Mackenson is a destroyer killer. It’s maneuverable, good secondaries, and sonar. At tier 5, destroyers (…most) need to close distance… and they rarely run from a pursueing BB. But against other BB’s, it’s meh. But it’s a great ship if used on the right map
Gneisenau is love hate relationship. Have had some really good games and some really bad ones. Best used aggressively where torpedoes and secondary can do damage.
I have tried multiple builds on Gneisenau and still hate it and I'm always less critical on ships in the game that actually existed. I think a lot depends on your personal rng but I find the main guns on this thing to be absolutely terrible 95% of the time and then out of the blue, for no reason at all, it will pull a dev strike against a cruiser out of it's ass and then go right back to being useless the rest of the match. I find the entire concept of the ship in this game to be mostly a one trick pony - find an island to take cover, pray that someone is dumb enough to come around full broadside, rage as your main guns to nothing and cry as the torps are completely underwhelming, beg for your secondaries to do something as the guy chunks you for 1/3 to 1/2 of your health, repeat. That's been my experience in Gneisenau, anyways, your results may vary. It one of the few ships I've seriously considered selling and I never sell ships.
They must have nerfed it at some stage because I can remember Gneisenau being a force to be reckoned with. It would consistently get citadel strikes once, but now it is a hose.
@@CamMcCulls-kx6zk I think they effectively nerfed all shell/armor interactions in favor of armor/HP, which effects battleships the most, and probably effects ships like Gneisenau even more since it has a low number of main guns, months ago when they did the big armor rework. When I started playing the game it was much easier to dev strike cruisers and even battleships from across the map. Like a lot of people say, it use to be possible to dev strike a broadside Iowa from across the map but that almost never happens anymore. Clearly WG changed something.
@@177SCmaro it has certainly affected the British cruisers with only AP shells. You could add all of those to the worst ships list on that alone. I used to love ships like Fiji once, but now it is useless.
@@CamMcCulls-kx6zk I'll take your word for it since I don't have much experience with them other than the few I've played seem like Omahas without the great guns - like the ship is packed with explosium.
Pretty good list. I understand some people like Gneisenau but I don't think I've ever come closer to selling a ship and I never sell ships, especially ones that actually existed. Evidently they have way better rng than I do.
I do agree Gneisenau is just good only for torp against unexpected enemies unawares of your presence. But the issue with this ship, a lot of people know how to counter it pretty easily due of nonexistence accuracy. Honestly the b hull "upgrade" only give you major mobility and hp and "fire resistance" (you'll always be on fire lmao). The secondaries are a absolute downgrade, yeah sure these little guns can pen 31mm. But at the true cost of never getting fires, because fire is very good, and that decrease her damage potential. Gneisenau will always be the most inconsistent ship. All is just positioning but always pray rng doesn't screw you over.
I quite like Bayern. 15 inch gun overmatch, good armor, and decent speed & turning. 15 inch guns at Tier 5 are nice. To put it into perspective; Bismarck has 15 inch guns and that is two tiers higher.
I have the Friedrich (I got from a free crate) and it is a little more different from your standard german bb as its accuracy is much better ( way better than mackensen) so yea I personally like the Friedrich, thats my take though.
That's interesting because for me it's the complete opposite, Friedrich underwhelms and the Mackensen performs very well for me. What is an unsatisfactory ship to one player is a complete winner to another. In most cases it's subjective.
@@moonytheloony6516yeah I had pretty good results with Mackensen when I was grinding the line but don't roll it out unless I need to for some requirement...just lots better options for T5 battleships
@@moonytheloony6516 hard to really nail down a favorite but it would probably be an American battleship cause I like to get in there. Lots of carriers at T5 so California is always a solid choice...Tennessee smacks as well, I've killed lots of destroyers with that one. Bayern has a good armor scheme for the Germans and the Hyuga's reload booster makes it pretty strong on the Japanese side. I don't think Mackensen is bad...there's certainly worse choices, pretty sure I'm running a secondary-focused build on the Mack. Good luck out there Captain👍
San Diego now is good man, I get 100k damage pretty frequently. The thing is, it's not useful to the team. But the damage now is fairly good. For the armour part, yeah, it's a high tier pensacola. But try a few more games and treat it like a hide and seek boat, trust me you'll have fun@@DrGhostTH-cam
I think he's saying he hates the playstyle, not that all these ships are also necessarily bad. I, too, find Shima boring to play but it's also ridiculously overpowered. It's about as close to easy-mode for a desoyer as it gets with the possible exception of her even more evil cousin Kamikaze, who doesn't even have to deal with radar.
