Premium Ship Review: Odin

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Odin, the tier VIII German battleship kindly provided to me by Wargaming.  To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this article are accurate as of patch 0.9.4.1.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Quick Summary:  Tirpitz-lite.  Same great Tirpitz flavour with half the fat.  I mean efficiency.

Wait, that doesn't work.  I really should mention the guns or agility.  How about:  Imagine if Bismarck and Graf Spee loved each other VERY much and....

Probably best I stop right there.

Uh, okay, here we go:  Imagine a tier VIII Scharnhorst that went to the gym and got super cut.  She ends up with slightly improved punch but she tore a few muscles dead-lifting so she can't carry anymore.

Bam.  Nailed it.

PROS

• Excellent citadel protection with turtle-back armour.
• Good armour layout -- especially for shrugging off HE shells, including a thick deck, ice-breaker extended waterline belt and strong upper hull protection.
• Heavy secondary battery with very long range, good rate of fire and excellent penetration values.
• Decent agility, especially for a high-tier German battleship.
• Good concealment for a tier VIII battleship (especially for a German one).
• She combines Bismarck's Hydroacoustic Search with Tirpitz's torpedoes.

CONS

• Tiny hit point pool for a tier VIII battleship (which also reduces the amount she can heal).
• Poor anti torpedo protection with only a 22% damage reduction.
• Main battery guns are only 305mm in caliber causing all sorts of problems from poor HE performance, poor AP penetration and limited overmatching ability.
• Secondaries have wonky fire angles.
• Forward fire angles on her torpedoes are very limited.

How to Acquire Her

Before I get into the review proper, it's worth mentioning how you're (supposed to be) able to get this ship.  Akin to Puerto Rico, Odin is part of a dockyard event.  You complete missions to increase the rate of production of the ship itself with the option of spending money to accelerate construction.  Unlike Puerto Rico which could technically (and rarely in practice) be earned for free, Odin has specifically been declared as requiring at least some expenditure of cash (or doubloons) to complete her -- something to the tune of a minimum of 3,500 doubloons.

Now I mention all of this because the event hasn't gone live yet and, let's be honest, anything can and will change before the event launches.  Don't come crying to me if you get burned from buying the pre-hype wholesale.  I'm waiting to see how the event finally shapes up, what bugs are present and what the functional asking price for this ship is.

Fairly warned be ye, says I.

Overview

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

Odin has a small hit point pool and crappy guns.  You're putting that on a ship that ostensibly is made to brawl and handing that to new players?  That's a recipe for disaster -- or at the very least, low damage totals if they manage to keep themselves alive or a quick trip back to port if they push too early.  This isn't a ship for new players.

For veterans, however, there's all sorts of fun shenanigans that can be accomplished with Odin, aside from the obvious brawling.  Good ammunition choices, proper commander specialization, use and abuse of her agility and concealment and map knowledge will all go along way to improving your gains with this ship.  The question is, though, is it worth the effort?

Options

Consumables

Her Damage Control Party is standard for a German battleship with unlimited charges, a 15s active period and an 80s reset timer.

Her Repair Party is also normal.  This heals back up to 14% of her health over 28s and starts with four charges.  This has an 80s reset timer as well.  Convenient!

In her third slot you have a choice between a Spotting Aircraft and a Catapult Fighter.  The former starts with four charges, lasts 100s with a 240s reset timer.  This increases her range by 20% (up to 22.9km) for it's duration.  The latter has three charges to start, lasts 60s and has a 90s reset timer.  She launches three fighters at a time.

And finally, Odin borrows Bismarck's Hydroacoustic Search.  This has three charges to start with a 100s active period.  It detects torpedoes at 3.5km and ships at 5km.  It has a 120s reset timer.

Upgrades

There's not a whole lot of variety here.  Optimally, you're going to want to build for fire mitigation and improved main battery performance.  To this end, take Damage Control Systems 1 & 2 and Aiming System Modification 1.

But nuts to that.  That's not fun.  What you should do is take Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1, Secondary Battery Modification 1 and Steering Gears Modification 1 to soup-up Odin's performance for those brawls you want to get into.  Optimal?  No.  Awesome?  Hells yeah.

I said "soup-up Odin's performance", Potage.

