HaachamaShipping

Des Mo or Worcester cannot play like Goliath, just lile Goliath cannot play like them. And smoke isn't necessarily better. Sometimes tanking shots for your team is actually useful. And it isn't just negated by radar or robbing you of vision.

Give me doubloons then, cause no, I don't "enjoy" it. But not much I can do. Not to mention, you assume I make this because I detonated, yet it doesn't say that anywhere. Frankly though, detonating someone is not particularly enjoyable and I typically give a +1 to those, cause exploding sucks. And the module reduces the chance by 70%, it doesn't disable detonations. Andobviously on most ships where detonations aren't once in a millenia, it'd mean losing your gun turrets and torp tubes every game.

Thing is, her armour won't save her in a T5-7 match either. The strengths and drawbacks of the ship are valid regardless of tier it finds itself in. So, the caveat is kinda eh, as it's basically a prerequisite for doing decent regardless of what match you are in, not a bottom tier exclusive thing.

I mean, I know what a ranging shot is, but last time I heard people talk about this was Jingles in beta when he considered it an advantage of ships like Fuso or such with many turrets. I would think typically, people either know their ship's ballistics after a while or they go by the flight time estimate on the crosshair and guesstimate how far the ship will go in that time. Firing two shells and waiting to see the results is like giving your enemy some advance warning of what is to come, so they can maneuver and make it once again necessary to aim according to intuition.

