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World of Warships Ship Opinions: Sinop More like SinOP. For Flambass Sake, Wargaming!!! This is something that I did not want to do. I hate Russian Battleships with all my heart, but I’m doing it anyways because it will inevitably be asked of me in the future, and I would rather do it now rather than later. So here we are, the Sinop, the Tier 7 RU BB. Arguably one of the most powerful ( broken) ships in the game, she outperforms pretty much every other battleship at Tier 7 by a considerable margin, from firepower to durability to AA. She’s not a big dumb brainless ship like the Conqueror or the Smolensk, and admittedly it takes some time to get used to her massive power, but she’s still somewhat brainless in her overall experience. I’ll try not to sugarcoat it when it comes to describing this brutal behemoth of a BB, but don’t expect me to go around calling it balanced, either… Armor: Holy Ugly Tankiness, Batman! It’s no secret that Sinop, like most other Russian Battleships, save the lithe and elegeant Kremlin, is a hideous mess of geometry and angles that would make a modern day supertanker blush. Still, it’s not like it’s all bad. Underneath that incorrigible skin lies 65,000 hitpoints and a near-invincible armor scheme that would make the German Battleships blush with envy. Sinop has a powerful bow armor scheme consisting of a 100mm-120mm thick plate that stretches the whole way across the bow, making penetrations from the front impossible, save the upper part of the nose, which is just 25mm thick. Sinop also has an incredibly thick 45mm deck that almost matches that of the German twins Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, not to mention nigh-indestructible turrets and AA defenses. The one weakness in her armor scheme comes up when she shows full broadside. Her citadel is horrendously exposed over the waterline, making devastating strikes from almost any battleship in her matchmaking spread very much a possibility. She also has limited damage control party consumables to use, with just 5 in reserve with a full build, as well as one less heal than the Battleships of other nations, at just 4. To survive in this ship takes more than just your sheer luck ( and, if you have Kuznetsov, that extra consumable charge with the first blood achievement ), it takes guts, brawn, and good understanding of the weaknesses in the ship’s armor scheme and tactical positioning to make it work. Otherwise, you’ll pay. Dearly Rating: WTAF Armaments: Mini-Kremlin The Sinop isn’t just horrendously broken for no reason. Despite the fact that it’s Sigma rating is incredibly low, at 1.6 ( being reduced to 1.55 in 0.9.2), it will clobber most ships within ranges of 10 kilometers of her massive 16 inch primary armaments, thanks to the unique dispersion of the RU BBs. She wields the second largest broadside at Tier 7 ( only behind Ashitaka ), with 9 406mm/45 Vickers guns mounted in three triple turrets, two forward and one aft. They have that aforementioned incredible dispersion, a high shell velocity, and an absolutely brutal AP alpha strike per shell of 12,950 damage per shell, with the only weaknesses being the long reload time of 33 seconds and a painfully slow turret traverse of 60 seconds. Her secondaries are similar to Roma, with a decent range of 4.6km and a good number of relatively high damage and rate of fire barrels found in the form 152mm case mate / turret guns and the 130mm B-2-U guns that are also found on Khabarovsk. Don’t be fooled into thinking that she is a brawler, however. The large majority of barrels are located along the sides of the ship, and she has to turn and show an uncomfortably large amount of skirt if she wishes to use them. Therefore, she is best played as a midrange brawler that can take some punishment for the team, and dish a whole lot of it out back for the allies. Rating: WTAF AA: Meh I wasn’t entirely surprised at how WG decided to balance this thing out. She does put out some fairly impressive numbers, with 154 dps on her long range and 262 on her medium range, but it’s sorta hampered by the lack of a short range AA ring. Nevertheless, with 6 kilometers of reach and devastatingly powerful flak clouds, Sinop’s AA can put a serious dent in both Tier 6 and Tier 8 carriers with proper timing. She also has access to a Fighter, which allows her to fend off airstrikes more effectively than would be expected. Still, she’s no Gneisenau or Duke of York in terms of overall AA effectiveness, so she’s still kinda meh Rating: Acceptable Maneuverability: Is this thing a truck or what? I begged the question with the Akizuki about this, whether or not that thing was a cruiser. Now I have to ask the question of the Sinop’s maneuverability: ARE YOU A FLIPPIN’ AIRCRAFT CARRIER OR WHAT!? sorry about that. But I am being serious. Her turning circle is utterly unacceptable, at 960 meters. Her speed is meh, at 27 knots, putting her towards the slow end of the spectrum with Nagato and Colorado, but she has a lightning fast 12.9 second rudder shift that allows her to swivel about, should it be called upon. Still, that turning circle is the worst of all the Tier 7 BBs, with the only one nearly as bad being the Hood, at 910 meters, with the Gneisenau’s 830 meter turning circle being far better than either of them. Still, it’s not like she can’t move, it just takes patience and some awareness, lest you run yourself aground broadsiding to any BB other than Scharnhorst, and even she will make mincemeat of you, should you blunder your maneuver. Rating: Poor Stealth: Sorta good, actually… Sinop has fairly good stealth as far as it’s size goes. It has a base concealment of 14.9 kilometers, which can be improved to an almost best in tier 13.1 kilometers, which is only 0.4km behind the best in Tier King George V class, and tied with the Gneisenau. That is fairly impressive for such a large warship with this kind of power. It gets better too. The aerial detection is also fairly impressive at 9.1km, which is only 0.1km worse than the King George V. Overall, this is no middle of the pack stealth. This kind of stealth can be lethal to anyone who finds themselves suddenly exposed on a flank and detected. And if this thing is shooting at you, well, you’re f***ed. Rating: Good Build Bog Standard BB Build, as I have described it on the Roma. I do suggest taking either Znamensky as a commander for the improved skills such as Preventative maintenance, Expert Marksman, and High Alert, or Kuznetsov for the powerful Concealed Reserves talent and the downright broken Will To Victory talent Verdict Armor: 5 / 5 Armaments: 5 / 5 AA: 3 / 5 Maneuverability: 2 / 5 Stealth: 4 / 5 Overall: 21 / 25 General Writer Verdict: It’s only one Admiral Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov away from being broken. Otherwise it’s fairly solid for what it is. I’d like to thank all of you for voting on this otherwise ultra controversial topic that I swore I would never do. But like the Old Man said, what comes is what goes, and if these things came, I might as well take a look before something horrendous happens to the game that ends it. And now for the surprise (two,actually) One, I will actually be releasing a CV review as the next Ship opinions,in the form of Lady Lex, and two, I will be putting the Massachussets against the Tirpitz for the next comparo test instead of Ohio and Kurfurst, as it violated my rule about non-researchable ships dueling against researchable ones. Welp, that’s all I got for this one, I hope you all enjoy. Peace! and YeEt fLeEt Mothatruckas!!! ( sorry, not sorry )

After many containers I finally got one!! The secondaries have averaged about 25% of the total damage, with a range of 7.6km. They hit very hard, and I don't even have IFHE or MFCSA yet. It seems WG needs to give Scharnhorst a buff now, with longer secondary range and damage.