German BB 2019

[Jankr7]

Hello guys,

I feel really badly about German BBs. Since i have purchased Bismarck, I think it is probably worst BB line right now. Dispersion, weak guns, short range, they r very large ... I tried secondary build on Bismarck and it is awfull. Secondaris are very unacurate and in current meta it is hard to get close to enemy. In Bismarck most og my games are T 10 matches. I cannot fight even same tier ships. Even i stay angled to enemy I usually got hits for 7 k or more.  Are tier 9, 10 better or i should go for another line ?  Do u have some guides for german bbs  in 2019 ? What builds do you recomend for T8 + german bbs ? Please help me ... I do not feel soo hopeless in other tier 8 bbs (I played them on my friend acount) 
Thank u 

 

[rnat]

You're not gonna like it but i'm gonna be honest, this is mostly a l2p issue.

Rushing through the tech-trees in this game is a pretty bad idea and leaves you lacking the knowledge to make your ships work when you get to higher tier.

Trust me when i say, that if you had gone up the USN or IJN tree you would face very similar problems. Their guns tend to be more accurate but they eat more dmg than the KM line at the same angles.

I'd strongly advise you to go back to T4-6 and play your ships there a bit more. Ideally start going up a few more lines and stay at those tiers for a while.

Understanding the different ships, gaining experience in situational awareness, positioning ect. It's a much better experience when you know your stuff imo.

 

Last note on the Bisco: It's still a fine ship, capable of pulling it's weight and more.

For an example of how to play her check out for example Flamu:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[ColonelPete]

get more experience in middle to lower tier

[Alipheese_XV]

As you just have 446 battles in general, I recommend you experiment more in middle tiers:

Even if König and Bayern are slow ships and don't feature good secondaries (due to secondary skill only becoming effective from T7 onwards), you can still collect experience for your playstyle in general.

With Gneisenau you can somewhat experiment with your first secondary build. Manual Secondary, Advanced Firing training and (in my opinion) IFHE are mandatory for that. Even if Gneisenau only sports 8 km secondaries, especially with IFHE they will also hurt higher tier BBs.

It's up to you if you want to try that.

[Jankr7]

Před 9 hodinami rnat řekl/a:

You're not gonna like it but i'm gonna be honest, this is mostly a l2p issue.

Rushing through the tech-trees in this game is a pretty bad idea and leaves you lacking the knowledge to make your ships work when you get to higher tier.

Trust me when i say, that if you had gone up the USN or IJN tree you would face very similar problems. Their guns tend to be more accurate but they eat more dmg than the KM line at the same angles.

I'd strongly advise you to go back to T4-6 and play your ships there a bit more. Ideally start going up a few more lines and stay at those tiers for a while.

Understanding the different ships, gaining experience in situational awareness, positioning ect. It's a much better experience when you know your stuff imo.

 

Last note on the Bisco: It's still a fine ship, capable of pulling it's weight and more.

For an example of how to play her check out for example Flamu:

  Odhalit skrytý obsah

 

 

 

 

Thank u. I used to play WoT and it took me much more time ro climb the tech tree. I have been very suprised how fast was it in wot. I will definitly start another lines. At lower tier i sometimes have more dmg than in mi Bismarck (f. e in Kongo). I was very excited to play Bismarck, because of the new song. I am glad noone  on forum here is toxic. When i used to play tanks amd wrote something on Czech forum, then i usually got only toxic answears and mo real answear 

[Jankr7]

Před 10 hodinami Alipheese_XV řekl/a:

As you just have 446 battles in general, I recommend you experiment more in middle tiers:

Even if König and Bayern are slow ships and don't feature good secondaries (due to secondary skill only becoming effective from T7 onwards), you can still collect experience for your playstyle in general.

With Gneisenau you can somewhat experiment with your first secondary build. Manual Secondary, Advanced Firing training and (in my opinion) IFHE are mandatory for that. Even if Gneisenau only sports 8 km secondaries, especially with IFHE they will also hurt higher tier BBs.

It's up to you if you want to try that.

Thank u for answear. I will try to lower tiers and try to grind other lines. Then i am going to grind 19 pts captain (i have premium Scharnhorst) 

[rnat]

5 hours ago, Jankr7 said:

I will definitly start another lines. At lower tier i sometimes have more dmg than in mi Bismarck (f. e in Kongo).

