Help me with the Graf Zeppelin

[I'd rather be playing RuneScape]

Hi everyone,

A friend as an early Birthday present spoiled me with the Graf Zeppelin. I tried looking around online for some tips and realised that many consider it to be the worst CV in the game by far.

I don't know how much of it is me being inexperienced and how much of it is my ship, but I can sorta see the argument.

The planes have very little HP to the point that going after a lone ship in my torpedo planes or rocket planes will get shot down before they're even in firing range. The Torpedo damage is... underwhelming at best and quite slow.

The Rockets actually work fairly well against Destroyers which is nice.

But the Dive Bombers, mein gott the dive bombers are so bad. The damage is so little and they're so inaccurate.


So, what suggestions do you have for me to step up my game with friends and do more than like 15k damage per game and do they ever rebalance ships? I feel like for spending like $70 I should have a better ship than this.

[Firewalk]

Yeah, as a fellow GZ owner I can attest that she's in a rough spot. I much prefer my Kaga and Lexington at tier VIII... heck one could make a case for Implacable!

That being said, she DOES have redeeming factors. You have hella strong secondaries that would make Bismarck blush, so any DD or lower tier cruiser wandering into your secondary range is gonna get melted.

The planes are fast, at least the bombers are so one advantage of GZ is her ability to quickly rather recon and do quick hit and run attacks. Don't expect to get more than 1 attack off per attack run unless your target is lower tiered.

Her dive bombers are temperamental indeed, but I found that attacking from the front or rear works best. They take practice though and even then RNG can decide to drop the bombs into the ocean.

The torps do low damage and are slow... however she drops three of them at once, so provided the target has no damage control ready, she can stack on floods. These also take some practice to get the timing right. Your bombers are fast though, so you can speed up on an unsuspecting target and possibly drop your torpedoes before they know what's going on.

The rockets are more suited against cruisers than DDs, because of their small number of rockets. If your aim is really good though, she can rip DDs a new one. These rockets are useful against all targets, even some BBs.

Hope this helps!

- RA -