History GameBreaker / WorldOfWarships

* Battlecruiers are a group of ships that at the higher tiers are outside the normal tech tree and are given as reward ships for spending coal, steel, ranked tokens or purchased premium ships. They aren't given their own class they are Cruisers like most simply "cruisers" as far as the game is concerned. Although they do have trade-offs compared to regular Light & Heavy Cruisers, such as having longer reloads on their larger guns, they still have much higher healthpools and their guns are all rounders capable of punching holes in Battleships or Heavy Cruisers, and still having strong HE firepower for use against Light Cruisers & Destroyers. If a cruiser place in the matchmaking is taken on one team by a Battlecruiser like an Alaska or Stalingrad, and on the opposite by one of the weaker cruisers, it can drastically unbalance the game.

* For the May 2020 season of Clan Battles the dominant ship roster was the ''Hakuryu'' Japanese Carrier, 2 of the ''Stalingrad'' super cruiser, and 4 of the Italian Tier 10 ''Venezia'' Heavy Cruiser. It was the first Clan battle season to allow carriers, and ''Hakuryu'' has insanely good AP dive bombers that take gigantic chunks out of large ships. The ''Stalingrad'' is for the reasons mentioned in it's own entry. The ''Venezia'' is taken because it has 5 turrets each with 3 long range guns firing SAP rounds that penetrate at much higher angles than ordinary shells, making angling far less effective, attached to an extremely fast & nimble ship.

* The Russian Battleship line is ship after ship of extremely tanky ships with large health pools, good maneuverability, turret traverses and good weaponry. The two standouts however are the Tier 7 ''Sinop'' and Tier 10 ''Kremlin''. Sinop is tier for tier one of the strongest ships in the entire game and a dominant force in the 16th Ranked Season, while Kremlin is at a minimum in the top 3 best ships in the entire game.

* ''Smolensk'', is a Tier 10 Russian light cruiser with the Smoke Generator consumable and 16 rapid reloading 130mm guns. Like the ''Flint'', ''Smolensk'' can drown enemy ships in a rain of high explosive shells from the safety of a smokescreen or behind an island. The 130mm guns have a very high fire chance even with the old Inertial Fuse skill, it also has torpedoes if a bigger ship tries to close on it as well. It had a "troll" armour scheme that meant that large guns would often pass right through the ship doing minimal damage when they would annihilate other ships. It was also available as a coal ship, making it very easy for players to acquire and having it become a very common ship in higher tier player.

* The Inertia Fuse High Explosive skill turned the game meta into being dominated by fast firing light cruisers, as they became capable of both direct damage and burning ships with fire. It was the biggest reason the likes of the ''Smolensk'' became so reviled, and was such a problem that Wargaming had to dedicate an entire major update of the game to an attempt to fix it.

* ''Belfast'' is considered one of the most overpowered Tier 7 cruisers. ''Belfast'' can fire both AP AND HE shells, already making her far more versatile, she can also take smokescreen, hydroacoustic search, AND radar consumables at the same time! It was also somehow given access to the Tier 8 upgrade slot, allowing her to mount the Concealment Module. With a full stealth build, ''Belfast'' can reduce her detection range to 8.7km. Combined with the fact that her radar has a range of 8.5km, ''Belfast'' becomes the ultimate destroyer hunter.

** The only major counter to a CV is what s commonly known as the "899 Division", which requires a Tier 8 Carrier like the Graff Zepplin in a division with 2 Musashi battleships. The CV flies it's ships to the enemy carrier to spot them, and the Mushashi uses it's long range guns + spotter plane to shoot and kill the enemy carrier, which can't shoot down the enemy planes quickly enough to stop it getting stomped. This tactic has a limitation however, in that it doesn't work at Tier 6 because ships that match with a Tier 6 Carrier don't have the long range, and it doesn't work at Tier 10 because the Tier 10 carriers have armoured decks that prevent them getting massively penetrated.

** ''Kidd'' earned a reputation as being one of the most powerful Tier 8 destroyers in the game. A modified Tier 9 ''Fletcher'' with one torpedo launcher, she makes up for the lack of torpedo power with an insanely high AA rating for her tier and the Repair Party consumable. The ability to heal herself means that ''Kidd'' can afford to be extremely aggressive in destroyer fights and take fights that would normally get any other destroyer sunk. Her extremely high AA rating, combined with Defensive AA Fire, allows her to mow down even Tier 10 aircraft.

* The Tier 9 American battleship ''Georgia'', like the ''Missouri'', is essentially a superior variant of ''Iowa''. Instead of radar, ''Georgia'' gets eight 457mm guns, long range fast reloading secondaries, an improved repair party consumable, and a speed boost which is normally the reserve of the French ships, that can have it's active time extended with a coal bought premium modification. This gives Georgia a massive amount of utility, as the 457mm guns allow her to overmatch the armor of almost every cruiser in the game, her improved secondary armament is more efficient than those of the German battleships against everything except other battleships, and her speed boost allows her to quickly re-position anywhere on the map, or charge down a weak flank, as it reaches high speeds that match ''Destroyers''. As a Tier 9 Premium Battleship, it also has a very high potential for making credits. The major reasons it isn't as big a problem as other ships are that it's not very common, requires a captain spec'd outside the usual US Battleship line spec to use properly and still needs a good captain to avoid getting sunk while charging at the enemy.

