Understandable, I would suggest focus on one tech tree first so you can get the daily RP bonus for having a tech tree completed, that way grinding the other tech trees will be faster
I’ll just drop a few more points based on my more recent experiences:
The US CLs are the best of their class in the game due to antifrag and sheer rate of fire. If you want to play cruiser BRs, look no further. The Pr. 68s are under them in efficacy. Still great, but not the best.
US CAs and BBs are generally poor, with the BBs being characterized by high pen, but low filler shells, and abysmal reload speed. They’re among the slowest moving ships in the game, but have heavy belt protection, making them incredibly difficult to sink if angled. The only problem there is that the magazines are tall and shell rooms explode in every match, which makes for extremely slow play and little ability to retaliate. The Alaska is literally just a big cruiser that fights battleships, so expect it to lose like one.
The Gangut and Mariya class BBs on the other hand, are monsters capable of drowning cruisers in a single salvo. They can plant 55+kg of TNT firmly within the hulls of cruisers and early dreadnoughts, often killing by flooding which guarantees you get kill credit. Their weakness is the pre-WWI belt and flammable elevators. They’re highly likely to explode if the elevators get set on fire, which means they struggle to punch up against better ships. Izmail works the same way, except I’d say it’s even more likely to explode due to the height of the magazines.
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Just curious, did you consider Germany? In my opinion they are one of the most balanced nations in naval when considering the whole tree, good destroyers, good cruisers, good early battleships in Westfalen, Kaiser, Bayern ( Westfalen at 6.0 is kinda OP, sees a big lot of cruisers at that BR, not so much uptiers in my experience), good battlecruisers from Von Der Tann also at 6.0, Derfflinger and the infamous Scharnhorst which is still a hard nut to crack.
Can’t comment on Ersatz Yorck, Sachsen or Bismarck yet, since I dont have them.
I do however got the Gneisenau, and that is one hell of a ship! Expensive as hell, but whenever it will come on sale in a few updates time I highly recommend it if you will ever start this tree.
Cant really go wrong with Germans tbh!
If that’s off the table, I’d go USSR. Not that big tech tree, Some good destroyers and good allround cruisers that can dish out a lot of hurt. Not USA level, but not that far off.
Early battleships hit hard when they hit, and with careful play you will survive a lot.
Kronshtadt is a superb ship, if played a bit careful and not brawling.
Having a good stock grind with Novorossiysk so far, Arkhaengelsk struggles a bit as stock. Slow as hell, not good shells, not so good dispersion. Cant comment on Soyuz as Im still grinding for it, but reading all the comments it seems quite OP which tbh turns me off playing it much.
Just my 2 cents
USSR navy 3.3-5.3 is the funnest part and great and decent vehicles. The Bravy is very good, king of amoracking any destroyer and great for killing those planes and boats. 5.7+ the Kirov have very great guns very domiant in down tier. Uptier your dead, your armor is thinner then a slice of paper. Project 68 got some great ships but also quite painful to play with constant facing battleship and lack or armor however it has very good firepowers.
Battleships:
Poltava and Mariya are both equally great choice, only problem is they lack Anti air and get on fire very easily. You would wish to get the Pairs Kommua, which is an awesome battleship. Izmail is great but still lack AA cabilities. I don’t really know anything about Rank 6+ but I will give you what others thought. The Kronshtadt is very awesome you gotta try it. Great mobility, Good AA and great Main guns. the Novorossiysk is very very powerful aswell and so is the Arkhangelsk and the Soyuz.
Have to agree with this!
All cruisers at 6.0+ is in a not too good spot atm. Maybe not too bad now that there’s event grinding an lots of BR 5.0+ destroyers around, to feed on :-) but when you get uptiered in an open water conquest map, there’s no hiding from battleships and not a fun experience.
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I’d rate the Pr.68s higher than their US 6.0 - 6.3 CL equivalents due to their better AP ammo (more pen and twice the filler, mitigating the slightly lower RoF), better armour (main belt extending over the magazines and not just covering the engines), larger tonnage and higher crew count.
In my experience it’s easier to take out US 6.0+ CLs with Soviet ones than vice versa, the improved specs of USS Roanoke notwithstanding. In my view the Pr.68s are overall a better choice than their US counterparts when taking on other Pr.68s as well as the other team’s heavy cruisers.
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Let’s not forget Spokoinyy and Blagorodnyy with twice the amount of Bravy’s non-situational firepower to better engage even 5.7 cruisers due to their punchy SAP shells.
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Hello!
Hope this helps in some way.
All the best with your grind!
My Experience
Disclamer: I forgot the ship number requirements for unlocking the next rank for USA and Japan.
USSR
Rank 4
The way I would do it is Bravy>Kirov>Project 68
Project 68 sometimes surprises me. They have decent guns and would sometimes not detonate.
Uptiers will be a pain, but Sverdlov has torps. I would spade her.
Rank 5
With Marat: Poltava>Mariya>Izmail>Kronshtadt
Without Marat: Poltava>PK>Mariya>Izmail>Kronshtadt
I have not play Poltava and Mariya much, so I say anything about them.
PK and Marat are really good.
Marat has the highest RP/game and my highest K/D ratio.
Her magazines are difficult to detonate.
Her SAP can be deadly, but in my experience, they can be inconsistent. Her AP worked for me.
Rank 6
Kronshtadt (with talisman) has my second-highest RP/game.
She can be easily detonated, but she is way better in shell performance than Novorossiysk and Arkhangelsk.
