Premium Ship Review: Giuseppe Verdi

[LittleWhiteMouse]

Wargaming doesn't just make fictional ships, it makes whole CLASSES of fictional ships!

The following is a review of Giuseppe Verdi, the tier IX premium Italian battleship, was sponsored by my patrons on Patreon who helped me afford this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.11.2.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

The purpose of this review is to support the players, not the company behind the product. 
Posting this review is not an endorsement of current goings on nor is it a statement about them.

Giuseppe Verdi was released at the tail end of 2021 without much fanfare.  I had hoped to review her immediately following my look at Marlborough.  I could piggyback a bunch of graphics I had done for the British-chonker and even sneak some of my earlier Marco Polo graphics to speed up production.  But then I got it in my head that I should finally get around to properly evaluating anti-aircraft DPS for the sake of tidying up future reviews.  The idea seemed sound -- produce an active database of relative efficiency of AA DPS in World of Warships.  Little would I appreciate just how big of a job that would prove to be and as such, Giuseppe Verdi's review sat in a "not even halfway finished" limbo as the days rolled by. 

Following Dido and Canarias' review, I had a brief window to squeeze another review out before patch 0.11.2 dropped, so I've done what I can to get this out the door in a timely manner.  As is becoming increasingly commonplace, I grossly underestimated just how big of a job this project would be and I've spent more time with Giuseppe Verdi than I thought.  Given that she's a ship that was largely dismissed by the community when she first arrived, this attention is perhaps undeserving.  However, I feel this time has been well spent.  Giuseppe Verdi surprised me.  I hope you find this review worthwhile.  I'm not expecting this review to change your mind about the ship, but maybe you'll learn something new.

Oh, and keep this copy by Wargaming in mind.  This is how they advertised the damn thing.  We'll come back to it later.

Quick Summary: A short-ranged Italian battleship with nine 406mm guns with HE shells, SAP-firing secondaries and an improved Exhaust Smoke Generator.

PROS

• Dispersed armour scheme
• High velocity shells and good AP penetration
• HE shells deal increased module damage.
• Good gun handling and decent fire arcs.
• SAP armed secondaries.
• Competitive agility for a high-tier battleship
• Improved Exhaust Smoke Generator

CONS

• Exposed citadel with easily overmatched turtleback
• Small hit point pool for a tier IX battleship
• Wonky dispersion
• Anemic HE shells and poor AP DPM.
• Short ranged main and secondary gun batteries.
• Crappy AA defences

Differences Between Sisters

Giuseppe Verdi borrows heavily from Marco Polo.  She has identical durability, agility, anti-aircraft and detection parameters.  The primary difference between the two vessels comes in the form of their firepower.  Giuseppe Verdi's guns reload faster but don't hit as hard and her secondaries are significantly improved.  In addition, the two ships have different consumables.  The specific differences between the two vessels are:

Canarias is only the most recent victim of weird shell weight nerfs.  Before her, Giuseppe Verdi was attacked!

Marco Polo on the left and Giuseppe Verdi on the right.

Overview

Skill Floor:  Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult
Skill Ceiling:  Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme

I struggled a bit on where to slot Giuseppe Verdi for inexperienced players.  Her exposed citadel and advertised secondaries sounds like a recipe for disaster.  I had to conclude that if you played her as advertised, you were in for a rough time.  The moment you try and bring those secondaries to bear, you also expose Giuseppe Verdi's weaknesses.  Her guns don't perform well.  Her citadel protection falls apart.  However, were you to keep Giuseppe Verdi at a comfortable distance, then her initial skill floor drops down to a Casual rating.  There's nothing much to worry about there short of "don't flash your sides" and vary your ammunition as needs be.

Giuseppe Verdi has a very high skill ceiling, almost enough to warrant an Extreme rating.  The extra level of game play provided by her Exhaust Smoke Generator when paired with possible brawling builds is just that much more enticing for players with a broad knowledge of systems and mechanics in World of Warships, especially spotting and auto-ricochet angles.  This is a battleship with just that extra bit of special sauce which allows you to outplay others with its expanded toolkit.

Options

There are a couple of things to keep an eye on with Giuseppe Verdi.  The first is her improved Exhaust Smoke Generator, which is so far unique in World of Warships.  The second comes down to how you choose to build her -- wether that follows your more traditional battleship build or if you go down the brawling-battleship rabbit hole.

Consumables

Her Exhaust Smoke Generator is weird.

