Tyrendian89

BATTLEship's superstructures is what I said. Since it will just bounce off the main armour belt on those.

just a little word of advice: DONT FIRE HE ON GERMAN CRUISERS! I pretty much never do. It's that bad. More or less no matter the target, AP will do better. That's a design choice from Wargaming (at least I'd assume so) to reward better aim, since AP cares much more where you hit the target than HE. And believe it or not, firing cruiser AP at battleships can do very reasonable damage if you know where to aim (i.e. weak spots like superstructure or bow/stern). I've seen many a salvo from my KBerg and NBerg doing 3k damage to a battleship. While the lack of fire does cost you a sizable chunk of potential damage against battleships, you're better at hunting cruisers than either your IJN or USN counterparts from my experience, the high arc means you'll citadel carriers like nobody's business, and putting reliable 3-4k salvoes into destroyers coupled with the very good fire rate leads to damage potential that even the T5-6 USN cruisers will struggle hard to match.

a well-played triple Isokaze wolfpack is probably the scariest thing you could run at T4, maybe mix a Clem in for better guns. Either that or zip around as a wolfpack of Phoenixes, but be prepared to get citadel'd in seconds by anyone who knows their trade

I'm kinda forced to aggree on the New Orleans from my own experience - I also don't find it a very enjoyable ship to play at this time. It pretty much feels weaker than the Mogami in every respect except AA (although the gun buff coming in the next patch is supposed to make USN 8" AP very good, so that might help slightly offset the insane IJN HE shells, but I still don't see it outgunning a Mogami against most targets except maybe a broadsiding cruiser at short range but those are kinda rare...), and AA is useful in something like a third of all games because either there's no enemy carrier at all, or he just goes to torp a different part of the team than the one I'm with (admittedly that is also a contribution to the team via keeping a part of our force safe from that strike, but certainly not a fun one for me). And it's not that I would be doing totally atrociously with it, 45k average damage and a positive KDR isn't too bad, but it's just not that much fun for me at the moment. Other than that I wholeheartedly aggree with the OP - understanding how your ship is supposed to work is a key part of both doing well with it and having fun with it. And that's a sign of a well working class-based system, even if there are a few balance kinks to work out (which there always will be, and that's not a bad thing!)