* Warships has many premium ships that are blatantly superior to the tech tree ships:
** ''Imperator Nikolai I'', an attempt to create a Tier IV battleship that can fight in Tier VI matches, which ended up being so overpowered that Wargaming decided that the ship will ''never'' be on sale again. Carrier players are well advised to target any enemy ''Nikolai'' first, as its awful AA defense is its only real weakness compared to other battleships of its tier, and the longer it's left alive the more friendly ships it can wreck. Some of the things that make ''Nikolai'' so powerful include the fact that its unusual turret arrangement allows for 9 out of its 12 guns to be brought to bear while heavily angled, combined with its armored belt extending all the way to the bow (where it's 100mm in thickness). While the bow plating above the belt can be overmatched by 14" guns, shells hitting the front of ''Nikolai''[='=]s bow at the waterline will ''always'' bounce. With 100mm thickness, even '''''Yamato''[='=]s''' shells would autobounce when hitting bow-on. ''Nikolai'' also has deck armor of precisely the right thickness (35mm) to guarantee that cruisers within its matchmaking spread will ''always'' do zero damage with HE if they hit the deck (though zero-damage HE hits can still start fires). Normally the solution to this is to aim at the superstructure (the best place in general to aim at a battleship when you're in something other than a battleship), but ''Nikolai'' '''barely has a superstructure'''. The only places a cruiser can shoot ''Nikolai'' and do any HE damage at all are the bow plating (so long as the shells don't go low and splatter off that belt) and the funnels, the latter being such a tiny target that you'll only ever hit them by accident. Bear in mind that HE is the standard method for a cruiser to do damage against a battleship, since unless it's completely broadside-on to them their AP will have a hard time penetrating. In addition, ''Nikolai'' also has some of the most accurate guns ''in the entire game'', having a 2.0 Sigma rating [[note]]Basically a measure of the shell's propensity to end up at the center of the aiming ellipse. The higher, the more likely shells will end up where you're aiming[[/note]], making more accurate than some ''Tier X ships''. The funny thing is that when ''Nikolai'' was introduced few players suspected that it would be strong, since they didn't notice just how angled the ship could be while still getting most of its guns to bear, the guns have a quite low rate of fire (35 second reload) and just looking at the maximum thickness numbers (this was before armor viewer was introduced to the game) made ''Nikolai''[='=]s armor seem like it was merely average for Tier IV. What makes matters worse is that a later patch changed matchmaking to guarantee that Tier IV ships would never be put into games with Tier VI ships, meaning ''Nikolai'' ironically never has to face the ships it was specifically designed to fight, making it all the more powerful.
** ''Gremyashchy'', the Tier V premium Soviet destroyer. It was considered as balanced in closed beta due to its great gun performance being offset by having the worst turret traverse speed for a destroyer (36 seconds for the B-13 turret to rotate 180 degrees) and torpedo range (8km) being between ''Minekaze'' (when equipped with its longer-ranged, but slower, 10km torpedoes) and ''Nicholas''...then Lesta removed the 10km torpedo from ''Minekaze'', globally buff turn radius which indirectly nerfed US destroyers due to higher difficulty of hitting enemy because US DD's bad shell velocity for their 5-inchers was only balanced for pre-buff turning radius, and after Russian destroyers have their guns nerfed[[note]]By increasing the ship's post-firing detection bloom from 3.9km to 5.4km, for ALL the Russian destroyers. A May patch would tone down the nerf for the early tier 102mm-armed ships, but it (4.2km) would still be greater than the post-fire bloom for the ''Gremyashchy'', and greater than a [=USN=] or [=IJN=] destroyer with the same caliber guns.[[/note]] , said nerf didn't touch the ''Gremyashchy'', which end up resulting in the ''Gremyashchy'' becoming ''the'' most powerful Tier V destroyer in the game. If you're not sure how bad it is, Tier VI ''Anshan'' is basically uptiered ''Gremyashchy'' with nary any stat changes (though it shares the post-nerf detection bloom as the other 130mm-armed Russian destroyers on the tech tree) and it can ''still'' compete. Finally, all three Close Beta access ships (the ''Gremyaschchy'', ''Sims'', and ''Yuubari'') have a 1 year exclusivity period before they will be on sale again...then Wargaming came out and say that they're very reluctant to put the ''Gremyaschchy'' on sale again, unlike the other two. However, as of Patch 0.6.2, stealth firing has been removed which significantly brings down ''Gremyaschchy's'' power level. But even after that, ''Gremyaschchy'' is '''still''' basically a better version of ''Gnevny''. Sitting at Tier 5 while ''Gnevny'' is Tier 6.
** ''Atago'' is the only non-British cruiser below Tier IX that gets the Repair Party consumable[[note]]it can restore it's HP mid-battle[[/note]], and even more importantly it's got amazing stealth for a cruiser. Its base detection range is 11.5km, which by itself is excellent. Not only is this the best concealment of any cruiser at its tier, it's the best from ''all cruisers Tier V and up''. On top of that as a Tier VIII ship it can mount the Concealment System Modification (10% reduction in detection range), dropping down to 10.3km. With the Concealment Expert captain skill (another 12% off detection range), it drops down to 9km detection. Its torpedo range is 10km, giving it the ability to fire torpedoes from stealth, something that is otherwise exclusive to destroyers. This stealthiness also gives the ''Atago'' a decent range band in which it can fire its guns without being detected, which is an incredibly powerful ability. While its armor isn't great[[note]]Though it is substantially better than that of its tech tree counterpart, the Mogami. Not only is the citadel armor thicker on the Atago but it has its torpedo blister cover most of the citadel giving it an extra layer of protection.[[/note]] and its gun layout is not ideal, an ''Atago'' trailing a few kilometers behind a friendly destroyer and stealth-sniping everything it detects can be devastating. As for ''why'' War Gaming made it so good...[[note]]Basically its designed to be a game breaker because it replaced the premium Kitakami. This was the first time War Gamming has ever completely removed a premium; their normal policy was to just not sell unbalanced vehicles ever again. So to make sure everyone who paid for a kitakami was happy, they made a ship that was a pure upgrade over its tech tree counterpart[[/note]]
** ''Flint'', a Tier VII premium American cruiser that's the reward ship for getting Rank 1 in 3 separate seasons of Ranked Battles. It's a modified ''Atlanta'' that loses the wing turrets (thus 2 fewer guns per broadside) in favor of better overall AA. Okay, nothing OP about that. ''Atlanta'' has massive DPM potential but falls firmly in the DifficultButAwesome. Its torpedoes have just over double the range of ''Atlanta''[='=]s. Useful, but still not OP since it can't fire from stealth. Or can it? Here's where the game gets broken wide open. While neither the torpedoes nor the guns have the range to attack targets without being detected in the open, ''Flint'' is just one of three non-British cruisers in the game that can lay a smokescreen. And it's an ''amazingly good'' smokescreen, giving 2 and a half minutes of invisibility and once the smoke dissipates there will only be 30 seconds left on the cooldown before it can lay ''another'' smokescreen (if premium consumables are used). A destroyer firing out of a smokescreen and lighting ships on fire with HE shells can be extremely dangerous, especially fast-firing American and Russian destroyers. ''Flint'' doing the same thing is equivalent to ''two'' invisible Tier X ''Gearing''s firing from invisibility...against Tier VII opponents. To make matters worse, as a reward ship ''only'' highly skilled players can even get their hands on a ''Flint'' and thus anybody playing it will likely be able to get the most out of it. The introduction of the Inertia Fuse for HE Shells (IFHE) skill just makes ''Flint'' even stronger, allowing the HE to cause direct damage whenever it hits armor plating up to 27mm[[note]]Without the skill it can penetrate only up to 21mm, which results in a ''lot'' of zero-damage hits.[[/note]]...which is what the extremities and decks of most Tier VII and below battleships are covered in. And then the IFHE skill got buffed, so that instead of losing 3% of its fire chance, ''Flint'' and every other ship with 139mm or smaller guns the reduction is only a paltry 1%.
** ''Kamikaze'' and its Halloween-themed twin ''Fujin'' have now joined ''Nikolai'' and ''Gremyashchy'' on Wargaming's "too OP to sell" list. (''Kamikaze R'', a reward ship version of ''Kamakize'', was only ever available once to begin with.) The very similar ''Minekaze'' was still considered overpowered after losing its 10km torpedoes, because of its stealthiness and the 7km torps being quite fast at 68 knots. This changed in November 2016, when the 68 knot torps were replaced with 57 knot ones that also do less damage. This transformed ''Minekaze'' from one of the best non-premium destroyers to one of the worst. But while ''Minekaze'' got dramatically nerfed, the ''Kamikaze'' triplets...didn't. As usual, premiums don't get nerfed. Basically they're the same ships as the pre-nerf ''Minekaze'', with the main difference being that they're ''even stealthier''. Their performance (in terms of win rates and damage dealt) is so close to ''Gremyashchy'' as to be statistically insignificant. While they're much more specialized than ''Gremyashchy'' and would be at a distinct disadvantage against it in a 1-on-1 duel, they're '''very''' good at what they specialize in: being ninja torpedo assassins.
** ''Belfast'' is generally considered to be the most overpowered Tier VII cruiser. First of all, unlike her regular British counterparts, ''Belfast'' can fire both AP AND HE shells, already making her far more versatile. Not only that, but she can also take smokescreen, hydroacoustic search, AND radar consumables at the same time! Finally, for some inexplicable reason, ''Belfast'' also has access to the Tier VIII upgrade slot, allowing her to mount the Concealment Module. With a full stealth build, ''Belfast'' can reduce her detection range to 8.7km. Combined with the fact that her radar has a range of 8.5km, and ''Belfast'' becomes the ultimate destroyer hunter. If a ''Belfast'' is detected by an unseen destroyer, it needs only to pop the radar and within a couple of seconds the destroyer will also be detected. In addition, with the sheer number of consumable she can mount, a popular tactic for ''Belfast'' players is to deploy their smokescreen and then use their hydroacoustic search to detect incoming torpedoes while using their radar to detect threats to fire out. If positioned close enough to the enemy, ''Belfast'' can (unlike nearly all other ships) reliably spot for itself from inside of smoke. Suffice to say, even though ''Belfast'' has relatively weak guns, her ability to fire from within smoke and the sheer fire rate of 12 such guns gives her massive damage potential. And then there's the prevalence of multi-''Belfast'' divisions, staggering their smoke to remain hidden and staggering their radar to spot the enemy more frequently. Another popular choice is to include 1 ''Fiji'' or ''Atlanta'' with 2 ''Belfast''s in a division; while they can only provide either smoke (''Fiji'') or radar (''Atlanta'') rather than both at once like ''Belfast'', their torpedoes cover the the one major weakness of ''Belfast'' by providing an immediate alpha strike in case a battleship charges headlong into the smokescreen.
** ''Mikhail Kutuzov'' was added to the banned premium list despite once being considered quite underpowered [[note]]She was released shortly after a major mechanical overhaul when it came to light cruisers and the devs didn't change her stats accordingly[[/note]]. She really doesn't look like much, most mistake her for ''Chapayev'' that trades radar for smoke. However the ''Kutuzov'' boasts ''way'' better torpedoes and has a lower citadel that puts her among the talkiest cruisers of her tier. To top it off she has the best AA of cruisers in her tier and can mount defensive fire and smoke at the same time. This makes her counter-intuitively a much better open water cruiser than not only ''Chapayev'' but most its tier mates as well, but she still gets a smoke screen if she needs one. To top it off ''Kutuzov'''s guns have vastly superior range to the other tier VIII cruisers and remains accurate up to the maximum range of her guns. The end result is a rapid fire sniper that's very good in a brawl and can disappear in a puff of smoke three times a game. Quite literally no ship type is strong against a ''Kutuzov''. Battleships can't hit her, she can murder Destroyers in a second, outrage other cruisers, and shoot down every plane flying near her.