Ok, after acquiring Goliath and playing a good few matches in it, I think I should give some words on it too. First off, I think tier for tier, Drake is better. Not massively, but Drake is just a very solid ship and the lower range + spotter makes it more flexible than larger base range without spotter. Also, the competition at T9 is different from T10. That out of the way, Goliath is a very good ship and is a proper upgrade at least for randoms. Goliath has 58k hp, superheal and a 40 mm deck, which makes it quite tanky comparatively. It will occasionally eat cits from the stepped citadel, but I hadn't really seen a lot of those. Kinda like playing Stalingrad and getting citadelled through the upper bow. Possible, saw it happen, not very frequent. At medium range, so, like 12-14 km, Goliath does quite well against BBs and can be quite the floating brick. People say it takes a lot of damage that others wouldn't take, but that's kinda silly. Maybe a Moskva, Stalingrad or Petro can take less damage in the first place, but neither of those shares a playstyle with Goliath and kiting they all aren't taking really less damage most of the time, as their stern can be overmatched. Compared to Hinden, Henri or Zao, Goliath really can just sit there and take a beating. Which is not to say sit there and get farmed, it's just, if you have to, you can. Imo, Goliath would have excelled in competitive if it had been released during Henri meta, because it would be very good at fighting off Henri push and still can deal with Stalingrad. Obviously, show side and you die. The range of 16.8 km is good enough. Barely. I run reload mod, some go range. In my opinion, range mod Goliath is the poor man's Yoshino. Reload mod Goliath is solid though, as it can stay around at mid range. I did consider going range mod after running into MvR + Slava divs that shut you out, but I do have a Yoshino and can just play that. If you don't run into this cancer though, the range is fine. Now, the upgrade of Goliath over Drake are two things - one additional turret and a ton of tankiness. The dpm increase is not just appreciated as it is a fairly normal step up like with Roon to Hindenburg, Iowa to Montana, etc, but because with the 28% fire chance these shells have, you can almost always count on a full salvo setting fires if there aren't already any. Setting ships on fire and farming Witherer and Arsonist awards isn't hard in Goliath, really not. The alpha of a Goliath salvo also is no joke, easily dealing up to 10k HE damage or being devastating with AP on broadsides. The shells are same as Drake, so the HE is just great and has no issues with anything. Even against Kremlin, the ability to set fires reliably makes Kremlin wary about fighting Goliath once it realises that it has to either sacrifice a lot of hp or a lot of damecon charges. The tankiness increase meanwhile means that the Goliath can stand its ground against most T10 cruisers fairly comfortably, if you know how to fight your battles and aren't getting overrun by like 5 different people. But for Goliath, fighting cruisers is like with Conqueror fighting battleships. You'll likely win if it is not very specific matchups. To go into specific details: Against the likes of Henri and Yoshino, Goliath is just tankier and has more dpm. Shouldn't be hard, as you outspot them. Henri you can screw over if it turns too, if you load AP. Stalingrad and Petro are way too AP reliant, so angling will deny them most of their dpm and in an HE fight, Goliath wins even with just two turrets. Petro's smaller hp pool comes to bear hear. Don't try to brawl, they will trade typically, because their improved pen angles mean that your torps can't be launched before you eat cits. So it often can end in rams. At midrange though, Goliath comfortably wins. Moskva has a bit more dpm, but also loses much of its own tankiness vs Goliath and you very much can torp rush Moskva, because it doesn't have improved pen angles. Hindenburg deals a good bit of damage, but Goliath can outlast it. Typically, would avoid engaging it, though you can burn it down. LU Hinden is like silly to deal with, but yeah. Doable. Don't brawl, Hindenburg wins the brawl. Venezia is dangerous, but so are you. SAP can do a lot of damage, but keep in mind that your large citadel belt means much of your side is off-limits. That doesn't mean broadside, but angled side can be surprisingly effective. If you have to fight Venezia, personal recommendation is to ambush with the superior concealment and AP it if it tries to turn or HE it if it is angled. Either way, you should get the first salvo and you can make it count. I had games where Venezia ran into me and lost 50k hp in AP cits, HE pens and 2 perma fires for doing maybe 10k in return. Zao is basically a joke. It outspots you, that's its biggest advantage. If it runs into you head on, you can try to AP it in the turn. Zao cannot win the mid range trade because it has no hp and it cannot win the brawl because its torp angles suck. At long range Zao will hurt, but you shouldn't try gun a Zao down at long range. Des Moines is scary because of its dpm. Engage at mid range and you should win due to 40 mm deck. As these people camp some corner, you can easily hit and roast them. If you get the broadside at mid range, Des Mo takes huge AP damage. Do not brawl Des Mo, unless you know you'll catch its side and just blap it out of existence. Keep in mind, they might run LU and accelerate fast. Worcester is like a crappier DesMo. Honestly, if you don't get free farmed, pretty easy. Outrade at range or just rush it down. In a brawl, Goliath wins. Unlike Des Mo, no improved pen angles here. Mino, Colbert and Smolensk are all high dpm annoyances that however have the fundamental issue that they lack any effective armour and get overmatched. If they wouldn't get overmatched, Goliath should actually fear the Mino and respect the others. As is, they have to very much respect a Goliath. Salem is the worst enemy of Goliath. Thankfully, most are played by absolute morons who don't know anything about how to cruiser, but if they have an idea what their ship can do, just don't stay around. You cannot brawl Salem, just like DesMo. You cannot win a mid range, because Salem has much more dpm and even with 40 mm deck, your tankiness is not good enough when you deal with a Des Moines with superheal. Just respect Salem. Puerto Rico can be farmed quite easily, but be aware that its huge hp pool means it'll take a while before it dies. Can be annoying, but that's about it. Drake in such matches might be a bit worse, because it doesn't have almost supercruiser levels of hp and a 40 mm deck, so it has to respect many higher tier cruisers more. At its own tier, thankfully, the biggest dpm in cruiser form is Seattle and Seattle hasn't got the turret angles to not get absolutely devastated for trying to fight a Drake with all of its turrets. Frankly, all things considered, Goliath lacks a lot of utility in terms of consumables and like most of the line, you have to accept that dealing damage is not necessarily enough to win games. In competitive, Goliath will lack the range or radar to matter. But for randoms, Goliath is a very easy-going ship that can pull its weight. Just to get nice numbers, Goliath farms damage pretty well, but for impact, you will have to use your ship, tank when necessary and at times take the risks this ship can take. Personally, I like the ships because you can take them out and regardless of what you run into, kinda do your thing (except MvR + Slava cancer) and get some good damage and contribution, but I guess not everyone likes it. Kind of like playing Yoshino, Zao or Henri. Also, it might be an unpopular opinion, but imo, the Goliath has replaced for me the Zao. I stopped playing Zao a good while ago, because it sucks vs CV, it sucks vs RU BB, it sucks vs 50 mm plating Moskva. Goliath seems to me like someone who fills that niche of stealthy HE spammer that can delay a flank or play mid range support with the current state of the game in mind, as the Goliath can actually tank BB far more effectively, doesn't struggle as hard to deal with all the reinforced BBs, has absolutely no trouble with the Russian 50 mm plating cruisers and has the hp to survive CV better. Goliath outspots any heavy cruiser that isn't Zao and like Zao has a very heavy 12 gun salvo that isn't as accurate, but has bigger shells with bigger alpha to compensate when shooting DDs. Makes me sad about Zao, which was a great cruiser, but I really don't see the point of playing Zao these days over just playing Goliath or Yoshino in randoms, depending on what range I want to have. Lastly, take a detonation flag on Goliath. It seems to detonate a bit more than normal cruisers.

