HaachamaShipping

Torps will be lulzy, but well, I still can't see them as super-useful. Kii isn't like some Mogami that stealth torps. Normal Fuse is a trade-off, but I think overall it's a decent buff with the sigma increase. This actually might give the ship basically Warspite guns. I definitely would use the 7 km torps. 11k damage isn't exactly "High Reward", but with actual speed, still better damage and okish range, I take them over water mines. I'm looking forward to trying this out.

The only thing where Ishizuchi is lackluster is pen. And AA, but it's T4. But it has offenses and defenses that can hardly be called lacking. Also, one thing that is noteworthy with PEF, which most of the listed BBs are missing: PEF can pull flanking maneuvers without fear of getting murdered by any present CV. Most of the others have a much harder time peeling off and doing their own thing without advertising themselves as an easy kill to any semi-competent CV player, something that won't get better with the rework. In general thus, I kind of question the wisdom of such playstyle post-8.0.

Same as normal premium camo.

You don't even need to show more than angled side for that long if you know how to use your rudder. Its citadel protection is among the poorest, it can very much take huge salvos and eats them more easily than any other BB. It's stealth is on par with Mutsu. It's only surpassed by Fuso. This isn't ok, that's very much bad and nowhere close to dreadnoughts. Bayern with no concealment investment at all is stealthier than Dunkerque fully decked out. And there's a difference to being a Dunkerque that eats all the IFHE pens and a Fuso or Bayern that are partially immune. Doesn't matter whether you take time to burn, if you just bleed HE to pens. I don't try to make my personal stats representative of anything. NM and Montana don't overmatch either. The exact same shitty argument you brought up. So, no, nothing in your argument shows that Dunkerque is actually good. You just continue throwing crap at the wall and hope it sticks, because half the stuff you claim isn't even factually correct.

And Dunkerque players are less likely to run premium account than others? Also, Jean Bart and Bourgogne get overmatched by one single ship at their tier, two in their MM spread and not more than half the ships in their MM spread. They also have guns that have high sigma and lowered reload, making them actually good dpm-wise. Dunkerque prepares you about as much for Jean Bart as New Mexico prepares you for Montana.

You mean worst armour scheme of any T6 BB? Like, there's no T6 BB that is worse armoured than Dunkerque. And yes, you can get pretty good uptime in a good few other ships if you know how to angle in and out inbetween salvos. No other T6 BB is as easily devastated by overmatch guns and HE as Dunkerque. Too bad they occupy a BB slot and thus should at least fulfill the basic roles of BBs. And to be fair, both can fulfill these roles, even if not necessarily as great as others. It's not even 100 battles and even if 100 was representative, which one can doubt, then what's the point of comparing it to ships you played vastly less battles in? There's just way too many holes in the argumentation to take these stats as representative of anything.

Clearly... Your 92 battles in one of the oldest T6 premiums clearly shows that this ship is producing outstanding damage numbers, way better than the tech line ships like Fuso... oh wait. No, Dunkerque is not a damage machine. If you can rack up higher damage numbers in Dunkerque than in most other T6 BBs, that doesn't mean Dunkerque is great. And the averages show similar things, when the same average damage on the Dunkerque doesn't even get you into purple on a good few other T6 BBs. So, what's your point with your not very statistically significant sample size of battles? Fun fact: Dunkerque has the worst AP dpm of all T6 BBs. Combined with not very great accuracy.

-It's a Neptune/Minotaur and even if the shell just scrapes the bow a bit you get easy citadel ribbons. That you don't know, as planes only get spotted from 8 km away, while the Kurfürst was way further away.

Modules: Main Armaments Mod 1, Damage Control Mod 1, Secondary Mod 1, Damage Control Mod 2, Concealment Mod 1, Main Battery Mod 3 Captain Skills: PT, AR, BoS, AFT, Manualn Secondaries, then either SI, CE or IFHE, depending on what you like fixed the most. Yes, it's a secondary build. Yes, secondary builds are not very great in T10 battles. No, I don't recommend other builds. If you weren't in it for the secondary memes, go play a different BB line. No, Großer Kurfürst is not magically more in line meta and is just the same with more barrels. And no, nothing forces you to grind this line past Bismarck, as neither FdG nor GK are good ships for anything except brawling memes. No Ranked or CB needs you to have this.

Hood in capable hands is tankier (the one point where KGV/DoY beat her is citadel protection from the side), but her repair party is standard RN repair party, same as KGV and DoY. She does not get Nelson lolrepair.

