The best cruiser at Tier 7 ?

[VC381]

Although Martel is the only T8 cruiser I haven't played, looking at the stats it seems she's power-creeped the tier quite a bit. Baltimore coming down isn't going to help. While I'm personally OK with Hipper I do have to wonder, given how widely disliked she is, if there are buffs incoming.

[Paimentaja]

3 hours ago, VC381 said:

Although Martel is the only T8 cruiser I haven't played, looking at the stats it seems she's power-creeped the tier quite a bit. Baltimore coming down isn't going to help. While I'm personally OK with Hipper I do have to wonder, given how widely disliked she is, if there are buffs incoming.

Yeah, I do think she needs buffs. Maybe reload buff or something. While I manage to perform quite well with it, it still is'nt in par with the others. Personally I liked the Martel a lot more than NO. But we are now carried away since this was about T7's. :)

[RAMJB]

Gotta say tho...Hipper has it's moments. But they are once in a blue moon...

 

Survived (alone) an almost nonstop engagement at knife fight vs an aigle, chapayev, lyon and bismarck in the chokepoint on the lower right side of B cap. Aigle and Chapayev were first (they were hiding in Aigle's smoke when I turned on hydro). Lyon and Bismarck were some 12km away, saw me and thought "hey, food!".

Aigle fell to secondaries, Chapayev was citadelled to kingdom come. Lyon and Bismarck charged me while I was reversing towards them. They were pretty much full health. I was maybe 25% left...but I was rear on towards them and reversing while giving autobounce angles. Lyon came first and died a pretty humilliating death eating the whole lot of my starboard side torps. You'd think Bismarck would've taken the hint, but nope. Charging he came too, I was able to hold long enough for my torps to reload (there was no question of trying to shift the ship to use the port side torps, there was no space for it in such restricted waters), and he ate 4 out of 6. Still not enough to kill him from full health, but a severe blow anyway. Bless Hipper's 27mm bow and rear :P.

Best part of this is that it ended in a win just because of points. When I died what was left was an Aigle and the CV in our side vs the Bismarck ,nuremberg and the enemy CV. We were 200 points ahead. You'd think the Aigle would've run away and just be happy with winning. Nope...he charged the bismarck and died leaving our CV alone vs the enemy CV ,a nuremberg and the Bismarck. I actually thought we were going to lose (I had not noticed my increasing damage counter, the Bismarck was flooding). And let's say I didn't have much hope in the CV...because he actually dropped behind me when I was trying to hold the lyon and Bismarck...and one of his torps actually hit me (while the rest came nowhere close to hit them)

Thankfully the Bismarck flooded to death and the game ended before the nuremberg could kill our CV. The team came -><- this close to throw away this game. Seen it before (I had a game like that with Nagato. 210k damage, 6 kills, we lost anyway).

Upon reflection it's quite clear Hipper's 27mm armor was the only reason I was able to stay alive for that long. Neither the Bismarck nor the Lyon could overmatch it, and that allowed me to tank them an impressive time when I was on so low health to begin with. And that is something no other T8 cruiser would've allowed me to do, Hipper is the only one with that armor. As I said, the ship is not powerless, it has strenghts but they're very situational. Even so, and said that, I'll have to concede that when the situation is right for those strenghts to shine (which isn't common), this thing can be a beast.

all in all I'm very happy with this one :P



Spoiler below with the other screenies.

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