HaachamaShipping

Bismarck is free.

Damn, that's actually a pretty nice design. Sadly will be a while till EN sees any of that.

Most likely, Gneisenau. Many seem to hate it for its low gun count with not very accurate guns, but I feel like it's just in the sweet spot of secondary builds, has strengths that uptier quite well and can be played as a very aggressive bully while being extremely tough. Graf spee is another ship. Bought HsF Graf Spee just for the weeb and didn't expect much from it, but it turned out to be pretty fun overall.

The reason you can get silly high WR in coop is because bots are incompetent, so any decent player will win against them. Even if you go afk, an ally will just farm that extra bot for you. But if you would for example play something like GZ and go afk every match, you'll find that that WR will take a nosedive really fast.

I did play a bit of T-61. It's good, but I personally prefer playing HSF Graf Spee. But first I need to fix my internet connection.

If you count the WR for a day or even a week, maybe. if you count it for a longer period though, it typically evens out, as it's hardly likely that it is just RNG giving you all the potato teams and giving the good players to the enemy. As @El2aZeR quoted eliastion already up there, there are games beyond your control, but in a good few, our own actions have large enough impact to matter and it is that which over the course of hundreds and thousands of games determines a winrate. Frankly, most people don't care because reflecting on one's own actions is hard in general, it seems. Blaming the team, blaming RNG, blaming the ship or, which would be the lulziest, blaming a WG conspiracy against oneself (those folks sadly exist) is easier. Then peple go by how things feel, not how they are and obviously it'll be unlikely that there'll be any change for the better. So, for most it is that they cannot be bothered. Call it ignorance or call it laid-back attitude, whatever, when you sit at 4k games with 44% WR, it's the cold hard truth that you aren't being very useful most of the time and whether one accepts or denies that, that fact won't change. One thing that does obviously get more frowned on would be when you take personal stats just as an argument to dismiss people as idiots from the get go. While it typically can hold true that a player with no good results has not much of an idea what they are talking about in game mechanics, just because one is unicum doesn't mean one's good at analysing information either. And while you'll encounter potatoes who won't listen to any sensible argument, spend long enough here and you'll also meet those pretentious folks who'll tell you that unless you get purple stats, your opinion is basically trash. Even if they don't on average if you don't pull your weight, you lose more often than you win, if you carry, you'll win more often. As was said before, you are the only constant factor in all your games. And if PR and damage increase (note that PR is partly based on damage, so obviously higher damage will result in higher PR even on constant WR), while WR stagnates, you might have found a different playstyle that farms more damage, but has no more impact on the team success than what you did before.

Secondaries won't hit a thing at 10 km, because T6 does not get the proper benefit from Manual secondaries that T7+ gets. So, it'd be mostly useless.

Can be said about any ship really. And screw over T4 ships? Doubt some Karlsruhe puts up much of a fight against effectively T6 ships.

