Aotearas

Not sure if it's just confirmation bias on my end, but I do find that I get more citadels with (rare) regularity against US BBs when I aim for the turret magazines rather than going for the engine room citadel.

Which is already more forum competence than one can realistically expect from people, so that gets bonus points from me! To add some insight, the tier III battleships are deliberately hard to do well in. But they (and the tier IV ships) are very good platforms to teach important skills for battleship gameplay, very much in swim or sink fashion. You have to work against those limitations and when you manage to do that, you can later on leverage those skills to add up to the ships' strengths, making the low tier lectures (positioning, angling, target priorization and aim) extremely valuable. I personally liked the South Carolina, better than the Kawachi (for reasons I'm not going to expand here, lest I go on about a Kawachi rant), but even if you don't like her much you only have to persevere a little bit until you get to the Wyoming and that's where the fun starts with the US BB line. That glorious Wyoming broadside volley. New York is a bit of a speedbump in the line, but it leads to the absolutely amazing New Mexico and the Colorado doesn't deserve its bad reputation in its current form at all, another good ship. And from the North Carolina onwards the US BBs get very strong. Persevere and enjoy the fruits of your labour!

Aztec.

Tells a bit about french flamboyancy when those sailors all want to get into a dude rather than into a gal

Do u evn logic, bruh?

They still didn't solve that issue? Keh, WG ... when will you ever learn. There already was a sizeable commotion about the same thing!

Of course it doesn't. Anyone who still remembers the New York would quite possibly feel right at home just from looking at the stats.

Sell your Colorado then. There's your refund.

God forbid you ever visit a beach ...

Problem is at tier VI you also get smaller maps. Couple that with say a Fusou's gun range of up to ~21km and tough luck trying to evade that one short of running and putting the entire map between the two of you. And the tiers at which you get bigger maps are also the tiers you start running into ships like the North Carolina, Amagi and Tirpitz from which running away is a much more difficult option and we already know the Dunkerque doesn#t scale well at all when uptiered thanks to the 380+mm overmatch. And it doesn't look much better against cruisers too, considering her apparent vulnerability to HE ... tier VII+ is where the golden age of HE cruisers really kicks off with ubiquitous 203mm HE rain.

Yeah ... how about no? You're supposed to exploit the enemies' broadside, not show them yours.

I'd be happy to refer a list of such cartoons for anyone who dares challenge to try them out and maintain they're childish. I do have a couple series I could provide, like 'Psycho-Pass', 'Monster', Mouryou no Hako', and 'Aoi Bungaku' just to name a few that immediately came to mind. Anyone feel free to watch those. Do NOT recommend showing those to kids ...

Tier VII CV going for an Iowa

The thing is the Scharnhorst, whilst not having the guns to duel it out with another BB, has the armour to tank it and its guns are entirely sufficient for the role of killing cruisers (or putting opportune volleys into broadside BBs ... or putting some HE volleys into angled BBs). The Dunkerque does not have the armour to tank another BB and whilst its guns are good enough to penetrate other BBs, you do not have good chances in a straight up 1vs1. And for cruiser killing, whilst not bad at all it does not have the rate of fire to really excel at it. Or in other words: the Scharnhorst fulfills it's role and is still good at other things, whereas the Dunkerque fulfills its role and does bad in everything else.

Jingles video showed a lot better accuracy (of the ship mind you ...) and most of the subpar salvoes are down to subpar aiming (like elevating your aim on a target that's steering slighty towards you, then complaing about getting superstructure overpenetrations, really?). But then there was that moment with the Cleveland disabling the turret with HE ... nope. Nope, nope, nope, NOPE!!!

Hmm, it strangely didn't look very accurate in either Flamu's or iChase's shown gameplay. With 1.8 sigma, I'd expect a quite decent average accuracy and nothing like what iChase seemed to have suffered. What is going on here, is this a conspiracy to try and make the ship look bad so only few people buy and then WG decides to no longer sell it because it's in actuality too damn OP???