Captain Skills

So, there's a good argument to be made that Odin, like other German battleships, should simply default to the Standard Battleship Build™.  That is to say:

• Priority Target at tier 1.  You can swap this for Incoming Fire Alert, Expert Loader or Preventative Maintenance based on your preferences.
• Take Adrenaline Rush at tier 2.
• Next up comes Basics of Survivability at tier 3 to help mitigate fire damage.
• And cap it off with Fire Prevention at tier 4.  This will maximize your fire resistance potential.

After that, take what you will.  Skills such as Concealment Expert, Superintendent, Expert Marksman and High Alert all being suitably hyped to round out your 19pts.

Of course, this is loser-quitter talk and what you really should be doing is building for awesomeness:

Both Superintendent and Basic Fire Training are equally awesome. I prefer the former, myself, and this is the build I've been using for Odin. Superintendent gives her a bit more survivability.

Camouflage

Odin has three available camouflage patterns, Type 10 Odin,  Nordic and War Paint.  They have identical statistics making them just cosmetic swaps between them.  They provide the usual tier VIII bonuses:

• -3% surface detection
• +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells.
• -10% to post-battle service costs.
• +50% experience earned.

I like Odin's base camo. When are the Germans going to get an alternate palette swap?

]
I'm not a fan of Odin's War Paint camo.

But I love her Nordic camo.

Firepower

Main Battery:  Nine 305mm guns in 3x3 turrets in an A-B-X superfiring configuration.
Secondary Battery:  Six 150mm guns in 2x3 turrets mounted superfiring over B and X turrets and twelve 128mm guns in 6x2 turrets with three mounted per side.
Torpedoes:  Eight tubes in 2×4launchers in wing mounted just behind X-turret on the rear deck.

The Woes of the Three Oh Fives

Let's not mince words.  Odin's main battery firepower is trash-tier.  This isn't because her guns are "only" 305mm.  If 305mm guns were automatically bad, we wouldn't be making the fuss that we do over ships like König Albert, Alaska and Stalingrad.  They can be good, gun caliber be damned.  It's all a matter of their individual performance parameters at a given tier.  In Odin's case, these parameters suck moose-balls.  Odin's main battery faults are numerous and I'll go over each.

Hits on Target

Odin dispersion test while equipped with ASM1. 180 AP shells fired at a Fuso-bot that had no camouflage. Shots were coming in from right to left (Fuso is bow-tanking). Owing to her higher shell velocity, Odin tends to overshoot and undershoot targets more often than American or British battleships despite using the same dispersion formula.  This is bog-standard for German battleships.

The first hurdle you'll experience with Odin's gunnery is getting enough hits.  Now her dispersion isn't terrible -- for a tier VIII battleship it's not only normal, it's fairly decent with her 2.0 sigma value.  However, a lack of any improvements to dispersion when stacked with the rest of Odin's woes means that you're not landing the number of hits needed to compensate for the other drawbacks.  I could have just as easily griped about her rate of fire for not being better instead.  Throughout most of her testing, she reload in 20 seconds instead of the current 23s which helped her put more shells on target through volume of fire (increasing from 23.5 rounds per minute to 27).  Either one of these could have been massaged.

The simple fact of the matter is that Odin doesn't generate the number of hits needed to be competitive with other tier VIII battleships once all of the other gunnery parameters are considered.

AP Penetration & Overmatch

Approximate penetration values of the high-tier German battleships. Odin doesn't have the punch necessary with AP rounds to contest battleship belt armour at ranges greater than 12km or so once you account for even slight angling.  Belt armour of high-tier battleships easily flirts in excess of 300mm.

Alright, so why does she need to get more hits?

Well, her low AP penetration is perhaps the biggest problem with Odin's guns.  She has similar problems to Scharnhorst in this regard but as a tier VIII ship, there are even fewer overmatch targets.

As a German battleship, we can forgive her poor HE shell performance -- the expectation is that her AP shells should compensate for any drawbacks there.  In some regards they do -- Odin's AP shell damage is more than sufficient.  Even with her 305mm guns caliber and the woes with over matching targets, her AP shells deal almost as much damage as French 340mm weapons.   Her overmatch caps out at 21mm -- largely limiting her to destroyers and tier VI and VII cruisers (and the occasional super-light cruiser across all tiers).

You can forget about comfortably engaging battleships.  She struggles to best battleship belt armour within nominal engagement ranges.  It's only in brawls -- where her secondaries are already engaging targets -- when you can expect her to punch through belts without frequent shatters.

