thehelmsman

More WWI-era stuff? Auto +1 from me. In truth, though, I'd prefer to see battlecruisers get proper lines of their own rather than being shoehorned in as BB premiums. It is apparent to me that Kronshtadt may well be an experiment to see just how best to implement them. --Helms

I didn't find Mahan to be that bad, either. You just have to realize that you're not gonna be outspotting enemy DD and play accordingly. Wait until they're spotted/distracted by something else, and then pounce, or set an ambush behind an island that will shield you from their friends while you brutalize them with sheer DPM. It has fast reload and quicker turrets than most of its peers, plus a fairly fat HP pool that can keep it in the game after taking a surprising amount of punishment. Having said that, tier 7 DD in general (aside from a couple of the premiums) are rather underwhelming to play compared to the 6s and especially the 8s. --Helms

I've been wanting this ship for quite a while. She'd make a nice tier 4 premium, though they'd have to give her another name, of course. Good write-up! --Helms

Eugen suffers at the moment for being basically worse in every way than the Hipper, which is already one of the less-threatening tier 8 tech tree cruisers. Your AP is very powerful, but also very finnicky, and thus quite situational to use. Your HE is very reliable, but also very weak, and thus won't be killing anything fast. Your long reload limits your ability to punish enemies quickly with either. Lert and SeaRaptor00 basically have the right of it. The upcoming buffs (DPM and handling for Hipper, heal for Eugen) should help these ships quite a lot, but until then, you kinda just have to pick your fights and play cautiously, especially in the early game. --Helms

I used to feel that Vigilance was a better first 3-point pick compared to Superintendent, back in the day. Now, though, the value of Vigi is significantly diminished by deepwater torps, and the prevalence of firespam means Superintendent is basically a must-have; if you're playing passively enough that you're not burning through all your heals, you could be doing a lot more for your team. --Helms

Thank goodness. Baltimore at tier 8 will definitively be an improvement over the current New Orleans with these changes. Excellent. Before the reload buff, it was questionable at best. Looking forward to it, now. Buffalo.... not so much. --Helms

It looks like it COULD be fun.... but man, that is a LOT to trade for gimmicky (and probably not very good even fully buffed) secondaries that require a highly specialized captain (which gives up important survivability talents) to get the most out of them. Terrible sigma, terrible cooldowns on DamageCon. Interesting, but this is gonna be hard to justify other than as an occasional novelty ship, or maybe if we get tier 8 scenarios at some point in the future. There's no way this thing is gonna be remotely competitive in ranked formats. They were talking about how underpowered it would be before it had its reload buffed from 35 seconds to 30. As released, it's hideously OVERpowered, because it represents a full tier 10 in games where there aren't any carriers to exploit its lack of AA, and frankly Yamato's AA was never anything to brag about anyway. A tier 10 ship with tier 9 matchmaking weight, essentially giving your team an extra tier 10 compared to the enemy. If that's not the definition of overpowered, I'm not sure what is. --Helms

9 fires in 10 minutes is nothing to cry about. Scharnhorst got set on fire four times in less than a minute today. Needless to say I didn't last very long after that. But I was forced to make a play and had to trade my ship to kill the offending Atlanta, and secure the win. Worth. --Helms

This thing is going to be very hard to carry games in. Very, very hard. It'll punish oblivious battleship drivers (which is most of them), but it seems to be good for little else on its own. Also, while I despise the current BB meta, I despite it because the battleships are campy and passive, not because there are so many of them. Asashio will only 'fix' this problem in roundabout fashion by reducing the number of battleships in the queue. Those that remain are likely to be even campier and more passive. I suppose I can settle for fewer surprise citadels in my cruisers and getting chunked for 1/4 of my health less frequently in my destroyers. I can live with that. --Helms

+1! --Helms

Good choice. Z-23's rudder shift isn't what lets it down, as much as the sluggish rate of turn and the large turn radius that results. The W and A portions of your WASD hax are thus very valuable, and the propulsion mod is a better choice because of that. Propulsion mod is a better choice on almost all destroyers, I find. --Helms

+1 to USN. Good all-around ships without many real strengths, but also few glaring weaknesses. They tend to be good cap bullies because of their fast-firing, quick-traversing guns, but they lack impact at long-range thanks to the lazy shell arcs and poor fire chance. The torpedoes are serviceable, but not brilliant, at least until high tiers. They're not super-sneaky, but they also (generally) don't get spotted from half a map away, either. As a rule, they generally fall around the middle of the pack for any given stat, compared to their counterparts in the same tier. USN's hybrid style and versatile nature will teach you how to play your destroyer to its strengths depending on what you're facing and what is required of you at the time. About the only thing you won't learn how to do at low tiers is stealth-torp, since you can't do that until you get the Mahan at tier 7. But you'll get used to using terrain to set ambushes for your torp kills, which is a very satisfying thing to pull off when you get it right. Not only do you get an insanely fun tier four sealclub boat (never sell Clemson), but the rest of the line is surprisingly versatile and capable, all the way up. Not a bad ship in the lot, even at tier 7, which is a notoriously troublesome tier for destroyers. Nicholas and Farragut are competent. Mahan is capable, as well, which surprised me, considering all the crap it gets for being the dog of the line. I really didn't feel that. Benson is awesome and Fletcher is the best tier 9 DD in the game. Gearing is kinda meh, but it can get the job done and has the best smoke in the game. If you can get USN's destroyer gameplay down, you can translate those skills to every other DD line. Because of this, it's the best for beginners, in my humble opinion. --Helms

Hipper probably needs the concealment, but FWIW I run double-rudder on Roon and it's plenty comfortable. --Helms

Good changes. I think there's an excellent chance of these going live, because both Hipper and Eugen (being virtual clones in their current state) are rather underwheming. The 11.5 second reload will help Hipper out tremendously vs its competitors, while Eugen should have enough staying power with the heal to make it a compelling alternative. Less DPM, but vastly improved tankiness to make up for it? That's a fair trade, I think. Yorck and especially Hipper are a drag at the moment, but Roon is worth it. And Hindenburg is DEFINITELY worth it, from what I hear. Haven't got there yet, but Roon is fabulous and a real joy to play. --Helms

This, I think, is a good sign. Eugen was largely pointless except for ship collectors, but now it'll have an identity of its own rather than simply being a slightly-nerfed Hipper that makes a bit more exp and credits. I think Indi will probably be looked at down the road, after the USN cruiser split and they get a chance to see how the new Tier 7 New Orleans does, since that'll be the benchmark. --Helms