Are low tier BB just crap?

[isaneng]

Ok, I have nothing above Tier 7 on any account, so my experience is very limited. I have only played BB up to T6 with Fuso.

 

They're rubbish.

 

Am I just being a bad player, do they suddenly get better?

 

Defend the BB honour gentlemen!!

 

[aboomination]

Low tier BB (tier 3/4) are crap - otherwise there would be no new cruiser players in the game 

[Crow_Eschatologist]

Eh? I hate playing battleships and I'm relatively rubbish with them, but they are easy mode with the exception of a couple of low tier stinkers (Kawachi I'm looking at you!) - Fuso is a lovely battleship, although my favourite so far is probably the Warspite. The only thing battleships need to fear is their own incompetence, carriers (in some cases) and other battleships.

[Sturmtiger_304]

They get...slightly better.

 

But from the NC to the Iowa was like jumping to the moon with accuracy. Keep grinding until the Yamato, it has the best accuracy of any BB in the game.

[Crow_Eschatologist]

1 minute ago, aboomination said:

Low tier BB (tier 3/4) are crap - otherwise there would be no new cruiser players in the game 

IDK, Kaiser and Orion both felt plenty strong to me.

[DFens_666]

Pretty hard to say how do u define good? Lowtier BBs struggle against DDs, but i think thats ok, and on hightiers they are just too strong against DDs.

Had to look at what BBs u actually played so far:

Orion: Totaly Overpowered - cant say anything else. U can shoot HE at anything all day long and get good results

Myogi: Pretty crap, and powercreeped especially by Orion f.e. 3x2 inaccurate turrets just wont cut it.

Iron Duke: Like Orion but with worse MM. At T7 i think they (RN BBs) start to get "better" (aka borderline OP) again.

Kongo and the clones: Good ship, unfurtunately has been powercreeped aswell, lately by Giulio Cesare.

 

Fuso is a good ship on T6. Lots of guns with so-so dispersion

Bayern same tier has awkward guns sometimes, which may yield no results. The closer u get the better.

New Mexico havent played so much in here, but also lots of guns with shotgun dispersion sometimes.

 

Hightier gameplay changes drastically, also for BBs. BBs have a harder time punished each other on lower tiers, than they have on higher tiers (depends a bit on which nation u play)

Lets say IJN BBs are the last BBs which can be citadelled reliable. US BBs are harder to Citadel but its possible. RN BBs are very hard to citadel imo. And german BBs are almost immune to getting citadelled.

[Migulaitor]

British line is broken from tier 4 (Not playedr tier 3)

The other 3 lines from tier 5, maybe powercrept by other BBs but Kongo still outrun everything and the other 2 are tanky.

Only rusky BB is also broken.

Try to play the british cruisers on those tiers 

[isaneng]

Ok, they gave me Orion and ID on one account. HE spam seems good.

Kongo was 'Meh', Fuso not bad.

Wyoming,...  shudder

 

NY,...  not convinced....

 

Deutsche, not tried yet.

 

[aboomination]

42 minutes ago, Crow_Eschatologist said:

IDK, Kaiser and Orion both felt plenty strong to me.

Kaiser got nerfed, Orion should be nerfed.

[Deckeru_Maiku]

1 hour ago, isaneng said:

... Fuso.

 

...rubbish.

 

 

you're doing it wrong...

git gud!

[SmartassNoob]

Are you guys trying to be funny? Nassau is one of the best ships in the game. The Wyoming can also kick so much [edited], if you can figure out when to angle and when to use your broadside. I've never played South Carolina, but at its tier range, it seems to have very accurate long range firepower.

 

The only bad low tier BBs are Kawachi and Myogi and any other that's used by someone who doesn't know how to play them.

 

Really anyone who has trouble with BBs under tier 7 just has to learn to play (except Kawachi and Myogi, because those are just bad).

[ColonelPete]

1 hour ago, isaneng said:

Am I just being a bad player, ...

