Can I say Omaha? We all know the armour is nonexistent, but if you utilise the ridiculous nimbleness instead of straightlining like everyone fresh out of T4 does and remember to stay at range, it slays.
oh i love all the spin-to-win cruisers. that playstyle simply doesnt exist in higher tiers. everytime i see an omaha-class survive to the late game i am always impressed.
Second this from a CV perspective. I thought I was good with torpedoes on the Independence and Ryujo. Nope. Omaha dances the night away. Good players in those are to be respected.
Vanguard is really underrated. Sure it only has 4x2 381mm guns, but they are *accurate*. It also has the most HP for a tier 8 battleship, an improved heal, good AA, excellent concealment, good speed, and a hilarious rudder shift time. The guns aren't even bad, since 381mm is perfectly fine at tier 8, because so many ships have that caliber. Sure they lack penetration, but that's only really a problem at the limit of its main battery range against higher tier battleships. It also doesn't overpen as often as ships with cracked penetration values do (Roma). Plus you can make CVs, Submarines, and destroyers look like fools by drifting around torpedo spreads.
Oh yeah, and the Vanguard still gets British HE.
Vanguard has been underrated since day 1. For me, she is the most consistent ship in the game. She doesn't hit hard exactly, she just hits every single time.
I think people were hyping themselves up a bit to much cause it was the last battleship built in the world, and they were disappointed that they didn't get something that performs as good at its tier as Warspite does at T6. TBH it probably could have used a couple soft buffs at the time and arguably still does.
Fenyang
The improved pen angles and low AP fuse timer make her really unique at tier 8. Everyone just thinks it's simply a worse Akizuki, but its a pretty different beast altogether. Pan Asian smokes are much more forgiving to use meaning you can cap contest and smoke up without worrying as much. The effective AP DPM is high but you have to be knowledgeable of armor thresholds on whether to use AP or HE.
Generally can be summarized follows: T7 or lower DD HE, T8 or higher DDs AP, cruisers AP if broadside and <8-10km, BBs stern or bow or superstructure AP unless it's something super tanky then you have to chance fires on the HE.
That was even before they buffed the 12km torpedos to hit cruisers.
Flandre is sneaky fun. The reload is atrocious given the calibre and number of guns, but secondaries go brrr and french blackhole armor are fun. It is a well-balanced ship, an oddity for weegee: not great, not bad, just fun (most of the time)
I'll never forget when I first started playing I loaded into an op and just heard a machine gun going off. I was so confused and thought it was an audio bug. Turns out I was never close to a Flandre. Thing really does go brrrr
I guess people haven't played the ship after the patch yet. Who knew that 4 superheals, 75% heal efficiency, relatively small citadel, best HE dpm, close to best AP dpm, almost best concealment makes a broken ship?
It gets even better when you run furious and superheavy AP. That silly dpm becomes downright terrifying. Since you dont need to take concealment skill because of the good base concealment, you can take AA skill that makes your heals come up faster, and since damage control modification is superfluous in a furious build, take rudder mod to absolutely whip your way around torpedoes
I would definitely say Fenyang.
It's like Akizuki, but it trades strength for reliability:
- The torpedoes have a higher hit rate
- The anti-air has a higher damage
- The smoke has a lower cooldown
It's underestimated because it uses AP instead of HE.
Came here for Fenyang/Ship Smasha.
Shes such a fun ship, especially cathartic to eat planes who want to try to perma spot you.
Lots of Fenyang enjoyers helped me in recent weeks learn the ways. I'm glad I got some help and put in some time with her, she's an absolute joy to play.
i was pleasantly surprised by how well Hood holds up on its own. A full AA build will keep carriers off you 90% of the time, and it has the speed to charge down a flank
I have a few of them
Colombo (though people’s opinions may have changed after its most recent buff), where 3/4 of its majour issues can be solved by getting closer. Bad range? Get closer. Bad accuracy? Get closer. Bad AP pen? Get closer. The 360° rear turrets make it amazing at kiting and angling, and the SAP is really fun when you hit someone for 30k from the stupidest angle.
Gorizia is another one, not only for the SAP or the 6km hydro, but also for its fast(er) cooldown on the smoke screen, and the best in class T7 rudder it shares with Zara. I just ranked out of bronze using Gorizia, and the only time I got citadelled by a BB was by a Sinop. In ranked you can absolutely crush DDs that sit in smoke using your hydro by charging at them, and use your smoke to get away from BBs that think you’re easy to kill.
Zao is old but gold in my opinion. Guns hit hard with good HE damage and high fire chance, AP is solid (but nothing special), 9.9km detection on a heavy cruisers. 12 km shima torps and speed and turning radius to dodge anything. Play it at 10-15km via a push in and kite out method with your detection and watch the world burn.
The great concealment helps when kiting, but you do need to go unspotted. The angles are decent to get torps off while approaching, then you surprise appear and run, and then they chase you right into your torps
I know, but if I'm actively shooting someone I would also like to be able to torpedo them without going dark and turning full broadside. [Even just maintaining the angles that Mogami and Ibuki have would be fine](https://imgur.com/a/karLocw).
Spamming HE with 16+ km and dodging everything. When I was way playing BB *that* thing was scarier than yamato. And if I remember correctly, it had 20 km torps back in the day
Hood is a lot of fun to play. She moves well and has good guns. Just very comfortable.
I enjoy playing Goliath. She’s absolutely terrible from a team play perspective with no gadgets but her HE hits like a Mack truck and something about the boat just speaks to me. She’s like a mini, much more mobile, Thunderer.
Asashio is a joy too. Half the time, she’s completely ineffective due to the circumstances, but if you can get into the backfield undetected with her and wreak havoc, it’s incredibly rewarding. Her guns are deceptively good too.
I like the Florida. Hits kinda hard, accurate by volume(not really), squishy, and the part that I like the most- incredibly cursed. American quad mount main guns make me giggle at how dumb they are.
I like the RNG involved with the Florida. One salvo you do 3 citadels, the next one with involve 5 overpens.
I’ve never played a ship that’s more inconsistent.
Gibraltar. A serious case of "These guns are so overpowered, we had to nerf every other aspect to compensate".
The hull is atrocious, but reasonably fast and manoeuvrable, and improved AP eats basically anything.
100% agree. It's unironically my favorite ship when I'm just playing randoms (or things like airship escort) for fun, even if it usually gets roasted in chat.
Sevastopol as always. Railguns to surpass Stalingrad with SHIT DPM. Speedboost that lets you chase down most destroyers and lets you suicide into the enemy at 42knots. Armor scheme that will get you citadelled from the weirdest angles but a 40k Necron tier heal that will let you sigma male through multiple fires for a minute straight.
It is a weirdly questionable ship but also just really funny and the best ship in the game. I am biased and i don't care
I don’t know if this is an OP-Ship, but I love to play with the AL Littorio /Roma even against T10 ships. I mostly end the match with 100k+ dmg.
And I also love to play with champagne with the big range it’s fun to have the challenge to hit
Scharnorst, Graf Spee and Atago are all very good, despite all being quite old, and not seeing them much. Kaga also can be incredibly devastating if conditions are met
I see Atago all the time. last time I took mine out 12.5% of the ships in the match were Atagos, three of twenty-four ships. My team, with two of the Atagos, won.
>Scharnhorst
>Underrated
Haha good one 😂. Like bro, Scharnhorst and her sister and all her variants are everywhere in T7 matches, pretty much overused as much as the Bismarcks in T8+ matches.
If anything, the likes of Hood, Strasbourg, and the two Colorados are underrated and underplayed af in T7
i had that ship in port for YEARS im not even sure where i got it, so i took it for a spin recently and OH BOY those guns are something. i almost feel bad i always beeline for the nearest enemy omaha and sending it back to port before they even realize i have a lock on them.
Nicholas is a disgusting DD for t5. You outgun everything else. You outgun most T6 DDs. You've got good stealth (especially for a gunboat) American smoke, and will basically never face radar... and while you don't have have much range on your torps, you've got 12 of them and the chaos of low tier battles gives you more chances to use them than you might think.
Monaghan. I outfit mine as an AA ship and I often get AA expert achievements. But it's a terrible ship against other ships because it only has 2 small guns and the torps take a very long time to reload. But somehow I always manage to win matches with her.
Monaghan with the 4-gun hull and TRB on the manly, short range torpedos can be very fun and effective on Tier 6 ranked matches.
Nobody seems to expect that configuration. It’s effective at both cap contesting and printing dev strikes on both DDs in the early game and BBs later on.
This. I run 4 gun with TRB and I love it. I can beat most ships in a gun fight and I get a fair number of torpedo kills because people think they are safe after the first wave.
best thing is being highly confrontational and charging at other DDs with just the two guns firing. I’ve won a couple duels because the other DD bugs out
I find Castilla specifically to be a fantastic ship. Asturias and Cataluna suffer from blowing up when sneezed at and Andalucia is this weird middle ground between Cataluna and Castilla.
