HaachamaShipping

Gneisenau guns are at T7 though and for the tier, while they do not have the overmatch of the big seven, they have still significant overmatch over stuff like Scharnhorst, Lyon and KGV/DoY. In fact, I consider the overmatch difference rather unimportant, as it mainly concerns cruisers with 27 mm armour, which are Germans and USN. Neither kind are dpm machines and neither is going to get much out of rushing a BB that has secondaries that take cruisers apart and can return the torp exchange. Overall, on Gneisenau, it's imo trading the consistency of landing shells for more consistent results when it lands shells and it's my preferred choice between Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, because Gneisenau can reliably deal with most stuff it runs into. When top tier, few other BBs can bully other BB as hard. It's fast, it has better secondaries and guns that really hurt.

Despite 6-7k less hp, WV is surdier than Mutsu, hull-wise. I prefer WV too, but Mutsu actually has merits.

OP is actually getting pretty decent results in Hipper, but is complaining that Hipper guns are not exactly great and that the ship overall is underwhelming. Such is legit criticism levelled at a ship that frankly is not good. Similarly, OP noted that it takes till T10 for cruisers to get armour values that actually give them semi-reliable protection and that's also hard to dispute. Maybe, instead of dismissing OPs partially legit concerns with a "L2P" and "git gud" attitude, and telling me that I'm missing points you should try get the point yourself. Or are you just here in an attempt to tell others to learn to play, so you can feel better about yourself? Your own contribution isn't exactly the pearl of wisdom either.

I mean, at T2, there's no skill more pointless than those two, at T3, AS is still useless and Manual AA works only on a very select few, where it applies only in matches vs T4. At T4, mostly BBs benefit from Manual AA, while AS arguably becomes a sealclubbing skill, but not before this level. But given how air power at T4 is, I'd consider manual AA worth much less than anything else still.

I mean, Furutaka is the only T5 cruiser that is anywhere close to able to reliably carry stuff. And that because it's starting to be borderline OP compared to its competition. If you want to claim an Omaha has an easier time going up against an Iron Duke than a Worcester against a Conqueror, then I dunno... And no, the only reason Hipper in this case might be "more forgiving" is because dying as bottom tier cruiser has less impact. But on the other hand, even if you don't die, your influence is pretty limited. Carrying a game in Hipper vs carrying in a Hindenburg is way harder. Hipper might see once every so often a game where noone overmatches it and will always see ships that hurt it with HE irrepairably. Hindenburg will always be top tier, able to at least partially tank all but three BBs (four with 457 Conqueror noone uses) it likely faces and even has means to repair HE damage. Yes, the pressure is higher to perform, but you at least are able to perform and that's kind of what I get when someone complains about cruisers needing to be high tier to be able to stand a chance. There's a reason I don't play Königsberg or Omaha, although T5 is really a tier where cruisers are hardly reliable, because yes, my death in a T7 match likely was expected and is not shifting odds much, but I don't queue up just to gift someone else First Blood. And if you want to carry in a cruiser, T10 is basically the best tier to go to, while T5, something like Omaha relies on people not knowing how disastrously bad the armour is. Get matched against a Schors or Helena that have a clue and watch them citadel you through the bow with their silly dpm. Fiji doesn't even need to know how to switch ammo for that.

I explained already why the armour thickness doesn't mean as much as you think it does. Feel free to ignore it.

Hindenburg is less forgiving than Hipper? Zao is less forgiving than Mogami? Henri is less forgiving than Charles Martel? Honestly, there's only two cruisers that I know where the T10 is more fragile than the T8 if you mess up and that'd be Moskva vs Chapayev and Minotaur vs Edinburgh. And in both cases, the T8 is hardly anything tanky either. Moskva has way better options to survive than Chapayev.

Manual AA and Air Supremacy.

Oh, I know what I'm talking about. But as you say check armour models ingame, here: This is the PEF citadel. It goes up to just below the waterline. The ship overall isn't too fat and the citadel is even more narrow. For comparison: The West Virginia goes up to the waterline too, its frontal bulkhead is wider, but at least thicker. At range, WV will be better off, up close, as soon as the pen is enough to punch through that, it's no better. At that point PEFs long nose might actually mean some AP runs run out of fuze time before reaching the cit. New Mexico is basically the same as WV, but with slopes at the side and wider. Slopes don't matter for frontal shots. It is wider than PEF. QE (and Warspite) go just below the waterline and are wider. Their frontal bulkheads aren't anything to write home about and there's a step with 25 mm citadel deck. Now, these were the kinda decent T6 citadels. Let's look at some truely horrifying ones: Fuso: Just below waterline, absolutely massive in its width. Not the worst offender though, because: Mutsu goes above water and is still quite fat. So far, all the citadels were fatter than the PEF's, so which are more narrow? Well... About as narrow, has a similarly long bow, frontal bulkhead is only 228 mm. Quite comparable to the PEF. This is a joke. Thankfully, it's behind a reinforced bow. If one manages to bypass it though from an angle, the side bulkheads of the citadel are only 20 mm. Still, this ship actually is better protected. Lastly, there is Bayern, where I won't bother, because citadelling it from the front is kind of impossible. Overall, PEF is thicker than only Normandie, is not higher than any of them (because waterline is the standard here), the citadel is decidedly worse than 2 BBs (Bayern and Normandie), decidedly better than 2 BB (Mutsu and Fuso) and comparable in its frontal protection to the remainder. Mostly, because, yes, it has 32 mm lower bulkhead, but who cares? It has a long bow that angled arms shells that go through and at range they will detonate before reaching the citadel. At any distance where shells retain enough speed to pass through this part, they have enough pen usually to penetrate the citadel bulkhead even if it was 250 mm all over. Compared to ships like Dunkerque, this is very comparable in effectiveness, while USN and RN are easier to hit citadels, but with more raw plate strength. Not that 343 mm is going to be much better than 250 mm or 32 mm when you overmatch from sub 10 km. It's only significantly wider than friggin Normandie, comparable to Dunkerque and more narrow than anyone else. It's by no means wide. Do you even look at your own images? No other T6 is deeper. 2 are higher and 2 are harder to hit due to having a reinforced bow PEF's frontal citadel protection is no worse than mos T6 BBs.

