Guide: British Cruisers

[Celandri]

totaly agree with him, the standard players that wargaming will get most of and still playing is the causual homegoing people (i am one) cant play more than 1-5 battles a day but thats ok for me. but when they make a whole fleet that even me who have atlanta and enjoy it cant get this to work on low tiers because of the imunity the german BB got vs the ships, higher tier? dont know i will get higher tier as im not going to waste my money in this game before someting changes, 

i will still play Belfast as its a good and ejoyable ship but not anything in the normal tree. 

[philjd]

I was bum-rushed 3 times yesterday (bow on charges) by RN Emeralds while driving my Imperator - 1 time 2 Emeralds, I hit and destroyed one with an angled broadside, the other torpd me to death after main battery missed him, the other time main guns missed totally and it torp'd me to death, I sent a karma compliment to both successful skippers.

I was also bum-rushed by a Leander with a Minekaze for company while driving my Bayern, main guns shot at the Minekaze (sunk), secondaries did a lot of damage to the Leander, then the reload destroyed him, minimal damage to me.

In all three situations I was clawing my way back from a flank to the main battlefield so was isolated from support, once I was last man standing on my flank and running away (trying to). No other ships involved on either side.

 

In short, the low tier RN CLs are too reliant on RNG to be effective.

 

As a  general comment - I find my Ishisuchi (spelling) a great ship to take out against RN CL's, the 10 guns and reasonably fast reload, with both speed and manoeuvrability to be a lethal combination (to them), but then, it always has been a good anti-cruiser ship.

[Ryuuteimaru]

Yeah low tier heal is pretty bad as well. Usual scenario is start on 20k health. Get hit for 5k. Heal gives you back 750.

Get hit again lose 12k. Heal gives you back 1.2k

Next hit kills you.

 

Problem with the heal is the vast majorty of the damage you take is citadel most of which can't be healed which makes it pretty much useless on those Cruisers,

[Jay135]

 

While this is probably a very unpopular point of view right now, this is exactly one of the points here. However, the question is rather: can we integrate both of these "philosophies" (i think the word is too big in this context) into the same framework, but with different content.

From our point of view the answer is yes. There is no strict rule that says content has to be equally easy to play - the only requirement is that its balanced in terms of effectiveness. Of course at first it may seem unfair that an average Joe Potato can just show up and be effective on average with other ships of a similar type while you have to endure to get good and harvest the potential. However, i believe this is acceptable, as those players who do put in that effort and skill will eventually start getting above average results in the long run.

 

Now, whether this approach should have been taken with this particular piece of content is an entirely different question - this one purely philosophical. 

 

I guess we'll just make sure that British Battleships don't require any effort and are as boring as afternoon tea. 

 

Awesome defence. Shame it's already apparent to anyone with functioning brain matter that this is a last minute bodge dressed with lame "gameplay reasons" to justify how badly you've messed this line up. 

 

I'd have respected the WG staff more if they'd at least admit the line has serious problems, but instead "gameplay reasons." I'm a pretty patient and saguine casual gamer but even I'm unimpressed by such a feeble excuse.

 

As for the taunt about RN BBs, by all means go ahead. It'll only confirm for the rest of us that the tinfoil hat brigade aren't quite as full of BS as we'd assumed.

[Chiledip]

That is true, and I don't negate that. I negate, that one has to at least play them a bit, preferably reach higher tiers, to vocal his displeasure about whole line. It's like playing a Kawachi and Myogi only, and then saying Amagi and Yamato are crap. Isn't it a bit stupid? 

 

 

I could not disagree more with you Dropsiq. If someone claimed that they didn't like "murder" would they be unqualified if they hadn't tried it? Even if they had seen it? What if they had watched 10 unicum murderers and decided that it was not for them. I don't like "generalisations". Would I have needed to previously been a generaliser to have decided that I don't like them. Of course not. Just plain wrong.

 

I have enjoyed reading much of what you have written, its good to get the opposite point of view. It has been informative for the most part and thought provoking too. However this ragging and dismissing of lesser players, hard to take mate! If someone plays this game,his opinion is important and should not be dismissed in such a crass way. Not sure if its a language thing but throwing people's record at them diminishes the way that you come across.

