Baltimore

[Syrchalis]

It's been some time since the changes to the ship that elevated it from T9 Trash to T9 Solid. I just got the ship myself (if you stalk my profile you will see I skipped Pensa/New Orleans because I ain't dealing with that crap) - and I'm surprised by the Baltimore.

 

What surprised me on the negative side is how your armor is completely garbage against BBs and you eat citadels through the front and back like angling isn't a thing. I also thought the USN cruisers were a bit faster. The AA isn't also quite what I expected, mostly because I haven't specced for it and I need hydro so much that I usually don't have defensive AA.

 

However, on the positive side - this thing carries games, holy hell. You completely deny a cap with radar, your HE shells work well against DDs, despite the shell arc and your AP is disgusting. Semi-angled cruiser? Might as well be broadside. Broadside battleship? Enjoy 7-10k every 8sec. 

 

I play it with reload module, because I rarely hear myself saying "damn, if I had 2km more range right now..." - the ship is only effective close range anyway and burning BBs long range is something you could do if you weren't that vulnerable and slow. The rudder of the Baltimore is great and dodging stuff is definitely easier than in other T9 cruisers.

 

My gameplay usually consists of denying cap and being super careful early on, because you die very easily in the first five minutes. Your value skyrockets the longer the game goes, because of hydro and radar you're the worst nightmare to DDs (without hydro you're still terrifying, but vulnerable). DD's value also goes up significantly if the game drags on, and since you can expose and get them killed early and hunt them down later, you WILL hard-carry games, just not by damage dealt.

I had okay games in the Baltimore, but no 200k+ games. Even my Kutuzov has 220k games. You still top the XP board because you will often have a lot of damage dealt to DDs and cruisers, which counts more than on BBs. Your damage is also not easily healable (DDs mostly don't have heal and cruisers you fight with AP), so 100k on your Baltimore could easily count much more than 200k on a Zao.

 

Overall a fine T9 cruiser, but hard to play. Definitely better in carrying than some of the more damage-farming cruisers.

 

P.S.: I know there is another Balti topic, but the first few pages are a year old, before it got reload buffs and are very misleading for a lot of people... mainly those who don't check the date and read topics from page 1.

[lup3s]

I liked playing the New Orleans (which was pre-buff), and I love playing the Baltimore! Awesome ship!

 

Excellent concealment, good AA power (AA range mod and AFT help a lot), American Piercing shells, radar, decent armour (to bow-tank enemy Cruisers), etc.

 

I love playing this ship aggressively, e.g. sailing to the centre of Epicenter on Tears of the Cruisers, just to f*ck enemy DDs with my radar.

 

:edit:

Because of the excellent concealment I like to refer to it as the "DD Baltimore" and you can do some funny stuff like getting 3 solo caps.

Spoiler

 

[Tomasberkut]

Hi.

I think you missed a lot with the pensacola and new orleans. The pensacola sits in a niche of being relatively low tier while posessing monstrous guns, very good manuverability. The new orleans has radar and excellent concealment with strong guns.  Both eat crusiers and dd's like musli, chewing them thoroughly. I fell in love with both.

 

The baltimore is a lot more clumsy and more visible. But those guns. My favorite part with both the balti and des moines are the catapult launchers. Who needs CV when you can lobe those ap monsters over islands with impunity. Islands are your friend. Its like having russian armor.

 

I never even bothered to install the range module. 14.4km is enough.
 

Every ship from the pensacola to DM cant deal with BB's. You just get wrecked. I find it hard to play with the DM cause its such a attention magnet. While the mentality with the pensacola is of "hey, look, a damage piniata" the DM is "I have to kill it before it lays eggs". Getting shot at every 4.8s reinforces that thought further.

 

Personaly I like the DM the most, NO a very close second and Pensacola/Baltimore third.

[VC381]

Really nice to have some positivity going around about this line Baltimore is definitely a fun ship and I completely agree that while other cruisers can feel easier to play and superficially appear stronger because they can rake in damage numbers, this is one ship that can go aggressive and make or break a game. Had some fantastic moments, like sailing circles around a North Carolina at such close range he couldn't keep his guns on me while I was farming him for citadels. It wasn't intentional and I instinctively hit "3", thought "uh oh, I don't HAVE torps" then quickly realised "ha ha ha, I don't NEED torps!"

 

Yes, reload mod all the way, you don't need the range, that isn't your job. Actually, playing Atlanta recently without AFT has actually made me realise the value of having a short gun range (you can get un-spotted easier with the new gun bloom mechanics). I've actually been very tempted to remove the base range modification from a few ships (US CAs included) to see how well I can leverage this on other ships. I almost never fight at max range anyway.

