Premium Ship Review: Tiger '59

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Tiger '59, the tier VIII premium British light cruiser.  This ship was provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes at no cost to myself; I did not pay to get access to her.  To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.10.4.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Tiger '59 borrows heavily from Wargaming's Box o' Gimmicks.  There is so much about her that's non-standard.  Look at this laundry list of improvements:  Better healing queue, better healing amount, better smoke duration, better dispersion, improved acceleration, tiny turning circle radius, improved auto-ricochet angles, shortened fuses, 360º gun traverse and finally getting access to a Surveillance Radar and Smoke Generator at the same time.  This is all meant to pad out a ship with bad damage output, slow speed and poor durability.  Let's see if those gimmicks can make her workable...

Summary: A slow and thinly armoured light cruiser with smoke, radar, DFAA and heals.  She's armed with a pair of HMS Minotaur's rapid-firing 152mm twin-turrets slinging RNCL modified AP rounds.

PROS

• Phenomenal turret traverse rate (an insane 38º/s) with 360º rotation arcs.
• Her AP shells have vastly improved auto-ricochet angles (60º to 75º) and very short fuse timers (0.005s).
• Excellent main battery dispersion.
• Improved acceleration.
• Tiny turning circle radius and comfortable rate of turn.
• Sneaky, with a surface detection range as low as 9.19km.
• Access to Surveillance Radar and a Smoke Generator simultaneously.
• Powerful "portable dry-dock" Repair Party with improved damage queues.

CONS

• Small hit point pool and very thin belt armour.
• Only four main battery guns with very low combined damage output and no big alpha-strike potential.
• Only armed with AP shells.  No HE, no SAP, no torpedoes, no secondaries, no planes.
• Short 15.6km range.
• Slow, with a top speed of only 30 knots.
• No access to Hydroacoustic Search.

Overview

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

New fish: Keep away.

Tiger '59 is comfortable to play for new players right up until the point their first Smoke Generator charge goes on cool down.  From then on, it's a severe uphill battle with a slow, very fragile ship with very limited hitting power.  In order for Tiger '59 to perform, she needs to survive and outlast her opponents.  While between stealth, agility and her heals, the toolkit is provided to do just that, sudden and outright deletions are not uncommon, nor does she come out well when it comes to trading damage, even with some gunship destroyers.

Options

Consumables

Tiger '59 has a glut of consumables but it's important to keep in mind what she's missing.  She does not have access to a Hydroacoustic Search. 

 

• Tiger's Damage Control Party is standard, coming with unlimited charges.  When activated, it repairs all temporarily knocked out systems, extinguishing fires and patching floods for 5 seconds.  It has a 60 second reset timer.
• Her Repair Party is one of the infamous British "portable dry-dock" versions, healing back up to 40% of the ship's health per charge over 20 seconds at a rate of 2% per second.  She queues up and improved 60% of penetration damage, 50% of citadel damage and 100% of everything else.  It comes with three charges and an 80 second reset timer.
• Tiger's Smoke Generator is identical to Edinburgh's old smoke consumable before she got hit with the nerf bat.  It has a 15 second emission time and each cloud disperses in 106 seconds (Edinburgh's used to do this, now it's 99 seconds). This includes the usual British cruiser tropes including a large emission radius (600m) and a 160 second reset timer.  It starts with three charges.
• The ever so popular and controversial Surveillance Radar makes an appearance here.  Tiger's version has a 9km detection range for 30 seconds (!), coming with three charges and a 120 second reset timer.
• Finally, she has access to Defensive AA Fire.  This comes with three charges and is active for 40 seconds, providing the usual 50% increase to sustained DPS and 300% increase to flak explosion damage. It has an 80 second reset timer and starts with three charges.

Upgrades

Tiger '59's upgrade choices are straight forward.