 

I am much better at the game I play, than you are at this game, the game that I play has provided me with a very decent living for the last 10 years. We have a large European community in which I am pretty well known. In my community, over 85% of players have losing records. Only 0.5% have a decent win rate and only a very small amount of the 0.5% can be called successful. We very successful players would never consider talking to the others like that! Simply because it's not in the interest of the game and thus it is not in my interest. If I disagree with someone, I hope that I can make them see it without actually telling them that they don't know anything! If I can't I walk away because my community would think that I am a right skidmark if I were to say "look at your record"!

 

Please keep your opinions coming, I love to debate, that's the way we learn, but I like to do it respectfully and with class. If you love this game, please realise that it wouldn't be here if it weren't for the casual player too.

[Jay135]

 

Problem with the heal is the vast majorty of the damage you take is citadel most of which can't be healed which makes it pretty much useless on those Cruisers,

 

They can heal citadel damage, but they get citted with almost every hit they receive, so it buys you next to nothing. It's only really useful if some one has set you on fire and if you're being hit hard enough to burn you're dead anyway....

[creamgravy]

Only tier 8+ can heal citadel damage.

[SeaMonsterUK]

The other problem with British ships, this was my experience with the Leander, is when you do get a Citadel hit, it won't always do a lot of damage. Got 1 citadel and full penetrations for 6K damage, most cruisers you go up against will do twice if not 3 times that from just a single citadel and no additional hits.

[Capra76]

 

Well it is difficult to remove the emotional attachment the British have with their Navy...........

 

I disagree with this, I don't think that many Brits feel a particular attachment to the RN except those of a particular age or those who served in it, for the vast majority of game players I suspect it's just another line.

 

What I hate about the line is that it feels like another sop to the whining BB players that the game seems to revolve around, a series of ships that are easy XP for the BBabies that are unable to inflict any kind of meaningful damage in return.

[Chiledip]

 

I disagree with this, I don't think that many Brits feel a particular attachment to the RN except those of a particular age or those who served in it, for the vast majority of game players I suspect it's just another line.

 

What I hate about the line is that it feels like another sop to the whining BB players that the game seems to revolve around, a series of ships that are easy XP for the BBabies that are unable to inflict any kind of meaningful damage in return.

 

I'm mixed on this. If WG and their minions stop claiming "historical accuracy" it would be very easy to let go. I would not be a very good ancestor to my grand-parents generation if I were to let WG tarnish them and their ships. Simple as that! The RN cruisers were the most successful cruisers of WW2, bar none. FACT.

 

The problem here, as I have touched on before, is the misuse of statistics. Sometimes numerate people can be too numerate in a way. Sometimes pure numbers don't tell the whole story.

 

If WG ever designed a football game it would have this problem. Please forgive yet another football analogy, but I think it's mainstream enough for us all to understand the limitations that we are dealing with here.

If WG were designing the 3 players, Messi and the 2 Belgium strikers, Romalu Lukaku and Christian Benteke, they would look at their stats and the Belgium strikers would be far stronger. Poor Messi would be viewed as slow, weak, small, unathletic, passive etc in comparison. But as we all know, Messi is a God, we know this because of real-life experience of watching him.

Statistics have to come with caveats, you have to know the limitations of them. It is one thing to say "the ship really had a huge citadel" but the nuances of design will mean that a hit to the vitals of one ship will not react in the same way to another. Sometimes the package of components all together are much stronger than the sum of all its parts. It would have been nice if WG would see their over -reliance on pure numbers and stop claiming "historical accuracy".

 

I agree 100% that this was a line designed with the BB skippers in mind. This design, to me, was more about what it was not going to be rather than what it was going to be. The cruiser meta wasn't considered.

 

[damo74]

 

This line is simply unbalanced and inferior compared to all the other cruiser lines. There are just too many glaring weaknesses with all these ships.I believe there are two fundamental problems with these ships - fragility, and lack of firepower, just one is bad enough, but the two issues combined make this line pitifully weak compared their peers.