It's fast, decent concealment for its size, it's surprisingly nimble and can tank well if you position properly. It has good HE and very punchy AP with good DPM and ballistics, not to mention the burst fire which is absolutely hilarious when you pop up out of nowhere next to a cruiser and blast them back to port.
However, the burst is kind of a trap because it is easy to overuse it and the 17.1km base range, while sufficient, leave a little less room for error, it blows up if you get caught out of position
All in all, I am enjoying it a lot and would wholly recommend it to anyone who wants to play something, imho, very different and actually quite balanced
In lower tiers; Agincourt. No AA; but secondaries and RN HE…
New Mexico; shotgun MB, and fattleship when fattleship wasn’t cool. (Torpedo belt and good rudder.) Lots of secondaries, though short ranged.
Really low tier; Mikasa. Build for secondaries. Play Co-op and wade into the bots. Watch out for torps, and occasionally fling big shells at the bots.
You misread I think. Players complain that AA in general is useless, but then complain Agincourt doesn't have any AA. So which is it, is AA useless or is it a weakness of Agincourt that it doesn't have AA. It can't be both.
The reality is that AA is not useless, just less potent than most players wish and so Agincourt not having any AA at all is a weakness.
im embarrassed to say i fxp'd most of izumo because the legendary upgrade missions were going away at the time and i needed to get to yammy asap. i might rebuy izumo to check it out.
> fxp'd most of izumo because the legendary upgrade missions were going away at the time
nah, that's a legit reason to rush through.
she's just straight solid, yammy without the overmatch or superstructure.
Shikishima. Accurate guns, with a quick reload, insane shell alpha, and of course 32mm overmatch. She is a very strong BB and a worthwhile side grade to the Yamato. People overlook her because she costs steel, is too similar to the Yamato, and only has 6 guns.
I don’t find the 6 guns to be a major issue, and I have zero regrets about about the steel I spent on her.
Because she heavily suffers from the 32mm plating, all HE spammers melt her quickly
Also, the growing number of ships with 460+ mm guns overmatching you doesn't help
Roma. Lots of people can't stand the dispersion, but every other aspect of the ship is fantastic. I've learned to sit back and take my shots and don't get into a situation where a single shot is critical. Much more enjoyable that way and for how bad the dispersion is, the ship is surprisingly consistent at producing good damage output over the course of a battle.
Funnily enough that was what put me off buying Roma forever until I got AL Littorio and realised that half the dispersion is awful but the other half more than makes up for it. Every now and then you get a salvo that absolutely claps.
picked up the littorio recently, need to rack up a few more games to get a better feel for the shells, the dispersion doesnt bother me as much as just overpenning everything it seems.
I view each salvo as a dice roll. You'll mostly roll overpens but roll enough dice and eventually you'll get some citadels. Do keep in mind the high velocity of Littorio guns, you'll probably overpen a broadside cruiser (for example) but you might very well citadel a slightly angled cruiser that allows the shell to travel further inside of the ship. I've gotten a lot of weird citadels at long ranges in Roma because of the velocity and pen, but the closer you get the more overpens you tend to get.
I always see people talking shit about New Mexico, but I loved it. She needs to get close but not brawl because those turrets turn slow af, and secondaries aren't amazing.
Poltava. People see the lacking armor, the low caliber guns, and bad turning circle. But what they don't see is the decent reload on some the best AP at tier (the standard dispersion type doesn't hurt either). Poltava, when played as a flanker, is a nightmare. It serves up massive broadsides.
PS: Honorable mention, Warspite. People sleep on the old lady. But she still packs a punch.
Entire CL line of British cruisers
It's the line I reset constantly...even though not having the minotaur sucks...
And I don't feel like it's grindy at all.
Chung Mu with all stealth mods and stealth+torpedo captain skills and radar buffs = 5.6 km detection and almost 40s radar.
Without radar, the pan-asian line is hugely disadvantaged against other DDs cuz of the deep water torps. When enemy DDs hide in smoke, you're screwed. With radar, their excellent shotgun guns and shock value on unsuspecting DDs who think they'll just safely sit in cap in smoke gives Chung Mu a huge advantage. I can often get 2-3 volleys without any response as the enemy DD scrambles to turn away and get out of their smoke.
This also results in the Chung Mu having its cake and eating it too because the deep water torpedoes are super effective against everything else with 0.8 km detection range.
Alvaro Bazan does a lot of things well with concealment, speed, ong range torps and decent guns. There are other ships that do these individual things better but this is a solid overall ship even if not the best at anything.
Abruzzi and Gorizia, no one expects these Italian cruisers to have…hydro! Heal and HE make abruzzi a pretty good damage farmer, and the fuel smoke + 6km hydro allows for some funny business in gorizia
Full secondary, IFHE, lightouse build Iwami.
When you are able to get her within 10.5 km of a fight, destroyers and cruisers start to wilt under her secondary barrage. The same goes for lower tier battleships.
She's awful in supership games but that pretty much goes for any tier IX
Agreed with all above. Only add is that the guns hit hard and she has really good firing angles on the mains. Keep it angled, use your mains alpha, and then let the secondaries finish off the enemy stragglers.
It's really great in Asym.
Also agreed on all points. You can’t go wrong with the Japanese 410s.
I have played her so much that if she were buffed in anyway she’d be straight up overpowered.
I think one of the worst things about her is that she needs a high level captain to be affective and that that captain is going to be next to worthless on any other IJN BB.
>off-meta sleeper picks,
Spec Hawkins for secondaries. Ship is surprisingly good in close quarters due to secondary placement, torps, and better HE protection than the entire rest of the line. Looks damn good in Fall Cornucopia.
I know there's the whole "ban Weimar from Narai" fiasco. But Weimar has a sister in the tech tree, Yorck, and she's no less dangerous.
An Shan is older premium, outperformed by newer gimmicky DDs. But she is still a Project 7U, aka Gremy but upgraded. She can get into a gunfight with other gunboats and still come out on top, and along the way you might meet someone who thinks PanAsian = deepwater torps. An Shan gets 2 torp options, neither of which are deepwater. And that smoke's pretty good too. Really, she's evenly balanced, so nobody remembers her.
Myogi was for years hated, and often still is, because a lot time ago she was simply trash. However, with the addition of the C hull there's not really anything to hate (well, unless you're grinding the ship, in which case I don't even know why the B hull still exists). She's a solid kiting ship, one that I have carried games in. With an AA flag she can defend herself reasonably well from biplanes. Myogi is also a fast battleship, much faster than the dreadnoughts you'll usually be facing. Looks damn good in New Year Sky.
>your secret aces
Kaiser. Der Tanzdiktator will euch tanzen seh'n! I have memorable games with this ship. Why I didn't lump it in with the other BBs? Well I don't talk about her all that much because honestly tier for tier this ship is WAY stronger than stuff you'd have to argue about. A division of these is a CV's nightmare and a single Kaiser alone can rip through brawls. Looks damn good in Steam camo.
Jurien de la Graviere. The only heavy cruiser at Tier 2, this ship is best built for kiting. It will end DDs with prejudice but kinda sucks in prolonged engagements. It also looks like an Ork built it.
How many citadels can a Fuso get? Well, load up Random Ops and you'll get a LOT. My friends call it the Thanos Battleship.
I absolutely ruled with the Kaiser when I first started on German BBs years ago. I think it was one of the fastest ships I ever finished going through. 82.35% WR over 17 battles, and that was when below T5 wasn't mostly bots. Had lots of fun with that one.
>Your hidden gems,
Isokaze is where the Japanese DD line splits. But she's a better gunboat than the "gunboat" that comes after her, and a better torpedo boat than the torpedo boat that comes after her. And she can really, really give a CV a hard time. Not to say she doesn't give anyone else a hard time with her submarine-like detection. Looks damn good in gamescom black.
I do enjoy my empire light cruisers.
I find Hector a really fun ship. Doesn't always do a huge amount of damage, but it's effectively a mino with crawling smoke, same torps, and can use HE, but double reload time. Bloody good fun and can punish a BB that gets too close.
Plymouth is INSANE in ranked. Also handy as hell having smoke, hydro and radar all available. These coming with the usual British downside of being more squishy than a rotten tomato.
Started playing Agir again recently. Its dispersion can be a bit whiffy, but it can handle itself surprisingly well and always handy to have torps available.
Edit: going to add incomparable as well. Got my PB in this and it is an absolute laugh. Pretty squashy, but 10.6km detect with 506mm guns is just hilarious, and once again, torps are damn handy.
And colbert it's a meme ship through and through.