 

Yes. But do not worry, most new players are and many veterans do not get past that stage.

[Major_Damage225]

Nassau + 19 point skipper = quite a lil troll 

 

Edit: Fat Albert is a troll ship too 

[Akula971]

They perform poorly for game balance, but if you keep a captain in them, and get more skill points they can be more fun. Sometimes its more fun to improve your captain skills, and your own instead of purely grinding. There are so many mid-high tier BB players with low skills and low skill captains with predictable results.

[Riselotte]

When I opened this topic, I though we were talking about tier III, but Fuso...

 

Tier II Mikasa is a joke. It's pretty much for collectors or for those who like to have a real challenge.

Tier III can be frustrating and in Kawachi, it really is, because Kawachi is utter garbage. The others are somewhat better. South Carolina is not exactly good, but at tier III, making it work is not too hard. Accuracy on all tier III is bad, but just aim and wait for the citadels. Don't fear getting closer, the ship turns ok and most cruisers lack torpedos. Also, grinding through it isn't hard. Bellerophon I never played, but I heard it's decent. Nassau is great. I mean, unlike the SC and Kawachi, where armour is pretty much a joke, the Nassau is extremely hard to kill for its tier and it has a ton of fast-firing guns that can just rip apart enemy ships.

Tier IV has as worst ship Myougi, which I still liked. It has DPM issues, but it has speed, range (don't rely on it though) and when you hit, you can deal pretty good damage. The AP rounds are the worse IJN AP rounds, but against ships that typically have no armour, it's fine. The firing angles are pretty good too, so the armour is not too exposed. Wyoming is the opposite, because you get the DPM, you just don't get speed. And firing angles are terrible. But I'd consider it a pretty good ship for tier IV and any cruiser should fear its ability to hand out devastating strikes. Kaiser is also not bad, having decent speed, incredible armour and fast-firing guns. Orion is OP.

Tier V is where I'd say BBs really start to become good, because the worst of the bunch likely is New York and I'd still not say it's a bad ship. Just a slow one. Iron Duke is an Orion with better AA and secondaries (not that secondaries matter much on lower tiers), but still great, because of that lulzy RN HE. König is a Kaiser with a better turret arrangement that finally allows to bring all 5 turrets on a target in more than some narrow obscure angles and while the guns are only 305 mm, being fast firing and accurate, you can do a lot against cruisers. Kongou has been well-liked since it was introduced as the earliest tier V BB and to me it is still my favourite tier V, because it is just etremely versatile as a battlecruiser.

Tier VI is a tier where I frankly would think there is no bad BB anymore. New Mexico and Fusou both have 12 gun broadsides with 14-inch guns that can delete cruisers and at times battleships, Bayern and Queen Elizabeth have 15-inch guns that can be used even against angled BBs and are both quite well-armoured.

 

Fusou especially is far from crap. It's likely the best tier VI BB, because the ships has decent speed, the best range (I'd not advertise to make sniping a standard practice, but I do find that it helps in the opening minutes and also when uptiered and you don't want to be the closest thing the enemy can shoot at. Also, it can be pretty lulzy to pop seaplane and devastate a briefly spotted carrier in the enemy spawn point with a salvo), a slightly faster than standard reload and hp that would be appropriate even for tier VII.The armour belt is terrible, but honestly, you should not show broadside and because you should angle anyway, the 229 mm of belt are sufficient and I kind of appreciate the IRL dated armour scheme of the ship over USN all-or-nothing armour that allows for far easier penetrations everywhere else. Killing cruisers in a Fusou should be easy. Killing DDs can be done too. And while Bayern and QE have better guns for killing BBs, Fusou can just wreck the superstructure or fire HE if the enemy is angled and there's no chance of them turning to show a better angle.

[Synth_FG]

Hell no

I have so much fun with Billy ruffian it's unreal 

and Warspite is my favourite BB of the lot 

[wilkatis_LV]

Low tier BBs generally are bad, with some exceptions of course, yeah. That's tiers 3 and 4.

