Premium Ship Review: Mysore

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Mysore, the tier VI British Commonwealth cruiser.  This ship was provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes at no cost to myself.  To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.10.1.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Mysore is a curious ship.  She competes directly with not only HMAS Perth, the other tier VI British Commonwealth light cruiser but also Huanghe, the Pan Asian tier VI light cruiser.  All three ships are of British design and incorporate, to varying degrees, elements of the British tech tree light cruiser game play while adding on a Crawling Smoke Generator.  Mysore keeps to the "AP only" element of British gunnery, for example, while Perth and Huanghe more closely match the British energy retention.  Throughout this review, I'll be touching base back to how Mysore matches up against these other two premiums while using Leander, the tier VI British tech-tree light cruiser as a baseline measurement.

Quick Summary:  A slow-firing, nine-gun armed British light cruiser with excellent handling and agility and a Crawling Smoke Generator.  She has no torpedoes or HE shells, using only modified AP rounds.

PROS

• Improved auto-ricochet angles on her AP rounds
• AP shells have shortened fuses with improved sensitivity to limit over-penetrations
• Excellent acceleration and agility
• Stealthy
• Has a Repair Party
• Has a Crawling Smoke Generator

CONS

• Short range
• Slow reload on her main battery, greatly reducing her DPM
• No access to HE shells or torpedoes
• Struggles to damage severely angled targets
• Short fuses makes it difficult to land hits on internal citadel spaces
• No access to Defensive AA Fire.

Overview

Skill Floor:  Simple / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult
Skill Ceiling:  Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme

Mysore looks new-player friendly on the surface -- sneak around, park in smoke, apply pew-pews.  Her fragility and short-range make this risky though.  It's not the firing in smoke that presents any kind of challenge; it's surviving in between those smoke clouds which is difficult.  There are other challenges too, but they're relatively minor compared to managing her consumable use properly.  It's her low damage output which limits her performance in the hands of an expert, however.  Her inability to deal large alpha strikes or even output damage reliably holds back her carry potential. 

Options

Consumables

• Mysore's Damage Control Party is standard for a cruiser with a 5 second active period, a 60 second reset timer and unlimited charges.
• She has a standard Repair Party.  It heals back up to 14% of her starting health over 28 seconds.  It queues up 10% of citadel damage, 50% of shell, bomb, rocket or torpedo penetration damage and 100% of everything else.
• Her Hydroacoustic Search is also standard for a tier VI cruiser.  Active for 100 seconds and with a 120 second reset timer, it comes with three charges to start.  It detects ships at 4km and torpedoes at 3km.
• Finally, she uses a Crawling Smoke Generator.  It belches out smoke continuously for 90 seconds with each cloud only lasting 10 seconds.  It starts with three charges and has a 160 second reset timer.

Upgrades

• Start with Main Armaments Modification 1.
• The special upgrade Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1 is the best choice in slot two if you can afford it.  It costs 17,000 from the Armory.  If you cannot afford that, default to Engine Room Protection.
• Also for 17,000 (and best in slot) is the Smoke Generator Modification 1 special upgrade.  If you can't afford that, default to Aiming System Modification 1.
• And finally, take Steering Gears Modification 1 in slot four.

Captain Skills

For testing, this was the build I settled upon for Mysore.

• I started with Last Stand.  Though ships can still crawl when their engines are knocked out and still turn (kinda) with their rudders damaged, this gives a bit more speed and agility which is life for a cruiser under fire.
• Priority Target is too good of a skill to pass up at tier 2 and was my go-to choice there. 
• I grabbed Superintendent at tier 3 as my first pick for more smokes and heals.
• And finally Concealment Expert just makes the most sense at tier 4.

That doesn't leave a whole lot of viable skills beyond that for Mysore to take.  Adrenaline Rush is easily the most advantageous, but after that, the pickings get pretty slim.  I eventually settled upon skills that would help Mysore play keep-away, namely Radio Location and Outnumbered. 

