HaachamaShipping

Because it's a broken class that has broken interaction with other classes and most players hate the notion that the best defence against a CV is to bet on the statistical likelihood of the CV player being incompetent? Sure, it isn't necessarily your fault as a player that things go to crap, but if you want to know why CVs are hated, I can only tell you to look around at the way the CVs are discussed on the forums, take a dib into that 204 page CV discussion thread and look at the bottom right on the map loading screens prior to battle to get an idea about the general attitude towards CVs.

No. Prinz Eugen's tankiness relies on being somewhat hard to citadel and the ship has piss poor dpm and fire setting, but has long range. RN CAs rely on their insane repair party and good concealment, but are comparably short ranged. Their fire setting is better though and their dpm too (though still not great). Prinz Eugen compared to T8 Albemarle will basically be much better vs most BBs, while Albemarle is better than PE against anything with less than 380 mm of gun caliber.

Wait, so you are telling me that you don't even see how the Belfast at T7 is too OP to return? Are you kidding me? Upsides: Top tier dpm at its tier Best concealment at its tier, among the best in its MM spread, regardless of up or down tier (only beaten by the Perth and Huanghe) Decent hp pool for its tier Top tier maneuverability for its tier Radar and smoke Downsides: 13 mm extremities get overmatched by 203 mm guns, just like Fiji, Atlanta and Flint. Too bad half the time it's in smoke, so unless you are one of the rare Indianapolises or T7 cruisers with a spotter plane (Zara, Gorizia, Surrey), good luck trying to kill it by blindfiring before it dpms you down) It has no torps (Neither have Helena, NO, Indianapolis, boise/NdJ, Gorizia, while Shchors and Lazo get a 4 km torp armament that will likely never see use) And sure, you can say a concerted effort by the team will kill it, but that isn't how balancing works, nor is it an argument that when it is uptiered, it's somehow less of an issue. A match with a T7 Belfast vs T9 still has arguably a good T8 cruiser in it while the enemy team likely gets what is a T7 cruiser. Go figure how much more influence a properly played Belfast, bane of DDs and smoke supporter extraordinaire can have on a T9 match compared to a Shchors or some Helena that has no such tools and basically has to sit behind an island to not die. A job which Belfast could do too, but doesn't have to and high tier maps like Okinawa aren't even conductive to that playstyle. Belfast is Belfast. They of course could introduce Sheffield instead or Swiftsure, but it wouldn't be Belfast. WG doesn't want to keep the Belfast name rare, they want to minimise the impact their T7 balancing failure has on the game. Thus we get a new T8 Belfast that allows people to own a historic ship that isn't absolutely broken OP and oppressive in the matches it is in. And people can miss Belfast, because it's a historic ship, people can visit it in London, it was a shame that it was no longer available in the game. And sure, it isn't the version that is in London, but it still is Belfast in an earlier iteration, before the 50s refit. It basically is Belfast, the way it fought most of WWII. Is it going to make money? Sure. But so would releasing any other high profile ship. Honestly, releasing Belfast '43 is likely going to pay off less than had they just put out a Sheffield or Dido that would have avoided the absolutely braindead comparison with a broken OP ship that obviously is going to be better. But this is a ship that mitigates the issue of a historic ship being locked behind stupid balancing mistakes, it allows players to get a historic ship in a historic layout without it being overtuned and it even is different enough from other light cruisers to be its own thing without being utter garbage. You want people that are undecided to get another opinion. Then don't be upset when someone disagrees and brings a different opinion from yours.

tbf though, Pommern and Alsace are much faster and get much more relevant consumables than defAA. Pommern also gets a set of torps per side and decent secondaries. The Pommern basically justifies having a sucky main battery by having decent add-ons, while Minnesota basically is just a floating gun battery that has no engine power and all its match influence stems from its main battery. A main battery that objectively isn't even good in anything except alpha strike and range. Everything else is mediocre (dpm, accuracy) to poor (pen). The main issue with Kansas and Minnesota is that it's absolutely crap to play, as you basically are at the mercy of your team. Your ability to influence the battle is minimised by having the poorest repositioning, while your influence on the side you are on isn't anything special either. The accuracy and crap pen will see to it that others might just punish harder with 3 less shells, but 10s better reload. You also can't go get into flanking positions like the Alsace either.