From tiers 5+ BBs tend to bee ok-to-good, with some exceptions, of course.

 

Good low tiers include Nassau, Kaiser, St Louis, Ishizuchi, Orion, and some premium ones that I think aren't available anymore

 

Some bad high-tier ones are ships like New York, Iron Duke, QE, Monarch and some IJN premiums

 

As for the IJN line that you mentioned - from Kongo up to at least Amagi they are great, on Izumo and Yamato opinions differ.

[Riselotte]

7 minutes ago, wilkatis_LV said:

Low tier BBs generally are bad, with some exceptions of course, yeah. That's tiers 3 and 4.

From tiers 5+ BBs tend to bee ok-to-good, with some exceptions, of course.

 

Good low tiers include Nassau, Kaiser, St Louis, Ishizuchi, Orion, and some premium ones that I think aren't available anymore

 

Some bad high-tier ones are ships like New York, Iron Duke, QE, Monarch and some IJN premiums

 

As for the IJN line that you mentioned - from Kongo up to at least Amagi they are great, on Izumo and Yamato opinions differ.

St. Louis is, despite its playstyle, actually a cruiser. Also, I'd not consider the QE bad, nor would I consider her worse in her tier than Gneisenau in hers. Or the Colorado.

 

Lastly, I wouldn't say Wyoming/Arkansas Beta is a bad ship. At worst they are decent.

[wilkatis_LV]

1 hour ago, Riselotte said:

St. Louis is, despite its playstyle, actually a cruiser. Also, I'd not consider the QE bad, nor would I consider her worse in her tier than Gneisenau in hers. Or the Colorado.

 

Lastly, I wouldn't say Wyoming/Arkansas Beta is a bad ship. At worst they are decent.

St Louis was the best of the original 2 tier 2 BBs, bcuz she is better than both - South Carolina and Kawachi Didn't she even have more hp than they do?

 

QE was a personal hatred (thought she's going to be the lines lowpoint till I got to Monarch). Haven't played Gneis just yet, I do quite enjoy Colorado.

 

I liked Wyomings gun performance, but all too often I found the battle just moving its position faster than a full speed Wyo could. Or maybe you just went to the wrong flank. Most times when you get to actually engage enemies chances are your team is already starting to lose and you are fighting whoever has broken through the lines and catching up to you as you can't run away. A rather big flaw I'd say.

[Riselotte]

2 minutes ago, wilkatis_LV said:

St Louis was the best of the original 2 tier 2 BBs, bcuz she is better than both - South Carolina and Kawachi Didn't she even have more hp than they do?

 

QE was a personal hatred (thought she's going to be the lines lowpoint till I got to Monarch). Haven't played Gneis just yet, I do quite enjoy Colorado.

 

I liked Wyomings gun performance, but all too often I found the battle just moving its position faster than a full speed Wyo could. Or maybe you just went to the wrong flank. Most times when you get to actually engage enemies chances are your team is already starting to lose and you are fighting whoever has broken through the lines and catching up to you as you can't run away. A rather big flaw I'd say.

St. Louis has a good chance killing a same tier BB. At least against Kawachi and SC. The main issue is that a St. Louis pretty much can spam a BB with tons of HE shells till it dies, while BB accuracy is troll. Add to that that the St. Louis has longer range and better speed and you can guess why the greatest balancing factor at tier III was that most folks wouldn't know to just steam away and kite your BB to death.

 

QE was my personal hatred in the Bayern. The ship has worse AP shells, but compared to Bayern, it has better accuracy, it is no less tanky when angled and that thing can just fire HE instead, if both are angled. It isn't super high fire chance like the ships preceeding it and those following it, but it still is more effective than a Bayern trying to shoot HE back. And Bayern was a pretty solid ship.

