HaachamaShipping

Given the majority of cruisers is not good in brawls with BBs, I don't think you can say that you shouldn't brawl a cruiser. Like, unless you show broadside, what's a New Orleans going to do to your T5 BB even? Majority of cruisers decide to burn you at a distance, because they have to, but that doesn't mean you should not brawl these cruisers when you can. Just be aware of the potential torpedo and AP threats they pose.

PEF like all Germans has flat turret sides. Get hit there and the turret likely is out.

It's the ultimate Hipper captain though. You may not like it, but this is what peak Hipper looks like. Together with tsun Hipper flag and permacamo.

Nassau, Kaiser and König are no joke though. Also, don't insult my Gneisenau.

And if you kite them, neither is scary. Just keep within 8 km and let secondaries work them over. But no point in risking getting torped and losing large chunks of hp that cannot be recovered.

The skill picked is SE though. BoS is the skill on the left of it. Also, I don't find the need for double rudder on the Hipper. Better concealment is imo a more solid option. Yes, Mogami with double rudder works, but Mogami without concealment mod already has better concealment than any CA, except Atago, with concealment mod. My greatest advice to making single rudder work would be to start paying attention when the number on the PT counter goes up, not when IFA goes off.

I mostly want it for scouting around corners. You need no booster against CVs. Every CV present is a morale booster making me feel immediately much more useful. Hood at T7 has the highest hp pool for its tier, PEF has below average. Hood is coated in reinforced plating, PEF isn't. Hood has overmatch guns, PEF doesn't. Hood gets improved pen angles, PEF doesn't. Hood gets best speed at its tier, PEF doesn't. Hood has meme self-defense AA, but otherwise is food for CVs as soon as the rockets are dead, PEF has long-range AA that can survive most matches with few losses. PEF gets secondaries that are noteworthy, Hood doesn't. There's quite a few differences, which are also quite significant. And the difference why PEF is one of the poorest uptiered T6s, while Hood is among the most survivable uptiered T7s. Hood is a decent pick in Narai, because: 32 knot speed allow it to be used to support the Aoba in top right corner and return before the battle is over. hp pool and HE resistance allow it to tank a ton of damage from the vast amount of cruisers. The main enemies in the op are cruisers, DDs and low tier BBs. Hood as a cruiser killer is basically in her element. Hood to me is perfectly fine for Narai, among BBs, I'd say it's not on par with Scharnhorst, Nelson and Lyon which are imo the best, but on par with Gneisenau and definitely better pick than Nagato or Colorado. Graf Spee is one of the best T6 operation ships. Even more so in operations that don't have a repair zone. Hood takes either full tank build or exchange FP with AFT if you want to extent range on the rockets (not worth it in general though). You also can get away with exchanging EM for JoAT or something. Overall though, no surprise, it's a BB. It wants a bog standard BB spec for peak performance. Graf Spee is a cruiser and can get basically the same skills as Prinz Eugen, Roon and Hindenburg. Unsurprising, it's a cruiser. PEF is a BB and basically works with any German BB commander you can spare, though you'd want AFT and not Manual Secondaries for a dedicated commander. If you go into AA, you can as well use an AA Prinz Eugen, Roon or Hindenburg commander. So, no, the three don't behave similar in terms of captain skills and no, they are not "crossbreeds". It says Manual AA, not Manual Secondaries. Also, close range your armour may be not very good, but it's still better than trying to use those guns on long range. No.

You don't brawl Hippers in Gneisenau. You kite them.

This. If you see a Hipper, turn and kite, unless you fancy eating up to 12 torps. That's not even a PEF issue, but applies to all T6 BBs, with only Mutsu and WV being able to effectively deal with an angled Hipper/Eugen.

Yes. Including ships like Dunkerque and Jean Bart.

Paying weebs have a bunch of HSF captains already. And maybe ARP, if one was around for that too. Not that I'd object to a IJN captain, but France is the more pressing matter atm to me.

Unless it's a T2/3 Imperial Russian Armoured Cruiser.