Belfast very much can stand up to cruisers to the same degree as most other T8 CLs. It has less dpm than most CLs, but it has similar hp pool to the other CLs (actually it's pretty healthy for a CL) and with the good concealment and smoke you can create unfair advantages in a fight. Against supercruisers, the ship is worse off, but that's the tradeoff of being a British CL. Belfast 43 is on the other hand one of the hardest DD counters at T8. Against BBs and CVs, other cruisers get mostly screwed just as hard. A handful can tank 38 cm, but that's heavy cruisers, so Belfast being a light cruiser cannot be put on that standard. For a light cruiser, the only high tier BB it cannot tank that a normal T8 CL can tank is the Odin. Against CVs, you're about as f****d as any other CL, except you got your smoke to hide. Cleveland can be rocketted for free. Poor armour is true, but as stated above, it's not a huge difference. Don't get shot by BBs. Same as any CL. Having only short burst smoke is not a downside when most cruisers don't get a smoke. Radar being not a good thing is an understatement when the Belfast is one of the few ships with a radar range surpassing concealment and not having a heal is a joke when that is the standard for T8 cruisers. Yes, it is unforgiving. But it isn't a bad ship. If someone thinks Belfast '43 is not their cup of tea because it requires too much skill or effort, sure, but at the end of the day, the ship still has some serious strengths and when played well and not crapped on by a CV (which is the case for any cruiser) it can win battles to the same degree as most cruisers at the tier. When Cleveland got retiered it still was a very very strong T8 ship.

The definition of being OP is not to have no counters, it is to be better than your peers. Sure, a Gremy will fare much worse against the likes of Ark Royal, Ranger, etc. than it did years ago, but it isn't really countered harder than any other T5 DD, is it now? Similarly, when it comes to Belfast being the best T7 light cruiser, the only case to the opposite I see people make is that Fiji might be better. But Fiji is not a new addition and nothing has changed. Compared to Shchors, Helena, München and such, the fact remains, even if it sees more radars maybe, the ship still retains its powerful smoke, concealment and radar, which none of the others get. So, while yes, a Shchors doesn't care as much about getting matched against T8 or T9 radars maybe, it's only because it fundamentally lacks the same options.

Regardless of how poor the HE shell would be by comparison to other cruisers, compared to Edinburgh that gets none, any HE is already a major thing. And having less dpm also isn't surprising. As I said in other places, Edinburgh is a better ship than Belfast in either the pure smoke support or the DD hunter role. But it never is both like the Belfast is. Belfast has to be worse at both when it can do them at the same time, otherwise it'd straight up be a better Edinburgh. Compared to the other T8 CLs. Apart from OP Kutuzov, which of the He cruisers gets smoke? Cleveland also gets no stealth radar and no torps at all. Maybe you should compare Belfast to others one by one, not to everything at the same time ignoring the various shortfalls other cruisers have. It has no advantages except for these major advantages, I guess... Radar + smoke combo is mostly just useful for cruiser vs cruiser, not cruiser vs DD. The thing is that you have a radar and you have a smoke and not just either of the two. You have something to disengage, you have something for opprtunistic farms, you have something to counter DDs hard and to make sure they won't bother try to spot you for their BBs. The option to use a plane is literally just silly, because noone does that. It's a literal non-issue. Maybe you just should take into consideration the gun bloom and slow down before running out of your smoke? Pretty much something anyone who played RN CLs in the past should know. And Anchorage has its smoke, which is nice and sure, the smoke is at times situational, but the ship is a CA. It has a CA hp pool, 27 mm armour allround. You aren't some Edinburgh that always needs the smoke. Please don't just call ships bad because their tools require a modicum of intelligence to not get yourself killed.

Except its not, but ok.

Mainz is a different kind of cruiser. I could as well ask, why get a Moskva if you can get Minotaur that shoots way faster? Fiji isn't really better, it has a heal and is a tier lower, but it has no HE, has worse concealment, worse armour, no radar. Prinz Eugen hardly fulfils the same role as Belfast. A good Edinburgh player can do the smoke support or the radar cruiser role better. But they cannot do both. Belfast can. Obviously it cannot be as good as Edinburgh in either when Edinburgh has to dedicate itself. The original was broken OP, thus it wasn't sold. The whole point of new Belfast is to sell a balanced Belfast for people who want a historic vessel and not pay hundreds on santa containers for a chance to get one. If all you wanted was the OP T7 one, sure, Belfast '43 isn't that. Ah yes, because both issues didn't exist already back in the day, right? No, Belfast still outclasses other T7 cruisers. Obviously it needs a brain, but it just has the tools. After all, sure, you can get countered by radar and BBs can delete you... but Sinop also just deletes any other T7 cruiser and most of them get no smoke either. Drop a lot of money on Christmas containers and hope that RNG gives you the ship.