• Damage Control Party is standard for an Italian battleship.  It comes with unlimited charges, an 80s reset timer and a 15 second action time.
• Her Repair Party is also standard.  It heals back up to 14% of the ship's health over 28 seconds, queuing 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage and 100% of everything else.  It has an 80s reset timer and starts with four charges.
• Her Exhaust Smoke Generator is something special.  I'll do a quick side by side comparison with the one that comes on Lepanto, the tier IX Italian tech-tree battleship, which we'll use as our "normal" version of the consumable.  Like the standard consumable, Giuseppe Verdi's version starts with 3 charges and it has a 180 second reset timer.  But after that, things deviate.  Giuseppe Verdi's version creates huge smoke clouds, 1.8km across! Lepanto's are 1.02km across.  Furthermore, Giuseppe Verdi issues smoke for longer, pooping out clouds for 60 seconds instead of 45 seconds.   And finally, the clouds take longer to dissipate.  Normally, Italian Exhaust Smoke Generator clouds disappear within 10 seconds of being generated.  You have a bit more leeway with Giuseppe Verdi as they last 15 seconds.
• In her final slot, you have the choice between a Spotter Aircraft and a Catapult Fighter.  The Spotter Aircraft comes with four charges, increases her main battery range by 20% for 100s and has a 240s reset timer.  Her Catapult Fighter launches 3 aircraft  which stay on station, orbiting the ship at a range of 3km for 60s.  It comes with three charges and has a 90s reset timer.

Upgrades

Let's do this!  It's decision time.

• Start with Main Armaments Modification 1.
• Damage Control System Modification 1 is the only one that makes sense in slot 2.  It's a shame she can't take some kind of smoke-making-better upgrade.
• You've got to choose your Destiny in slot three.  The most efficient choice is Aiming Systems Modification 1, especially with how wonky Italian ballistics are.  BUT, if you're going to be a CHAD-BRAWLER, then take Secondary Battery Modification 1 instead for the extra range and rate of fire.
• Damage Control System Modification 2 is the best choice in slot three.  You can take Steering Gears Modification 1 instead if you want, but be prepared to burn.  Still, for someone intent on brawling and knife fighting, it's not a terrible choice.
• Concealment System Modification 1 is still the only choice worth considering in slot five.
• And finally, you can choose between Main Battery Modification 3 to help with her shoddy reload or Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 to make up for her lacklustre range.

Commander Skills

Now OBVIOUSLY, the optimal build here is the same tried, tested and true battleship survivability-focused commander.  You specialize in fire-resistance with your choice of skills at the lower, mandatory tiers.  It's worth noting that for Italian battleships especially, the second tier Brisk is particularly effective.  The extra jump in speed kicks in everytime they activate their Exhaust Smoke Generator, on top of the extended periods of time between their salvos owing to their longer (and sometimes downright punitive) main battery reload times.  As a nerd that has spent way too much time twirling ships, I like the extra kick it provides to a ship's rate of turn.  With Giuseppe Verdi's smoke lasting longer than other Italian battleships, she stands to benefit from this longer and getting her up to X knot top speeds is thrilling.  It's like combining Engine Boost to your Exhaust Smoke Generator.  Very fun.

But SURELY you didn't come here for optimization; you came for AWESOME. 

I know your type.  You're a Giga-Chad who plays a secondary-spec'd Montana.  You're the Boss-[edited] who took Survivability Expert on your battleships. 

Well, Giuseppe Verdi will not let you down.  Her SAP-firing secondaries are SCREAMING for a dedicated commander build to fully optimize the ship, citadel exposure be damned.  Well, worry not my valiant, hyper-morphed blokes and lasses, I've got your needs covered. 

Brisk comes up once again as an excellent skill for this build.  Secondaries don't increase a ship's spotting radius in smoke, allowing Giuseppe Verdi to close to knife fighting range while still delivering the hurt.  Between Secondary Armament Modification 1,  the November Echo Setteseven signal and the following build, she can yeet her shells out to a respectable 10.51km, making her a threat to anything she wants to flex on.  Only Manual Secondary Battery Aiming and Long Range Secondary Battery Shells are truly mandatory for this build, leaving you with lots of options to play around.  I'm a fan of pairing this with Concealment Expert and Emergency Repair Expert but you're free to pick and choose your favourites.

Obviously, I'm biased towards a secondary build.  You'll understand why by the time you get to my Final Evaluation, if not before with my Firepower section.  Of course if you elect to use secondary build, that precludes Giuseppe Verdi from being an effective commander trainer for your other Regia Marina battleships.  That's a significant strike against her and worth keeping in mind.

Camouflage

Giuseppe Verdi only has access to a single Type 10 camouflage.  It provides the usual bonuses for a tier IX premium battleship:

•  -3% surface detection
• +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells.
• -20% to post-battle service costs.
• +100% to experience gains.

Giuseppe Verdi's base camo looks fine.  It's helped that Regia Marina battleships look bloody gorgeous.