From the looks and impressions from people who reviewed her, increasing the overall accuracy/consistency is a must. I'd go a bit further and give her a bit of the Scharnhorst treatment and buff the gun reload a bit to increase her dpm. With somewhat reliable accuracy (for a BB) and a bit higher dpm she could do well as a cruiser hunter/killer at her tier. That would also coincide with her historical mission, hunting and engaging german commerce raider. She'd still perform subpar in a direct duel against another equal or higher tier BB, but then she could still gain the upper hand by exploiting her gun layout with careful positioning or target selection. I don't think that would make her overpowered, but it would certainly give her a nicely defined gameplay niche that isn't "hug island and hope no one bothers with shooting back whilst you try your luck with your own dispersion".

Sounds like it worked pretty well on you. Going bow-on is an excellent way of diging your heels in and just tank. An Iowa has two thirds of its firepower up front and strong bow armour. That means unless you're in a Yamato that can overmatch the bow armour that isn't at an auto-bounce angle, your practically immune to AP barring superstructure hits, whilst you can still deliver a majority of your dpm against any opportune targets. Stopping bow-on and reversing is typically also a sound tactic since it means you don't risk exposing a broadside in a turn to any enemy ships that would just love to put a couple shells into your citadel. You don't get out of harm's way as fast than if you turned, but you risk less damage taken in return.

Okay, those shell groupings and dispersion in iChase's video are horrendous!!! What's the sigma on those guns? Because even if she can actually reliably bounce 356mm AP when angled bow on and her turrets wouldn't get knocked out easily, if I can't get consistent damage done on targets even at ranges as close as below 10km, then oh boy. I could live with the ship being fragile against 380+ mm AP shells (gotta work those autobounce angles), but if I can't do some reliable damage against any targets that I picked, then the Dunkerque is failing at the most basic level. Can't exactly say anything about the armour yet because iChase didn't go into much detail (though it does seem it is supposed to hold up against 356mm when angled if I caught his drift correctly),but I also noticed that iChase wasn't exactly trying to exploit a bow-on playstyle, even though he had a couple good chances to exploit just that (plus convenient islands on the Estuary map!).

Huh, maybe I heard it wrong, but I thought he said the armour could not protect against 356mm shells even when angled. Well, I just started loading iChase's review of her, let's see what he's saying about that. If the Dunkerque actually can reliably angle against 356mm AP and isn't overmatched, then my interest in the Dunkerque is rekindled like a bonfire. Because the idea that 356mm AP shells could overmatch the bow armour (which would mean literally EVERY battleship with the exception of the Scharnhorst and her own kind) was a huuuge blue baller for me.

Herp-a-derp, guess I haven't played my Fusou enough lately to spot the error. Well, the point still stands, albeit slightly less damning, Fusou still has 50% more firepower all things considered. Not all at the front, but that's not much of a disadvantage because an angled Fusou can bounce those 330mm shells from the Dunkerque all day and will very likely win a HE damage trade contest. Will need some more gameplay/reviews to judge, but I'm not very impressed for now. Which is a shame, because I want to like this ship.

Except the Izumo has armour, the Dunkerque not so much. My problem with this ship is that I have no idea what gameplay niche it's supposed to fill. It's certainly not the BB role, not enough armour and the guns don't exactly seem stellar too, certainly not very scaleable when you get seeded as anything other than toptier, because tough luck trying to kill a Colorado or something like that with your 330mm guns. The range is, whilst not bad at all for a t6, not good enough to try and keep higher tier BBs at an arms's length. And as a cruiser killer, it lacks the dpm to really excell at the job. Like I mentioned, the Fusou has more and faster firing guns with a higher caliber on top of it. It's also not an AA fortress. And DD hunting in a BB? Yeah, no ... There's nothing the Dunkerque is really good at other than hiding next to an island, which is as much a necessity as it is a strenght of hers. The Dunkerque is overall simply ... mediocre. Not bad, mind, just mediocre. Which isn't much of a selling point "hey guys, buy this new, mediocre premium BB for 25€". You can get the collectors who want the ship for its history, or people who really, really want a MN ship, but that's it.