And that's a bad thing?

1: What ship was you surprised by? (not very high expectations for example) but ended up loving? HSF Harekaze. Bought it when I had enough exp to unlock Kagero back in the day and thought it'd be decent, but it was way better than I thought. 2: What ship did you buy and not play it as much as you thought you would? Prinz Eugen. 3: What ship did you buy then regret buying it after? Odin. The hp pool isn't even the issue, the guns are just a new low for a T8 BB. Getting hydro or torps doesn't make up for that. 4: What ship did you want but is not in the game now? A month ago I would have said Belfast, but currently, none. 5: What Premium ship do you think is underrated? Hood. Gets often overlooked, but with accurate guns that have overmatch at its tier, excellent firing angles and improved ricochet angles, it's very good. Speed and tankiness also are best in tier overall. 6: If WG gave you any choice of a free ship, what would it be? Jean Bart, Tirpitz or Irian. Ships I think would perform solid, but I can't get myself to justify a purchase.

Atlanta has 16 guns overall, with 14 max on target, Flint has 12 total that are all centerline. And Nürnberg at 9 shells every 6 seconds also has vastly better pen and likely better range. One of the main drawbacks of a 133 mm gun cruiser will be the utterly garbage HE pen, the short base range and Dido having likely no hp pool. Atlanta at T7 for example has outstanding dpm values. Yet its amongst the worst T7 cruisers because it has no range, no pen, no survivability and while it once was an AA goddess, it now is a free rocket kill. Only decent for ranked when you never see T8s, so IFHE isn't prohibitive and you can utilise that radar for influence.

For comparison, Atlanta base is up to 14 guns on a 4.8s reload with 1.8k per shell. Dido at T6 could work, but it still would have issues like Atlanta, and the same issues with upcoming commander skill rework.

Belfast '43 has longer reload, higher HE alpha, worse fire chance, but T8 appropriate RN CL armour (no longer gets overmatched by 203 mm) and T8 appropriate HE pen (30 mm instead of 25 mm). I agree, Belfast '43 has a very high skill floor, because of the shortcomings of the design. It will make a great difference whether people know how to use the smoke and any other cover on the map or not. In the open, Belfast just dies. The 40s smoke is certainly a challenge, as it isn't very good for farming, though at the very least, just like the RN DDs, you have some flexibility with 5 charges and a decent cooldown. There clearly was one priority during the development and that was to not make the ship OP. And that succeeded. People should cut the ship some slack though, given that yes, it isn't T7 Belfast, but it never was going to be, nor should it be. It's like calling Anshan, Gnevny and Fushun crap for not being Gremyashy. These were blatantly OP ships that got removed for a reason. The Belfast '43 is a ship that overall fits in at T8, it isn't oppressing like T7 Belfast, but it certainly can compete with other T8 CLs in terms of powerlevel. It is fragile and has a lackluster dpm, but has great radar utility, great concealment and smoke. If you compare it to other T8 CLs, the Cleveland has more dpm and armour, but no torps, no stealth radar and no smoke, Mainz has CA level of concealment, no radar at all, no smoke, Chapayev also has no smoke and overall a good bit worse concealment. Closest competitors are Ochakov, which has no survivability, underwhelming dpm and no smoke and the Edinburgh, which will do the smoke spam or the DD hunt better, but never will do both. Belfast '43 is fundamentally what it is being advertised as. A means to get a balanced Belfast for those people (like me), who for years complained that the historic ship was locked behind santa containers due to WG failing to balance it properly. And the Belfast '43 is not some utterly terrible ship that only is worth the name plate, played properly it certainly can influence a battle. It obviously looks crap when compared to T7 Belfast, but you could make that point also about ships like Cleveland or Chapayev. And the ship is different enough from other ships to where one can't just say "just go play ship x instead". I can definitely say though, don't buy Belfast if you aren't up for the skill floor. I don't mean to say that in some elitist fashion saying plebs should stay away from it, but in general, Belfast '43 requires a good bit of work, so even for good players, the ship to me has a bit of London syndrome, in that it overall is balanced, but has so many things going on that to get your results you need to put in a lot more work than with others. Mainz for example is a much more easy-going ship that can still have great influence, but requires a lot less work. But it shouldn't be news that a RN CL has to be extra careful...