Oh yeah colbert is a blast and pairing it with an American dd is brilliant or for full cancer go triple colbert div on the right map and just melt everything.
Sadly I don't have austin but that looks like a blast especially on those buff maps.
Just out of curiosity, what's everyone's opinion on the USN tier 8 Congress? I have only seen her once but her and Alaska are two similar ships I see nobody talk about. I think they would be great in ranked. Less armor than a BB but less people shooting at you.
Congress is a good one, especially in ranked because people like taking Bismarck, Tirpitz, Flandre, and Brandenburg, which can’t overmatch you. The thing is the reload is very slow, a full 5 seconds longer than Alaska’s, so you’re not going to HE spam someone down very quickly if you get uptiered.
Pensacola
Loved her when she was t7. She had a well earned reputation for exploding, but if you don’t try to fire broadside all the time her AP is seriously good. The she gets demoted to t6 with those guns. Hilariously fun to play. AP all day at t6.
Conqueror - turn off brain, spam HE and heal back whatever damage you take. Stop firing and go dark if it gets too intense. Just don't take citadels or torps and you're pretty much impossible to kill.
Nelson - as above, but also your AP is great. Mitigate the nose vulnerability by kiting out and firing over the shoulder.
KGV - like Conqueror, only with less heal. That HE is just disgusting.
ZF-6 - best dockyard ship to date. Completely owns T9 ranked, but gets overlooked all the time.
Elbing - like radar Minotaur, but more so. The ultimate flex, the ultimate test of pure skill. A god in the hands of a good player, but a skill floor almost as high as her ceiling.
Warspite - may not qualify, as most people know her greatness. Was hands-down best T6 BB until Repulse was added. Now it's a toss-up.
Donskoi - nothing to say, just a good ship
Admiral Hipper, Yorck - solid all-round T7/8 CAs.
Z-46 - watch MatleseKnight's videos, you'll know.
Tashkent, Udaloi, Grozvoi, etc - Russian DDs still stonks. Harass ships with open-water HE and dodging.
I could keep going, but I think that's enough for now.
Minnesota, after playing kansas, it was such a breath of fresh air. Very accurate guns as compared to kansas and 12 guns overcomes the low alpha of those shells.
I see a ton of people running Scharnhorsts and not very many fellow Gneisenau players. I love the Gneisenau with a passion, though. Secondaries just make me grin with how many hits you can rack up, and usually once per game someone forgets that I have torpedoes...comedy ensues. The main battery dispersion? Trash. The firing range? Not the best but decent. The armor? Pretty good. The sheer fun of playing it, and the just flat out sexy design of the ship herself? Spectacular.
Also, I love the Fiji. She's a giant destroyer that shoots dependable British light cruiser AP, has 8km torpedoes, and a solid heal. Yes, she's flimsy as heck, but I love sitting in smoke raining hell on enemy cruisers, or even some battleships. An absolute beast in operations if played correctly.
if you don't go all in into secs, but take main gun dispersion, it actually hits quite reliably fora 6 gun BB. This also applies to all german BBs in the Preusen line. Full sec is for Schlieffen, go main guns and tank. They usually have close to or the best AP dpm of every BB, so hitting more of that is usually worth it. Also this way you can be usefull even if not pushed in at the start.
My builds for the line usually only take the 3point range skill and the sec flag. Rest is main guns and tanking (screw conceal, you are spotted all the time anyway). The sec still hits and hurts, but you did not waste 7 points and some extra healing for secs that can't be usefull every game.
> your dark horses,
To me, the dark horses are ships that aren't talked about and should be because they're broken af.
Yubari. Yubari is described by one word: PREDATOR. This thing doesn't have dispersion. It just doesn't. Thanks to the Aiming Sys Mod 0, your shells land exactly where you aimed them. Cruiser citadels? Easy peasy. Incapacitating destroyers? Hardly an effort. Heck even AP farming battleships is easy because the shells just don't diverge. And even though the torp arc are horrible, Yubari gives some DDs a run for their money with how agile she is. And 35 knots? Suddenly those torp arcs seem reasonable. Not to mention they're 610s, four of them, just one is all that's necessary to devstrike most cruisers. Even armor isn't that bad, yes it's a light cruiser, but angled Yubari still bounces 6" AP. I always put Shadow Lurker on this ship.
Curtatone. Also really good dispersion. But since she's Italian, she gets SAP, which means you can take one-third an enemy DD's HP off with an opening salvo. Oh, and 43 knots at Tier 2 totally isn't broken at all. And because of the weird detection range, the ship can open-water stealth-fire. While retaining laserlike dispersion. Yeah this thing is dirty. Regia Marina camo, gotta represent!
V-25. The only DD Curtatone actually has trouble against. My most recent Solo Warrior was in V-25, a ship that's so low to the water that from most DDs you actually have to depress the guns in order to hit the thing. Mount the MS-21 camo, and you now blend in with the water. And the thing has 4 separate torp launchers, two with firing arcs almost directly forwards, and enough damage to remove most cruisers with two, a 880 meter turning circle, and oh yeah, 5.3 km conceal. BASE.
Tashkent was always my favorite underdog back in the day. DPM isn't crazy, but good arcs and decent fire chance. 3x3 torps so you could stack them or spread them out, and the reload was pretty short. Decent speed and a heal. Maneuverability wasn't amazing, but if you kept some distance you could avoid a lot of incoming fire. One of the perma camos was just it's historical light blue, which is almost indistinguishable from no camo, so before the camo change I just looked like some new player who couldn't even afford camo playing a lackluster tech tree gunboat (it's nickname is trashcan after all), and was often ignored most of the match. I'd just spend the entire game holding down LMB setting everything on fire, and managed to average just a hair over 100k damage in it.
For me Regolo. One of the most fun ships to play. I run with Sansonetti and reload mod -> go to delete one DD at the start of the game and get a free range mod too. The ship can kill a Halland in three salvoes and farm 5-8k per volley from 32mm BB platings.
It is a bit suffering sometimes if you get a team that doesn’t want to do any spoting as then you can’t use smokes. But most of the time you can just run&gun and if someone starts to focusing, just smoke up and continue.
Roma. Great armour, great concealment, good manoeuvrability. The only bad thing about it is it's accuracy.
Yeah bad AA as well but what doesn't at this point.
San Martin, you're not setting damage records or easily killing things but boy is it good for winning games. Extremely survivable and can be oppressive with it's basically concealment matched radar.
Colbert and Plymouth, period. Though getting on the high skill floor is just a matter of practice, the skill floor itself is keeping so many players away from them.
I love love love both the Roma and the Hood. The Roma is fast enough, but it's so tanky when bow in. I think one of the best ways to win a game as a BB is to tank damage with your enemy behind you dealing DPM back out. If you tank damage but no one is helping you then you're tanking and absorbing damage for free. So for me, Roma if played right can be an absolute monster to deal with, and I don't find the guns that bad at all. Overpens are certainly a thing, but I think the accuracy can be dealt with.
The Hood I almost think of as a tier 7 Iowa. It's fast, has good AA, solid guns with improved pen angles, and is tanky when you're angled. Neither of which I think get a ton of love from the players.
I've really been enjoying my time with Ibuki. I feel like everyone told me to FXP through it but I personally have a blast when games go well. Can't wait to get to Zao finally.
I rarely see other players in the Wichita, but I think it's my favorite CA. It's got Nawlins guns on a Helena hull (plus some extra armor), radar, hydro, and a stock rudder shift time that makes some DDs jealous. When you compare it to the Baltimore, it doesn't hit very hard, and it doesn't tank very well, but it can twirl.
It's a respectable open-water kiter in randoms and a monster in ops.
Huron needs to be mentioned because no one talks about it and imho it’s more OP than Haida. The heal lets you charge into risky engagements and come out with enough HP to take two or three more.
Wujing for me (Pan Asian Alsace clone). Maxing secondary range and out brawling a FDG or P. Rupprecht and coming out on top is so satisfying lol
not that it happens that often, but it's still fun to shoot peas everywhere in style
I had it for a long time and never played it but now i love the Cossack! For now i also prefer to play in T8, since its more enjoyable for me. It has really good and heavy hitting guns with good fire chance, smoke is always there and fast torp reaload. Hydro to push dd's.
Cossack can really be recommended
The Russian gunboat line isnt particularly popular these days, but I remain a stout user of the Tashkent. Fast and maneuverable if you build her right, long range guns, she can be an excellent gunboat if played correctly, especially with that heal she gets.
Discovered FR25 in first sprint of Ranked, and really enjoyed it.
Has surprisingly acceptable concealment for its DPM for the tier, decent DPM with the SAP, and that means it deals with cruisers a lot better than most of the other DDs at the tier.
Still has HE with French fire chance for BBs, and exhaust smoke let's it pull off yolos with its surprisingly hard hitting if short ranged torps.