Pretty much. If this was something that was felt to be necessary for the game, it'd be handled like fires, where you can mitigate it, but in the end, there is no immunity. Detonations however can be turned off (at a cost!).

People fire ranging shots? What?

Realism doesn't excuse an absolutely terrible game mechanic. CVs crapped all over surface ships IRL and guess what, it doesn't make the state of CVs more enjoyable or excuses it from a gameplay perspective. Just like BBs cannot just absolutely annihilate DDs with secondaries that realistically would match the DD main battery range and accuracy. Also, regarding realism, the one class in the game that carried the most amount of fuel and ordnance with the least amount of protection when considering the amount of explosivs and flammables it carried is totally immune to detonations and always has been. CVs do not have magazines, thus they do not detonate. They burn for five seconds, which makes you wonder if game mechanics were meant to be realistic, how the hell did Japan lose 4 fleet carriers at Midway?

Ah yes, I can explode once, screwing my game and then mount a signal in 10 games. Maybe I wouldn't have exploded anyway, maybe I would have, who knows. Afterwards I can explode again. And no, DDs are not the only class to randomly blow up. Cruisers and BBs can blow up too, which is very fun when that CV torp hits your ship and detonates a magazine. Also, there obviously is a difference in how susceptible different ships in these classes are to detonations, depending on where modules are located and how they are modelled. Huanghe for example is way easier to blow up with magazines outside the citadel than the Petropavlovsk that has 300 mm of plating inbetween the outside and the magazine. Nope, while magazines are often part of the citadel, they need not be. For example Huanghe forward turret magazines are not citadel, but exist. And like all modules, it takes damage from HE blast. You can blow up in a Hipper that cannot be HE citadelled the same way a HE shell will not ever reach your engine room, yet Hipper regularly will lose its engines from BB HE shells.

It's almost as if there is a massive balancing factor that many people overlooked in the last few months before the ship went live. Nothing against you, good luck with mastering the ship, would guess just try to play mobile and try to opportunistically farm cits, but after months of debate whether Russian CAs would be the next OP Russian line that will end the game and crap on everything, it's nice to see people acknowledge the absolutely terrible state of the HE on these ships.