** ''Kidd'' has quickly earned a reputation as being one of the most powerful Tier VIII destroyers in the game. She is essentially a Tier IX ''Fletcher'' with one torpedo launcher, but she makes up for the lack of torpedo power with an insanely high AA rating for her tier and the inclusion of the Repair Party consumable. The ability to heal herself means that ''Kidd'' can afford to be extremely aggressive in destroyer fights and take fights that would normally get any other destroyer sunk. Her extremely high AA rating, combined with Defensive AA Fire, allows her to mow down even Tier X aircraft.
** ''Giulio Cesare'' is widely considered to be the most overpowered Tier V battleship. Specifically designed to be able to stand up to Tier VII ships, ''Giulio Cesare'' is fast, maneuverable, well armored, and has very accurate guns. However, the fact that she can take on Tier VII ships means that she is leagues above her fellow Tier V ships, making her extremely overpowered at her tier.
** ''Missouri'' is basically a carbon copy of ''Iowa'' in all respects except for one critical difference: ''Missouri'' can mount the radar consumable. Suffice to say, having radar means ''Missouri'' can more easily engage and sink destroyers, which are supposed to be the intended counter to battleships. And since ''Missouri'' still retains ''Iowa's'' thick armor and high AA protection, she has very few (if any) weaknesses.
** When initially introduced, ''Lo Yang'' was seen as a SoOkayItsAverage version of ''Benson'' that traded a gun turret for the ability to use a short ranged Hydro-acoustic Search that would help her detect torpedoes more easily. However, Wargaming decided to increase the effective range of the Hydro-acoustic search from a lowly 3km to a whopping 5.4km. To put this in perspective, the only other Tier VIII destroyer with Hydro-acoustic Search, ''Z-23'', can only detect ships at 4.4km. This makes ''Lo Yang'' outright better at flushing enemy ships out of smokescreens or detecting them behind islands, and makes her the uncontested capture point queen if she faces only equal or lower tier destroyers.
** ''Stalingrad'' is a TX premium Russian cruiser that is essentially a ''Moskva'' with battleship caliber guns. While this isn't automatically overpowered by itself, ''Stalingrad'' has improved AP penetration angles on her shells with a faster fuse arming time and a whopping ''2.65 sigma value'', which is the highest sigma value of any ship in the entire game. This makes Stalingrad's guns insanely accurate, and the combination of her high AP penetration and improved penetration angles means she can deal massive damage to even angled ships. Her radar and faster fuse time allows her to easily deal with destroyers. Her ''Mosvka'' level armor lets her repel most types of damage, including the 460mm shells from ''Yamato''. The cherry on top is like the ''Black'' and ''Flint'', ''Stalingrad'' is only available to the top performing players who reach the highest Clan Battle ranks.
** ''Musashi'' is literally ''Yamato'' at Tier IX, with slightly less sigma and significantly less AA protection, but still keeps the signature 460mm guns, heavy armor protection, and massive HP pool. This makes ''Musashi'' insanely overpowered if she happens to be top tier, since other Tier IX battleships don't have the special stats or gimmicks the Tier X battleships possess to combat ''Yamato''. This doesn't even consider the poor Tier VII ships that may end up facing her! In addition, just like ''Missouri'' is basically an ''Iowa'' with radar, making her better by default, ''Musashi'' is better than her silver Tier IX counterpart ''Izumo'' in every conceivable way.
** ''Smolensk'' is essentially the Tier X equivalent of ''Kutuzov'' on steroids. Like ''Kutuzov'', ''Smolensk'' has the Smoke Generator consumable but trades out the 12 152mm guns with 16 rapid reloading 130mm guns. Very much like the ''Flint'', ''Smolensk'' can drown enemy ships in a rain of high explosive shells from the safety of a smokescreen. In addition, unlike the ''Flint'' whose guns have a poor chance of setting fires, ''Smolensk's'' guns have a very high fire chance for their caliber, giving it a better ability to deal with battleships.
** ''Colbert'' is almost equally as gamebreaking as ''Smolensk'' in a similar fashion. This Tier X light cruiser is armed with 16 rapid reloading 127mm guns which it can use to rain HE down on enemies. Unlike ''Smolensk'', ''Colbert'' does not have a Smoke Generator, but makes up for this by having an incredibly efficient Repair Party that is comparable to the one used by ''Minotaur''.
** The Tier IX American battleship ''Georgia'', like the ''Missouri'', is essentially a superior variant of ''Iowa''. Instead of radar, ''Georgia'' gets 8 457mm guns, long range fast reloading secondaries, an improved repair party consumable, and speed boost. This gives Georgia a massive amount of utility, as the 457mm guns allow her to overmatch the armor of almost every cruiser in the game, her improved secondary armament is more efficient than those of the German battleships against everything except other battleships, and her speed boost allows her to quickly reposition anywhere on the map.
* Nearly all premium battleships are game breakers from economical standpoint. Battleships earn money at a higher rate than than other ships which is normally offset by the fact that they have high repair costs and have to put their hit points in the game to be effective. Premium ships multiply the amount of credits earned and reduce repair costs. This allows premium battleships to rake in piles of credits.
*** The T9 (which itself is better than T10 for credit generation) Premium Battleship Missouri is the best ship in the game for generated credits because it has a two times multiplier for credit generation, unlike the other ships which only have 1.5 times at best.
** For similar reasons, if you're dying to get a premium camouflage, you will get better saving and earnings for battleships and aircraft carriers than you will other ships.
* Most of the Soviet era cruisers, which have some of the highest win rates in the game. While all but the tier X one are poorly armored compared to American and Japanese standards (and substandard turning circle and rudder shift), they are still better armored than the Germans and have sizable health pools. This isn't really a problem for Soviet cruisers though, since they all have excellent long range guns. The problem is that they also can do well if forced into a knife fight, as they are equipped with fast "knife-fighting" torpedoes and their guns have good traverse speed, and their AP rounds have deceptively high penetration.
* The ''Shimakaze'' was a very big one until it was recently re balanced. Like all Japanese destroyers it has a torpedo range that exceeds its detection range, but none can quite compare to ''Shimakaze'' with a torp range of 20km and a ''stock'' surface detection range of 7.6 km. What made this overpowered is that these torps were also blindingly fast and it can put 15 of them in the water in a single salvo, which combining with their low detection range makes it extremely hard to dodge them. This has since been rectified by increasing detection range of the long range torpedoes and decreasing their speed. ''Shimakaze'' players now have to choose between fast torpedoes with short range and lower detection range (which does put them in enemy radar range) and ones with extremely long range but with slower speed and high detection range that are therefore easy to dodge. It's generally held by ''Shimakaze'' players that Wargaming overcompensated for its previous GameBreaker status by going too far with the nerfs.
* The ''Khabarovsk'' is now considered to be one the bigger ones because its it is a much better brawler than any other destroyer. While it already had the most guns of any tier ten DD and had incredible shell characteristics combined with high speed, this was at least somewhat balanced out by its poor detection range and the extra firing bloom penalty that Russian destroyers got. However after the split of the Soviet destroyer line it was given the ability to trade its smoke screen for damage repair and all Russian DD guns were given an extra 200 points of HE damage. Now no other DD has even close to its gun DPM and can't beat it in a damage trade with its healing ability. While you would think the loss of smoke would make it vulnerable to cruisers, its fast speed allows it leave any situation where it would be vulnerable very quickly, along with making it difficult to aim at (often you have to aim so far ahead of a ''Khabarovsk'' that it's '''no longer on the screen''' to account for its extreme speed). To top it off its torpedo armament may be substandard but is still workable so bigger ships will still have to keep their distance. In addition, the ''Khabarovsk'' is both the most heavily armored destroyer in the game and the fastest ''ship'' in the game. Unlike other destroyers, which are completely composed of 13-19mm of armor, the ''Khabarovsk'' has a whopping '''50mm''' of armor on a large portion of her hull, making her practically immune to low caliber guns and highly resistant to larger caliber guns of up to 203mm. This armor protection combined with her extremely high 40+ knot speed make the Khabarovsk almost impossible to hit and damage, much less sink. The presence of that 50mm belt armor and a larger HP pool than any other destroyer has led many players to say it's not actually a destroyer at all, declaring ''Khabarovsk'' to be the best light cruiser in the game, especially after the repair party option makes it play even ''more'' like a light cruiser.
** Wargaming has responded by nerfing ''Khabarovsk'' several times...but they refuse to touch that 50mm armor. Instead they greatly increased the rudder shift time to slower than most cruisers at 11.1 seconds (making it practically mandatory to mount the Steering Gears Modification 3 upgrade instead of trying to mitigate its lack of stealth with Concealment System Modification 1) to impede close-range brawling with enemy DDs. Then they removed the option to mount 8km range torpedoes, requiring the use of suicidally short range 6km torps that are also very slow (but cause a lot of damage). This means that aside from surprise encounters when sailing around an island, the torpedoes will pretty much never be used. While these changes ''have'' closed the performance gap, they've also made ''Khabarovsk'' even less of a destroyer than it already was. It's not good for contesting caps and isn't particularly good at hunting enemy DDs (because they'll all spot it ''long'' before being spotted themselves and run in the other direction), and since repair party is usually the better option it can't lay smokescreens for its allies. But it's great at peppering cruisers and battleships from maximum range and using its speed, armor and repair party to survive any return fire, pretty much keeping the guns firing for an entire battle and burning down as many ships as possible.
* To those who think the ''Flint'' is already bad, say hi to the ''Black'', Tier IX American Destroyer that can only be acquired by getting to Tier 1 in ''5'' ranked seasons. She's a ''Fletcher'' with a higher damage torpedo that goes extremely slowly...and gets a radar. This means that she can easily flush out other destroyer from their smoke at ''much'' longer range than the German destroyers (who have to rely on hydro for that job). Even a nerf to her radar range and duration doesn't make people think she's balanced. The radar range might've been nerfed but it's still greater than the ship's own detection range, making it the only ship in the game capable of stealth-radaring enemy destroyers in open water. And its carrying both smoke and radar at the same time means ''Black'' can also self-spot from inside its own smokescreen, an ability shared only by ''Belfast'' (considered overpowered in its own right, but at least ''Belfast'' has '''some''' weaknesses). Repeated calls (including from the very unicum players who were going to be among the first to receive a ''Black'' of their own) to put the radar in the same consumable slot as smoke instead of letting it carry both simultaneously were ignored.