Bisko is maybe specialised for close quarters, but being able to tank HE spam and bounce off Yamato shells on the 50 mm deck plating is no joke either. Dispersion is workable, once you get used to the guns. The main issue is the velocity. On the other hand, high velocity allows more clutch shots and gives less time to react. You definitely should get closer to enemies, but Bismarck isn't too terrible at range either, during times where you can't push without suiciding. Secondaries are an option to build in and to use. They neither are something you have to focus on nor are they a must if you invested into them. Bisko has hydro with 5.5 or 6 km range (forgot, but more than enough), unlike any other T8 BB. It's literally the least torpable T8 BB. Also, you wouldn't believe how easy it is to avoid getting torped if you played torp DD for once and factor in the mentality of the average DD captain. Bisko has 50 mm deck that shatters all but German HE. So, all but the ships with anaemic HE dpm will actually do proper damage to your ship in the long run. Some Richelieu or Monarch certainly would appreciate that level of tankiness. Bisko's 50 mm deck also bounces Yamato shells. Other shells any T8 BB bounces about equally. So, no, this is still the toughest T8 BB there is. And unlike FdG and GK it still is rather well-rounded and compact. "Sniper BBs" won't do squad either. Richelieu, Gascogne and Tirpitz share your dispersion woes, NC, Alabama and Massachusetts have shell velocities that make dodging at long ranges easy to anyone who's paying just about any attention to the battle and their PT counter (though after devstriking people from 22 km that sat stationary in a cruiser and ask why such "BS" could happen in chat, I guess one shouldn't expect a lot from random players), Amagi and Kii are the only ones who can try snipe, but frankly, the results are pretty poor. Certainly in Kii wouldn't try it beyond the occasional salvo at stuff halfway across the map because nothing else is around and maybe the target isn't paying attention. But you can do the same with Bismarck and your shells arrive on target far sooner. Not to mention, "boatloads of cannons" is quite the strange statement when Bismarck has 8 rapid firing guns compared to 8 normal guns on the French, 8-9 rapid firing guns on the Brits, 9 normal guns on the Americans and 10 on the Japanese. So, the Japanese have a whole two guns more, most only 1 gun more. Compared to like T6, where Gneisenau fights against Lyon with 10 more guns or the next tier with FdG against Alsace with 4 more guns, this is a pretty minor disparity. The Biscuit is a solid ship. It can play in battles vs T10s and it is not suffering more than other T8s really. Survivability-wise certainly beats Amagi, Richelieu and Monarch with their "what is HE resistance" armour scheme and NC and derrivates with overmatchable citadel deck. Not that the others are necessarily worse, but this is likely the easiest T8 BB to do decent in vs T10, unless an AP Midway is involved.

Tbh, I hated the New Mexico and was very happy when I got to Colorado. But if I had to pick one of the two to play for competitive, I'd take New Mexico over PEF. Yes, it is slow, yes the accuracy gets a bit more wonky, but having 12 guns with some actually very impressive penetration makes up for it. New Mexico also has decent concealment and soon gets Colorado heal, so it is and will be a decent BB. The ship does pack a punch when it catches a broadside and the concealment allows to get some surprise salvos off. When bottom tier, you also can still shoot at targets a bit further out and do decent damage and in the rare occasions where HE is necessary, 12 guns gives it an ok punch. I did manage to fend off Scharnhorsts with that. PEF meanwhile lacks most of that just to get speed and AA. And you can get around being inflexible by planning ahead where to go. Easier than trying to figure out how to get good dpm out of this ship and not just be fast, but ineffective.

Leander doesn't have Aobas deck. Clearly Leander is much less able to deal with all these threats than an Aoba. The 48 mm deck of Furutaka and Aoba is nice, but having smoke and repair at these levels still beats it. Graf Spee is brutal, but Graf Spee is brutal to any cruiser pretty much. Saying that Graf Spee and upper tier BB are going to counter this thing harder than any other T5 is maybe wishful thinking but Exeter with current stats would be the next absurd OP premium for packing a ship that would be good for T6 into T5. As is, this thing would likely still manage to rock the T6 charts, given it basically is a CA version of Leander and Perth, both which show good performance.

They say the RM lacked night battle training and equipment, but those ballistics clearly must be illumination shells. But really, the ship is slow, the shells are slow, the torps are slow. The dpm is ok, but frankly, what is the point of this thing? Flamu says the dpm is good when you land the shells, but it's 96k HE dpm vs 81k on the British, 86k on Shinonome (with much better ballistics and a workable torpedo armament, frankly that Akatsuki should have ripped him apart), 125k on Aigle and 135k on Farragut. So, I guess you can beat on Buckies and Hatsus, though they might outrun you.

DDs actually uptier very poorly, if a T8 DD is in the game as well. The T8 concealment mod makes life for t6s very hard. For example a T6 DD like T-61 has 6.1 km concealment, which is great for T6, but on T8, you won't even get a real warning before running into an Akizuki. Playing against ships like Benson, Kidd, Loyang, Cossack or harekaze meanwhile will just mean that the only way to win the cap fight is if you gotvery reliable support and the enemy has barely any, because getting outspotte and outgunned spells a quick end to your ship. Of course if no T8 DDs are around, a T6 DD can just freely torp t8 ships like it can torp T6s. But without other BBs around, T6 BBs can gun at T8 cruisers as much as they want too. And at least the ships with overmatch guns really care less about whether that target was a Dallas or a Cleveland. Both get wrecked about equally if hit. I'd say, cruisers uptier better than DDs andon par with BBs.

