HaachamaShipping

MM tries to mirror Mikasas. If it cannot do so within the time reserved for strict mirror matchmaking, it will draw upon T2 cruisers or T3 BBs, if it is a T2-3 match. Obviously, because it is not uncommon to end up as the only BB in a match, it has opportunities to be incredibly OP or incredibly crap, depending on what MM and RNG want you to be.

Mikasa is a ship that can be played for the meme and otherwise is both strong and crap at the same time, just because of how it at once is unreliable and slow, but one cannot understate the potency of the effective hp pool at the tier. Yet, uptiered, it gets ripped apart by any other BB. At least the thing is cheap for how rarely I want to play it. Also, cause MM takes like a couple minutes at times, because it needs to find another Mikasa or run long enough to abandon strict mirror MM.

That's overselling T8 cruisers, frankly. If you run a 4 Akis combo against enemy cruisers You don't have to push into enemy caps, as you can just deny them the cap for long enough to get the upper hand. Akis are slow for DDs, but faster than most cruisers and if the enemy DD pushes in alone, what are they going to do? Pushing in in most cruisers gets you then farmed and shot to pieces by the BB, because cruisers usually don't get great concealment, a smoke and a damage mitigation vs BBs. Most don't get any vision control either. Range only matters if you can capitalise on it. Unless you got a spotting DD and the enemy does not or you caught the Aki with radar around an obstacle, Akis can just melt whatever lights them up while your cruisers try to give support from far away. In the end, you are far more likely to lose a ship than the Aki composition, especially in cases where the Akizukis are not actually spotted and you have nothing to shoot at anyway. Cruiser utility is a joke. Utility-wise, the only decent cruisers are Edinburgh, Baltimore and Chapayev, which bring powerful vision with radar and a hydro. While not bad, I don't call that greater utility than smoke, great concealment and the ability to create torp soup. Taking a cruiser for the utility requires you to be able to capitalise on the 20-30s of radar provided and not having enemies that can play around that. Which basically means, you bring maybe a radar vessel, but actually running a cruiser lineup like in T10. Yeah, that's not really going to be any more reliable than running DDs instead. Is running 4 Akis, a Cossack and a BB the optimal lineup with no counterplay? Lolno, but it has more success than it likely should have, judging by how people get pissed at it and this lineup, Kiev lineups and variations of these mainly DD spam lineups are just more reliable in getting you somewhere, compared to traditional lineups that focus on cruisers like you see at T10.

Even if you hate Izumo, which is up to you, the ship likely is one of the strongest T9 BBs currently. extensive 57 mm plating rivalling the Soviet 60 mm, but with almost no superstructure, guns that combine good 2.0 sigma with excellent shell velocity and a penetration in line with Republique, I'd take it over Musashi in same tier matchmaking and top tier matchmaking likely. Only in T10, Musashi can boast the additional ability to overmatch 30 mm plating of cruisers. But against anything other than BBs in T7-9, Izumo is likely the better choice.

The reason you can spam 1 BB and 4 Akis and actually succeed is not due to Aki being mediocre across the board, but it is because Aki is specialised to the point it can actually take the role of a cruiser. You'd then still run one more ship that is a spotting DD, because of the things Aki cannot do. The reason you cannot do that at T10 is because for one, Stalingrad's specialisation is not making a whole class obsolete and because as you have three relevant classes, not two, you need a more variable setup. Especially when one of the two viable classes is hardcoded at 1 ship max and the second is a counter to the other. If T10 meta had no BBs and the DD was 1 max, then cruiser meta also would degenerate into lineups of 1-2 ships. Gut tells me, it'd be 5 Henris and a Mino to provide spotting or 6 Henris relying on the 1 DD to do the spotting. Because all you need then is one cruiser that can crap on all other cruisers reliably and enough complementary ships to not have issues with any potentially counterplay.

It's not a completely clear cut case for all ships, imo. Like, Musashi sure is insane, but it no longer totally invalidates the Izumo for example, because yes, the Musashi has the overmatch, but Izumo has way better accuracy and citadel protection. Alaska also is good, but it doesn't replace good T9 cruisers like Buffalo. Tirpitz isn't really better than Bismarck. It has a different specialisation. And while torps certainly are powerful and give Tirpitz a niche when uptiered, the hydro is also a very useful tool if employed correctly, regardless of tier. After all, while torps allow Tirpitz to even brawl T10 BBs and win, what if noone is dumb enough to brawl you? Then you might radar want a hydro that at least can help prevent you getting wrecked by torpedoes or allows you even to light up smoked up ships or ships behind islands, etc. And then there are people who play Neptune because they have the captain for it. *insert headnod emote*