Per se, ship is ok. Not bad, not great. Would consider it actually among the better T5 BBs. It's not Pyotr or GC, but it certainly beats crap like Bretagne and it has a good armour scheme if you know how to use it (and unlike the VU it isn't that bad in hp pool and speed). Question is, why the hell would you get a T5 premium BB? If you got leftover coal and are a collector, sure, go get it. But paying money?

It cost me 37€, so I dunno, are prices different across the EU server? Dido has the issue that it basically would at best be HMS Flint and we know how poor Atlanta-class ships are these days. Also would need some silly boost to RoF, which wouldn't be uncommon, but just worth noting, given with 5x2 of the 5.25 inch guns we currently have as secondaries on various BBs are not gonna puut out a lot of shells with their current realistic RoF. And let's not pretend that these ships ever will be AA ships, they'll be CV fodder like the Atlanta, thanks to crap mid range dps, crap hp pool and armour that is just good enough to arm AP rockets. Repulse/Renown (I doubt we'd get both) could be many things. Most conventional implementation would be as T6 BB with some very good concealment and other soft stats to make up for the crap belt and 3x2 main gun armament. Going lower would introduce 15 inch guns to T5, which frankly isn't really in anyone's interest and going higher means it gets more gimmicks slapped onto it to make up for the shortcomings (stuff like (super)cruiser accuracy, defAA, superheal, shortened reload, god knows what).

Combat Maid 43 has 9 km radar, not 12 km. It's no Chapayev. It is literally the worst radar at T8 other than Tallinn. Still good enough. If they are, they were so for quite some time already and certainly numbers tipped way back with CV introduction. Radar hasn't really made them any more scarce. Also because usually you don't see more than one Belfast per team. Often none. This isn't WoT. Never has been. If you struggle against Belfast 43 or any radar, then I don't think you were a very good DD in the first place. With some map awareness and an idea of where a cruiser can go and where it can't go, you already can avoid most of the issues of radar. Especially against a Belfast '43, the most fragile T8 cruiser only matched by maybe the Ochakov, with a worse radar and no easy overpens, meaning when you run headfirst into a DD in open waters, you likely will just get deleted before you can kill the ship spotting you, not to mention, you might just die afterwards as you shot your guns and you cannot just smoke, because if you didn't slow down before smoking, you run out of your own smoke. But compared to the many other threats, like running into a competent enemy DD or getting hunted by CV, some mediocre radar cruiser isn't really all that scary.

British line is optimised for repair, HE dpm and concealment. Doesn't mean that that's all they can do. All BBs up to QE and Monarch have quite capable AP, as do most premiums. And the devs gave it short fuze for a reason.

I disagree. Monarch has an improved repair, with a great ability to restore damage and on shorter CD, allowing it to get more potential hp than Roma. The combination of great heal and lower base hp means the ship is worse off against cits, but it is better off against fires. And Monarch isn't exactly easier to citadel for any ship other than Yamato-class, given like Roma it has a higher citadel, but a very good belt. And for Monarch, getting closer in isn't even as disadvantagous, given that unlike Roma, you don't get into the overpen zone, thanks to British short-fuze AP. Also, while Lion has a superheal, it has tier for tier worse guns than Monarch. The dpm is nothing special, the accuracy is nothing special, the AP is so poor, there's a reason why it goes back to HE spam (and why HE spammers consider it as good again after the Monarch).

Dunno, Tachibana for less than a Euro still looks nice. Or well, it would, if it wasn't free at Christmas.

BB: Yamato, Kremlin Cruiser: DesMo and Nevsky DD: Daring That would be my main recommendations, ships that typically have a good number of strengths, are reliable in performance, can pay off with enough skill and most have stood the test of time. For cruisers, really, DesMo has been strong for a long time and it just isn't going to ever not be good. Nevsky is more risky pick of mine, as it's relatively new, but I think with its long range HE and AP, its radar, the sturdiness, torps and speed, it should be a safe investment. Certainly would consider it overall more useful than Petro, which has its AP and armour, but that's it.

