So uh, the Leander....

[Speedstang]

Not liking this ship at all. I haven't had a single game where I died to something other than my armor being overmatched and citadeled. Doesn't matter what angle I put my ship at, if I'm in range of a BB I'm dead. No HE, I'm like 100% useless against BB's, as the AP is pretty terrible against anything with decent armor. The smoke generator is useless, literally 1 circle/puff of smoke, can't really be used...... Should I just sell this? Wanted to get to the Fiji as that thing has hurt my BB's a lot in matches and looks really fun to play, but not sure if I'm willing to suffer through this ship for it. I feel like an oversized Russian destroyer with a citadel and no HE.

[DeadManxDan]

No you need to learn how to play UK CL's.  The Leander is a amazing ship and performs extremly well.  No you can't angle and the smoke is the same all the way to tier x so you should learn how it works.  Her ap is crazy good and will punish even tier 8 BB's.

[Speedstang]

No you need to learn how to play UK CL's.  The Leander is a amazing ship and performs extremly well.  No you can't angle and the smoke is the same all the way to tier x so you should learn how it works.  Her ap is crazy good and will punish even tier 8 BB's.

 

​Hence why I posted this....? How do I play it correctly?

[MrDeaf]

You need to go 24ish knots (around 3/4 speed) and then go to a stop to get two puffs of smoke, yet still be inside of your smoke when you are stopped.

To stop inside of one puff of smoke, you need to be going something like 15 knots or slower and coming to a stop.

RNCL smoke has been really [edited]buggy for me recently, so I use the 1 puff method.

 

You have to be aware of your surroundings when you go to smoke, when you're smoked and know when your smoke runs out, so you can get moving to keep outside of detection range.

 

Go watch some replays or youtube videos of how to play RNCL. They all play the same, so tier doesn't matter.

[DeadManxDan]

 

​Hence why I posted this....? How do I play it correctly?

There is a ton of Info in other threads on how to play them, also a ton of videos on youtube like,

that you can use over me trying to type it out.

[poeticmotion]

Positioning is key with British CLs. Leander's a great ship. And once you master her, the rest of the line is very consistent playstyle wise. I sucked with Leander my first go round, but really 'got it' with Fiji and kept grinding to Minotaur. Then I got a Leander from the Christmas Convoy missions and have done great in her because I had gotten good at Fiji/Edin/Neptune. 

RN CLs have a high skill floor and a massively high skill ceiling. The key is learning how to position your ship to limit the # of ships that can fire on you while being able to unleash hell on your target. It's learning where, when, and how to use offensive smoke. It's being aware of the situation and the map so you can slow down and pop smoke and not get focused and murdered while you're still slowing down to pop your smoke.  And you have to accept that sometimes you're going to get deleted quick because a lucky salvo oneshots you, and sometimes you're going to be ineffective because it's hard to carry a flank unsupported when you're so dependent on smoke and spotting (especially in Minotaur...I can carry very hard in Fiji and Neptune for some reason, they just seem more deft at dodging.)

You can absolutely murder BBs with RN cruisers. Pound their broadsides. If they're angled it's much harder, but you can still damage their superstructure. But your bread and butter are other cruisers and DDs. 

 

Even if you dislike Leander, at least go through Fiji. Fiji is the high point of the line IMO (although I like all of the RN CLs after Leander.) If you can't stand Fiji, even after watching videos as recommended above and working on your positioning, you won't like the Edinburgh or Neptune. But they're incredibly good ships if you can adapt to them. 


 

[LemonadeWarrior]

Play her like an Atlanta! Hug islands, surprise DDs and cruisers. Use smoke only when needed (nowadays people know to torp a smoke cloud...). Smoke itself is still bugged, but don't let that stop you!

 

Versus BBs can be tough, but as others already mentioned she does awesome broadside damage, plus she has torpedoes! And if you are unsure about winning a fight, simply don't attack! You need your landscape to win vs cruisers and BBs, also keep in mind that surprise is your biggest strength and that you need islands to get out.