You must understand, having 6 different speed settings available is quite complex and would create a major distraction for the average player. We can't have that. 6 barrels of 203 mm is one of the reasons Furutaka is considered one of the strongest if not the strongest T5 cruiser in the game and Exeter even gets almost Aoba reload on it. Yes, against T7s this ship may feel a challenge, but with smoke, repair and a de facto T6 gun armament, it is much better equipped to meet this challenge than any other T5 cruiser. Certainly better than Omaha with 10 mm armour or Emerald that gets citpenned by IFHE. And obviously it will utterly murder T4s. This isn't just a case of a ship that downtiers well, but uptiers poorly. This is a ship that is entirely too much for its own tier. Armour scheme also is basically Leander/Perth, not Emerald. And it's nice to compare it to Perth, because Perth gets no repair party but spotter plane. Nice, but not the same power level. 203 mm guns have special value. At T5 they overmatch pretty much all cruiser bows. At T6 and T7 the RN cruiser bows. Exeter would win 1v1 against Perth pretty handily being able to just citadel it through the bow or side as it wishes. Perth is one of the best-performing ships of its tier. Perth is T6. Exeter is T5!

LWM gave it a "Mehbote" rating, though the only thing that keeps this ship afloat is AA. And you don't have to have GC-grade expectations of premiums to be disappointed by this ship. It's brutal when you start considering whether Dunkerque is a more useful ship than PEF. Scharnhorst gets 20 second reload and 50% more guns than the tech tree counterpart. PEF gets as many guns as Bayern (and on the low end of T6) with a 28 second reload. If these guns could fire every 20 seconds, it'd be a completely different story. Giulio Cesare is an OP ship that is a peril to most things it faces except maybe T6 and T7 CVs. And it's no more a peril to PEF than most T8s and many T7s. If you want, you can tank a GC and try run off. A Gneisenau meanwhile cannot be ignored nor can it be outrun. Graf Spee is a better ship. Graf Spee has clear strengths and those are strengths that really matter every game. It's maybe squishy, but it is the sturdiest T6 cruiser by far and while it lacks dpm, its ability to punch hard makes up for it. Graf Spee is maybe harder to play than some other T6 cruisers, but it has potential. Indianapolis I'd consider not necessarily bad, but unexciting. It's barely worse than NO in performance, but gets a radar to make up. It may be the worst T7 radar in terms of synergy with the ship that carries it, but it is radar nonetheless.

It has 8 guns, so 28 second reload pretty much leads to one of the worst dpm numbers at T6 among non-overmatching ships. The lack of penetration at range means applying this dpm effectively cannot be done at any range. Fire chance per shell is among the poorest and combined with low HE alpha and low barrel count means setting fires is harder than in other BBs. Going about per shell values without accounting for barrel count is just ignorant. Gneisenau also isn't a better firestarter than Lyon or Scharnhorst. 34 second reload on 12 guns still leads to higher effective dpm. To be equivalent, NM would need a 42 second reload. A Fuso at the ranges PEF can fight at is accurate enough to work. Beyond that range Fuso is not very accurate, but PEF even when it lands shells doesn't do much against armoured targets. I mean, you can try to bait shells on your belt. Enemies obliging with it isn't really up to you though. Some ships have an easier time with it, but PEF is not among them, as the 25 mm bow section is quite large, so it is among the easier ones to hit at T6. And yes, T6 BBs vs T8s is a struggle, but PEF uptiers even more poorly than any T6 BB I know. Other T6s at least have the penetration to hurt T8s at range, avoiding the tanking against T8 BBs to lend a hand with supporting fire to their T8s, but PEF with its garbage dpm and pen does way worse at that than even a Dunkerque or New Mexico. It's also nice that you point out how you don't bow tank in Kongou and Fuso in response to me stating that these two cannot bow tank. Feel free to be more dismissive of arguments. Lastly, the main reason the vertical dispersion on PEF is great is because while it has a high muzzle velocity initially, that velocity falls off fast due to drag. The shells never reach NC levels of slow, but they do noticeably take longer after a while than for example Gneisenau/Bismarck 38 cm shells. On the flipside, it's a contributing factor of why the shells stop penetrating much beyond 14 km. And it's easy to dismiss this with "Just get closer". Vs T5s and T6s, sure, just get closer, T7s partially too, but at T8, it's really a matter of whether you want to get that close and personal in a ship that has neither dpm nor good defenses and basically is poorer than any other T6 in that regard. The starkest contrast likely is West Virginia, which basically only suffers in being slow and a bit low on hp, but otherwise has the bite to punch T8 BBs at any range.