I have gone as far as building shima for better guns😂, torps are alredy good and with 8km torps you don’t need the extra speed. Normal shimakaze playstyle is a one trick pony and I don’t want to that way either.
The Nagato. You couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with those guns...even if you are standing INSIDE the barn. So frustrating that I gave up on the IJN BB line because of the horrible accuracy of those guns.
How To Gneisenau in your Gneisenau..... Gneisenau....the most misunderstood ship in this game, in my opinion, and greatly disliked. It's a pity because she's one of the best-looking capital ships in this game. This is how I play the Gneisenau.... Firstly, forget the main guns, they are as hopeless as a severely near-sighted bloke in a dart competition. Saved your energy and build for speed. with a bit of agility. aka VII Hipper I use Sheer as the primary commander because he adds speed, and I'll add Guepratte because he adds more speed and AL Baltimore because she adds improved agility. Throw on a speed flag and the ship is even faster in excess of 34 knots...maybe 35 or just under. With Gneisenau, speed is the need. In a domination game the first thing ya do is make a bee-line to the nearest cap....and you will get there quickly. Next thing ya need to do is draw in ships to engage you in tight places in which the Gneisenau excels or get within 6-7 km's which isn't difficult because ya got speed and torpedos that the other player is concerned about. And then fire at will, at closer range the main guns are better and the secondaries will start some fires to help a bit. Throw in torpedos in close brawling and you'll hit things. The armor will protect you considerably so no need to worry as much about angling. Punch and move close, Punch and move closer. And.....and one last thing. Your map awareness matters and in this ship it will matter more. Don't get in a cross fire under any circumstances with this ship. Now there is one caveat....it's a situational ship. Your dream position is regarding Gneisenau is on either flank so you can isolate which is what it can do best. If placed and allowed. The center is tougher but it can slow an advance by the bad guys but its best to move the ship toward one side of that center. Give it a try, ya got nothing to lose out there. 😊
To each their own. Some valid points, but I've had entirely satisfactory and sometimes even good games with most of these ships, so here is my two rubles worth. Mackenson is a battleCRUISER. That means you use it to kill small fry and try not to get into it much with battleships. BCs are NOT fast battleships, but that's how people keep treating them, both ingame and historically, and this seldom ends well. Like the Scharnhorst, hate sister ship Gneisenau. The scatter on the G's guns mean it couldn't hit a barn if it was inside, and no amount of buffing can fix this. If I have to play it, best I can do is amp up the Secondaries and pray. The Shimakaze is a victim of power creep, imo. Used to be pretty good, but we now have a plethora of other Japanese DDs that can do absolutely everything the Shima can, only more so. It is a torpedo-transporter, sure - just like most other high-end Japanese DDs. I've had good games with it, certainly. If we want to talk truly cr#ppy, let me start by explaining that I like to play all tiers. I'll sometimes have a Tier 1 fight as a warm-up or for a bit of relaxation. The Gryf (the T1 Pan-European ship) is truly horrible for a couple of reasons. First up, it is out of place historically (historical accuracy is not a high priority, I know, but still). It is a minesweeper that was built in 1938, and all otehr ships that tier are pre to early ww1. That deeply offends my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Second, and more to the point, shoot it with anything and it loses 40%+ of its HP in one go. Even by the standards of Tier 1 ships, it is sad verging on tragic.
Definitely agree with Shimakaze as #1 I used to fear them but they seem to be captained by the most brain dead players so rarely do I feel threatened anymore.
No#1 is absolutely correct. I hate Shima as well. Less than optimal guns force a distanced playstyle tossing walls of "skill". If only it had a 3 sec gun reload and only 8 torps. Oh well...
It's concealment is also pretty broken. The TINY nerf it got felt more like the devs mocking us than a any attempt to balance the ship. I've said it before but that ship would still be very competitive at legendary even if you deleted one whole rack of torps.
