Cragger

Like the Murmansk the Nikolai was given a hidden stat buff that is not displayed in game (two actually) The Nikolai has very high Krupp value for her AP shells. What this means is that her shells basically cannot shatter on the targets it plays against. Deflect or fail to penetrate yes, but never shatter. The second buff that the Nikolai got for Russian pride was a sigma value of 2.0. Only one other ship has a higher sigma value and that is the Yamato. Couple these with the make believe overmatch mechanics they have devised in this game that massively favors a distributed or incremental armor scheme. And not having her gun arcs restricted by any peace time deck clutter like the Wyoming and New York you get one hell of an OP ship.