HaachamaShipping

It's called situational awareness about where you can get shot from and from where you can't. Additional enemies are always an issue, as is the fact that lulzily, it can take even a Worcester 5 minutes to kill a BB, if that BB is something like a Yamato, with 50-57 mm deck for most of the deck area (though, I had games getting farmed by a Worcester for like 100k damage and still didn't die). But it's nevertheless worth considering that a BB that cannot overmatch your centre section is basically much less able to fight back by itself than a T10 cruiser. Go up against a Worcester or Des Moines, if that thing has a working brain, it doesn't even need a Republique buddy to kill you. It can do so by itself, unless you surprise it around a corner, able to pump it full with torps point-blank (which would also work against any BB). And guess what, all those BBs can as easily just crap on you in the crossfire if you take your time farming that Moskva, which after all has still over 60k hp and only takes 30 sec fires. That's an issue with being in crossfires though, not with being in a Hindenburg.

Sure, it takes a long time, but some Montana cannot brutalise you if you are angled and even with crap HE, you can burn the Montana to the ground 1v1 eventually. Against other cruisers, Zao will hurt a lot with heavy HE salvos, DM, Worcester, Henri with MBRB all don't care about your armour when they unload their spectacular dpm. So, I find it easier to kill a BB than to kill other cruisers at T10.

First buyables, I think, but am not sure, were Sims and Yuubari, as bundles to get access to CBT.

German secondaries being all HE is one of the main reasons the secondary builds on them were viable in the first place. Only T6- (tiers where secondary builds are questionable) have AP secondaries on Germans.

Well, tell me then. Which of the Bismarck guns fire AP? I tell you, none of the secondary guns. On terrible Bismarck players not even the main battery...

You can citpen broadside cruisers. As soon as they angle, you cannot, because either you ricochet or the armour is thick due to angling. And no, Russians are fine. Moskva is easy to citadel. Vs BB meanwhile, yes, you cannot citadel it, but who cares? Against a Montana, if it gives broadside, your AP still deals 15-20k in damage, if you can torp it, it's dead and if you have an angled standoff, the HE dpm is still enough to burn the BB down. The only BB opponents that you really should not brawl 1v1, imo, are Republique, any actually smart Conqueror (because they can kite you with HE) and Yamato, if you cannot manage to outrun its guns. And yes, Yamato has 57 mm centre deck, but 50 mm in front of that, 32 mm at the extremities. Hindenburg can shoot at vastly more deck area compared to any other cruiser limited to 32 mm only.

They are specialist torps. As said before, Zao cannot use the torps in brawls as effectively. I brawled Zaos in Kurfürst (cyclones are fun) and had it been a Hindenburg, it likely would have had better chances to torp rush me. With Zao, I basically just had to wait till it tried to go for the torp, then devstrike it as it turns to get the angle. Same in cruiser vs cruiser fights, where Zao basically can get citpenned by any other cruiser if it tries to torp, while Hindenburg only takes massive damage from those cruisers with improved pen angles. So, yes, Zao torps are useful in other situations. They are not very useful here.

I'd actually question that. Against most BB, Hindenburg is quite solid, against Yamato, you get overmatched, but Yamato hasn't got fast reload or shells and few shells and it has 50 mm deck that keeps you relevant. Republique is your archnemesis, but if it isn't present, I'd argue, other cruisers are often a bigger issue than some BB.

Nice necro, but... Scharnhorst has two triple turrets in front. It's not a Graf Spee. And the downside is not having only 3 guns, but having small guns that cannot hurt T6+ BBs that are angled. Also, secondaries can be maxed to 8 km with secondary signal and being able to outbrawl a Hood is easy. On the other hand, at distance, Hood will just laugh at your AP.

Sometimes 20 seconds can be enough to get into cover. I'm personally not even of the opinion radar needs a nerf, given if you don't get caught horribly out of position, escaping USN range or outlasting Russian duration is easy enough, if not half the enemy team is shooting you. With 10 seconds only, Russian radar can easily become quite the joke.

I hope they work on that Russian radar, because I might be quite reluctant to use a 20 second radar for the team, if they get only a 10 second window out of it. In randoms, that basically would make me radar only when I have very very good reason to think the team will actually capitalise on the radar.

It would be if those who hate it were hating it because "it's OP and ruining the game". But the main reason some people don't buy it is because they categorically oppose the design concept behind this DD and we brought forth good reasons, not for why this DD cannot deliver some results, but why we consider it not worth the money. A monkey who got half their brain removed could play this ship and would do better than in any other DD, but that doesn't make the ship good, nor am I going to invest 40 Euro into a ship that I'd loath to play and which would encourage WG to design more such ships. Asashio is one of the first introductions that made me personally question how much I should invest overall into this game, given if this is the future, I might want no part in it.

What you were saying was... Hindenburg torps however, for what they are, are perfectly usable. These torps are brawling torps and in a brawl, I take these torps over any other torps. And the sole reason you cannot brawl a BB isn't the torps, but because certain T10 BBs crap on your ship. But when against T8s, there is no brawl Hindenburg cannot win. Just learn to not try to brawl when half the enemy team is around (at which point any T10 cruiser would just up and die). Ambushing lower tier BBs (or same tier BBs that don't just ignore your armour) with these torps is however viable. Not saying Hindenburg is in a good spot, but it's hardly because the torps are too short-ranged.