It needs no more than a WV to teach you the hardships of PEF.

@1MajorKoenig seems just *edit because his German battlecruiser is pretty crap. And any German CC enthusiast has the right to be angry, just as I'm still pissed that Asashio is a joke of a ship. I'm not angry nor feeling guilty. I bought that ship for the steel to get ships actually worth a damn. PEF was just an extra. But it is a piece of junk and just because I don't feel terribly upset about it doesn't mean I won't state that this ship has actual issues pulling its weight. For one because I pity anyone who'd purchase this ship on its own for the ship itself, because it's not worth the money, but also because it's overall questionable how this ship got designed. If people were crying for an OP ship, they'd have been more than happy with the initial version of the ship. If you go look it up though, most people who now state that the ship is crap back then already complained that the concealment was retarded good. Obviously, concealment was not the sole thing that got nerfed and here we are. I'd say, if you just get the ship for free and don't give a damn, likely the whole matter seems not worth the effort to complain about. But for enthusiasts of the Hochseeflotte it's not, for those who wonder why WG will ask money for this piece of crap in the future it is not exactly irrelevant and it kind of makes one wonder what WG's balancing department is like, because we go from Le Terrible that follows its name to Cossack that got a buff out of the blue to make it one of the best T8 DDs to now this ship that seems a perfect fit for CV divs (good AA and mobile enough to get around), while 8.0 is being prepared and the ship has little else that justifies its T6 status. Rip off the ahistorical AA and throw it into T5 and it's perfectly at home.

What flag? you mean camo?

Honestly, the dispersion is among the least of the issues. There's likely even more things I have to complain about in the speed department than the dispersion. In both, PEF isn't hurting much (my main issue with speed would be the general question why Normandie does 29.5 knots). The main issues I see are: Lackluster dpm, due to low barrel count, reload that does not properly compensate, nor any overmatch to make damage more reliable. Rather, inability to reliable penetrate armour at range detracting from the nominal dpm even further. This means this ship has pretty underwhelming offensive potential. Underwhelming armour scheme with a belt that is among the worst at T6, a citadel that is not terribly exposed, but not hard to reach and extremities that are overmatchable and lack any kind of effective armour. Low hp pool to boot, makes this one of the less survivable T6 BBs. On the other side strengths are: Decent speed in a straight line of 28 knots. Uptiers not too well, because T7s and T8s progressively do more. AA that is great. Secondaries that are great for T6 (but get absolutely outclassed by T7 and T8) This results in a ship with strengths that are situational at best, reliant on MM to give you the enemies to shine, while the flaws are basically the two key areas of a BB. Only one uptiers properly and the AA has an uncertain future with CV rework.

Sure. This ship certainly didn't have the introduction boost like any new ship, it'll certainly climb back up to first spot once people return to other BBs. Once all the PEF players move on to other BBs again, the stats will recover and we'll see, this ship won't drop off further. Now on the third day, it's on #4 in overall WR, with similar results in the better player brackets with a #3 in 10% bracket, but ranging from #4 to #9 elsewhere (worst rating in top 5%). I'm pretty sure that this isn't exactly what drags this ship down, especially as, if PEF was a good ship, it'd have decent stats in the other categories. As is, PEF already is uninspiring in average damage and in the bottom 3-4 ranks in this category in the 50% and higher brackets for example (unsurprising given it has the hardest time dealing any). But, as I said before, I'd take the stats this early with a grain of salt. We'll see in a few month where this ship is... also, when 8.0 hits.

