Pensacola Made the Game Fun Again

[bacononaboat]

I've played gunboat destroyers for most of my time here at WoWs and I finally got bored of them about two weeks ago.

So I ground my way up the USA cruiser eventually getting to the fabled Pensacola - a ship I'd usually only seen through my scopes as I sunk it - even in my Atlanta. 

I didn't expect much from the Pcola from what people had told me about it but you know what? I actually really love this ship. I immediately decided it was fantastic when I slammed three citadels out of a Yorck at 15 kilometers. 

For a while I was confused as to why I personally feel the Pcola is a good ship - and then I realized. I've played gunboat DDs forever - and the level of WASD you have to do in a Sims or Benson is way beyond that of Pcola dodging long range fire. If you're used to hanging back and dodging shells, like me, the Pensacola is smooth riding but it'd be hell for someone grinding their first line. 

And how could you go wrong with those glorious 8" shells? I love just smacking cruisers upside the head and then eating away at BBs while kiting. It's honestly the most fun I've had in this game in a long time.

Who woulda thought that the one ship that would revive my interest in WoWs would be the Pepsicola? LUL I might even become a cruiser player now.

[Madwolf05]

People love to complain about her and her "squishy" nature, and as true as that is, her ability to put roundson target is a thing of beauty.

[bacononaboat]

3 minutes ago, Madwolf05 said:

People love to complain about her and her "squishy" nature, and as true as that is, her ability to put roundson target is a thing of beauty.

Exactly. I mean there's definitely cruisers with much better armor but I've played the Atlanta enough to not care. That 10 gun broadside is just.....brings tears to my eyes lol.

[LadyUniPotato]

I just picked the Pepsi back up again after selling her about a year ago when I was new and knew absolutely nothing about how the game worked.  Honestly, I've got to say I agree with you.  She's not half bad now that I halfway sorta know what I'm doing.  It can still be painful when you get thrown into a tier 9 game but what tier 7 cruiser doesn't suffer from that?

[Hanz_Gooblemienhoffen_42]

Yeah when i first got the Pepsi it didnt have the concealment buff and it was spotted before BBs...that was not fun at all.

Then they buffed concealment and it got a lot better....then after playing it for about 20 games i started to like  it..i mean i sold it for the New Orleans without thought..but it wasnt a "bad" ship...just a ship that you had to be careful in. Thankfully the ship moves pretty well and as long as all the fire is coming from one direction...Pepsi can easily dodge BB fire.

In a couple of games i got a match with only CAs, one BB each and a DD...it was glorious..did 178k and most of it was citadels...and against same tier CAs..the Pensacola can bounce if angled....i felt like a BB.. 

:)

Again its not a "bad" ship but the citadel issues...are still "issues".

 

[pyantoryng]

Gone were the days that Pensacola can be seen from orbit *with guns silent*...that did it much good and made it viable...

[Skpstr]

And compared to its rivals, it can dance like a cat on a hot tin roof.

[Rocketpacman]

The concealment buff was badly needed. It's a perfectly good ship now with a fun and different playstyle from the HE spam of the other T7 cruisers. 

[bacononaboat]

20 minutes ago, LadyUniPotato said:

I just picked the Pepsi back up again after selling her about a year ago when I was new and knew absolutely nothing about how the game worked.  Honestly, I've got to say I agree with you.  She's not half bad now that I halfway sorta know what I'm doing.  It can still be painful when you get thrown into a tier 9 game but what tier 7 cruiser doesn't suffer from that?

Yup T9 can be painful. I usually don't have too much of an impact in a T9 battle but I'm slinky enough to live til end game, then get 40k or so from mop up.

20 minutes ago, Hanz_Gooblemienhoffen_42 said:

Yeah when i first got the Pepsi it didnt have the concealment buff and it was spotted before BBs...that was not fun at all.

Then they buffed concealment and it got a lot better....then after playing it for about 20 games i started to like  it..i mean i sold it for the New Orleans without thought..but it wasnt a "bad" ship...just a ship that you had to be careful in. Thankfully the ship moves pretty well and as long as all the fire is coming from one direction...Pepsi can easily dodge BB fire.

In a couple of games i got a match with only CAs, one BB each and a DD...it was glorious..did 178k and most of it was citadels...and against same tier CAs..the Pensacola can bounce if angled....i felt like a BB.. 

:)

Again its not a "bad" ship but the citadel issues...are still "issues".

 

Oh god I can't even imagine what it woulda been like before the concealment buff. That must been horrid. And that's exactly it, if you pick one or two targets that are in the same direction, you'll dodge and bounce like a pro. I love this ship for that. 

I think having a squishy citadel is fair with this ship. Like you said, it dodges BB shells easily - I just trolled the heck out of a Bismarck and Nagato with my dodges for 8 minutes or so - the only shell that hit me was a citadel. Imagine how unfair that would have been if it was a pen or overpen.