The citadel is neither wide (unlike a good few other BBs at the tier, it's not even the entire width of the ship) nor high in the water (waterline). Also, calling 270 mm belt good... uhm, what? BBs that overmatch PEF bow will overmatch USN bow too. And depending on range 343 mm is not a lot to keep shells out. That's misuse of the term overmatch. No clue what happened then, given I also don't know impact angles and such.

Rubbish players doing well when playing a ship that is designed for rubbish players? Magic! People already explained since the first pages that Asashio mainly is a ship that is limited and is specialised in one area. Basically, Asashio trivialises torpedoing BBs, to the point WG would need to give it homing torps to make it any easier. No ship has better chances to land torps on a BB if properly played. However, Asashio sucks in many other categories and outright sucks vs cruisers. Luckily for rubbish players, killing anything like a gunboat DD or a cruiser was nothing they were going to accomplish most of the time anyway, while they now can reliably farm BBs, where formerly they might even have sucked at that. Decent players meanwhile rather have a ship that isn't utterly handicapped, because killing a BB with torps from a T8 DD isn't exactly hard in other DDs either.

Bow on just needs to overmatch the bow and have enough pen to pen the 250 mm frontal bulkhead. Below that, it's 32 mm, if the shell falls lower. This is entirely possible. Especially at closer ranges and with ships that have high enough pen (usually T7s or T8s, but I already landed bow citadels on an Arizona with WV, and Arizona has 343 mm, afaik). But the armour on PEF is just straight up average (vs HE) to bad (vs AP).

Glass cannon would mean Hipper has meaningful damage output.

Mutsu is a vastly better ship as long as no CVs are involved. Mutsu and WV are different niches. WV is basically all the pen on an otherwise pretty lackluster hull. Mutsu has T6 appropriate pen with a decent hp pool, a very decent speed, some nice secondaries, if you can be bothered and a bunch of torps. It's got a vulnerable citadel, which really limits it more than the pen, as the pen is basically Warspite levels, but with better overmatch. And people aren't whining about how poorly Warspite is doing. If Mutsu can't pen it at 10 km, then chances are, only WV can among the big gun T6s. And WV doesn't have Mutsu's speed and hp pool.

I don't like Fiji much, because it feels like a meh upgrade on the Leander (Yes, 50% more dpm, but one less torp per side and 1 km worse concealment at worse MM) and Neptune feels like even less of one over Edinburgh. Nor do I really need a dpm sidegrade over it. I'd frankly rather play Fiji vs T9 than smoke Neptune, because Fiji has Edinburgh's citadel, not Neptune's, it has better concealment and having impact as aT7 cruiser vs a T9 cruiser is avastlydifferent thing. Concealmentwhen firing from smoke is6.6 km though... Also, I find that the smoke firing penalty isn't that much of an issue. If a DD is within 6.6 km, you should run anyway, because you are about to get torped. If someone is rushing your smoke and is within 6.6 km, you are hardly likely to gun them down before they would detect you even if it was something like 4 km. And in general, way too often you stay 10+ km away just because of radar.

You quote me, why?

That's actually the best case scenario. It had Tirpitzes trying to catch me and get torped to death.

She isn't really better than the USN and certainly not better than the RN BBs. When I can citadel slightly angled PEF at 7 km with PEF, then I consider that pretty terrible (mostly because it means that you don't need overpen guns to just bunch through the 270 mm belt, 60 mm cit bulkhead and the aledged 25 mm or so of not-displayed armour inbetween that I once heard this ship has (though I'd not be surprised if that's false)).

PEF showing broadside is a risky game. Thanks to the PEF spam in the recent weeks, I have gotten citadel ribbons on PEF at close range, at mid range of around 7 km and at long range, with 15.8 km (which was today). It's not IJN, but seriously, this isn't good by any means.

Zao? Come on, Zao dpm is a joke. Stalingrad needs DM dpm to be competitive. Also, I wonder what would happen if Asashio could actually hit super cruisers...

I will likely use 7 km torps. The sea mines are crap anyway and 7 km torps with 11k damage and 65 knot/1.3 km detection is not too bad. If you get a T7 max game, these work quite well. Vs T8/9, just stay clear of radar threats or torp around islands or something.

I'd not consider it necessarily extra torp range. I'd consider it making it an actually useful choice and with the 7 km torps being not too bad, de facto you might see a decrease in torp range.

Global nerfs don't get you a refund. Which is the point.

Because Alaska and Azuma weren't nerfed to 60 seconds fire duration as well, oh wait... Meanwhile Moskva and Donskoi enjoy the normal 30 seconds.

She may not have the pen, but Hood still improves on Warspite with improved ricochet angles. Mid-range, that can be quite some hurt.