HaachamaShipping

Atago and Prinz Eugen are tankier overall. Thanks to repair party coupled with similarly effective armour. Just because you want to exclude certain cruisers doesn't not make the game count them as cruisers. That 40 mm plate is useful every now and then, but not reliably at all, as highlighted by my above gunnery test. Bow-in dispersion was a much greater issue than the 40 mm plate. and except for that plate, there's nothing. 27 mm armour vs T10 could has barely any advantages over 25 mm (You don't get penned by IFHE Cossack) and apart from that, the ship only has a lot of hp. Hindenburg is better, because it has 30 mm midship plating, meaning if you don't hit the bow, you don't overmatch, unless you are Republique, Yamato or 457 mm conqueror. This can be leveraged somewhat effectively. 40 mm bow plating cannot. Counter-argument: Cleveland has far better fire chance and actually can reliably burn ships. Hipper cannot. Also, Cleveland behind an island has far longer uptime than a Hipper that is in the open and up and dies, because it cannot tank crap. USN CLs do have AP and if you don't try use it from max range, it actually does damage. Sad as it is though, if I wanted to play a proper T8 CA with strong AP, I'd play Atago, because the 10 shell surprise volley with new accuracy is far more devastating than Hipper is most of the time, and apart from that the ship has decent HE and long-range torps. Lastly, if Hipper had good damage output, then why is my Hipper damage way below Cleveland damage? Similarly, Cleveland has higher averages in both WR and damage on the server. So, I wonder which is the oddity: Your personal stats or the average WoWS player?

Nassau is actually fast for her tier. And frankly, fast enough for T3. Best T3 tech tree BB anyway.

Any BB can deal with bow-in Hipper. It's not Hindenburg, it has 27 mm plating everywhere, except a bit of 40 mm armour at the lower bow section. Anywhere where Yamato overmatches, any BB with 406 mm or better guns overmatches. Which at T10 is every BB except Bourgogne. At T9 every BB except Alsace and Jean Bart and at T8 it's half the BBs still. Even at T7 and T6 there are three and two BBs respectively that can just crap on your armour. Armour layout: And just to demonstrate: So, no, Hipper to most BBs in a T10 match is just as crappy armoured as any other T8 cruiser. In fact, in a T8 match, the best-armoured cruiser is Atago, because it has 41 mm deck that is impervous even to Yamato. But all other cruisers get overmatched everywhere and Cleveland at least has a small citadel and no armour anywhere else, so it often eats overpens. Also, even when it doesn't die, Hipper has terrible HE dpm (worse than Yorck one tier lower, which already wasn't stellar) and short of getting to use AP extensively, you are the least threatening T8 cruiser there is. Only Prinz Eugen has less dpm, but gets a repair party. Cleveland meanwhile has good dpm and a highly valuable utility tool in form of radar.

T5: 21k ton displacement, more belt armour than some BBs at its tier, 8 28 cm guns, 27.5 knots top speed. T6: 14k ton displacement, almost no armour whatsoever, 6 28 cm guns, 28.5 knots top speed. Something seems off there... Well, guess torps are worth that much?

It's funny how people say that, then return instantly for another reply. Shows how much substance is behind the words...

Izumo is slightly larger than Yamato actually. And no, you don't need to camp. You might at times not move much, but ideally, if you need to hold back a flank, you don't do it by nose in and reverse with 6 guns, but by turning around soon enough to kite with 9 guns. Works in Izumo, works in Yamato. It also makes you less easy a target for torpedoes or for flanking maneuvers, as you can speed up to quarter, half, three quarter and full speed, not just reverse or stop.

I take Cleveland into T10 over Hipper any day. Hipper's one strength over its competition is the armour. Which is the first thing noone in T10 cares about except Bourgogne and Bourgogne players likely know they can switch to HE and kill you that way too. Hipper otherwise only brings bad dpm, a set of 6 km brawling torps that matter only if you get into that range alive and that's it. Cleveland meanwhile has actual dpm, has a radar that spots T10 ships just as well as Worcester radar, it has good concealment, good maneuverability and while it lacks armour, it has a rather small citadel, so it gets overpenned a lot, which is way better than Hipper, who gets regular pens or cit pens all the time. During times of almost exclusive T10 matches as T8 cruiser, Cleveland and Chapayev were the two T8 cruisers I found most useful to play.

They are buffing the penetration. Izumo already has the best pen of her caliber at sub 15 km though (and exceeds FdG 420 mm at sub 10 km) and only falls off at range where USN super-heavy AP exceeds it. If they buff it further, oh boy... I'd guess best pen at all ranges then.

MM is aweful. Cleveland is not. If I get thrown into T10 anyway, Cleveland still is one of the best T8 cruisers.

Dpm. Both on main guns and secondaries. Also, less easy to bumrush in a Prinz Eugen/Hipper, because the guns can actually overmatch the cruiser. Also, AA. If you just want a ship to brawl BBs with, Tirpitz is better. If you want a ship to brawl anything else with, Massachusetts is better.

