michauorin

No doubt about that, we're getting bad news on a daily basis now.

again , same to what i said before , what cruiser doesn't take heavy dmg from hindo or IFHE henri ? doesn't mean stalingrad is not op just because it takes dmg from these ships It's very nice how you completely missed my point. May i ask you to find the parts where i mentionned hinden or ifhe HIV, read then again, and reconsider the answer? Hint. There is no mention of those ships. So i assume it either isn't answer to this post or you did not read it at all. Oh, and a cruiser that does not take heavy damage from these 2 is a Zao. Because a Zao will just disengage. Unless it's a Zeyo, but let's skip over that and assume correct play.

If wg didn't graciously delete my replays from beginning of the season i'd happily record you some cb replays with stalins getting eaten by Zaos and Moskvas. You don't need 50mm pen to deal with it, you need focus fire, patience, and careful positioning. This ship punishes mistakes heavily, while being vulnerable to organised proper counterplay. Pushing into crossfires is a no go regardless if they're set by a stalin or not, but stalin lets jump on that much harder. Is it bad that we have a ship punishing mistakes? There is a certain problem with this ship, but it doesn't have to do with the ship itself, but the matchmaking weight it received. Arguably no other cruiser can lock out as effectively, while moskva is better overall as a cruiser it doesnt have the bb threat in guns. It would not be unreasonable for cruiser killers to be separated MM wise. Note i say cruiser killers, including HIV.

The very mentioned New Orleans had to sail stern first to nearest dockyard to avoid sinking. Generally speaking ships struck on the bows had a reasonable chance of survival with proper damacon, as even extremely small ships (eg coastal defense ship / kaiboukan Shimushu surviving a bow torpedo hit from USS Haddo) lived through it. While the bow damage is mostly catastrophic integrity wise, torpedoes hitting amidships often caused extensive hull shattering, and most importantly knocked out boiler rooms with either flooding them or spreading massive fires, obviously knocking out the power, steering, often shattering the shafts, and further complicating the work of damacon parties, not to mention huge crew loss to begin with. While in itself it might not bring a ship down immediately, a heavily wounded unit is open for further air or surface attacks, which especially in case of the Japanese led to ships being evacuated and scuttled, as they were found beyond safe salvaging.