* ''Fletcher'' is by far considered the most powerful non-premium, non-Soviet destroyer in the game. Her fast firing, fast turning, accurate guns means she can defeat any other destroyer in a close range fight. Her extremely good stealth rating makes her able to sneak up and ambush even Japanese destroyers. Her good AA rating and the ability to take the Defensive Fire consumable means she can defend herself from air attacks or quickly eliminate scout planes (and unlike preceding American destroyers, ''Fletcher'' doesn't have to sacrifice the 5th gun turret to gain Defensive Fire). Her long range, fast moving, fast reloading, and highly stealthy torpedoes also allows her to effectively engage larger ships to a much better degree than even her Japanese counterparts. In short, ''Fletcher'' is a jack of all trades and master of all of them. To the point that it's considered debatable whether the Tier X ''Gearing'' is actually an upgrade over ''Fletcher''.[[note]]While ''Gearing'' very obviously outguns ''Fletcher'' (6 guns with 3 second reload compared to 5 guns with 3.34 second reload, and a better layout of the gun turrets to boot), ''Fletcher'' is more agile, slightly stealthier and has overall better torpedoes (''Gearing''[='=]s torps have longer range at 16.5km, but the 10.5km range of ''Fletcher''[='=]s is usually more than adequate and they do more damage and reload faster than ''Gearing''[='=]s.[[/note]]
* The ''Clemson'' is by far the most powerful Tier IV destroyer. When fully upgraded, ''Clemson'' make all four of her guns double barrelled, effectively doubling her firepower. This means that she can potentially bring six guns to bear on a target when other destroyers can only get three to five. Plus, three of her turrets are mounted on her front arc, so she can point directly at her opponent to minimize her profile while still being able to consistently get four guns on her target, while other destroyers can only manage one or two if they try the same tactic. Coupled with her high speed, ''Clemson'' is capable of chasing down and outgunning any destroyer she can face, and she's only grown more powerful now that Tier IV ships have protected matchmaking against Tier VI. Due to her superior firepower and the fact she is not a premium ship, ''Clemson'' has become a favorite among sealclubbers. Even moreso after the main competitor at Tier IV, the Japanese ''Isokaze'', got her previously slightly overpowered torpedoes substantially nerfed.
* The Tier IX and X Japanese carriers ''Taiho'' and ''Hakuryu'' are widely hated among non-CV players (and among players of American CVs for that matter), mainly due to their ability to bring three squadrons of torpedo bombers. With three squadrons, ''Taiho'' and ''Hakuryu'' players can simply stack the drops on top of each other to deal massive damage to larger ships, or cross drop them in multiple angles to get hits on smaller more nimble ships.
* The ''Saipan'' is considered the most overpowered Tier VII carrier since she carriers Tier IX planes. Naturally, Tier IX planes have much higher stats than Tier VII planes, and are more resistant to anti-aircraft fire from Tier VII ships. With faster and more powerful fighters, a ''Saipan'' can easily seize control of the skies. This was compounded in a later update where carriers could disengage their fighter squadrons from a dogfight using the oddly-named "strafe" mechanic[[note]]Normally used to target a specific area of the sky for a fighter squadron to sweep through with guns blazing, shooting at everything in their path (yes, including any friendly planes that have the misfortune of being there) rather than targeting a specified enemy squadron. Nobody seems to know why it's called "strafe" when it bears no resemblance to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafing the real-life tactic of that name]].[[/note]] but would have to suffer the automatic loss of one plane, but the ''Saipan'' was specifically exempted from this downside, so her fighter squadrons can disengage freely.
* The Tier IX and X British battleships ''Lion'' and ''Conqueror'' have quickly been seen as this shortly after being introduced to the game, as they beat their other similar tier battleships in almost every parameter. Their HE shells have double the damage and fire chance, their AP shells have better normalization angles and short fuses to reduce overpenetrations, they have extremely high concealment that's better than half the equal tier cruisers, their citadels are underwater making them practically impossible to hit, and they have extremely powerful repair party consumables that can heal up to 60% of their HP in mere seconds. Coupled with the fact that the ships have no clear weaknesses, it's not surprising that they have shot up to the top of the leaderboards just weeks after being implemented.
* The Tier VIII, IX and X Japanese gunboat destroyers ''Akizuki'', ''Kitakaze'' and ''Harugumo'' are considered highly overpowered since Wargaming changed the HE shells of their 100mm guns (the smallest main gun caliber in the game) to have 25mm of armor penetration [[note]]Typically, HE armor penetration is calculated by dividing the caliber of the gun by 6, so 100/6 = 16.7mm of armor penetration. However, Wargaming changed it so their penetration would be 1/4 of their caliber instead, so 100/4 = 25mm.[[/note]]. While this was intended to allow the Japanese gunboats to deal with enemy destroyers without requiring the use of the IFHE skill, taking IFHE with the new guns allows them to penetrate 32mm of armor, meaning their HE shells basically ignore almost all cruiser armor and all battleship extremity armor, something only 203mm guns or IFHE boosted 152mm guns are capable of doing. While this extreme gunpower is supposed to be offset by the gunboats' relatively slow speed, poor handling, and large size, these downsides don't appear to be affecting their overall stats, which put them almost equal to the other Gamebreaker destroyers like ''Khabvarosk'' and ''Yueyang''.
* The Russian battleship line in general has been accused of this due to most of the ships in the line having significantly more armor protection than any other battleship. For example, most of the higher tier Russian battleships sport '''60mm''' deck and upper belt armor, which renders them completely immune to most HE shells and are impossible to overmatch with AP shells of any caliber. This is generally balanced with Russian battleship guns supposedly having poor accuracy and very vulnerable citadels, but two of the battleships, Tier VII ''Sinop'' and Tier X ''Kremlin'', stand out.
** ''Sinop'' is considered highly overpowered for Tier VII since she is fast, well armored, and has 406mm guns. Her fast speed means she can outrun most Tier VII battleships like ''Colorado'', and her 406mm guns means she can easily overmatch the 25mm extremity armor on all Tier VII battleships while her superior armor makes it difficult for other battleships to deal damage if they can't hit the citadel.
** ''Kremlin'' is widely considered to be the most overpowered Tier X tech tree battleship to date. Not only does she sport heavy armor that makes her almost invulnerable to all but the heaviest of guns, but unlike the other Russian ships in previous tiers, her citadel is very well armored to the point that despite being one of the largest citadels in the game, even battleship guns have trouble penetrating it from range. This makes ''Kremlin'' almost impossible to defeat in a head on engagement.
* In terms of captain skills, there is general consensus that the Inertia Fuse High Explosive (IFHE) skill makes any ship with low caliber guns a potential GameBreaker. Due to how it works[[note]]HE shell penetration is calculated by dividing the caliber of the gun by 6 and rounding down. For German battleship and (as of 0.6.6.) cruiser HE, however, they divide by 4 instead. IFHE increases HE shell penetration by 30%.[[/note]], IFHE allows low caliber guns of up to 155mm to penetrate large sections of battleships with their HE shells that they weren't able to before, significantly boosting their damage potential for the relatively minor (for 150-155mm guns) loss of 3% fire chance. The biggest winners from the introduction of IFHE are considered to be a pair of already very powerful premium cruisers, ''Belfast'' at Tier VII and ''Mikhail Kutuzov'' at Tier VIII, followed by ''Mogami'' with the stock 155mm guns equipped (particularly after patch 0.6.4 when 155 ''Mogami''[='=]s previously horrific turret traverse was buffed to a reasonable level) and ''Atlanta''/''Flint'' (whose 127mm guns more often than not caused zero damage when firing at battleships because of their small diameter; 3% lose in fire chance is huge for shells that only have 5% chance to begin with). It's also considered practically mandatory for the Tier VIII Japanese destroyer ''Akizuki'', whose [[MoreDakka 8 fast-firing 100mm guns]] are incredibly lethal against Tier VII and lower destroyers but struggle to do damage against Tier VIII and above...until IFHE is applied, at which point not even Tier '''X''' destroyers are safe if they encounter an ''Akizuki'' at knife-fighting range.
** When first introduced for testing, IFHE was considered a pretty lackluster skill. Instead of a relatively minor 3% reduction in fire chance it had a near-crippling (for 155mm or less shells) 6%[[note]]For ''Atlanta'' that would reduce fire change to '''0%'''![[/note]] and only a 25% instead of 30% increase in penetration (which is just barely too little to allow a 152mm HE shell to penetrate 32mm the extremity armor that's so common on high-tier battleships). The seemingly small buff in the 2nd round of testing to the current version of the skill changed it from questionable value to borderline overpowered, even with the change from a 3-point to 4-point skill making it more expensive to employ. Then in update 0.6.11 the IFHE skill was buffed for guns of 139mm or lower caliber. While it's unchanged for larger-caliber guns, or DD-caliber guns the lose in fire chance is now only 1%, making even more of a no-brainer mandatory skill for ''Akizuki'' and ''Atlanta''/''Flint'' (as well as HSF ''Harekaze'' if the 100mm gun option is chosen), and possibly even a viable choice for Tier V through VII American and Russian destroyers and the Polish Tier VII ''Błyskawica''.
* During the Closed Beta Test era, aircraft carriers in general were a ''notorious'' game-breaker, with such overwhelming strike potential that CV players would actually deliberately get their bombers shot down after completing a strike, because that allowed new squadrons to get in the air faster than flying back to the carrier, and each strike was an almost guaranteed kill of an enemy ship. Not helped by the fact that the matchmaking was much worse at that time, meaning a Tier X CV could easily get to pick on Tier VI enemies, and there wasn't even any guarantee that the enemy team would have a carrier of its own to counter them. A big part of the reason that [=CVs=] are considered to be in bad shape in the live version of the game is that the changes made to address this problem rendered them the hardest ships in the game to play well. The problem now is that a CV in the hands of an expert is ''almost'' as broken as the CBT-era [=CVs=], but a CV in the hands of anything less than an expert is much weaker than before. This means that any team lucky enough to get a Unicum CV player on their side has dramatically higher odds of winning.
** Update 0.6.14 gave major buffs to non-premium American [=CVs=] (which had been notoriously underpowered relative to their Japanese counterparts since the Open Beta Test, finally removing the much-reviled unbalanced plane loadouts (which required the player to choose either an air superiority package with minimal anti-ship power, or a strike package with no fighters at all and thus completely at the mercy of the enemy CV) and also adding the option of AP bombs for their dive bombers at Tier VIII and up. In the process of this the Tier X ''Midway'' gained a second torpedo bomber squadron (the first time since CBT that any American CV could field 12 torpedo bombers at a time), which combined with AP bombs make it arguably even ''more'' broken than it was during its CBT notoriety. Tellingly, the week after 0.6.14 was the first time in the game's history that ''Midway'' averaged a higher win rate than the Japanese Tier X ''Hakuryu'' (itself previously seen as a GameBreaker), along with averaging 15-20 thousand more damage inflicted per battle.

