Premium Ship Review: Massachusetts

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Massachusetts, a ship kindly provided to me by Wargaming. This is the release version of the vessel and these stats are current as of June 20th, 2018.
 

Over a year in development.  Thanks 'bama.

 

Quick Summary: A South Dakota-class battleship which trades a bit of concealment for more agility.  She's the first American battleship with respectable secondaries.

Cost: Undisclosed at the time of publishing.

Patch & Date Written: Patch 0.6.15.1 to 0.7.5.1, January 13th, 2018 until June 20th, 2018.  Yes, really.  She had a long development cycle.

PROs

• Excellent anti-torpedo protection with a 46% damage reduction.
• 50% faster reset timer on her Repair Party consumable, allowing her to recover damage more quickly.
• Low velocity 406mm shells have good overall dispersion area and her AP shells hit like trucks.
• Improved secondaries compared to Alabama with 2.5km additional range, 50% faster rate of fire and 40% increased accuracy.
• Excellent anti-aircraft firepower.
• Very agile for a high tier battleship -- even more so than Alabama -- with a great rate of turn.

CONs

• Very vulnerable to cruiser-caliber HE fire with the majority of the ship having only 32mm of protection.
• Main battery is short ranged at 18.3km base.
• Main battery dispersion is a bit wonky with 1.7 sigma.
• Secondary guns are small caliber and struggle to deal direct damage to most targets.
• Horribly slow for a tier VIII battleship at 27.5 knots.
• Large surface detection range for an American battleship at 16.6km base.

 

Overview
Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / Challenging / Difficult
Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / High / Extreme

 

Since the lowering of the citadels of high tier American battleships, they've become much more forgiving to play.  They're not as brainless as British or German battleships, but they're still a comfortable ride.  Any player of any skill level can pick one up and do reasonably well with them.  Massachusetts is only a little more difficult (but only slightly) due to her temperamental main battery dispersion.

 

 For Veterans, Massachusetts' poor sigma value and mediocre concealment will prevent her from becoming the darling of many.  She's a medium-range brawler that falls apart up close.  Her overall carry potential is limited.  However, she does allow players to make use of island terrain in the same manner as an American light cruiser to lob her secondary shells at targets they cannot hit with their main battery (which is a nice trick).  Jousting and brawling skills will also help here.

 

- One of, if not the worst at its tier. This is a pronounced weakness.

- Middle of the pack at its tier. Not terrible, but not terribly good either.
- Has a significant advantage over her tier mates. A solid, competitive performer.
- No other ship at its tier does this as well as this ship.

 Massachusetts looks like a rather mediocre and safe offering and that's not far from wrong.

• While there are remarkable aspects about it, Massachusett's firepower merits only a rating.  As good as her secondaries are, they are only a situational weapon.  That doesn't make up for the deficiencies with her main battery.
• With the lowering of the American citadels, their biggest weakness was safely moderated.  They're still among the most fragile of the tier VIII battleships.  Thankfully, Massachusetts has a Repair Party bonus which puts her solidly in the  category.
• Where the South Dakota-class really shines is in their Agility and Anti Aircraft firepower.  Both merit a  evaluation.
• Finally, for Vision Control, Massachusetts has a disappointing surface detection and sits in the bottom half for her tier.  She only gets a  score here.

 

Options

Massachusetts has a couple of oddities to be aware of.  First, she's an American Battleship.  This has three effects:

• Her Damage Control Party has a 20 second active period instead of 15 second of other battleships.
• She does not get access to Aiming System Modification 1 in her third upgrade slot.
• Instead, she gets access to Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1 in her third upgrade slot.

Furthermore, Massachusetts has a unique Repair Party consumable with a faster reset timer

 

Consumables:

• Consumable wise, you have the choice between a Spotter Aircraft and a Catapult Fighter.  This latter consumable offers 53 additional DPS.
• Massachusetts Repair Party has an accelerated reset timer of 60 seconds for standard and 40 seconds for her premium version.  This is half the standard timer for other versions of this consumable.

