Gneisanau is OP

[Mordt]

Ranked battle brawling... The Gneis at her best.

Starting 7 minutes in.

20220421_150636_PGSB107-Gneisenau_08_NE_passage.wowsreplay

Ok, maybe not OP... just very very good.

[RonJamesDio]

Gniesenau can be powerful in the smaller games of ranked courtesy of her secondaries, torps and armour, but her low number of guns with appalling dispersion means that her damage output at medium and longer ranges tends to be on the lower side of things. The guns do solid damage and overmatch the bows of all ships her tier, but hitting with them consistantly is the issue I found with her. 

[Nevermore135]

1 hour ago, RonJamesDio said:

her low number of guns with appalling dispersion

Gneisenau has the exact same horizontal dispersion and sigma as every other ship in the original German BB line: UK/US/German standard and 1.8 sigma. She also has the exact same guns (and thus vertical dispersion) as Bismarck.

The issue with Gneisenau’s guns is that she only has six barrels, which can lead to some wonky salvos when RNG trolls you. She’s like tier IV Japanese BB Myogi in this regard, which has objectively excellent IJN BB dispersion at long range and 2.0 sigma, but only six barrels.

German BB dispersion has been the same as most US and UK BBs for years now. The “German dispersion” meme needs to die.

[Superczar]

I like the German BBs, but she feels highly underwhelming compared to the others in her line, and her peers at Tier VII.

[Nevermore135]

46 minutes ago, Superczar said:

I like the German BBs, but she feels highly underwhelming compared to the others in her line, and her peers at Tier VII.

Gneisenau has a lot of things going for her. She’s very well armored, up there with Sinop as arguably the best-protected BBs at the tier (in different ways). She also has strong secondaries, especially on her B hull. She has a uniform battery of 128mm guns that pen 32mm without IFHE. Such a secondary suite isn’t seen on any other German BB in the tech tree except Preussen (formally GK), which has a mixed 150mm/128mm battery. She’s also very fast (32 knots) for a battleship, yet alone one with tier VII MM, and she is the only BB in her line with torpedoes (and was the only tech tree battleship with torpedoes at all prior to the German CC release). The price she pays for all these features is… having six guns, which goes to show you just how much barrel count (and thus RNG) can affect BB gunnery. Other large-gun ships with similar barrel counts like Georgia, Repulse, Siegfried, and the WIP Sevastopol have some form of improved dispersion to offset their low barrel count, but Gneisenau doesn’t.

Gneisenau doesn’t really fit well into the German BB line. She’s always been an odd ship and her inclusion in the line back in 2016 was more a product of the greater emphasis WG placed on including historical ships back then than the properties of the ship herself, IMO. Back when the Soviet CA split was released, tier V Kirov (a historical ship) was removed from the tech tree for the sake of smoother line progression, and Gneisenau would be a prime candidate for similar treatment. I could easily see WG making her a premium coal ship in the same manner and replacing her with a ship that more comfortably fits into the line between Bayern and Bismarck. Something like the 15”-armed L-20e alpha variant, the class that was designed during WWI to succeed the Bayern-class, would be more appropriate.

[Mordt]

4 hours ago, Superczar said:

I like the German BBs, but she feels highly underwhelming compared to the others in her line, and her peers at Tier VII.

She probably is in Random's... but in Ranked... With a secondary build...inside of 7km ... FEAR ME.

3 hours ago, Nevermore135 said:

Gneisenau has a lot of things going for her. She’s very well armored, up there with Sinop as arguably the best-protected BBs at the tier (in different ways). She also has strong secondaries, especially on her B hull. She has a uniform battery of 128mm guns that pen 32mm without IFHE. Such a secondary suite isn’t seen on any other German BB in the tech tree except Preussen (formally GK), which has a mixed 150mm/128mm battery. She’s also very fast (32 knots) for a battleship, yet alone one with tier VII MM, and she is the only BB in her line with torpedoes (and was the only tech tree battleship with torpedoes at all prior to the German CC release). The price she pays for all these features is… having six guns, which goes to show you just how much barrel count (and thus RNG) can affect BB gunnery. Other large-gun ships with similar barrel counts like Georgia, Repulse, Siegfried, and the WIP Sevastopol have some form of improved dispersion to offset their low barrel count, but Gneisenau doesn’t.

The ability to citadel basically anything and not be citadeled in return... AND torps... is completely worth a couple guns.

Also, you forgot about her AA suite. Just had a battle with 80k plane damage and 40+ planes shot down.