• The optimized build starts with Main Armaments Modification 1 is slot 1.
• Next, take Surveillance Radar Modification 1 if you can afford it.  It costs 17,000 from the Armory.  If you cannot afford that but you have access to a Defensive AA Fire Modification 1 consumable, go ahead and put that in (but I would not waste the coal on that).  If you do not have access to either, default to Engine Room Protection.
• Now it gets brainless.  Take Aiming Systems Modification 1 in slot three.  Yes, even with her improved dispersion, this is still the best choice.  Sad, innit?
• Steering Gears Modification 1 goes in slot four.
• And finish things off with Concealment System Modification 1 in slot five.

Commander Skills

The commander skill rework was simultaneously kind and cruel to the AP-slinging British light cruisers.  On the one hand, there's not a whole lot to spend your points on so it's easy to max out on efficient choices.  On the other hand, there's not a whole lot to spend your points on so there's not a whole lot of variety to play with.  Here's the build I settled upon:

• Start with Last Stand.
• Next take Consuamble Enhancements.  We'll be doubling back for Priority Target later.
• Superintendent is next, but we'll be wanting Adrenaline Rush after we spend our 10th point.
• And finish things off with Concealment Expert.

After doubling back for Priority Target and Adrenaline Rush, you've got 6 points to spend where you will.  I recommend Radio Location but that leaves a clumsy 2 points remaining that's kinda hard to fill.  You could always go for Grease the Gears for the luls, I guess.  Like I said, British light cruisers kinda miss out.

Camouflage

Tiger '59 has access to two camouflage patterns:  Type 10 and In Memory of Jutland.  Presumably, these are cosmetic swaps of one another (I have not seen the In Memory of Jutland camo first hand) and both provide the identical bonuses of:

• 3% reduction to surface detection.
• 4% increase to enemy dispersion.
• 10% reduction to service costs.
• 50% increase to experience earned.

You can unlock Tiger '59's alternative camo palette (the darker one) by completing the appropriate section of the Royal Navy Destroyer Naval Aviation collection.

At the time of publishing, I do not have any information on how to get this camouflage or its stats.

Firepower
Main Battery:  Four 152mm guns in 2x2 turrets in an A-X configuration.
Secondary Battery:  None
Torpedoes:  None

I should really include dispersion on these going forward.  Tiger '59 has an approximate dispersion calculation of:  Dispersion in Meters = [ ( range in km ) x 3.5 + 15 ].

Tiger '59 has bad DPM.

Tiger '59 hides her crappy firepower behind a veritable wall of creature comforts and quality of life improvements.

• She has excellent turret traverse rates.
• She uses the same improved gunnery dispersion as the new German destroyers.
• Her forward fire arcs are super comfy (they're not so great to the rear, but whatever).
• Her guns rotate 360º.
• She has improved auto-ricochet angles on her shells.
• Her fuse timers are super-short.
• She has smoke to hide in!
• She's good at lobbing shells over islands.
• She has Surveillance Radar to sniff and dig out lolibotes.
• Her guns reload in 3.2 seconds!

But you get four guns.  Just four.  And they can only fire British modified AP rounds.  You get no HE shells.  You get no SAP shells.  You get no fish.  You can't even summon aircraft like some of those newer ships do (Ise and you Dutch boys, I'ma lookin' at you).  Yes, these are Minotaur's guns but you are only getting 40% of Minotaur's guns and none of her torpedoes.  Nor are you getting access to a slot-six upgrade that would further boost DPM the way it would on the tier X British cruiser.

Tiger '59's gunnery DPM is just slightly better than Belfast '43's but without the ability to rely on HE shells and fire to pad her numbers.  This isn't quite tier VI cruiser levels; Leander manages only 193k DPM for example, but it's still on the low side.  Tiger '59 is largely reliant upon picking on distracted targets, either firing from her smoke clouds or using her super-floaty ballistics to lob shells over islands and annoy them steadily over however many minutes it takes to make them die.  Even with her improved dispersion, those floaty, Minotaur ballistics (almost 12 seconds to 15km!) means that any kind of wiggle in your opponent's butt and you're not guaranteed to hit.  So pick on parked or predictably moving targets.