PEF - 27% (4k potential) Bayern - 35% (4.5k potential) Fuso - 25% (5.7k potential) Mutsu - 30% (6.5k potential) New Mexico/Arizona - 30% (5k potential) West Virginia - 36% (5.7k potential) QE - 35% (6.3k potential) Warspite - 34% (5.3k potential) Normandie - 26% (4.7k potential) Dunkerque - 35% (4.8k potential) Dat fire chance... beating out by 1-2% the fire chance of two ships that get 50% more barrels. Even if you land only 25% of your shells with Fuso, you are basically still doing hardly worse than landing 37.5% on PEF if the accuracy does make such a difference (which in reality it doesn't, unless you max range spam). Potential damage added in brackets, just because the differences are not negligible.

Not worth it. If it sat higher, it'd have a tiny strip of reinforced armour. This is basically worse than what Kongou and Fuso have and those aren't known for their exceptional bow-tanking capabilities. Or Normandie. It's way too easy to hit the rest of the massive bow section. On the flipside, raising the ship raises the citadel and while the 270 mm at the moment are crap, 300 mm plus 60 mm citadel bulkhead on an above waterline citadel basically are just asking for enemies to delete you. For real tankiness, you'd need fundamental changes in the armour model Seconds can matter, be it for angling out or just flat out killing the enemy with the second salvo. Sure it isn't without risks, but it's at least something to get excited about. Short of giving the ship a 6k alpha/40% fire chance shell, even with 24 seconds the HE shell will not become a replacement for the AP shell. But it at least can have better chances against DDs and things you don't overmatch. If you look at Dunkerque, that ship has amazing pen, yet it can be forced to fire HE when bottom tier against targets that don't conveniently show broadside. Pen alone only solves so much. And at sub-10 km, you can penetrate decently well if the target isn't angled. I don't think that amazing pen will salvage these guns. It will allow you to pen stuff from further out, but PEF will remain a low dpm, low survivability ship with no overmatch. Basically a Myogi with a fourth turret, some added hp and better AA, two tiers higher without protected MM (to tiers where everyone overmatches everyone). Well, ok, not quite, because Myogi has 1 knot higher speed, better HE shells and better accuracy.

As is, the only reason to get close in this ship is to make your guns pen. Because if you don't time your shots and maneuvers well, the moment you fire 8 guns, a Fuso or New Mexico fires 12 back. A QE or Bayern doesn't even need to bother and will just do its best to stay angled and overmatch you. If you actually had turrets that traverse fast and dpm that is worth a damn, you could actually try be a brawler, albeit without the turtleback. You could try outrun them and when in close range exchanges, you could over time dish out better damage. It also could lift the HE dpm from barely there to sub-optimal, like on Scharnhorst, which may leave a bitter taste, I know, but let's be real, unless the aP shell gets some special overmatch rules to go with special HE pen rules, HE will have to serve as backup at times. If you look at it, fixing the pen makes this ship a long range sniper that has low dpm, but accuracy. I'm not sure that's this much better than buffing the dpm.

I'd argue that this makes it actually more valuable, because a person that gets it while being F2P basically gets it during holidays when they might not want it. Or they do get it when they want it, in which case they are lucky. Either way, there's a chance they get it for a time when otherwise they wouldn't have paid for it, thus it's wasted. Someone who runs premium 365 days a year basically gets to renew it 7 days later. For them, they would have the cost anyway. But they save some cash actually by getting part of it for free. I'd argue in that sense, while you may not feel the value, it actually is there. with this overview, I'm actually wondering though, with the Steel Monster's campaign basically giving you your money's worth, what is the return on the Steel Prinz bundle? Because while it costs like double as much, it does include a ship, doubloons, a ton of signals and a bunch of extra steel.