* It can be argued that back when it was Tier VI, the ''Cleveland'' was this and/or a TierInducedScrappy. This was partly due to being a WWII-era design with armor and displacement equal to or greater than most ''heavy cruisers'' put in a tier where everything else is a 1920s-1930s "Treaty" design with severely compromised firepower and protection. [[note]]Currently, the game puts most light cruisers at lower tiers while putting all heavy cruisers at the higher tier, no matter the date of contruction.[[/note]] Unsuprisingly, the ship has a sort-of divisive status between players. [[note]]WG is planning on adding a separate US Light Cruiser line in order to remedy this dilemma, with the introduction of an all light cruiser line for the Royal Navy being seen as a preview/test of how light cruisers will fare at the highest tiers.[[/note]] The introduction of Russian cruisers mellowed this a bit, however, since the Budyonny has strong performance on Tier 6 too, or the introduction of the ''Molotov'' which is uptiered ''Kirov'' with Tier IX ''Dmitri Donskoi'''s guns...
* Unlike ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'', where Premium tanks may have superior performance to stock tanks of equivalent tiers, but not so much to the max upgraded ones, Warships seems to have several premium ships that are just plain superior to their line counterparts[[labelnote:As for why Lesta/Wargaming didn't nerf them]]Basically they're afraid of disgruntled customers trying to initiate chargeback against them, or that they would completely stop purchasing any other contents, plus regardless of what the terms of service say about the player not actually "owning" premiums they pay for, in terms of the European server Lesta likely worries about running afoul of the European Union's strong consumer protection laws.[[/labelnote]]. Notably:

