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Other DDs can torp the cruiser and don't need to gun it down. And some actually can (Akizuki, Harekaze). And T8 BB have not much of an issue penning T10 BBs at reasonable combat ranges.

I wanna see you fight an Ibuki with your 127 mm guns. That damage will be spicy on that 25 mm of armour.

I don't keep turning. I just first pointed out the armour strengths of different T5s (which matters when comparing the Exeter), then responded to your statement that there's seemingly not much consistency with later parts of lines. It just seems to me like it was obvious that the Germans would not be consistent across the line, because their armament and all indicates as much. They transition into heavy cruisers from T6 to T7 (as do French) and only then start to get actually decent armour. This is what the IJN does from T4 to T5 and that's the only reason why Furutaka shows consistency with Aoba and later ships (though deck plating is a different story), but has no consistency with Kuma. On Omaha, after the cruiser split especially, it's a bit weird to consider Omaha, a scout cruiser, to be in line with USN CAs, not USN CLs, which as a line are also not terribly well-armoured (getting HE penned by most DDs up to including Helena). So, in a way, why would lines that make a clear break at T6/7 and T5/6 show consistency across this break in one quality when they are inconsistent in most other aspects? That is the point I'm making. I'm not talking about rebalancing T5 cruisers, I'm saying your expectations as to their armour scheme should keep in mind that these cruisers lines in general have breaks and unless you actually want to switch out ships, there's little that can be done there. And yes, the light plating strength and extent is not always historical, but it is on pretty much no ship in the game. But there stiill is a sort of balancing behind it and consistency is an afterthought. Else one would have to question for example the transition from Fuso with reinforced barbette and deck to Nagato that eats HE pens everywhere, just to transition back into tanky designs from Amagi to Izumo. Consistency in armour plating strengths is often an afterthought and there should be no expectation for it to always follow the same rules. Not to mention that you saying Furutaka shouldn't be better armoured before, I'd like to point out that from T5 to T7, IJN is among the best CA armour schemes, T8 and T9 suffer, T10 is decent again, at T8 the proper progression would hve been Atago. Just because Mogami is able to get citpenned from any angle doesn't change that Furutaka can tank every same tier BB on the centre section, Aoba could before they introduced 38 cm guns and larger at T6, but still has 48 mm deck (like Furutaka), Myoko has the same 25 mm side armour as all T7 CAs, but gets a 32 mm deck, as does Ibuki (but the superstructure above that makes sure you eat normal pens, you just eat less cits). Mogami sucks with 25 mm, but Atago would have had 41 mm, before it was switched to premium (and now is basically a T8 Myoko). Compare that to Germans, which get 25 mm everywhere on Yorck, 27 mm everywhere on Hipper and Roon, which is better vs 38 cm at those tiers, but does absolutely nothing against the more common larger guns (and there's a grand total of 3 38 cm gun BBs at T9/10, two of which are premiums). Or UsN CAs, which get absolute crap on Pensacola and NO (19 mm), then 27 mm on higher tiers, but never a reinforced deck until des Moines. And even Des Moines is arguably worse armoured than Zao. So, I don't see how an argument could be made that Furutaka shouldn't get better armour than Königsberg and Omaha, even just for consistency's sake.

And 15 cm spam guns turning into 21 cm and then 20.3 cm guns with mediocre reload is consistent? Or 15.2 cm to 20.3 cm. Both have no larger guns than the Emerald, though they have way more firepower and I wouldn't call Emerald better armoured than Nürnberg. Omaha is hard to salvage with its 10 mm bow, but Nürnberg at least doesn't get overmatched by her own guns and unlike Emerald doesn't get cipenned by hits on the midsection deck which doubles as 25 mm citadel deck (thus letting IFHE, 203 mm HE and German HE citadel the crap out of the ship). And obviously Furutaka has better plating. It is the only heavy cruiser at the tier. Without that 25 mm section, it would be straight up the worst CA against BB and DD, you know, the two types of T5 ships that actually matter.

Belfast decelerates like all the other RN CLs out there. Which means planning ahead. Might sometimes not even be stupid to just ram into an island if it prevents you from gliding past it into vision. Also, again, thanks WG for making an absolute mess out of the ship so it no longer can be sold regularly. Who would want HMS Belfast anyway even just for the historical value?

