HaachamaShipping

Only ships I'm looking out for specifically are DoY and Vanguard, but only if they come without the shitty boxes. If I get bored to the point I want to buy a ship like Le Terrible that has not even a smoke, I feel like I might just as well play a different game.

Get an Aigle for coal. It even gets the smoke.

If I play Ranked, sure, I can go with that. Can't guarantee I'd bother with Ranked though. It will be one of the ships I rebuy next though. also, I didn't say "inferior".

1. all time stats don't account for buffs that came out more recently. 2. By that metric, NC is an absolute piece of garbage at T8, yet few experienced people would ever consider it a bad BB.

Some of us do talk about Izumo, especially after WG handed it enough buffs to make it one of the strongest tech tree T9 BBs in the game. You just cannot call a T9 BB with 57 mm centre deck that shatters even German HE and 9 guns that not just have 2.0 sigma but Republique-grade pen and extreme shell velocity a turd. It may be slow, it may not look great, but Izumo easily is one of the best gun platforms at T9, only maybe neglected because premiums exist, like Musashi that was totally a good design concept and not one of the most silly additions to the game. as for turret layout, it provides the exact same advantages and drawbacks as a two turret forward, one aft setup. Noone complains about those. Noone calls Iowa, Alsace, Musashi or Lion out on their setups and at least Musashi and Lion have nowhere close to the great rear firing angles the Izumo has, while forward all three aren't great (though unlike Musashi, Izumo has no cheek for free cits). FdG obviously cannot compete in this regard, German 4x2 setup is atrocious for firing angles. On topic, USN line or failing that IJN line. USN are more forgiving for tanking, but less mobile, which isn't too terrible really. IJN is more mobile, but easily gets citadelled on most tiers. Both nations are kinda solid from T4 onwards, though USN T5 and T6 I found boring after having gone through other lines, which is why I'll always recommend them to people to start with.

I take Krasny Krim over Omaha, if you give me a sufficiently skilled (18-19 pt) captain. KK scales so much with captain skills, as base, the ship is garbage, but with BFT, to get actual reload, AFT to get range, CE to not be spotted halfway across the map and IFHE to not struggle against T6+ BBs, the ship becomes decent. KK is still only 29 knots, but it at least gets its citadel encased in 25 mm armour, so top tier, no BB can citadel it through the bow, which is in stark contrast to Omaha, where cruisers can crap on it. Add the pretty solid torps and KK is a surprising package. Still, you can get a tier for tier better ship by just buying the Svietlana and putting your 19 pt captain on that. It has less AA, less torp damage and less reload, but it's T4, still has the armour, still has insane torp reload, still benefits from all the captain skills, has way better base concealment and is free. You get by without IFHE even, because you'll never see T6. With Krasny Krim and a Duca degli Abruzzi plus surprise mechanics x2 bundle for 50 Euro, this easily is the day with the worst offers so far.

That opens the next issue, which is, what skill to get instead. Like, the only captain skill that comes to my mind is FP or RPF (overall build being PT, EL, EM, JoAT, AR, BoS, FP/RPF, CE). The payoff imo is even less than what Hindenburg gets, which would likely take DE to get its fire chance up (a bad deal for Yoshino, due to already high fire chance). And I still don't take FP over SI, because fire damage is the sole thing a fifth repair party can fully cover and SI gives me another defAA/hydro and another plane too, while for RPF, that's quite situational and I prefer to not go on solo flanking maneuvers without people spotting. In both cases, the +1 repair party is a poor fix and it'd be better to just buff other base stats, like fire chance or such. It also doesn't get better with WG trying to sell these extra repair parties on cruisers as extra tankiness, which they just aren't. And pen damage isn't a matter of AP being shot at you. HE pens are as healable as AP pens and with 30 mm max plating, every cruiser and every battleship will HE pen you for full (unless they hit the spaced armour). Yoshino can troll at every range, but trolls towards both sides. There is no really "effective" way to angle the ship and achieve any sort of immunity to citadels. at any time you either present enough side or enough bow/stern to potentially get citadelled. Given the armour scheme though, if you don't show broadside though, shells that don't hit the frontal or aft citadel bulkhead but hit the side will ricochet off for minor damage and shells that overmatch the 30 mm deck have no chance of ever citadelling anything. In that regard, Yoshino isn't even any better or worse than Azuma, except that Yoshino takes less normal pens from BB shells overmatching amidships. But an unlucky hit from 20 km away can wreck your ship, while a lucky hit at 3 km can bounce off your citadel and potentially even be no damage pens if they hit the spaced armour.