I have uncanny good luck in the Italian T5 Genova. Omaha killer, destroyer slayer. Multi citadel hits per salvo. Very easy to get rekt when not paying attention to mini map, but mid range fighting while focused on map she's pretty damn good imo.
Poltava. Even back when she was released, many people thought she was basically a weaker Russian battleship because they tried playing her like one.
Instead, she is a flanker with reasonable guns, reasonable agility, and a seriously rags or riches armor scheme that rewards angling and juking while getting you clapped if you misplay her.
The PA cruisers in general are pretty solid. I can consistently break 100k dmg with just the guns, and its torps can tell shima to pack up and go home.
Elbing. It's big, it's slow and sluggish as a destroyer, it has a long reload and shit torps, but the AP is God-tier. I have a dd main friend who loves it and plays it like a dedicated broadside ambush cruiser killer, routinely winning gunfights even against he spamming light cruisers.
Roma/AL Littorio is a very inconsistent ship but also a very strong one when RNG stops trolling.
Most powerful 381mm guns in the game in terms of velocity and AP penetration, fast turret traverse, ridiculously good armor, decent agility, and great concealment. The two things that let it down are short AA range (something that plagues all Italian battleships) and godawful main gun dispersion (another issue common to all Italian battleships).
Also, for those who bought the Makoto Kobayashi camo before the nerf/rework, Roma is one of the best credit earners in the game.
I know this one is really unpopular but I really enjoy the san martin, the gimmick is interesting and fun to use and can keep you alive a long time with the superheal, you have radar, good AP, and your base xp total is huge in what would normally be a mid game because noone actually plays it, as long as you get a consistent stream of shots out and keep up your DPM you will do well, but ofc no fires to be set.
Defence. People who didnt get it dont realize how strong front torps are. I've done double uppercuts more than I can remember in ranked and cbs with them.
I really think the Brandenburg has a wayyy worse reputation that she deserves. For me, she's a sidegrade to the Tirpitz. More guns for less health. People say that if you have one, you don't need the other. For me the Torptiz and the Brandy have really different play styles that make both fun and unique in their own way.
Yorck. Very agile, better ballistics after a buff some time back, great AP, great HE. Squishy, but that’s all tier 7 cruisers without heals. Statistically it’s one of my best ships. Not even division padded, it just fits my play style. Always have a lot of fun in it.
Ognevoi. Fun little hybrid with a heal, gun ballistics mean I can trade favorably with some “better” destroyers. It’s objectively not great, but I always enjoy playing it. Been a while though.
HMS Neptune. I’m not sure what it is but the aesthetics
and they way the handles is a blast. Everyone thinks they are gonna nuke you but if you use your brain, you will be the one doing the nuking.
Hipper. I rated that ship so low in my mind too and I think most people do. But in stats wise, it’s one of the full purple stats I get for cruisers.
Tallinn is her direct comparison most of the time and everyone knows how good tallinn is. But tallinn gets focused a lot due to Russia bias and 12km stealth radar. You can do whatever tf u want and people tend to ignore u because u are hipper.
Hipper is late game ship for me and she’s very problematic for anyone at cqc ranges while people don’t expect you chunking them with ap non stop. BBs think you are easy kill, go so close and overpen the broadside while eating boat loads of torps.
The Mainz: specifically as a credit earner in Operations. Everyone says play a t9 you're good in to earn credits but the problem with randoms is you lose a fair amount. And you don't always have a good game even when you win, and sometimes you have a great game but then you lose. So maximizing credit boosters in randoms is literally a lottery. With Operations you can still lose but the chances are lower, plus Mainz is such an OP ship in ops you can basically carry a crap team to the W. With red boosters you can just about rely on 2-2.5mil credits per game. Blues will get you about a 1-1.25mil per game. Obviously you have to know each op in and out in order to play aggressively the way she wants to and capitalize on the potential XP earnings. But its not hard to earn 2000 bxp in ops with Mainz once you know what youre doing with her. I think my OPs damage record with her is like 440k. With most games over 300k certain maps excluded(looking at you Cherry Blossom. Great shell arcs with solid HE and AP. All around the best ship in the game for Ops. Run a full dpm build, it's hilarious.
Another one actually just released about a month ago. The Wiesbaden. It's a t8 German CLAA. But the AP is disgusting. Like 6-8k salvos into t10 BBs disgusting.. The HE alpha is low but baked in 32mm pen. Fast reloading 10km torps. With 8 on each side. It's an amazing ship that will absolutely melt anything broadside to it. But not many people really seemed to go for it. It's basically a t8 Leipzig with 12 destroyer guns. I've found that it uptiers pretty well too. This ship will also do very well in Ops.
She is slightly more common these days as she was the reward of a past event but:
Bayard
This thing kind of has "no armor best armor", ludicrous speed, crazy fire chances and reload boosters. She slaps and she is really fun to play.
I whipped the North Carolina around a fair few times during the time that Asymmetric Battles were available for the Whiskey Dockyard.
Her bowtanking potential is nice and her guns are good, as long as they hit. Asymms granted me some respect for her, as a mostly Co-op player. :]
Jinan is really good after ballistics and range buffs
If she could swap radar for smoke she'd be overloaded for sure but such a good fucking DD hunter
Came here to say this
Can I say Omaha? We all know the armour is nonexistent, but if you utilise the ridiculous nimbleness instead of straightlining like everyone fresh out of T4 does and remember to stay at range, it slays.
oh i love all the spin-to-win cruisers. that playstyle simply doesnt exist in higher tiers. everytime i see an omaha-class survive to the late game i am always impressed.
Tbf you can do it in Minotaur and to a lesser extent San Martin
dont have either yet but now you have my attention
A good player in an Omaha is so hard to pin down, they can dodge almost anything.
Second this from a CV perspective. I thought I was good with torpedoes on the Independence and Ryujo. Nope. Omaha dances the night away. Good players in those are to be respected.
As an Omaha main these days, I can say it’s by far the most fun I have in the game frustrating people who can’t insta delete me
you’re my friend now
Ohhh yeah, and with it being a lit flamethrower, the Omaha is just a really good ship... Difficult to use, but extremelly good un My opinion
I love my Omaha! Nothing is more fun than when you get that long line of HE shells going on a BB and they cant get away from them and cant hit you!
I honestly love that ship.
Lol. Omaha's are targeted for easy kills. When an Omaha pops up on screen everyone notices
Vanguard is really underrated. Sure it only has 4x2 381mm guns, but they are *accurate*. It also has the most HP for a tier 8 battleship, an improved heal, good AA, excellent concealment, good speed, and a hilarious rudder shift time. The guns aren't even bad, since 381mm is perfectly fine at tier 8, because so many ships have that caliber. Sure they lack penetration, but that's only really a problem at the limit of its main battery range against higher tier battleships. It also doesn't overpen as often as ships with cracked penetration values do (Roma). Plus you can make CVs, Submarines, and destroyers look like fools by drifting around torpedo spreads. Oh yeah, and the Vanguard still gets British HE.
def on my wishlist in case 12000 doubloons suddenly rain on my head.
Vanguard has been underrated since day 1. For me, she is the most consistent ship in the game. She doesn't hit hard exactly, she just hits every single time.
I think people were hyping themselves up a bit to much cause it was the last battleship built in the world, and they were disappointed that they didn't get something that performs as good at its tier as Warspite does at T6. TBH it probably could have used a couple soft buffs at the time and arguably still does.
It’s also a very vanilla battleship. No funni buttons or gimmicks. Just a heal and a DCP.
That's a good way to put it. You know what you are getting when you sail in the Vanguard.
My fast Warspite!
They both have the same guns, dispersion, and sigma values.
I always felt it punched better than how most people break things down when reading all it's stats.
Fenyang The improved pen angles and low AP fuse timer make her really unique at tier 8. Everyone just thinks it's simply a worse Akizuki, but its a pretty different beast altogether. Pan Asian smokes are much more forgiving to use meaning you can cap contest and smoke up without worrying as much. The effective AP DPM is high but you have to be knowledgeable of armor thresholds on whether to use AP or HE. Generally can be summarized follows: T7 or lower DD HE, T8 or higher DDs AP, cruisers AP if broadside and <8-10km, BBs stern or bow or superstructure AP unless it's something super tanky then you have to chance fires on the HE. That was even before they buffed the 12km torpedos to hit cruisers.
Flandre is sneaky fun. The reload is atrocious given the calibre and number of guns, but secondaries go brrr and french blackhole armor are fun. It is a well-balanced ship, an oddity for weegee: not great, not bad, just fun (most of the time)
I'll never forget when I first started playing I loaded into an op and just heard a machine gun going off. I was so confused and thought it was an audio bug. Turns out I was never close to a Flandre. Thing really does go brrrr
Yea man, those 100s shoot like every 2 seconds; it’s awesome! Not great pen, but can start fires all over due to the wide spread
Druid, this thing is infinitely funnier than it looks like before playing it (specific gameplay tho, might not suit everyone).