Despite having Surveillance Radar, it's a good idea to bring a friend along to make sure that the maulings Tiger '59 delivers turn into guaranteed kills.  It's really annoying to see destroyers successfully limp away what would otherwise be a certain pasting had she more guns or more variety in ammo.  Without torpedoes, she's very much in danger of having her own smoke screen charged and there's not a whole lot you can do to dissuade this. 

Can you make these guns perform?  Absolutely.  It's all about positioning and picking your targets.  But you've got an uphill battle when it comes to a damage farm and nothing is going to die especially fast to Tiger '59's attentions.  So flex that map knowledge.  Use that smoke.  Harass and reposition as needed and keep the engagement running as long as it needs to in order to secure kills.

Her forward fire angles are much better than her fire angles to her rear.

Tiger '59 has 360º rotation arcs on her guns!  She's the poster child for demonstrating why the percentage-based upgrade system is both stupid and meme-worthy.
Stock Turret Traverse: 38º/s
Main Battery Modification 2 (MBM2) Turret Traverse: 43.7º/s
MBM2 + Grease the Gears: 50.3º/s!

VERDICT:  Gunnery with Tiger '59 largely boils down to "angry smoke cloud" with some island humping tossed in which is pretty much Royal Navy light cruiser 101.  Still, that low damage output hurts.  Edinburgh is miles away a more reliable weapon's platform and even Belfast '43 feels like she has better (or at least more reliable) damage output.

Durability

Hit Points: 35,700
Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck:  25mm/13mm/25mm/27mm
Maximum Citadel Protection: 83mm belt.
Torpedo Damage Reduction: 4%

Made of squish.  Tiger '59 has awful citadel protection but there are two good things to take away here.  The first, she has better structural armour than very light cruisers like Edinburgh.  Second, she wasn't afflicted with the 'camel hump' citadel that makes Cheshire's survivability so volatile. The bad news is that 13mm hole in her citadel roof is easily overmatched by any AP shells greater than 186mm in size, so heavy cruisers have a habit of deleting Tiger rather spectacularly -- especially American heavies with their improved auto-ricochet angles.

High tier British light cruisers are infamous for their "portable dry-dock" superheals.  Tiger '59 joins Edinburgh, Cheshire and Albermarle with access to this god-tier heal BUT with the added bonus of queuing up 60% of penetration damage instead of the usual 50%>  She still gets the 50% citadel damage queue of most cruisers.  On top of that, she has better structural plate than Edinburgh, so that's nice.  Furthermore, she doesn't have Cheshire's citadel "camel hump" which makes her slightly less of a citadel magnet that the other premium.  Slightly. 

Of course, her armour protection is otherwise crappy as all get out.  With only an 83mm belt and a citadel roof that's easily overmatched by 203mm AP shells, Tiger '59 is damage farm for anything that catches her out.  She can even citadel herself when angled at 60º at ranges of 7km or less, so beware of jousts with your doppleganger in Co-Op.  Larger calibre guns with improved auto-ricochet angles eat this ship alive, with Baltimore's 203mm AP shells capable of citadelling her a 60º angle at 14km.  Seriously.  It's hilarious.  It's almost as funny as losing one of your guns either temporarily or permanently as they're not particular well protected (but no cruiser is, if that's any consolation).  It doesn't help that she's a huge, squishy target for small and medium calibre HE shells to farm, never mind the possibility of Royal Navy battleship HE shells citadelling her outright.

The best solution, of course, is to avoid damage as much as possible. Stay hidden.  Use your heals whenever you can because you're not likely to survive if you hold off for that "optimal" heal.

Her armour may be crappy but provided she doesn't get deleted outright, Tiger '59 has a lot of potential health to play with.