 

1) These ships are so fragile, I've watched other players get detonated in match after match. I find myself concentrating so much on just not getting deleted, that I'm hardly doing any damage. This isn't fun, it's unsatisfying.

 

2) These ships lack firepower. Not only do they have fewer guns until tier 7, these guns have lower range, lower damage, bad arcs, , lower penetration, and no HE! All any opponent has to do is angle a bit, and your'e effectively disarmed.

 

I could understand if they were glass-cannons, but the guns are so poor and situational. I could understand if the guns were poor, but the ships themselves were tough brawlers. But these ships just disintegrate when shot at. I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone could justify releasing British cruisers, or any other nation's first tech-tree in such a state. These ships are just much too weak and need a re-think.

 

My solutions? Either buff the armour on these things, so they can take hits and not get citadelled by destroyers. Or buff the guns by either increasing the range and shell velocity. Or just giving them HE shells.

 

Or failing any of that, these ships are going to need a dedicated match-maker to compensate for all their many many weaknesses. These poor things should never meet anything two tiers above. I mean an Emerald against a Myoko? A Leander against an Atago? It's ridiculous.

 

[SgtToad]

Glass cannons - without the cannons.

 

Everyone should watch this - https://streamable.com/ydzo

 

Then please do explain whether this is indeed correct, and this line is just as good as any other. This is a FIJI - one of the best of the line. Watch it and weep.

[damo74]

Glass cannons - without the cannons.

 

Everyone should watch this - https://streamable.com/ydzo

 

Then please do explain whether this is indeed correct, and this line is just as good as any other. This is a FIJI - one of the best of the line. Watch it and weep.

 

That's just sad.

[SerPurr]

Glass cannons - without the cannons.

 

Everyone should watch this - https://streamable.com/ydzo

 

Then please do explain whether this is indeed correct, and this line is just as good as any other. This is a FIJI - one of the best of the line. Watch it and weep.

 

Bwhahahahahahahahahaha! I still can't stop laughing. It's so hilariously painful [edited] that I can only laugh in spasms of disbelief.

 

 

[Chiledip]

Glass cannons - without the cannons.

 

Everyone should watch this - https://streamable.com/ydzo

 

Then please do explain whether this is indeed correct, and this line is just as good as any other. This is a FIJI - one of the best of the line. Watch it and weep.

 

Don't know what you are moaning about, he made it work didn't he? Its just high skill cap, that's all!

 

To be honest, I was impressed that the fiji wasn't deleted,somehow the shot he took missed the citadel, now that is accuracy for you!

[Effrit_TR]

Playing through the T5 Emerald today, when I had this occur.

Fire 7 guns on a T5 US Nicholas Destroyer, range of about 4-5 km its broadside on. 2 shots miss, 5 go straight through the side plating, 4 come out the other side = Over Penetrations! 1 did damage!

 

Can someone explain, I thought these were designed to do penetrating damage to Destroyers.

[SerPurr]

Can someone explain, I thought these were designed to do penetrating damage to Destroyers.

 

That was a typo. What they meant was Destroyers do the penetrating damage.

 

[creamgravy]

^^

 

Well, that's me done with tier 9-10. It's virtually impossible to get a fun game. Time to try the mighty Emerald!

 

 

All my games have been like this 

 

[Goats_Beard]

I haven't seen any comments on crew skills and the way several are now redundant for the uk cruisers. Are there any realistic alternatives for 1 and 4 or are BoS and SE the only viable options?

 

 

 

[CuddlyPanda]

Glass cannons - without the cannons.

 

Everyone should watch this - https://streamable.com/ydzo

 

Then please do explain whether this is indeed correct, and this line is just as good as any other. This is a FIJI - one of the best of the line. Watch it and weep.

 

Oh sweet baby Jesus.... AHAHAHAHA. I could not stop laughing 

 

[Admiral_noodle]

Glass cannons - without the cannons.