 

One more thing. I know most people will play this ship all stealth and Radar, but I would highly recommend giving the rudder shift module a try instead of the concealment module. Detection range is still pretty good with just CE+camo, you are using islands anyway for most of your cap approaches with radar, and that rudder shift module really patches up one of the ships few weaknesses. Sure, she's not as agile as a Pensacola or NO, but it still helps a lot depending on how you play. It's not a 100% dodge tank, but you have good armour, HP pool and heal so it's a bit of a "hybrid" tank that still gives you a lot more mileage in survivability. And speed flag is your friend.

[lup3s]

8 hours ago, VC381 said:

One more thing. I know most people will play this ship all stealth and Radar, but I would highly recommend giving the rudder shift module a try instead of the concealment module. Detection range is still pretty good with just CE+camo, you are using islands anyway for most of your cap approaches with radar, and that rudder shift module really patches up one of the ships few weaknesses. Sure, she's not as agile as a Pensacola or NO, but it still helps a lot depending on how you play. It's not a 100% dodge tank, but you have good armour, HP pool and heal so it's a bit of a "hybrid" tank that still gives you a lot more mileage in survivability. And speed flag is your friend.

 

I would highly recommend the concealment ship upgrade, because it gets your concealment down to almost your radar range; meaning if you get spotted, you wait a couple of seconds, pop radar, and detect the DD that is spotting you.

While I understand the benefits of the rudder shift module, it's (in my opinion) a less preferable choice than the concealment module (exactly for those situations where a DD is spotting you).

On the Baltimore: concealment >>> rudder shift.

[VC381]

Up to playstyle. Rudder shift is more versatile when you aren't hunting DDs, and even if you turn radar on as soon as you're spotted and spot the DD back, that won't save you from the inevitable incoming BB salvos. Survival first. If I'm spotted in a bad place I prefer to dodge and reposition than try to retaliate with radar at the edge of its range where it can get wasted easily (your guns are probably not pointing the right way and you usually can't rely on your team to follow up either in a quick-reaction situation like that). I save radar for more guaranteed kill situations, like denying smoke when I already know where their DD is but I want to make sure I am so close first that he has no possible escape when I hit radar.

[piritskenyer]

Pensacola is not crap 

[Tomasberkut]

I found my US CA's best with the power modification. But im a island camping monkey rat (R). Concealment + power mod. Ambushing is really powerfull on US CA's, but one has to be highly map aware to excell at this.

My whole game plan is always the same: find an island and abuse it. Unless theres a friendly team playing US DD. Now thats a match made in heaven.

[jss78]

I'm very fond of all the USN CA's. These days (after the buffs they received) I feel there's a very well-balanced progression in them.

 

New Orleans is very similar to Pensacola, but a little better protected, has radar, and better concealment.

Baltimore is superficially quite different, but I still play it like a beefy and somewhat sluggish New Orleans. I tend to stay at or close to concealment/radar range, set up ambushes.
 

Des Moines gets  worse concealment but longer gun range and monstrous DPM. I tend to play her from further out than the Baltimore.

 

I feel they're roughly equally good for their respective tiers, and my enjoyment in them is basically dictated by the MM. Pensacola is very commonly top tier, and it's a strong ship in that environment. New Orleans gets the short end of the stick here. It's a good ship at T8 -- but not necessarily in all those T10 games. With Baltimore and Des Moines it gets progressively more enjoyable.

[DEFCON_1]

You wouldn't be so surprised by the lack or protection if you had not skipped the two previous ships, or at least the one. Hell you would have actually felt an improvement.

[deadly_if_swallowed]

21 hours ago, Tomasberkut said:

I found my US CA's best with the power modification. But im a island camping monkey rat (R). Concealment + power mod.

 

Where can I get this mod? :O

[Lin3]

23 hours ago, piritskenyer said:

Pensacola is not crap 

It just has the 31st out of 34 highest win rate of all tier 7 ships over the last week on Warships Today.

 

With the 3 worse ships being Colorado, Haguro, Ranger.

 

 

Coming back to the Batimore, it does look grim stock, with the DPM looking particularly poor compared to fully upgraded. Tricky decision for me. Do I use a load of free XP to unlock the more rapid firing guns, or do I keep saving for HMS Nelson?

[rnat]

16 minutes ago, deadly_if_swallowed said:

 

Where can I get this mod? :O

Tool Time.

 

And the Pepsi isn't bad. Just extremely unforgiving.

Combine that with the atrocious stock-grind and the quite jarring shift from the Cleve and you can understand why ppl struggle.