VERDICT:  Nice heals but an absolute mess when it comes to citadel protection so you're probably not going to live long enough to make good use of them.

Agility

Top Speed: 30kts
Turning Radius: 590m
Rudder Shift Time: 8.9s
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 6.4º/s at 24.3kts

The only thing bad about Tiger '59's agility is her low top speed.  Everything else is excellent.  Tiny turning circle radius, improved acceleration, rate of turn; all great.  Even her rudder shift time is on the better side of average.  But her lack of a decent top speed is a real bother, especially when paired with what she lacks:  Improved British energy retention.  Unlike the tech tree cruisers and destroyers for the Royal Navy, Tiger '59 matches Belfast '43 in that she gets their improved acceleration but instead of bleeding only 2% to 3% of her speed in a turn at maximum engine power, Tiger '59 bleeds the nominal 20% most cruisers do.  Thus, under any kind of manoeuvres, Tiger '59 is even slower and that 30 knots quickly falls away to the mid-twenties.  Controlling engagement distances in this ship is something with which players must always be proactive.  If the enemy gets too close, there's no way to reliably disengage.

Good gravy, there are a lot of tier VIII cruisers.

VERDICT:  Great except for that crappy top speed.

Anti-Aircraft Defence

Flak Bursts: 2+1 explosions for 1,750 damage per blast at 3.5km to 6.9km.
Long Ranged (up to 6.9km):   59.5dps at 90% accuracy (53.6dps)
Medium Ranged (up to 4km):  217dps at 90% accuracy (195.3dps)

Who says modern ships get better AA?  Ships are ordered here by the formula { [ range - 1km ] x dps.}

Tiger '59's anti-aircraft firepower is a bit of a complicated discussion.  On the one hand, her range is phenomenal.  Once upon a time, dedicated AA cruisers could throw damage out beyond 7km so seeing Tiger's 6.9km range is giving me all kinds of nostalgia feels even if the overall efficacy isn't there.  Still, while she's not the first cruiser to have a 6.9km aura, she is the first cruiser at tier VIII to have it which is definitely noteworthy.  So her range is great.  This is a large window from which she can be dealing damage early on top of which, her flak radius is increased too.  For poor tier VI carriers with their slower aircraft, this increase in range presents a signifcant obstacle and Tiger '59's presence is enough to make them nope right out of there.  In terms of an AA support cruiser, she's the knees of the bees.

Sadly she does not follow this great range up with chunky damage values. Ranked by the efficacy of her guns, taking range as well as damage output into account, she's arguably no better than Edinburgh.  If you go by raw damage alone then she drops even further, sitting in the doldrums ahead of Mogami and the Atago-clones but behind Belfast '43 and Anchorage.  This looks bad and it is bad, however it does not tell the whole picture.  Unlike many tier VIII cruisers, Tiger '59 has access to Defensive AA Fire.  When active, her damage jumps, giving her equivalent DPS to Edinburgh but with better aura bubbles.  "Only" reaching Edinburgh's level of AA DPS with DFAA active should really put this discrepency between range potential and DPS potential into the proper perspective.  Tiger '59's AA defence is only ever "okay".  It's not great.  You'd have to invest a whole lot of skills and upgrades to even approach it becoming "good".

VERDICT:  Disappointing for such a modern ship.  Good enough to make tier VI CVs balk if you're supporting the target they're trying to bomb, but not much beyond that.

Vision Control

Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 11.7km / 9.19km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 8.52km/6.9km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 5.52km
Maximum Firing Range:  15.6km

Yay, data!

