VC381

Come on, most of the "descriptions" of the ships range from debatable to completely wrong, with a couple of translation train-wrecks for good measure. Just ignore them and move on. Yamato had the most AA the IJN dumped on any one ship. It was pretty useless IRL and is in game as well.

It also depends on how much you like to change target and how often you do a 180 degree turn and need guns on the other side. I pick EM on basically everything because I play very dynamically. German BBs might feel like they don't need it but I've been close enough to enemies that I couldn't track. Also, if you're pushing for close range there are enough situations where you want to turn one way while aiming against the turn (e.g. DD just appeared) and "just tracking" isn't enough.

I agree with this. I recently unlocked Shinonome and I realised that's the problem with Fubuki torpedoes. Shinonome torps are as if you had TA on Fubuki. The ship is good enough to contest caps with CE and just torpedo spam the enemy DD smoke. A single torpedo will sink any DD at that tier. Basically, you need to play a little bit more from distance but you can still take opportunities to get close.

The ship in game represents the whole class. It's quite normal for it to have features from later ships of the class, not just the one it's actually named after. So the bow is not a mistake, just a different detail they chose to use. But yes, thank you for the historical interest. Spuggy, I'm curious what niche you found to get the ship to work. I wanted to enjoy it because it's a really beautiful ship but I had trouble with the agility and gave up.

I think also people have selective memory, I love to remember the good times, a lot of other people focus on the bad. I had a game where I turned bow into a GK and forgot a Yamato 10km on my broadside. I survived 4 salvos (2 from each) losing less than 1/4 HP, got away, had a great game. As I said, there are times I get really screwed up playing other cruisers because I keep expecting to dodge and then I think "crap, I'm not in a Baltimore". 30k XP to Des Moines, but I'm keeping all US cruisers T6+ (only one missing from my collection is Atlanta).

I see what you're saying but I just haven't had this negative experience. Sure I get smacked sometimes but the Baltimore is a cruiser that I feel lets me get away with going stupid places and doing really stupid things, especially trolling T10 BBs that think they see an easy kill.

Yeah, people keep calling it normalisation but the real advantage is auto-bounce. 67.5 degrees start of auto-bounce means you have a chance to pen someone shooting only 22.5 degrees off their bow! Basically, if an enemy cruiser even tried to open up his rear guns at you, he's risking citadels, while other cruisers need a 45 degree angle. An Ibuki can safely fire 10 guns against a Roon and keep enough angle to bounce his AP but will be deleted by a Baltimore in the same situation. Serious question, why is everyone ignoring or dismissing the agility? The way this ship turns and dodges is probably THE biggest selling point for me. Am I playing a different game that I find that so important but others either don't care or don't think it's strong?

Ugh, I hope not. Firstly, it would be boring since we already have 2 of the T10 BBs with 4x3 layout and secondly neither of those has basis in the concept designs. 3x3 with bigger guns or 3x3 with higher RoF, or if you really want 12 guns, 3 quad turrets.

I'm not getting this concealment thing. 11.8km detection is very impressive for a BB and in theory you can disappear between shots especially since you're accurate enough to fire outside that range. But at T6 the maps are tiny, even with that concealment you're going to be perma-spotted by a DD somewhere, and CVs are popoular at that tier. It just seems like a waste.

Maybe I'm getting a little philosophical here, but I still think it's all relative. You can't have perfect balance unless you make every ship the same. There can be ships which are fun but inefficient and that doesn't mean they are bad. They have a place in the game, for me at least

C & D pretty fun, E I couldn't get to work but really only because she's stupidly sluggish. I might have got something from it with practice but then I got Leander from the missions and boy oh boy is that one good!

Yes, but as I said competitiveness isn't the only measure of goodness. You can have more fun from the work you put in to getting good results from something that's difficult to use. And it still offers some uniqueness of playstyle that can be strong in some situations, maybe not all, but is nevertheless very enjoyable. If I play Baltimore or other US cruisers a lot and then switch to something else, I tend to get killed very fast doing stupid things that I would have gotten away with in Balti/NO.