[piritskenyer]

16 hours ago, Lin3 said:

It just has the 31st out of 34 highest win rate of all tier 7 ships over the last week on Warships Today.

 

With the 3 worse ships being Colorado, Haguro, Ranger.

 

 

 

 

It's weak, it's not crap. It had some debilitating drawbacks, true, but it has never been as bad as people tried to make it out to be. 

 

Colorado isn't trash per se either if we're to believe good players, it's situational.

[Robber_Baron]

I've only played six games in Pensacola so far, but I'm not disappointed at all. I think US cruisers will be my main line the next months. 

[Taliesn]

4 hours ago, piritskenyer said:

 

It's weak, it's not crap. It had some debilitating drawbacks, true, but it has never been as bad as people tried to make it out to be. 

 

Colorado isn't trash per se either if we're to believe good players, it's situational.

 

They are both tier VII which helps. They are ok if not uptiered. New Orleans on the other hand...

[Mr_Tayto]

On 11/09/2017 at 3:32 PM, piritskenyer said:

Pensacola is not crap 

Absolutely.

 

So far Pensa is in my top 5 most fun ships, I even bought permacamo and put a new captain in her. 

 

My divmate @Bear_Necessities says the same thing; that he skipped because it's rubbish. It most certainly is not, as the Ashes of many burned BBs and cita-murdered CAs will attest. 

 

I'm on NO now and I'm finding her a fair bit harder to play, but still fun. For me, only the RN CLs feel more vulnerable upon spotting than NO. 

[tsounts]

I've had very good times in Cleveland, Pensacola and New Orleans for some strange reason.  I happily got Baltimore yesterday (she has a 16 skill captain) but somehow I got fucked up in most matches, either by RNG or by totally useless teams such as dds smoking themselves up and not spotting or bbs running away at the first sight of enemy.  (those matches were also with her stock guns)
However, after fully upgrading her she became more manageable and effective.  Still missing DE though.  
 

[mirage77]

Sry but catapult launchers?? What are you talking about? The Atlanta has catapult launchers, the Baltimore doenst. The angle are average, nothing special. That plus the slow shells is one of the main reasons i hate this ship.

The HE shell is almost useless and while the AP is great it only works at close range.

The  radar is great, of course, but no easy to use. You need to be very close to the cap. Baltimores using radar close the a cap are a very easy kill.

The maneuverability is nothing special and yes the concealment is great, not the best,  but great.

Im not being a troll, just im really hating this ship and i could use some advice.

 

 

 

[deadly_if_swallowed]

13 hours ago, mirage77 said:

Sry but catapult launchers?? What are you talking about? The Atlanta has catapult launchers, the Baltimore doenst. The angle are average, nothing special. That plus the slow shells is one of the main reasons i hate this ship.

 

Baltimore's stock guns have quite fast and flat shells but longer reload. Upgraded guns have faster reload and Des Moines shells. Pick your poison.

The reason why they don't feel like catapults that much is because you usually slot the reload mod in slot 3 while Des Moines is better off with the range mod. But they do have the same slow (but powerful) AP shells with the high arcs.

[mirage77]

 I dont have the des Moines, so i cant compare to it. But i do have the Atlanta and there is a big diference. In Atlanta you can hide behind am island and they cant shot back at you ( most of the time). In Baltimore, if you can shot over an island most of the time the enemy cant shot back at you. Same as Ibuki. I cant see no diference between the both. Do you consider the Ibuki a ship with high angles shells?

Thanks for the help

[rnat]

Both get floaty arcs at longer ranges (i.e. close to their max range).

If you can't shoot over islands chances are you've either picked and unsuitable spot or you are too close to the coast.

Cleve and Atlanta can get away with being much closer, in the Balti and Ibuki you might want to leave a little more water in between.

[mirage77]

Yes and thats my point. Almost all ships are like that close to their max range. Atlanta, Cleve etc, are diferent because they can get away being closer to islands.

Thats why i call them catapult launchers. Because they have floaty arcs at medium ranges.

If you call shipp that can only do that at max range, you have to call almost all ships catapult launchers.

 At least thats my opinion.

[rnat]

While they are not catapult launchers (US-DD guns and Cleve are more or less on the extreme end of that spectrum) the Baltimore e.g. usually can use significantly more terrain to shoot over while being closer than e.g. a Roon or a Donskoi. It's all a matter of degree and the Baltimore is considerably more floaty than basically all of it's peers (when measured at the same range)

[pra3y]

Just got the Baltimore and I'm enjoying it. Free-exped the modules so I'm not playing it stock. I'm playing it with the range mod (yes i can hear the shock and horror) but I find it pretty worth it since I get more options while engaging the enemy and the 10s reload is fast enough for me.