Upgrades

The big question presented with your consumable options are as follows:

• You can largely correct her range deficiency by equipping Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1.  This will boost her range back up to 21.2km (compared to 21.1km on a stock Alabama) and your Spotter Aircraft consumable can boost it further.
• The most appealing and gimmicky choice is to emphasize her secondaries and take Secondary Gun Modification 2.  Her accuracy with her secondaries will be boosted to 68% greater than most other ships.
• Finally, in the question of defense, you must choose between fire damage reduction with Damage Control Modification 2 and further emphasizing her good agility with Steering Gears Modification 2 for her 4th slot.  In addition, you have a choice between emphasizing the durability of your already-tough main battery armaments with Main Armaments Modification 1 or doubling the hit points of your secondaries with Auxiliary Armaments Modification 1 in your first slot.

 

Camouflage

Massachusetts comes with Type 10 Camouflage.  During testing this was in the style of Measure 22 historical pattern but is set to change when the ship goes live. This provides:

• 50% bonus experience gains
• 10% reduction to maintenance costs
• 3% reduction in surface detection
• 4% reduction in enemy accuracy.

During playtesting, Massachusetts used the Measure 22 camouflage (blue hull, grey superstructure).  To my understanding, this is being replaced on live when she gets released with the black and grey scheme shown on the World of Warships devblog. Ye be warned, says I.

 

 

Firepower

Primary Battery: Nine 406mm rifles in three turrets in an A-B-X superfiring configuration.

Secondary Battery: Twenty 127mm rifles in 10x2 turrets,

 

 

 

Massachusetts is the fifth American battleship in World of Warships armed with 406mm/45 Mark 6 naval rifles.  Colorado, North Carolina, Alabama and Alabama ST all make use of these guns and many players should be familiar with their performance.  Generally speaking, these are accurate weapons with comfortable dispersion but they pay for this with lower muzzle velocity. They have longer shell flight times over distance than other battleships.  Their heavy shells don't lack for penetration power, however, preserving energy well.  They also hit like trucks.

 

Official penetration values of American 406mm/45 Mk 6 Guns, taken from World of Warships Armada videos published by Wargaming.

 

At the time of writing this, Massachusett's guns have the hardest hitting AP shell at tier VIII.  They do 500hp more damage per shell than their closest competitor, the IJN 410mm guns found on Amagi and Kii.  They far outstrip the 381mm/380mm guns of the Bismarck-class, Monarch, Richelieu, Gascogne and Roma.  With nine guns and a 30s reload, Massachusetts is easily one of the hardest hitting battleships at her tier.

 

Massachusetts falls behind the other American battleships for two reasons, however.  She has the worst shell grouping out of all four previously mentioned battleships.  She is also short-ranged.

 

With a maximum reach of 18.3km stock, Massachusetts is one of the shortest ranged battleships at her tier, besting only Monarch and Roma.  The impact of this flaw is mixed.  It can largely be alleviated by taking the American upgrade, Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1, which resets her maximum range back up to Alabama levels.  This is a less than ideal solution given Massachusetts secondaries which compete for attention with Secondary Gun Battery Modification 2 in the same upgrade slot.  The alternative is to make use of her Spotter Aircraft consumable to temporarily boost her range when needed.  This range deficit isn't terrible when the ship is top tier, but on some of the larger maps and against higher tiered opponents, this lack really begins to hurt, especially when compounded by her low top speed and surface detection radius.

The second issue compounds on this problem, however.  Massachusetts has the worst sigma value of any of the aforementioned American battleships with a 1.7 value compared to the 2.0 of North Carolina and 1.9 of Alabama, Alabama ST and Colorado.  Her guns, while still boasting good performance, are overall less reliable.  It's unlikely Massachusetts will ever be the darling of the competitive scene because of these flaws.

 

 
On a per salvo basis, most players will struggle to see the difference between Massachusetts' accuracy and that of Alabama.  Over the course of several matches this will be far more telling. Massachusetts will average less damage from her main battery due to shells straying from the center of her reticle.

