I’m losing a bit of motivation, and some of it may be the the ships I’m grinding.
I have 7 ships left to finish all the bluewater trees.
Britain:
Warspite, Prince of Wales, Vanguard
France:
Richelieu, Clemenceau
Italy:
Roma, Italia
For Britain, I have the Marlborough and Hood spaded, so it should be going faster, but the Marlborough doesn’t benefit from the broken HE mechanic from a year ago, and the Hood isn’t as competitive as it once was. I do have the Renown and Barham event ships.
For France, I’m using the spaded Paris for slower grinding and the Dunkerque in the tech tree as well as the Strasbourg event vehicle. Nothing spaded other than the Paris.
For Italy, I’m working on spading the Conte di Cavour, Dulio, and Francesco Caracciolo. I don’t even have the AP shells unlocked for the first two, and SAP is a chore but should have AP shortly.
What are my best bets out of those for fun ships that will make this grind a little less tedious? I’d really like to finish all the trees.
I am finishing the grind of the top BB’s released with Leviathans - to buy them I used many of the same lower tier ships your are in, so here’s my ha’penny’s worth - note this is in AB:
generic advice:
1/ ALWAYS USE RP BOOSTERS - if you don’t have any trade in useless orders to get some
2/ use backups on the main ship you’re grinding with to maximise it’s utility
3/ target ships yo can kill - don’t target the biggest baddest enemy - target the weakest and smallest - killing AI cruisers is a better way to grind than shooting at any battleships. If there’s only BB’s, then pick on the AI ones - they do less in the way of evasive manoeuvres so are easier targets
4/ make BR lineups as much as possible - isn’t always possible, and if not, consider taking alternatives to the big ships - DD’s with lots of torpedoes that have decent range are usually good for a few AI kills.
5/ Only ever use AP shells - they carry more than enough HE to crush smaller vessels, and you don’t have to waste time firing sub-optimal shells at anything (eg Common vs BB’s)
6/ Turn off repairs, fight a lineup until it runs out of ships, then go to a different lineup and/or nation while the first one repairs.
HMS Marlborough is a really good ship at 7.0 - 10 x 13.5’s make short work of cruisers in downtiers.
Britain has a good 7.0 lineup with Repulse, and you can field Barham at 7.3 occasionally between repairs too. Also a decent 6.7 lineup which is also great vs cruisers :)
Hood is a bit meh at it’s BR, as you have noticed, but it is a higher tier and gets a better BR multiplier, and there is a reasonable 7.7 lineup to go with it - although of course it sees 8.7 fairly often too…so matter of preference.
France is a PITA - the 2 x 6.0 BB’s are great vs cruisers - but 1 of them is Premium which you have to buy - I don’t have it so use 6.3/6.0.
Dunkerque (7.0) and Strasbourg (7.3) are similarly orphans in BR with nothing to support them except DD’s, plus their 2 turrets are seriously sub-optimal in this game! I used them alone with backups, but it’s not a great experience.
The Italian low level 6.3 BB’s are like Marlborough - hell on wheels (sic) to cruisers in a downtier, or even in an uptier you can see some.
Britain, dont play 7.7+ Its not worth it. Ive been tempted to make a 7.0 lineup with Renown, Replulse and Marlborough. Barham is tempting, but not sure if the 0.3 increase and thus a chance to see Bismark and co is worth it.
If Soyuz ever gets sorted, and moved up. I would return to 7.7 stuff, just a shame KGV is being nuked
I mean for me it was a pure hell to research a single nation top tiers: Roma and Italia, I think I will never even try to grind other nations battleships.
I play naval RB btw. Although I should say it became way better after rewards rework, because before that playing most of Italian battleships were “assist” simulator. 320 mm battleships have probably the worst stock grind, you should get AP shells to do any damage. RN Roma was a bit smoother after I accepted its nerfed RoF and accuracy, also you need an expert crew at least.
Try to also target easiest to destroy bots, at Roma br for me they were USS Alaska and Cavour/Novorossiysk.
Congratulations on making it so far.
I’m 9 or so battleships away myself.
The way I go about it is that instead of looking at what I want to unlock. I just spade other battleships that can efficiently research the ship.
That way you get some short term goals to work towards (unlocking new mods, learning the ship, earning spading bonus RP) while researching the new ships.
As an example. I still need to get Bismarck. My sachsen is stock so I’ll use that (since it also gets a 10% bonus for being the preceding ship) the process of spading just sachsen will probably get me most of the way to bismarck. Especially with the daily RP bonus.
Speaking of which, is also a decent way to pace yourself and not “burn out” grinding the last few ships. Just play until your daily rp bonus is up and move to another tech tree that still has the bonus.
As for what to do in matches, Josephs_Piano’s comment is pretty solid advice. So I’m not gonna just repeat that.
Right now, I’m going to play the Dunkerque and Strasbourg for a while. They both seem like capable ships that I have to spade anyway, and they have a more unique playstyle. They seem competent and capable of getting kills without being too squishy.
I remember when they first came out, and any hit to the front half of the ship would lead to catastrophic flooding, but that seems to be fixed.
Next, I’ll probably finish Britain, and save Italy for last as I don’t see the Littorio class being useful until the fix the reload.