Novorossiysk is easy to detonate, her AP shell research is in the second tier of modules, and her reload is really long. I don’ manually control the 120mm secondaries.
Arkhangelsk’s reload is long, her turret is slow, she is slow, and her secondatries are rear-facing.
USA
Disclaimer: I grinded halfway through the US tree during the Zombie era. USS Cleveland gave me a lot of RP during that time. USS Cleveland is good at killing cruiser bots.
Rank 4
Atlanta>Cleveland>Fargo>Brooklyn>Northampton>New Orleans
USS Atlanta is decent, but I did struggle at long range.
My brother likes the US heavy cruisers, specifically the USS Northampton.
I liked sailing USS New Orleans but I do not perform well with her.
Rank 5
I have only played Wyoming and USS Pittsburgh
Rank 6
USS Alaska, without a talisman and post-zombie era, has my second-highest K/D.
It can be detonated easily, but she makes up for it in reload and shell performance.
However, the muzzle velocity isn’t great. This also makes it challenging to use her secondaries alongside the main guns.
My brother likes USS Arizona and USS Nevada. I am not sure how I feel about them.
I do not have USS Colorado and USS Tennessee.
Last week I gave USS Alaska a talisman. I should have waited but I saw this as an opportunity given that I am grinding the event.
Japan
Rank 4
Furutaka>Ikoma>Haguro>Agano
I do not have Haguro.
Furutaka is surprisingly my most-played ship in both this game and that other one. Furutaka has been a great RP earner and really fun.
I played her just before BBs were added/naval-spit thus after her armour change, I did not play her much during the zombie era, and I have not played her much recently.
Back then, Furutaka was tanky. I always started matches by beelining to a cap point. I would take hits and not repair. After capping, the enemy would be really close to my position, I would then brawl!
Sometimes I would first dump torps and hope to get lucky.
Her AP was dope. I would ammo rack Prinz Eugen so easily.
Her magazine used to be difficult to detonate.
She is beautiful!
However, she is long, her guns get knocked out easily, she doesn’t have a lot of guns and torps.
Recently, I haven’t been doing great in her. Battlecruisers are hard to deal with, caps are further away, getting detonated is easier, and uptiers are brutal.
5.7 lineup is decent, having two Furutaka-class ships makes me happy, plus an armoured cruiser. I think the only other country whose 5.7 lineup I prefer over this is the UK because of HMS Invincible.
A Furutaka/Ikoma/Torp-DD/Floatplane lineup will suffice. You won’t really need Aoba if you don’t like Furutaka.
Aoba stock grind was hard. Furutaka was easier because HE used to be good against DDs.
Ikoma is just there. She is not great, but she can take hits. She is slow!
Rank 5
Suzuya>Mogami>Hyuga>Tone>Settsu
I do not have Tone and Settsu.
I haven’t heard great things about Settsu. However, when I am playing 5.3, she isn’t fun to face.
I played Mogami and Suzuya just after BBs were added.
I used Mogami, without a talisman, to grind my way to Hyuga. After getting Hyuga, I used Mogami as a torp boat.
Mogami was okay.
Hyuga, without a talisman, was surprisingly a good RP/game earner. She detonated so much, so very much. I thought I did poorly in her, but according to my player statistics, she is average.
Her guns were inconsistent, but they are plenty. I liked her secondaries.
I recommend getting the Hyuga as soon as possible so that if 6.0 is experiencing Uptiers or full teams, but you want to shoot at bots for a faster grind, then you get the option of trying the 7.0 tier. For example, currently (usually Mon-Thurs), 7.7 sees almost full teams while 8.7 is almost entirely bots.
Rank 6
Ise>Amagi>Fuso>Kongo>Mutsu
I do not have Amagi and Fuso.
Ise has a talisman. Ise’s armour is inconsistent. I detonated only sightly less than Hyuga. She has better AA than Hyuga. Otherwise, she has similar performance to Hyuga.
I do not have Fuso but it seemed to me that Fuso is more survirable than Ise.
Fuso has 3 foward-facing 3 rear-facing guns vs Ise’s 2 foward-facing 4 rear-facing guns.
Fuso secondaries seem like a downgrage from Ise.
Haruna/Kongo, without a talisman, was a good RP/Game earner.
She is fast and has the same gun performance as Hyuga.
She bleeds crew but doesn’t get one shot. Though her magazines sometimes detonate, they are usually localized explosions.
Her secondaries suck.
I was shocked I did okay with her.
I haven’t playe Mutsu enough to say anything about her.
I would recommend getting the Amagi as soon as possible for the same reason I explained earlier.
Other Useful Resources
Here is an excellent guide by SdwCdrGhost. It is still a work in progress.
RogueFlameHaze on YouTube has some videos on how to grind, current bugs/exploits, and reviews naval techtrees.
https://www.youtube.com/@RogueFlameHaze/videos
Rowan does the “Should you spade” and “is it worth it” videos.
https://www.youtube.com/@RowansWTNavalGuides/videos
He also reviews entire lines, for example, he reviewed the Japanese naval line.
Cmdr. Tyrael has some high-quality naval guides, usually, of individual ships.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2LkhK5hEefhT7AZg_C6JGcLxbES_T98d&si=z91E27gPX7Hhpg9a
To date, Napalmratte has really informative ship reviews.
https://www.youtube.com/@Napalmratte/videos
PeterbiltFan2003 has a good video on the US Techtree
Gunship reviews ships from time to time
https://www.youtube.com/@Gunship/videos
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