It is superior in a lot of ways, the main drawbacks of the Massachusetts compared to Tirpitz imo are: 32 mm all over for easy HE farming. Farming Massachusetts is fun. Only battleships at T8 more fun to farm is Richelieu (Amagi/Kii is usually more mobile, Monarch is stealthy, these two are played by many people who just sit stationary or move predictably in reverse). But even when not played by a moron, the ship still is way easier to deal with as a cruiser than some others if you don't sit inside the secondary range. Tirpitz has 50 mm deck and is harder to kill. overmatchable citadel deck. Same as all T8+ USN BBs, the Massachusetts can be overmatched there and thus is pretty prone to eating citadels for a high tier BB. Tirpitz will get hardly ever citadelled. Still, would take free Bismarck over Tirpitz. Why pay money for torps if you can have hydro for free?

All BBs at a tier burn the same. Bismarck and Tirpitz don't burn more "easy" if you know what to spec into. This is not a weakness of the ships, nor do they have any real HE "weakness" over their peers. In fact, they are the most HE resistant ships at T8 and the overall tankiest, which is balanced against their lackluster main battery and getting deleted by AP bombers. Most Yamato players run it. It helps, as it should. According to statistics, Republique, Conqueror and Montana are doing fine. They might take more damage from HE, but they are miles better in other areas, compared to Kurfürst which has terrible turret angles, terrible accuracy, terrible concealment and maneuvers like a brick to the point that even with hydro you struggle to dodge torps you spot. And Yamato has, as has been discussed before, a citadel that gets penned from pretty much any angle except directly bow-on (because non-Yamatos cannot overmatch the bow at that point). Yes, this might not seem like much to the cruiser player that has no ideas how BBs work, but well. Add to that that Yamato has pretty lackluster AA, that it is slow, has still quity slow turret traverse and rather underwhelming dpm and it's a ship that is quite well-balanced. A well-played Yamato can wither a storm, a misplayed one dies faster than any other T10 BB. From a cruiser perspective, Yamato is dangerous due to the accuracy and overmatch, but it fires 6-9 shells every 27 or so seconds and these shells are quite slow and not exactly hard to dodge compared to other BBs. Repunlique with its high velocity cruiser overmatch guns that reload fast is much harder to deal with as a target and Conqueror has concealment that makes the life of some cruisers quite hard, if the player knows how to use it. Also, did you consider maybe getting into a position to use ammunition other than HE? Or shooting targets that aren't laughing at your HE spam, so they run out of friends and can be flanked? Not everything has to be Republique-levels of squish.

What exactly does PEF better against DDs? The only thing it really does well is spam low tier secondaries at them if they are spotted, but that's it. Main battery has worst HE dpm and isn't even fast to get onto target. There's no BB worse at nuking DDs that try to rush it, at best there are some equally bad or almost as bad. Speed is great, turning circle is not. It's not necessarily easier to dodge torps in this thing compared to others. Secondaries are ok, but only valuable vs DDs that are spotted. Most DDs can just stealth torp you. Any DD that actually rushes you gets spotted at around 6 km or below and at that range PEF doesn't even have the best anti-DD secondaries of all T6s. Torpedo belt isn't anything remarkable. Lacks a catapult plane to help in spotting DDs or torps. If I had to nominate a best anti-DD BB, I'd likely go for Mutsu. Handling isn't great on that ship either, but the high HE alpha main battery and pretty much the best anti-DD secondaries at 6 km or below as well as the ability to launch a catapult plane make her remarkably capable of fighting off DDs. Tachibana is worth 89 cents though, because it's OP. It's only kept in place by the tier its at, but T2 has competitive players, I heard... I bought multiple T6 premium BBs (including PEF, but due to steel) and the main reasons are: collector's value (Warspite for example) T6 competitive modes (Ranked Sprint and test CB show it might happen) Not every T6 BB is as bad at punching T7s and T8s. West Virginia, which I praised a lot is basically just a handicapped Colorado at T6 and I liked Colorado, so I don't mind playing it with risk of T8. As for T6 non-BB premiums, Graf Spee if one didn't get it for free is an ok ship, Perth is a great ship too. To be fair, you can grind a T6 silver BB within a week, not four and even in absolute time, F2P players might rather grind out a T6 BB than bother with 4th directive. Additionally, any T6 silver BB leads to higher tier BBs later down the line that are often quite decent to great, PEF leads nowhere. There's a lot more reasons to grind T6 BBs than to grind for this ship, just so you can have a ship in ops. Also, because frankly, for ops, you can as well just use a 6 point captain and do fine and you should have at least one T6 BB unlocked anyway before playing T6 BBs like PEF.