 

Everyone should watch this - https://streamable.com/ydzo

 

Then please do explain whether this is indeed correct, and this line is just as good as any other. This is a FIJI - one of the best of the line. Watch it and weep.

 

While that is funny I can explain it. 

 

AP won't pen the belt of that BB. Heavily damaged BB will have damage saturation to the superstructure. Therefore this ship can get 6-8k salvoes early on but are particularly crap at finishing off heavily armoured low health BBs. Let the HE spammers finish them off and do something else. 

 

Same problem I had finishing a furutaka in a svietlana once. And he wouldn't burn either. Damage saturation is a pain. 

 

But not all ships are "finishers". Battleships should not be finishing off low health cruisers. In the same vein RNCL shouldn't be firing at low health BBs. 

It's actually fairly realistic. Multiple shots to a damaged superstructure aren't going to make it any worse. That ship would be relatively hard to finish off with HE as well - except fires. So you need to take this into account as well and count on your team mates to finish off ships as well as spot for you and get them to turn their broadside to you. Like with torps or a flanking BB or torp planes. Yes. I just said rely on your team mates... RNCL. Best played in divisions (where they are actually very good)

[SerPurr]

I haven't seen any comments on crew skills and the way several are now redundant for the uk cruisers. Are there any realistic alternatives for 1 and 4 or are BoS and SE the only viable options?

 

 

I recommend the following:

 

[C4PT41N_0BV10US]

I could not disagree more with you Dropsiq. If someone claimed that they didn't like "murder" would they be unqualified if they hadn't tried it? Even if they had seen it? What if they had watched 10 unicum murderers and decided that it was not for them. I don't like "generalisations". Would I have needed to previously been a generaliser to have decided that I don't like them. Of course not. Just plain wrong.

This is Schopenhauer man. You took example that is obviously skewed. And murder is murder. You can't commit almost murder, semi murder, and half slaughter. It's not based on opinion, it's a fact: person was forcefully killed - murder.

You drive Ford Focus, and it's utter crap. So that means, that Ford Mustang is also crap? This is Ford, and this is Ford. You have a 9 mm beretta, and it' can't penetrate 10 mm hardened armour. So that means that 30 mm gatling gun with uranium shells also won't do it? They both shoot projectiles after all? You get the idea. 

 

I have enjoyed reading much of what you have written, its good to get the opposite point of view. It has been informative for the most part and thought provoking too. However this ragging and dismissing of lesser players, hard to take mate! If someone plays this game,his opinion is important and should not be dismissed in such a crass way. Not sure if its a language thing but throwing people's record at them diminishes the way that you come across.

As a base of principle, I don't dismiss weaker, or how you put it, lesser players. I avoid calling people noobs, potatoes and tomatoes. However, if I make an effort, to explain something to someone, and I show facts, arguments, detailed explanation based on my experience, even do a freakin vid in which I show how good it perform, provide statistics and comparisons, and if I only hear wah wah go play tier 1 - 5, or that my opinion is "comic". Well, it's dr. Dropsiq and mister Drops. The second one is a bit snappy, sarcastic, and overall an [edited]. I have much respect for people that don't play as good as me. It might be lack of time, talent, ability, approach - anything. But I don't respect people, who don't think and are being douchebags, when I'm trying to be nice You get the idea. 

And, although yes, he's opinion is surely viable and he is entitled to it, it might not change that intelectual value of said opinion is null. It's like me having an opinion on colonialism. I have one, but I'm ignorant. And I will accept and explanation showing me why I'm ignorant. That's where I begin to differ from my two buddies in that topic. 

I am much better at the game I play, than you are at this game, the game that I play has provided me with a very decent living for the last 10 years. We have a large European community in which I am pretty well known. In my community, over 85% of players have losing records. Only 0.5% have a decent win rate and only a very small amount of the 0.5% can be called successful. We very successful players would never consider talking to the others like that! Simply because it's not in the interest of the game and thus it is not in my interest. If I disagree with someone, I hope that I can make them see it without actually telling them that they don't know anything! If I can't I walk away because my community would think that I am a right skidmark if I were to say "look at your record"!