You expected Omaha and Königsberg to be better armoured than Furutaka? I mean, both are light cruisers and have no place being tankier than the one heavy cruiser at the tier. In exchange both actually are in top HE dps at the tier, which you can't say of Germans from T7 onwards and not for USN CA line except Des Moines. Also, armour-wise, Des Moines is actually one of the less great designs at T10. 27 mm bow over Worcester 25 mm is nice, but the only 30 mm plating is the deck and all those T10 BB guns except rare Bourgogne will just cut right through 27 mm.

Remembered this convo when I looked at my matchup today. Apart from the blatant 4 KM BB, no IJN BB vs 1 KM BB, 2 IJN BB, which is f-ed up by a single division, the cruiser split is just eh and I deeply regretted bringing a goddamn Hipper to this match (or rather taking Hipper out at all). And as long as that can happen, yes, radar is an asset that also needs to be taken into account when balancing against ships with no radar and can't just be justified with radar ship getting matched against radar ship. Not to mention that it'd be an utterly stupid logic in cases like Belfast/Fiji, Atlanta/Indianapolis/Flint/Helena/New Orleans/Boise Chapayev/Kutuzov or any RN CL or PA DD from T8 to T10 that can switch out smoke for radar. So no, Azuma does not need a radar, but it should get at least something equally worthwhile which can be put to good use and is characteristic for IJN CAs, which imo is torpedos.

Playing Gneisenau, got into T9 match, 3 Musashis per side, 1 Essex with AP DBs per side, 1 Gneisenau per side. Managed to do a whole 13k damage before dying, most against a Kutuzov, before I died miserably to AP DBs and one Musashi salvo after trying to dodge the bombers. Three people managed to score below me. The only other T7, a Jervis topped our boards on the loss. I do not know what these three folks did. But apparantly not a whole lot useful. And I thought I had reached peak incompetence today after I had an AS Ryuujou tell me that it's impossible to play with a single fighter squad. Because strafing is too munition inefficient to them.

Common plating for cruisers at T5 is 10 mm for terribly armoured cruisers (Omaha et al., Krasny Krim and Königserg) and 13 mm for decently armoured cruisers. Königsberg (20 mm), Emerald (38 mm) and Krasny Krim (25 mm and 75 mm just at and below the waterline) have reinforced lower bow plating. We can thus say there exist two different plating strengths in general. As a fun aside, if you don't give broadside, Furutaka is the tankiest, but next would be Emerald and Krasny Krim. Not that they are truely tanky, but their armour scheme makes it harder to get citadels from the bow, as shells would need to pen the upper bow, then dip down into the forward bulkhead. If they keep straight on, they'd bounce off the citadel deck. If they strike too low, they bounce off the reinforced lower hull. At T10, common plating ranges from 16 mm (Minotaur) to 25 mm (Henri, Worcester, Zao, Moskva, Stalingrad) to 27 m (Des Moines, Salem Hindenburg). Moskva and Stalingrad also feature a reinforced lower bow (50 mm). There thus is effectively a greater variety of plating strengths at T10 than at T5. Now, to get back to Exeter, realistically I'd expect armour very similar to Leander, with 13 mm all over and 76 mm belt, which is on par with Furutaka. Exeter will by no means be tanky against BBs (like most T5 cruisers), but anything below Kirov in caliber will likely not pen the belt beyond 10 km, which is more than you could say for a good few others. Similarly, DD AP will only get cits at close ranges, with exception of Soviets Gremyashchy up to maybe 8-9 km). Unlike Furutaka, you get full penned by all the HE though. Furutaka needed IFHE to get penned in the side and BB HE or Yorck to get penned on the deck (48 mm strength).

