The Gneisensau is a keeper. How's the Scharnhorst?

[amaROenuZ]

Title says most of it. I love the Gneisenau, it fits my playstyle perfectly. She'll be getting the premium camouflage and full upgrade treatment. I'm considering the Scharnhorst just to have the pair.

[Lert]

Their difference in gunnery makes them entirely different experiences and playstyles. Gneisenau plays like a light battleship, Scharnhorst like a super-heavy cruiser. Both are great fun and great ships though.

[yamato6945]

My favorite tier 7 BB. Smaller guns 11 inchers vs Gneisenau's 15 but they reload in 20 seconds same armor good range 19.9 km and still has torps. bit slower 30 vs Gneis 32 but better turnig circle 800 vs 830 

[Wodyo]

Lert basically nailed it. But if you like the Gneis, then I imagine you'll enjoy the Shineyhorse.

[VannKraken]

Scharn is awesome.  One of my favorite ships in the game.  You can't expect to go around one-shotting everyone, but the fast reload makes up for that.

[99Lightning]

Scharn appears to have been removed for purchase also...

[amaROenuZ]

On 1/20/2018 at 4:37 PM, 99Lightning said:

Scharn appears to have been removed for purchase also...

It's still there for me. 9500 doubloons.

[99Lightning]

Sorry, meant in Premium Shop..

[NoCoGaming3645]

The Scharnhorst comes and goes in the Premium Shop. It'll be back (probably in a package discount) in a few months.  In the mean time, it's permanently (so far) available to buy for doubloons in the German Tech Tree.  

 

As far as playstyle goes:  I have both, and I love them both. They do well sharing the exact same captain build. 

That said, they play a bit different.

The Gnei is a pure brawler:  under 8km, smearing anything that moves.  Manual secondaries are fabulous against DDs and set BBs on fire all over the place. The Torps are great for anti-BB work and to discourage the CAs from trying to make close-in torp runs on you, while the main guns nuke CAs and hurt BBs. The lack of total rifles means you have a problem shooting DDs well, so that's what the Manual Secondaries are for.

Basically, the best thing for a Gnei is to close as fast as you can with several enemy ships, and just blast everything. :-)

The Scharnhorst is a bit different.  Yes, it actually has BETTER secondaries than the Gnei, but the change in main gun caliber/number/accuracy means I don't brawl as much with it.  The Scharn is still more than able to hold it's own against BBs in close-quarter combat, but you NEED to be using your torps well to do so, and you can't fight 2+ BBs like you can in the Gnei.

Instead, the Scharn works well as a CA and DD killer. Yeah, a DD killer: the combo of 7.7km secondaries and relatively fast-firing big main guns means HE fire from a Scharn will kill a DD, and you can do so pretty reliably up through 10km or so.   The 11" main guns absolutely shred CAs, and citadel them from bow/stern well.  And you can do this at 12-15km reliably.  Against BBs, the 11" are unreliable - they bounce and shatter far too much to be dependable for damage. 

 

It boils down to this:  the Gnei is a pure bare-knuckle brawler, at home in a 6km or less bar fight with multiple opponents of any kind. The Sharn is more of a Samurai  - it slides those 11 inchers into the bowels of CAs and DDs at mid-ranges, and while it can brawl pretty well, it's not as good as it's rough-and-tumble brother, and really shouldn't be fighting more than 1 close-in opponent at a time.

Oh, and both have amazing AA for T7.

 

One last thing:  the Scharn is the perfect captain trainer for both CA and BB KM captains. It even makes a halfway decent DD captain trainer, as the skills for them all translate pretty well for a Scharn.  I've bought exactly two premiums from WG, and the Scharn I had no hesitation or regret doing. 

[HazeGrayUnderway]

The gunnery of Scharnhorst makes her better against Cruisers and Destroyers than Gneisenau.  You need the 6-9 shells to more reliably hit than the 4-6 you can do with Gneisenau.  Against BBs you may have to leverage HE more depending on the scenario.  However, get into a brawl, knife fight, Scharnhorst's AP become very dangerous to other BBs.

