Admiral Hipper is abysmal

[The Tinman]

I recently unlocked the Hipper and it is just plain bad. MM doesn't help either, but the AP is situational, it has no armor, no DPM, mediocre concealment, and the manueverability is questionable. The AA is sufficient for T8. I hear the Roon and Hindy are much better, so should I just FreeXP past the Hipper?

[Sidian]

"It has no armor" isn't true. It has basically the best armor of all t8 cruisers. But the rest of the ship is really bad. And even though Roon and Hindenburg are better, they are still outclassed by most other cruisers of their tier. I wouldn't use freeXP for them.

[StormhawkV]

The german cruisers have never been good ships. Only exception was Hindenburg but that's a thing of the past now, too.

[The Tinman]

Yey for powercreep. The IJN CA line still feels pretty ok. The Zao is fantastic.

[Ryuu]

That's ironic considering IJN line is the oldest in the game (USN was split later, so does not count).

[StormhawkV]

Originally posted by The Tinman:

Yey for powercreep. The IJN CA line still feels pretty ok. The Zao is fantastic.

Because it was buffed several times. There's not much a Hindenburg can do better than an IFHE Aids.

[The Tinman]

Before the dispersion was buffed on the rest of the line I thought they were pretty ok except for Ibuki.

[s u p e r g r a m p s]

Originally posted by Sidian:

"It has no armor" isn't true. It has basically the best armor of all t8 cruisers.

I think he means that it doesn't have good deck armor, which is a common theme for most of the german CL/CA line until like Roon.

Like look at the Konigsberg and Nurnberg: those things have probably the worst deck armor I've ever had the mis-pleasure to sail in. My god, I got my HP chunked so many times from battleships just because one round hit me while I did everything I could to evade their shots. Same deal when shooting at one: I've got many devastating strikes out of no where just because I shot at a Nurnberg's general direction.

Still, Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen are the beefiest cruisers for their tier, with a lot of HP to work with. I think the problem with them is that their armor doesn't do anything for them at long range, but they can't really sneak around since they have near-battlecruiser level size and concealment. So you're kind of in this awkward situation in most matches asking yourself "Do I push up to use my cruiser turtleback armor and HP to tank and draw fire while supporting my team? Or do I sit back and spam my high pen-HE at the nearest ship while risking taking plunging return fire that could devastate my HP?"

Combine all of that with both tier VIII matchmaking and their meaty superstructure for HE spam to erode away at with their only upsides is it that they have mid-range armor and AP: there's a lot going against them and it's just not an easy ship to sail around in.

Say, does a full tank build for these ships work out pretty well? I've never really known how to build these two ships captain skill-wise.

[The Tinman]

The Konigsburg and Nurnburg actually have DPM and good manuerverablitity. I liked them both(Konigsburg more so). Hipper has neither of these things.

[Jackson]

I really enjoyed Hipper, tho not as much as Yorck. I primarily used HE against many recommendations. It worked for me. I bought Prinz Eugen because of that.