 

Gneisenau is, in my opinion, the worst of the German BBs. It isn't complete garbage, but it is far too one-dimensional in its close-range aggression. With most other German BBs, you know your damage at range is mediocre, but you can still try to get at ok ranges of like 10 km and be a real pain to deal with. With Gneisenau, given your main battery is 6 German derp guns, the DPM isn't there at range and what you get for it is a ton of armour (which is mostly useful against lower tiers) and 6 km range torpedos. Which however often means the sole way of dealing with a threat is to push to torp range to kill them, which you need to consider very carefully, because if you push at the wrong moment, the enemy will just prioritise you, because while they'll happily ignore you as a threat beyond 15 km, if you start closing in, everyone will try to neutralise the threat of torpedos. Fun times if you then get a torpedo launcher disabled. The ship, like the Bayern before it, felt not exactly too strong compared to for example Fusou and Nagato, but they both were bearable and one can get good games. It's just hard to get the Gneisenau working.

 

I'm certainly not an authority on the Colorado, having never played it, but from my experiences playing against it in both the Nagato and Gneisenau, it feels not exactly too amazing. The 8 16-inch guns are no joke, but Nagato has also such armament, but Nagato has way more hp and a bit more speed. And as a Gneisenau, the Colorado was pretty much my favourite enemy tier VII BB, because other Germans carry torps, RN can HE spam me to death, Nagato can still try to kite, but Colorado with its 21 knots is just not able to kill a Gneisenau closing in, before it gets murdered with torpedos and point-blank 38 cm fire.

 

I'm surprised you list the 21 knots as a major drawback on Wyoming, when you have that speed all the way to the Colorado (except SC on 18 knots), which faces larger maps and faster enemies.

[BrusilovX]

Stock Fuso is bad - worse than most ships when stock.

 

[Riselotte]

20 minutes ago, BrusilovX said:

Stock Fuso is bad - worse than most ships when stock.

 

Well, there was once a time when stock IJN hulls were the original WWI hulls, with (close to) no AA, low gun elevation (meaning garbage range, because pagoda masts and gun elevation to get more range were interwar upgrades) and of course snail speed, because engine upgrade needs to be researched too. Fun vs carriers.

 

I mean stock, a lot of battleships are pretty meh. But we usually don't measure ships by how they perform stock, because then the sole decent BBs would likely be Tier X and premium.

[wilkatis_LV]

43 minutes ago, Riselotte said:

St. Louis has a good chance killing a same tier BB. At least against Kawachi and SC. The main issue is that a St. Louis pretty much can spam a BB with tons of HE shells till it dies, while BB accuracy is troll. Add to that that the St. Louis has longer range and better speed and you can guess why the greatest balancing factor at tier III was that most folks wouldn't know to just steam away and kite your BB to death.

 

QE was my personal hatred in the Bayern. The ship has worse AP shells, but compared to Bayern, it has better accuracy, it is no less tanky when angled and that thing can just fire HE instead, if both are angled. It isn't super high fire chance like the ships preceeding it and those following it, but it still is more effective than a Bayern trying to shoot HE back. And Bayern was a pretty solid ship.

 

Gneisenau is, in my opinion, the worst of the German BBs. It isn't complete garbage, but it is far too one-dimensional in its close-range aggression. With most other German BBs, you know your damage at range is mediocre, but you can still try to get at ok ranges of like 10 km and be a real pain to deal with. With Gneisenau, given your main battery is 6 German derp guns, the DPM isn't there at range and what you get for it is a ton of armour (which is mostly useful against lower tiers) and 6 km range torpedos. Which however often means the sole way of dealing with a threat is to push to torp range to kill them, which you need to consider very carefully, because if you push at the wrong moment, the enemy will just prioritise you, because while they'll happily ignore you as a threat beyond 15 km, if you start closing in, everyone will try to neutralise the threat of torpedos. Fun times if you then get a torpedo launcher disabled. The ship, like the Bayern before it, felt not exactly too strong compared to for example Fusou and Nagato, but they both were bearable and one can get good games. It's just hard to get the Gneisenau working.