** ''Tirpitz'', the Tier VIII German battleship, is the most expensive premium ship in the entire game, and it certainly has the performance to back it up. The reason it's so strong is because it wasn't play tested in its current form. The developers had modeled and had balanced her more famous sister the ''Bismark'' with the intention of building a whole German battleship line in the near future. It was decided that adding a premium German BB would help promote this line, and turning their work on ''Bismark'' into ''Tirpitz'' was the easiest way to do that. The problem is that Tirpitz was heavily modified during construction after the famous loss of her sister, which allowed ''Tirpitz'' to be superior the the ''Bismark'' in many ways but not suffering any consequences for those improvements. So ''Tirpitz'' ended up getting more AA, a much better rudder, and ''torpedo launchers'' with no negative effects. While the 6km range of the torpedoes is nothing special, in a close-range brawl (''Tirpitz''[='=]s specialty) their high damage output makes them basically equivalent to getting citadel penetrations with all 4 forward guns. To make matters worse the German BB line and with it the free ''Bismarck'' were postponed in favor of other ship lines, making ''Tirpitz'' not only a powerful ship but a very unique one too. And then Patch 0.6.4 buffed ''Tirpitz''[='=]s secondary range to the same 7.0km base as '''Bismarck''', even further improving her lethal brawling power. And then ''Bismarck'' and ''Tirpitz'' '''both'' got their base secondary range increased to 7.5km. This was to compensate for the fire chance of German 105mm secondaries getting globally nerfed to correct their stupidly high fire chance of 9% (almost certainly a typo that never got caught before) down to 5%, but whether a typo correction should be compensated at all is dubious.
** When German battleships finally came around, people were in for quite a shock when they saw what ''Bismark'' could do. As expected it loses ''Tirpitz''[='=]s torpedoes but go use of a unique consumable (for battleships), in the form of hydroacoustic search (and German hydroacoustic search has better range than other nations). Unexpectedly it received better speed, better AA, and better secondaries as well. These last two are particularly confusing as they are seem to represent the improvements made to Tirpitz because the actual ''Bismark'' sucked at them. The combination of hyrdo and much-improved range for secondaries have made ''Bismarck'' fairly overpowered, as with the right captain skills and a competent player destroyers have a hard time safely attacking. The base range of the secondaries is 7.0km (compared to 4.5km for ''Tirpitz'' despite their being ''literally identical guns''), and with a combination of Secondary Battery Modification 2 (+20% range buff to secondaries), the Advanced Firing Training captain skill (another +20% range buff) and a Mike Yankee Soxisix signal flag (5% range buff) that can be increased ''over 10km'', with as a bonus similar improvements to rate of fire and dispersion of the secondaries. Any destroyer that gets detected while making a torpedo run will get rapidly lit up by the secondaries, and very possibly sunk without the ''Bismarck'' player even taking direct action against them. If destroyer tries to hide in smoke, ''Bismarck'' is well-equipped to simply ''charge into the smoke after it'' to kill the destroyer and steal its smokescreen (a tactic that would be outright suicidal for most battleships) because with hydroacoustic search activated everything within 5.58km gets auto-detected. And against cruisers and other battleships those same destroyer-melting secondaries (which amount to having a Tier VI cruiser strapped to the side of the ship) provide a pretty reliable stream of bonus damage on top of what the main guns inflict. While they lack the massive single-hit damage potential of ''Tirpitz''[='=]s torpedoes, ''Bismarck''[='=]s long-range secondaries tend to inflict more damage over the course of a battle. While ''Tirpitz'' has the same potential damage output from secondaries, the shorter range (with all possible range boosts, ''Tirpitz'' can't fire its secondaries as far as a '''stock''' ''Bismarck''!) means that they'll never actually achieve that potential the way ''Bismarck'' can. Nor is it just a matter of comparison to ''Tirpitz''; none of the other Tier VIII battleships have secondaries with range as good as ''Bismarck''. In fact, ''Bismarck'' has better secondaries than most Tier ''IX'' ships. However, more recent patches have reduced the range of ''Bismarck's'' hydroacoustic search and given ''Tirpitz'' the same base range for secondary guns, putting both ships more on par with each other...and leaving both of them still overpowered compared to the rest of Tier VIII battleships.
** ''Konig Albert'', the Tier III premium German battleship, is seen as being a lesser version of ''Imperator Nikolai'' when it comes to brokeness, being essentially a Tier IV ship that's ranked at Tier III. Basically it's a ''Kaiser'' with only slight nerfs that don't at all make up for the more favorable matchmaking (''Konig Albert'' will never face higher than Tier IV opponents). While every other Tier III battleship can fire a maximum of 8 guns at a target, ''Albert'' can fire 10. ''Albert'' has the best armor of any Tier III ship. often by a wide margin. It's also the fastest Tier III battleship, outpacing several ''cruisers'' at its tier. And it has the strongest secondary battery in its tier. These are supposed to be balanced is a surface detection range longer than its max firing range and poor shell dispersion, but the rest of Tier III aren't actually much better in those areas and those weaknesses don't really come into play if ''Albert'' is used for close-range brawling, the basic specialty of German battleships. This eventually resulted in Albert being permanently removed from sale.