Capturing and holding an objective is the abstract way of simulating a fight for control over an area. And yes, such could happen. Some battles in history weren't just about sinking enough ships, but about establishing control, maybe long enough to get something done. If you take something like the Battle of Tassafaronga for example, by most accounts it's a Japanese victory. But strategically, the encounter prevented the Japanese from supplying their troops with that run and the mounting threat to supply runs meant that they worked first on alternative ways of resupplying, before it contributed to the evacuation of the troops.

Given I already own two Hippers, what interested me the most was the Hipper flag. And the flag works like a charm, given my first battle with it was pretty nice. Third Hipper will likely go on DD. Third Aurora can be put on the new Soviet BBs.

Not every T6 gets crapped on by T8s this hard. Bayern likely is the most survivable and has guns that still do decent damage when they hit. Warspite, QE and Mutsu have guns that do good damage vs T8s, but have survivability woes. Fuso, New Mexico, Arizona and Normandie have to at times rely on HE, but broadside, their 12 shells can be a pain. Dunkerque at the very least can try play like an oversized cruiser, firing HE or AP from range (it has the pen) and fighting cruisers up close. WV as the newest addition before PEF is like the polar opposite of PEF, as its guns wouldn't even be out of place on a T8. Just the survivability and speed is. But it still eats citadels less often than PEF. This is like saying Krasny Krim is good, because most T5 cruisers are pretty lackluster, so who cares?

It's 2 s less than most guns. Same as Fuso guns. Fuso has 50% more guns. And if you look at the big guns, waiting 2 seconds longer for the extra impact is worth it absolutely. Well, yes, it's alright, but it won't win any prizes either. For a German. And no, early versions had 2.0 sigma as well. None. If you had to play secondary BB, you could make a case for Bayern otherwise, but no T6 BB has secondaries that are worth a lot. Even on high tier BBs you can't trust secondaries to pick up the slack of crappy main battery guns, at T6 you certainly can't. What I see is a BB that only is kept balanced by it's T8 long-range AA that is neither historical, nor relevant in half the games and faces an uncertain future with AA rework. If it wasn't for AA, Mutsu is a much better ship in the same role. Balancing PEF around something that is actually relevant every game would be nice, instead of making it a ship that has issues with dealing reliable damage while also being only "tanky" by virtue of being a T6 BB, thus outtanking cruisers. Seriously, only IJN ships are easier to citadel. And not by much.

I agree, though I also don't think her accuracy is insanely good. Warspite obviously does it better, but even ships with just decent base dispersion like the WV hit comparably often in my experience. But as you said, it is not a weakness either and thus shouldn't be stated as such.

I guess Yamato also isn't more accurate than Izumo, because while it has higher sigma, the shells arc more? Or North Carolina isn't the most accurate T8 BB? The shell arcs on PEF are far from bad and frankly in that specific point of accuracy, it's really a matter of learning how to handle the ballistics, not blaming the ship for bad accuracy. PEF's accuracy is good. Also, sigma is not a minor thing. It does make a difference. I find it inappropriate to make issues out of non-issues. No, PEF isn't good. But when you want a proper argument about PEF, it should address what actually is bad about the ship. It shouldn't be about points that are actually among the good parts. If someone was stating Yamato wasn't tanky, because it gets easily citadelled and burned by HE, one would have to wonder whether the person even has any idea how to play ships or understands game mechanics. Similarly, if one just denies the few (but clear) advantages the ships has, it's pretty easy to dismiss that statement as baseless whining. It's in the interest of fact-based discussion that people don't just go off on rants and when you want to argue about PEF lacking volume of fire or pen, sure, I can agree to that. But accuracy? Now, that's inappropriate because it detracts from the credibility of the person bringing forth the claim. And it also doesn't matter whether you tell me what other issues PEF has. I know them, as I pointed them out before. But being unable to hit things is not the issue.

Played PEF in early ranks, where it did ok, but did not dare bring it to later ranks, because there's just straight up better BB picks. In the end, for consistent results, needed a DD though. But for 8-gun BB, I'd frankly rather take Warspite, West Virginia or Mutsu.

