Riga Russian?

[Ronin69]

With the poor performance of the Riga, I am rather surprised it's a Russian ship.

Pros:

• Heal

Cons:

• High visibility (typical of Russian ships)
• Limited range (guns and aircraft)
• Longer load times
• No torps (not even the measly 4k variety)
• HE and AP lacks damage potential - hits like a T6 ship, not a T9 (unusual for a Russian ship)
• Maneuverability stock

 

[HazeGrayUnderway]

She's a Tier IX Cruiser.  IX Cruisers pretty much suck.

[Pirate_Named_Sue]

I’d say she’s one of the best tech tree heavies at T9. Both from a DD perspective (receiving end) and the cruisers perspective. It’s not OP like Petro, but it’s very strong and a lot of fun to play. 

[Mr_Argamas]

Being playing Riga as of late, regrinding the line for RB.

It's a tanky T9 cruiser for sure, 35 mm belts is something even Des Moines can only dream of.  Then, it has really great damage potential with fast velocity AP shells. But, there are two pitfalls that will quickly kill the damage output of Riga, if a player is not careful;

1. It has the worst vertical dispersion out of any T9 cruiser. I am surprised it wasn't noted in the "cons" list. As a result, smaller destroyers are hard to punish when they get past 12km.  And at 15km, cruisers showing complete broadside will sometime not give you a single citadel hit because the shells are either landing short, or too high. If the citadel sits too low on the water, you'll get less citadel hits that with any other heavy T9 cruiser in the same situation.
2. The AP pen is not as good as Petro, by a large margin. It drops below 300mm at 14.x kilometers (can't remember the exact number). So even a broadside BB at 15km can actually give you a lot of shatters, since the vertical dispersion will make aiming for the soft upper belts less reliable. For the tankiest T9 and T10 BB, you may actually find out you still have to rely on HE to fight them at range. Even if the 37mm HE pen also gets you lot of shatters. Praying for fires and aiming for hits on the super structure might still be more efficient, especially if the other player doesn't have FP. 

For these reasons, Riga is a cruiser that wants to push and play closer to the enemy ships, much closer that other T9 heavy cruisers. It is just not equipped to do well at range, and that will put a lot of players out of their comfort zone. Performing solo in randoms, can get difficult because the meta gets lot of players to fight at range or behind a rock, sometime leaving you overexposed (focused). You need to recognise this before it happens, because it's not Petro; you won't survive as long if you get focused. Not long enough to have any meaningful impact anyways.
If you go fight in open waters at appropriate ranges for AP efficiency (11-13km), the clumsiness makes it a bit difficult to efficiently use the belts to ricochet incoming AP shells.  You could improve this situation a bit with the steering upgrade but you would then lose the propulsion when you bow tank to secure positions.

It's a ship full of compromises, really. And not so well adapted to a random meta where too much players don't want to commit anything at the start of a battle. It is probably better suited for competitive play, smaller team engagements where the team can communicate and you won't have to find T10 ships. But it CAN do well in randoms too; it's just not as good as Petro.