As much a limitation as it is a strength. The enemy isn't always cooperative when comes to being close enough to a conviniently campy island and even if one found a nice spot with a target rich environment, the AA is still horrible, so any halfway competent CV player that notices a stationary Dunkerque hugging an island is going to make a beeline towards it. To recap, long ship, stationary (or very close to it at least), no series AA to speak of, below average torpedo protection ... equals CV players going mental like the seagulls from 'Finding Nemo' - "MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE" ... and CVs are ubiquitous in the tier VI bracket (thankfully, but unfortunately for the Dunkerque). Plus hugging islands in the matchmaking bracket full of Minekaze/Kamikaze DDs isn't exactly healthy for BBs unless you can make absolutely certain that you won't have on of those pop up around that island corner right next to you. Divisioning with a CV player that can keep enemy airstrikes away from you and scout out DDs, yeah I can see this working somewhat, but it shouldn't be the only thing the ship is good at. Increase the gun reload and the ship could at least shine with dpm, make it a cruiser killer (which it was historically designed to perform like, with killing the Deutschland-class having been the design specification, which was an uparmed cruiser), but currently in that regard it's second to the Fusou that is much better at it and the Fusou is also much better at being a fullfledged BB.

Urgh ... Dunkerque was one of the ships I was looking forward to, but with armour that is getting overmatched by most BBs she can face, nevermind the weak belt armour in general, and the horrible AA she's more and more looking like a floating target practice dummy. And wth is with that reload? Below average caliber, yet still longer reload than the Fusou which has higher caliber guns and more of them. Reload should at the very least tie with the Fusou at 26 seconds or possibly be at 24 seconds. That way she'd work as a glasscannon dpm machine, but meh dpm, bad armour and bad AA at tier VI when she will face tier VII BBs regularily that will just roll her over for a spanking, nevermind all those CVs that can quite literally just strike her with impunity (just imagine a Shokaku or Lexington seeing one of those on the enemy team, one clean strike run and it's dead, they will be coming running for that free damage and as fast as the Dunkerque is, she ain't faster than airplanes ...). My interest nearly evaporated instantly ...

Zu Yi Sun Shin muss man aber der Fairness noch dazusagen dass die bloßen Zahlen mächtig trügen: Die Japanener hatten noch nie eine große Seefahrer Tradition und deren Erfahrung im militärischen Seekrieg nochmal eine ganze Ecke weniger. Korea um Gegensatz dazu hatte mehrere Jahrhunderte wert Tradition und Erfahrung was das rumschippern anging und Dank regulärer Wetzeleien mit japanischen Piratengangs einen Überfluß an Erfahrung mit japanischen Schiffen und Taktiken. Ausserdem hatten die Koreaner eine um Welten besserentwickelte Schiffsbaukunst. Dazu gehört auch der Umstand dass die als erste Schifffahrtsnation zu Artillerie als Primärwaffe für Schiffe wechselte während die meisten anderen (darunter auch Japan) noch fast exklusive auf Enteraktionen bauten. Und wenn man von Enteraktionen und koreanischer Schiffsbaukunst redet ... die Schiffe die Yi Sun Shin zu der genannten Schlacht hatte waren alles hochstöckige Kanonenschiffe. "Hochstöckig" hervorgehoben, weil als überaus effektive Kontermaßnahme gegen typische Enterversuche, "Kanonenschiffe" weil, naja ... brauch ich glaub ich nicht viel erklären. Japanische Schiffe waren so leicht gebaut die konnten nur eine Kanone benutzen ohne dass deren Rückstoß das Schiff beschädigt, selbst die größten Schiffe der Japaner konnten maximal vier Kanonen tragen. Die koreanischen Schiffe dagegen ... mindestens 26 und typischerweise weit mehr mit bis zu 50 (!!!) Kanonen verschiedener Art, plus gerne noch ein paar Hwachas auf'm Deck. Um's mit Star Wars zu sagen "our ships can't repel firepower of that magnitude". Um das ganze in WoWs zu übersetzen: Yi Sun Shin hatte 13 Yamatos mit voll trainierten 19 Punkte Kapitänen gesteuert von einer Gruppe Flamu-Klonen als Division auf Voicecoms, während die Japaner mit 133 Chikumas ohne Kapitäne gesteuert von irgendwelchen Neulingsrandom Bobs versucht haben auf der Two Brothers Karte allesamt durch die Mitte zu rushen. Sorry wegen Offtopic, aber da musste der Historier in mir einfach seinen Senf dazugeben (ich studiere genau diesen Kram )