There are ways around this, of course.  You can aim higher and go for upper hull and superstructure hits.  I do stress that with Odin's dispersion issues mentioned above that the sheer number of hits made won't equate to the same level of damage as her contemporaries.  What's more, she still sees a lot of overpenetrations.  She still has 0.033s fuse timers and she still needs 51mm of armour to fuse.  So those soft sections of enemy battleships won't necessarily arm or slow down the shells enough to give meatier numbers. This all contributes to further reduces her damage output.  It's hard to keep up when you can't land reliable penetrating AP shell hits.

As you might expect for a faster-reloading battleship-caliber gun, Odin's AP DPM is decent despite the smaller gun caliber. I do stress here that this is potential damage -- it in no-way represents the actual gun performance, discounting factors such as dispersion, range, firing angles, ballistics, penetration, etc. These are just the theoretical maximums.

HE Performance

There's a lot of changes coming to the tier VIII meta shortly, though it remains to be seen how these five test ships will finalize. On topic: Odin's HE DPM is kinda terrible. I badmouthed Roma's HE DPM (though granted, that was coupled with her shoddy dispersion) and Odin's damage output is worse than that.

No one should be surprised that Odin's HE performance is garbage.  It's only her fast reload that creates any semblance of "close to acceptable" damage output and fire setting.  Given her poor AP penetration and lack of overmatch, Odin has to reach for her HE shells in spite of this lackluster showing.  It's not something you want to spam, mind you -- use them as often as you need to but no more than that.  Stacking fires or hoping for big tallies of damage this way just won't happen with some severe hand-holding from RNGeebus (praise be!).

It's the disparity between her HE and AP performance which makes her HE shells so unnattractive.  An AP overpenetration is worth more than an HE saturated hit -- almost to a 2:1 ratio.  Compare:

This isn't a problem unique to Odin.  The hope is that fires will off-set the damage disparity between the two shells.  However, this depends not only upon the chance to actually set a blaze, but also the target that it is set upon.  Lighting a destroyer or carrier on fire offers little in the way of damage return where as it's disproportionately more valuable when used against a battleship or large cruiser.  Shell choice thus matters greatly and Odin should, whenever possible, lean upon her AP shells instead of her HE.  Expert Loader is a very worthwhile skill for this reason -- you want to have the correct ammunition at the ready when opportunity presents itself.

I think you'd be hard pressed to call any of the tier VIII battleships "good" fire starters. Nelson and King George V at tier VII really set the bar and Monarch (despite being Famous & Historical) falls short. Once you account for fire resistance and battleship accuracy, these values drop down to about 1/4 to 1/6th of their theoretical averages.  Of course, RNGeebus being RNGeebus, lucky volleys can and will change everything (praise be!).  All things said, Odin's fire setting isn't terrible but it's certainly not a strength.

Overall Feels

It's hard to have anything nice to say about these guns.  The best I can manage is that some of their parameters are "okay", but there's nothing that stands out as fun or interesting.  I honestly prefer Scharnhorst's 283mm guns to Odin's 305mm -- at least Scharnhorst's guns have fast traverse rates and good forward fire angles.   Scharnhorst's matchmaking also means she can sometimes see super-squishy tier Vs.

Let's talk about Odin's HE for a moment as it sort of encapsulates the issue here -- the improved penetration she gets might have been a plus had she the damage to back it up.  But without it, her high HE penetration is just window dressing on more mediocrity.  Like her improved rate of fire or meatier-than-they-should-be 305mm AP shells, it just doesn't matter.

No other flaw of this ship is as damning as that of her main battery armament.  This is where your decision on whether or not to invest in this ship should be made.  Stacking reliable damage from Odin's main battery guns is frustrating, especially in the first half of battles where you're trading fire at long range.  Her AP shells simply aren't good enough for this and her HE shells only stack damage slowly.

Because of these deficiencies, players may be baited into pushing too soon in an effort to make use of her secondaries and torpedoes.  This exacerbates the problem of her small hit point pool while simultaneously throwing away her advantages in concealment.  In higher tiered games, this will get Odin sunk in a hurry -- players have to accept what little returns their guns can achieve, focusing primarily on softer targets until they can safely begin closing the distance and unleashing her other weapon systems.

Odin's forward fire angles on her guns are good and crap on her torpedoes. Her rearward fire angles on her guns are crap and great on her torpedoes.