Dunkerque vs T6 can play a decent role as BB, vs T8 where T6 BBs take more supporting roles, the Dunkerque has far less issues staying a bit further back than PEF, because when Dunkerque hits at 15 km, it likely hurts, PEF is questionable. Speed-wise, both rely more on that than raw armour when uptiered. Yes, Dunkerque suffers more from IFHE than PEF, but not having to brawl to be functional helps a ton in not getting farmed to death. Lastly, Dunkerque has superior HE shells. Overall, neither of the two is anywhere close to my preferred BBs of T6, but between the two, I prefer Dunkerque a tiny bit more.

Normandie is free and 29.5 knots. And sure, if you can get PEF for free, great. But after this event, this ship is basically straight up not recommended by me for anyone looking for a premium T6 BB. I frankly rate Dunkerque higher than PEF. Not much, both have issues, but I feel slightly less frustrated with the Dunkerque.

PEF: 28 knots Mutsu: 26.5 knots You can pretty much pen them while you flank and then shoot from the side, so why use PEF? And before the matter is Mutsu's accuracy, it's pretty decent. I don't even use ASM1 and last Ranked Sprint I could wreck DDs with HE hits somewhat reliably. Which is the next fun thing... having to rely on secondaries to deal with the DD rush in Raptor Rescue, because the main battery sucks at the job.

I would disagree on that. I'd argue, the most demonstrative part of her review was: And the main point why I personally find her unfun is pretty much down to that. I prefer a ship that is great where it is and requires me to consider positioning, rather than a ship that is basically able to get around fast, but has to work extra hard to even win a 1v1 against people who have an idea of what they are doing. In that sense, PEF feels not comfortable. It to me feels very Hipper... and I hate Hipper for much the same reasons as to why I don't like this ship. Deck armour of all three would be too much for any T6 BB. Only Musashi can get through Myoko's 32 mm deck and no AP gets through 48 mm Furutaka/Aoba deck. The frustrating part imo is that all three have 25 mm sides, which mean angled you can only aim for bow pens/cits in small caliber BBs, while others can also try overmatch the upper belt.

No, you just have to hit the citadel box most of the time. Angled CA is the mixed blessing of being easier to not overpen, but in many cases its when you actually just bounce off. T5s you can devastate that way, T6s mostly, many T7s and almost all T8 meanwhile just laugh at you shooting them while angled. Which is imo another point where I'd rather play something with more shells or with better overmatch, where you either have more crap to throw at them or you just don't care about angling. And thus I don't consider the PEF anything outstanding in the cruiser-killer role, when half the BBs at T6 are more threatening to cruisers (especially higher tier ones) than the PEF.

The sad part is, the friendly CV in first game was the enemy in second game. And somehow that guy managed to utterly suck the first time while finding an even worse CV enemy the second time.