[Captain_Dorja]

 

​Hence why I posted this....? How do I play it correctly?

 

if you like videos, go to YouTube and look for Whiskey's Gaming Lounge. Actually, just check this out. 

These videos aren't short, but UrPeaceKeeper does a great job breaking down modules and captains skills, then has a good exemplar match to show what the theory looks like in practice. 

 

One thing to consider is upcoming captain skill changes. We're likely to want a different setup on these CLs once those changes go live.

[desmo_2]

I had the Emerald fully upgraded and was working toward the Leander.  The Santa Convoy campaign finished that grind for me.  Fine by me.  I have since found the Leander to be a breath of fresh air in the British line.  The combination of smoke, great AP, and good torpedoes have proven her to be quite dangerous.  She may be my favorite T6 cruiser.

[Aduial]

Although I haven't played the RN CLs past the Weymouth, I do know that they can still do decent damage on angled ships because of their ability to get 33% penetrations on superstructure. 

[Cruiser_YahagiKai]

You are a light cruiser with a relatively low-sitting citadel. Be glad you skipped Emerald, its citadel is half the size of the ship. Your armor is made of paper, but you have one of the best acceleration rates in the game without even needing the propulsion modification. Your range is decent, your rate of fire is decent. Against broadside cruisers and battleships: aim almost anywhere; and against angled and bow-on cruisers and battleships: aim at superstructures, namely the bridge and any other tower. British cruisers excel at harassment, island firing, and basically acting like a Soviet destroyer with a citadel. 

[11thACRColdsteel]

So uh....I have no idea why you're having a tough time.  Here are the server stats on the top three tier VI cruisers:

 

Icon	Name	Tier	Type	Nation	Battles	WR ▼	Dmg	XP	K/D	Sh☠	Pl☠	Srv	MBH	TH
		12345678910	DDCA/CLBBCV	JapanUSAUSSRUKGermanyPoland
	Admiral Graf Spee	6	CA/CL		156,166	53.90%	35,982	1,117	1.1	0.8	0.7	32%	31%	9%
	Molotov	6	CA/CL		462,044	52.45%	34,656	1,182	1.1	0.8	0.6	27%	32%	9%
	Leander	6	CA/CL		322,552	52.45%	32,709	1,084	1.1	0.8	0.8	29%	37%	9%

Interesting, two the top three are free ships in the current campaigns. You have to tip your hat to WG for that....

[xXxRCADDICT]

CE drops Leander's concealment down to 8.8 so that along with using islands for cover will help. Yes it will wreck battleships at that range if they show you their sides. I love this ship but it can be a pain if you are caught out in the open.

[Estimated_Prophet]

Even if you dislike Leander, at least go through Fiji. Fiji is the high point of the line IMO (although I like all of the RN CLs after Leander.) If you can't stand Fiji, even after watching videos as recommended above and working on your positioning, you won't like the Edinburgh or Neptune. But they're incredibly good ships if you can adapt to them. 

 

I personally liked Emerald. So far completely unimpressed with Leander, (though only two games in.) If not for the fact is was a free ship, I would blow through the minimum number of games I play in a ship, (5 each, PvP, PvE,) and then get rid of the thing.

 

I've done passibly well in Perth, a least I feel that way. Compared to Emerald, Leander is trash.

 

Talk all you want about how this ship or that ship is good; for some people thay are still just utter trash no matter what they do.

 

Atago is one such ship for me. 25k average damage in a ship that's supposed to be so awesome? Whatever.

 

Positioning is supposed to be so important huh?

 

An important skill yes; but to me of less vallue than the luck and opportunity that comes from the potato level of your enemies. If no one shoots at you or torps your smoke; if the enemies all sail like morons right into your guns, if no one comes to pry you out of your hidy-hole; then it doesn't take much to be 'great.'

[pewpewpew42]

Well it's fabulous compared to Emerald. I love it.

[Spyde]

Leander is an amazing ship.. and does very good damage against all ships it faces.  

