World of Warships - First Look: Tier VI British Cruiser HMS Devonshire
22There aren't many true heavy cruisers at Tier VI; HMS Devonshire enters a field that really only contains American USS Pensacola, Italian Trento, and Japanese Aoba. Viewed through that lens, she's a very solid ship.
Defense
+ Devonshire's health pool is nearly tied for best-in-tier amongst tech tree ships, just a hundred points behind Tier VI Italian cruiser Trento. Admiral Graf Spee has far more HP, but she's an outlier at this tier in so many ways that I don't consider it a fair comparison.
+ 16% TDS is best-in-tier for tech tree ships; only Graf Spee's is better.
+ Of all the Tier VI heavy cruisers, Devonshire has the best citadel protection. Now, that's not saying a whole hell of a lot. It's only 114mm here, same as the belt found on Tier VII light cruiser HMS Fiji. But it's far better than the 70-ish mm of citadel armor you find on Pensacola, Aoba, and Trento.
+ As far as AA goes, Devonshire is the best of an otherwise bad lot. I mean, most Tier VI cruisers don't have a lot going in the AA department, but Devonshire has the most raw AA power of any Tier VI cruiser, premium or otherwise. Her long-range aura is pretty good, and her mid-range aura is amazing other than the fact it's shorter-ranged than most (2.5km vs. 3.5km). She's not a soft target for enemy planes.
Offense
+ Similar to Trento, Devonshire packs four turrets of twin-barreled 203mm action. These are pretty good guns. The HE shells hit decently hard and have a solid fire chance, while the AP shells will do good work against enemy cruisers when called to do so. Her overall DPM is very competitive with that of Aoba and Pensacola. Trento is harder to make a direct comparison because of how SAP works, but suffice to say that in terms of her main battery Devonshire is very comparable to the other heavy cruisers in her tier.
+ What makes her a real challenge to play is her 14km base range. This is bloody awful. She barely out-ranges her light cruiser cousin, HMS Leander, and every other heavy cruiser in this tier out-ranges her easily. Most of the LIGHT cruisers at Tier VI out-range Devonshire, such as Dallas, Budyonny, La Galissionere, Nurnberg, De Grasse, and Makarov. Her main battery range is her primary handicap and it's tough to play around.
+ Her torpedo armament is identical to that of Leander: a quadruple-tube launcher on each side of the ship throwing 8km torpedoes with a 61kt speed.
Handling & Detection
+ Further compounding her short main battery range is her below average speed. 31 knots for a mid-tier cruiser is just... bad. There are times that playing Devonshire feels like playing an American standard battleship; it takes you forever to get anywhere, but you have to keep going forward because your range is so bad that you can't hit anyone if you ever slow down.
+ Her handling is a tad on the sluggish side; the turning circle feels a bit large, and the rudder response a bit slow. This is not a ship you can reliably expect to do a lot of torpedo-dodging in.
+ Luckily, her detection is such that it helps make up for some of these other deficiencies. Fully rigged for stealth, Devonshire clocks in at an even 10km detection radius. She's much harder to spot than any other heavy cruiser at Tier VI, which is good, because she's going to need all the help she can get to get into range of her guns!
Consumables
+ Devonshire has access to only Damage Control Party, Repair Party, and Hydroacoustic Search.
+ Her heal is the British regular cruiser heal, same as Leander. Used wisely, these will absolutely keep you her in a game longer than most other same-tier cruisers. The only tech tree cruiser with a heal at Tier VI is HMS Leander; premium-wise, Admiral Graf Spee also gets a heal. Heals on a Tier VI cruiser are very uncommon, so a getting good results out of Devonshire is going to depend partly on good usage of her heals; knowing when to disengage, heal up for a while, then get back into the fight.
+ The hydro is identical to British destroyer hydro, so it's great for defense, but less useful for hunting down targets in smoke.
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