*** The T9 Premium Battleship Missouri is the best ship in the game for generated credits because it has a two times multiplier for credit generation, unlike the other ships which only have 1.5 times at best.

** For similar reasons, if you're dying to get a premium camouflage, you will get better saving and earnings for battleships and aircraft carriers than you will other ships.

* It can be argued that back when it was Tier VI, the ''Cleveland'' was this and/or a TierInducedScrappy. This was partly due to being a WWII-era design with armor and displacement equal to or greater than most ''heavy cruisers'' put in a tier where everything else is a 1920s-1930s "Treaty" design with severely compromised firepower and protection. [[note]]Currently, the game puts most light cruisers at lower tiers while putting all heavy cruisers at the higher tier, no matter the date of contruction.[[/note]] Unsuprisingly, the ship has a sort-of divisive status between players. [[note]]WG is planning on adding a separate US Light Cruiser line in order to remedy this dilemma, with the introduction of an all light cruiser line for the Royal Navy being seen as a preview/test of how light cruisers will fare at the highest tiers.[[/note]] The introduction of Russian cruisers kind of mellow this a bit, however, since the Budyonny has strong performance on Tier 6 too, or the introduction of the ''Molotov'' which is uptiered ''Kirov'' with Tier IX ''Dmitri Donskoi'''s guns...
* Unlike ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'', where Premium tanks may have superior performance to stock tanks of equivalent tiers, but not so much to the max upgraded ones, Warships seems to have several premium ships that is just plain superior to their line counterparts[[labelnote:As for why Lesta/Wargaming didn't nerf them]]Basically they're afraid of disgruntled customers trying to initiate chargeback against them, or that they would completely stop purchasing any other contents, plus regardless of what the terms of service say about the player not actually "owning" premiums they pay for, in terms of the European server Lesta likely worries about running afoul of the European Union's strong consumer protection laws.[[/labelnote]]. Notably:

** ''Mikhail Kutuzov'' was added to the banned premium list despite once being considered quite underpowered [[note]]She was released shortly after a major mechanical overhaul when it came to light cruisers and the devs didn't change her stats accordingly[[/note]]. She really doesn't look like much, most mistake her for ''Chapayev'' that trades radar for smoke. However the ''Kutuzov'' boasts ''way'' better torpedoes and has a lower citadel that puts her among the talkiest cruisers of her tier. To top it off she has the best AA of cruisers in her tier and can mount defensive fie and smoke at he same time. This makes her counterintuitively a much better open water cruiser than not only ''Chapayev'' but most its tier mates as well, but she still gets a smoke screen if she needs one. To top it off ''Kutuzov'''s guns have vastly superior range to the other tier VIII cruisers and remains accurate up to the maximum range of of her guns. The end result is a rapid fire sniper that's very good in a brawl and can disappear in a puff a smoke three times a game. Quite literally no ship type is strong against a ''Kutuzov''. Battleships can't hit her, she can murder Destroyers in a second, outrage other cruisers, and shoot down every plane flying near her.

** ''Mikhail Kutuzov'' was added to the banned premium list despite once being considered quite underpowered [[note]]She was released shortly after a major mechanical overhaul when it came to light cruisers and the devs didn't change her stats accordingly[[/note]]. She really doesn't look like much, most mistake her for ''Chapayev'' that trades radar for smoke. However the ''Kutuzov'' boasts ''way'' better torpedoes and has a lower citadel that pus her among the talkiest cruisers of her tier. To top it off she has the best AA of cruisers in her tier and can mount defensive fie and smoke at he same time. This makes her counterintuitively a much better open water cruiser than not only ''Chapayev'' but most its tier mates as well, but she still gets a smoke screen if she needs one. To top it off ''Kutuzov'''s guns have vastly superior range to the other tier VIII cruisers and remains accurate up to the maximum range of of her guns. The end result is a rapid fire sniper that's very good in a brawl and can disappear in a puff a smoke three times a game. Quite literally no ship type is strong against a ''Kutuzov''. Battleships can't hit her, she can murder Destroyers in a second, outrage other cruisers, and shoot down every plane flying near her.

** ''Belfast'' is generally considered to be the most overpowered Tier VII cruiser. First of all, unlike her regular British counterparts, ''Belfast'' can fire both AP AND HE shells, already making her far more versatile. Not only that, but she can also take smokescreen, hydroacoustic search, AND radar consumables at the same time! Finally, for some inexplicable reason, ''Belfast'' also has access to the Tier VIII upgrade slot, allowing her to mount the Concealment Module. With a full stealth build, ''Belfast'' can reduce her detection range to 8.7km. Combined with the fact that her radar has a range of 8.5km, and ''Belfast'' becomes the ultimate destroyer hunter. If a ''Beflast'' is detected by an unseen destroyer, it needs only to pop the radar and within a couple of seconds the destroyer will also be detected. In addition, with the sheer number of consumable she can mount, a popular tactic for ''Belfast'' players is to deploy their smokescreen and then use their hydroacoustic search to detect incoming torpedoes while using their radar to detect threats to fire out. If positioned close enough to the enemy, ''Belfast'' can (unlike nearly all other ships) reliably spot for itself from inside of smoke. Suffice to say, even though ''Belfast'' has relatively weak guns, her ability to fire from within smoke and the sheer fire rate of 12 such guns gives her massive damage potential. And then there's the prevalence of multi-''Belfast'' divisions, staggering their smoke to remain hidden and staggering their radar to spot the enemy more frequently. Another popular choice is to include 1 ''Fiji'' or ''Atlanta'' with 2 ''Belfast''s in a division; while they can only provide either smoke (''Fiji'') or radar (''Atlanta'') rather than both at once like ''Belfast'', their torpedoes cover the the one major weakness of ''Belfast'' by providing an immediate alpha strike in case a battleship charges headlong into the smokescreen.

** ''Imperator Nikolai I'', an attempt to create a Tier IV battleship that can fight in Tier VI matches, which ended up being so overpowered that Wargaming decided that the ship will ''never'' be on sale again. Carrier players are well advised to target any enemy ''Nikolai'' first, as its awful AA defense is its only real weakness compared to other battleships of its tier, and the longer it's left alive the more friendly ships it can wreck. Some of the things that make ''Nikolai'' so powerful include the fact that its unusual turret arrangement allows for 9 out of its 12 guns to be brought to bear while heavily angled, combined with its armored belt extending all the way to the bow (where it's 100mm in thickness). While the bow plating above the belt can be overmatched by 14" guns, shells hitting the front of ''Nikolai''[='=]s bow at the waterline will ''always'' bounce. With 100mm thickness, even '''''Yamato''[='=]s''' shells would autobounce when hitting bow-on. ''Nikolai'' also has deck armor of precisely the right thickness (35mm) to guarantee that cruisers within its matchmaking spread will ''always'' do zero damage with HE if they hit the deck (though zero-damage HE hits can still start fires). Normally the solution to this is to aim at the superstructure (the best place in general to aim at a battleship when you're in something other than a battleship), but ''Nikolai'' '''barely has a superstructure'''. The only places a cruiser can shoot ''Nikolai'' and do any HE damage at all are the bow plating (so long as the shells don't go low and splatter off that belt) and the funnels, the latter being such a tiny target that you'll only ever hit them by accident. Bear in mind that HE is the standard method for a cruiser to do damage against a battleship, since unless it's completely broadside-on to them their AP will have a hard time penetrating. In addition, ''Nikolai'' also has some of the most accurate guns ''in the entire game'', having a 2.0 Sigma rating [[note]]Basically a measure of the guns' vertical dispersion, or random chance of overshooting or falling short of the target. A rating of 2.0 means there is virtually no vertical dispersion, meaning that as long as you can accurately lead your target, you are guaranteed to hit.[[/note]], making more accurate than ''Tier X ships''. The funny thing is that when ''Nikolai'' was introduced few players suspected that it would be strong, since they didn't notice just how angled the ship could be while still getting most of its guns to bear, the guns have a quite low rate of fire (35 second reload) and just looking at the maximum thickness numbers (this was before armor viewer was introduced to the game) made ''Nikolai''[='=]s armor seem like it was merely average for Tier IV. What makes matters worse is that a later patch changed matchmaking to guarantee that Tier IV ships would never be put into games with Tier VI ships, meaning ''Nikolai'' ironically never has to face the ships it was specifically designed to fight, making it all the more powerful.