I'd always take rudder mod on these ships, because the rudder shift isn't great, turning circle is. The best thing about Pensacola 203s is the improved AP pen angles and SAP has even better angles. Zara has a turning circle radius that rival Shiratsuyu. It isn't fast, but it has turning abilities that are insane for such a cruiser. To dodge, I wouldn't rely on IFA, but on PT, knowing how many aim at me and dodging when they are firing. IFA seems to me too late to prepare and initiate an accurate dodge. None of the British cruisers have great range, which is intentional, otherwise you'd look at a repeat of the British BBs, just firing HE from the backline doing absolutely nothing otherwise. Devonshire's range is bad for a CA, but you still got ships like Dallas with less range and just like Dallas, Devonshire can fire over cover. As can any of them. These ships become open water gunboats at T9 and before that, they typically shouldn't be the first thing a BB shoots at. However, and that's what most people seem to utterly ignore, is that British CAs from Devonshire up can bully other cruisers (and DDs if those engage in an open fight), due to having a heal and thus the necessary sustain. A Devonshire in a cruiser vs cruiser fight has all the means to win at T6, a Surrey can crap on T8 heavy cruisers at times, because it can just outlive them and they all got pretty ok torps and great concealment. Surrey also has a pretty small citadel (which is unsurprising, given it has a pretty lackluster propulsion). Edinburgh has a superheal, but Edinburgh does not have 25-27 mm plating on the whole ship. A Fuso can screw over an Edinburgh through the front. An Edinburgh cannot run up to any BB pretty much risk free and torp it in the face. Albemarle can, because it can tank any small caliber BB, it can tank any and all cruisers except Siegfried (which still bounces off the midsection). Albemarle has no business tanking some NC, but when you for example run into top tier MM and just fight something like Lyon, Odin, KGV and a bunch of cruisers, Albemarle already is ridiculous and if it had more dpm or more range it'd just be a bit broken as a top tier ship. As for Atago, Atago has 10 barrels (not 12), 16s reload vs Albemarle's 13s, so no, Albemarle has more DPM and one shell less alpha per volley. And yes, Atago has the better dispersion and a smaller cit, which is the entire point of the argument I made. If you reduce the cit of Albemarle, it basically is an Atago with better dpm, spotter plane, superheal and the lulzy trade-off of having one less torp launcher per side (which however has excellent firing angles, has less reaction time, slightly better reload and can be single-fired). Atago already is popular, because its heal allows it to outlive opponents despite its poor dpm, you can guess if Albemarle offered that with superheal, it'd just crap on pretty much every cruiser and BB. Also, for comparison, Albemarle DPM sits on the same level as Charles Martel, just that CM can boost the dpm temporarily, Albemarle can restore 48% of its hp pool in one go. DPM is worse than Baltimore, better DPM than the Hipper, PE and Atago. As for having low influence, such is the live of a HE farm cruiser line. Same can be said about Japanese cruiser lines and French cruiser lines that still have poor influence, unless they can preserve their ship to capitalise then on their strengths, which a cruiser line with heal should be able to do too. Drake and Goliath meanwhile are basically often absolute bricks when properly angled, that can tank incredibly well and with their 28% fire chance can basically incinnerate opponents quite well. As for being unpopular in ranked (or other modes that aren't random), being a ship that just doesn't fit the meta for ranked is not a crime. Albemarle also in terms of performance isn't the absolute worst, performing on par in WR with other ships that aren't massively powerful in ranked meta, like Charles Martel, Mogami, Amalfi, Alabama, Amagi, Benson and fan favourite Bismarck (all sitting ~48%). Ship does ok, just not really best pick for ranked.

Not even with German pen.