Camouflage

Mysore has access to Type 10 Camouflage providing the usual tier VI bonuses of:

• A 3% reduction in surface detection ranges.
• A 4% increase to the dispersion of enemy gunfire.
• A 10% reduction to post-battle service costs.
• A 50% increase to experience earned. 

Mysore's simple, uniform colour scheme is kinda nice.  She comes with the default blue, but you can unlock the tan-colour by completing the "Naval Aviation" collection.

Firepower

Main Battery:  Nine 152mm/50 guns in 3x3 turrets in an A-B-X superfiring configuration.
Secondary Battery:  Eight 102mm/45 guns in 4x2 turrets, with two turrets per side, mounted behind the rear funnel facing forward and back.

Only having one ammunition type sure simplifies this data dump.

Mysore pays dearly for her access to her consumables.  Her firepower is downright terrible, owing to the staying power of this ship.  Between her Repair Party and her Crawling Smoke Generator, Mysore has a good survivability toolkit -- better than Leander, Perth or Huanghe.  Thus, Wargaming has paired her with bad damage output, probably figuring that given she'll be around longer (on average), her numbers over time will win out.  Given that I prefer glass-cannons to cast-iron squirt-guns, you can guess why this disappoints me.

The problem here is three-fold.

1. Mysore does not have access to HE shells.
2. Mysore does not have access to torpedoes.
3. Mysore's reloads more slowly than my 2021 update schedule.

A lack of any one of these isn't damning in of itself (though it does bear investigating).  But having all three shoves Mysore into the doldrums of damage-output.  Let's look at why.

A More-Different Perth

The lack of HE shells on Mysore immediately sets her apart from Huanghe & Perth.  Like Leander, short of (somehow) managing to pepper targets with her secondary batteries, Mysore cannot start fires.  She cannot take advantage of skills like Inertial Fuse for HE Shells, Pyrotechnician or Heavy HE and SAP Shells.  Mysore is restricted to firing AP shells, slightly modified versions to those tossed out by Leander herself.  These behave like normal 152mm AP shells with the following differences:

• They have improved auto-ricochet angles.  Mysore's AP shells do not check for ricochet until they strike at an angle of 60º to the perpendicular as opposed to the nominal 45º.  The do not auto-ricochet until they strike at an angle of 75º as opposed to the nominal 60º.  Thus Mysore's AP shells are much less likely to ricochet off an angled target, making them more viable against enemies that aren't offering up their flat broadside.  Note that this does not come with increased penetration values.  These shells have the same normalization as other 152mm armed guns (8.5º) and must contend with the increased relative armour thickness the same was any other AP round.  Thus, Mysore's shells may be less likely to ricochet, they may still shatter if the sloped plate of steel has a relative thickness too great for her to punch into.  Furthermore, it is still possible to ricochet these shells by angling aggressively against incoming fire from Mysore. 
• They have improved fuse sensitivity.  Mysore's AP shells arm upon impact with thinner steel than other 152mm rounds.  Normally, a 152mm AP shells needs to strike steel 25mm thick (relative thickness due to angling counts).  Without this, the shells will not arm and you will only see overpenetrations.  For Mysore, her fuses are much more sensitive and need only 12mm to activate.  Thus penetrating hits are more likely.
• They have shortened fuse timers.  On top of their increased sensitivity, Mysore's AP shells explode more quickly when the fuse is armed.  This again reduces the chances of the shells overpenetrating.  In this case, they are more likely to blow immediately after entering a ship.  In Mysore's case, her fuse timers are a mere 0.005s -- translating into a maximum distance crossed at muzzle velocity of 4.4m.  Had she normal fuse timers, this would have translated to as much as 21.8m (though keep in mind, no shell will arrive inside a ship travelling anywhere close to muzzle-velocity; air friction and punching through steel slows them down appreciably).  The reduced fuse timer is bit of a double edged sword, however.  While it does mean that Mysore's shells are more likely to deliver penetrating hits, they cannot punch deep into a ship to strike buried citadels.  Thus against ships with fully internalized citadels or with anti-torpedo protection, it's entirely possible that Mysore is patently incapable of landing citadel hits.