I agree with some of your pics. Hawkins is tough to use but its AA is good. shooting down planes is worth a lot of experience. not very consistent but fun. Makensen is cool.. sonar is nice to have Gneisenau is not great but with a Lutjens kondo and Gepraette build, you can become a big distraction that can close the range very fast. My 5 pics would be: Normandie, New Orleans, Kongo, the Italian cruisers(excluding the Duca d aosta), and, vanguard.
Just can’t agree with your pics. Normandie, at least for me, is one of the most consistent battleships at tier 5. Accurate guns, fast speed, alright armor, never really had a problem with it. And hating on Vanguard? With the buffs that thing has, it’s one of my favorite tier 7 battleships right now. Ghost’s pics were aight. Hawkins does suck, Mackenson is pretty good imo. Gneisenau is one of the worst boats in the entire game, so that might be the worst.
I've come to the conclusion that home stereo/theatre speakers and warships in this game share one commonality....the experience with either of them is generally subjective. The beauty of that conclusion is that no one is truly wrong. I see the Mackensen quite differently than Dr. Ghost Games, in my experience. The side-plating, when angled will bounce bigger shells effectively while its vulnerability to HE shells is a trademark of all German capital ships in the game. They burn baby burn like the disco inferno that they are. Will someone please call the fire department? I do agree regarding the AA. If memory serves me correctly, Japan's Tier 6 Ashitaka, which has 16-inch guns, also has a very low AA rating, in fact it may be worse than the Mackensen but I digress. And yet the Ashitaka is a premium ship...Wargaming should create a "Ashitaka '44" that updates the superstructure with the addition of much better AA but I'm getting off topic... The thing is this...if a capable CV player focuses on the Mackensen or any ship with very limited AA...there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Even the better AA battleships will get bested by a capable CV player who is focused on you and only you with almost zero personal risk to their ship's overall well-being but i digress. One person's successful ship can be another's failure of a ship which is the appeal of this game. There are ships that will and will not work for you, just like home speakers. What I like to see now from Dr. Ghost Games is his Top 3-5 ships that he very much likes to play that are also far less popular if not hated by many players. For example Metajerk, the legendary King of Krakens on TH-cam loves the Tier 7 Gascogne and has showcased more than one video of how well he can play that ship which the majority of players in this game disregard as a undesirable ship to play that's seldom seen out there.
Mackenson is a destroyer killer. It’s maneuverable, good secondaries, and sonar. At tier 5, destroyers (…most) need to close distance… and they rarely run from a pursueing BB. But against other BB’s, it’s meh. But it’s a great ship if used on the right map
In my experience, Im dead before I can even think about using my sonar or secondaries.
I have to agree with this gentleman. I like the mackensen a lot
I think if the Germans got their secondarys like on pc they would be a lot better
Gneisenau is love hate relationship. Have had some really good games and some really bad ones. Best used aggressively where torpedoes and secondary can do damage.
I have tried multiple builds on Gneisenau and still hate it and I'm always less critical on ships in the game that actually existed. I think a lot depends on your personal rng but I find the main guns on this thing to be absolutely terrible 95% of the time and then out of the blue, for no reason at all, it will pull a dev strike against a cruiser out of it's ass and then go right back to being useless the rest of the match.
I find the entire concept of the ship in this game to be mostly a one trick pony - find an island to take cover, pray that someone is dumb enough to come around full broadside, rage as your main guns to nothing and cry as the torps are completely underwhelming, beg for your secondaries to do something as the guy chunks you for 1/3 to 1/2 of your health, repeat.
That's been my experience in Gneisenau, anyways, your results may vary. It one of the few ships I've seriously considered selling and I never sell ships.
They must have nerfed it at some stage because I can remember Gneisenau being a force to be reckoned with. It would consistently get citadel strikes once, but now it is a hose.
@@CamMcCulls-kx6zk
I think they effectively nerfed all shell/armor interactions in favor of armor/HP, which effects battleships the most, and probably effects ships like Gneisenau even more since it has a low number of main guns, months ago when they did the big armor rework.
When I started playing the game it was much easier to dev strike cruisers and even battleships from across the map. Like a lot of people say, it use to be possible to dev strike a broadside Iowa from across the map but that almost never happens anymore. Clearly WG changed something.