 

 

Massachusetts' claim to fame in game is that while she has the same 127mm/38 secondary armament as other high tier American battleships, they aren't nearly as lame.  These guns are 40% more accurate and reload 50% faster while having 2.5km additional range over those on North Carolina, Alabama and Alabama ST.  The range and rate of fire are easy to appreciate -- these are straight up buffs that any player can wrap their minds around.  The accuracy buff is a little more challenging, however, and is worth examining further.

 

Secondary dispersion buffs are multiplicative.   There are four buffs available in the game currently for tier VIII secondary guns.  In ascending order, they are:

 

• Secondary Signal:  5% dispersion improvement.
• 3rd Slot Main Battery Upgrade:  5% dispersion improvement.
• 3rd Slot Secondary Battery Upgrade:  20% dispersion improvement.
• 4th Tier Commander Skill:  60% dispersion improvement.

 

Thus, Alabama and North Carolina could reduce their dispersion area down to 30.4% of its normal size with all upgrades and skills applied.  Massachusetts, by contrast, can reduce hers down to 18.24% of Alabama's dispersion radius.  As fun as these big numbers appear, it really doesn't mean anything without seeing it applied.  To this end, I ran tests to compare secondary accuracy with the assistance of the WGNA Forums community (thanks, guys!).

 

Only misses were recorded and then not all of them (there's splash render issues at that much zoom).  It took about 20 to 30 hits to sink Mahan, including a fire.  Not only does it take Massachusetts less shots fired to sink Mahan, thanks to her faster reload, it takes her less time too.
In this demonstration, it took the stock Alabama roughly 4 minutes to sink the destroyer.  Her fully upgraded self took less than 66 seconds to do the same.  Massachusetts did it in less than 24 seconds.

 

Hopefully that puts it into better perspective.  Massachusetts secondaries are awesome at shredding enemy lolibotes.  Even intervening terrain doesn't automatically keep an enemy ship safe.  These are the same guns Atlanta uses, so their high arcs are legendary.  If an enemy ship is hugging their island waifu and lobbing shells at you, your secondaries can hit them back and force them to back off.  However there are three main problems with these guns.

 

1. Her 127mm/38s lack penetration.  They can only deal direct damage to areas of 21mm of armour thickness or less.  This limits them to damage select cruisers and destroyers or the superstructures of more protected ships.  If you take the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells you can increase their penetration to 27mm which will allow them to punish all cruisers within their matchmaking spread and lower tiered battleships.
   
   There is a catch to this though.  Secondaries tend to aim for the waterline of enemy ships.  At very close ranges, this will cause Massachusetts' secondaries to shatter against the thick belt of battleships and cruisers, mitigating some of her damage output.  With Massachusetts' improved accuracy, she's very good at hitting the belt armour at close range so they tend to work best at distances of 5km+ against larger targets.
    
2. Her 127mm/38s are terrible at setting fires.  Though these guns have excellent reload rate, each hit only has a 5% chance base to start a fire.  They cannot be relied upon to tax the Damage Control Party of enemy vessels.  Each fire they do set should be seen as a bonus, not an inevitability.
    
3. Their predictive aim is lacking. You'll find at the extremes of her range (distances greater than 9km) that these guns struggle to hit small targets that are constantly manoeuvring.  This is probably owing to the long flight time of shells out to these distances.

 

Any enemy lolibote would have to be out of her gourd for trying to get Massachusetts-senpai to notice her.  Surprisingly, this extends to larger ships as well.  Lert and I sat down and conducted some raw Bismarck vs Massachusetts tests.  At 6km with both ships fully upgraded into secondary builds, Massachusetts out performed and sank Bismarck every single time (!).  Bismarck just doesn't stand a chance against Massachusetts' damage output.  Even with each ship destroying a couple of secondary guns per trial, Massachusetts won conclusively.

