World of Warships - Learn to Play: Tier VIII American Cruiser USS Baltimore 

AMERICAAAAA FUCK YEAHHHH

Only probelm I find is its range.

@@Exalt3863 The range is an issue, but honestly, it's not totally out-of-line for a T8 cruiser.

Not sure who that is, but I do like the name. =D

Thank you, glad it was helpful!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Reasonable, I hadn't considered that. Should be worth nearly a full second of reload in such situations. I like it.

Great to hear! I honestly think the long-running "AA is garbage" crap from a lot of content creators has done lasting damage to the game. There are plenty of ships with solid AA suites, it's just that AA doesn't make you immune to planes.

​@SeaRaptor so aa can be useful?

no heal.

It looks like an artifact/bug in the replay system. Not sure what else to tell you, I definitely don't have my rudder hard over at either of those two timestamps. Baltimore is pretty responsive to her helm, if the rudder was hard over you'd know it.

@@SeaRaptor oh okay that makes sense. thanks for the reply tho

The secondaries work just like those on battleships; they're automated with a very short range (perhaps 4km or so).

Which value(s)? Most of the stats on Baltimore aren't change-able, but some are depending on how you upgrade the ship or commander.

I went and watched ClydePlays sing, "Dumb Ways to Die". I feel better now ;)

That song is amazing.

P.S. hmmm again . . . Took the Balti out this morning after switching from the Bionic cammo to a Pi cammo. Averaged over 80k, over 700xp and killed 7 ships in three Co-op battles, 2 Tier VIIIs and a Tier IX. Okay, she's nice ;)

That's one way to play the ship, but it's not particularly interesting (or necessarily conducive to winning random battles).

We disagree on additional Defensive AA time being bad. More often than not it means that my DFAA is still active if the carrier comes back to me with another wave of planes (after the first one finishes or is destroyed). The same special upgrade that lengthens the time DFAA stays active also reduces the cooldown. It's possible to have DFAA up for ~48 seconds and down for ~55 if you stack all the buffs together. (I need to double-check the math on this, but that sounds about right.) Regardless, not many CVs can or will stay away from you for nearly a minute once they have decided to chase you. You'll get good work out of the extra duration most of the time, and you're not exactly helpless while DFAA is on cooldown, either. As far as the Weser, most CVs you encounter in randoms will be pretty average skill-wise. That doesn't mean they can't still hurt you if you haven't taken any steps towards murdering planes better (depending on the ship you are driving). Baltimore, thankfully, is several steps ahead of most of the pack at T8 and can get even better with a minimal investment in commander skill points.

As I stated at the very beginning of the video: I was not remotely concerned about the Weser. Why he continued to throw away his planes remains a mystery. But it speaks to a larger point, IMHO. There is a non-zero set of players in Warships that think all AA is worthless. They've spent years watching YT videos and reading forum and reddit posts of people saying it, and thus they believe the lie. AA isn't worthless, but you have to understand the mechanics of how it works as well as the individual matchup you've got (i.e. your ship's capabilities vs. enemy carrier planes). Your Malta example is a good one. Baltimore vs. Malta is a much more difficult matchup for the cruiser. Will I murder some of his planes? Absolutely. Will the ordnance he actually lands really hurt? Very much so. So that engagement plays out completely differently for both players than this Baltimore vs. Weser one. The Malta can come after me repeatedly and will probably eventually win... but my AA is enough that I have an above average chance of causing him catastrophic plane losses in doing so. The odds of an enemy Malta chasing me at the start of a match when there are invariably less well-defended targets on the board are pretty slim, but in the late game if my Baltimore is still alive he may have no choice but to come after me. That's when the dance gets interesting. There's some good examples of this in my Learn to Play Des Moines video where I end up paired against an enemy Midway.

Yeah that's fair...the japanese cruisers were your first line i think, they may have some reason to complain about AA, i like my Mino and can't complain about it's AA... or the AA on the dutch cruisers is pretty solid.. still i rarely would swap hydro for AA.. hydro too useful compared to enhanced AA even in a game with CV.@@SeaRaptor

Hydro is just so ineffective against smoke. I do like making a no fly zone so I can last till mid battle.