@@177SCmaro it has certainly affected the British cruisers with only AP shells. You could add all of those to the worst ships list on that alone. I used to love ships like Fiji once, but now it is useless.
@@CamMcCulls-kx6zk
I'll take your word for it since I don't have much experience with them other than the few I've played seem like Omahas without the great guns - like the ship is packed with explosium.
My issue with Machensen is that if you get shot in the ass, you always take citadels
Pretty good list. I understand some people like Gneisenau but I don't think I've ever come closer to selling a ship and I never sell ships, especially ones that actually existed. Evidently they have way better rng than I do.
“I don’t play shima” 380k Elite xp??
Yeah 💀
I do agree Gneisenau is just good only for torp against unexpected enemies unawares of your presence. But the issue with this ship, a lot of people know how to counter it pretty easily due of nonexistence accuracy. Honestly the b hull "upgrade" only give you major mobility and hp and "fire resistance" (you'll always be on fire lmao). The secondaries are a absolute downgrade, yeah sure these little guns can pen 31mm. But at the true cost of never getting fires, because fire is very good, and that decrease her damage potential.
Gneisenau will always be the most inconsistent ship. All is just positioning but always pray rng doesn't screw you over.
Bayern is my nightmare，i just dont get why people play german BB unless for its secondary
I quite like Bayern. 15 inch gun overmatch, good armor, and decent speed & turning. 15 inch guns at Tier 5 are nice. To put it into perspective; Bismarck has 15 inch guns and that is two tiers higher.
Yikes you even bought the steel camo for your most hated ship? Lol
Regret it every single day 😔🤣
SAP is just a disappointing shell. It can’t do enough damage most of the times to matter. IMO
Yea
Sap is just trash.
Only decent on secondaries really 😂
I have the Friedrich (I got from a free crate) and it is a little more different from your standard german bb as its accuracy is much better ( way better than mackensen) so yea I personally like the Friedrich, thats my take though.
That's interesting because for me it's the complete opposite, Friedrich underwhelms and the Mackensen performs very well for me.
What is an unsatisfactory ship to one player is a complete winner to another. In most cases it's subjective.
@@moonytheloony6516yeah I had pretty good results with Mackensen when I was grinding the line but don't roll it out unless I need to for some requirement...just lots better options for T5 battleships
@@iamsuzerain3987
What's your fav battleship at that tier?
@@moonytheloony6516 hard to really nail down a favorite but it would probably be an American battleship cause I like to get in there. Lots of carriers at T5 so California is always a solid choice...Tennessee smacks as well, I've killed lots of destroyers with that one. Bayern has a good armor scheme for the Germans and the Hyuga's reload booster makes it pretty strong on the Japanese side. I don't think Mackensen is bad...there's certainly worse choices, pretty sure I'm running a secondary-focused build on the Mack. Good luck out there Captain👍
Oh and also don't sleep on the British...Warspite and Queen Elizabeth and great battleships
If the San Diego had HE, it would be amazing!!!
SO true
San Diego now is good man, I get 100k damage pretty frequently. The thing is, it's not useful to the team. But the damage now is fairly good. For the armour part, yeah, it's a high tier pensacola. But try a few more games and treat it like a hide and seek boat, trust me you'll have fun@@DrGhostTH-cam
Shima was unexpected 🤯
i think most people from all playstyles hate the ship
@@steamedgames5148yaeh, but playing it should be a bit satysfing at least
I think he's saying he hates the playstyle, not that all these ships are also necessarily bad. I, too, find Shima boring to play but it's also ridiculously overpowered. It's about as close to easy-mode for a desoyer as it gets with the possible exception of her even more evil cousin Kamikaze, who doesn't even have to deal with radar.
@@177SCmaro I dont know if I should define this more cool or worrying
@@caioanglussi7139 lol
I have gone as far as building shima for better guns😂, torps are alredy good and with 8km torps you don’t need the extra speed.
Normal shimakaze playstyle is a one trick pony and I don’t want to that way either.
Shima do suck Doc
The Nagato. You couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with those guns...even if you are standing INSIDE the barn. So frustrating that I gave up on the IJN BB line because of the horrible accuracy of those guns.
How To Gneisenau in your Gneisenau.....