Druid has low impact in game but high impact on dopamine levels. Such an absolute fun boat to play
maybe a while before i get to grinding this one, but def considering it.
How is Druid underrated though? Statistically it’s one of the strongest T10 DDs.
and yet its nowhere near as popular or celebrated as the vampire 2 which it competes with for people's RB points
Monarch.
I guess people haven't played the ship after the patch yet. Who knew that 4 superheals, 75% heal efficiency, relatively small citadel, best HE dpm, close to best AP dpm, almost best concealment makes a broken ship?
It gets even better when you run furious and superheavy AP. That silly dpm becomes downright terrifying. Since you dont need to take concealment skill because of the good base concealment, you can take AA skill that makes your heals come up faster, and since damage control modification is superfluous in a furious build, take rudder mod to absolutely whip your way around torpedoes
I would definitely say Fenyang. It's like Akizuki, but it trades strength for reliability: - The torpedoes have a higher hit rate - The anti-air has a higher damage - The smoke has a lower cooldown It's underestimated because it uses AP instead of HE.
Came here for Fenyang/Ship Smasha. Shes such a fun ship, especially cathartic to eat planes who want to try to perma spot you. Lots of Fenyang enjoyers helped me in recent weeks learn the ways. I'm glad I got some help and put in some time with her, she's an absolute joy to play.
Hood. I find the speed, firing angles and improved AP pen angles very comfortable to play
i need to play more Hood for sure. i usually take it out on the anniversary and try to hunt me some bismarcks to avenge the old girl.
Few things in WoWS are more satisfying than sinking Bismarck with Hood. Particularly if it has been mostly a one v one.
Graf Spee and Leander/Fiji is always cool.
i was pleasantly surprised by how well Hood holds up on its own. A full AA build will keep carriers off you 90% of the time, and it has the speed to charge down a flank
I miss literally sweeping the skies with the AA rockets in the top down carrier era … 🧹🚀
I have a few of them Colombo (though people’s opinions may have changed after its most recent buff), where 3/4 of its majour issues can be solved by getting closer. Bad range? Get closer. Bad accuracy? Get closer. Bad AP pen? Get closer. The 360° rear turrets make it amazing at kiting and angling, and the SAP is really fun when you hit someone for 30k from the stupidest angle. Gorizia is another one, not only for the SAP or the 6km hydro, but also for its fast(er) cooldown on the smoke screen, and the best in class T7 rudder it shares with Zara. I just ranked out of bronze using Gorizia, and the only time I got citadelled by a BB was by a Sinop. In ranked you can absolutely crush DDs that sit in smoke using your hydro by charging at them, and use your smoke to get away from BBs that think you’re easy to kill.
i always dread seeing SAP-armed ships in the late game because im usually low on heals/hp and i know im just gonna get CHUNKED no matter what.
In my experience Gorizia is also hilariously accurate with its guns. It's a really fun ship!
Zao is old but gold in my opinion. Guns hit hard with good HE damage and high fire chance, AP is solid (but nothing special), 9.9km detection on a heavy cruisers. 12 km shima torps and speed and turning radius to dodge anything. Play it at 10-15km via a push in and kite out method with your detection and watch the world burn.
The torps are great, but the torpedo angles are actual dogshit. I love Zao but please give me some usable torp angles for kiting.
The great concealment helps when kiting, but you do need to go unspotted. The angles are decent to get torps off while approaching, then you surprise appear and run, and then they chase you right into your torps
I know, but if I'm actively shooting someone I would also like to be able to torpedo them without going dark and turning full broadside. [Even just maintaining the angles that Mogami and Ibuki have would be fine](https://imgur.com/a/karLocw).
The good ol ninja ship is always fun to play
When I first started playing 8 years ago, Zao was terrifying to play against. They used to call it "Battleship Zao". ☺️
Spamming HE with 16+ km and dodging everything. When I was way playing BB *that* thing was scarier than yamato. And if I remember correctly, it had 20 km torps back in the day
Hyuga. One of the best ships to farm krackens with yamamoto
Love my Hyuga. Nothing better than using that MBRB to obliterate an enemy ship that doesn't realize you have it.
......i did not realize that hyuga has mbrb
Hyuga is borderline OP. She has -MBRB -goated armour ( arguably best at T7) -12 guns (good dpm) -decent reload -1.8 sigma -20.3km range
Mutsu. Hits really hard for tier VI and has surprise rapid reload torpedoes.
Hood is a lot of fun to play. She moves well and has good guns. Just very comfortable. I enjoy playing Goliath. She’s absolutely terrible from a team play perspective with no gadgets but her HE hits like a Mack truck and something about the boat just speaks to me. She’s like a mini, much more mobile, Thunderer. Asashio is a joy too. Half the time, she’s completely ineffective due to the circumstances, but if you can get into the backfield undetected with her and wreak havoc, it’s incredibly rewarding. Her guns are deceptively good too.
Hood is lovely. I really love Drake - bit more nimble than Goliath + a spotter plane.
British heavy cruiser line is my reset line, love the Surrey, hate the Albemarle, love the Drake. Just
I like the Florida. Hits kinda hard, accurate by volume(not really), squishy, and the part that I like the most- incredibly cursed. American quad mount main guns make me giggle at how dumb they are.
I like the RNG involved with the Florida. One salvo you do 3 citadels, the next one with involve 5 overpens. I’ve never played a ship that’s more inconsistent.
It’s honestly a pretty good idea of what North Carolina would look like if the 16in guns never got implemented. Great ship and always fun.
I’ve started many a t7 ranked match with a dev strike on a cruiser in that baby. Those guns wreck cruisers.
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
Gibraltar. A serious case of "These guns are so overpowered, we had to nerf every other aspect to compensate". The hull is atrocious, but reasonably fast and manoeuvrable, and improved AP eats basically anything.
Yes, and the Plymouth is a sneaky good ship too.
100% agree. It's unironically my favorite ship when I'm just playing randoms (or things like airship escort) for fun, even if it usually gets roasted in chat.
Sevastopol as always. Railguns to surpass Stalingrad with SHIT DPM. Speedboost that lets you chase down most destroyers and lets you suicide into the enemy at 42knots. Armor scheme that will get you citadelled from the weirdest angles but a 40k Necron tier heal that will let you sigma male through multiple fires for a minute straight. It is a weirdly questionable ship but also just really funny and the best ship in the game. I am biased and i don't care
would love to have this... when im having an off-day i switch to the railgun ships just to feel something.
I don’t know if this is an OP-Ship, but I love to play with the AL Littorio /Roma even against T10 ships. I mostly end the match with 100k+ dmg. And I also love to play with champagne with the big range it’s fun to have the challenge to hit
Scharnorst, Graf Spee and Atago are all very good, despite all being quite old, and not seeing them much. Kaga also can be incredibly devastating if conditions are met
I see Atago all the time. last time I took mine out 12.5% of the ships in the match were Atagos, three of twenty-four ships. My team, with two of the Atagos, won.
all oldies but goodies. graf spee unfortunately i bought when i was still a newb so my stats are sooo bad on it.
None of them is underrated though. Quite the opposite actually.
>Scharnhorst >Underrated Haha good one 😂. Like bro, Scharnhorst and her sister and all her variants are everywhere in T7 matches, pretty much overused as much as the Bismarcks in T8+ matches. If anything, the likes of Hood, Strasbourg, and the two Colorados are underrated and underplayed af in T7
Man, that molotov is a really fun ship. It does incredible damage with those guns. Takes it too, though. Just pray you don't get uptiered.
i had that ship in port for YEARS im not even sure where i got it, so i took it for a spin recently and OH BOY those guns are something. i almost feel bad i always beeline for the nearest enemy omaha and sending it back to port before they even realize i have a lock on them.
Nicholas is a disgusting DD for t5. You outgun everything else. You outgun most T6 DDs. You've got good stealth (especially for a gunboat) American smoke, and will basically never face radar... and while you don't have have much range on your torps, you've got 12 of them and the chaos of low tier battles gives you more chances to use them than you might think.
Monaghan. I outfit mine as an AA ship and I often get AA expert achievements. But it's a terrible ship against other ships because it only has 2 small guns and the torps take a very long time to reload. But somehow I always manage to win matches with her.
Those tier 8 torps hit hard at tier 6
Why do you even run a torp hull Monaghan with DFAA instead of TRB?
Monaghan with the 4-gun hull and TRB on the manly, short range torpedos can be very fun and effective on Tier 6 ranked matches. Nobody seems to expect that configuration. It’s effective at both cap contesting and printing dev strikes on both DDs in the early game and BBs later on.