And Ranked is usually not 4 DD and if it is 4 DD, congrats, You can seriously hurt 0-3 enemy ships (likely 2). Meanwhile ships like Harekaze, Cossack, Kidd or Loyang would be incredible assets in these cases, could still be incredibly useful if the sole DD in the match and at lower ranks can basically solo-carry. I know I did last T8 Ranked with Harekaze and I'm not unicum, but when you actually got guns worth a damn and torps that can hit anything, you really are an asset against any ship. Which also brings me to aforementioned "the DD can dodge". Dodging doesn't kill things. With Asashio, you might kill dumb DDs that chase or utterly terrible cruisers that can't aim. In something like Kidd, Cossack or Harekaze (all ships of equal or better maneuverability), you'd win DD fights most of the time even without kiting and you can actually inflict not insignificant damage on cruisers. Which doesn't mean you can 1v1 competent cruisers, but it needs far less incompetence for the DD to win. Especially something like a Hipper can have real trouble against a Harekaze or Akizuki that penetrates it for raw damage, vs an Asashio that maybe sets a fire at most. Eugen makes that even more pronounced with the repair party, which would negate the damage inflicted by the Asashio in the fight, but would likely not make it more of a threat to the others as it at best equals the scores after we factor in that it has even worse dpm than Hipper.

Issue is, you tie down 2 DDs at one flank then. If these are all the DDs you got... Other DDs are self-contained units that can act more autonomously and if some could have insane impact if paired up with force multipliers. Like, an Akizuki, if anyone spots for it and adds their smokes to the ship, it can gun down basically anything. Doesn't matter whether it's a DD, CL/CA or BB. If you wanted to avoid the double DD issue, you could even go as far as to combine the ship with a stealth radar cruiser (Edinburgh or Chapayev) (and a BB) and you got a combo that when well-played can roll up a flank and/or dominate a cap.

I know the feeling from when I put salted butter on my bread after buying the wrong one. And guess what, I didn't go "Well, why the hell can they not be clearer about it, instead of just adding these two tiny words "con sal"? Who reads past "Mantequilla" anyway?", but rather I learned to properly look at what the hell I was buying. And ate my salted bread. This is almost on the level of people who complained about how WG didn't make it clear enough that Asashio DWTs can't hit a cruiser. Or those who in general cannot read the warning ingame that torpedoes are not effective against certain targets and torp anyway. And so what?

Unless objectives are in the thunderstorm/snowstorm front. Then it's hard to ignore it. Personally, I don't mind the effect too much.

And people wonder why randoms are igoring the objective when the ad told them they could do anything else.

Yes. I don't.

Except it isn't. Not even top 5.

Myogi?

20 regulars, 5 big, 5 mega. Got KK, Monaghan and T-61. About the worth of the ships in the prem shop + extra.

Top three is a contest of the listed DDs though, where I'd say Harekaze, Loyang, Kidd and Cossack are top contenders. Asashio is far from top three.

Akizuki exists. But apart from it, Asashio and Kagero are joint slowest (though faster than Lightning when using engine boost) and Harekaze is half a knot faster, but a little bit slower rudder shift.

First off, low skill floor is not equivalent to a good learning class. Thus not one suited for "a new pleb to start out on." Second, taking superstructure damage is universal. You can derp a Queen Elizabeth in its massive superstructure. It's a difference though whether I can farm only superstructure till it gets depleted or whether I can just farm the entire hull for damage. Myogi has 3 turrets, Kongo has 4, Fuso has 6, all the same gun caliber, all are decently mobile, if not most mobile in their tier, all have above average plating and a weak citadel. Nagato then steps up in caliber and reduces the plating, but stays somewhat mobile and has again highest hp for its tier among silver ships and weak citadel. Amagi adds a turret, some speed and citadel protection. Izumo and Yamato again get improved plating, but stay high hp ships with a citadel weakness. Across the line IJN, ignoring T3, there are two jumps in caliber and one break in playstyle. Take RN meanwhile, where you go from silly armoured T4 and T5 to weakly armoured from T6 onwards, you go from 343 mm to 381 mm to 356 mm to 381 mm to 406 mm to 419 mm. 381s in the line have weaker HE than the rest. Also, up to T5 the ships have among the best secondaries, then they are crap. Up to T6 the speed is slow, then it is fast. Sorry, but IJN actually is more consistent than RN in playstyle. IJN T4 to T8 are all roaming BBs with consistent gunnery, good range, bad concealment, better performance at range than most peers. The gun count may vary and caliber changes once, but the core playstyle of the ships differs far less than RN T4-8.

You can and will meet T8s in this ship. First game in the ship:

Ah yes, how does a line that "teaches you to be lazy instead of learning you how to aim (which is true)" manage to be " a good line for a beginner". It's basically a line that has a skill floor so low that it discourages learning and that's the least a new player needs, unless they just don't give a damn. Anyone who actually wants to learn a ship class first learns a line that teaches all the basics, to then branch out into lines that are special where you need to adapt, but where the basic knowledge still is handy. If you first learn to HE spam while broadside in the RN line and then learn the hard way that in most other lines you die fast doing this with little to show for it, then that's more of a trap than if you first play something like IJN or USN where angling really matters and AP is far more valuable and you apply this to RN afterwards, where indeed, you should actually use AP too, if you care about winning games, not just farming damage off ships. Also, German BBs being squishier? Uhm, what? yes, Brits get overmatched anywhere and HE penned, but Germans basically get damaged in the superstructure and maybe 1-2 other areas when properly angled. Name me the BBs from T3 to T10 that are tankier than a properly angled German. IJN BBs from T4 to T8 are pretty consistent and only T9 and T10 slow down a bit. Overall, the line isn't however less consistent than RN BBs.

I use that with ships like Gneisenau or Bismarck, but at T10, the amount of radars, spotter planes and semi-open maps is a pain. I'll for now check how it works till end of CB season, then decide whether to switch back or not.