Mysore's shells have a bit more punch than Leander's, grace of increased damage, shell mass and muzzle velocity, though this comes at the expense of less Krupp.  So Mysore's AP shells are good, but they're not so great that they replace HE (or SAP) shells entirely.  To this end, it's Huanghe and Perth that take the lead here when it comes to gunnery and I'm inclined to give it overall to the Pan Asian ship simply because she can make best use of both ammunition types with her high-velocity Soviet AP shells that make her a little more capable of landing citadel hits at range.  Mysore comes dead last, of course.

Mysore's not too far behind Huanghe in terms of penetration values over distance.  While she is capable of landing citadel hits against soft-skinned cruisers that have their machine spaces abutting against the exterior of the hull (such as the Omaha-class for example), her ability to do so against other cruisers largely falls away after 10km.  This isn't a problem unique to her but she feels it more with AP being her only ammunition choice.

No Country For No-Fish Cruisers

Why are torpedoes good?  Well, three reasons.

1. They can be used to aid in gunnery.  No, really.  When in doubt about the direction or velocity of a given target, switch over to your torpedo launchers and take a look at the lead indicator.  This can tell you if a bow-on ship is reversing or not.  It can also show you when a ship is slowing down, speeding up or changing direction.  This is easily the most minor bonus having torpedoes provides, but it's handy and Mysore misses out.
2. Obviously, they can be used to deal big alpha strikes.  Individual torpedoes easily deal damage equivalent to a battleship-calibre citadel hit (or greater!).  Land multiple fish at once and print those Devastating Strike medals.  Mysore obviously doesn't get this and what's more, she's largely left without an ability to rack up damage quickly save for against specific cruisers and a few aircraft carriers that have their citadels abutting against the exterior of their hulls.  It takes her time to chew through an opponent's hit point pool and she's generally incapable of dealing singular knockout blows.
3. Torpedoes are a deterrent.  You have to be stupid-confident (or just stupid) to close with an enemy ship with loaded torpedoes.  Closing with an enemy ship that has torpedoes is always a gamble and this can be enough to deter people from trying to sniff out your ship in smoke, for example.  Similarly, torpedoes can be used offensively to prevent people from camping their own smoke cover or for pushing them away from a strong-point such as an island.  Short of supporting fire, there's nothing to deter an enemy from charging Mysore when she's sitting in smoke.  Especially coming at her bow-on, they can largely mitigate any damage she can do them as they charge in.

Leander and Perth have the best torpedo armaments of the four (naturally).  Huanghe sits well behind them, not only for having triple launchers instead of the quadruples boasted by the Leander-sisters, but because she cannot single-fire her torpedoes as they can and is stuck with only a narrow-band when launching. Mysore really feels her complete lack of torpedoes, particularly when enemy ships come sniffing her out in her crawling smoke. 

Heavy Cruiser Reload

The lack of alpha-strike potential on Mysore gets even worse when you consider her poor damage output.  Her 10.7 second reload is just downright painful and greatly hurts her damage output.  You can't count on Mysore to be able to out-trade some destroyers, particularly in close-range knife fights where they might be able to land the occasional citadel hit.  Just look at this shoddy DPM:

Mysore's slow reload gives her less potential DPM than Huanghe, despite having 50% more guns than the Pan Asian cruiser!  Granted, it's easier to damage with Mysore's AP shells than it is Huanghe's.

Now down to brass-tacks.  Mysore's AP DPM is so low that some of the better HE DPM at tier VI rivals her.  HE has the benefit of being much easier to use and it stacks some tasty fires as well.  The only drawback to HE is that it's very skill-hungry in order to optimize.  And even then, for a tier VI cruiser, it doesn't optimize well.

