thehelmsman

I simply can't fathom why anybody would play USN cruisers if these things go live. They have no torpedoes, so they're less flexible, and they also have less range AND worse ballistics, so they're harder to position because they rely on island cover. The only thing they do that these boats can't is long term area denial via radar, but I think the much safer USSR long-range radar offsets this. --Helms

The combination of all these features into a single package. --Helms

So they get 'Murrican ricochet angles, British quick fuze, HE, and railgun ballistics all in one? Yeah that's not gonna be brainless to play at all..... I hesitate to say overpowered until the numbers start coming in, but these things are gonna be utterly faceroll. --Helms

The County class is DEFINITELY not tier 8 material and would be a stretch even for tier 7; it's a mid-1920s design, contemporary with the likes of Pensacola, Aoba, and Trento, along with Suffren if we ever get it. In other words, it's right about where it should be. The British never really went in for heavy cruisers like the US and Japanese did. --Helms

Pretty much this. Lion has nothing going for it aside from good concealment and a superheal. The bad firing arcs on the rear turret force you to give up tons of broadside in order to bring all of your guns to bear and you're covered in squishy 32mm plate that HE spammers just love to feed on. --Helms

You should, occasionally, though it's low on the priority list when you're actually engaged with reds, or about to be. Hitting a teammate with torpedoes is ALWAYS The fault of the ship that launched them, though. There is no such thing as a friendly torpedo and some people seem to either not realize this or not care. Eeeeh. If I judge a 1% chance that a green is going to 'intercept' my torpedoes before they get where I want them to go, I'm still going to launch. That's a chance I'll take. But I'll put it in chat and try to get their attention. And if that 1% chance does turn into actual reality.... well, that's on me. --Helms

Roon is pretty solid, but tricky to play owing to the turret arrangement and bad forward firing arcs. You have to give up too much broadside to push aggressively, It's a phenomenal kiting cruiser and open-water duelist, though. --Helms

An adequate summary. Suffice it to say that the battlecruiser was from its inception a somewhat nebulous idea for which the design and purpose depended on which nation's Navy you were dealing with and what their doctrine called for. The British, Germans, Japanese, and US all had very different naval doctrines in the early 20th century and right up through the end of WWII. It is worth noting that the reason battlecruisers were usually larger than contemporary battleships was two-fold: the larger hulls were needed to hold more boilers, turbines, and fuel bunkers in order to achieve the desired speeds, as well as supporting either main battery firepower (in the case of the British and Japanese) or armor protection (in the case of the Germans). For a proper battleship, small overall dimensions (if not tonnage) is eminently desirable because it means you need less armor to protect the ship, and therefore less of the weight is taken up by heavy steel plating that does nothing to move the ship or sink enemy ships. 'Modern' fast battleships have far more in common in design and role with WWI-era battlecruisers than they do with the dreadnoughts they supplemented and eventually replaced, ironically enough. Jacky Fisher would seem to have gotten the last laugh in some ways. --Helms

Right? And it was a year that didn't begin well or progress well to begin with... --Helms

Thanks, as always, LWM, for all the effort and time you put into these. Puerto Rico is an interesting ship and the method of obtaining it is an interesting (dare I say brilliant) innovation.... but the execution was horribly botched and WG's greed is the sole culprit. This could have been an amazing, fun experience, but they turned it into unobtainium unless you were willing to fork over a frankly obscene amount of cash. This event makes World of Tanks marathons look positively friendly by comparison. At least with those you know up front what the total cost of bypassing the grind will be, and even if you aren't willing to front the cash, earning yourself a sizeable discount off the asking price is well within reach of most players. Even if you aren't interested in the final reward at all, it still costs you nothing out of your pocket to progress and try to earn a few of the little bonuses that come along the way. Why they decided to turn this archetype on its head is beyond me. I might have been willing to bite at 25k gold. I definitely would have been willing to bite if I'd been able to knock 30-40% off of that 25k price without too much trouble by completing the directives. Sadly, World of Warships has lost its luster over the last year or so; what was once the shining jewel in WG's crown is now tarnished. The Warships dev team seem to have lost their way even as Tanks devs have finally started to course-correct on years' worth of greed-based decisionmaking. Tanks is getting better... slowly, but it is. Warships, unfortunately, is rapidly getting worse. --Helms

It's intended. Bayard is something of a stealth testbed for upcoming IFHE rework. --Helms

Priority Target gives you tons of information, and once you understand how to interpret what it's telling you, allows you to make decisions that can greatly influence the match. As such, it is far more valuable to any ship class than a bit better RNG when it comes to modules breaking. PT > PM on every class, though destroyers, fragile as they are, can justify taking PM on the first pass since DD usually are #1 on everybody's hit list whenever they're spotted, anyway. This. --Helms

QFT. Best analogy for this that I've yet seen. --Helms

This is my biggest gripe. Paper ships at the exclusion of real, built-in-steel options that deserve a place. The only reason I can think of as to why is that they were looking to introduce a Swedish line within the tree and have plans to implement another line (or possibly lines?) later on and fill those with alternatives from other nations that deserve to be represented. I want to make the assumption that this is the case. If it isn't, then I will be supremely disappointed. --Helms

For that matter, Norwegian and Yugoslav. The lack of variety here is somewhat frustrating, considering how cool it would have been for people from all of these countries to see their ships in the game. I suppose there's room for adding another DD line later on, but still... I think they should have led with it. Fill in a dedicaded Swedish DD branch later on. --Helms