 

You may miss Gneisenau's AA though.  Scharnhorst is average in that department.  Even a typical Gneisenau Secondaries Build is vastly superior in AA capability than Scharnhorst.  On the rare times I do CVs, I don't give Scharnhorst the respect I do Gneisenau.

[Canadian_Batman]

I love both of them, best ships in game imo

 

These are my first two games of the day

[motormouth85]

On 1/20/2018 at 9:53 AM, amaROenuZ said:

Title says most of it. I love the Gneisenau, it fits my playstyle perfectly. She'll be getting the premium camouflage and full upgrade treatment. I'm considering the Scharnhorst just to have the pair.

I want to like the Gneisenau, I REALLY do, but this thing is so good, and yet sooooooooooooooooooo bad.  You can get 100k games in her, and you can miss 2km salvos due to horrible dispersion.  6 barrels of RNG is utterly rage inducing.

[Jumarka]

The only reason I keep my Gneisensau in port is for the faint hope that someday WG will realize how [edited] of a move was to put the historical design behind a paywall and saddle the tech tree with that thing. And that they will make the A hull historial (no upgraded AA)  and move the 380mm guns to the B hull with all the upgraded AA.

[TheStarSlayer]

The Gneis has the hilarious honor of having the highest MBH ratio of my frequently played BBs.  I can only attribute it to her "drive me closer so I can hit them with my sword" play-style. The cruiser mobility with zero-fraks given armor of both Gneis and Scharners makes for fun aggressive games.

 

 

[S16_Hunter]

I really like the Scharnhorst, it's fun to play. However that being said recently the dispersion has been HORRIBLE.. it seems a lot worse then when I first got the ship which was around Christmas. Not sure if it's been Nerfd during one of the patches? or not, but last few times I've had her out it has been horrible no matter the angle or the distance shooting..  Suffering right now from CHCS.. "can't hit crap syndrome".. 

I won't get rid of it but I have not been playing it as much because of the dispersion.. I have the Tirpitz which also has crappy dispersion but I expected that going in and it has not changed since I got it, also around Christmas.

Who knows, maybe the RNG gods are not smiling at me..

[Bacl]

On 2/6/2018 at 12:43 AM, TheStarSlayer said:

The Gneis has the hilarious honor of having the highest MBH ratio of my frequently played BBs.  I can only attribute it to her "drive me closer so I can hit them with my sword" play-style. The cruiser mobility with zero-fraks given armor of both Gneis and Scharners makes for fun aggressive games.

 

 

Well thats what the BB are supposed to do, push in, take the grunt of the assault and provide a "meatshield" for the rest of your fleet.

GLOOOOOORIIIIIIOUSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bacl]

On 2/9/2018 at 2:47 PM, S16_Hunter said:

I really like the Scharnhorst, it's fun to play. However that being said recently the dispersion has been HORRIBLE.. it seems a lot worse then when I first got the ship which was around Christmas. Not sure if it's been Nerfd during one of the patches? or not, but last few times I've had her out it has been horrible no matter the angle or the distance shooting..  Suffering right now from CHCS.. "can't hit crap syndrome".. 

I won't get rid of it but I have not been playing it as much because of the dispersion.. I have the Tirpitz which also has crappy dispersion but I expected that going in and it has not changed since I got it, also around Christmas.

Who knows, maybe the RNG gods are not smiling at me..

Ahh the GLOOOOOORIIIIIIOUSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  German dispersion. Thats why they like to fight up close, its not to try and compensate for anything really...

[jaqattack02]

I love the Scharn but i couldn't get the Gneis to work for me.  I guess it was the lack of barrels combined with the German dispersion.  I love taking the Scharn and using it's speed to hunt down isolated same tier or lower BBs.  Once you start to close distance the high velocity 283s do plenty of pen damage to most BBs, while if you keep a good angle they have a hard time getting good damage on you.  It's also pretty funny to watch them panic when they realize they are in torp range.