 

Now that's all in theory, mind you.  The reality of Random Battles (or Ranked) has so very often demonstrated that secondaries are a completely situational weapon.  For every game where they perform phenomenally, there will be games where they contribute less than 1,000 damage.  The question then becomes if Massachusetts' improved secondaries are worth the cost of the sigma and range difference from her sister ship, Alabama.  I'm not convinced it is.  It's certainly novel, but I wouldn't ever call it a fair trade.

 

Massachusetts has less than ideal fire angles.  Unmasking her X-Turret is just asking to get her penetrated through the front.  Despite her secondaries, Massachusetts isn't ideally setup for brawling as you'll see in the Defense section below.

 

Summary:

• 1.7 sigma hurts.
• Secondaries are surprisingly devastating.  Unfortunately you can't always use them.
• Do you like to gamble?  Her firepower is very RNG dependent between bad sigma and her secondary performance. 

 

Evaluation:
What it would have needed to be : Amagi and North Carolina jockey for the top spot.  Massachusetts would have needed better dispersion on her main battery and her improved secondaries to take this position.

 

Defense
Hit Points: 66,300
Maximum Citadel Protection: 32mm + 310mm + 16mm roof
Min Bow & Deck Armour: 32mm
Torpedo Damage Reduction: 46%

 

Massachusetts' durability is a bit of a mixed bag.

 

THE GOOD:

• She has awesome torpedo defense -- one of the best in the game behind Alabama (49%), Musashi (55%) and Yamato (55%).  I suppose you could call this good news for a battleship that's meant to be up on the front lines by design, not that I'd recommend eating fish if you can help it.
• Her citadel is fully submerged.  All of the high tier American battleships (including Alabama) had their citadels lowered in early 2017.  Massachusetts carries this same trend forward, making her much harder to get her machine spaces blown out.
• Awesome turret face armour.  Massachusetts has 457mm turret faces and barbettes.  The sloping on her turrets can bounce battleship caliber shells for days until you're in point blank ranges.
• Her Repair Party has a short reset timer.  Massachusetts' Repair Party comes off cool down in half the time.  She's better able to take advantage of multiple charges of her consumable when needed which increases the value of the Superintendent skill.  It's easy for her to cycle through the maximum of five charges in a given match, giving her access to a larger health pool per game on average.

 

THE BAD:

• Her citadel roof is 16mm.  So if an enemy battleship shell does manage to penetrate her belt at a shallow angle, she doesn't have roof armour thick enough to cause their shell to ricochet -- it will simply overmatch and deliver a citadel hit.  This is devastating, especially at close range.  This only applies to the areas over her machine spaces (her magazines are better protected), but her machine spaces are huge.
• Cruisers love to burn her.  With only 32mm or less everywhere except her turrets, barbettes and belt, Massachusetts is highly vulnerable to cruiser-caliber HE shells.  With the right captain build, any 150mm+ armed cruiser can hit her over and over and over again for massive amounts of direct damage, never mind the resulting fires.

 

THE UGLY

• Her secondaries are fragile.  Remember those secondaries?  Y'know, the gimmick that's the big selling feature of this ship?  Yeah, those.  They pop easy.  Like most secondaries, they are not particularly well armoured and if Massachusetts gets spammed by HE shells or British cruiser AP, she's going to lose these turrets quickly.  There's not a whole lot you can do to protect them, either.  At best, you can use Auxillary Armaments Modification 1 in your first slot to double their hit point total (from 800hp to 1,600hp) but that's not going to save them forever if they get taxed.

 

Overall, Massachusetts' protection scheme is best suited to medium range (10km to 16km) engagement distances in World of Warships.  This gives her a chance to use some of her vaunted agility to help dodge incoming fire (ooh, a segue!).  Up close, she becomes too vulnerable to brawl effectively if she gives up her sides.

 

Evaluation:
What it would have needed to be : Massachusetts would need quite a bit to bump her out of the doldrums of mediocrity here. She's far removed from being and little more than a bad citadel placement away from . 