Torpeedus

Odin has torpedoes.

Evaluating their effectiveness based on early play-testing is difficult.  They're easily more potent during this stage as not everyone knows Odin is packing fish.  So setting aside the successes during my games (including torpedoing a Kagero, lul), we can look at them more critically by comparing them to those found on Tirpitz.  Still, lemme just humble-brag and say that I got to torpedo a LOT of people with Odin during play-testing and it never got old.

There are two significant differences between the two ships when it come to their torpedo armaments:

1. Their fire angles.
2. Their survivability.

Odin's fire angles on her launchers are pretty terrible.   They're limited to launching at 39º off her bow.  Rearwards, she's better, needing only a 22º angle off her stern to fire that way (which is amazing), giving her a total launching arc of 119º per side.  Tirpitz, by contrast can launch 34º off her bow which is better (not great, but better) but she pays for it with more limited reward launch angles of 33º.  This gives the OG German premium a 113º launch window.  If you think I'm going to therefore justify Odin's launch angles as "better", you're mistaken.  I would much rather have Tirpitiz's launchers based on their firing angles.  These ships tend to use their torpedoes offensively rather than defensively, so forward firing angles matter a Hell of a lot more than rearward.  So points to Tirpitz here.   Odin has to swing herself out more than Tirpitz to squirt off a load which causes all sorts of problems from making her more likely to take damage on the return to simply (and embarrassingly) beaching herself.

However, where Odin does get better marks is the survivability of her fish.  Individually, the launchers on the two ships are just as squishy, it's merely their position upon the ship that counts here.  Having Odin's torpedoes mounted on her stern puts them largely out of harm's way -- they're more likely to be available than Tirpitz's and much less likely to be sniped off.

Odin's torpedoes are nice to have, short ranged though they are.  They make her an absolute terror in a close-range brawl.  Getting that close to her in a battleship is all but a death sentence.  Her fish are more awkward to use than Tirpitz's but they're much less likely to get broken beforehand.  There's few things as heartbreaking for one of these torpedo-armed battleships than having their torpedo-mounts destroyed when they finally (FINALLY!) get a chance to use them.

Secondaries

The final piece of Odin's firepower puzzle is her secondaries.

I wanted to simply write praise for Odin's secondaries, boasting about their increased range, rate of fire and penetration over Tirpitz's guns, concluded that they were therefor better and been done with it.  I was then told by my peers, in so many words, that this would be disingenuous and I should take the time to properly compare Odin's secondaries to the other AI-driven pew-pews.

Tirpitz has words regarding my early praise of Odin's secondaries.

So let's get into it.  The first thing to consider is their raw damage potential.  At tier VIII there are six ships which have "good" (or merely goodish) secondaries -- Massachusetts, Bismarck, Tirpitz, Gascogne, Odin and  Graf Zeppelin.  I'm leaving out Amagi and her clones because, despite having improved accuracy, they are short ranged as all get out and not practical.

All of these secondaries put out comparable damage when firing broadside, though the carrier is the hilarious front-runner.  However, a more nuanced look changes things when you consider a practical application:

There's a few things to keep in mind here. First, Graf Zeppelin and Massachusetts have (much) improved accuracy with their secondaries -- they generate far more hits than their competitors. Second, Inertial Fuse for HE Shell may be necessary to enable these ships to fully maximize their direct damage potential against select targets.  Odin doesn't care about that last part, though, so points for that.

Odin's secondary firing angles are a bit of a surprise. With all of her 128mm guns mounted flush on the deck, they have limited firing arcs. Her 150mm guns are interrupted by the ship's superstructure and are similarly limited.

There's a 20º dead-zone on either side of Odin's prow where only her superfiring 150mm secondary can engage targets. Once you swing out, the majority of her secondaries will begin firing. She is not as well setup for kiting, though.  Her butt is a mess though (ew!), with staggered fire angles.

Mounted fore and aft, Odin's superfiring 150mm secondaries have limited fire arcs. There's only a small window where all five of her secondary mounts can be brought to bear on a target, and that obviously opens her up to return-fire.  It's best just to stick with four on the attack and two when kiting.