 

Just has a learning curve on how RN CL's work.   Over the weekend i pulled a 117,884 dmg Kraken game in the Leander

 

 

Just gota aim for superstructure of battleships...

 

 

[TheLastSterling]

\Perhaps the RN cruisers aren't your play style. RN cruisers are what I like to describe as "positional glass cannons". They use their stealth and smoke to get into a postition to do damage without that damage being returned.  I haven't played many games in the Leander, but nearly 65% winrate atm I think I have a good understanding on how to play it. I'll try to avoid some of the more common advice.

 

-You have no armor, the only thing to worry about is showing broadsides and citidel hits.

-don't bother trying to fire at max range. shells travel is too long and and  will not pen reliably. The worst part is you lose your comcealment.

-Use your concealment to get as close as possible to the enemy(especially destroyers). Your shells won't bounce as much closer you go.

-keep a good distance: too far=bounces;too close=get torped.

-Know your smoke times:how long the smoke will last(prem smoke will last until right around 1:20 on the reload time) and reload.

-Predict how slow you decelerate. Use smoke at most 20kts, better to change directions in smoke that to try to reverse back in( I have never managed to reverse back into smoke without dying). Turning helps to slow down but is risky depending on the scenario.

-Never go alone. If you have friendlies with you when you smoke, the enemy will change their fire on them. instead of going for you, otherwise they might bow on and hydro.

"Use" your team, move foward and dragged them into fights you can't win. Let them tank the damage(you can't) while you bombard the enemy while they're destracted(I have posted a screenshot of one my games in danae with 133k damage).

-If they do try to get close to your smoke, use your hydro to spot their torps and move to use your torps. I'd be lying if this tactic didn't save me on many occasions(i've sunk bow on battleships thinking that they could just charge me, if not, ramming speed!).

-Use all your consumables(using all smoke will cost as much as using smoke once) and don't cheap out on the prem smoke.

 

TL;DR play the RN Cruiser methodically; make decisions before actions more so than other ships. kill targets that you where designed to kill(DDs and CL) while avoiding targets you were not designed to kill(BBs and CA).  

 

[Wyatt_DERP85]

UrPeaceKeepr's video is a good one to watch. This is a very strong cruiser but it's easy to kill.

You have the potential to rip targets apart shooting over islands and hiding in smoke. Outside of smoke, you will find your ship to be quite squishy. The guns are great but you only have 8 of them. You can do decent damage but you aren't the DPM king the British line turns into tier 7-10. Using Royal Navy cruiser smoke can take a while to get used to but getting free damage in without return fire is amazing.

[Mercsn]

On 1/16/2017 at 2:21 AM, Speedstang said:

Not liking this ship at all. I haven't had a single game where I died to something other than my armor being overmatched and citadeled. Doesn't matter what angle I put my ship at, if I'm in range of a BB I'm dead. No HE, I'm like 100% useless against BB's, as the AP is pretty terrible against anything with decent armor. The smoke generator is useless, literally 1 circle/puff of smoke, can't really be used...... Should I just sell this? Wanted to get to the Fiji as that thing has hurt my BB's a lot in matches and looks really fun to play, but not sure if I'm willing to suffer through this ship for it. I feel like an oversized Russian destroyer with a citadel and no HE.

 

I'm going to necro this because it's the first post that came up in Google.  Currently, 3 years after the OP's post, the Leander is much worse, for tier, than even the Emerald.  It just doesn't have the gun range or damage per shell to participate in a tier 6, 7, 8 match.  It struggles more in a tier 5, 6 match that even the tier 5 Emerald.  The Leander has been a nightmare to play and completely unproductive at helping a team push or defend an area.  The Emerald was at least underestimated enough that it could surprise and saw more tier 5, 6 matches than tier 5, 6, 7 or 6, 7, 8 matches. 