Dancing around with the rudder shift plus small turning circle is precisely why I love this ship, and the two before it (which are even better at it). That's what really makes the ship great for me, because it increases your survivability in a way no amount of armor or HP can. If that doesn't do it for you that's fine, if you have a different playstyle where you more successfully use the strengths of the other cruisers, fantastic. But you asked for strengths and I gave them to you, so don't dismiss them. Also I think you're blowing the arcs thing out of proportion. BBs are huge targets at that tier, really not hard to hit at max range (and you're a much better player than me so I'm even more surprised you complain about the arcs). Everything else you can sneak up on. Again the stealth+agility comes in, you can get into the range where you are strongest and dance to stay alive there. Ibuki has other strengths, as you say, but she can't do that, and she will be dead before getting torps on you if she tried (sunk enough of them already to not fear them).

A combination of stealth, agility and firepower. Joint best concealment for a T9 cruiser (with Ibuki), second best turning circle (but the tightest turner, Neptune, has worse rudder shift). Second best rudder shift (only slightly worse than Ibuki, that also has a bigger turning circle). Second best rate of fire for 20cm guns. Second best AP although arguably more useful than Roon due to better performance on angled targets. The armor feels pretty troll most of the time and she's a fairly small target. So yeah, she isn't the best at anything in particular (except maybe overall agility) but the whole package of being second best at so many things make her very fun. You say she has no real strengths, I would counter and say she also has no real weakness either.

I'm not a good enough DD player to solo contest a cap, plus I also generally take the opinion that everyone doing a bad plan together is still better than trying to do two different things at the same time. Lemming trains are generally bad but I've seen quite a few games where the team that lost 2 caps early won because they all circled around as one big block and took out the split enemies one by one. So yeah, I usually try to talk through the caps first but otherwise resort to the good soldier DD style.

For mission IV, I would go Strike Lexington. You might need to spam it a few times to get the right conditions, but as soon as you're top tier in your game and the enemy CV is anything other than an AS Lex or a VERY good Shokaku, this becomes a breeze. Mission V however... Oh boy! Here we go again with the lemmings ignoring the objective to go hunt the enemy CV...

It is my opinion, and I admit I'm taking an extreme point of view with saying good/bad can't be fact. Let me try to explain a different way: It's impossible to get perfect balance in a game like this, provided you care about actual variety. There will always be a meta, ships and tactics that are easier to use, more popular and more effective in the current state of the game. Baltimore has poor server stats, I accept that as fact. You can say Baltimore is not a competitive pick, I can lean towards agreeing with you there. But the overall assessment that the ship is "bad", based only on stats, makes the assumption that all players are only interested in playing ships that give them the best chance of winning. That isn't true. There are players who play a certain ship because they like it from history or whatever and don't care how well it actually performs in game. There are those who play for a certain gimmick and are happy to ignore the 9 times it doesn't work for that one time they dominate the game with it. There are simply different people who get their kikcks out of the game in different ways. This article is a great explanation of what I'm getting at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlayerArchetypes So as long as some people like a "bad ship", it's not really a bad ship, it just caters to a specific sub-set of the player base. And that's fine, those ships can stay in their current form, they provide a necessary bit of variety even if lots of people don't like them. Not every ship needs to be statistically strong, in fact it's impossible as I said. The game needs to provide for everyone, and that's the same for any online game. Look at LoL for example, they have hundreds of champions of which only a few dozen are truly competitive in a particular meta, but the others still get played because people like them for other reasons than winning as hard as possible. So I'm not sticking my head in the sand, I'm just trying to make people see that a) making a general statement that "a ship is bad" based only on stats is short-sighted and b) not every ship is for everyone, but it's still good to have all of them as they are. That's why one of my points in an earlier post is to think about why you want to play Baltimore. Forcing yourself to play a ship you don't enjoy then complaining it's bad just comes across as wanting to have your cake and eat it.