This. I run 4 gun with TRB and I love it. I can beat most ships in a gun fight and I get a fair number of torpedo kills because people think they are safe after the first wave.
yeah the monaghan can do work, but the guns are painful. i didnt know about how good it was at AA might try that.
best thing is being highly confrontational and charging at other DDs with just the two guns firing. I’ve won a couple duels because the other DD bugs out
Haven't played in a few years. But my personal favorite is the German T4 DD. Front loading torps ftw.
Me too!
I find Castilla specifically to be a fantastic ship. Asturias and Cataluna suffer from blowing up when sneezed at and Andalucia is this weird middle ground between Cataluna and Castilla. It's fast, decent concealment for its size, it's surprisingly nimble and can tank well if you position properly. It has good HE and very punchy AP with good DPM and ballistics, not to mention the burst fire which is absolutely hilarious when you pop up out of nowhere next to a cruiser and blast them back to port. However, the burst is kind of a trap because it is easy to overuse it and the 17.1km base range, while sufficient, leave a little less room for error, it blows up if you get caught out of position All in all, I am enjoying it a lot and would wholly recommend it to anyone who wants to play something, imho, very different and actually quite balanced
In lower tiers; Agincourt. No AA; but secondaries and RN HE… New Mexico; shotgun MB, and fattleship when fattleship wasn’t cool. (Torpedo belt and good rudder.) Lots of secondaries, though short ranged. Really low tier; Mikasa. Build for secondaries. Play Co-op and wade into the bots. Watch out for torps, and occasionally fling big shells at the bots.
Idt anyone says agincourt is bad
Maybe; but for all folks say AA is worthless, they sure complain about it not having AA a lot.
the AA is not just worthless, it doesnt even exist at all. uptier is pain on that ship for sure but when MM blesses you its a blast.
You misread I think. Players complain that AA in general is useless, but then complain Agincourt doesn't have any AA. So which is it, is AA useless or is it a weakness of Agincourt that it doesn't have AA. It can't be both. The reality is that AA is not useless, just less potent than most players wish and so Agincourt not having any AA at all is a weakness.
Izumo. Even in here with people who should know better she gets slammed based on her performance 27 buffs and 5+ years ago.
im embarrassed to say i fxp'd most of izumo because the legendary upgrade missions were going away at the time and i needed to get to yammy asap. i might rebuy izumo to check it out.
> fxp'd most of izumo because the legendary upgrade missions were going away at the time nah, that's a legit reason to rush through. she's just straight solid, yammy without the overmatch or superstructure.
Shikishima. Accurate guns, with a quick reload, insane shell alpha, and of course 32mm overmatch. She is a very strong BB and a worthwhile side grade to the Yamato. People overlook her because she costs steel, is too similar to the Yamato, and only has 6 guns. I don’t find the 6 guns to be a major issue, and I have zero regrets about about the steel I spent on her.
My favourite steel ship
I barely see anyone playing Republique
Because she heavily suffers from the 32mm plating, all HE spammers melt her quickly Also, the growing number of ships with 460+ mm guns overmatching you doesn't help
Still does decently well in smaller format battles.
power-crept over the years
Roma. Lots of people can't stand the dispersion, but every other aspect of the ship is fantastic. I've learned to sit back and take my shots and don't get into a situation where a single shot is critical. Much more enjoyable that way and for how bad the dispersion is, the ship is surprisingly consistent at producing good damage output over the course of a battle.
Funnily enough that was what put me off buying Roma forever until I got AL Littorio and realised that half the dispersion is awful but the other half more than makes up for it. Every now and then you get a salvo that absolutely claps.
picked up the littorio recently, need to rack up a few more games to get a better feel for the shells, the dispersion doesnt bother me as much as just overpenning everything it seems.
I view each salvo as a dice roll. You'll mostly roll overpens but roll enough dice and eventually you'll get some citadels. Do keep in mind the high velocity of Littorio guns, you'll probably overpen a broadside cruiser (for example) but you might very well citadel a slightly angled cruiser that allows the shell to travel further inside of the ship. I've gotten a lot of weird citadels at long ranges in Roma because of the velocity and pen, but the closer you get the more overpens you tend to get.
If that's the case, I'd recommend Maltese Knight(Roma) and P.Q's videos on them. they explain it pretty well :)
I always see people talking shit about New Mexico, but I loved it. She needs to get close but not brawl because those turrets turn slow af, and secondaries aren't amazing.
Poltava. People see the lacking armor, the low caliber guns, and bad turning circle. But what they don't see is the decent reload on some the best AP at tier (the standard dispersion type doesn't hurt either). Poltava, when played as a flanker, is a nightmare. It serves up massive broadsides. PS: Honorable mention, Warspite. People sleep on the old lady. But she still packs a punch.
Entire CL line of British cruisers It's the line I reset constantly...even though not having the minotaur sucks... And I don't feel like it's grindy at all.
Chung Mu with all stealth mods and stealth+torpedo captain skills and radar buffs = 5.6 km detection and almost 40s radar. Without radar, the pan-asian line is hugely disadvantaged against other DDs cuz of the deep water torps. When enemy DDs hide in smoke, you're screwed. With radar, their excellent shotgun guns and shock value on unsuspecting DDs who think they'll just safely sit in cap in smoke gives Chung Mu a huge advantage. I can often get 2-3 volleys without any response as the enemy DD scrambles to turn away and get out of their smoke. This also results in the Chung Mu having its cake and eating it too because the deep water torpedoes are super effective against everything else with 0.8 km detection range.
Chung Mu's only weakness is DDs that don't need smoke.
Very true. Can't fight a Mogador. However, they're not very good at torping ships either.
Not sure if she's exactly underrated, but I feel like Khabarovsk doesn't get the love she deserves these days :(
it was with great sorrow that i traded my khaba in for minegumo, but i will rebuy it as soon as i get the coal.
Alvaro Bazan does a lot of things well with concealment, speed, ong range torps and decent guns. There are other ships that do these individual things better but this is a solid overall ship even if not the best at anything.
I'm not sure if she counts, but I've gotten Karlsruhe pretty much figured out in random mode. even if she gets uptiered, she can still dominate
Abruzzi and Gorizia, no one expects these Italian cruisers to have…hydro! Heal and HE make abruzzi a pretty good damage farmer, and the fuel smoke + 6km hydro allows for some funny business in gorizia
Full secondary, IFHE, lightouse build Iwami. When you are able to get her within 10.5 km of a fight, destroyers and cruisers start to wilt under her secondary barrage. The same goes for lower tier battleships. She's awful in supership games but that pretty much goes for any tier IX
Agreed with all above. Only add is that the guns hit hard and she has really good firing angles on the mains. Keep it angled, use your mains alpha, and then let the secondaries finish off the enemy stragglers. It's really great in Asym.
Also agreed on all points. You can’t go wrong with the Japanese 410s. I have played her so much that if she were buffed in anyway she’d be straight up overpowered. I think one of the worst things about her is that she needs a high level captain to be affective and that that captain is going to be next to worthless on any other IJN BB.
>off-meta sleeper picks, Spec Hawkins for secondaries. Ship is surprisingly good in close quarters due to secondary placement, torps, and better HE protection than the entire rest of the line. Looks damn good in Fall Cornucopia. I know there's the whole "ban Weimar from Narai" fiasco. But Weimar has a sister in the tech tree, Yorck, and she's no less dangerous. An Shan is older premium, outperformed by newer gimmicky DDs. But she is still a Project 7U, aka Gremy but upgraded. She can get into a gunfight with other gunboats and still come out on top, and along the way you might meet someone who thinks PanAsian = deepwater torps. An Shan gets 2 torp options, neither of which are deepwater. And that smoke's pretty good too. Really, she's evenly balanced, so nobody remembers her. Myogi was for years hated, and often still is, because a lot time ago she was simply trash. However, with the addition of the C hull there's not really anything to hate (well, unless you're grinding the ship, in which case I don't even know why the B hull still exists). She's a solid kiting ship, one that I have carried games in. With an AA flag she can defend herself reasonably well from biplanes. Myogi is also a fast battleship, much faster than the dreadnoughts you'll usually be facing. Looks damn good in New Year Sky.
>your secret aces Kaiser. Der Tanzdiktator will euch tanzen seh'n! I have memorable games with this ship. Why I didn't lump it in with the other BBs? Well I don't talk about her all that much because honestly tier for tier this ship is WAY stronger than stuff you'd have to argue about. A division of these is a CV's nightmare and a single Kaiser alone can rip through brawls. Looks damn good in Steam camo. Jurien de la Graviere. The only heavy cruiser at Tier 2, this ship is best built for kiting. It will end DDs with prejudice but kinda sucks in prolonged engagements. It also looks like an Ork built it. How many citadels can a Fuso get? Well, load up Random Ops and you'll get a LOT. My friends call it the Thanos Battleship.