Trento has to look out for whoever is silly enough to not angle. As it is fast and has a smoke, you might consider going to positions where you know people will show their side. Ideally, where people will keep showing side, as they want to go through. Take Estuary for example, Going wide typically is not a great idea, because people go head from mid towards the caps and then through the caps. Positioning somewhere behind the rock edges that extend from the home cap towards the sidecaps gives good shots at broadsides of whatever is passing by. And you know, most people won't just turn into your shots, as that'd mean they'd yolo straight into the cap and into your team there. Also, observe carefully what ribbons you get. There's three types of ribbons that give no damage: Ricochet: Your shell bounced off. This means, the surface was too angled. Is there any plate on the target ship that is not angled like that. On Trento, as I wrote before, shells fall at range, so you might try to go for deck pens at extreme range on BBs. On other Italians or Trento close up, consider superstructure shots as a measure of desperation. Also note that some cruisers you can simply overmatch, then go for the parts where you don't need to make a bounce check. Shatter: The part you hit was too thick. Aim for somewhere else. Shatter at least means, the angle was right. As I pointed out before, the most frustrating ships in this regard will be Russian BBs, but stuff like Fuso at the wrong spot can be just as painful. If you constantly run into ships you cannot pen, study their armour in port to learn where you might pen. Heck, Pyotr if it kites can be SAP citadelled. Not reliably, but is funny when it happens. On cruisers, if you shatter, you likely hit the belt or a turret/conning tower. Don't shoot cruisers' centre of mass, unless you know you can SAP citpen or you got AP loaded. If you shoot for example another Trento with SAP, much of the middle of the ship is 70 mm main belt, shattering SAP. AP would citadel. Upper belt would give SAP pens on the 25 mm section. Bow and stern give SAP pens too. Meanwhile crap like Mikoyan can be SAP citpenned, so you can just shoot centre of mass and laugh as it evaporates. Torpedo belt hit: This is like the most frustrating and weird thing. Many ships have a torp belt that does not count for damage if hit. Go into port and disable torpedo protection in armour viewer to see the difference and where you should aim to not hit torp belt. Thankfully, for the Trento, the only examples you really meet where this is a notable issue would be Nagato, Amagi and some of the USN 21 knot standard dreadnoughts. French cruisers can have this too, but there, just load AP. High tiers has way more of this feature, with ships like Henri or Yoshno being very notable for having a light outer plating and an internal belt that might trick people into shooting that area, yet getting 0 damage hits. If you feel you don't want to learn most ships' armour schemes, it's honestly better to just play a different line. Will be more fun. But it's not a Trento issue. I think one reason why people feel high tier Italian cruisers are more "fun" is because at T6, weird armour is all over the place and BB-wise for example, large parts of Fuso, Bayern, Izmail and Normandie are off-limits, most cruisers are relatively small with large cits that border the hull, so sizeable main belt sections. High tiers get BBs that often have pretty minimal armour except for the belt, or at least not more than 50 mm and cruisers often start having a bit smaller citadels (while the ships grow bigger) that also at times are internal (like on Zao or Hindenburg), so you really can just fire with little regard of where you hit and likely deal damage. But after Venezia pen angle nerf, Venezia and Zara are pretty much similarly "forgiving" or not in what angles they pen and Venezia just throws 15 shells, Zara 8. But Zara still can do damage from pretty silly angles if it hits the right area of ship, just like the high tiers, as can Trento. You shouldn't get citadelled by either of those through your stern. But consider that none of the Italian cruisers are stealth ships. I'd go so far as to say, Italian cruisers for good cruiser players are as much about being seen as they are about dealing stupid damage, because dealing direct damage is one of the few things these ships can do. Baiting shots and dodging, thus wasting enemy fire is a second means of padding the crappy match influence these ships can have in randoms. Best is though, stay at mid range and use the fact that your SAP has no drop-off in performance in range. It pens as much from 2 km as it pens from 20 km. Once BBs are gone, you can push in and do cheeky stuff like duel other T6 cruisers more aggressively if you feel confident. But thus, you don't need extreme stealth and if you really have to disappear, you got the smoke. This is not for farming, it's for disengaging. I'd honestly not take Trento into ops though. Bots can aim and it's very different from how randoms work, where these ships do decent. As for the guns of Trento, they are really not great, but they are 203s and you can expect them to be similar in ballistics to any other T6 203 mm gun. I decided to compare the T6 flight times of 203s to showcase this here. Zara is there for comparison with a high tier-grade high velocity gun (German 203s from Hipper onward are similar ballistics, Zao is superior to Zara, but Aoba's 203 actually is same ballistics as you get all the way to Ibuki), to put it into perspective and highlight how close these guns are in ballistics. Algerie also is very much like these T6 guns, so Trento isn't exceptionally lazy, it's just in line with what most people get at T6 and what some lines use up to T8 (Albemarle still uses same guns as Devonshire in ballistics) or T9 (Saint-Louis gets only slight improvement over Algerie and the Ibuki is same as Aoba). And if people can do AP-heavy Pensacola or New Orleans play, throwing Trentos SAP around shouldn't be impossible either. It just isn't the kind of instant arrival shell you get from Zara onwards. Also, one thing I consider personally with Trento: Don't be surprised if damage isn't steadily coming in. Due to the tier it's at and the opportunism you have to embrace, the Trento might not see a steady increase, but often gets more explosive increases in damage as it spends some time just not doing much till it finds the target that feeds you damage. On later tiers, you get more steady damage, as you can just keep multiple enemies in range and punish whoever isn't angled properly with fast SAP. On the other hand, as pointed out multiple times now, Trento can meet enemies it can citadel with SAP and that obviously can make your damage numbers explode when you just delete a ship in very few salvos.