Odin's secondary fire arcs aren't comfortable.  I don't know how much potential damage I've wasted merely because I was sitting bow-in with only my superfiring 150mm gun spitting off the occasional shot.  Odin has to angle out at least 20º off her snoot to get a reasonable volume of fire going.  This isn't much, but this 40º not-quite-deadzone forward is much more sizeable when you account for manoeuvre, navigation and dodging.  This was especially frustrating when dealing with ships in smoke -- having to turn away to begin blasting them with secondaries.  All of the other ships fire off with more than a single turret's worth with just a couple of degrees worth of allowance.

Still, Odin does have more range than her contemporaries, right?  It's not much, really.  It's 200m base and 300m when the two ships are fully upgraded with all of the trimmings.  Still, it's enough that Odin can almost (ALMOST!) stealth-fire her secondaries in open water, with her surface detection getting as low as 12.02km and her secondaries reaching out to 11.642km.  That would have been hilarious had Wargaming accidentally let that happen.  Oh well.

This is the worst dispersion I got with Odin's secondaries. Most kills occurred within 120 rounds fired (about 40s), so I thought this one would make a more obvious indicator of the total area her shots could stray within.

German secondaries are the current runner-up in the secondary effectiveness race.  American secondaries, specifically those found on Massachusetts and her descendents, are the current gold-standard.  That Massachusetts accomplishes this with only 21mm worth of penetration is testament to just how accurate those weapons are compared to (nearly) everyone else.  Against soft skinned targets, it will take Odin twice as long to do comparable damage to Massachusetts.  That's not an approximate either.  I ran dozens of tests between them and Massachusetts lewds lolibotes two times faster than Odin. 

The marked difference between them and where Odin claws back a little deserved renown, is with her penetration.  Even without Inertial Fuse for HE Shells, she's capable of damaging tier VIII+ battleship hulls with her secondaries without having to wait for RNGeebus to descend from on high (praise be) and gift her with a fire or to disperse one of her shells into their superstructure.  This extends also to high-tier cruisers which Massachusetts can only directly damage if she spends the skill points on IFHE.

The obvious question is:  Are Odin's secondaries better than Massachusetts?  Well, no.  And that's the wrong question.  Are they good enough is more apt.  And yes, yes they are.  All things told, I rate them better than Tirpitz's secondaries despite being more fussy to use.  That extra penetration is just lovely and Tirpitz's 105mm, which form the bulk of her damage output, don't cut the mustard.  Odin's secondaries are a reliable workhorse and definitely worth investing into to improve.  This goes double given the woes of her main battery firepower.

Summary

Her secondaries are good.  Her torpedoes are nice to have, but they're too short ranged to make regular use out of outside of PVE game modes (and one-on-one Ranked Battles, lul).  But at the core, her main battery firepower is a huge let down and it severely compromises all other aspects of this ship.

• Her secondaries are almost great but they lack accuracy and fire arcs to contend with the current heavyweight champion.
• Her torpedoes are awkward to use but at least they don't break as often as Tirpitz's.
• Her main battery firepower is garbage.  You can make it work, but you're not going to like it.

VERDICT:  Your butt belongs to RNGeebus.  Praise be, you filthy sinners.

Defense

Hit Points: 52,800
Min Bow & Deck Armour: 32mm extremities, 45mm upper hull & 50mm deck
Maximum Citadel Protection: 320mm belt + 105mm to 120mm turtleback + 45mm citadel wall.
Torpedo Damage Reduction: 22%

There's no getting around it: Odin's base hit point pool sucks when compared to the other tier VIII battleships. However, her theoretical effective health isn't that much lower than Lenin's -- a ship which is considered Tonka-tough™.  Apparently there's more to battleship survivability than base hit point totals including such factors as armour, citadel protection, favoured engagement ranges and many more elements besides.  Of course, dwelling upon the esoteric doesn't make for a very good sound bite, now does it?

Hit Points

We may as well start with the poop-storm that is her hit point total.  Odin has less than 60,000 hit points.  She has a lot less, in fact.  She sits at 52,800hp.  Let's put some averages up on the board, ignoring reskinned clones:

• Tier VIII Battleships (excluding Odin):  66,400hp
• Tier VII Battleships: 60,200hp
• Tier VI Battleships:  53,800hp  (aww, bae-bote's average! ♥)
• Tier V Battleships:  46,300hp

Odin has the hit point totals of a tier VI battleship -- and slightly lower than average for a tier VI battleship at that.  Oof.  Yes, this is bad.  No, it's not the end of the world.  There's more to ship survivability than just their hit points after all, though let me be clear, this does put her at a marked disadvantage.