Firepower
Main Battery:  Nine 406mm/50 guns in in 3x3 turrets with an A-B-X superfiring configuration
Secondary Battery:  Twelve 152mm/55 guns in 4x3 turrets and twenty-four 90mm/50 guns in 12x2 turrets superfiring over the 152mm guns.  These armaments are spread evenly along each side of the ship.

Main Battery

Let's do things a little different this time and start with the main battery.  There's a world of difference between Giuseppe Verdi's main battery firepower and Marco Polo's and it's worth reiterating them.

• Giuseppe Verdi has a faster reload by 5 seconds.
• Marco Polo is more precise with 1.9 sigma to Giuseppe Verdi's 1.7.
• Giuseppe Verdi's AP shells do 450 less damage and are lighter.
• Marco Polo has SAP shells, Giuseppe Verdi has HE shells.

While it's nice that Giuseppe Verdi does not to have Marco Polo's 36 second reload, the rest of the changes suck monkey butts.  I mean, I can accept having HE instead of SAP.  It's a fair trade for the reload reduction.  But, I have to ask just what the heck is going on with her AP shells?  450 less damage on a citadel (149 damage on a penetration) isn't a lot but that makes me wonder why it was even necessary.  Now, I do like my consistency so incongruencies bother me more than they should.  So I'm left scratching my head at this design decision.  I think it points to Wargaming fussing with things that don't matter for the sake of making their "behind the scenes" performance-graphs look pretty. 

The same goes for a 31 second reload instead of the standard battleship 30 second reload.  That smacks of Wargaming looking for optimization so someone can make their bonus rather than a design decision that's to the benefit of the players.  That kind of change is a nuisance to players.  Seriously, there's been a lot of this unnecessary fidgeting with stats away from established norms and I can't see the reason why.  Giuseppe Verdi could have had a 30 second reload and 13,050 damage on her AP shells like her sister and it wouldn't have made an enormous difference -- her DPM would have still sat beneath Hizen's (freakin' Hizen for crying out loud).  Wargaming could have bought back their numbers with something that players can't perceive anyway, like a 0.05 sigma reduction or whatever.

When is Wargaming going to learn that messing with main battery performance is a sure-fire way to annoy their customers?

 
Giuseppe Verdi isn't winning any prizes for sustained damage output.  I'm aware I forgot Prinz Rupprecht.  She's at the bottom of both. I'm not redoing these.

Again, Prinz Rupprecht is missing, this time because I recycled this from my Marlborough review.   She sits beneath Giuseppe Verdi and above Georgia.

Speaking of annoying, let's talk about dispersion.

Giuseppe Verdi's accuracy is ... well, it's not good.  It combines the triple headache of French & Italian dispersion formulas AND Italian high-velocity vertical dispersion AND 1.7 sigma on top of that.  Even if you do hit your targets, Giuseppe Verdi is likely to yeet her AP rounds clean through the broadside of a cruiser at anything less than 12km.  Now, this is countered by the fact that her AP rounds retain a lot of energy over distance, so smackin' battleships for citadel hits at long range is totally in her wheelhouse... or at least it would be if she could reach out to 20km.  You need to activate her Spotter Aircraft or install Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 in order to shoot that far.  Her short range is a real pain in the butt sometimes, so ditch the Catapult Fighter and keep the other consumable on standby.  You're going need it.  If you don't, you'll have to install the range module instead and that's only going to push her DPM potential further down the list.

 
Giuseppe Verdi's dispersion with 1.7 sigma on the left.  Marco Polo's with 1.9 sigma (and minor ballistic changes) on the right.

Giuseppe Verdi doesn't quite top the charts in terms of her AP penetration for a sixteen-inch gun but it's pretty darned close.  She's a threat to battleship citadels up to 20km and beyond.

A Curious Note

Towards the tail end of this review, I noticed something weird in Giuseppe Verdi's datamined stats.  This came from spotting a typo on one of my graphics.  I got the HE damage value wrong, so I went back and double checked all of the info for her main battery HE shells just to make sure that I wasn't misquoting other stats.  That's when this little value jumped out at me:

"Alpha Damage 9,230"

Now, Alpha Damage is weird.  It's not the same as regular damage.  That regular damage value for Giuseppe Verdi appears normal -- it's 5,700.  It's the same amount of hurt that Iowa and Missouri spit out with their 406mm guns.  Alpha Damage for HE shells is a bit of a holdover from the Closed Beta days where HE shells had a splash effect that could even damage ships on a near miss.  To my knowledge, this may have had an effect still on modules (WG never gave me a clear answer on this as a Community Contributor).  With the inclusion of submarines taking splash damage from near misses, it was something I had ear marked to explore when I could take submarines into the training rooms finally.  So what does this value do?