If the DD can bully a heavy cruiser either the DD isn't LIDL or the heavy cruiser is even more so. Short of landing torps (which happens at any tier), what is some Ognevoi, Loyang, Benson, Lightning, Hsienyang, etc. going to do to some Charles Martel, Baltimore, Mogami or Atago? Unlike some other tiers, T8 doesn't have single ships that are OP as hell, it has an issue in that certain classes interact poorly with each other. Aki and Kiev spam after all aren't a product of these ships being OP compared to others, just that these ships fit the meta of CB far more than others. This is for example a stark contrast to what T7 CB would be, where you can certainly expect a flood of Belfast, not because of the class interaction, but because Belfast is simply a better ship, especially for the meta, but also in general. Because cruisers have a different evolution in their power level compared to other classes. Cruisers start out dominant at T1 and 2, because there they are the only choice or up against DDs only, which they outgun, T3+, BB meta kicks in and up to T7, the only reason to not replace cruisers with BBs is the restrictions of MM. Like, why would you ever take any T5 cruiser over a T5 BB? From T8 onwards (ignoring Belfast), you get actually solid radar cruisers, but all the cruisers basically still get absolutely trashed by BBs and the difference between an Akizuki and a Cleveland when getting shot at is that Cleveland has like 50% more hp, but has way worse concealment, no smoke and can take citadel hits. Thus, you either go full DD or you run some cruiser that is virtually just a radar bot. At T9, finally, cruisers get a repair party (except RN cruisers, which have other issues that make their use in CB very niche, yet it's one reason why some run radar Edinburgh), so their hp disparity compared to DDs is far more pronounced, but their armour is still crap. At T10, most cruisers get a repair party and some armour and even though the rise of overmatching BB guns might come to mind, the fact that cruisers exist that can tank the shells (Moskva/Stalingrad) and the DDs that get enough pen to reliably hurt cruisers are not hardcoded to only take 10% damage, cruisers as a whole stay relevant (as you'd need something to counter the tanky cruisers). Compare this to BBs, where at Tier 3 to T5 you overmatch most other BBs, every cruiser and DD and then your power slowly goes down a bit, due to certain ships or classes being able to tank your shells. But if you look at USN BB line, South Carolina basically tier for tier likely is no less powerful than Montana, if not even more so. You can never claim that some low tier cruiser could ever compete with its T10 counterpart tier for tier, except potentially for Furutaka. T8 CBs being a complete DD fiesta thus is mainly due to how cruisers scale over the tiers, which is pretty poorly. And I voted T10, because T10 is basically still the best tier for inter-class balance, with T9 potentially being viable, but voting other just for that felt silly, because that'd include 7 tiers I'd consider absolutely trash for CB. After all, T1 and T2 are jokes, T3 to T5 is a combination of cruisers being absolute roadkills and certain ships throwing the balance out of whack, T7 is Belfast fiesta, T6... what exactly would be the reason to not replace every single cruiser with a combination of Aigle and Guepard and a spotting T-61? Even if they don't fully rival the dpm of cruisers, unlike the Akizuki, cruisers have no radar to counterplay smoke effectively and they need no IFHE to screw over cruisers, while IFHE allows any DD to screw over BBs on basically the same level as cruisers (because any DD can reach the 25 mm necessary to pen lightly armoured sections and all the reinforced sections are at most penable by IFHE Nürnberg/Aoba or Graf Spee). I mean, we saw what the meta on these tiers would be without restrictions in Ranked Sprint, where genuinely the sole cruisers that were kinda ok were Perth and Graf Spee, because they would not just die and Perth could bring some added firepower on a platform with moving smoke, while Graf Spee could kill cruisers and you were guaranteed at least one enemy cruiser, so in the end, to be a net benefit for your team, you just had to outperform that enemy cruiser (which was easy if it was some Nürnberg that gets blapped at the start).

From the text in the background, save to say, this is Giulio Cesare. One ship remaining. My guess is some Duca or a Zara-class.

Not too hard to hit. And while Colorado is 25 mm all over, Lyon cannot even overmatch that. So, yeah, no. there is a difference between Lyon and Sinop in how they interact with the old big gun BB lines. Gneisenau is a bigger issue than Lyon.

Lyon doesn't screw over Nagato and Colorado though. The reason Sinop is silly is because it takes the main draw of the Big 7 (the 406/410 mm guns) and puts it on a hull that has more armour, matches Nagato's hp (best in tier among silver ships) and is faster. Lyon meanwhile has 16 guns, but: cannot overmatch garbage accuracy inferior penetration gun firing angles are a joke hp value on par with T5 Kongo Armour layout isn't bad, but still extensive 25 mm plating that makes trading AP with a properly angled Big 7 a loss, as you will eat regular 10k salvos or so, which is almost 20% of your hp, while the AP return fire doesn't do much. Lyon's best armour is towards the bow, amidships it is easily overmatched and kiting, you can potentially citadel it through the stern (did so already once in Gneisenau). Lyon is not bad, but it occupies a different niche. Sinop does not. It basically kicks all other Big 7s out of that niche, because why bring those to anything competitive over Sinop?