No, I'm just trying to stay away from the "good" and "bad" labels from a pure stats performance point of view. Stats aren't everything to some people, if they enjoy the ship, then she is good. Good is what you make of it, what you want it to be, regardless of what other people think, that's why it can never be fact no matter what stats you bring up. I have no agenda, I would be happy if she was buffed but at the same time I don't think she needs to be. OK maybe I do have a slight agenda, I like playing my under-appreciated ship and don't want it to become mainstream.

This is my point. Statistics prove nothing. That doesn't show that the ship is bad, it only shows most people can't do well in it. It maybe can "prove" the "fact" she's unpopular, but not the one that she's "bad". I repeat, there's no such thing as a good or bad ship, just players who enjoy different things.

That's fair enough, and I respect your opinion, but the OP and a few others didn't come across like that. Plus your attack on me was very random and unwarranted. Anyway, I get on with almost all cruisers but I have found the top end of the US line (Pensa to Balti, no DM yet but soon *drool*...) to be particularly enjoyable. This is due to their excellent agility and very strong and flexible AP. I'm personally not frustrated by their perceived weaknesses because I took to their playstyle naturally. That isn't meant as a boast, I'm far from the best player in these ships, but I just "got" them at T7 and loved them since. I can provide advice but my bias makes me a less than ideal teacher.

I agree with your T1 and 2 assessment, I'm not sure I agree with concealment or shockin's secondary build. I would have done pre-German BBs, but these days Warspite is obsolete as a brawler. She is however an excellent mid-range damage dealer. I would go for everything that improves survivability. I'm yet to reassign my points on her and my captain is a bit low level (my good one moved to cruisers) but I would aim for something like this, (taking the first skill at each tier first): T1 - PM T2 - EM, High Alert, Jack of all Trades T3 - SI, BoS T4 - Fire Prevention If you get to 19 points, throw the last 2 into Adrenaline Rush so you're more dangerous the more people beat you up.

No they are not, firstly because the whole discussion is hinged on the assumption that the ship isn't good. This is an OPINION. I am not offended by anybody's opinion or them discussing it, but passing off opinion as fact is not constructive discussion. Some people like the ship and perform well in it. Are they in a minority? Yes. Does this make it a bad ship? No. All I'm saying is, speak with a positive attitude and an open mind and then it can be called a "discussion". All it takes is to say "I don't like this ship because..." instead of "the ship is bad" and suddenly you have a positive constructive conversation about how to work the ship. The other point I was trying to make is that after a point it's a choice of playstyle. The game caters for all sorts of players and as I said before, no number of players disliking a ship makes it bad. Ultimately, there is no such thing as a bad ship, only ships that suit certain players. I was advising the OP to make a choice, decide why he wants to play the ship and whether it's worth it for him to learn or just play something he actually enjoys. No shame in just saying a ship isn't for you and moving on.

German DDs IRL were strong on paper but had iffy reliability and seakeeping. Neither of those matter in game, basically all the things you list as weaknesses are soft stats WG just makes up or tweaks as necessary. I think what happened is WG wanted to make a DD line that could do everything then got scared it would be too strong, so found ways to nerf it. As for strengths? They have hydro. This is a unique and very powerful tool for a DD, one that could easily make the whole line stupidly OP. Because of that, their balance is always on a knife-edge, a tiny buff to some other stats could quickly become an enormous advantage combined with hydro.

Let's try something here. How about when you don't do well in a ship, take the following steps instead of raging about it: 1) ask politely what you're doing wrong and try to learn 2) if you still can't make it work, stop playing the ship 3) don't skip to the higher tiers and expect them to be good if you aren't willing to learn how to make them work 4) if you really want to grind the line, go back to step 1) 5) if you still can't make it work, stop playing the line Simples ;) Seriously why complain? Nobody is forcing you to play a line, so ask yourself why you're doing it, and if you can't answer, don't do it!

I agree it needs to be less buggy but unfortunately it is what it is and I guess WG have other priorities. If you have any exposure to software design, it's possible a seemingly small bug could be an enormous time sink to actually fix, and I would rather they worked on RN BBs instead.