Odds and Never-Ends-Well

Overall, Mysore does not put out damage quickly, but she does do so steadily provided she's picking the right target.  To this end, close-range fights are invariably a disaster with all but the most fragile of targets.  Instead she's best served by keeping at a distance and peppering shells annoyingly at exposed enemies.  She can use her Crawling Smoke Generator to do so for long periods (largely) uninterrupted, and really, the strength of this shouldn't understated.  With her smoke deployed, Mysore's gunnery switches over to easy-mode and she can cycle her guns with near impunity for nearly two minutes (fully buffed).

It's what comes after that's more difficult.  When her smoke is on cooldown, she's reliant on either firing from open water (bad idea) or using island cover to keep bombarding targets.  Otherwise, she'll have to go dark and redeploy.  Mysore's range is on the short side -- just 14km, so the islands she uses has to be close to the front. This same lack of reach makes firing from open water stupid-dangerous.  While she is an agile little boat, the shell flight time for incoming battleship rounds is much too short to be able to dodge effectively and her thin extremity plate and exposed citadel makes every hit hurt a lot. 

As for the rest of it?  Her traverse rate is mediocre.  Her gun fire angles are trash.  Her ballistics are kinda floaty (though admittedly better than Leander's) and her her AP penetration sucks.

Overall, Perth takes the big win here.  Perth has both ammunition types.  Perth has good torpedoes.  Perth's reload rate doesn't suck and she has eight guns.  Mysore is sadly at the bottom of the pile.  This imposes limits on how Mysore can be played.  It's too dangerous for her to be up on the front lines or to try and rush down targets because she simply cannot kill most enemies with any kind of alacrity.  While the other three cruisers are not front-line brawlers, they can manage it in a pinch.

Mysore's fire arcs are pretty terrible (most Royal Navy ships have poor fire arcs).  Her 7º/s gun rotation rate is pretty meh too.

Summary

• It's all about the AP spam.
• Her low DPM and lack of torpedoes makes her struggle to kill anything quickly.
• Play keep away and just keep spitting out shells.

VERDICT:  Pretty uncomfortable, I'm not going to lie.  She's the worst of the four.  What's worse, Mysore's gunnery isn't fun which is pretty damning for a premium.

Durability

Hit Points: 30,600
Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 16mm/10mm/19mm/19mm
Maximum Citadel Protection: 114mm
Torpedo Damage Reduction: None

Mysore is easily the best-protected of the tier VI British light-cruisers.

Objectively, Mysore is the most resilient of the four cruisers.  She has Leander's ability to heal coupled with better citadel protection than any of the other ships.  Her armour profile is overall better too. It doesn't hurt that she comes with more hit points than any of the other ships either. 

For a cruiser, for a light cruiser especially, Mysore weighs in well.  Her 114mm belt armour is very respectable at her tier.  Her citadel placement, while peeking just over the waterline, isn't so high that it's a ready flaw.  Furthermore, she doesn't have any "camel hump" shell traps that afflicts so many British cruisers (infamously damning some of the British heavies).  The stepped section of her belt leading up to the 51mm portion of her deck doesn't count as part of the machine spaces the way it does on Perth and Leander.  While admittedly her citadel is larger than her three competitors, it's hard to argue that she's more vulnerable than Perth or Leander due to their wonky citadel geometry.  Huanghe arguably has the best citadel layout but hers has the worst protection.  All four ships have an easily overmatched "hole" directly overtop of the machine spaces where any shells coming in high can easily dip into the citadel and generate big damage.

Unlike Leander, all of the premium ships conform to normal, tier VI light-cruiser armour layouts, with 16mm extremities and 19mm upper hull and deck armour.  Leander only has 13mm on her bow and 16mm on her upper-hull and deck, leaving her vulnerable to overmatching through her butt and snout by 203mm AP shells to which the premiums are thankfully immune. 

As for heals, only Leander and Mysore have them which puts them well above the others in terms of survivability.  Combine this with Mysore's Crawling Smoke Generator and Hydroacoustic Search and she is easily the most survivable of the four.  Her consumables remove many opportunities to easily pick her off with either torpedoes, aircraft or shells making her very annoying to deal with.