When any ship's AA suite is up-tiered against a CV, it's likely to feel bad. That's just math. I'm looking forward to hearing more "AA is worthless" arguments after I post my Des Moines video for this line, though. Someone here on YT several months ago pointed out to me the opportunity cost of taking DFAA vs. hydro has shifted significantly in submarine world (and they're right). I hadn't viewed it through that lens previously, and it's colored my thinking ever since. We've reached a stage where I honestly think you can make a very solid case for either consumable on certain hulls, Baltimore being one. It's just down to personal preference at that point.

@@SeaRaptor Completely agree, subs changed the decision equation. Look forward to that DM vid as well!

Concur; most CV players will take a shot at an AA-spec ship, realize what they're up against, then stay far, far away. This guy apparently believed all the hype he read on reddit saying how OP CV's were.

1. Every ship "lights up like a Christmas tree" when you shoot. That's a game balance thing. There was a time in the game's history when you could fire heavy cruiser guns and not be spotted in certain ships. It was toxic, and WG removed it. 2. All American heavy cruisers have garbage torpedo protection, as discussed in the video. It's one of the things that makes taking hydro instead of DFAA so attractive. 3. The armor is among the best cruiser armor in the tier. You aren't going to get battleship armor in a cruiser. You have to compare it to contemporaries. Baltimore has one of the best armor belts of any T8 cruiser. There are a few better, but it's quite good. It's still cruiser armor, though. You are going to die to battleships eventually, all things being equal. Based on this comment, I don't think cruisers are a class you're going to enjoy very much in World of Warships. Nearly every cruiser in the game has to deal with these same problems.

@@SeaRaptor Thanks for responding! Maybe your right, I prefer to play at a distance, Maybe I'll grind up Battleships after I'm done with Cruisers👍

If you want range, then MOST cruiser lines are not going to jive with you. There are a few exceptions. Check out the Russians, for example (but their armor is generally worse, you have been warned). Long range combat belongs almost exclusively to battleships in this game. The trick is to find ships that can fight at range and actually hit things. That isn't easy. Good luck!

​@@SeaRaptor(update)So I managed to unlock the extra 10% concealment through my captain skills, and I realized that all of a sudden,the ship is playable now.I think you look at things from a 21 point captain's perspective.If you have all the extra perks bells and whistles right off the bat then sure the ship is markedly better.I had a 12 point captain and it was a nightmare.

That's fair. I try to point out that on cruisers and destroyers, you pretty much always want your first 4-point skill to be Concealment Expert. Once you have that, the ship plays much more "optimally". Without it, it's a much less enjoyable experience. I'm glad it's going better for you now!

If you have ever played a carrier, you will know that AA absolutely does impact them. I'm not sure how you can make the "honest" argument that it doesn't. It impacts plane availability, how much (or how little) damage the CV is able to land, and what strike they choose next (depending what ship was just attacked). The exception to this is the Soviets, who for some reason are allowed to ignore all of the other AA rules that the other carriers must play by. The Russian carrier line is horribly designed. How can you watch the opposing Weser in this game fail to do anything meaningful to me at all and still claim that AA does not affect carriers? I murdered every plane that guy sent after me, and he got... what, a few hundred damage out of a stray rocket? This carrier could have chosen to send his planes elsewhere to at least attempt to be effective, but he continued to attack the single most AA-heavy target on the opposing team (me). Consequently, he accomplished very little in support of his team, finishing with less than 500 XP in a game he played for a full 16 minutes. My AA suite should have been a red flag to him from the first time he attempted to drop on me, and he should have avoided me like the plague thereafter (which is generally the argument against taking DFAA as a consumable). He didn't, and was consequently a non-factor in the game. In higher tiers, individual ship AA suites are not often a deterrent... unless they are pooled together. Two or three ships sailing in company will probably not prevent a CV from dropping on someone, but they will likely make him over-pay (in terms of plane losses) for the damage he gets out of the strike. My sample game in the Des Moines video from this series is a good example. For most of that game I do not prevent the enemy Midway from striking me, but by taking DFAA and using it against the right types of planes I make him pay heavily to do so, such that well before the game ends he isn't able to field full squadrons any more. That absolutely impacts his decision-making and what planes he puts up next (and what targets he will go after with those planes). It also makes it easier to destroy/prevent the next strike, because there is less health to chew through. If you honestly think that AA has no impact on carrier play, I would strongly encourage you to go play a T6 or T8 carrier and educate yourself. Barring that, I'm not sure ANY evidence will change your opinion... assuming you are willing to consider challenging your assumptions at all.