Best tier 6 for ranked

[Wyatt_DERP85]

I was wondering what your thoughts on ranked at tier 6 for this season were. I think that it's a pretty balanced tier and premium ships have no huge advantage over their tech tree counterparts. I think I'll be playing mostly battleships this time around. I think that for battleships, this tier is pretty balanced but was wondering which you thought were the top battleship choices.

 

I think my top 3 choices for battleships are:

Arizona, Fuso and Warspite in that order but it could be easy for Fuso to take the lead from Arizona. I think the only downsides to these 3 ships are the fact that their AA is crap. I suppose New Mexico and Arizona are interchangeable. I don't have Mutsu or Dunkerque so my list may be different if I had played them since I view them both as having serious potential.

 

Fuso up-side is it's guns are amazing - long range accuracy, lethal, good rate of fire. Unfortunately it's detection is a huge problem and you can be spotted as soon as the battle starts. The turrets need WD40 but I find this ship to be great at long range and if you are planning ahead you can compensate for this. Unfortunately, your team NEEDS you to be a damage sponge and I'm not fully impressed with the Fuso's armor. That being said, it's guns are TOP TIER. I find my performance to be consistent even if my team potatoes so this ship may be the best to minimize losing stars on looses.

 

Arizona - Obviously shorter range and less accurate at range but you still have the ability to completely wreck targets with some of the highest damage per salvo in the game. The armor is good but I find it's a tempting target, there is a lot of 25mm plating that can be brutalized by CL's with IFHE and flat edges that can be brutalized by AP. That being said, being a good target tempts the enemy to shoot at you which is what you want - to be the damage sponge. It can brawl or push at mid range so I would say it gets some bonus points in my eyes for flexibility. Speed shouldn't be a huge issue since you will likely all be trying to go to the same cap.

 

Warspite - It's armor is ok except for this stupid underwater citadel section. That being said, this thing turns beyond amazingly. It also has accurate guns that can overmatch all other battleships. The downside is the amount of guns it has. In my opinion, that becomes a huge problem. It's range is lacking in my opinion but the spotter plane can make up for this. It got WD40 for it's turrets and has decent secondaries.

[Kapitan_Wuff]

T6 has me excited for this season, think its a good one. No premium is crazy OP, though some like the Arizona are defiantly going to be top performers IMO. I like t7 in randoms but I though it was god awful for ranked. 

[HowitzerBlitzer]

Two seasons back we had a combination of two tiers, first 6 and at some point moved to 8. What I found worked best around tier 6 was cruisers with a high fire chance, and battleships with a good rate of fire with range. Budyonny would be my cruiser pick and Fuso would be my battleship pick. The Fuso can hit salvos for 8-10K no problem at 17km if the target doesn't try to dodge. By the time your shells land you're pretty close to being loaded up again at that range, so you can pop another off pretty quick. You're also fast enough to be flexible (unlike slower USN battleships), and the armour is pretty great at tier 6. I don't need to explain Budyonny, everyone knows what it can do at tier 6.

I did not see any destroyers dominating strangely enough, as there is no radar at this tier it would've be expected. Torpedo range isn't that high, and they're pretty easy to dodge if you're not a bad player. Carriers can also help in spotting them with their planes, and the cruisers at this tier generally have a high rate of fire - great for taking out destroyers.

But if I had to choose a destroyer, either Gnevny or Farragut (for the USN smoke).

[RipNuN2]

Honestly whichever BB you do well in. I'm pretty comfortable in the Warspite, Bayern, Arizona, and New Mexico.

[YehoshuaUzziel]

For battleships, I'll only be playing Dunkerque and Fuso since those are the only battleships I have at present.  I expect to take some occasional grief for bringing Dunkerque, since I expect most players will feel it sub-optimal; but I've generally found it satisfactory enough.

For cruisers, I'll definitely use my Bodyonny, Leander, and Cleveland; but probably also Graf Spee and Duca d'Aosta depending on how I feel I'm doing.  Since I'm going to buy De Grasse, I might investigate whether or not she's solid enough to play in ranked; I have some doubts, but we'll see.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

All the Tier VI BBs are pretty good but I foresee Arizona leading the BB aspect.  Dunkerque won't be far behind.

