Guide: British Cruisers

[mjfred]

Love the RN light cruisers so far apart from t4/5.

The playstyle feels like a mix between russian and usn dd gameplay.

Nice guns that are lasers 6-9km and mortars for ranged bb decks.

The engine pick up is an absolute joy.

Decent torps. and smoke to reset a fight.

 

Tier 4/5 was painful, but I don't think it's a problem with the ships particularly. I think it's just an unfortunate combination of small maps, inexperienced dds, and bbs starting to get decent range.

It is tough to hide, dd early spotting is patchy, and there are good odds at least 2 bbs have you in range of all  guns as soon as you are spotted by another cruiser anywhere on the map. You also get Kirov/ Pensacola  target magnet effect. Probably need a hefty hp buff for those 2 ships. 

My tuppence.

[Redgecohones]

Also the shell arcs are too high, & the velocity too low - it should be 861 m/s for all RN 6 inch guns in Tier 2 to 5, & the omission of the HE rounds... ugh. Neither do the SAP rounds work properly; they should penetrate armour only slightly less effectively than other nation's light AP rounds, but with a larger amount of explosive they should cause MORE damage when they penetrate. I can't comment on the dispersion above T3 yet, but I'm hoping it's not as bad as some comments suggest; these should be fairly accurate guns overall. 
I'm hoping that these are teething troubles that will be addressed with the next patch or two; if fire-spamming is a problem, then maybe a lower OVERALL fire % for all nations would be a better idea than removing a vital ammunition type from all RN ships.

This is actually a very good point (and historical too! ) I dare say if lower tier British cruisers had similar alpha damage from their guns versus appropriately mis-positioned ships in the lower tiers as they do starting tier VI -VII much of the frustration would be allieviated even with the drawbacks against angled targets and squishyness since it would seem a more appropriate trade off.

 

Not to mention a more useful training ground for what to expect of them at higher tiers.

[Admiral_noodle]

Right. I've played even more now

 

Tier 4 and 5 are still garbage. Leander can actually survive longer. She will take a lot of pens from everything but has heal.

 

But the single most annoying thing is the AP only. Was having a good game (personally. My team were suiciding and it was pretty much just me left) I'd joyously torpedoed a New Mexico coming through the middle on two brothers utilising that trollish single torp spread and then went after a Farragut.

 

Took half his health in one salvo. But he didn't try to panic torp. He simply slowed, pointed at me and kept firing. At point blank range. A few bounces later and I'm dead. Of course my torpedoes were destroyed so I had no options.

 

72k damage. Top of the team in brutal tier 8 MM. And I come away from the game thinking Leander is useless...

 

^^this is the frustration. You can have a good game (I did really) and come away frustrated because there was nothing I could do in that situation apart from fruitlessly bounce shells and miss.

 

Also I feel bad for not complimenting the Farragut. He played the situation perfectly.

[Redgecohones]

Right. I've played even more now

 

Tier 4 and 5 are still garbage. Leander can actually survive longer. She will take a lot of pens from everything but has heal.

 

But the single most annoying thing is the AP only. Was having a good game (personally. My team were suiciding and it was pretty much just me left) I'd joyously torpedoed a New Mexico coming through the middle on two brothers utilising that trollish single torp spread and then went after a Farragut.

 

Took half his health in one salvo. But he didn't try to panic torp. He simply slowed, pointed at me and kept firing. At point blank range. A few bounces later and I'm dead. Of course my torpedoes were destroyed so I had no options.

 

72k damage. Top of the team in brutal tier 8 MM. And I come away from the game thinking Leander is useless...

 

^^this is the frustration. You can have a good game (I did really) and come away frustrated because there was nothing I could do in that situation apart from fruitlessly bounce shells and miss.

 

Also I feel bad for not complimenting the Farragut. He played the situation perfectly.

 

Don't ruin it for me Noodle!

 

After a days break pontificating on the forums, and reading Deckeru and 44Lbs posts i was actually starting to feel a certain eagerness to get back in there and try and make Danae (God help me) work for me again!

 

Lets see how many games of the team hiding around their one cap sniping, uncooperative enemy BB's and unfortunate RNG before it's beaten out of me again!

[Admiral_noodle]

 

Don't ruin it for me Noodle!

 

After a days break pontificating on the forums, and reading Deckeru and 44Lbs posts i was actually starting to feel a certain eagerness to get back in there and try and make Danae (God help me) work for me again!

 

Lets see how many games of the team hiding around their one cap sniping, uncooperative enemy BB's and unfortunate RNG before it's beaten out of me again!

 

I got 72k damage and came top of a tier 8 game. Leander isn't bad. I also played her right. The failure to kill the DD is understandable and I was dead anyway. It's just frustrating. 

 

It's about learned perceptions. Immediately after the game I felt cheated that I didn't win that encounter because I'm too busy thinking what my other cruisers could have done. On reflection...

- my other cruisers wouldn't have taken half his health in one salvo to start with. 

- only Leander could have done that torp run on New Mexico 

- I could have. Should have rammed the dd!