 

Bow tanking is still as effective as ever so long as the enemies oblige you by throwing anything smaller than 460mm rounds in your face.  Here Massachusetts outplays a tier X Großer Kurfürst, bouncing her 420mm AP shells in a brawl and using her superior agility to keep on the Kurfürst's flank while never giving up her own.  If they catch your side, you're dead stupidly quick.

 

Agility

Top Speed: 27.5 knots
Turning Radius: 710m
Rudder Shift: 15.7s

Maximum Turn Rate: 4.5º/s

 

Massachusetts is the most nimble battleship of her tier.  It's a shame she wasn't faster.  Her flexibility is limited.  Once she commits to a given part of the map, there's little chance of flexing somewhere else, never mind dictating engagement distances.  For a ship with a lot of secondaries, this is a shame -- you're only ever going to bring them to bear if someone makes a mistake (that someone may have been you).

 

Due to whatever quirk it is that dictates energy preservation in a turn, Massachusetts holds onto an extra couple tenths of a knot over her sister ship when her rudder's hard over.  Combined with her small turning radius, Massachusetts can change her heading faster than any other tier VIII battleship and giving her comparable handling to a high tier Soviet cruiser but with a much tighter turning radius  You can see now why I lament her lack of speed -- she could have been the complete package.

 

Massachusetts is a bit of a sluggabutt when it comes to initiating a turn, however.  Her sloppy rudder shift time leaves a lot to be desired, even if it is around the norm for a tier VIII battleship.  In order to take advantage of her high rate of turn, it's recommend to equip the Steering Gears Modification 2 upgrade, though this will come at a severe cost to her fire damage mitigation.  Given that you're likely going to be eschewing fire prevention skills anyway to upgrade her secondaries, this isn't a bad investment.

Evaluation:
What it would have needed to be :  More speed.  27.5 knots just doesn't cut it if you want to be the best.  Alternatively, shave off 50m from her turning radius.  That will get people to sit up and take notice and steal the crown from Gascogne.

Anti-Aircraft Defense
AA Battery Calibers: 127mm / 40mm / 20mm
AA Umbrella Ranges: 5.0km / 3.5km / 2.0km
AA DPS per Aura: 151 / 238.5 / 120.5

Out of the seven American battleships at tier VIII+, Massachusetts has the least DPS but her effective AA DPS is better than Alabama and Alabama ST's and sits just behind North Carolina. 
 

Massachusetts is a powerful anti-aircraft platform.  Her heavy secondaries are a mixed blessing as far as her AA defense goes.  She's more likely to have skills like Basic Fire Training and Advanced Fire Training which will emphasize her AA power further but her upgrade slots will likely be filled with secondary-specific or range boosting modules rather than AA Guns Modification 2.  This upgrade is necessary to truly solidify American battleship AA defense and without it, the range gap is enough to allow aircraft to make their drops. 

 

Still, Massachusetts presents a thorny target most CV players would rather avoid.  Her dispersed AA guns makes her overall defense less vulnerable to being knocked out by cursory HE shells and it takes a sustained bombardment to suppress them fully.

 

 
Her small and medium caliber AA guns are nicely dispersed, making them more difficult for single volleys of battleship caliber HE from Royal Navy battleships to neuter her AA power (they may have to shoot you twice instead).

 

Evaluation:
What it would have needed to be :  More firepower or more range -- something to make her stand apart from the likes of North Carolina & Kii.

 

Refrigerator

Base Surface Detection Range: 16.56km

Air Detection Range: 12.18km

Minimum Surface Detection Range: 12.43km
Detection Range when Firing from Smoke: 16.01km

Main Battery Firing Range: 18.27km

Detection Consumables: Spotter Aircraft / Float Plane Fighter

 

So now we get to the bad news.  Massachusetts has a big butt (and I cannot lie).

 

While none of the American battleships are contending for a top spot in terms of concealment at tier VIII, Massachusetts is definitely the worst of the bunch.  North Carolina's stock concealment is 900m better, for example.  For a short ranged battleship with secondaries as her gimmick, more concealment would have been preferable, not less.  It's only thanks to the failures of Amagi and Kii that Massachusetts has any pretense of mediocrity.  As it stands, she hangs out with the chubby Richelieu and Gascogne in the bottom half, just behind Tirpitz in overall badonkadonk size.