 

Mutsu may have problems though.  She's very dependent on range and space to help protect her sides and Ranked maps are pretty small.

[Wyatt_DERP85]

9 minutes ago, Kapitanleutnant_Ford said:

T6 has me excited for this season, think its a good one. No premium is crazy OP, though some like the Arizona are defiantly going to be top performers IMO. I like t7 in randoms but I though it was god awful for ranked. 

 

I think that t7 was fine for battleship balance tho the smoke/torpedo meta was a bit brutal. I can't speak for cruiser balance as there was one premium ship that was very strong as it was and happened to fit the meta very well and provide nearly perfect utility to the team.

 

My biggest beef with tier 6 is how often they face tier 7 and 8's and how easily dominated they are by tier 8. But the balance at tier 6 is exciting.

 

 

5 minutes ago, HowitzerBlitzer said:

Two seasons back we had a combination of two tiers, first 6 and at some point moved to 8. What I found worked best around tier 6 was cruisers with a high fire chance, and battleships with a good rate of fire with range. Budyonny would be my cruiser pick and Fuso would be my battleship pick. The Fuso can hit salvos for 8-10K no problem at 17km if the target doesn't try to dodge. By the time your shells land you're pretty close to being loaded up again at that range, so you can pop another off pretty quick. You're also fast enough to be flexible (unlike slower USN battleships), and the armour is pretty great at tier 6. I don't need to explain Budyonny, everyone knows what it can do at tier 6.

I did not see any destroyers dominating strangely enough, as there is no radar at this tier it would've be expected. Torpedo range isn't that high, and they're pretty easy to dodge if you're not a bad player. Carriers can also help in spotting them with their planes, and the cruisers at this tier generally have a high rate of fire - great for taking out destroyers.

But if I had to choose a destroyer, either Gnevny or Farragut (for the USN smoke).

 

I only had Cleveland and New Mexico that season and was brand new to the game. My only dilemma on the Fuso is I tend to do the most damage at long range and the battleship should be tanking, not sniping. The Fuso has considerably worse armor than the Arizona but considerably better guns. I'm thinking force my Fuso in a little bit closer and take some fire prevention and superintendent to try to survive as long as I can.

[HowitzerBlitzer]

2 minutes ago, Wyatt_DERP85 said:

I only had Cleveland and New Mexico that season and was brand new to the game. My only dilemma on the Fuso is I tend to do the most damage at long range and the battleship should be tanking, not sniping. The Fuso has considerably worse armor than the Arizona but considerably better guns. I'm thinking force my Fuso in a little bit closer and take some fire prevention and superintendent to try to survive as long as I can.

 

Tanking? How about trying to minimize the damage you take and last longer overall? Those battleships that get close in will be the only reason torpedo focused destroyers still have a chance, as I would prefer having cruisers ahead of my battleships to make it harder for torpedo focused destroyers to get any big hits. It's not worth attempting to tank in tier 6 battleships unless you're in a Bayern or Dunkerque, where your armour lets you have a chance.

It would seem smarter to be hard to hit rather than an easy target, no?

[Psycodiver]

Really depends on the meta, of which I will the list the ships I have actually used. That said I think tier 6 has the best balanced BBs and are all viable choices

 

CV centric:

 

Bayern is my choice because of its long range AA, pair ir with AFT and Manual AA creates a absolute F off zone for CVs.