Doesn't matter, because you run out of recoverable hp. Only cruisers like Moskva, Stalingrad or Alaska can get decent value out of a 5th repair party, due to being able to shatter lots of HE so that significant amount of damage is dealt with fires. Yoshino, just like Hindenburg will just succumb to normal pen damage before it can use that heal, if it doesn't just lose most of its hp to citadels.

On the contrary, I bet that it'll be most significant for Germans, Japanese and Russians. Cruisers will still spec into IFHE, because raw damage is more important than fire damage and everyone else reaps the benefits of abysmal fire chance.

I mean, it isn't hard to survive in a ship that has over 21 km range before you account for potential range mod and spotter plane. The challenge is to get the necessary impact to win games. And well... to lead your shots far enough to still hit things at ~28 km.

It has the best in its entire tier spread. Closest in concealment are Roma and Lion. I found the dispersion to at best be comparable, hardly worse. Overall, I rate Monarch's gunnery the best from T7-9 in the British BB line and would argue the only guns in British BB high tiers that feel anywhere as comfortable are the Conqueror's 457s. But KGV has crap for pen, neither KGV nor Lion or Conqueror are significantly more accurate and their shell velocity is pretty crap, which is sad, because at least Germans and French (and Monarch) get good shell velocity as an upside for their mediocre to bad accuracy. Also, Monarch has KGVs 25 seconds reload without having low caliber guns. KGV with its 356s has caliber issues, Lion and Conqueror have no reload advantage over their opposition.

I'm neither saying Akatsuki is best DD nor that lucky torp hits on DDs are the way to go, but wanted to highlight that the Sims has some serious downsides to it and for the average game, I find more fun in Akatsuki than in the Sims. As to being able to ignore CVs, that's the case currently and was not the case during the height of CV meta, god knows how long it'll last before CVs get buffed again. And I say that having played full AA specced Sims. If it had been just the T-61, would totally recommend. With the containers, not so much.

Sims is... ok. It's a very nice teamplay boat, but I'd not call it a powerhouse. If you want a decent T7 USN DD, you can go for Sims, but it's just not a ship that aged well and which is really in a troublesome spot if uptiered. Imo, what made the ship decent again was the buff from 6.4 km to 7 km on the shorter torps, as it allows them to be way more flexible and with good concealment and 65 knots, they are quite lethal. The main issue I have with 10.5 km sea mines is that even if you hit something after a minute the damage output is too poor. It's a stark contrast to something like Akatsuki, where the reaction time is worse, but speed and damage are good and you potentially oneshot DDs you hit (Sims 10.5 km memes potentially can hit DDs twice and leave them alive without any sort of saturation). Sims works, but it is far from the "best" DD.

It's currently below the waterline and will be barely above waterline afterwards. Citadel vulnerability will go up, but it's nowhere as bad as ships like Roma and Vladivostok, where the citadel is larger, or current Kii and the USN BBs, where the citadel deck can be overmatched.

Furutaka? Exeter?

Vladivostok has 370 mm of main belt, which is only a bit thicker than Monarch in the centre, though towards the ends Monarch has 381 mm. Unless you sit there broadside, pretty much asking for it, the citadel is a non-issue, given angled the belt often will be too thick to be penetrated, quite similar to Roma, though unlike Vladivostok and Roma, Monarch citadel ends at the waterline, it doesn't go significantly above the waterline.