 

The only spot of good news is that her aerial detection range is excellent and can be reduced down to just over 9.4km after all upgrades, which gives her a little more flexibility while moving into position.

 

One of the fun tricks you can pull off with Massachusetts involves taking advantage of smoke mechanics.  Secondaries won't give away your position in smoke the same way as main battery guns will.  So you can park Massachusetts in friendly smoke and let her secondaries go to town.  It's hilarious.  It's not terribly effective, mind you, but hilarious.  Just make sure your friend has Hydroacoustic Search to spot those incoming torpedoes well in advance.

 

Evaluation:
What it would have needed to be : Lose 900m off her stock surface detection range or give her access to a game-breaking consumable like Missouri.

 

No more Drama Llama

There's only one skill build worth considering for Massachusetts despite what common sense will tell you:  That's to go all out on her secondaries and never look back.  No, this build isn't optimal, but it's FUN, damn it.

 

MAN-otaur approved. 
Seriously, though, if you want a good build, take Superintendent to maximize her awesome Repair Party consumable.  Build the rest as you will.

 

 

Final Evaluation

The story of Massachusetts in World of Warships begins with Alabama.  Alabama was originally going to be for Supertesters only as a reward ship for those who had performed exemplary service in this volunteer role.  The masses like you and I, were going to get her equivalent in the form of Massachusetts -- not-quite a clone with small differences here and there (slightly more agile, slightly less stealthy and a different small & medium caliber AA suite).  But it wasn't meant to be.  The community blew up and Alabama was released to the masses and Massachusetts suddenly found herself with an identity crisis.

 

I've had my hands on this ship since December of 2017 and she's been in the works since at least August of that same year.  This ship has gone through several different iterations with development accelerating towards late Spring of 2018 (which undid a lot of my previous work).  I'm pleased with the final result, but there's a caveat:

 

This is one Hell of a fun ship to play but she's not good.

 

Secondary built ships are seldom optimal.  Their gimmick is just too situational to top more well rounded ships.  Massachusetts gives up a lot to be a secondary monster.  As much fun as her pew pews are, they're not going to win many games in of themselves and she's not an ideal platform upon which to base such weapons.

 

Bismarck, Gascogne and Tirpitz could have told you as much.  These ships are all reliant upon a combination of factors to keep them relevant and competitive, between turtleback armour, amazing speed, torpedoes, agility, rapid fire guns and/or Hydroacoustic Search.  Massachusetts weighs in among these brawlers with arguably the best secondaries of the bunch and a Repair Party that's available in half the time.  She has nice agility and good AA power.   But she's too slow.  She's too easily spotted. This isn't enough to take the top spot from the brawlers.  If people were hoping for another Tirpitz, we got what amounts to another Kii instead.

 

So if she's not top dog among the brawlers, where does this leave her?  Her artillery is only ever going to be okay with 1.7 sigma, so she's not going to compete with the likes of Alabama, North Carolina or Amagi.  Even Kii arguably outshoots her with her ten guns to Massachusetts' nine.   She's only ever going to be a mediocre artillery platform.

 

And it's not like the combination of the two unlocks some new paradigm either.  No, Massachusetts isn't good.  She's not terrible either and her game play is fun and different from anything else in the American battleship line.  That's good enough for me.  I'm glad to see this final chapter of Alabama-gate come to a close on a relatively positive and interesting note.

Would I Recommend?
So if you could only have one high tier premium American battleship, which should be it be?  Missouri, Alabama or Massachusetts?  Not that she's available anymore, but Missouri is the defacto winner.  Surveillance Radar and her broken, overpowered economy is just too good to pass up on.  Out of the two remaining ships, Alabama is superior.  She's well rounded if offering very little that's different compared to North Carolina.

What Massachusetts offers is unique game play.  That's it, really.  She'll earn the same amount as Alabama, but you'll have to work harder for the same gains. 