PEF dispersion is standard German in the horizontal, not in the vertical, as PEF effectively bleeds shell velocity at range, making vertical dispersion much less an issue than on other Germans (and causing penetration to fall off as a side effect). 2.0 sigma also makes the observed dispersion pretty decent, as shell groupings are nice and shells don't fly all over the place like on Bayern. Inconsistent results mostly stem from being unable to pen or overmatch, not from accuracy issues. Noone argued firing volume, but pen. OR is worse. Arguing that it is worse than all T5s in pen thus is just false. All other factors should be adressed in other ways, but not by inaccurate statements that do not properly portray what is being talked about. If you folks want to argue that PEF has poor pen and tier for tier is worse than T5s, as it has to go up against tougher armour, that'd be a legit approach. Making absolute statements though that don't hold up is not.

Bretagne: 27 dps @5 km 60 dps @3.5 km 45 dps @3.1 km Texas: 187 dps @3.5 km 158 dps @2 km Iron Duke: 38 dps @5 km 96 dps @2.5 km 8 dps @1.2 km König: 66 dps @4.5 km 16 dps @3.5 km 30 dps @2 km Note that only the 4.5-5 km auras get ever affected by Manual AA. If you wanted an AA skilled BB, Bretagne basically only provides a decent mid-range AA, which outperforms Iron Duke in AA spec because it kicks in 1 km earlier, but it has less long range. Given the long range on Bretagne is negligible though, the actual AA BBs at T5 are either Texas, featuring a far better mid range AA that doesn't need Manual AA or König that can get quite brutal values if it specs into Manual AA, as all the AA is frontloaded. Both offer the same 5x2 gun layout with similar dpm and accuracy, Texas offering better firepower, König offering better armour and speed, both offering more hp. Overall, for self-defense AA purposes, Bretagne is basically just a bit better armed than Iron Duke (by virtue of mid-range range, not dps), but there's little reason ever to take Bretagne over another ship in any role. Note that the mid-range AA is susceptible to getting knocked out by any kind of HE shell that lands on the deck, far more than long range, so towards the end of a battle, Bretagne can end up with worse dpm than most competition as even Kongou features better long range AA. Also note that AA is going to change next patch, with AA builds getting made far harder, so AA power becomes a far less meaningful stat. I know both ships. I looked them up, I played both. The wiki is nice to get values from, but the fluff text is often something you can ignore, because it's dumb. For example: This for example is just sugarcoating. Bretagne has a reinforced lower bow, yes. So do König, Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya and Kongou. The Bretagne bow is far less reliable than König's and OR's and is barely better than Iron Duke's which has a bit more 19 mm area. In every area other than the lower bow plating, Kongou, OR, König and Iron Duke are just way better armoured, be it the deck (where most HE lands), the barbettes, Iron Duke and König also have better belt and citadel protection (and 15% more hp). In actual ship to ship combat, the Bretagne is basically always at a handicap against these ships and the wiki just tried to find something that is actually good about this ship. Because in pretty much ever aspect other than AA and a reinforced bow, this ship is among the worst.

T61 is pretty solid, but personally I preferred the Shinonome to it in the end. Given I put my Harekaze captain on it, it made a pretty decent gunboat, with enough pen to hit BBs for 4k salvos.

What is Bretagne better at than New York and Iron Duke?

More potatoes getting the ship won't reduce his individual stats. Obviously, being top x in a ship also doesn't make it good. Shell arcs are only bad at range. Close range, there's worse. Dispersion is fine. I don't even use ASM (AA range mod to enjoy the AA while it lasts) and hitting stuff isn't hard. Pen is easily worst at T6, wouldn't say worst at T5. Pretty sure Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya for example has way worse pen. If PEF has your lowest hitrate, then you either only play Warspite as alternative or I don't know how. The ship is imo not good, but to blow it out of all proportions doesn't help any debate. PEF is basically a T6 Hood, but without the tankiness and overmatch.