A lack of hit points has a couple of trickle-down effects.

• Her Repair Party's efficiency is tied to her base hit point total -- 14% of her health healed per charge up to a maximum of 16.8% with a flag.
• Fires and Flooding are also tied to her base hit point total, with the former doing 18% unmitigated and the latter doing 20% unmitigated). The damage done here can be healed back 100% with sufficient charges of her Repair Party.
• However, the flat damage done by bombs and shells hurts her more than higher-hit point total battleships. 10,000 HE damage done to Odin hurts more than 10,000 HE damage done to Nagato (18.9% of her health versus 15.4% for Nagato).

Simply put, fires hurt all battleships equally but being shot does not -- the latter hurts lower health ships more.  Thankfully, Odin is pretty well setup to resist shell damage in the first place.

Armour & Citadel Protection

A very German armour layout.

Odin's protection scheme is analogous to (but distinct from) that of the Bismarck-class.  This means ice-breaker bows, an extended waterline belt that covers her stern as well, thick upper hull protection and a reinforced deck amidships.  Short of her icebreaker bow extending further up, this is about as good as you could ask for in terms tier VIII battleship protection.  Her 45mm and 50mm hull sections along with her extended belt will foil many HE shells (pretty much anything that's not a German or British heavy cruiser or throwing battleship-caliber HE).  This improved HE protection does make her more vulnerable to AP penetrating hits if they catch her broadside, so bear that in mind.

When you look at her citadel defense, it's S-class -- as German as you can get.

If you listen closely, you can hear the AP bombs drooling.

Compiled from GameModels3D.com. This highlights Odin's turtleback and the two different armour values present. She has 120mm over her forward and rear magazines and 105mm over her machine spaces.  This belt of steeply angled armour keeps her largely immune to AP shell citadel hits except from high-penetration shots at very (VERY) long ranges.

Also from gamemodels3d.com.  Odin has a "hidden" 60mm deck-plate linking the two sides of her icebreaker on both her bow and stern. Even if Yamato, Musashi or Shikishima overmatches her 32mm upper-extremities from range, this plate will prevent the shell from plunging into the 200mm transverse bulkhead of Odin's citadel.  Bismarck and Tirpitz both lack this, having only a smaller (and easily overmatched) 20mm plate protecting this area.  This isn't a game-changing bonus, but it's nice to have.

Mitigation

Odin's low hit point total eclipses her otherwise great survivability traits.  These include her decent AA power, better-than-average agility and better than average concealment.  All of these combined create a ship that honestly has a lot of tanking potential.  Still, I shouldn't sugar coat it -- as well equipped as Odin is to control the engagement and shrug off attacks, her low hit point total is always going to be something you have to keep in mind.

Exercising her mitigation tools is the best bet you have to giving Odin some carry potential.  Use her Hydroacoustic Search to lower the amount of torpedo damage you take per game.  Abuse her good concealment to go dark until there are juicier targets to shoot at.   Invest in skills and signals to add efficiency to your consumables.  And most of all, keep to the second line until it's time to push.

It's a lot of work to keep Odin hale and whole.  This is probably off-putting for a lot of people but I find it worth while and accessible.  Keeping her healthy for the mid-to-late game allows her to pull off all sorts of shenanigans where her protection scheme and mitigation tools really allow her to flex.  In the end, she is still a German battleship -- tough as old boots and built to brawl with the best of them.  You just have to live long enough to get to that stage where the opportunities are more likely.

I am convinced that her hit points are a bit of a red herring when it comes to the flaws of this ship.  With a bit of know-how, the woes of her low hit point total can be easily mitigated.   You can't say that about the performance of her 305mm guns, however, which are the real source of woe with this ship.

The greatest criminal mastermind of our time.

VERDICT:  Solid armour, nigh-impervious citadel protection (outside of AP bombs) and good damage mitigation but she's still the Viribus Unitis of tier VIII.

Agility

Top Speed: 30 knots
Turning Radius:  790m
Rudder Shift Time: 14.1 seconds
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn:  4.4º/s

"It's not terrible."    - Mouse, June 2020.