RN BBs didn't exactly need a buff, but the changes certainly helped make the ships a bit less silly. Like, in the past, I could outbrawl others in Monarch because if necessary, I can give broadside and not care much and just work them over with dpm. Now I have to put a bit more thought into what I actually do with the ship. As to German BBs being bad at what they do, not really. German BBs are just not good at things that are relevant often, but that which they are good at, they are unquestionably good at. There's a reason why FdG actually was a weirdo pick in T9 Ranked, but people who knew how to play FdG got great stats. After all, as infuriating as the guns can be, it was equipped with tools for the meta, being able to rush down and outbrawl the average Musashi, secondary farm the JB that was 32 mm all over the ship, hydro to deal with DD spam, reinforced deck and upper plate to eat fewer HE pens from all the Kitakazes and such... if FdG was actually able to reliably hit a target, how would it not be OP? And no, theoretical dpm is not irrelevant when you manage to get to play the ship to its strength. When you managed to rush down some Musashi or something, at 5 km, derping these guns into their side, accuracy matters little.

Nagato and Colorado share their extensive 25 mm plating all over the ship, but Colorado's citadel armour is thicker and while Nagato has more hp, Colorado has the way better repair party. I think Colorado is currently in a decent spot, with the sole thing that is kind of questionable being the Sinop, which has similarly powerful guns, but not the weak plating and poor speed.

They don't need buffs, because they don't outright suck. Their issues stem from strengths that just are not easily made relevant and thus hard to apply. If the line needs something, it's a redesign in high tiers, similar to what we saw with British BBs (which received a citadel to not be braindead, but got an improved heal as compensation). With Germans, you can buff their strengths hardly further, because their secondaries are at a power level where more power would just be undeserved for an automated armament, while the hydro already has great range and there's no reason why BBs should carry the best hydro in the entire game. Citadel protection cannot really be buffed, as it already works. Yet, buffing aspects of the ships that are weak might end up creating ships that are just too strong. e.g. if you give German BBs accuracy like the Russians, how is that justified? FdG already has a dpm advantage over Sovietsky Soyuz, has better bow armour, has up to 80 mm deck plating, a hydro, a spotter plane and is nigh-impossible to citadel by anything other than AP DBs. Would it be justified that this ship gets actual accuracy while retaining everything else? Yeah, certainly not.

She doesn't get superheavy shells and no, it would not be an advantage. NC SHS cause the shells to have great vertical dispersion and decent punch, but at the cost of having an appaling 700 m/s shell velocity. Colorado guns are already very accurate and any added accuracy is not worth losing a significant amount of shell velocity. NC is better than Colorado in almost every way, but the super-heavy shells are certainly a mixed blessing. Also because you don't need the added punch. Colorado guns already manage to decimate things anyway. Overall, Colorado is slow, but otherwise pretty solid. Guns are accurate and certainly the one part that uptiers well (in contrast to things like Lyon where the speed is nice, but the guns certainly have lackluster punch at anything but short to medium range and can be bounced by cruisers). So when uptiered, you accompany other BBs and try to make your great main armament count. When top tier, the ship is really nice though, because at mid tiers, you are less likely to feel the speed issue on the smaller maps and you can do good numbers on all BBs that you overmatch.

Basically would take it on any DD that isn't Russian or IJN alt-line. For Friesland... I'd take IFHE, because with no torps, you have to rely on guns to kill things and even if it'll only be 25 mm pen, penning T8/9 cruisers helps a lot, I'd assume.

Played it in last ranked with AR mode, given you could stealth radar. the radar changes certainly helped make it more useful in randoms too though, as the gap changed from 9.45 km radar on 10.1 km concealment (thus over half a km) to 10 km radar on 10.3 km concealment (basically half the gap that existed before). And tbf, that's about as much of a gap cruisers like Cleveland or Seattle have.

I mostly stopped playing radar Mino. Dunno, just not feeling it.

105 mm Hinden secs: 18 rpm, 1.2k alpha 100 mm Yoshino secs: 20 rpm, 1.7k alpha And it depends on what you are fighting. Anything that cannot overmatch the stern, you could even kite at an angle and not give a damn, because the citadel has enough armour to not care. And if you are rushing a BB, both ships will try to kill it with main guns and the torps, not with their secondary armament. Also, against anything that overmatches 30 mm, Hinden isn't much better than Yoshino, because both will get overmatched and while the citadel of Yoshino is massive, when properly angled, the amount that you can actually pen through and not internally ricochet off is not too large. It's then up to RNG where shells fly and both ships have a chance to just lose huge chunks of hp, though Yoshino in my experience has more troll options for those shots that aren't cits, while on Hinden it's just guaranteed massive pen damage. In a cruiser vs cruiser fight, if you have secondary specced Hinden vs secondary specced Yoshino, I'd likely consider the Yoshino to be able to win basically most engagements, if it doesn't push into the Hindenburg (given Hinden torps are going to wreck Yoshino before it can do much in return). At 6 km though, you can outkite the torps, farm with superior secondary dpm, half your broadside is a no-damage zone and you actually are more accurate than a Hindenburg.