Well, frankly, I don't know.  It could mean that Giuseppe Verdi will do more damage to submarines with her HE shells than she should.  It could mean that she does more damage to modules (including exposed magazines of destroyers and some cruisers) than her contemporaries. Maybe it's more HE penetration against modules (they have a kind of armour -- module damage is hella weird). It could mean absolutely nothing and it's just a holdover from Closed Beta.  Just be aware that she has more of this than Iowa and Missouri (4,620), Thunderer (7,730) or even Incomparable (7,800).

I'll make some inquiries and keep you posted.

[ Edit - This has been confirmed.  Giuseppe Verdi does more module damage than other battleships. ]

I'm borrowing this graphic from my Marco Polo review.  The two sisters have the same firing angles.  They're almost good.  Almost.

Main Battery Summary

Giuseppe Verdi's main battery firepower sucks.

She has bad range.  Her AP shells have nerfed damage.  She has only nine guns and yet she's stuck with an abnormally long reload.  Her HE shells aren't SAP and they suck at starting fires.  Her dispersion is also terrible.  Her guns' redeeming qualities are decent fire arcs and gun handling, good AP penetration over range and you're playing with a larger calibre of gun than you normally can with Italian battleships.  Seriously, that last bit is meant to be a selling feature of the ship and it makes me laugh.  "Ooh, you get to play with 406mm guns!"  Yeah, everyone else already does that and has been doing that since as early as tier VII.  406mm SAP with a bad reload was novel on Marco Polo.  Nerfed 406mm AP with a bad reload is just a bad tier IX ship -- being Italian doesn't make that better somehow.

Wargaming is obviously banking that her secondaries will make up the deficit.

Her Secondaries Don't Make Up the Deficit

There are four things I look for when evaluating if a ship's secondaries are worth upgrading into:

• Range:  Look, you gotta have range. 
  I don't care about the rest if a ship can't reach its target.  Without range, secondaries are not going to come into play often enough to be worthwhile. The next three are all distant seconds to this first criteria.  I cannot stress this enough: without good range, your secondaries suck.  End of story.
   
• Dispersion:  Dispersion helps put more hits on target for few shots.  This can be counteracted somewhat by a high volume of fire (more bites of the apple) or meatier individual hits (good penetration / high damage or fire chance per shell). 
• Penetration:  Will my hits do damage when I get there?  Like Dispersion, this can again be overlooked if the other two boxes are ticked .  The idea being that if you don't have good penetration to hurt all targets, landing enough hits may pad the numbers through fires.
• Potential Damage:  This category is kind of a catch-all.  It combines volume of fire with fire arcs, shell damage and fire chance per hit.  We're evaluating if the ship has the potential to deal a lot of damage -- pretty much, if all of the ducks were in a row, how much hurt can this ship dispense?  A ship with poor potential damage may still be a decent contender for a secondary specialization if dispersion and penetration are present -- the idea being that you make up for the deficit by hitting more often and the quality of said hits being higher than average.

We can look at a few examples:

Prinz Rupprecht has arguably the best secondary battery at tier IX.  She combines accurate "Massachusetts" level of accuracy with 1/4 HE penetration.  Her 105mm guns fire quickly and her 150mm casemates hit like trucks.  With nearly an 8km base range, the only marks against her are the poor firing arcs on her casemates and the fact that her 105mm can't quite penetrate 32mm battleship hull sections without dipping into IFHE.   Still, she can do without and rely on fires to carry over the rest.

Georgia is a step down from Prinz Rupprecht.  Though she dittos the German battlecruiser's accuracy, she has slightly less range.  Furthermore, her 127mm/38s don't have the penetration needed to contend with anything short of destroyers and very light cruisers.  Dipping into Inertial Fuse for HE Shells allows her to engage cruisers, but this hurts her poor fire-setting ability when facing other battleships, forcing a choice.  Her fire arcs, however, are excellent, ensuring she can bring her full secondary broadside on anything that creeps within range.

Alsace has the range and massive volume of fire but she lacks everything else.  Her penetration is infamously terrible with her 100mm guns unable to directly damage destroyers or the superstructures of ships at tiers VIII+ and her dispersion is just the baseline secondary accuracy which is awful.  Still, she's one of the best potential fire starters.

Marco Polo has absolutely nothing going for her.  On paper, she can deal more potential damage than Georgia but her range is even worse.  Furthermore, she inherits Alsace's penetration issues.  The bulk of her fire comes from her 90mm guns and they can't hurt anything directly.  She's only a modest fire starter and her accuracy is terrible.