Gneisenau so far is the third ship in this game that I bought a permacamo for and the first one where the perma camo isn't Azur Lane collab camo (main reason I bought it for Nelson and Cleveland). I don't think I need to talk much more about the strengths of the ship, though I really love the secondary build on it. There's no satisfaction like seeing some mid-tier BB get melted or watch a Prinz Eugen or Roon try to rush you, while you kite and let the secondaries work them over. If you can live with a main battery that has a bit of a temperament, Gneisenau really is one of the most fun BBs I know, because no other BB feels as much like a hunter than Gneisenau to me. Not even Scharnhorst, because watching 28 cm guns bounce/shatter and the secondaries fail to do raw damage is sad. Also, some BBs and cruisers have 25 mm citadel deck, where the caliber matters. Though, honestly, I don't think there exists a thing such as a bad T7 BB. Gneisenau just is one that I find actually among the most consistent, because against most enemies, your armour basically performs the same, regardless of tier and the guns get a bit stale against Musashi or such, but as we see, 38 cm caliber is perfectly fine in T8. If you manage to angle the armour, you can ambush T9 BBs even and win without too many issues. It's what I find frustrating for example on Nelson, where you may have the firepower, but it is really hard to make the armour work against T8 and T9 if the enemy is any good. Against T5 meanwhile, what are they going to do (or even ships like small caliber T6 and T7). At best they can try to reach for HE, but even in a pure HE contest (If AP doesn't work for whatever reason), Nelson has the better HE shell and the better repair.

Furutaka doesn't get overmatched by any T5 cruiser. Also, lulzily enough, Krasny Krim has a reinforced lower hull and citadel deck of 25 mm that bounces off stuff. The upper hull is utterly garbage though. Most other T5 cruisers only get overmatched by Furutaka. Omaha (and clones) gets overmatched by anyone with the exception of Krasny Krim.

No, please don't. It's terrible and always has been terrible. Ships should be balanced and not blatandly OP. If you look at Perth, it's a ship that is good, but not OP. It's a decent design. If you look meanwhile at something actually OP, Belfast is the prime example of why you'd not want an OP Exeter. First the ship utterly devastates MM at its tier whenever present, it gets all the (justified) hate from people who had their experience ruined and then it'll get pulled from store, because WG won't balance it and just hope the problem solves itself over time. Belfast now is a ship that is known to be OP, that can ruin T7 experience when played well, but gets focused down when spotted so hard you wish you were any other T7 cruiser. It's also no longer in the shop, so an iconic RN vessel will likely never be sold again directly and only be available through container gambles. Is that what you want? Not to mention that it encourages a shitty business practice of P2W.

I'd bet on Patch 8.0, when Kronshtadt and Musashi get removed.

Because trying to balance CVs has never been a priority since the announcement of a rework years ago.

Impending Exeter can't and if it could, it would be OP for T6 even.

Or not. If they fix it, great. But as long as the suggested values are like this, I comment on these suggested values, because obviously some very smart people thought this could somehow be balanced on T5.

This is not how balancing works. Saying "Well, we put a T6 cruiser at T5, but MM will put it against T6 and T7 anyway" is not a valid argument. and everytime this ship isn't up vs T6 and T7 it'll be painfully obvious.

I mean, Gneisenau also can utterly wreck a Giulio Cesare. Is Giulio balanced now? No, it goddamn isn't. Nor is this.

You mean Grindblue Fantasy?

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Albania? Kosovo and Montenegro are relatively "new", but Albania is not.

Wait till Patch 8.0. Then tell me how you wished the CVs were like they are today.

Alright. And which T5 cruiser except Furutaka isn't lightly armoured? Furutaka and EB are the only T5 ships that don't need to fear getting insta-deleted by same tier BBs from any angle. Exeter isn't special there, her drawback is the same drawback most others have at T5. What stands out is the options Exeter has to get around that and to regain some hp if she made a mistake. hp-pool-wise, the ship also isn't starved. Lastly, against anything but 203 mm guns, that armour holds up (which is more than you can say about Omaha and clones) and in cruiser vs cruiser fights, it's really only Furutaka that Exeter has to fear at her tier. Everything else gets outclassed by overmatch guns and a ship more durable against cruiser and DD gunfire than most others. So, yes, it is goddamn OP for T5.

Interesting. Tell me when Cag becomes playable.

Loyang is a good T8 DD though. Gneisenau has arguably the best BB AA at T7. Lyon and DoY have high AA values too, but neither of them crams their silly AA into long-range mounts that kick in at the earliest possible moment and not just when you are about to get dropped. have way better survivability than 40 mm Bofors that die to HE spam. get actually affected by Manual AA skill. Lyon and DoY are stripped off large chunks of their AA after half the battle if they didn't camp in the back. Gneisenau can be brawling upfront and still have most of its useful AA intact.