Amongst tech tree CVs, likely one of the weakest T8 CVs. Implac is a random CV, where you count on the enemy CV being your average potato and you just being better and thus winning. To get the most out of it: Rocket planes have to attack from side now, like all rockets, but they are quite ok at it. You can use those on T9 or lower cruisers too. But try to disable DDs first, if possible, because dead enemy CVs means enemy will be hampered in pushing power and a slower push gives Implac more time to work its magic. And it needs that time. Once you are done or if DDs cannot be found/attacked, just go look for some isolated ship that you can carpet bomb and torpedo to crap, stacking DoT on it to get your numbers up. If possible, use someone who overextented towards your team, because that way it overtaxes their damage control more, flight time is shorter and impact is felt more than if you try to fly across the map to bomb that one Conqueror spamming from the rear. Try to not waste TBs too much. They are one of your best anti-cruiser assets. You should have them at hand if you have to deal with cruisers somewhat fast. Overall, don't play this CV line for competitive value. They just don't. Play them because you want to watch people miserable, because you set two to three fires in a bombing run on their BB and they will now watch and panic as the sirens annoy the heck out of them and you get stupid Witherer and Arsonist awards, while the enemy CV hopefully is not good and doesn't decimate your team meanwhile. Or your team decimates itself...

Saying fun starts at T8 ignores that fun is not an objective value. You can have fun it pretty much any ship. Better question is, does performance start at T8 and that it certainly does not. Performance you can get at T6 already, whether you find it fun or not is up to the player. I also don't like playing Fiji. Doesn't mean its a bad ship. Trento seems kinda underrated. The ship has two issues, which are that it is not yet as tanky as the higher tiers and the ballistics are lazy. First one is an issue, second one, imo, is an "issue". 70 mm belt and lack of the 30 mm upper belt section means, you have to be a bit more careful than on later ships, but Trento is fast and still has signature dodge and smoke. Trento also as a heavy cruiser gets 25 mm, so against 356 mm and such, you can do fine. The ballistics are an "issue", because they have their uses. Midtier dreadnoughts tend to have all kinds of reinforced armour. Something like Pyotr and Sinop for example you are hardpressed to pen at the upper belt, but you can pen the deck. Trento ballistics make hitting that deck much more likely than Zara and up's railguns, given with Zara you actually often need spotter plane to get the required angle of fall to deal decent damage on a Sinop. Otherwise, learn to lead your target and don't underestimate the AP. It's 203. At T6, if you meet T5, it overmatches cruisers. If you meet Leander, Perth, Fiji, Belfast, Atlanta or Flint, it overmatches those too. Also, Trento's armour isn't special at T6, it is emblematic for low tier plating. Everyone has crap armour. Trento AP will punish broadside cruisers still. Lastly, Trento regularly meets ships it can actual citadel with SAP. Zara now gets the tankiness, the railguns, the better smoke you get up to the Venezia and is just great. I have no clue why people hate this ship. Trento and Zara have better reload than Amalfi and far better reload than anything after that. It should also be noted that the dpm increase from Trento (155k) to Zara (167k) and from Zara to Amalfi (176k) is not much compared to what the step up with Brindisi (213k) and Venezia is. Amalfi for all intents and purposes is Zara 2.0, with 16 and 25 mm plating replaced by 25 and 27 mm respectively, one extra torp per side and a bit more ship speed (at the cost of worse turning circle). One tier higher. Amalfi isn't bad, but if you could make Amalfi work and Zara not, despite the ships playing pretty much the same, it's hard to see why. Also, it should be noted that the Italian line is likely one of the most rewarding lines for knowing plating of different ships, as knowing where to aim, where to not aim, when to use SAP and when to use AP is quite well-rewarded. I'd also consider the lines some of the most ignorant lines regarding tiering, because a Zara doesn't really care if it is farming a Bayern, a Nagato or an Iowa, your approach to survival is always the same and your SAP pen is always relevant. Ship line plays also the same across the entire line, which is basically farming any broadside you find in range, using AP to get citadels when you see the opportunity, paying attention to who might aim at you and dodge with topkek turning. Use smoke when things get out of hand. Other cruisers are good targets because your damage matters more and they have less armour to shatter SAP, DDs are a target of opportunity. DDs fear SAP, but you don't hunt DDs, you just shoot them when they get spotted. This stays the same across the entire line, whether it's Trento or Venezia. Devonshire and Surrey are pretty standard for their tier. Albemarle without its stupid citadel would be kinda OP, given how insane a heavy cruiser with superheal at T8 is. Atago is a solid cruiser with a normal heal and a pretty sizeable cit, Albemarle has better dpm, similar concealment and a superheal. Also similar range with access to a spotter plane. Something has to give if you don't want Albemarle to just crap on everything in its tier. Drake and Goliath meanwhile can tank quite a lot of fire for being quite stealthy heavy cruisers.