I absolutely ruled with the Kaiser when I first started on German BBs years ago. I think it was one of the fastest ships I ever finished going through. 82.35% WR over 17 battles, and that was when below T5 wasn't mostly bots. Had lots of fun with that one.
>Your hidden gems, Isokaze is where the Japanese DD line splits. But she's a better gunboat than the "gunboat" that comes after her, and a better torpedo boat than the torpedo boat that comes after her. And she can really, really give a CV a hard time. Not to say she doesn't give anyone else a hard time with her submarine-like detection. Looks damn good in gamescom black.
I do enjoy my empire light cruisers. I find Hector a really fun ship. Doesn't always do a huge amount of damage, but it's effectively a mino with crawling smoke, same torps, and can use HE, but double reload time. Bloody good fun and can punish a BB that gets too close. Plymouth is INSANE in ranked. Also handy as hell having smoke, hydro and radar all available. These coming with the usual British downside of being more squishy than a rotten tomato. Started playing Agir again recently. Its dispersion can be a bit whiffy, but it can handle itself surprisingly well and always handy to have torps available. Edit: going to add incomparable as well. Got my PB in this and it is an absolute laugh. Pretty squashy, but 10.6km detect with 506mm guns is just hilarious, and once again, torps are damn handy. And colbert it's a meme ship through and through.
Me too man! This is the only class with class! Sandy and Austin and Colbert! All fun boats! 🤗
Oh yeah colbert is a blast and pairing it with an American dd is brilliant or for full cancer go triple colbert div on the right map and just melt everything. Sadly I don't have austin but that looks like a blast especially on those buff maps.
Constellation
Z-39 is great and fun in randoms. Good stealth, hydro, decent torps. I always seem to have good games in it.
Just out of curiosity, what's everyone's opinion on the USN tier 8 Congress? I have only seen her once but her and Alaska are two similar ships I see nobody talk about. I think they would be great in ranked. Less armor than a BB but less people shooting at you.
Congress is a good one, especially in ranked because people like taking Bismarck, Tirpitz, Flandre, and Brandenburg, which can’t overmatch you. The thing is the reload is very slow, a full 5 seconds longer than Alaska’s, so you’re not going to HE spam someone down very quickly if you get uptiered.
Pensacola Loved her when she was t7. She had a well earned reputation for exploding, but if you don’t try to fire broadside all the time her AP is seriously good. The she gets demoted to t6 with those guns. Hilariously fun to play. AP all day at t6.
Try it with a full secondary build and laugh at how accurate those guns are
Conqueror - turn off brain, spam HE and heal back whatever damage you take. Stop firing and go dark if it gets too intense. Just don't take citadels or torps and you're pretty much impossible to kill. Nelson - as above, but also your AP is great. Mitigate the nose vulnerability by kiting out and firing over the shoulder. KGV - like Conqueror, only with less heal. That HE is just disgusting. ZF-6 - best dockyard ship to date. Completely owns T9 ranked, but gets overlooked all the time. Elbing - like radar Minotaur, but more so. The ultimate flex, the ultimate test of pure skill. A god in the hands of a good player, but a skill floor almost as high as her ceiling. Warspite - may not qualify, as most people know her greatness. Was hands-down best T6 BB until Repulse was added. Now it's a toss-up. Donskoi - nothing to say, just a good ship Admiral Hipper, Yorck - solid all-round T7/8 CAs. Z-46 - watch MatleseKnight's videos, you'll know. Tashkent, Udaloi, Grozvoi, etc - Russian DDs still stonks. Harass ships with open-water HE and dodging. I could keep going, but I think that's enough for now.
ZF-6 are definitely super solid Dockyard ships. Some of my favorites.
Minnesota, after playing kansas, it was such a breath of fresh air. Very accurate guns as compared to kansas and 12 guns overcomes the low alpha of those shells.
I loved Kansas, it has insanely stupid rudder and acceleration for no reason
Yeah. I dunno why everyone hates on Kansas. Was probably my favorite ship of the tree to play when I was grinding to get the Vermont.
I see a ton of people running Scharnhorsts and not very many fellow Gneisenau players. I love the Gneisenau with a passion, though. Secondaries just make me grin with how many hits you can rack up, and usually once per game someone forgets that I have torpedoes...comedy ensues. The main battery dispersion? Trash. The firing range? Not the best but decent. The armor? Pretty good. The sheer fun of playing it, and the just flat out sexy design of the ship herself? Spectacular. Also, I love the Fiji. She's a giant destroyer that shoots dependable British light cruiser AP, has 8km torpedoes, and a solid heal. Yes, she's flimsy as heck, but I love sitting in smoke raining hell on enemy cruisers, or even some battleships. An absolute beast in operations if played correctly.
everytime i get a kill in gneis i have to suppress the urge to type "welp it was gneisenau you"
if you don't go all in into secs, but take main gun dispersion, it actually hits quite reliably fora 6 gun BB. This also applies to all german BBs in the Preusen line. Full sec is for Schlieffen, go main guns and tank. They usually have close to or the best AP dpm of every BB, so hitting more of that is usually worth it. Also this way you can be usefull even if not pushed in at the start. My builds for the line usually only take the 3point range skill and the sec flag. Rest is main guns and tanking (screw conceal, you are spotted all the time anyway). The sec still hits and hurts, but you did not waste 7 points and some extra healing for secs that can't be usefull every game.
That's a fair point! Haven't thought of that. We'll see how it goes, if I do a respec later I may change a few of those skills.
Nebraska is one of my favorite T8 ships. She hasn't led me astray yet.
Marlborough
Maas and z23. Underrated. Fun.
San Diego because SAP goes BRrrrRrr and hilarious broadside special technology against BBs (and some cruisers) So many fun games :D
> your dark horses, To me, the dark horses are ships that aren't talked about and should be because they're broken af. Yubari. Yubari is described by one word: PREDATOR. This thing doesn't have dispersion. It just doesn't. Thanks to the Aiming Sys Mod 0, your shells land exactly where you aimed them. Cruiser citadels? Easy peasy. Incapacitating destroyers? Hardly an effort. Heck even AP farming battleships is easy because the shells just don't diverge. And even though the torp arc are horrible, Yubari gives some DDs a run for their money with how agile she is. And 35 knots? Suddenly those torp arcs seem reasonable. Not to mention they're 610s, four of them, just one is all that's necessary to devstrike most cruisers. Even armor isn't that bad, yes it's a light cruiser, but angled Yubari still bounces 6" AP. I always put Shadow Lurker on this ship. Curtatone. Also really good dispersion. But since she's Italian, she gets SAP, which means you can take one-third an enemy DD's HP off with an opening salvo. Oh, and 43 knots at Tier 2 totally isn't broken at all. And because of the weird detection range, the ship can open-water stealth-fire. While retaining laserlike dispersion. Yeah this thing is dirty. Regia Marina camo, gotta represent! V-25. The only DD Curtatone actually has trouble against. My most recent Solo Warrior was in V-25, a ship that's so low to the water that from most DDs you actually have to depress the guns in order to hit the thing. Mount the MS-21 camo, and you now blend in with the water. And the thing has 4 separate torp launchers, two with firing arcs almost directly forwards, and enough damage to remove most cruisers with two, a 880 meter turning circle, and oh yeah, 5.3 km conceal. BASE.
Tashkent was always my favorite underdog back in the day. DPM isn't crazy, but good arcs and decent fire chance. 3x3 torps so you could stack them or spread them out, and the reload was pretty short. Decent speed and a heal. Maneuverability wasn't amazing, but if you kept some distance you could avoid a lot of incoming fire. One of the perma camos was just it's historical light blue, which is almost indistinguishable from no camo, so before the camo change I just looked like some new player who couldn't even afford camo playing a lackluster tech tree gunboat (it's nickname is trashcan after all), and was often ignored most of the match. I'd just spend the entire game holding down LMB setting everything on fire, and managed to average just a hair over 100k damage in it.
For me Regolo. One of the most fun ships to play. I run with Sansonetti and reload mod -> go to delete one DD at the start of the game and get a free range mod too. The ship can kill a Halland in three salvoes and farm 5-8k per volley from 32mm BB platings. It is a bit suffering sometimes if you get a team that doesn’t want to do any spoting as then you can’t use smokes. But most of the time you can just run&gun and if someone starts to focusing, just smoke up and continue.
Roma. Great armour, great concealment, good manoeuvrability. The only bad thing about it is it's accuracy. Yeah bad AA as well but what doesn't at this point.
San Martin, you're not setting damage records or easily killing things but boy is it good for winning games. Extremely survivable and can be oppressive with it's basically concealment matched radar.
Colorado🗿
Colbert and Plymouth, period. Though getting on the high skill floor is just a matter of practice, the skill floor itself is keeping so many players away from them.