So where does Giuseppe Verdi fall on this spectrum?

Giuseppe Verdi, Marco Polo and Friedrich der Große have the same brawling and kiting DPM.  Pommern and Georgia have such good fire arcs that they can fire all of their guns whether kiting or brawling.
Giuseppe Verdi's SAP ammunition provides tremendous potential, both through her theoretical DPM but also her high penetration.  There's just one problem...

SAP Armed Secondaries

SAP secondaries are a game changer.  On paper, Giuseppe Verdi's secondaries have more damage potential than Alsace's, which is pretty frightening.  And this comes paired with high(ish) penetration.  Her 152mm secondaries can smack 42mm hull sections and her 90mm can hurt up to 26mm.  Pair this with (very) high damage per shell and she appears capable of front-loading some big alpha when her secondaries start singing.  I was initially skeptical, expecting most of these shells to ricochet but her 152mm have VERY forgiving bounce angles.  Her 90mm are less so, but still highly respectable.

This was enough to make me curious.  I could accept her not starting fires or damaging internal modules with these kind of stats (you're not detonating anyone with SAP).  It stung a bit that her 90mm were stuck at 26mm of penetration -- 27mm would have been preferred to hurt ALL cruisers within her matchmaking, but I could deal with that, especially when her 152mm guns had been buffed with a slightly faster reload over those on her sister ship.  Things were looking up.

At least, they were until I looked at their range.  Lemme dig up that meme I used on my Marco Polo review.

There we go.

With a 6.95km base range, Giuseppe Verdi's secondaries cap out at a modest 10.51km.  That's a kilometre and a half shorter than Alsace and Prinz Rupprecht.  That hurts.  That sucks.  What is it with these Italian battleship premiums post-Cesare being so close to good but fumbling at the last minute?

Thus, Giuseppe Verdi ends up having excellent potential damage, good penetration, poor accuracy and, most damning of all, modest range at best, though I'm loathe to call it anything other than 'poor'.

It's not that a 10.51km range isn't workable, it very much is, especially if you're a PVE-junky.  Giuseppe Verdi's secondaries are boss-level badass in Co-Op and it's not uncommon to see her do in excess of 40,000 damage with her secondaries if you throw her headlong into jousting scenarios with a full secondary build.  However, you can't expect this kind of regular performance in PVP where brawling scenarios are less common.  Giuseppe Verdi doesn't pair these secondaries with a citadel profile that's healthy in a knife fight.

That's not to say that there isn't some use for her secondaries in PVP, it's just not idiot proof the way it is on German battleships.  Giuseppe Verdi's ace in the hole when it comes to making use of her secondaries is her Exhaust Smoke Generator.  She can blink off people's radar, show up closer than people are expecting and saturate them with a hail of surprisingly damaging fire.  This works best against destroyers and cruisers, obviously, and only select cruisers at that.  But still, it opens the door for some fun, dynamic and aggressive plays that are so very dear to my blood thirsty heart.  You just can't count on it being the trump card that people so often envision brawling to be.

I really do like the combination of decent secondaries (I am loathe to say 'good') and an Exhaust Smoke Generator in brawling scenarios.  So long as no one brings Hydroacoustic Search or a Surveillance Radar to the party, it's going to be amusing.  I can't promise it will be game winning or even a good idea, but it will be amusing.

After the disappointment of her main battery armament, having "amusing" secondaries is high praise.

If you can fire all six of her 90mm guns at a target, you're showing waaaay too much broadside.

Secondary Summary

They're better than I initially thought.  Their short(er) range is a pain in the butt and really hurts what could have been an impressive and novel armament.  It would have been nice to see them reaching out to at least Georgia levels of range (7.5km) or getting at least German battleship levels of accuracy.  Still, the way her secondaries synergize with her Exhaust Smoke Generator is a lot of fun, so top marks there. 

VERDICT:  Giuseppe Verdi's offensive capabilities are only "okay".  Her main battery firepower is pretty bad compared to her contemporaries and if you're not interested in a secondary-build, then you should probably stay clear of this ship. 

Durability
Hit Points: 69,100
Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck:  32mm / 19mm / 70mm to 80mm / 55mm
Maximum Citadel Protection: 320mm belt + either 25mm turtleback or 50mm citadel wall
Torpedo Damage Reduction:  27%

Marco Polo and Giuseppe Verdi share the same hit point pool, which is really generous of them considering it's not very big.

Giuseppe Verdi entirely clones Marco Polo's armour and hit point profiles.  This means she has a tiny hit point pool for a tier IX battleship, a dispersed armour scheme and a highly vulnerable citadel. 