Odin has better-than-average agility for a tier VIII battleship. However, she's no where close to being a top contender, lacking the straight-line speed (Richelieu, Gascogne), turning radius (So-Daks), rate of turn (Azur Lane's Littorio) or rudder shift time (Vanguard). She's just average or slightly better than average in a few key areas without being horrible where she's found lacking.  It's worth mentioning that AL Littorio and Champagne are still works in progress and subject to change.

VERDICT:  It's not terrible.

Anti-Aircraft Defense

Flak Bursts: 5 explosions for 1,775 damage per blast at 3.5km to 6km.
Long Ranged (up to 6.0km):   88dps at 75% accuracy
Medium Ranged (up to 4.0km):  333dps at 75% accuracy
Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 109dps at 70% accuracy

Screw it. I was going to make a pretty AA graphic but you can have my preliminary notes instead. I had a wth moment and ended up spending a couple of hours chasing down leads. APPARENTLY the Japanese Type 96 25mm AA gun is the most accurate mount out of any battleship AA gun. Look, I'm not the most savvy historionatrix -- scarcely better than the History Channel -- but even I know this is a facepalm.  Also, Champagne and Borodino are still works in progress and subject to change.

I'm not going to waste too much time here.  Take a Catapult Fighter instead of a Spotting Aircraft consumable.  If you've upgraded your secondaries, you'll have a bit more bite to your AA guns which should be enough to make a tier VI carrier cry and mildly annoy a tier VIII carrier enough to make them alternate aircraft types they hammer you with to mitigate losses.  But don't kid yourself into thinking that this provides anywhere close to "good" AA firepower.  She has marginally better defense than Bismarck but she still sits well behind ships like the So-Daks, North Carolina and Kii.

VERDICT: 

Refrigerator

Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 15.3km / 12.02km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 9.86km/7.99km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 11.9km
Main Battery Firing Range:  19.09km / 22.87km with Spotting Aircraft active
Hydroacoustic Search Ranges:  3.5km torpedoes, 5km ship detection.

I'm about to heap a whole lot of cautionary praise on Odin's surface detection.  Lemme state this fact before I get started:  Odin's concealment is nothing special for a battleship; it's simply better than expected.  High-tier German battleships are thunder-chunkers with choo-choo thighs.  Odin isn't.  This opens up the door to actually weaponizing her concealment as some other battleships can and German battleships typically can't.  Clear?  Cool.

Vision control is, in my opinion, the ship's saving grace.    Like Roma before her, having good concealment prevents Odin from being an unmitigated disaster of a ship (boy, has my opinion of that ship evolved over time).  In particular, it softens the blow of Odin's smaller hit point pool, adding a bit of much needed survivability that she might otherwise lack.  Playing up to this concealment advantage will keep this ship alive -- Odin belongs on the second line, playing more like a large cruiser than a true battleship, at least until the end game when she can finally choose to spend her hit points where it will actually matter -- in brawls and securing objectives.

Of course, Odin's concealment advantages are easily undone.  All it takes is a flanking destroyer or a determined aircraft carrier to undermine her stealth, lighting her up for the enemy team.  At least in Randoms you can count on not being the first ship targeted if you're in the second line -- PUBies tend to shoot at whatever is closest rather than what's optimal, so again, I stress -- keep her in the second line, even if her damage output is going to be garbage for a while.

Odin's vision control extends beyond playing peek-a-boo whenever she fires her guns from range.  Having access to a Hydroacoustic Search is an underrated boon.  It is primarily defensive, ostensibly keeping her safe from torpedo hits while it's active.  However, I find it much more rewarding to use it offensively to sniff out ships behind cover even if opportunities to do so prove much more rare.  This consumable does provide a welcome bit of supporting confidence to aggressively push when the time is right.

Finally, like Roma before her, Odin is better equipped to flank and steal shots from an unseen quarter than some other battleships.  On my wish list, including a kilometer less surface detection, would be a bit more speed to better take advantage of this ability, but it's good enough.  Odin can make good use of islands on top of sneaking through open water to set up ambushes.  Unlike her Italian counterpart, she's generally not doing it to put main-battery firepower pressure on the enemy, but rather to safely close and begin using her fish and secondaries.

I honestly wish there was more to get excited over about this aspect of Odin.  It's a panacea to her durability woes, but a single aircraft carrier will put a fly in that ointment.

VERDICT:  It's sad when arguably the best thing about the ship is a mediocre showing like this that band-aids other problems.

Final Evaluation

Odin or Tirpitz?