That's because that's where you and your opposition are more evenly matched skill-wise. ^^

GL with the other lines as well and have fun with your Kongo :)

 

5 hours ago, Jankr7 said:

I am glad noone  on forum here is toxic. When i used to play tanks amd wrote something on Czech forum, then i usually got only toxic answears and mo real answear  

Feel free to ask any question that comes to your mind. You'll generally get help quickly as long as you don't behave like a bell-end yourself. ^^

[Psychomike83]

While i wont deny this can be a l2p issue, i ran into the exact same problem described by the OP.

 

I am by no means an experienced warships player, but i knew how to aim properly after my first few games on T1 and had very few issues to lead and hit my shots on any battleship cruiser or destroyer up to t5. but in the whole german battleship line i frequently struggled to hit salvos that are not almost point blank or at least in a ~5km range and at 10-15km you can miss flat-out perfectly placed salvos as everything goes short-or-long. while i had not only bad games between t3-6 on this line, i recently arrived at the Gneisenau and got fed up by the awful shell dispersion and the increasing long range sniping camp-meta, since i personally felt like a lone paper against many scissors.

 

By now i know that i can play "differently" to make it work somehow. but i think i have chosen the wrong line for my needs and also for going into higher tiers where camping behind islands and long range sniping is considered "good manners".

[rnat]

On 5/13/2019 at 8:20 PM, Psychomike83 said:

frequently struggled to hit salvos that are not almost point blank or at least in a ~5km range and at 10-15km you can miss flat-out perfectly placed salvos as everything goes short-or-long.

The sub 5km thing is pretty rare even with the most german of dispersions. But yeh you can miss even at 10km.
More so for the KM line but all BBs have that trait to a larger or smaller extent (except for the Slava) to balance their potentially massive alpha dmg.

 

On 5/13/2019 at 8:20 PM, Psychomike83 said:

but i think i have chosen the wrong line for my needs

Indeed. If you value main-battery accuracy above all pick the USN or IJN BBs or better yet play cruisers.

 

On 5/13/2019 at 8:20 PM, Psychomike83 said:

also for going into higher tiers where camping behind islands and long range sniping is considered "good manners". 

Long range sniping on BBs unless you have no other option is rubbish at any tier.

For cruisers what do you want them to do ? They can't tank BB-caliber shells or, for that matter the spam by other cruisers (with some exceptions),

so they either need to be difficult to hit (i.e. dodging at longish to long range) or unspotted to begin with (behind islands/smokes).

 

You can still make the KM BBs work at high tier, you just need to be aware when and how to engage and when you can commit do a real brawl.

Being able to hit correctly lead your target is the most basic skill in this game, to "git gud" there's map-awareness, consumable management, predicting the flow of a game, knowing when and where to push, when to kite ect. pp.

[Psychomike83]

Thank you for your feedback @rnat.

 

First of all i have to mention that i like destroyers the most and consider myself a DD main. in BBs (especially the german ones) i often felt just like a big sluggish target for everyone while in my DDs i contributed well or even saved some games for our team. i have to mention that this was mainly from t2-5, but im well aware of the "situation" in higher tiers especially about CVs. Right now i plan to go higher in one of the IJN or the USN DD lines but i struggle to choose. i excelled at the ninja torpedo style of IJN (currently at t5-Mutsuki) but on the other hand i had great success with the t4-Clemson and its more gunboat oriented style. Even this thread is mainly about BBs, which line would you recommend?: the one that ends in Shimakaze (ninja), Harugumo (minigun) or Gearing (allrounder)

 

4 hours ago, rnat said:

Indeed. If you value main-battery accuracy above all pick the USN or IJN BBs or better yet play cruisers.

You nailed it. After my success with destroyers i always thought about to go on a cruiser line. sadly it did not work out for me as well as i expected. but that is mainly founded on the fact that i had chosen the RN cruiser line (t1-5) and was playing them almost like a destroyer while not having the same concealment and eating citadel after citadel. i will pick this line up again when i am more experienced since it was still fun and i like the utility and maneuverability. i also tried out the KM cruiser line, but i stopped at t4 since it felt too sluggish for me.

 

4 hours ago, rnat said:

Long range sniping on BBs unless you have no other option is rubbish at any tier.