Giuseppe Verdi's armour is excellent for resisting cruiser calibre HE, SAP and AP rounds, even the latter two which may have improved auto-ricochet mechanics.  Her amidships deck and upper belt are immune to HE rounds from even small battleship calibre weapons, being proof up to 330mm calibre guns.  She can similarly shrug off the 1/4 HE penetration of 203mm calibre weapons found on the German cruisers.  Similarly, all cruiser-calibre SAP rounds are patently incapable of damaging the ship in these places. This limits the effectiveness of these attacks to her extremities and superstructure.  Given the difficulties of accuracy at range, the further away Giuseppe Verdi is from said cruisers, the more effective her armour becomes if only grace of dispersion.  Even players who know what to target will find their shells occasionally straying and piffing off Giuseppe Verdi's thick plate ineffectively.  Against battleship calibre rounds, she fares alright.  She can bow-tank with the best of them, though she has to worry about the usual 460mm+ guns like everyone else.  This all changes if she gives up a little too much side, however.

Barring having an ice-breaker on her bow and stern, Giuseppe Verdi's external armour is excellent.

The citadel protection of the Marco Polo-class isn't great. 

It's almost good enough. 
Almost. 

Against anything 356mm or smaller, it holds up well.  Her turtleback is sloped steeply and it prompt ricochets (or at least ricochet checks) against most incoming rounds, deflecting them up and away from her magazines and machine spaces. However, at only 25mm thick, any larger AP shells simply ignores the armour entirely through overmatch mechanics.  Similarly, ships with improved auto-ricochet angles like American heavy cruisers and battleships like Duke of York won't bounce off this plate.  Granted these two ships in this specific example need to be extra close in order to get through her belt armour, but ships like Stalingrad and the Alaska-class do not.  Exposing Giuseppe Verdi's sides is baaaad juju and it's just begging to get her sent back to port from the ensuing big citadel hits.

That 25mm turtleback is just begging to be overmatched.  It may as well be non-existant for any AP shells greater than 356mm.  Flash her sides at your own peril.

This raises the point on how it's generally a REALLY STUPID IDEA to bring this ship anywhere close to brawling distances against other battleships in PVP.  Like, seriously.  You'd have to be a flaming moron to want to engage in knife fights using Giuseppe Verdi and expect her to come out the better for it.  Even her Exhaust Smoke Generator can't keep her safe at these ranges (and that won't save you from enterprising blind fires at a distance either, btw).  Even if you don't get flashed by Surveillance Radar or sniffed out by a Hydroacoustic Search, the guaranteed detection range will ensure she gets lit.  Barring "being the torpedo", you'll have to expose your sides to your quarry (if not their friends) and probably suffer for it.  As good as her secondaries (potentially) are, Giuseppe Verdi's citadel protection should make you think twice about getting her anywhere close enough to use 'em.

Or you can live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse.  Up to you.

Shut up.  I look fabulous.

VERDICT:  Nice external armour.  She doesn't have enough HP, though and her healing suffers because of it.  Furthermore, citadel gets tapped too easily especially at brawling distances where WG wants her to be played.

Agility
Top Speed: 32 knots
Turning Radius:  860m
Rudder Shift Time: 16 seconds
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn:  4.3º/s at 24.1 knots
Main Battery Traverse Rate:  5.0º/s

Fourth from the top in bright, booger green.

There's nothing really special about Giuseppe Verdi's handling.  Her 860m turning radius looks decent.  Her 32 knot top speed is good, but she's not the fastest at tier by a long shot.  She lacks the Engine Boost consumable which makes Alsace, Wujing, Georgia and the Jean Barts so flexible.  And finally, her rudder shift time is only kinda-sorta okay.  Plug this all in and you get a ship that isn't exemplary in any one area, but she's not terrible in any of them either.  And yet, she strangely feels kinda lame.

This is largely owing to the empty niche at high tiers.  We have fast battleships but we don't have any nimble ones. 

Put Giuseppe Verdi at any of the lower tiers and sure, her speed stands out, but her handling would be all kinds of meh by comparison.  At tier VII, Gneisenau has a comparable top speed but scrapes off another 30m from her turning radius (and over a second from her rudder shift time), allowing her to manage a comfy 4.5º/s rate of rotation. The German tech tree ship feels fast and aggressive.  Yet just a few different paraemeters undermines Giuseppe Verdi.  The end result is that she only feels okay. There's room at this tier for Wargaming to play with agility as a perk if they wished.  Something with short rudder shift time like Vanguard or Yukon would be welcome, especially if it came with something close to (or just below) an 800m turning cricle radius and around a 30 knot top speed.  As it is, Giuseppe Verdi's agility misses the mark here.