 

The smoke is nice but means nothing when ships with 4+ km range can happily shoot into smoke and vaporize the meager hp.  Smoke just tells the destroyers where to send their torpedo volleys.  The hydro used defensively is hindered by the fact that the Leander has TERRIBLE low speed maneuvering.  The heal doesn't actually help the low hp and low armor situation.  Players using aim assist mods (a mod type that is labelled as a cheat, but not really policed by any anti-cheat) don't care at all about the small silhouette of the ship.  (I get it BB guys, you're guns have a long reload and you want to maximize your hits, but if you can't land honest shots, play something with faster reload.) 

 

The only real purpose of smoke in the ship is hide you as you desperately claw your way to another island, where you won't have anything to shoot at because as soon as you peek out, the enemy destroyer sees you and several ships are sending shells your way.  The other big problem is that Leander can't effectively recon by fire, baiting far off enemies into shooting at it after the Leander blind fires and announces itself in order to find targets that way.  Essentially, if you're close enough to actually engage, you're too close.  Unless you have an EXCELLENT destroyer who's happy to never shoot and is stealthier than the enemy destroyer(s) in an area, the Leander is simply free damage for anything else it faces. 

Supposedly the guns are a strong point, but damage output, even when there is a (rare) target of opportunity that you can engage without it being suicide, the damage is low with overpens on weaker armor, isn't sufficient to crack tougher armor, and has somewhat bad shell spacing even when you are on target (which makes the guns feel like they have much higher dispersion than the Emerald, and it does but only barely 118 vs 124m).

 

The Danae was a hoot, being able to dogfight with guns and torpedoes.  Emerald was decent as a big destroyer or DD hunter in its tier or cleaning up scraps, wounded cruisers).  Leander has been painful.

Danae 50%, Emerald 69%, and Leander 31%, thus far (granted the sample sizes aren't large, but the Leander is just garbage in its tier in 2021).

[Count_pott]

Funny, I came to this sub-forum just now to ask 'Leander: why/how?' and here, you necro-bumped this with exactly what I wanted to post.

 

I'm only on 8 battles, 75% win, 1 destroyed ship/battle average, 31k average damage. Vs. the server, that's not bad at all.

But every minute of it has been absolute agony.

 

What an entirely useless ship.

 

I expect out of all ships that they bring SOMETHING to the table. if it's a gimmick, that gimmick needs to be helpful. I get that not all ships can be entirely amazing, but I also don't see why any ships would, on purpose, be useless.

That is, until I tried Leander.

She can't do much vs. Destroyers, especially > 10km. She can't use HE against battleships. Her smoke does... what? She doesn't have DD smoke penalty, so maybe to disengage, ok. Her torps are good, but at T6 in a squishy light cruiser when would I ever be able to make use of them? And if I'm smoked, the enemy immediately knows there are torps comming. Got 0 hits so far.

She's not that fast. She's not that agile. Her concealment is ok, but without the means to ambush/hurt enemies, what use is it?

I try to play her like a fat DD but... a fat DD is an easy target with low firepower. And that's Leander regardless of how I play her.

More than a few games planes kept me perma-spotted. Even CVs know I'm an easier target than a DD. It's insane.

 

This ship brings 0 value to the tech tree in terms of learning. Just frustration. I won't FXP my way to Fiji, but dear-god... I may quit that line before it gets to then. Games are meant to be fun. This isn't.

[Helstrem]

My best match ever was obtained in a Leander.

[remington79]

I get some really good games in mine. The trick with BBS is not to aim at waterline like other cruisers or BBs since these shells aren’t as heavy. I can find a broadside BB at 10, 11k, pop a smoke and farm him for damage. You pick a nice spot to do that and farm everything that goes by. Do the trick like you do when running German DDs and run your hydro when sitting in smoke to help spot the torps. 
 

I’ve used the hydro to help spot on the other side of islands and have killed DDs trying to hide in smoke. I’ve had luck using the torps, put them on the single shot mode. 

[Risen_Damp]

Great boat but why is RN when it was HMNZS Leander.   