Gneisenau....the most misunderstood ship in this game, in my opinion, and greatly disliked.
It's a pity because she's one of the best-looking capital ships in this game.
This is how I play the Gneisenau....
Firstly, forget the main guns, they are as hopeless as a severely near-sighted bloke in a dart competition. Saved your energy and build for speed. with a bit of agility. aka VII Hipper
I use Sheer as the primary commander because he adds speed, and I'll add Guepratte because he adds more speed and AL Baltimore because she adds improved agility. Throw on a speed flag and the ship is even faster in excess of 34 knots...maybe 35 or just under.
With Gneisenau, speed is the need.
In a domination game the first thing ya do is make a bee-line to the nearest cap....and you will get there quickly.
Next thing ya need to do is draw in ships to engage you in tight places in which the Gneisenau excels or get within 6-7 km's which isn't difficult because ya got speed and torpedos that the other player is concerned about.
And then fire at will, at closer range the main guns are better and the secondaries will start some fires to help a bit. Throw in torpedos in close brawling and you'll hit things. The armor will protect you considerably so no need to worry as much about angling. Punch and move close, Punch and move closer.
And.....and one last thing. Your map awareness matters and in this ship it will matter more. Don't get in a cross fire under any circumstances with this ship.
Now there is one caveat....it's a situational ship. Your dream position is regarding Gneisenau is on either flank so you can isolate which is what it can do best. If placed and allowed. The center is tougher but it can slow an advance by the bad guys but its best to move the ship toward one side of that center.
Give it a try, ya got nothing to lose out there. 😊
Yes people underestimate this ship so bad and I think that is a big advantage. People will pick fights with me only to get destroyed in a brawl.
@@gokuismymom8553
I agree with you 100%
One of these days we should team up a wreak havoc on an enemy flank. Have a Happy Thanksgiving 🦃
To each their own. Some valid points, but I've had entirely satisfactory and sometimes even good games with most of these ships, so here is my two rubles worth.
Mackenson is a battleCRUISER. That means you use it to kill small fry and try not to get into it much with battleships. BCs are NOT fast battleships, but that's how people keep treating them, both ingame and historically, and this seldom ends well.
Like the Scharnhorst, hate sister ship Gneisenau. The scatter on the G's guns mean it couldn't hit a barn if it was inside, and no amount of buffing can fix this. If I have to play it, best I can do is amp up the Secondaries and pray.
The Shimakaze is a victim of power creep, imo. Used to be pretty good, but we now have a plethora of other Japanese DDs that can do absolutely everything the Shima can, only more so. It is a torpedo-transporter, sure - just like most other high-end Japanese DDs. I've had good games with it, certainly.
If we want to talk truly cr#ppy, let me start by explaining that I like to play all tiers. I'll sometimes have a Tier 1 fight as a warm-up or for a bit of relaxation. The Gryf (the T1 Pan-European ship) is truly horrible for a couple of reasons. First up, it is out of place historically (historical accuracy is not a high priority, I know, but still). It is a minesweeper that was built in 1938, and all otehr ships that tier are pre to early ww1. That deeply offends my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Second, and more to the point, shoot it with anything and it loses 40%+ of its HP in one go. Even by the standards of Tier 1 ships, it is sad verging on tragic.
I dont mind Gniesenau with a full accuracy reload build. I find i get 50k plus damage with 2-3 salvos a lot of the time
I see you used the comment idea. Nice vid man, keep ip the good content!
Indeed haha Thankyou :)
Definitely agree with Shimakaze as #1 I used to fear them but they seem to be captained by the most brain dead players so rarely do I feel threatened anymore.
mackensen is really accurate tho for a battleship
hmm. not in my experience
@@DrGhostTH-cam you must have the wrong commander/ build then or bad rng is which quite possible 🤣
Great video. Play the Collingwood😅
Collingwood; my worst purchase by far.
Gneisenau has a special place in my heart.
Nice Vid Ghost! Could you maybe do a vid on Georgia?
I have the Alaska, Des moines and about to get Yama so what bureaus would you recommend I get next?
Montana and Conqueror!
Excellent video couple of surprises in there. Couple I don't have so will have to see when I get them.