Because of this, I fell in love with the Swift commander skill in my play tests.  Paired with the Sierra Mike signal and her Exhaust Smoke Generator, it gave her a top speed of 37.1 knots in a straight line and a maximum rate of turn of 4.5º/s over a 910m turning circle radius at a sustained turning speed of 26.6 knots (for those unaware, when you exceed your in-port top speed, your turning circle radius increases in size).  Giuseppe Verdi can very comfortably come about 180º under the cover of her Exhaust Smoke Generator with time to spare.  Furthermore, her Exhaust Smoke Generator ensures she can always have access to this extra speed on demand, allowing her to redeploy even from hotly contested fights.  I know I'm making more of a big deal about her synergy with this skill than it perhaps deserves but I was delighted by this pairing and I'ma spread the word to mah peeps.

Overall, Giuseppe Verdi's agility is "good enough", I suppose.  It's not bad but there are better ships at her tier, like Georgia and Jean Bart.

VERDICT: It's not terrible.  It's not good either, but it's not terrible.

Anti-Aircraft Defence
Flak Bursts: 6 + 2 explosions for 1,330 damage per blast at 3.5km to 4.6km.
Long Ranged (up to 4.6km):  196dps at 75% accuracy (147dps)
Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 199.5dps at 75% accuracy (150dps)
Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 206.5dps at 70% accuracy  (145dps)

Range of Gun Types and DPS

Combined AA DPS by Range

Look, the only thing "good" going on here is the wall of flak that Giuseppe Verdi puts out and even that's held back by the pathetic short-range of Italian large-calibre batteries.  You can count on anything short of dive bombers being able to engage an attack run before they have to consider dodging and that really undermines their efficacy.  On paper, she has enough sustained DPS to do some damage to loitering planes (if they loiter), but in practice she's one of the softer battleship targets at her tier.  You're pretty much hoping that enemy aircraft will run into a combined flak-wall or be out-muscled by Giuseppe Verdi's DPS paired with something much more frightening, like an American or French battleship.

Here's how Giuseppe Verdi's sustained AA DPS holds up against the best three and worst three battleships at her tier.  This is the approximate damage done by sustained AA DPS against a fictional, 186.2 knot squadron travelling in a straight line from max range to 0km over a ship.  The colours separate the damage done by mount type, with darkest being the large calibre mounts, the medium being the medium calibre and lightest being the small calibre mounts.

Iowa (5833)

Missouri (5019)

Jean Bart & Jean Bart B (4884)

Marco Polo & Giuseppe Verdi (2948)

Hizen (2157)

AL Sovetskaya Rossiya (1914)

Musashi (1198)

Overall, your best AA defence is going to be to activate her Exhaust Smoke Generator if you come under concerted attack.  Make sure you put the rudder hard over to Just Dodge™ any blind drops of rockets, fish, bombs, or Soveit easy-mode ordnance.

VERDICT:  Not enough so it's entirely forgettable.

Vision Control
Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 16.8km / 13.2km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 12.98km / 10.51km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 16.26km
Maximum Firing Range:  Between 19.12km and 22.18km (max of 26.62km with Spotter Aircraft)

52nd (or 53rd) out of 93 vessels listed here.

Giuseppe Verdi (and Marco Polo) have concealment on the poor side of average for a battleship within their matchmaking (the average being an upgraded concealment of 13.05km).  That's not surprising given that short of Roma (and her unfortunate AL clone), most Italian battleships tend to have unremarkable surface detection ranges.  However, with very few exceptions, it isn't the raw concealment value that's the interesting aspect of a given battleship's vision control -- it's what consumables they bring to the table to shake things up that makes individual ships stand out.

With Italian battleships, it's access to their Exhaust Smoke Generator consumable that's their defining feature here.  This provides concealment on demand, at least so long as they haven't fired their main battery guns recently.  That Marco Polo lacked this consumable at all was a big hit against her comfort-level which was admittedly already suffering due to her punitive reload time on her guns.  Well, it seems that Wargaming has taken the Exhaust Smoke Generator Marco Polo should have gotten and added it onto her sister-ship, because Giuseppe Verdi's smoke is strange and powerful.  It provides all of the usual benefits for an Italian battleship, giving cover to allow it to disengage and manoeuvre as needs be.  With her great secondaries, you can also use it offensively, spitting ribbons of SAP fire into the faces of enemies that get close without being spotted in return -- at least until someone activates Surveillance Radar or Hydroacoustic Search or slips within 2km of her.  Still, this can be enough to cause some amusing shenanigans, such as foiling early torpedo attempts and getting a leg up on damage done, especially against the impatient.  It might be enough to protect her citadel against some opponents.