I think that's the big question out there.  If you have Tirpitz, why would you want Odin?  If you don't have either, which one should you get if you had to choose between the two?

Muh History aside, I prefer Odin but I don't think she's better.  I admit some of this affection towards Odin is owing to her being new and my rather enjoyable bouts of play-testing.  It was a challenge to play Odin well -- to preserve her hit points and then pounce upon the unsuspecting.  This probably explains the success I had with Odin.  She's so new that the population at large isn't aware of her torpedoes yet.  Once they become common knowledge, players will learn to stay away as vehemently as they do from a charging Tirpitz.  The shine will come off Odin's star soon enough leaving us with two very similar ships.

Is Odin optimal?  Hells no.  Is Odin better than Tirpitz?  Situationally yes.  Situationally no.

Tirpitz has better firepower, hands down.  The overmatch of her 380mm guns is great.  Tirpitz is arguably a better top-tier bully too where the deficiencies of her 105mm secondary penetration doesn't matter as much and she can make much more use of her overmatching ability.

Odin is no slouch, she just does things a little differently -- playing hit and fade until it's time to stove someone's face in.  Despite the deficit in hit points, Odin feels more survivable to me as a veteran player.  I don't have to be a damage sponge.

The catch, of course, is that her main battery guns suck.  Dealing reliable damage outside of a brawl is difficult.  And there will be matches where you don't get a chance to wade in and that will show in your results.

Frustrations aside, for those who love brawling, it's those matches where you do finally get to sneak up and wade in, where you do get to put torpedoes up someone's nose or rip someone's citadel out at point blank range which makes all of the previous frustrations moot.  Bonus points if you use Odin's concealment to set it up.  As I mentioned, those games came frequently during play-testing and that's why I enjoyed this ship as much as I did.   Was it because Odin is so sneaky or was it simply because people were ignorant of what Odin can do?  I think it's both, to be honest.  While I do imagine those opportunities will wane somewhat as people get wiser, those opportunities are so worth it.

Overall, I think Tirpitz is more consistent, but there's room for Odin in my port.

Conclusion

Not bad -- a week's turn around time from when Odin's finalization was announced to getting this one out the door.  I put a lot of extra work into this one and I hope the quality shows.  Thank you to my Patrons on Patreon for their continued support and making these articles possible! ♥



[LittleWhiteMouse]

I never see this ship played anymore except during anniversary / snowflake events.

[Wolfswetpaws]

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 minute ago, LittleWhiteMouse said:

I never see this ship played anymore except during anniversary / snowflake events.

I still play my Odin.
Either according to mission task criteria or as all my ships take-turns while earning XP or credits or whatever WOWs requires for task criteria fulfillment.

[TimurGlazkov]

On 9/23/2023 at 9:51 PM, Wolfswetpaws said:

I still play my Odin.

And I'm never getting Odin 😢

[MBT808]

On 9/23/2023 at 8:49 AM, LittleWhiteMouse said:

I never see this ship played anymore except during anniversary / snowflake events.

I took her out recently, during bronze this current season. In terms of how she is in the current state, the secondary buff hurt her to a degree with Tirpitz and Bismarck essentially matching her range now since she still uses the old tier X secondary range. She still sorta fun, but I think in a sweaty environment, Tirpitz out performs her in the current meta(her better survivability really comes into play a lot in ranked, Odin has to play much more cautiously by comparison). Odin could stand to be buffed a bit in my honest opinion, help her match up better with Tirpitz and make her stand out better vs Brandenburg.

[Wolfswetpaws]

6 hours ago, MBT808 said:

Odin could stand to be buffed a bit in my honest opinion, help her match up better with Tirpitz and make her stand out better vs Brandenburg.

The Odin is a dockyard ship while the Brandenburg is available in the Armory & Premium shop, as I recall.
I'm having trouble understanding why the Odin would get buffed to attract sales that cannot happen without another Odin dockyard event.
 

[Foxhound421a]

On 9/23/2023 at 3:49 PM, LittleWhiteMouse said:

I never see this ship played anymore except during anniversary / snowflake events.

I've used her in ranked once or twice and she's ok when its mostly dds or cruisers due to the hydro but she just doesn't compete well with the brawlers at her tier. Hell I'd take my secondary build Kii over her 9 times out of ten. Maybe if she had a bit more health (or super heal) and 8km torps she'd be more popular.