Yoshino secondaries > Hindenburg secondaries.

Yes, but none of them could pen its same-tier peers reliably, which is why you'd spec into IFHE. It doesn't matter if you can still wreck one class. Heck, Akizuki without IFHE still could torpedo boat, but that still meant it was not a good ship withjout IFHE and the likes of Smolensk and Cleveland also lose much of their value when all they do is set fires and nothing else, except against DDs (which half of them cannot even spot for themselves). Point is, just because a ship has much of its potential locked behind IFHE does not mean it is "nigh useless". And Akizuki before changes certainly wasn't.

33 knots for a DD is nice at T2/3, but not at T8. the next slowest DD has 35 knots and those are already "slow DDs". When you get outrun by some cruisers without speed boost, you know you got issues. Heck, Gneisenau and Hood are just one knot slower, while Iowa matches that base speed. The only DD the Akizuki can ever semi-reliably "outrun" is RN DDs, but the difference in concealment and handling between a Lightning and an Akizuki is like night and day. And 6.1 km concealment with best spec is also at best decent, for the size.

Even extremities at T8 are 25 mm or more for cruisers (except Edinburgh), so a Cleveland without IFHE can set fires or try pen superstructure, same as an Akizuki can try vs other DDs. Both without IFHE were absolute dogshit to play, to the point IFHE was at times recommended over CE (on Cleveland anyway). Because being unable to even deal with same tier peers is just too punishing. But just because you need 4 captain points for IFHE does not make the ship overall "nigh useless", as getting 14 points by T8 is not impossible and the 4 points are well worth it. And in most other aspects, Akizuki was already a strong ship back in the day, given it was before they nerfed her handling and concealment to make up for the increased pen, so Akizuki was way more capable as a DD hunter.

Can my Kagero get buffs. I'm not able to outgun a Benson. It does not matter whether it is a BB "main". It is clear from complaints about 32 mm pen that it is a BB argument, especially at T8/9. Especially when accompanied by "BB melting in less than a minute". For cruisers, 27 mm would be enough and any 127 mm gun could reach that with IFHE for years. People didn't complain about that and people don't complain about how fast a cruiser dies if shot at by an Akizuki. It is almost always the poor BBs that need protection. Nevermind that BBs get ever more potent heals and ever more insane plating to deal with it. RU BB now even get fancy damecon gimmicks, for those who feel like burning isn't their thing.

Or new people, given you actually cannot use things like camo, captain skills, signals, etc till you reach a certain account level.

Guess Chapayev, Cleveland, Seattle, Worcester, Bayard, Smolensk and Colbert are all nigh useless too, given they need IFHE to actually pen other cruisers of their tier? If you shoot a bot that doesn't use damecon and heal you might get it done under a minute. Otherwise, no. The base dpm of Harugumo just manages to theoretically kill a BB, but then you consider stuff like damage saturation, misses and shatters (as only British and French are 32 mm pennable all over at these tiers and RN gets superheal) and killing a BB on your own that fast is kind of nonsense. Just like most things German? And before you state that Germans get lower HE alpha, IJN 10 cm guns even by comparison rank low with their 1.4k alpha, which is only adding up thanks to firing fast and having a fair number of guns. But Clemson with 2 mm more caliber has already 1.5k. Akizuki and derrivatives are currently in a decent spot, imo. They get cruiser like gun characteristics, but also have some cruiser like handling and while quite powerful, they do have their drawbacks. Vs DDs, they can shred most DDs that try to fight them head on, but are usually outspotted and outrun. Cruisers and battleships ought to be a bit careful, but minding the positioning of enemy DDs should be done anyway, lest you want to eat a bunch of torps. Akizukis are prominent in CB, but that is more thanks to how busted BB vs cruiser at T8 is, where BB guns usually go through cruisers like butter and thus having a citadel is a liability. Can easily be seen when compared with T10 meta, where Harugumo is rarely ever played, because cruisers actually get repairs and 30 mm plating. But leave it to BBs to continue to complain about these ships, because they feel unrightfully hurt, ignore the cruisers that got right out replaced. But then again, T8 cruisers would still get penned by IFHE on any other DD except the RN, which only pen 25 mm with IFHE, so Baltimore, Wichita, Hipper, Eugen and Atago are comparatively fine (till they get superstructure farmed or APed in the side.