Could not agree more with these picks
No#1 is absolutely correct. I hate Shima as well. Less than optimal guns force a distanced playstyle tossing walls of "skill". If only it had a 3 sec gun reload and only 8 torps. Oh well...
It's concealment is also pretty broken. The TINY nerf it got felt more like the devs mocking us than a any attempt to balance the ship. I've said it before but that ship would still be very competitive at legendary even if you deleted one whole rack of torps.
It's always been weak against any other dd.
The flint I hate those ships just a pea shooter
For me its probably the carnot
That should not be a tier 8, in my opinion
My top 5 most hated ships
#5 Shchors T6 russian LC
#4 Furutaka T4 Japanese LC
#3 Poltava T6 russian Premium BB
#2 kamikaze T4 Japanese DD
#1 kansas T7 USA BB
I agree with some of your pics.
Hawkins is tough to use but its AA is good. shooting down planes is worth a lot of experience. not very consistent but fun.
Makensen is cool.. sonar is nice to have
Gneisenau is not great but with a Lutjens kondo and Gepraette build, you can become a big distraction that can close the range very fast.
My 5 pics would be:
Normandie, New Orleans, Kongo, the Italian cruisers(excluding the Duca d aosta), and, vanguard.
Just can’t agree with your pics. Normandie, at least for me, is one of the most consistent battleships at tier 5. Accurate guns, fast speed, alright armor, never really had a problem with it.
And hating on Vanguard? With the buffs that thing has, it’s one of my favorite tier 7 battleships right now.
Ghost’s pics were aight. Hawkins does suck, Mackenson is pretty good imo. Gneisenau is one of the worst boats in the entire game, so that might be the worst.
I love the Omaha, it's a beast!
I've come to the conclusion that home stereo/theatre speakers and warships in this game share one commonality....the experience with either of them is generally subjective. The beauty of that conclusion is that no one is truly wrong.
I see the Mackensen quite differently than Dr. Ghost Games, in my experience. The side-plating, when angled will bounce bigger shells effectively while its vulnerability to HE shells is a trademark of all German capital ships in the game. They burn baby burn like the disco inferno that they are. Will someone please call the fire department?
I do agree regarding the AA.
If memory serves me correctly, Japan's Tier 6 Ashitaka, which has 16-inch guns, also has a very low AA rating, in fact it may be worse than the Mackensen but I digress.
And yet the Ashitaka is a premium ship...Wargaming should create a "Ashitaka '44" that updates the superstructure with the addition of much better AA but I'm getting off topic...
The thing is this...if a capable CV player focuses on the Mackensen or any ship with very limited AA...there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Even the better AA battleships will get bested by a capable CV player who is focused on you and only you with almost zero personal risk to their ship's overall well-being but i digress.
One person's successful ship can be another's failure of a ship which is the appeal of this game. There are ships that will and will not work for you, just like home speakers.
What I like to see now from Dr. Ghost Games is his Top 3-5 ships that he very much likes to play that are also far less popular if not hated by many players.
For example Metajerk, the legendary King of Krakens on TH-cam loves the Tier 7 Gascogne and has showcased more than one video of how well he can play that ship which the majority of players in this game disregard as a undesirable ship to play that's seldom seen out there.
Awesome list and I appreciate you taking the recommendation to do a top 5 hated ships! I'm in agreement with all of them.
No problem man and thanks for the ideas. Theyre always welcome :)
Eh mackensen could be higher
Well thary are hand looded
Solid list. PE Friedrich and Gneisenau are just terrible...haven't played either in a LONG time
AHH yes the sandiego 😂
Mackenson gave me my first Tier V kraken do its got a spot in my favorites. (Low tier cant handle secondaries lol)
Hello, I don't know, I think Myogi, the Warhammer ships and the new Rasputin are my hated things in the game at the moment
I think zieten is far worst than the makensen
Both completely different tiers
Cheshire...
How the hell are you so far in the game
Been playing for 4 years, thats how lol
Saw you make this video. Idk what to put here
First one here baby
Hell yeah brotha
Mackensen ugly? That hurts my German soul 😅
And I don't give a damn 🤣😅
You heard it here folks, Dr RNG doesn't hate Tiger 59.
Cannot hate a ship I never played 😅
@@DrGhostTH-cam I can actually respect that