I always knew that from the start since i got a lot of information from a veteran friend that got me into the game and also through watching guides etc. but the dispersion of the KM BB line turned out as a bad joke for me. on the other side its undeniable that "the meta" switches to a long range sniping camper fest at higher tiers, and even BBs start to deal salvos over 15km and hope for the best.

 

I decided to stay and end it at the Gneisenau for now, but i will also give the RN BBs a shot pretty soon. according to the wiki the USN and IJN have in fact the best dispersion values on most of their BBs, but the RN was not that far away from that. and i frequently read about the endless disgust that the RN is a noob friendly HE spam line where you can only do good in no matter how bad you are. is that true? not that im trying to go the easy route on purpose, but i always wanted a line where i can "see the world burn".

[rnat]

12 hours ago, Psychomike83 said:

i excelled at the ninja torpedo style of IJN (currently at t5-Mutsuki) but on the other hand i had great success with the t4-Clemson and its more gunboat oriented style. Even this thread is mainly about BBs, which line would you recommend?: the one that ends in Shimakaze (ninja), Harugumo (minigun) or Gearing (allrounder) 

The safe bet would be to go down the US-line. The Mahan at T7 gains the ability to stealth torp, at which point the line turns into hybrids with the Fletcher and Gearing arguably having the best torps in the game.

The problem with the IJN line is that your enemies tend to get less oblivious and straight-lining at higher tiers and IJN torps while hard-hitting have a worse detectability than others making it harder to hit consistently.

On the other hand the Yugumo and Shima have pretty decent guns (same high alpha but workable reload, great for kiting DDs and finishing off low health targets.

For the Haru c.f. near the end of this post. (note: at least the Kita is currently clearly OP, expect a nerf in the forseeable future)

Then again there is nothing stopping you from trying out all of the lines.

 

12 hours ago, Psychomike83 said:

i also tried out the KM cruiser line, but i stopped at t4 since it felt too sluggish for me.

That's mainly because at T4 the KM still gets an old-style armored cruiser. They only get the more modern ships at T5.

Not gonna lie to you tho, the KM are the least nimble line out of all the CAs, so probably not your cup of tea.

If you like agility try MN cruisers, IJN ones a distant second.

USN cruisers are pretty good in that respect as well but their characteristics lend themselves to more stationary cover-based gameplay.

 

12 hours ago, Psychomike83 said:

i frequently read about the endless disgust that the RN is a noob friendly HE spam line where you can only do good in no matter how bad you are. is that true?

They are easy to play poorly. While you can get away with spamming nothing but HE they benefit massively from knowing which ammo to pick at a given time.

The QE for example is best shooting mostly AP unless seriously uptiered, whereas the KGV wants different ammo for different situations.

The big thing tho is that you might as well play IJN if you wanna just shoot HE. (don't do it or i'll shoot your dog )

Their BBs are usually about tied with the RN in terms of HE alpha and HE-dpm and tend to have better armor to boot.

 

The thing that in some ppls opinion makes them "idiot-proof" (besides the strong HE) is that their citadels are all submerged, giving the same effect as the KMs turtleback.

On the other hand though they are actually relatively squishy. Only 25/32mm (depending on tier) plating all around means you are a very juicy target for all the cruisers out there.

So you might be mostly safe from citadels but if you over-extend you're gonna get melted quick quickly.

 

Just play IJN or USN BBs and push with your team at a safe distance (~5-10km behind your DDs) as long as you're not taking too much dmg and shoot at: Anything broadsiding you > DDs > angled cruisers > angled BBs

Stick to AP only and try to stay angled while keeping your guns hot and you can't do too much wrong.

 

12 hours ago, Psychomike83 said:

but i always wanted a line where i can "see the world burn".

Play

-MN CA, IJN CA, VMF CL* (open-water long range HE-spam)

-USN CL (cover-using mid range HE-spam)

-VMF DDs with heal (Khabarovsk line+Udaloi) (open-water mid range HE-spam)

-the IJN gunboats running DE+IFHE (Aki to Haru) (HE-spam from smoke)

Less fires per salvo but the sheer amount of shells you throw at the target more than makes up for it.

 

*not including Moskva

 

 

One last thing you could do if you have some disk-space to spare is download the PTS client, register an account there (use same email) and try out the high tier ships of each line.

You currently start at T8 and can get to T10 in 1 match, 15point captains, free re-specs and functionally infinite gold and credits while the server runs make it a nice place to test a line before you start grinding it.