How to German BB at high tier?

[Deci]

Anyone have any advice? Generally the high tier meta discourages brawling or closing the distance at all. Most players want to sit back and snipe at max range, and whoever caps the points first wins. As nobody is willing to push to claim them back,
 

German BBs are promoted as being brawlers. But since nobody is willing to push, they seem to just be giant xp pinatas sitting in the back. If you try to push, you rarely get any support and just get focus fired to death before you can do any good.

I'm not calling for any particular change, since I can't change the way people seem to want to play at high tier. So my question is, how do you play the German BBs effectively at IX and X? What tactics have you found to be effective? Thanks!

[FierceTomato]

First of all, a secondary build is basically required to play the GER bb's properly.

 

I typically hang around islands that offer me concealment, and will set me up for a close quarters engagement. Your optimal fighting range is up to 15km.

 

With a secondary build, your DPS sky rockets as soon as your target comes within the 10.6 km bubble. Your secondaries will light fires while your main gun AP wrecks havoc.

 

Don't try to out snipe, or get in a long range battle, you simply aren't equipped for it, regarding both armament, and armor.

[Bill_Halsey]

My recommendations are these

 

1. On the consumables get premium damage control, hydrophones and fighters. The dispersion is still kinda iffy for me at long range so a spotter plane is not as great as a catapult fighter. Hydrophones for spotting torps and destroyers through smoke.

 

2. For CO skills, gonna need BFT, AFT, Vigilance. I'm working up to manual control right now.

 

My biggest problem right now are torpedoes. The only way to beat it is a radical change of speed/course the moment you see a DD. then chase the thing down and beat it with secondaries. Don't event need you main guns for that.