HaachamaShipping

Shatters don't affect fire chance and HE does not bounce...

Only with legendary module does Conqueror have better rudder shift and it certainly does not have the turning circle. Also, Goliath, funnily enough, has better armour vs HE and Yamato than Conkek.

Then again, the RN CAs exist. They do that job quite well without taking up a BB spot.

Mogami can get 38 mm of pen with IFHE. Also, vermont gets 51 mm of deck, not 52 mm. Major difference.

Indeed, quite sad. Well, guess I stick to T8 ship or play Yorck.

The torp tubes are located on the deck with no armour at all, the rest of the ship has pretty solid armour. But that's like complaining Kremlin has crap armour, because HE sweeps the deck off all the AA guns.

Lion is where I quit the line, because it's just frustrating. The AP pen isn't necessarily bad, but hit rate is and that's what kinda screws the ship for me. An FdG has the same accuracy, but reloads way faster and has faster shells. A Lion has some crap shell output and apart from not being very accurate gives the target a good bit of time to react to being shot at. Monarch was better in that regard. Apart from that, superheal's cool, but the ship gets easily damaged, hates running into Yamato-class and the turrets get knocked out half the time, because unlike Monarch, the turret face is absolutely flat. I rather go play Monarch or Thunderer and ignore the rest of the high tier Brits. Maybe Vanguard if on sale.

Shima isn't really too specialised, imo. Ship is good torp boat, but can at least avoid getting completely crapped on by other DDs. It has good concealment and unlike the ships before in the line, it has decent speed, so it typically has it easier bailing if it doesn't want to fight. If you aren't 1v1ing gunboats on their terms, Shima guns also are no joke and you obviously can't gun down cruisers unless they are speshul or don't react at all to you due to having other issues, but same can be said about most T10 DDs. As for torp power, Shima is no slouch, the 15 torp spread of high damage torps can be an absolute pain to any ship type (except maybe CVs), due to the amount of torps. Shima isn't like some insane DD, but for a DD, it can basically do its job and isn't like some Asashio that really has entire areas where it struggles. Shima covers the basics of what a DD can do pretty decently, obviously with more of a ocus on flooding certain areas with torps and less on 1v1ing stuff in caps, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend for other DDs either.

Anchorage

Just press R, lol. Flooding contained.

Damage isn't everything. e.g. Mainz shells are more comparable to something like Chapayev and Ochakov, while Nürnberg shells are almost as floaty as the ones on the USN CL line. If you were to just compare damage, Kirov has the same alpha as the Nevsky. dpm still is higher than Nürnberg by a fair margin. It's over 10% more dpm, but sure. I guess there also is no point in playing Myoko over Aoba and NO is just a piece of trash, given Pensacola a tier lower has barely worse dpm.

Nürnberg is 153k HE dpm with worse ballistics and worse AP performance. Unlike the München vs Ochakov gap, this is a notable difference. München is pretty much inbetween the Nürnberg and the Mainz in dpm, with crap armour like Nürnberg, but improved shells like Mainz.

Yet none of the USN cruisers at these tiers have smoke, except for two premiums. Devonshire and Surrey are tankier than Pensacola and NO, even with their bow tank gimmick, because of heal and Omaha is not even remotely close to the same ballpark of Hawkins in tanking damage. So, saying you'd rather play USN just does not work out. The only ship where it applies maybe is Albemarle vs Baltimore and then only against ships that are 38 cm gun, because against lower caliber Albemarle is insane and against higher caliber, Baltimore cannot tank it either. Albemarle at least can hope on the 30 mm deck and if not, it still has a heal.

Omitted that, as the person I quoted already stated so. But yes. Ochakov is a DD hunter, München a damage farmer.

I mean, it gets no radar, but... same hp pool of 30.2k comparable HE dpm of 170k vs 173k much higher AP dpm of 375k vs 260k more range at 16.6 km vs 15.6 km slightly worse concealment at 9.4 km vs 9 km 1 knot faster with 60 m tighter turning circle, while having 0.1s worse base rudder shift worse torpedo armament worse AA, but gets fighter plane better hydro... For being a tier lower, calling it "gimped Ochakov" is maybe not entirely fair.

Then don't compare to Hipper as if it was a meaningful comparison.

Certain ships being terrible isn't a good thing, but it still does not mean that every ship should be nerfed to that state of terrible, when the rest is simply balanced. Comparing Tallinn to Hipper basically assumes if a ship isn't as poor as Hipper, they are incredibly powerful, when basically every cruiser at T8 is better than Hipper.

If you fire off all forward turrets as ranging shots anyway... what's the point of just having the twin turret fire first? Either way, it makes no sense.

No, the thing is, if you compare to Hipper, any T8 cruiser looks good. Just like any T5 BB will look good if you just compare it to Bretagne. But that just means one ship is underpowered, not that everyone else is OP.

I look at a Bretagne and then look at a New York and I think whaaaa ???

The only BBs where you can't distinguish ranging from shooting when the guns are turned are ships with only a single forward turret, which is barely anyone. It's not virtually indistinguishable thus, if you see a BB shoot 4 shells, then 4 more or 6 shots, then 3 more or whatever, compared to what would be a ranging shot and then the remainder.

I mean, we now got two cruiser lines that literally were designed to not be HE spammers. Yet people complain still. Even if the new Soviet cruisers shoot their utterly underwhelming HE at ships, it's seemingly worth complaining about. And if the Soviet cruisers get good AP to compensate for the trash HE, it's "broken OP" or something.

Honestly, by the amount of people I see who ever fire ranging shots at anything (basically noone), I think calling the ability to fire the twin turret first is not what you called initially "A big QOL buff". For most people it's absolutely inconsequential.

The Riga has 13s reload, with 9 guns and a 18s fire chance if you fully spec into it. If that is 1-2 fires per salvo, you are just unlucky, because compared to other ships this is just garbage. Also, yes, if you just look at the good stuff and then go and look at the bad stuff you approach balancing from above. I could also look first at the ship having garbage HE and the cit and maneuverability, then look at the stuff it gets to make up for it and approach it from below. In the end, I arrive at the balance of Riga. One of the strengths of the ship. Meanwhile any IFHE and a good few normal HE pen her, unlike the 50 mm plating ships. This is a seperate issue unrelated to the balance of an individual ship. Worth noting that Riga radar is one of the most crappy radars around, with the only advantage being that it can be activated upon Riga being spotted. Which basically is the only radar utility these heavy cruisers have, because they are terrible at actually killing DDs compared to other radar cruisers and the utility for the team is a joke, given the short radar duration gets cut by 6s for them. Would certainly take Riga as an enemy over Donskoi or even a radar Nep that isn't utterly stupid. Even Alaska is a bigger pain in the [edited]. Immersion is unrelated to balance.

This does not explain why detonation is such a terrible mechanic that even the devs thought "yes, there should be a signal that absolutely disables it". Because the point was not about how you can mitigate fires but not detonations, it was about how you can mitigate fires and straight up disable detonations (for a cost). Also, after reading a good few of the responses, I think the best option would be if WG removed detonations and then made the signal so it gives a chance you may detonate. Then the detonation fans can have their opt in on this great mechanic and others can avoid having to deal with the most random and utterly BS mechanic that exists in this game. And it's not just about "is it realistic?", it's about "should it be in the game", the way we also don't occupy ourselves with other questions like whether ramming teammates shouldn't result in more damage, because people know it'll result in terrible gameplay. It's a game, not a simulator. You should die for being outplayed, not for RNG deciding today is your day to blow up.