I mean, comparing hit ratios is nice. Explaining hit ratios though... Like, one of my best examples for hit ratio and what it means would be T7s. My highest hit rate of any T7 BB is on Gneisenau. Noone would call Gneisenau an accurate BB though. Certainly not more accurate than most others, yet it somehow trumps my hit rates in Colorado, Nagato, Nelson, Scharnhorst... The reason for that comes after a bit of thinking though and that is the fact: I play Gneisenau aggressively and take most shots from way closer than I do with ships like Nelson, Nagato or Colorado, which are a good bit less tanky and often slower to get into forward positions. Also, I have only 6 guns, so this style of play is best, as it helps compensate a bit for the low barrel count. I wouldn't call PEF a Gneisenau though, because Gneisenau gets all the tools for the brawling job: Best armour scheme, best speed, best secondaries, a set of torps, fast turning quick reloading guns (with overmatch). PEF basically just gets decent speed and the secondaries. It's far less of the close range threat the Gneisenau is for its tier. A Gneisenau can go up vs T9s far better than a PEF against T7s even. Another thing is, Gneisenau isn't a better BB. It just is a BB with a different specialisation. If not an almost over-specialisation. If Gneisenau wasn't so very damn great at the thing it could do, it would be far worse, as it basically would be forced into a crappy role and would feel limited (and basically this is what imo causes still most of the complaints about Gneisenau by people who don't understand or don't appreciate the specialisation). This is why I don't like the PEF. It does feel forced to go close, but it does not reward going close. Yes, it becomes more functional going close, but I can't say a ship that has to close in to be anywhere decent is a good ship. If it was able to actually be great up close, then we could talk, but it isn't. And that's what I think might also put into perspective some of the hit rate differences between PEF and 8-gun BBs at T6. Yes, PEF hits stuff more often. But there's a hella difference between the impact of a PEF WWI vintage AP shell and the shells of most other T6 8-gun BBs, which with the exception of Dunkerque overmatch and hit far harder (Dunkerque gets insane pen though, so if overmatch isn't the issue, Dunkerque does perform better at range against BBs). A West Virginia shell, regardless of range, will leave a dent on a hit (unsurprising, given these guns basically were strong at T7 and are absolute bonkers at T6) and West Virginia can fire salvos at 15 km and expect pretty solid numbers on hits. PEF meanwhile has to consider whether it even wants to try. So, naturally, a good PEF player will waste less shells at range, but not because they are better than that scrub in another T6 8-gun BB, but because their ship just does not support this style of play. Sadly, it however also doesn't very well support the close range style of play, as Warspite/Bayern/WV can basically crap on PEF regardless of range if played properly, secondaries don't make up for the main battery disadvantage. Mutsu and QE are easier to mess up, because QE has horrid turret traverse, Mutsu has an easy to hit citadel. But if that cannot be exploited, both can demolish PEF too. I'll just disagree with that. I tried PEF in Raptor Rescue and my experience was: Speed sounds nice, but none of these ops are going at an insane pace. Something like Newport is easy to cover with 21 knots even. Even stuff like Killer Whale can be easily completed in a 21 knot BB. The dpm is decidedly mediocre. Nothing to brag about here. The lack of overmatch makes fighting Furutakas, Aobas, Myokos and such, which happen to exist in T6 ops, a massive pain that you certainly don't have with BBs that just don't give a damn. The main advantage of speed would be being able to flex a bit. In something like Ultimate Frontier, being fast to deal with Atlanta is great. In most of these ops, the main thing to deal with that spawns elsewhere are CVs and their BB replacements. Here, I found that the main issue with PEF is, that if the CVs run off, catching some Zuihou or Ryuujou is still a pain in the butt and if they get spotted, PEF is actually quite starved for range and doesn't have a plane to help. BBs meanwhile are more likely to close in and those you can demolish better with other BBs. PEF is not a T6 Scharnhorst that is great for ops. Scharnhorst is great becaus it is a great cruiser killer. PEF is at best a cruiser killer because killing other stuff s harder. I'd rather take a WV or Warspite into ops than PEF, because I know that where I am, I am effective. Though, favourite T6 for ops for me is Graf Spee.

I mean, i would guess Ikkousen are the most likely, but I don't put it beyond them to instead go for a different CV. Saratoga once was an event-drop and got LSC upon K2. Saratoga didn't really hurt for performance either, nor did Musashi before getting K2. It just seems like it works in mysterious ways.

Aquila? Graf Zeppelin? Ark Royal? Intrepid? Unryuu-class?

So, played a bit with radar today, trying to be a more careful Edinburgh. Ship feels like a downgrade compared to Edinburgh, just because of that added 1.1 km in detectability and the insane citadel size. I pretty much have to wait for a DD to mess up and plunder into my radar range before I can radar, which often means it gets me 10k spotting damage or so and the DD might get away. With Edinburgh, you could at least be a bit more offensive, as long as no big gun threats were around. Overall, my radar results are not much different from my smoke results. Decent damage average, crap WR, because when things go south, this ship can't hold a flank at all. It just dies and it being not very fast, not very stealthy and not tanky means I often get utterly wrecked if there's noone spotting and drawng the fire. Overall, I don't like this ship, I have no clue how this thing is supposed to be decent, given it seems to be completely inconsistent. Good results mostly depend on the enemy being stupid and putting all their big gun ships where they can't shoot me or where they ignore me (rare, but happens). If there's even just 1 BB around, I can basically just go and suck it, because even if I find some island to camp behind and they don't just delete me with spotter plane, actually killing ships before they push into me is hard. I don't even want to know painful this'll be with 8.0, when planes are everywhere, AA range gets nerfed, CE gets nerfed for cruisers and Alaska gets released.

I leave the PEF debate for a few days and this is among the last things I expected to find here. Not that I even give a damn anymore. Got my doubloons, enjoying other ships.

Alright. I tried one game with radar today in desperation, but got Tears of the Cruiser - Standard Battle and wanted to kill myself. Will try more next week, when I'm back from abroad and can maybe play a few games again. I know it'll require me to get a better grip on the handling of the ship though, given RN cruisers basically don't decelerate, so any mistake in slowing down too late might be instant death. Thanks.