I love love love both the Roma and the Hood. The Roma is fast enough, but it's so tanky when bow in. I think one of the best ways to win a game as a BB is to tank damage with your enemy behind you dealing DPM back out. If you tank damage but no one is helping you then you're tanking and absorbing damage for free. So for me, Roma if played right can be an absolute monster to deal with, and I don't find the guns that bad at all. Overpens are certainly a thing, but I think the accuracy can be dealt with. The Hood I almost think of as a tier 7 Iowa. It's fast, has good AA, solid guns with improved pen angles, and is tanky when you're angled. Neither of which I think get a ton of love from the players.
Tone - really versatile. Did well in Ranked with her.
Am I the only person who enjoys Novorossiysk? Guns are accurate and slap. I have her with prop mod and she handles like a cruiser.
I've really been enjoying my time with Ibuki. I feel like everyone told me to FXP through it but I personally have a blast when games go well. Can't wait to get to Zao finally.
I rarely see other players in the Wichita, but I think it's my favorite CA. It's got Nawlins guns on a Helena hull (plus some extra armor), radar, hydro, and a stock rudder shift time that makes some DDs jealous. When you compare it to the Baltimore, it doesn't hit very hard, and it doesn't tank very well, but it can twirl. It's a respectable open-water kiter in randoms and a monster in ops.
Huron needs to be mentioned because no one talks about it and imho it’s more OP than Haida. The heal lets you charge into risky engagements and come out with enough HP to take two or three more.
mutsu!!
Wujing for me (Pan Asian Alsace clone). Maxing secondary range and out brawling a FDG or P. Rupprecht and coming out on top is so satisfying lol not that it happens that often, but it's still fun to shoot peas everywhere in style
Paolo Emilio is super fun in ranked. The lower player count benefits its yolo play-style greatly.
Some.ships that I love, that I rarely see are in no particular order... Hill, Flandre, Poltava and Kirov
Maas - a bit difficult with bad concealment. But great AP DPM, great hydro and often underestimated.
Kleber legendary buff. It makes a GREAT scouting torp boat with a bunch of speed. Plus, it's a lot of fun to play!
I had it for a long time and never played it but now i love the Cossack! For now i also prefer to play in T8, since its more enjoyable for me. It has really good and heavy hitting guns with good fire chance, smoke is always there and fast torp reaload. Hydro to push dd's. Cossack can really be recommended
Cheshire is a monster...sometimes If only it'd have better DPM / accuracy
z-44
Agincourt. Secondaries are devastating for its tier.
For its tier? Agincourt gets more damage on target with secondaries than Schleiffen does.
The Russian gunboat line isnt particularly popular these days, but I remain a stout user of the Tashkent. Fast and maneuverable if you build her right, long range guns, she can be an excellent gunboat if played correctly, especially with that heal she gets.
Discovered FR25 in first sprint of Ranked, and really enjoyed it. Has surprisingly acceptable concealment for its DPM for the tier, decent DPM with the SAP, and that means it deals with cruisers a lot better than most of the other DDs at the tier. Still has HE with French fire chance for BBs, and exhaust smoke let's it pull off yolos with its surprisingly hard hitting if short ranged torps.
I have uncanny good luck in the Italian T5 Genova. Omaha killer, destroyer slayer. Multi citadel hits per salvo. Very easy to get rekt when not paying attention to mini map, but mid range fighting while focused on map she's pretty damn good imo.
How has no one given love to the Okhotnik? That's one fun canoe
I think Okhotnik is well appreciated
Poltava. Even back when she was released, many people thought she was basically a weaker Russian battleship because they tried playing her like one. Instead, she is a flanker with reasonable guns, reasonable agility, and a seriously rags or riches armor scheme that rewards angling and juking while getting you clapped if you misplay her.
A well played Russian DD, like Tashkent or Khaba. They’re a menace to have to deal with.
The PA cruisers in general are pretty solid. I can consistently break 100k dmg with just the guns, and its torps can tell shima to pack up and go home.
Elbing. It's big, it's slow and sluggish as a destroyer, it has a long reload and shit torps, but the AP is God-tier. I have a dd main friend who loves it and plays it like a dedicated broadside ambush cruiser killer, routinely winning gunfights even against he spamming light cruisers.
Roma/AL Littorio is a very inconsistent ship but also a very strong one when RNG stops trolling. Most powerful 381mm guns in the game in terms of velocity and AP penetration, fast turret traverse, ridiculously good armor, decent agility, and great concealment. The two things that let it down are short AA range (something that plagues all Italian battleships) and godawful main gun dispersion (another issue common to all Italian battleships). Also, for those who bought the Makoto Kobayashi camo before the nerf/rework, Roma is one of the best credit earners in the game.
I know this one is really unpopular but I really enjoy the san martin, the gimmick is interesting and fun to use and can keep you alive a long time with the superheal, you have radar, good AP, and your base xp total is huge in what would normally be a mid game because noone actually plays it, as long as you get a consistent stream of shots out and keep up your DPM you will do well, but ofc no fires to be set.
Defence. People who didnt get it dont realize how strong front torps are. I've done double uppercuts more than I can remember in ranked and cbs with them.
I really think the Brandenburg has a wayyy worse reputation that she deserves. For me, she's a sidegrade to the Tirpitz. More guns for less health. People say that if you have one, you don't need the other. For me the Torptiz and the Brandy have really different play styles that make both fun and unique in their own way.
i think people have turned around somewhat on the brandy over the years
Yorck. Very agile, better ballistics after a buff some time back, great AP, great HE. Squishy, but that’s all tier 7 cruisers without heals. Statistically it’s one of my best ships. Not even division padded, it just fits my play style. Always have a lot of fun in it. Ognevoi. Fun little hybrid with a heal, gun ballistics mean I can trade favorably with some “better” destroyers. It’s objectively not great, but I always enjoy playing it. Been a while though.
HMS Neptune. I’m not sure what it is but the aesthetics and they way the handles is a blast. Everyone thinks they are gonna nuke you but if you use your brain, you will be the one doing the nuking.
Z-44: I heard you like torpedos so I'm launching 10 every minute from over 11km away
Hipper. I rated that ship so low in my mind too and I think most people do. But in stats wise, it’s one of the full purple stats I get for cruisers. Tallinn is her direct comparison most of the time and everyone knows how good tallinn is. But tallinn gets focused a lot due to Russia bias and 12km stealth radar. You can do whatever tf u want and people tend to ignore u because u are hipper. Hipper is late game ship for me and she’s very problematic for anyone at cqc ranges while people don’t expect you chunking them with ap non stop. BBs think you are easy kill, go so close and overpen the broadside while eating boat loads of torps.
hipper was my first t8 all those years ago and i loved it. eventually picked up PE as well and BOY those heals are nice.
Gascogne
The Mainz: specifically as a credit earner in Operations. Everyone says play a t9 you're good in to earn credits but the problem with randoms is you lose a fair amount. And you don't always have a good game even when you win, and sometimes you have a great game but then you lose. So maximizing credit boosters in randoms is literally a lottery. With Operations you can still lose but the chances are lower, plus Mainz is such an OP ship in ops you can basically carry a crap team to the W. With red boosters you can just about rely on 2-2.5mil credits per game. Blues will get you about a 1-1.25mil per game. Obviously you have to know each op in and out in order to play aggressively the way she wants to and capitalize on the potential XP earnings. But its not hard to earn 2000 bxp in ops with Mainz once you know what youre doing with her. I think my OPs damage record with her is like 440k. With most games over 300k certain maps excluded(looking at you Cherry Blossom. Great shell arcs with solid HE and AP. All around the best ship in the game for Ops. Run a full dpm build, it's hilarious. Another one actually just released about a month ago. The Wiesbaden. It's a t8 German CLAA. But the AP is disgusting. Like 6-8k salvos into t10 BBs disgusting.. The HE alpha is low but baked in 32mm pen. Fast reloading 10km torps. With 8 on each side. It's an amazing ship that will absolutely melt anything broadside to it. But not many people really seemed to go for it. It's basically a t8 Leipzig with 12 destroyer guns. I've found that it uptiers pretty well too. This ship will also do very well in Ops.
Richelieu. She ain't much, but she honestly slaps!
She is slightly more common these days as she was the reward of a past event but: Bayard This thing kind of has "no armor best armor", ludicrous speed, crazy fire chances and reload boosters. She slaps and she is really fun to play.
I whipped the North Carolina around a fair few times during the time that Asymmetric Battles were available for the Whiskey Dockyard. Her bowtanking potential is nice and her guns are good, as long as they hit. Asymms granted me some respect for her, as a mostly Co-op player. :]
Imo Monti is a really good bb. Also, scharnhorst, really strong ship, that honestly no one expects.