 

New Mexico is my second choice, when upgraded it has great AA but favors more for personal defense, where the Bayern would be great for a division I believe the NM will be better for solo

 

Fuso: is my third choice, its AA is fairly weak and because it is a long ship with a wide turn radius means a good manual drop can really ruin her day

 

Dunkerque: This is my last choice, I love her to death but her AA sucks worse than the Fuso and suffers the same issue with manual drops the Fuso has

 

Cruiser centric:

 

Dunkerque: She is fast with fantastic anti-cruiser guns, she is prone to burning but a good captain can handle that but her guns for me always find multi citadels on cruisers

 

Fuso is a great choice, 12 accurate guns makes for easy deleting of cruisers and its speed helps it keep up with the battle

 

New Mexico is right up there with the Fuso when it comes to deleting cruisers but lacks the same speed

 

Bayern is last because it lacks the accuracy to really hurt cruisers in my opinion

 

Destroyers

 

Dunkerque again, its guns are pretty accurate at close range and seem to shred DDs for me

 

New Mexico is slightly better than the rest because it has a good turn radius while still packing good accuracy

 

Bayern is next because those secondaries can be scary  and she turns great for some fun torpedo beats

 

Fuso has the accuracy but its length and wide turning makes for potential torpedo eating

 

Battleships

 

All 4 are great really and comes down the play style all have pros and cons but really I feel comfortable in each and have no problem fighting each. If I had to choice New Mexico will be my go-to ship although I will probably buy back the Bayern for this also and will probably use the Dunkerque from time to time

[Wyatt_DERP85]

34 minutes ago, HowitzerBlitzer said:

 

Tanking? How about trying to minimize the damage you take and last longer overall? Those battleships that get close in will be the only reason torpedo focused destroyers still have a chance, as I would prefer having cruisers ahead of my battleships to make it harder for torpedo focused destroyers to get any big hits. It's not worth attempting to tank in tier 6 battleships unless you're in a Bayern or Dunkerque, where your armour lets you have a chance.

It would seem smarter to be hard to hit rather than an easy target, no?

 

The problem w/ cruisers going in ahead is they evaporate and things go south when you run out of teammates. I may be stuck in a tier 8-10 mindset or used to cruisers not using cover effectively or maps not being cruiser friendly. Angled battleships fare better against other battleships in most cases than cruisers anyway.

[HowitzerBlitzer]

2 minutes ago, Wyatt_DERP85 said:

The problem w/ cruisers going in ahead is they evaporate and things go south when you run out of teammates. I may be stuck in a tier 8-10 mindset or used to cruisers not using cover effectively or maps not being cruiser friendly. Angled battleships fare better against other battleships in most cases than cruisers anyway.

 

The problem is that my mindset may be stuck in the ideal if one had command of your whole team, but here we have random players who you hope know how to play efficiently.

But if a bunch of cruiser focus their guns on one target at a time, the enemies will drop pretty fast even without the help of battleships. Cruisers can dodge the first two or so salvos of an enemy pretty well, it may take a while for them to be taken out depending on the player. While enemies focus on your cruisers who are closer to them, they could forget about the battleships a little farther back and become even more vulnerable to their attacks. Competitively speaking my idea seems like a sound baseline, but in a random team, who knows how it'll work?

 

Both of our plans will have their own uses.

[Wyatt_DERP85]

1 hour ago, HowitzerBlitzer said:

The problem is that my mindset may be stuck in the ideal if one had command of your whole team, but here we have random players who you hope know how to play efficiently.

 

 

Clan/team battles implemented should show quite some potential and I'm hoping for more division options soon. There are clans now and leagues to play in now tho.

[BearlyHereBear]

Zona allows Capt Seagal...just saying...

 

[Wyatt_DERP85]

8 minutes ago, BearlyHereBear said:

Zona allows Capt Seagal...just saying...

 

 

Improved expert marksman is pretty nice. Really the downside of the Arizona is that it lacks the New Mexico's AA. It doesn't have 40mm Bofors :(.

[inktomi19d]

5 hours ago, HowitzerBlitzer said:

 

Tanking? How about trying to minimize the damage you take and last longer overall? Those battleships that get close in will be the only reason torpedo focused destroyers still have a chance, as I would prefer having cruisers ahead of my battleships to make it harder for torpedo focused destroyers to get any big hits. It's not worth attempting to tank in tier 6 battleships unless you're in a Bayern or Dunkerque, where your armour lets you have a chance.

It would seem smarter to be hard to hit rather than an easy target, no?