The elephant in the room is, of course, that heals don't amount for much if you lose all of your hit points quickly.  Mysore's horrible gun arcs means that any target she's engaging with all three turrets can damage her back and quite easily.  The nightmare scenario for this poor ship is knife fighting with any other vessel.  Even some destroyers are capable of out-trading her provided they keep angled to foil her AP rounds.  And if Mysore is trying to protect her own citadel, this disparity in damage output only increases further.  Her defence is far from perfect.  While she is a tough little ship for a light cruiser, she is still a light cruiser. Keep her to the second line.  Your best defence is to keep from being spotted in the first place.

Mysore's base hit point values are pretty modest, but the presence of her heals makes her far more resilient.  When you include how often her Exhaust Smoke Generator keeps her from being an easy target, she fast becomes one of the longest-lasting cruisers at tier VI.  Her opponents really need to prioritize bringing her down in those rare occurrences where she's exposed or she'll keep coming back.  Of the four British light-cruisers (highlighted in red) she has the most effective health to play with.

VERDICT:  Great survivability, especially for a light cruiser.  She's the best of the four here and beyond that, she's one of the best cruisers at her tier for survivability.  Very respectable.

Agility

Top Speed: 31.6 knots
Turning Radius: 610m
Rudder Shift Time:  8.6s
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 6.5º/s

When evaluating a ship's agility, there's a checklist of factors I consider.  I tend to favour a high-top speed over most other factors, especially when paired with a quick rate of turn.  But there are other things to weigh my decisions, including turning radius, rudder shift time, energy preservation and acceleration.  Mysore is weird in this regard.

• Top Speed:  Let's start off with how slow she is.  Mysore's top speed is slow for a cruiser.  She's not in the thunder-chunker, waddle-bert zone of Graf Spee, but make no mistake, she is not quick.  She is one of the slowest of the tier VI cruisers.  Unlike the slugga-butt La Galissonniere, she does not have access to an Engine Boost consumable to help pad her numbers.  Equipping the Sierra Mike signal is a very good idea to help cover this mistake.  Similarly, the captain skill Outnumbered can help, but generally speaking, if the enemies are in that close, you're in a whole lot of trouble anyway.
• Turning Radius:  Mysore has a nice, tight turning radius.  She'd be best in category if it weren't for Huanghe.  So this is great.
• Rudder Shift Time:  Mysore's rudder shift time is a bit chunky.  It's not terrible, mind you, but it's on the slow-end for a tier VI cruiser.  However, with her lack of access to Propulsion Modification 1 means that you will always have Steering Gears Modification 1 installed instead.  Granted, most other cruisers will too, so Mysore's not gaining a leg up here, but the raw value isn't as bad as it looks.
• Acceleration:  Mysore has ridiculously-good acceleration.  She reaches 30 knots in almost no time at all with a similar kind of rocket-butt acceleration Propulsion Modification 1 applies to the first get-up and go from a dead stop. This is all but identical to the same acceleration found on Royal Navy tech tree cruisers like Leander.
• Energy Preservation:   Mysore does not have any special energy preservation.  The Royal Navy tech tree ships are famous for bleeding little to no speed in a turn (they maintain upwards of 98% of their 4/4 speed setting while turning).  Mysore is decidedly normal in this regard, keeping the usual 80% of her 4/4 engine speed while turning.
• Rate of Turn:  Her lack of improved energy preservation means that her rate of turn is normal for cruiser with her speed and turning radius.  Though she is slow for a tier VI cruiser, it's not by such a large margin that her tighter turning radius doesn't end up being the deciding factor here.  Mysore's rate of turn is better than average, but far from the top competitors at her tier, behind the likes of Hangue, Perth, Leander and Trento.

Altogether, Mysore is a very responsive cruiser with good handling but a slow top speed.  She has much more in common with Huanghe than Perth or Leander in this regard.  While none of these four ships could be considered fast, Mysore is definitely the slowest of them.  On top of this, due to the improved energy retention on Perth and Leander, they can at least maintain their top speed for longer (on average) than Huanghe or Mysore.  Mysore really struggles to control engagement distances, subject to its whims rather than being able to comfortably dictate to it.  For a cruiser that really doesn't like being up-close in a brawl, this is bad news.  While she has a lot going for her, it's this lack of speed which bothers me the most.