I love this ship :)

19 minutes ago, Skpstr said:

And compared to its rivals, it can dance like a cat on a hot tin roof.

THIS

[Viscount]

22 minutes ago, Skpstr said:

And compared to its rivals, it can dance like a cat on a hot tin roof.

ehhh....both the Algerie and Yorck are nimble, and the Fiji even more so. Only the Myoko is notably worse in that aspect.

Well, in rudder speed the Pepsi has it on this I guess, Fiji has a tighter turning circle but still a worse rudder speed.

[Tachnechdorus]

I've always enjoyed the pepsi even before she received the concealment buff ......

[JochenHeiden]

The power of the AP on this ship is undeniable.  It has super normalization angles so it'll bite and deal full pen damage when other 8" shells would bounce. 

[ddoubletapp1]

I ground my way through most of it pre-buff - didn't enjoy it, but I was a new player then with skillz to match.

Put it on the back-burner, but finished it up last week.  I can't say I did all that well with it (unless top tier) - as my perception was that I was a priority target for all T8/9 cruisers and BBs.  Some easy XP points - ha ha!  But it was on me, as I like to play my cruisers up near the caps, supporting DDs.

I have a handful of games in the Nola, now.  What a difference!  Radar, hard hitting AP and some useful armor - I very much enjoy playing it forward, and I feel like I have much more impact on the game in her.

I'll bet you'll do very well in the New Orleans, given your enjoyment of the Pensacola.

[Skpstr]

Just now, Viscount said:

ehhh....both the Algerie and Yorck are nimble, and the Fiji even more so. Only the Myoko is notably worse in that aspect.

 

It's funny, I was about to quote numbers from the Wiki, and then saw that yeah, there isn't a lot of difference.

 

I can't comment on the Algerie,(forgot about it TBH) and I agree that Yorck and Fiji are no slouches, but I dunno, Pensa just feels a bit more responsive.

 

Maybe that's part of the fragility, it feels more nimble than it really is. 

 

[biddypapa]

I had a lot more fun with this ship than I thought I would, again based on the reputation. In fact I believe it might actually be my best cruiser statistically at the closing of the grind to the NOLA a few days ago. I would recommend anyone who played this ship early on to revisit it, and to reap the benefits of T7 matchmaking alongside with their increased experience.

[bacononaboat]

11 minutes ago, ddoubletapp1 said:

I ground my way through most of it pre-buff - didn't enjoy it, but I was a new player then with skillz to match.

Put it on the back-burner, but finished it up last week.  I can't say I did all that well with it (unless top tier) - as my perception was that I was a priority target for all T9/10 cruisers and BBs.  Some easy XP points - ha ha!  But it was on me, as I like to play my cruisers up near the caps, supporting DDs.

I have a handful of games in the Nola, now.  What a difference!  Radar, hard hitting AP and some useful armor - I very much enjoy playing it forward, and I feel like I have much more impact on the game in her.

I'll bet you'll do very well in the New Orleans, given your enjoyment of the Pensacola.

Yeah I think the Nola will be excellent. The extra armor plus the super stealth of that ship will make disengagement and kiting hilariously simple. I'm not sure I have enough skill for forward positions but I'll give it a shot when I get to her. 

[JinghisKhan]

The Pepsi has never been a bad ship, it's just that she is one of those perplexing ships that is difficult to tier based on her combined aspects. As one of the 'Treaty Cruisers,' she carried equivalent armor to the Aoba, Furutaka, and County-class cruisers, but had a gun suite that was the equivalent or better than a Myoko-class cruiser. Add that to the abrupt changes from the Cleveland at Tier VI, and you get an undeserved reputation for crappiness for the Pepsi. Yes, she is fragile, and yes, you're likely to get erased once or twice by BBs from extreme range, but if you know your limits and engage favorably, she is not impossible to sail well.

[bacononaboat]

Yup, I just ran a match where I literally forced an Amagi to turn around and go the long way a cap - between kiting him and making him run away on fire, I removed him the match for 7 minutes. Oh it was beautiful.

[JinghisKhan]

Just now, bacononaboat said:

Yeah I think the Nola will be excellent. The extra armor plus the super stealth of that ship will make disengagement and kiting hilariously simple. I'm not sure I have enough skill for forward positions but I'll give it a shot when I get to her. 

Grinding through the NOLA right now. The radar is a lifesaver, and the ROF is an absolute delight. When you couple it with the concealment module and concealment flags, you get a sub-10km detection radius, which induces some pants-browning moments for opposing cruisers when they realize they're broadside-on to nine 203mm USN AP shells about to romp through their citadels. The NOLA also has excellent gun traverse speeds, faster than both the Pensacola and the Cleveland. Don't forget to wiggle though-the NOLA is better armored than the Pepsi, but still not WELL-armored by any measure.