• PVE Battles
  How well does the ship maintain profitability in Co-Op modes and how does she fare against bots?

Very yes.  Bots will rush you without hesitation, bringing them into secondary range.  That's exactly where Massachusetts wants 'em.  Easy mode!

• Random Battle Grinding:
  This includes training captains, collecting free experience, earning credits and collecting signal flags from achievements.

Yes.  Massachusetts works well in Random Battles.  She's great for farming Close Quarters Expert achievements.  Team up with a smoke laying friend for extra hilarity.

• For Competitive Gaming:
  Competitive Gaming includes Ranked Battles and other skill-based tournaments. This also includes stat-padding.

No.  I'd give Massachusetts a pass here.  Alabama is superior to Massachusetts and North Carolina bests them both.  If you want to bring a brawler, dust off Bismarck or Tirpitz.

• For Collectors:
  If you enjoy ship history or possessing rare ships, this section is for you.

Yes.  She earned 11 Battle Stars in WW2 and is preserved as a museum ship.

• For Fun Factor:
  Bottom line: Is the ship fun to play?

Yes.  Secondary spec'd battleships are derpy fun.

• What's the Final Verdict?
  How would the ship rate on an Angry YouTuber scale of Garbage - Meh - Gud - Overpowered?
   

GARBAGE - The boat is unbalanced, not fun to play and weak. The ship desperately needs some buffs or some quality of life changes.
Mehbote - An average ship. Has strengths and weaknesses. Doesn't need buffs to be viable however she's not going to be considered optimal.
Gudbote - A powerful ship, often one of the best ships at a given role within its tier. Usually considered optimal for a given task.
OVERPOWERED - The boat is unbalanced and powerful. Typically she's either horrible to play against or she redefines the meta entirel

 

 

 

In Closing

This has been one Hell of a busy month.  I'm still not caught up on everything that needs doing, though I'm happy to say that I am making gains on my work pile.  This review is getting published five days sooner than I thought I might with only minimal corner cutting.  So yay!  Next up will be a review of HMCS Haida, due out before July 1st.  Happy Canada Day to you all!

 

If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

 



 

Appendix

A list of sites, programs and people I rely upon to create my reviews.

Research:

• Ship Comrade - http://shipcomrade.com/
• World of Warships North American Forums - https://forum.worldofwarships.com/
• World of Warships European Forums - https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/
• World of Warships Wiki - http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships
• World of Warships Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/
• iChase's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/ichasegaming
• Farazeth's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/farazelleth
• Vehicles from Video Games - https://gamemodels3d.com/
• ProShips - http://proships.ru/news/
• SEA Group - https://sea-group.org/
• The Armored Patrol - https://thearmoredpatrol.com/
• World of Warships AP Penetration Calculator - https://mustanghx.github.io/ship_ap_calculator/

Artwork:

• Chobittsu Studios, Mouse & Lert artwork - https://chobittsu-studios.deviantart.com/
• Kantai Collection, fan works and official artwork - http://www.dmm.com/netgame_s/kancolle/
• Chaofanatic's YouTube Channel, for speedlines - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7cs11HaqEA
• Victory Belles, https://victorybelles.tumblr.com/
• Azur Lane, http://www.azurlane.jp/

For Graphics:

• Imgur - https://imgur.com/
• Pixlr for picture editing - https://pixlr.com/
• Ezgif for animation - https://ezgif.com/
• Gif Maker for well... duh ... making gifs. http://gifmaker.org/
• National Center for Educational Statistics for graph making - https://nces.ed.gov/
• Google Docs for spreadsheets and data archiving - https://www.google.ca/docs/about/

Programs Used:

• World of Warships (duh)
• Notepad (seriously)
• MS Paint (also, seriously)
• iPhone Stopwatch App (yep)
• The Final Part of the Message (July 2nd)

Hardware: Mouse toils away on an old i7-2600K 3.40GHz computer with 16GB RAM and an Nvidia 560Ti GPU running a 64bit OS.