VERDICT:  Good overall handling but she's not perfect, not with that slow top speed.

Anti-Aircraft Defence

Flak Bursts: 2 explosions for 1,120 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km.
Long Ranged (up to 5.8km):  52.5dps at 90% accuracy (47.3dps)
Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 161dps at 90% accuracy (144.9dps)

Lemme open with this graph:

These are sorted roughly by effective AA DPS using the formula [DPS x (range -1km)] to value longer-ranged defences more.  Mysore looks pretty good sorted like this.

Mysore almost has good anti-aircraft firepower.  Almost.  The catch is that it's hard to claim that any tier VI cruiser has "good" AA defences, especially when they're regularly forced to contend with tier VIII aircraft carriers.  I'm aware this is a bit of an unfair comparison; weighing the merits of a given system against ships two tiers higher.  I didn't weight Mysore's DPM against tier VIII cruisers, for example, nor her durability.  Maybe this says something towards my frustration with surface ship interactions with aircraft in general?  Be aware of the author's bias, peoples!  Mysore's numbers are 'okay'.  With all of her guns intact, she has enough DPS to knock down a plane or two, but she's not going to prevent drops, never mind provide adequate defence for ships around her.

Generally speaking, what tends to make or break whether or not these ships can deter same-tier carriers is their access to Defensive AA Fire.  And most of these ships have to choose between taking that or Hydroacoustic Search.  The latter usually wins out from a pure utility standpoint which weakens AA power as a whole in a given match.  This said, Huanghe, Perth and Mysore definitely have it easier time protecting themselves from bombers, but not because of their AA firepower. Their crawling smoke really gives them an edge in frustrating carrier drops so it would be inaccurate to label any of them as 'useless' when it comes to seeing to their own protection.  Mysore and Huanghe especially are particularly good at chewing up aircraft that make the mistake to linger over their smoke screens, but that's a rookie mistake you can't count on a CV to make. 

It's disappointing that the best AA feature of Mysore comes from her smoke.  But it is what it is.

VERDICT:  Mysore and Huanghe are definitely the better of the four (with Huanghe being way at the top) but tier VI AA firepower just isn't good on the whole.

Vision Control

Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 10.98km/9.59km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 6.44km/5.8km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 5.04km
Maximum Firing Range:  14km

What Mysore does well (and what all of the tier VI British-designed cruisers do well) is her vision control.  This is a stealthy ship that easily gets her surface detection down below a sub-10km range (which is great).  On top of that, she has Hydroacoustic Search which is always a plus for sniffing out fish and the occasional ship hiding in smoke.  But moreover, it's her access to her Crawling Smoke Generator which is the feather in the cap of this ship's design.

Of the different varieties of Smoke Generators in the game presently, Crawling Smoke Generators are one of the more powerful for individual ship play (they have less value in team-based, competitive modes).  The moving nature of the rolling smoke screen allows Mysore to take it with her.  It helps frustrate torpedo salvos intent on combing her out of her cover and similarly, it provides some protection against counter-battery fire from people trying to blind-snipe Mysore from smoke.  Finally, it's a very effective from of AA defence.  While said smoke can be used offensively (as Haida has want to do), Mysore does not belong up on the front lines due to her poor damage output and alpha-strike potential. 

This all combines to make it a lot more difficult to take out one of these ships using Crawling Smoke.  Perth, for example, is notorious for her longevity because of this.  Mysore inherits this but couples it with her improved durability and heals, giving her even greater staying power.  Short of charging this ship in point-blank encounters or scoring a lucky broadside's worth of battleship-calibre citadel hits, Mysore is a difficult ship to put down quickly.  If she had a little more range, she'd be downright overpowered even with her horrible DPM, simply because it's such a nuisance to put her down permanently. 