This is the ship's main selling feature.  For all of the fun quirks of her guns, they're not good enough.  Her extra acceleration and small turning radius are nice, but are similarly found wanting because of her low top speed.  Her AA power is defined by her good range but not by good damage output and her durability is suspect at best.  So here it is.  This is what makes this bote.  She is sneaky.  She has Surveillance Radar and she has Edinburgh's old Smoke Generator.  Tiger '59 can't quite stealth-radar, but the disparity between her fully upgraded surface detection and her radar range is less than 200m; if you get spotted by something you can't see, wait 2.5 seconds and blow your consumable.  At 30 knots, you'll have covered that 200m in that amount of time and odds are they'll be closer than that if you on any kind of closing course.  Tiger '59 isn't quite so comfortable with her Smoke Generator unfortunately.  This is largely owing to the complete lack of access to Hydroacoustic Search.  Smoke screens attract torpedoes and even with Tiger '59's improved acceleration, she's not the best at dancing to torpedo beats.  Bring a friend with hydro if you can and promise to pay them back by sharing your large smoke clouds and some easy kills when you light your radar. 

And that's really it.  She's an angry smoke cloud with almost-but-not-quite stealth radar.  With Cleveland having had her Surveillance Radar active time nerfed recently, Tiger '59's 30 second duration on her consumable (up to almost 40 seconds when fully kitted out) looks all the more appealing.

VERDICT:  She's a long-duration Surveillance Radar delivery system.

Final Evaluation

 
Replay of Tiger '59 trying to stamp out a lolibote and Belfast '43 thinking he's just doing a super-job.  Edinburgh suffers being associated with them.
One of the dangers of having such low DPM is that these cruisers can actually be out-traded by some of the more ferocious gunships out there.  Especially if said destroyers do something unsportsmanlike, such as blowing out their citadels.

The value of Tiger '59 is found in its utility.  Her 30 second duration Surveillance Radar combined with its 9km range and her low surface detection makes the ship.  That the ship doesn't sacrifice access to either a heal (the way Belfast '43 does) or smoke (the way Edinburgh must) "pays" for her low damage output.  As a bonus, they slapped on another questionable consumable with Defensive AA Fire which again adds (somewhat) to her teamplay utility.  It's not a terrible combination.  I can't say I'm a fan, though.

Here's where we get to the "fun" part of the review where I have to make a judgement call if Tiger '59 is good or not.  It would be foolish to argue that Surveillance Radar on any platform with low surface detection isn't situationally powerful, if not downright "broken" (I'm using the Angry YouTuber hyperbolic version of that term).  Killing destroyers wins game.  Tiger '59 facilitates lolibote destruction.  Ergo, Tiger '59 must be good, right?  That's the grossly oversimplified way of looking at things and if Tiger '59 were the first cruiser to provide this kind of game play, it would be an easy case to make that Tiger '59 has a defined role, she is the best at it and you need to add her to your collection right now now now now.  However, we're in 2021.  World of Warships is fast coming up on her six-year anniversary of her Open Beta this July.  We've come a long way since tier VIII had only Atago, Mogami and New Orleans as options.  Look at the lineup:

This is all of the tier VIII cruisers currently in the game, including those still undergoing testing.  Of the 32 vessels (yes, really), 11 of them have access to Surveillance Radar.

So the question isn't so much "is Tiger '59 good" as it is "is Tiger '59 good enough?". And here I can safely say "no".  Just within the Royal Navy cruiser line, Edinburgh is the better bote.  If you want teamplay in a division or competitive, she can dump her smoke, grab Surveillance Radar and still bring some significant punch to the table.  If you're going to solo route, Edinburgh is just so much more flexible with way more carry potential.  This doesn't make Tiger '59 bad, per se.  Heck, she might even be optimal in certain ship combinations and game modes I'm not considering.  But for the average player looking at Random Battles and Co-op battles?  Very to the No.  Pass on this one, boys and girls, especially if you're a Co-Op fan.  She's one of the worst performers there being highly vulnerable to getting her citadel blown out and not having the alpha strike that's so very much needed in that game mode.  At least in PVP Tiger '59 has a role. 

In Co-Op, I'd rather play Cheshire than Tiger '59.  And I hate Cheshire.