[tajj7]

The AP can be devastating, with the Fiji I was getting 4k/5k salvos against tier 8 battleships.

 

But it's entirely dependent on them staying reasonably side on to you, if they start angling the damage drops off, to the point that at certain angles you literally get no damage, nada, just bounces.

 

Also the dispersion is awful, I mean the Fiji is ok because it's 12 guns, but it's like a scatter gun. 

When you add in the AP only bouncing, the poor dispersion, and the poor shell velocity, you end firing a lot of shots for very little damage.

 

The other issue is when anything even looks at you, they wreck you, it's not a case of other cruisers getting citadel shots on you, it's literally every AP round that comes your way, from whatever angle, from whatever gun will do substantial damage.

 

This leaves you extremely wary of shooting at anything, especially BBs if they have a sniff of shooting back at you, cutting down your damage potential even more because you only real feel comfortable shooting at enemies whilst in the smoke (even then people will blind fire and wreck you), no other cruisers feel this squishy, hell DDs don't feel this squishy because they get overpens and don't have citadels. 

 

I had several occasions where I was behind friendly battleships who are attacking an enemy and the enemy just ignores them sailing broadside and will shoot me behind sailing bow in and changing course/speed because they know one hit will probably get them full damage.

 

Other cruisers can bow in and reasonably expect to cause some bounces or overpens, these ones don't. 

 

Either make them less squishy (or more make them basically like DDs and cause overpens and take the citadel away) or improve the AP a lot so they can do more. 

[iFax]

So according to the stats only the Belfast is stacking up as capable compared to the rest. I hear in patch 0.5.14 they are planning to remove the heal for the lower tiers.

 

http://wows-numbers.com/ships/tree/type,cruiser/

[it3llig3nc3]

@Admiral_noodle

I haven't played a lot but you summarized my experience and thoughts in your post above.

As a matter of fact this is the main issue right now with this line, that based on the meta and its capabilities it does not have any decisive power in cliffhanger situations "to save the day"..

 

Unfortunately here are too many threads and discussions going on here on the forum so I lost track where I said things - afraid of repeating myself over and over.

There is one point however I keep saying and I strongly believe in: the current "negativity" related to the new RN CL line IMHO is not the problem of the design of these ships, it is an unfortunate EFFECT of the current meta with the broken Predator-Prey ecosystem. (I explained it somewhere else in detail)

(for doubters just imagine a scenario where before releasing this exact same ship line ship meta is unbalanced in a different way: destroyers spread are everywhere, hard to find a battle in which BBs or good cruisers are showing up and you just keep fighting against an invisible torping, gunning enemy... ...under this scenario the release of the RN CLs could have been a relief! Right? It is just unfortunate that the current ship meta in WoWs is broken down is such way that this ship line cannot really shine...)

[Hanszeehock]

So according to the stats only the Belfast is stacking up as capable compared to the rest. I hear in patch 0.5.14 they are planning to remove the heal for the lower tiers.

 

http://wows-numbers.com/ships/tree/type,cruiser/

That rumour about the lower tiers losing their heal is completely false. 

[Redgecohones]

And goodbye enthusiasm!

 

A bunch of heartily meh games, which you might think was strange since i used to love my Omaha.

 

Then lets give the OP Belfast a try (was concentrating on levelling before playing)...

 

Smoke bug! Goodbye Half health! Get told to secure the middle cap while the BB's all lemming A (with an atlanta no less!) Spot the enemy Belfast in smoke, radar him for team, nobody shoots!

 

Dead.

 

[Ryuuteimaru]

That rumour about the lower tiers losing their heal is completely false. 

 

Wouldn't really matter if they lose it or not it's pretty useless most of the time .

[Oely001]

I still don't unterstand the principle idea behind the RN cruiser line. Ok, you wanted to create light cruisers good for hunting DD. That's fine. Fast small calibre guns are perfect for hunting DD. However, AP at small calibres is challenging at best! You could do large calibre AP-only, but small calibre!? If HE-spamming was the reason: HE-spamming comes from the combination of high ROF, high range, high fire probability, and concealment. Take away one or two of them, and HE-spam doesn't work.

 

The other thing I don't understand, is smoke. RN cruisers have good concealment; why adding smoke then? You already have added repair (good thing), why not simply increasing HP instead of smoke? Smoke is the biggest pile of crap in WoWs at the moment, and you added a fleet of smoke-layers - great job.

[_GrimLock__]

Lemme tell you a little story.Me moskva ,2 minotaur's in the enemy team shooting at me. I never ever felt so bored and confused.They kept raining shells at me all i heard was the klingon song(the song of bouncing shells) ,i didnt even bothered with them.Was shooting at bbs.At the end of the match i finally spot them,nuked one with 2 salvos.Simply the feeling u get from this line is "what is shooting at me ,ohh its a rn cl in the smoke,nvm its a bb in front of me il deal with him later"

[shane80uk]

Lemme tell you a little story.Me moskva ,2 minotaur's in the enemy team shooting at me. I never ever felt so bored and confused.They kept raining shells at me all i heard was the klingon song(the song of bouncing shells) ,i didnt even bothered with them.Was shooting at bbs.At the end of the match i finally spot them,nuked one with 2 salvos.Simply the feeling u get from this line is "what is shooting at me ,ohh its a rn cl in the smoke,nvm its a bb in front of me il deal with him later"

 

well said 100% agree the RN line is just a stain on this game they need removing no point in them at all

[Dirlettia]

As a pretty causal player, only 470ish PVP and 170 PVE games since CBT I am seriously disappointed with the RN line.  From the games I played with them my guide to them would be if you want to have a reasonable fun game in one dont bother with PVP and just do the Co-op PVE matches instead.  I do love he ship models though so will play them regardless of their flaws.