Her points of vulnerability here come from the usual suspects:

• Surveillance Radar - There's not much you can do about this short of doing your best to keep out of range.  Generally speaking, you should be far enough back that only Soviet Surveillance Radar should pose any kind of threat.  While you may be picked up from other sources, you can usually count on there being an island being in the way.  However, in those circumstances where Mysore is caught flat footed by a radar-flash, she gets wrecked in a hurry.  Keep an eye on those team rosters and watch your minimap.
• Aircraft - There's not much you can do here.  If you're in danger, you can try hiding in smoke.
• Destroyers - These present a much greater threat to Mysore than they do to many other cruisers.  This is largely owing to her low-damage output which is easily foiled by aggressive angling on the part of the destroyer in question.  While having some friends nearby should (SHOULD!) discourage a lolibote from sniffing around, if Mysore is caught alone, she's in for a lot of trouble -- especially if the destroyer knows what they're doing. 
• Smoke on Cool Down - And here is perhaps the greatest challenge to playing Mysore well.  With as much as two and a half minutes in between smoke charges, figuring out how to engage the enemy without getting blown up is just something you have to figure out for yourself.  Take a page from the old light-cruiser playbook; make an island your waifu and rain fire as your ballistic arcs and range will allow until your smoke allows you to get a little more adventurous.

The temptation with Mysore is to be overly reliant upon her smoke.  Want to shoot someone?  Blow smoke!  Aircraft overhead?  Blow smoke!  Get spotted by some under-aged boat?  Blow smoke!  Battleships looking at you funny?  Blow smoke!  Sometimes it's definitely the right call, but using her smoke preemptively will greatly reduce her efficacy.  This isn't easy to get right and it's dirt-simple to get wrong.

VERDICT:  Excellent vision control, easily on par with Huanghe and Perth.

Final Evaluation

Mysore feels like a British light cruiser that's been sprinkled with British heavy cruiser flavour crystals.  She espouses the same game play from that whole line.  To refresh people's memories (or to educated those who have wisely kept away from them), the British heavy cruisers have poor damage output but improved survivability.  The premise is simple enough; these ships survive longer, ergo they will have similar damage output to more fragile, harder-hitting cruisers -- at least on average.  The combination of consumables on Mysore makes her VERY likely to survive a long time (provided she's played reasonably) so her damage output really sucks butt.  Is she BALANS™?  Probably.  I suspect Mysore's numbers will end up being pretty decent once they've had some time out in the wilds for a few months.  She can be really slippery so there's plenty of opportunity to make even her modest guns put out some hurt.   Is she fun?  Not in my opinion.

Mysore's game play is excessively passive.  What's worse, she only deals one particular type of damage -- AP chip-damage, specifically.  She doesn't have HE.  She's not farming fires.  There are no big alpha strikes from fish.  And she's not even likely to be landing citadel hits either.  You're just going to see penetrations, saturated penetrations and the rare over-penetration with Mysore.  If you play in PVE modes, MAYBE you'll see a few citadel hits at point blank ranges.  Her need to play constant keep-away in PVP modes really limits the variety of her game play.  There's still enough to do, I suppose, in between managing her smokes, reset-timer and making best use of islands.  But that lack of variety (and quality) in damage output really bugs me.

The bad news for Mysore is that Perth is a thing that exists.  These two ships directly compete with one another and Perth is, hands down, the more interesting ship to play.  I would have much preferred to see Wargaming shove Mysore in at tier VII and maybe stuck their hand into their bag of gimmicks to make her more interesting.  Honestly, if they had just given her a British dry-dock heal and/or massaged her reload time to 8 seconds, she would have made a great tier VII cruiser.  I don't understand why she ended up at tier VI.  It doesn't make sense to me, business wise.  But I can't see the full picture there.

As it is?  Mysore's a hard pass for me.  Perth's the better bote.  It's not that I think Mysore is awful, perse.  She's just not fun.  Heck, I'd rather play Huanghe and I didn't enjoy her the first time around.  I think that says a lot right there.