Cleveland is not balanced around 27 mm hull armour. Cleveland has good dpm, radar, defAA and hydro, is deceptively tanky for being a light cruiser and is pretty solid in any game. Because regardless of what you get matched against, these strengths always matter, regardless of whether you are vs T6 and can utterly dominate or whether you are against T10 and still have all the same strengths and all the same weaknesses. Hipper is balanced around 27 mm armour, which against T6 is nice, but against T8 and up quickly falls apart and when you start to have to island camp to avoid getting blasted out of the water by a Montana that doesn't give a damn about your 27 mms, or get simply dpmed into the ground by a Harugumo, you are basically kind of deadweight. And Yorck got buffs to its ammo, so I'm not even sure whether one could call it bad. Considering it now has hard hitting AP and HE (better HE dpm than Hipper even), all it lacks compared to Hipper is the ability to tank BBs. Neglecting recent announcements stating WG wants to make CAs able to stand up to BB AP when angled, I rather take the squishy T7 into T7 MM than taking Hipper into T8. Worst case, I'm getting thrown into a T9 match, where only a premium T7 would be vastly more useful, while Hipper most of the time basically does nothing other tech tree cruisers couldn't do better.

Then you are using the ship wrong.

Apart from not making much sense, this isn't in any way related to your original claim that USN buffs are related to cruiser changes.

I mean, if you have 30 mm at T8, that's effectively the same unless you run into Repu, crappy Conkek, Yamato or budget Yamato. OMG, Amagi secondary buffs! ... said noone ever... And there are no announced Bismarck buffs...

But... for T5 and T6, this already kind of applies. New York cannot overmatch the centre section of Furutaka, nor can New Mexico overmatch that of Aoba. Both can crap on the USN armour just fine. Nothing changes there. At other tiers, like, dunno, T8, why does the change necessitate NC buffs, but not Amagi buffs or Bismarck buffs?

I typically launch both sets, using one to go for where I expect the target to go, the other to account for evasive maneuvers. But I guess I could start just by launching only my forward launchers for that.

As much as it pains me to say... this is the main issue with your experience. There's like no reason to play Hipper over any other T8 cruiser, except to get to Roon. If you have to, play Prinz Eugen, at least you get a repair party. Otherwise, any other T8 cruiser is better than the Hipper. I still have Hipper in port (because I want to like the ship), but honestly, when I feel like challenging myself in a T8 cruiser, I pick Cleveland, Chapayev or Atago most of the time.

It actually has. Never counted them. I only know it has enough to kill ships when you know how to brawl with torps. And frankly, for that, 6 would be enough too.

New Mexico kinda is, kinda isn't Same crappy 21 knot speed, same guns. Personally, I consider Artillery Plotting Room 1 a necessity on New Mexico, while it isn't on New York (not because I love sniping in my 1.5 sigma USN BB, but because with that speed, throwing shells at targets 18 km away is still better than needing another 5 minutes to catch up with action again). New Mexico gets better in that it has more guns and better angles and it finally gets 25 mm plating, so you don't get overmatched by all BBs. Only by half the BBs at your tier and a great deal of BBs at higher tiers. While, unlike New York, you also fail to overmatch all the same tier BBs. One thing that's neat about NM is concealment, which goes down to 11.9 km. Which is not that bad. Colorado at least has 40.6 cm guns, which can slap same and lower tier BB. I'd keep expectations low though until NC. Imo, this is likely the worst BB grind I experienced so far. Ships are uninteresting, feel unnecessarily hampered in far too many ways and basically everytime I play New Mexico, I wonder whether I couldn't have been more useful had I been in a Fuso instead. I consider New York and New Mexico to be only "decent" by virtue of being BBs at their tiers where BBs crap on most cruisers, but for BBs, they are terrible.

5 km range and an above-water citadel. I'd spec a Kii for secondaries before speccing a Roma for it. Neither is a promising prospect. If the further changes include an increase in range, Roma with IFHE secondaries might be "viable", but still hardly recommendable. Reload on the 152s and number of 90s combined with 4% fire chance on all of them make this strictly worse than Bismarck or even Kii (which gets 8 10 cm and 8 14 cm guns per side that have better reload and fire chance). And without secondary investment, yeah, ok, your 152 mm guns can harm DDs at T8. But 6 guns, 12 second reload, when a DD strays within 5 km range, these guns are not going to make a difference.

Honestly, hitting things at range isn't the issue. Doing significant damage at range is. HE has 50 mm pen, but is otherwise plagued by poor alpha and underwhelming fire chance. AP pen falls off hard. Honestly, when up against T8 BBs, Hindenburg torp rush isn't even trading your ship. There is no T8 BB that should brawl Hindenburg, basically any T8 BB should try to avoid getting into range and just hope allies help kill the thing before it dpms you down. Against those targets, no other T10 cruiser has brawling torps as powerful. Zao would need to give enough broadside that you can just smack it into the citadel, Minotaur you can citpen through the bow.Hindenburg has the toughness to just shrug off T8 BB ammo and has 6 torps per side with good angles that mean that at close range, you are pretty much just going to get torp spammed to death before you can kill it. The only reason I would ever not find these torps useful against a T8 in a brawl is because the moron gave broadside and ate all the AP pens before torps arrived. Against T10 though. Have fun trying to torp rush a Yamato, Republique or Kurfürst.