But if someone went on a rampage in your community how X and Y is crap. And you could see he is clearly wrong, explaining him in detail why is that, only to receive aggressive posts telling you to [edited]off and how ignorant and comic you are, how would your community act? After two days of detailed explanations? If you went back to the first page of this thread, you would see a pretty big effort I made already to explain my opinion. So, I'm sorry, but at some point you have to say enough  

Please keep your opinions coming, I love to debate, that's the way we learn, but I like to do it respectfully and with class. If you love this game, please realise that it wouldn't be here if it weren't for the casual player too.

I will, but like I said. There is a difference in discussion with people who voice their opinion in very definite terms, but are not backed up by anything. And people that also have a strong opinion, but can actually base it on anything. Have an idea of what they talk about.  

 I'm a casual scrub. I don't even play randoms. Only noob-mode 'PvE' for me. So by some standards I should just keep my mouth shut cause I'm obviously not qualified enough to have an opinion on any ship in the game. I'm ok with that. I know tons of people are way more daring, adventurous and skilled than I'll ever be. I like my little Co-Op cocoon. Anyways, I have no issue in that greenhorn testbed to match or even surpass my average scores with the RN line. As I've said plenty of times before, some are truly excellent ships (when of course played to their strengths). Doesn't mean I think they are fun to play. I have very mixed feelings about that. What it personally comes down to is that I sail RN CL's shivering and quivering not to be detected and please no! shot at. I don't have that feeling at all when playing the other lines. I basically feel like a supersized DD being sharkfood for prowling BB's. I don't mind getting hit. I love to brawl. When I want to play sneaky I pick a DD and go have fun. It's all good cause it's all there. In that regard I gave (and am still inclined to give) the higher tiers the benefit of the doubt. Still, I have the sneaky suspicion ultimately I'll feel let down. There's a artificial limiter in play I don't enjoy. I'm ok with being fragile. I'm also ok with having AP only. Bad arcs and shell speed? Ok, bring it on! It's the combination of these three that royally puts me off though. Maybe I'm spoiled by the other nations. Could be. 

You are and you are not. You are entitled to voice an opinion if they are fun or not. If they feel strong on CO - OP or not. But you shouldn't voice opinions on PvP with limited experience in it. I mean, is this really that hard? There are a sterotypes, that how many Poles are in a room, that many opinions are in the room. But this is new even for me   

[von_Boeg]

But not all ships are "finishers". Battleships should not be finishing off low health cruisers. In the same vein RNCL shouldn't be firing at low health BBs. 

It's actually fairly realistic. Multiple shots to a damaged superstructure aren't going to make it any worse. That ship would be relatively hard to finish off with HE as well - except fires. So you need to take this into account as well and count on your team mates to finish off ships as well as spot for you and get them to turn their broadside to you. Like with torps or a flanking BB or torp planes. Yes. I just said rely on your team mates... RNCL. Best played in divisions (where they are actually very good)

 

Sorry, any attempt to defend this is ridiculous.

[SgtToad]

Admiral_noodle - a valiant attempt at defending the indefensible. I have never heard this concept, "finisher", because there is no other ship in the game it applies to - every other ship can kill every other ship, in any situation. No enemy is ever impervious to you. Except the British tho - i tried shooting a Shokaku, a f*cking carrier, in my Edinburgh (one of the "good" ships) - it bounced every shot of about 30.

 

Just had another game in Edinburgh - 91 hits on a Tirpitz, for 8742 damage. Thats an average of ... 96 damage per shot landed. NINETY SIX. In a T8 cruiser.

 

This is the most insulting, catastrophic f*ck up WG have ever made, IMO. These ships are garbage, capable of excelling in a certain number of niche situations - this is not true of any other ship or line in the game. The lack of HE absolutely cripples them. The AP doesn't go half way to making up for it. 

 

Due to the nature of the dmg mechanic, as you say, BBs will lose their entire superstructure HP - meaning they are from then on impervious to your guns. There is simply no defending this, and frankly I am stunned that anyone is trying to.