Exhaust Smoke Generators are a selfish consumable by their very nature.  They don't really provide smoke that can be shared by other ships unless you VERY tightly coordinate with a peer. That's nominally beyond the scope of trying to help some Random Battle buddy you meet in a one-off match.  The Exhaust Smoke Generator clouds don't last long enough for another ship to hide in them comfortably.  Trail behind an Italian battleship by more than a boat length and you're not likely to keep hidden, especially if you're struggling at all to match their exact course and speed. 

This is where Giuseppe Verdi stands out.  Her Exhaust Smoke Generator can be shared. While most Italian Exhaust Smoke Generators create smoke circles that are 1.02km in diameter, Giuseppe Verdi's is a massive 1.8km.  The extra duration of each individual cloud also ensures that it lasts long enough for a friendly ship to be able to follow in her wake.  Finally, the extra emission time gives a bit more room too coordinate.  While this may still be beyond the average player in a pick-up battle, it is enough to provide at least temporary cover and easily too.  That can make all of the difference in a Random or Ranked battle. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Giuseppe Verdi's Exhaust Smoke Generator is game changing.  It's just that much more comfortable to use and it opens the door for some team play options that didn't readily exist before.

Lepanto on top with a standard Exhaust Smoke Generator.  Giuseppe Verdi's smoke is large enough to hide a small fleet inside, provided they can keep up.

VERDICT:  Bad unless you account for her Exhaust Smoke Generator.  Then it's at least interesting, if not downright competitive.

Anti-Submarine Warfare
ASW Armament Type:  Airstrike from 1.5km to 10km (plus bomb drop column)
Number of Salvos:  Up to two
Reload Time:  30 seconds
Aircraft:  Two Kawanishi H8K with 2,000hp per plane.
Drop Pattern: 3 bombs each dropped evenly over roughly a 900m column
Maximum Bomb Damage:  2,800
Fire Chance: 21%

Not much to say here given that submarines were largely a non-entity during my playtesting.  I'm recording these stats for posterity and they're likely to change in the future.

VERDICT:  I'm not looking forward to when this section becomes relevant, if only because these reviews will get even more complicated.  #MouseTroubles

Final Evaluation

Marco Polo, was entirely forgettable and short of Christmas events, I never see any reason to take her out.  This is largely owing to Marco Polo's atrocious main battery reload time.  Seeing that corrected with Giuseppe Verdi caught my interest, especially when paired with the missing Exhaust Smoke Generator.  But when I became aware of the other gunnery flaws, namely the 1.7 sigma, the terrible range, the 31 second reload (for some reason) and nerfed AP rounds, my enthusiasm was dashed.  I resigned that she would never be anything more than another forgettable offering from Wargaming, not worth a deep dive.  I began framing this review as a quick comparison between the two ships.  That was until I took a look at how Wargaming was promoting her.

I told you we'd come back to this.  What stood out to me was the claims of a powerful secondary armament.  Now, I was aware of her development and how she had been touted as having SAP secondaries.  But just looking at their range gave me reservations, to say nothing when datamining pulled up that her dispersion wasn't improved. 

But the more I looked and the more I played Giuseppe Verdi, I felt it wrong to be so dismissive.  There was something interesting there.  Oh, my forays into trying to make her secondaries work in PVP were largely disastrous -- I'm not about to tell you that Giuseppe Verdi is a good ship, don't you worry.  But what I did find was that they were fun, especially in PVE.  I don't usually focus on individual game modes much in my reviews but I think it's worth examining here with Giuseppe Verdi.  If you are a co-op main, Giuseppe Verdi is a fantastic ship.  Secondary-heavy battleships and battleships with torpedoes do extremely well in PVE modes and Giuseppe Verdi is no exception.  If you're looking to scratch of some event mission that requires secondary hits, this isn't a bad pony to bet on.

In PVP modes, she's only alright though.  You can pull off some fun shenanigans every now and then the same way you could with say, Tirpitz or Odin. I just don't feel that her long range fire is good enough to warrant purchasing.  Yes, it's nice to have an Italian battleship with 406mm AP rounds AND smoke.  But given how heavy handed Wargaming has been to balance her, I don't think she's worth while.  Similarly, close combat just doesn't happen often enough in PVP battles to allow you to enjoy what makes her novel.  Her shorter ranged secondaries make that even more challenging -- you're getting less secondary incidental fire than you would from any other specialist and that's a shame.  I want to like Giuseppe Verdi, but I cannot in good conscious recommend her for anyone that enjoys Random and Ranked Battles.  She's not terrible.  She's certainly more novel than her sister ship, but I'ma stick to my guns.  Give her a pass if you're a PVP junky.

Thanks for reading.  Mouse out.

<Sinister pasta noises!>