That's neglecting something else though: Dreadnought, while it of course makes Britain lose out compared to others, is a revolution in battleship design that would be adopted by someone at some point inevitably. Britain not being the first to make the step and just continue merrily building pre-dreadnoughts would merely increase the amount of resources made obsolete once the inevitable happens. It's like saying the HMS Warrior was a stupid idea, because it destroyed the British edge in wooden ships-of-the-line. And for all the "levelling the playing field", the British did manage to build enough new battleships to still be a major navy till the end of WWII. Nazi Germany was not a party to the Washington Naval Treaty and the only time they were in some way connected to it was the Anglo-German Naval treaty that limited Germany to a certain ratio relative to the British, which were party to the treaty. But ships like the Deutschland-class built during the Weimar Republic are so clearly beyond the WNT, it is clear that the Germans never gave a damn about it. Only the Treaty of Versailles limited the Germans, but Hitler threw that out of the window. Tirpitz? Anson? Howe? Barham? Malaya? Valiant? The sole country to rival the UK in naval power at that time without being in a troublesome state financially was the US, which due to WNT still was tied to parity with the UK. Japan was 60% and even when not restricted would financially ruin itself trying to get even close to it. France and italy are not even close. So, for all intents and purposes, the British very much were able to enshrine their naval power with the WNT till the 30s and only got beaten by the US afterwards. Overall, it should however be clear that until the post-war era, the Royal Navy was one of the major players on the seas only rivalled by the US. To deny that it was a major naval power well into the 20th century is kind of silly. I mean, what else is there? Japan, France and Italy, all which were in even poorer shape, Germany and Russia that were both starting to build up a navy from barely anything. The Treaty enshrined British naval parity with the US and superiority over everyone else. It stifled Britain less than it stifled more minor powers. Like, what edge did the IJN get by defying the treaty? Yamato and Musashi? That's basically it and both ships were almost inconsequential during the war. Shokaku and Zuikaku were good carriers, but were two carriers compared to the RN's four carriers of the Illustrious-class built during the same time (and while having fewer planes, making the hull survivable can pay off). Even after leaving the treaty, Japan never really managed to get much out of it vs Britain, because frankly, their ability to build ships to reach anywhere close to parity was just not there, one of the reason why Japan had signed the treaties in the first place.

Lexingtons max armour belt thickness was 178 mm, not 127 mm. Amagi is 250 mm belt at its thickest. For comparison, Tosa is 280, Kii is 292 mm and Nagato is 305 mm. Arguing about Kii being a fast BB design I'd accept, but Amagi by all means is very much a very large battlecruiser.

Still less than Russian BBs. And that's basically what it should be compared to. Otherwise, anything looks well-armoured compared to something like HMS Couragious and its 76 mm of belt (Furutaka had 76 mm of belt...), including other British battlecruisers, like the early battlecruisers with 152 mm belt, later battlecruisers like HMS Lion and HMS Queen Mary with 229 mm belt (a mere 8.5 mm less than Izmail) and absolutely not comparable to the last British battlecruiser, HMS Hood, with the lessons learned from Jutland.

Worcester has 30 mm deck. If you don't count that, why count Des Moines/Salem (where 30 mm also is limited to the deck)?

Monarch and Lion will bowtank more, because already now the rear turret angle is so crap that you don't often plan on bringing it to bear. Good monarch play though is not campy, because of range and speed being on the lower end, so you set yourself up for being left behind and you are wasting one of the strongest points of the ship, which is the concealment (which also is what gives both Monarch and Lion some chance at maneuvering, as they can much more easily go dark). Also worth noting, an above-water citadel does not mean you instantly get deleted for not being perfectly bow-in. These ships aren't Yamato, they have no cheek, they have however some of the best belt armour in high tiers. Getting through that to pen through the sliver of citadel at any sort of range is very hard to pull off.

237.5 mm of waterline belt? Only is comparable to Russian BBs because the maximum thickness on most Russian BBs of the time was underwhelming and wouldn't stand up to "modern" AP shells.

This better not be what we get instead of steam sale. 75 Euro Alabama + 2 random premiums that can range from actually OP Enterprise to solid like Massachusetts and Kidd to garbage like Asashio, GZ or Prinz Eugen is nowhere near -75% on one of the best T7 DDs. Also, "Blyscawica for Ranked Sprint". I'm looking forward to seeing people who never played Blysca before bring this thing to Ranked Sprint with underlevelled captain (because not included) and give the enemy team a free "First Blood".

That this is no "nerf" has been stated by experienced players from the moment these changes were announced the first time. Conqueror is going to be way harder to kill if they know what they are doing and the Monarch will certainly get a whole lot more out of the ship, given the improved repair party and 75% repairable pen damage. Iowa and Montana also don't get 32 mm cit deck. Unless you are a Yamato/Musashi, if you don't hit at the waterline, your shell will just skip off the armoured deck for a normal pen.

I mean, it went downhill after the first half of the 20th century.