[Hurlbut]

2 minutes ago, JinghisKhan said:

The Pepsi has never been a bad ship, it's just that she is one of those perplexing ships that is difficult to tier based on her combined aspects. As one of the 'Treaty Cruisers,' she carried equivalent armor to the Aoba, Furutaka, and County-class cruisers, but had a gun suite that was the equivalent or better than a Myoko-class cruiser. Add that to the abrupt changes from the Cleveland at Tier VI, and you get an undeserved reputation for crappiness for the Pepsi. Yes, she is fragile, and yes, you're likely to get erased once or twice by BBs from extreme range, but if you know your limits and engage favorably, she is not impossible to sail well.

She was classified as a light cruiser until addendums to the treaties forced the USN to reclassified her as Heavy Cruiser (8" guns).

[JinghisKhan]

1 minute ago, Hurlbut said:

She was classified as a light cruiser until addendums to the treaties forced the USN to reclassified her as Heavy Cruiser (8" guns).

Agreed. And it shows. A broadside, 5km slingfest between a Nurnberg/Konigsberg and a Pensacola probably ends in MAD, as the German cruisers (notoriously thin-skinned) can still citadel a Pepsi fairly reliably and quickly with their rapid-fire 150mm guns.

[bacononaboat]

13 minutes ago, JinghisKhan said:

Grinding through the NOLA right now. The radar is a lifesaver, and the ROF is an absolute delight. When you couple it with the concealment module and concealment flags, you get a sub-10km detection radius, which induces some pants-browning moments for opposing cruisers when they realize they're broadside-on to nine 203mm USN AP shells about to romp through their citadels. The NOLA also has excellent gun traverse speeds, faster than both the Pensacola and the Cleveland. Don't forget to wiggle though-the NOLA is better armored than the Pepsi, but still not WELL-armored by any measure.

Oh god I can't wait to get 12 seconds of reload lol.

Yeah I just looked it up - 9.6 km detection is INSANE! Wow. That's kind of like the NC - just sneaking up, smacking, and running like hell or disappearing.

It's good to hear the Nola still has some wiggle in her, that will work well with my style of play. I'm probably going to stop at Nola as legendary as the Des Moines is, for easy of play.

Also, having faster turret rotation will be nice - how are the firing angles on the guns? For example if I were to run away and kite, how easy would it be for the front guns to fire?

[bacononaboat]

11 minutes ago, Hurlbut said:

She was classified as a light cruiser until addendums to the treaties forced the USN to reclassified her as Heavy Cruiser (8" guns).

 

9 minutes ago, JinghisKhan said:

Agreed. And it shows. A broadside, 5km slingfest between a Nurnberg/Konigsberg and a Pensacola probably ends in MAD, as the German cruisers (notoriously thin-skinned) can still citadel a Pepsi fairly reliably and quickly with their rapid-fire 150mm guns.

I actually to my embarrassment got the snot beat out of me by a La Gal a few matches ago. I should have seen it coming, I mean I've two shot the P-cola in my Atlanta, but man it stung when I died. Interestingly, however, the LG is so squishy I can citadel it when it's nearly bow on.

 

Pensacola does really feel like a light cruiser with big guns. I think once they fixed the concealment, WG modeled the ship correctly.

[Hurlbut]

1 minute ago, JinghisKhan said:

Agreed. And it shows. A broadside, 5km slingfest between a Nurnberg/Konigsberg and a Pensacola probably ends in MAD, as the German cruisers (notoriously thin-skinned) can still citadel a Pepsi fairly reliably and quickly with their rapid-fire 150mm guns.

From what I understand Pensacola and her sister ship were designed to be scout cruisers for the USN. Before everyone went Heavy Cruiser = Pocket Capital Ship crazy. 

Ships fast enough to overtake them would have to be lighter in size or in protection so that wonderful battery of 10 8" guns would be terrifying to such opponent. There were no thoughts given to night actions at the time, I would think they were focused on only how she should operate in daytime ops so the range advantage of the 8" over the 6" would seem more pronounced to the USN as well having bigger shells. So the 6" cruisers (besides the Omaha, considered extremely obsolete on eve of WW2) came relatively late in the treaty years; several Heavy Cruisers were built and commissioned before the first new 6" cruiser was laid down for the USN. 

[yashma]

I just finished grinding the Pensacola and loved her.  And the best part is her server averages are so bad it's hilariously easy to get "unicum stats", even on a bad game.

 

16 minutes ago, bacononaboat said:

 

Yeah I just looked it up - 9.6 km detection is INSANE! Wow. 

I'm sorry but you're wrong, the NO doesn't have 9.6 km detection.

 

Spoiler

It's got 9.1 km detection