[Lyrkiller]

Right now I am in the Bayern working to get the Gneisenau. Now I do have the Scharnhorst and yes she is great at killing CA/CLs and DDs. I may need to bring her out of mothballs and see how bad this dispersion really is.

[NoCoGaming3645]

Actually, Gneisenau is pronounced this way:

ni    -  stress this syllable, with the 'i' being a long one.  "nice" without the final "s" sound.  A segment of German-speakers (particularly those uncouth Southerners! :-)  will tend to start with a de-stressed "G", however, so it's not technically wrong.

se(n)   - unstressed syllable, with a short 'e', and a very unstressed 'n'. Think "sent" without the T sound and an even more depressed N.

nao  -  unstressed syllable, sounding identical to the pronunciations of 'now'  

 

As to Scharnhorst:

Scharn  -  the german 'sch' is a more 'ssssh' sound than the typical 'sh' is in English. Draw the 'S' out a little, but don't go full ssssssnake on it. You DON'T roll the R, though it's stressed slightly compared to the rest of the syllable. The closest approximation in English is the word 'yarn'.  Replace the Y with an SSH sound, and you got it.

h(a)orst -  the second syllable does NOT sound just like "horse + t"  The O is slightly different, more like there is a slight unstressed short A in front of it. It's not quite the same as the AU of "fraught". The closest I can find is how the British say "war". 

Neither syllable is stressed.

This is per how they're spoken in High German (which favors Northern German over Southern German for most pronunciation) of those living in the former West Germany. High German is probably the closest thing we have left to the dialect spoken in Prussia, which is where both names originate from.

[Stew_Padaso]

So far, this is my favorite ship.  I have had my best game so far, (a modest 91k) and my average has shot up as well.  I don't survive many battles, but I have fun and I do damage. I love the aggressive play style. I just get too aggressive and wind up fighting multiple ships at the same time. I'll be blazing away supporting a flank, helping where I can and the next thing I know, I'm alone on that flank.  DD sunk, cruiser and other BB halfway across the map. So....  I fight. 

[Das_Schlippo]

I kept my Gneisenau until I unwrapped a Scharnhorst in a supercontainer.  They play differently, but I didn't need to tier 7 German BBs hanging out in my port.

[Not_Your_Average_Potato]

Sharnhorst is what I consider a battlecruiser in this game.  Tanky but handles pretty well for his size.  Even though the guns are a smaller caliber it will make quick work of broadside targets including battleships if u know where to aim.  I personally like that challenge, cause some cases u need to know what ammo type to use.  I have the Tirpitz and was hesitant about getting the Sharnhorst.  But once I did I never looked back.  Only weakness is CV loves German battleships especially USN.  But overall it’s a solid shop and I am happy with it.

[TheDreadnought]

On 1/20/2018 at 11:53 AM, amaROenuZ said:

Title says most of it. I love the Gneisenau, it fits my playstyle perfectly. She'll be getting the premium camouflage and full upgrade treatment. I'm considering the Scharnhorst just to have the pair.

Scharnhorst is an excellent battlecruiser.  Will bully and abuse anything smaller than she is.  She should avoid stand-up fights with battleships where possible.  But if forced into one, she should torp them for their efforts. 

Scharnhorst is an elegant rapier.

Gneisenau is a big, heavy, sledgehammer you hit other ships in the face with.  If any ship in the game is not at least a little concerned about getting within 8km of you. . . they are a fool.

[LordWalken]

While I love the Gneisenau, I also love her sister ship as well. Yes the play styles of both of these ships are different but also they are extremely good together if you have a clan mate or a friend that has the opposite ship. Usually I play in the Scharnhorst more now a days but when I feel an urge to want to do some serious brawling I bring the sister that carries that massive baseball bat not to mention the darts that no expects to be launched if they wander to close to it