"Tanking" and "minimizing damage" aren't either-or. Any competent BB does both at once. I've survived 3.1 million damage (about 10 minutes of constant fire) in my Arizona, and that took tremendous pressure off the rest of my team. In a typical match in the Arizona i tank about 1.5 million. That doesn't mean you should rush ahead of your DDs, but if you know how to angle then you should be able to survive plenty of fire.

 

I kinda think that the German turtle back BBs with their capability for carrying vast quantities of broadside potatoes have kept players from learning how to use BB armor. It's not something passive that works all the time, but when you learn how to angle then most BBs are fine at tanking. 

[JCC45]

Ranked play on the PT server is all New Mexico and Fuso, so I am guessing Arizona and Fuso.

 

Haven't sen any CVs yet.

[Wowzery]

T6 is the tier I mostly play at and have all 7 BBs. 

Arizona - Honestly is one of the best jack of all trades BB at this tier.  Range means she is never out of the fight, even if out of position.  Her guns can hit well at any range, and with 12 rifles has a good chance of hitting things.  She can brawl in good hands and can take on any other BB in the tier and win.  AA let's her down and she can be penned though the bow.

Bayern - A ship many consider one of the best, but her strengths are also weaknesses when against a knowledgeable opponent.  Decent speed and good armor, her guns can be a major let down at all ranges.  To be effect it has to close, so if your Bayern ally stays back and snipes, its not a good sign.

Dunkerque - A unique ship which many consider terrible for ranked.  Her ability to bow tank and all of her guns facing forwards makes her tough in ranked.  Her speed allows her to move and react better than any other BB to changing battle situations.  Of all the T6 BBs, she is one of two which the biggest factor is the captain playing her.

Fuso - Fuso is the sniper of the T6 BBs.  For ranked she won't be the tanking BB, but her range and ability to hit hard can make her fearsome in a battle for a player sailing in a straight line.  Her side armor is one of the weaker BBs, and shouldn't go brawling if a captain can help it in her. 

Mutsu - Another bit unique ship for the tier.  Many will consider her terrible, but with her guns, able to hurt any other BB, range, she is formidable for a captain who can aim.  An interesting bit will be her torps, a good captain can use those to deny areas of the map to the enemy team, especially enemy cruisers it can't see, or firing torps into smoke.  Many will forget she is capable of torping them and get caught.  She is the second of two BBs which the biggest factor will be the captain.

New Mexico - Really, very similar to the Arizona, slightly worse guns but better AA.  Like Arizona can brawl, or snipe, but has the same weaknesses.

Warspite - She's a bit like NM and Arizona to me, decent guns, but can be soft in armor.  Higher speed than the NM or Arizona should allow it slightly more flexibility, and decent secondaries could come in handy, however, like any BB, don't sail broadside or she will get pounded. 

Any BB can be good and make a significant impact, the key factor for any T6 BB isn't the ship itself, but the captain behind it.

 

 

[Joe__defender_destroyer]

I'd chose New Mexico over the Bayern, because while New Mexico has terrible dispersion. It can output 12 shells compared to Bayern which isn't great either that only has 8.

[JojoTheMongol]

My Battleship of choice will be the Graf Spee

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[Wyatt_DERP85]

On 6/19/2017 at 7:20 AM, Joe__defender_destroyer said:

I'd chose New Mexico over the Bayern, because while New Mexico has terrible dispersion. It can output 12 shells compared to Bayern which isn't great either that only has 8.

 

I have to agree. I always thought that the Bayern was superior until I came back to it later. It's accuracy is just sub par. If I want the big guns I just can't see this ship comparing to the Warspite since it can actually hit it's target.

[JCC45]

An update to my previous post (if anyone is still reading this thread).

 

Round 2 of Ranked on the PTS was Warspite heavy.  Every match had at least 2 and 1 Fuso.  Warspite was good but the Fuso is the one to look out for.  It can cream just about any ship in the match.  As I plan to go with a mix of AZ and Warspite the Fuso's will be the ones I will be gunning for first.  Delete them and you have the run of the map.