[HazeGrayUnderway]

On 3/29/2021 at 1:58 AM, Mercsn said:

 

I'm going to necro this because it's the first post that came up in Google.  Currently, 3 years after the OP's post, the Leander is much worse, for tier, than even the Emerald.  It just doesn't have the gun range or damage per shell to participate in a tier 6, 7, 8 match.  It struggles more in a tier 5, 6 match that even the tier 5 Emerald.  The Leander has been a nightmare to play and completely unproductive at helping a team push or defend an area.  The Emerald was at least underestimated enough that it could surprise and saw more tier 5, 6 matches than tier 5, 6, 7 or 6, 7, 8 matches. 

 

The smoke is nice but means nothing when ships with 4+ km range can happily shoot into smoke and vaporize the meager hp.  Smoke just tells the destroyers where to send their torpedo volleys.  The hydro used defensively is hindered by the fact that the Leander has TERRIBLE low speed maneuvering.  The heal doesn't actually help the low hp and low armor situation.  Players using aim assist mods (a mod type that is labelled as a cheat, but not really policed by any anti-cheat) don't care at all about the small silhouette of the ship.  (I get it BB guys, you're guns have a long reload and you want to maximize your hits, but if you can't land honest shots, play something with faster reload.) 

 

The only real purpose of smoke in the ship is hide you as you desperately claw your way to another island, where you won't have anything to shoot at because as soon as you peek out, the enemy destroyer sees you and several ships are sending shells your way.  The other big problem is that Leander can't effectively recon by fire, baiting far off enemies into shooting at it after the Leander blind fires and announces itself in order to find targets that way.  Essentially, if you're close enough to actually engage, you're too close.  Unless you have an EXCELLENT destroyer who's happy to never shoot and is stealthier than the enemy destroyer(s) in an area, the Leander is simply free damage for anything else it faces. 

Supposedly the guns are a strong point, but damage output, even when there is a (rare) target of opportunity that you can engage without it being suicide, the damage is low with overpens on weaker armor, isn't sufficient to crack tougher armor, and has somewhat bad shell spacing even when you are on target (which makes the guns feel like they have much higher dispersion than the Emerald, and it does but only barely 118 vs 124m).

 

The Danae was a hoot, being able to dogfight with guns and torpedoes.  Emerald was decent as a big destroyer or DD hunter in its tier or cleaning up scraps, wounded cruisers).  Leander has been painful.

Danae 50%, Emerald 69%, and Leander 31%, thus far (granted the sample sizes aren't large, but the Leander is just garbage in its tier in 2021).

Leander has always done very well.

http://maplesyrup.sweet.coocan.jp/wows/shipstatswk/svr/na/ship_20210522.html

http://maplesyrup.sweet.coocan.jp/wows/shipstatswk/svr/na/ship_20210515.html

http://maplesyrup.sweet.coocan.jp/wows/shipstatswk/svr/na/ship_20210508.html

Those are from the last 3 weeks with the current Post-Skill Rebork System.  You can go back further if you wish, I promise you it will still be the same story.  She has done so well that WG is actually in the process of nerfing her nerfed her with the 0.10.4 update.

[Igiby100]

On 1/16/2017 at 2:21 AM, Speedstang said:

Not liking this ship at all. I haven't had a single game where I died to something other than my armor being overmatched and citadeled. Doesn't matter what angle I put my ship at, if I'm in range of a BB I'm dead. No HE, I'm like 100% useless against BB's, as the AP is pretty terrible against anything with decent armor. The smoke generator is useless, literally 1 circle/puff of smoke, can't really be used...... Should I just sell this? Wanted to get to the Fiji as that thing has hurt my BB's a lot in matches and looks really fun to play, but not sure if I'm willing to suffer through this ship for it. I feel like an oversized Russian destroyer with a citadel and no HE.

It's crap. Slow to s top, then drop smoke. Only aim at superstructure of braoside targets. Even then, you will often bounce. Torps are decent. Overall, it's crap, but Fiji is worth it (and eventually Mino).