Comparatively, maybe. in absolute terms, if you dodge the flak clouds, Mino isn't exactly hard to strike. its maneuverability does more to keep it alive than the AA. And in any situation where it cannot turn as it wants to, it's easy pickings like any cruiser. Mino has a superheal. citadel damage is still partially healable, on Mino with 33%.

It also has 25s of downtime before it can initiate strikes again, flies just 13 knots faster than a Swordfish and restores planes at a snail's pace. A Midway basically can drop 3/4 of the bomb or torp load on planes that cycle faster and that don't need to fly circles just to sit out the 25s. Also, doesn't matter if it loses more planes, because it actually regenerates planes... It's not useless, but like most other crappier CVs, there just is no point to playing it over a better CV.

Pretty sure one could do actually pretty decent without much of brain.exe in Pommern still, given the ship is an FdG hull and still throws 12 shells with 34% fire chance each. It undoubtedly performs better if one knows when to fire what at which enemy though.

I don't even know what you folks are talking about or whether I got anything. I know there's a collection for alternative camo and second flag, there are containers that may contain something decent but mostly contain signals, but even those I get on the sidelines. Everything else, dunno. I feel like I'm having a happier time though not caring about the quality (or lack thereof) of free stuff I get for playing. No, really, if this was about Odin missions that gave 10k credits, maybe, but even then, you either do it for the ship or just don't bother too much. I feel there's too many things in the game that are frustrating (like detonating in my Goliath yesterday. Why Detonations in 2020 still?) to look for extra stuff to rant about.

It'll still do fine against a Scharnhorst...

Ehhh, I rather play Gneisenau than play Pommern. Ngl, of all T9 prems, the one I would consider most for actual playing is Alaska, because unless I need creds, I rather play something else or just T9 tech tree ships.

TRB Shiratsuyu vs Fletcher, lol. I still remember years ago that Gadjah Mada that got mad at me for outspotting his stealthy DD in my Harekaze. But I want to also bash T5s in my hardearned bought Scharnhorst.

defAA is the worst consumable in the game and British secondaries at T7 and up even with range would lack the volume of fire to be useful. Just give the main battery like 1.9 sigma and call it a day.

T8 was much better able to handle T10 than T7 is able to handle T9. T6 was always kinda crap.

There are. But counting on it you shouldn't. I played some DD in the past. I wouldn't ever have called myself a DD main, but my most played ship is actually still a DD. Yet, I haven't touched that ship in months and the only DD lines I played recently was grinding up Russians. I wouldn't consider Ranked the issue, I just consider that most people who play well might wonder if they still want to play DD or just go play something else that doesn't get wrecked by rockets as hard.