 

Other observations from PTS Ranked (probably won't apply to Public Ranked, but what the heck).

 

- Russian players don't have the first concept of team play.  You don't have to speak the language to see the entire team is going to A so don't run off to B with your Russian buddy and get deleted right away.

 

- New New Mexico players can be idiots.  One stated at the outset that he "was heading for the border and would supply fire support".  Never hit a damned thing.  Another just hid behind an island until he was the last ship.

 

- Russian LOVE smoke.  They often seem to drop it for no reason at all, or they drop it at the cap and the run back out of the cap to hide (leaving everyone else blind).

 

-  Carriers don't matter.  Made it to Rank 1 twice and never had a battle where the CVs made a difference.

 

So look out for those Fusos!

[Herr_Reitz]

I gotta say it's gonna be more player than ship if recent T6 random play is any indication. Sure, I'm having to warm back up to T6 play but seriously folks... this could prove to be the most frustrating ranked season yet. Hopefully I/we can catch a good wave of players and ride that wave to the desired rank... 

 

Hope everyone has a good time of it no matter the ship you take to battle. 

[Wowzery]

9 hours ago, JCC45 said:

Round 2 of Ranked on the PTS was Warspite heavy.  Every match had at least 2 and 1 Fuso.  Warspite was good but the Fuso is the one to look out for.  It can cream just about any ship in the match.  As I plan to go with a mix of AZ and Warspite the Fuso's will be the ones I will be gunning for first.  Delete them and you have the run of the map.

If you worried about the Fusos, you might consider the Mutsu as well.  Long range, and guns which can punish any ship at T6.

[commodore_torakula]

for me it's Fuso, hands down and I dig it   ....("If you dig it do it. ...If you really dig it...do it twice."  --Jim Croce et. alia)...

 

some of the best valid criticism I've had leveled at me in-game or here is that IDK what I'm really talking about or doing, even if I'm enjoying myself while using these 12-gun rifle salvos and not angled right or enough at the time, when/if the chips are down for a time or two... ...about 6+ minutes into the developments.

 

Big-[edited]pagoda ultra detectable I.M Pei-inspired-anachronistically-lookin bridge and conning tower and masts with wires and such....nvm that happy horse-stuff....People have been surprised around me after their first random shakedown cruise or spin behind the conn of a new Fuso....feelin sexy behind the tiller of a new boat..."You DO look good in it"..."Feck, I'd do you." ....one or two of them raved on it while I might've been conning one too for some time. ....It "eats a can of nails for breakfast and finishes up w/a shi*p-eating grin on it". ....more Ovaltine!...even chatted w/a guy whose grandad, he said, was on one of the DDs credited w/sinking the real one comin' out of Surigao Strait or whatnot...well enough then.

 

AZ and premiums w/torps notwithstanding at tier 6 maybe, but on my team I don't wanna accept any substitutes... ...and bring that AZ or other tiered NC "shoots through schools" stuff around me when I'm going to the whip, jockeying my DD up to you under my teammates guns while you're at it.....even when it's me, that's rude awakening timesies.   ....     TLDR/TTFN.

 

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[The_Horned_King]

I do more of my playing at T6 than any other tier. Right now, my T6s are Dunkerque, New Mexico, Independence, and Graf Spee. I'm definitely going to be driving the Dunkerque the most, just as I do in non-ranked play. I usually don't have a lot of trouble with shells bouncing against T6 targets or getting clobbered by T6 battleships, though the Mutsu might be just the wrong thing for me to deal with.

 

Stat-wise, the Arizona and Warspite look like what I can expect to see as the big BBs on the block, but the battleship selection is great at T6, and I can see anyone doing well in any battleship as long as they're not taking a stock hull. 

 

There are smoke-capable cruisers at T6 (as pseudo-DDs), and then the Graf Spee as a pocket battleship. I think we may see a lot of weirdness in terms of balance based on cruiser composition - like, if you get a Leander and a Perth against a Graf Spee and a Cleveland, those are two really different cruiser squadrons.