 

I'm certainly not an authority on the Colorado, having never played it, but from my experiences playing against it in both the Nagato and Gneisenau, it feels not exactly too amazing. The 8 16-inch guns are no joke, but Nagato has also such armament, but Nagato has way more hp and a bit more speed. And as a Gneisenau, the Colorado was pretty much my favourite enemy tier VII BB, because other Germans carry torps, RN can HE spam me to death, Nagato can still try to kite, but Colorado with its 21 knots is just not able to kill a Gneisenau closing in, before it gets murdered with torpedos and point-blank 38 cm fire.

 

I'm surprised you list the 21 knots as a major drawback on Wyoming, when you have that speed all the way to the Colorado (except SC on 18 knots), which faces larger maps and faster enemies.

 

The only 2 things I liked about QE were her sAP and her turning speed. That ship literally turns on the spot, I'm willing to say that it's close to impossible to autodrop her with a single CV TB squadron.

 

I have the Bayern, and thanks to the Bismark campaign I have that one too, so I don't really need to grind the Gneisnau. Still want to get it, but not exactly looking forward to it especially because of his laughably small armament of 6x 381s with the infamous german accuracy.

 

Speed was issue on NY aswell, but that ship has way more issues than just that. On NewMex I never felt like it's a massive problem. I guess as ships get more health and range those engagements get longer and more stationary letting you to do more. As for Colorado... the only time when speed seems to be an issue is when the whole enemy team lemmingtrains the other flank. Also she has a heal that's 2nd best being overshadowed only by Nelson at her tier. So basically she has 4th best heal in game (Conq > Lion > Nelson > Colorado). And those guns are damn accurate and heavy hitting.

[Lin3]

Orion at tier 4 is OP.

 

Easy to get consistent 70k to 80k damage battles in it.

 

High chance Orion will get nerfed in the future as wargaming have a policy of keeping the best premium ships head and shoulders better than the best silver ships. And Orion, at the moment, is competitive with the OP Nikolai.

[Cmdr_Kouta]

Well untill T5 its can be tricky and harsh, yet after that you get Kongou, she is still best on T5, T6 is dominated by the sheer firepower of Fusou and T7 obviously the aim of Nagato can kill anything (try her in Traning room, AI is decent enogh to double as a moderate player, you will see that Nagato can take on some T10 and most of the T9 BB in the game herselfe if handled well(same goes for Fusou albeit its hard against those 16 inch shells, they can penetrate her armor (thou historical inaccurate) from most angles). For USN well, its a game of Spray and Pray, get the range upgrade and start shooting everything and hope for a hit or two. GB obviously decide for one side of the map, your turret traverse is BAD, even worse than on Yamato (so it feels). German well, side guns. Their all about Sub armament and countering anything smaller than they are (thus they are all exelent cruiser/DD hunter yet against BB well, lets just say germans guns suck at that)

So well, starting from T5 you get quiet the decent BB's already. Most kongou user i know are playing way above their Tier level in them and dish out damage that rivals T10 (because they know how and when to aim at something and ofc. because of the range they have(IJN has best range+accuracy, USN tends to have nothing of value other than turret traverse (wich can be quiet usefull), GB has their armor and later on HE and KM has subguns (guess French will go with their quad guns as well as competable range to IJN(yes.. there are pictures in the net of the Alscae and France already showing of their guns and equipment.. and i am not amused about them WG!(In reality, the only ship with comparable range to IJN's best gun was an Italian BB althou it was never tested if she could reach the 42 Km, she was claimed to be able to) Same for Fusou and Nagato. Cant say realy much about the others, i mostly skipped them to fulfill my goal in obtaining all T10 ships (save IJN, there its all or nothing(damn i was happy about getting the Katori finaly.. the last ship missing thats not permanent like the shinonome as campaign revard)