Minotaur has the highest dpm, great concealment, smoke or radar, armour that is easily penned by DD HE and can even be easily citpenned by some DDs, gets overmatched by a good few cruisers even, no HE, a crapton of torps that can be launched from stealth, improved acceleration and good maneuverability. Goliath has among the lowest dpm, no smoke, no radar, not even a plane, has 234 mm guns that have some of the best per shell HE performance of any cruiser in the game, while AP overmatches the likes of Minotaur and Smolensk, has a crapton of hp to go with superheal. 40 mm deck that bounces Yamato and shatters half the HE from cruisers. Some of the thickest armour above the citadel of any cruiser, meaning even the likes of Nevsky at range can f*** off and DDs certainly can, maneuverability is underwhelming and concealment is just very decent. UK CAs are very different from UK CLs. Both need skill, yes, but the differences in playstyle are massive. Best heal in class and tier with good hp pool and CA grade armour instead of being literally worse armoured than a friggin DD might be a point? I dunno. I don't see a Zao, DesMo, Hindenburg or Venezia bounce Yamato shells off the deck, while the occasional random cit is manageable thanks to 58k hp and being 50% repairable. I don't see those other cruisers then being able to just straight up pen the Yamato deck everywhere in return. Just don't bother and learn how to best angle against various attacks and where to not go to get easily dumpstered by a crossfire of CV and BB. A good CV player will kill you anyway, the main thing you can do is make it as hard as possible, but never expect your cruiser to be actually good against planes.

Belfast has 4 smokes base, 5 with SI. They last 40s though. OG Belfast is OP and isn't being sold for a reason. Having a non-OP Belfast is a good option for those who want the ship for having a Belfast, one of the few still preserved WWII ships in Europe, not for having an OP sip that has been way overtuned. And no, the OG Belfast is better than the Smolensk, because the main issue with the Belfast was not that it had a friggin smoke and could just spam HE from it. You could as well just play Flint or an Akizuki for that too. But Belfast had that AND it had a stupid radar that together with its insane concealment meant that it would counter DDs hard, counter cruisers with its dpm and still be one of the best support cruisers vs BBs, as it can smoke up and shell them. Smolensk is just an annoyance, but can't as easily pick fights with cruisers and is way less worrisome for decent DD players who know how to avoid being easily spotted near it. Lastly, no, Belfast '43 is not an Edinburgh. Belfast does not have the smoke nor the dpm, nor the heal. What Belfast offers is that it keeps smoke while being a good DD counter and it has HE, so you can deal better with ships that aren't broadside. Belfast '43 compared to radar Edinburgh basically has a bit more flexibility in creating its own cover and can farm some fires instead of having only raw dpm to get by. Ship isn't incredibly powerful, but also not bad. It obviously isn't the T7 Belfast, but that was to be expected and whining about that is just silly. Compared to other T8 CLs, Belfast seems quite fine.

Often enough, given that the ship is an Edinburgh without heal and especially when you get fun high tier maps like Mountain Range, Okinawa or other where you often can't easily find an island nearby to cover you. Also, CVs exist. Ship is n't terrible, but if you can't get your usage out of the short burst smoke, then I do wonder how the hell you play the ship, given the ship relies so heavily on these tools. I would consider giving the ship a higher fire chance though to compensate for the crap reload. Just like it has improved HE alpha. If it gets the DD short burst smoke, why not give it the fire chance necessary to at least reliably set fires while in smoke?

Aigle isn't better than Anshan. Aigle is good, but it's different. Aigle is great dpm, great hp pool, but it also isn't the most maneuverable without its speed boost and not very stealthy. If you can play around the very poor concealment, Aigle can be great. Anshan meanwhile is a very solid allround DD. It isn't as extreme as the Aigle, but it also does not have the extreme downsides. If you build it with CE, it has around 6 km conceal, which is prety solid and the torpedos with 8 km range are very standard. Compared to Gnevny, Anshan is straight up a better ship. Anshan basically combines Gnevny with a functional torpedo armament. Anshan can play the range game like the Gnevny, but it doesn't have to. I'd rate both options as solid DDs among the T6s.