Kahrlsrue has an undeserved bad rep

[IronBottom24]

Greetings all, about five days ago, I had one of those frustration moments and sold off my Nurnberg.  The ship itself is fine but I really can't stand being uptiered to tier 8 matches.  After 3 games in a row of being deleted early in the matck by some tier 8 BB from across the map it was gone.  Well now I had a 9 point captain with nothing to do so I bought a Kahrlsrue to complete my tier 4 cruiser collection.   I don't know why this ship gets so beat up on in reputation.  With a few basic survival skills, expert marksman and most importantly demolition expert, I've been pleasantly surprised with this ship.  The only other thing with this ship is I won't take it out with out the speed boost signal flag.  Its slow speed is still its largest handicap.  Sometimes, it's not only the ship that matters, but the tier its in.  It is refreshing to only get uptiered one level.  I am happy to have the Kahrlsrue in my port and believe it might actually be a keeper now.

 

[Unabletony]

Nurnberg unfortunately does get uptiered too often, but I think she's still a fun little ship. 

[AVR_Project]

Now if they can only fix the Karloradue.

[JojoTheMongol]

Most of the bad rep the Karlsruhe gets is when it was first introduced. It was a downright awful ship to play, it was sluggish, had useless torps, anemic guns, etc. Its the first ship and only ship I've free Xp'd because of just how bad it was. Since then its received a few buffs and most importantly it doesn't see Tier 6 competition anymore. Playing this ship against Clevelands and Aobas was a nightmare.

 

While not a good ship in any stretch, I do think its likely competent now. It actually has better HE (better fire %) than its successor the Konigsberg.

[TenguBlade]

 

Karlsruhe has been buffed a lot since release.  Her original guns had about 75% of their current RoF and half the traverse speed, the AP Krupp was way worse, she only had one pair of 2 torpedo tubes on each side (with 4km torps - no 6km upgrade), and there used to be a bug where the guns had no armor so literally everything could incapacitate or destroy them.  In addition, she got a hull upgrade to give her a second set of torpedo tubes on each side.

[centarina]

Karlsruhe was really bad, but   when I recently tested it, it was much better and competitive.   

 

	Svietlana	4	CA/CL	USSR	35	68.57%	46,465	862	3.5	1.3	0.2	63%	38%	3%	1,550
	Phoenix	4	CA/CL	USA	21	76.19%	55,989	995	3.5	1.8	0.3	48%	34%	5%	2,032
	Kuma	4	CA/CL	Japan	20	70.00%	46,587	928	3.6	1.5	0.4	60%	31%	5%	1,599
	Duguay-Trouin	4	CA/CL	France	17	76.47%	50,457	830	2.4	1.4	0.2	41%	30%	1%	1,417
	Karlsruhe	4	CA/CL	Germany	14	64.29%	42,020	892	3.9	2.2	0.1	43%	32%	3%	2,240

[ForgMaxtor]

Yeah... Karlsruhe used to be much worse.  Most painful grind experience I've done so far; only saving grace was that she's only T4 so even with my horrible scores and win rate, it didn't take too many games to put her behind me.  Fragile.  Limited main battery HE DPM.  AP DPM theoretically good, but in practice limited due to very mediocre penetration.  Slow compared to other T4 CLs, and not especially maneuverable either.  Her torps were individually good for tier, but you only had 2 per side.  No other cool tricks like good AA or amazing concealment or anything.

 

She's somewhat better now, and AIUI the 6.7 buff to KM Cruiser HE penetration does apply to her so this is something additional in her favor.  I can't say that I'm particularly interested in going back to play her, though.  If I'm in the mood for low-tier cruiser play, there are a lot of good CLs at T4 and I'm not sure the Karlsruhe brings anything to the table that one of the others can't do about as well, if not better.

[wylleEcoyote]

Going through Karl is like going through puberty.

Because WG likes to make german players suffer before getting to the "nice" ships

and once you get to a point where you can look back on it, you can laugh and say "it wasnt so bad"

 

those torpedo launching arcs are as always sweet. (as is the damage they do which only gets worse from here)

 

It introduces a big [edited](for its tier) 150mm gun.  Its so nice that it just gets better soft stats as you go into tier 5-6

Just like the Yorck; with AP that only works reliably at "almost close enough to Torp" range,

or the occasional tasty Citadel against a broadside RN CL.

 

HE damage was better than nothing but is good enough (and even better with 6.6 buffs)

and DE +flags makes for good enough fire starting. Or use IFHE and Pen citadels with HE.

( that is ALOT of captain points for tier 4 unless you are a filthy stat-padding seal-clubber)

 

With SONAR + Vigilance, it's perfect for DD hunting. if it could get out of its own way ...

 

and for a cruiser its kind of tanky. especially compared to others in tier 4.

That Tank-iness is really the only thing you will miss as you go up tier. (this and Torp damage vs enemy HP pool)

 

all and all its a bit of a pain in the [edited]for a Noob. 

But a pleasant change of pace from being in a Hipper and playing against Yamato for the 4th time in a row.

 

Its not the obviously OP Clemson, and it never will be.

But with the right skills; you can come back to this ship and surprise not only yourself, but counter some of the other seal clubbers.