 

Edit:  A comment and video was made about the Fiji's inability to finish off a ship and people said it was acceptable that it couldnt do that, but how can that be acceptable when most challenges are to kill x number of ships?

[it3llig3nc3]

I wonder how many forum members writing into this thread can explain more or less correctly the difference in the AP shells on the RN CL line versus the other nations and point out the advantages and disadvantages of this difference.

 

[damo74]

Re: armour. It's a combination of no armour AND wider beam AND position of citadels. You're right Kirov has no armour but that usually means BB overpens all the time. Meanwhile I can citadel a Kirov with a Murmansk. Firing HE...

 

To be fair, Kirov is also a poor ship. I have it and don't like it one bit, but at least it has HE.

 

I dread the eventual arrival of RN battleships, god knows what stupidity Puti... I mean the devs have in store for the poor things.

[JapLance]

God, Danae was bad, but Emerald... I have no words for Emerald . Much worse than Furutaka or Karlsruhe in their first versions. It's going to be the first ship that I probably skip with free XP.

 

I wonder what the hell were they thinking when they decided to release these two.

[44smok]

Emerald has fabulous torps. If you manage to provoke enemy to rush your smoke that is.

[mjfred]

God, Danae was bad, but Emerald... I have no words for Emerald . Much worse than Furutaka or Karlsruhe in their first versions. It's going to be the first ship that I probably skip with free XP.

 

I wonder what the hell were they thinking when they decided to release these two.

 

Reminded me of the ships I enjoyed the least playing, (I will add the Kirov) and they all seem to be T4/5 cruisers.

I said it earlier but I think the problem is with some of the maps being too open and too small in these tiers. Along with bbs finding their legs, and dds still learning, it just makes the cruisers horrid to the point where they need over buffing.

When the Karlsruhe came out I was convinced it was an evil ploy to force players to spend free xp, but looking back I doubt it because wildly different cruisers keep hitting the same roadblock.

Danae and Emerald badly need some extra hp, but then again so does the Kirov.

[CavScorpion_2014]

 

To be fair, Kirov is also a poor ship. I have it and don't like it one bit, but at least it has HE.

 

I dread the eventual arrival of RN battleships, god knows what stupidity Puti... I mean the devs have in store for the poor things.

 

I actually like the Kirov, though it has a very one-way playstyle, If the RN cruisers had Kirov's arcs, I'd be satisfied!

[Smeggo]

Like some people said, from Tier 6 on I had playable ships.

I even manage to survive till the end by using foreign and my smoke, hopping and parking. It works, but to be honest, it is not really funny.

[Spuggy]

I have been enjoying these ships. Only been playing tier 3-5 so far.

 

My only gripe is how the repair ability isn't very useful on these ships. The problem is that the type of damage these ships tend to exclusively receive means that they can't repair any damage. I can never repair any damage taken.

 

If these ships could repair critical damage taken then they would be utterly golden

[von_Boeg]

First half week of stats:

 

nation	tier	name	players
				win	exp	damage
						caused
JP	1	Hashidate	86	51.85	433	5073
KM	1	Hermelin	223	50.13	423	4628
RN	1	Black Swan	622	50.3	399	5604
SN	1	Orlan	125	49.39	421	4480
US	1	Erie	111	49.23	391	3823
JP	2	Chikuma	98	49.88	435	11951
KM	2	Dresden	248	49.5	435	12336
RN	2	Weymouth	154	41.54	403	12117
SN	2	Novik	41	46.32	460	12646
US	2	Chester	110	45.46	398	9246
JP	3	Tenryu	687	47.43	510	16764
KM	3	Kolberg	1238	46.76	484	14806
RN	3	Caledon	2659	48.63	542	18258
SN	3	Bogatyr	478	51.14	542	22697
US	3	St. Louis	1341	50.61	512	20248
JP	4	Kuma	1011	48.48	568	18451
KM	4	Karlsruhe	1481	48.77	545	15046
RN	4	Danae	1795	50.84	690	21783
SN	4	Svietlana	795	48.47	603	19978
US	4	Phoenix	1072	48.17	565	17383
JP	5	Furutaka	926	47.44	707	18560
KM	5	Koenigsberg	2132	48.66	731	20301
RN	5	Emerald	681	49.4	946	25071
SN	5	Kirov	756	46.77	744	21567
US	5	Omaha	1149	47.48	691	18458

[SerPurr]

First half week of stats:

 

Clearly shows, as was reported by many, Danae being completely OP