* Unlike ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'', where Premium tanks may have superior performance to stock tanks of equivalent tiers, but not so much to the max upgraded ones, Warships seems to have several premium ships that is just plain superior to their line counterparts[[labelnote:As for why Lesta/Wargaming didn't nerf them]]Basically they're afraid of disgruntled customers trying to initiate chargeback against them, or that they would completely stop purchasing any other contents[[/labelnote]]. Notably:

* It can be argued that at its current tier, the ''Cleveland'' is this and/or a TierInducedScrappy. This is partly due to being a WWII-era design with armor and displacement equal to or greater than most ''heavy cruisers'' put in a tier where everything else is a 1920s-1930s "Treaty" design with severely compromised firepower and protection. [[note]]Currently, the game puts all light cruisers at lower tiers while putting all heavy cruisers at the higher tier, no matter the date of contruction.[[/note]] Unsuprisingly, the ship has a sort-of divisive status between players. [[note]]WG is planning on adding a separate US Light Cruiser line in order to remedy this dilemma, with the introduction of an all light cruiser line for the Royal Navy being seen as a preview/test of how light cruisers will fare at the highest tiers.[[/note]] The introduction of Russian cruisers kind of mellow this a bit, however, since the Budyonny has strong performance on Tier 6 too, or the introduction of the ''Molotov'' which is uptiered ''Kirov'' with Tier IX ''Dmitri Donskoi'''s guns...

** It can be argued that at its current tier, the ''Cleveland'' is this and/or a TierInducedScrappy. This is partly due to being a WWII-era design with armor and displacement equal to or greater than most ''heavy cruisers'' put in a tier where everything else is a 1920s-1930s "Treaty" design with severely compromised firepower and protection. [[note]]Currently, the game puts all light cruisers at lower tiers while putting all heavy cruisers at the higher tier, no matter the date of contruction.[[/note]] Unsuprisingly, the ship has a sort-of divisive status between players. [[note]]WG is planning on adding a separate US Light Cruiser line in order to remedy this dilemma, with the introduction of an all light cruiser line for the Royal Navy being seen as a preview/test of how light cruisers will fare at the highest tiers.[[/note]] The introduction of Russian cruisers kind of mellow this a bit, however, since the Budyonny has strong performance on Tier 6 too, or the introduction of the ''Molotov'' which is uptiered ''Kirov'' with Tier IX ''Dmitri Donskoi'''s guns...
** Unlike ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'', where Premium tanks may have superior performance to stock tanks of equivalent tiers, but not so much to the max upgraded ones, Warships seems to have several premium ships that is just plain superior to their line counterparts[[labelnote:As for why Lesta/Wargaming didn't nerf them]]Basically they're afraid of disgruntled customers trying to initiate chargeback against them, or that they would completely stop purchasing any other contents[[/labelnote]]. Notably:
*** ''Imperator Nikolai I'', an attempt to create a Tier IV battleship that can fight in Tier VI matches, which ended up being so overpowered that Wargaming decided that the ship will ''never'' be on sale again. Carrier players are well advised to target any enemy ''Nikolai'' first, as its awful AA defense is its only real weakness compared to other battleships of its tier, and the longer it's left alive the more friendly ships it can wreck. Some of the things that make ''Nikolai'' so powerful include the fact that its unusual turret arrangement allows for 9 out of its 12 guns to be brought to bear while heavily angled, combined with its armored belt extending all the way to the bow (where it's 100mm in thickness). While the bow plating above the belt can be overmatched by 14" guns, shells hitting the front of ''Nikolai''[='=]s bow at the waterline will ''always'' bounce. With 100mm thickness, even '''''Yamato''[='=]s''' shells would autobounce when hitting bow-on. ''Nikolai'' also has deck armor of precisely the right thickness (35mm) to guarantee that cruisers within its matchmaking spread will ''always'' do zero damage with HE if they hit the deck (though zero-damage HE hits can still start fires). Normally the solution to this is to aim at the superstructure (the best place in general to aim at a battleship when you're in something other than a battleship), but ''Nikolai'' '''barely has a superstructure'''. The only places a cruiser can shoot ''Nikolai'' and do any HE damage at all are the bow plating (so long as the shells don't go low and splatter off that belt) and the funnels, the latter being such a tiny target that you'll only ever hit them by accident. Bear in mind that HE is the standard method for a cruiser to do damage against a battleship, since unless it's completely broadside-on to them their AP will have a hard time penetrating. In addition, ''Nikolai'' also has some of the most accurate guns ''in the entire game'', having a 2.0 Sigma rating [[note]]Basically a measure of the guns' vertical dispersion, or random chance of overshooting or falling short of the target. A rating of 2.0 means there is virtually no vertical dispersion, meaning that as long as you can accurately lead your target, you are guaranteed to hit.[[/note]], making more accurate than ''Tier X ships''. The funny thing is that when ''Nikolai'' was introduced few players suspected that it would be strong, since they didn't notice just how angled the ship could be while still getting most of its guns to bear, the guns have a quite low rate of fire (35 second reload) and just looking at the maximum thickness numbers (this was before armor viewer was introduced to the game) made ''Nikolai''[='=]s armor seem like it was merely average for Tier IV. What makes matters worse is that a later patch changed matchmaking to guarantee that Tier IV ships would never be put into games with Tier VI ships, meaning ''Nikolai'' ironically never has to face the ships it was specifically designed to fight, making it all the more powerful.
*** ''Gremyashchy'', the Tier V premium Soviet destroyer. It was considered as balanced in closed beta due to its great gun performance being offset by having the worst turret traverse speed for a destroyer (36 seconds for the B-13 turret to rotate 180 degrees) and torpedo range (8km) being between ''Minekaze'' (when equipped with its longer-ranged, but slower, 10km torpedoes) and ''Nicholas''...then Lesta removed the 10km torpedo from ''Minekaze'', globally buff turn radius which indirectly nerfed US destroyers due to higher difficulty of hitting enemy because US DD's bad shell velocity for their 5-inchers was only balanced for pre-buff turning radius, and after Russian destroyers have their guns nerfed[[note]]By increasing the ship's post-firing detection bloom from 3.9km to 5.4km, for ALL the Russian destroyers. A May patch would tone down the nerf for the early tier 102mm-armed ships, but it (4.2km) would still be greater than the post-fire bloom for the ''Gremyashchy'', and greater than a [=USN=] or [=IJN=] destroyer with the same caliber guns.[[/note]] , said nerf didn't touch the ''Gremyashchy'', which end up resulting in the ''Gremyashchy'' becoming ''the'' most powerful Tier V destroyer in the game. If you're not sure how bad it is, Tier VI ''Anshan'' is basically uptiered ''Gremyashchy'' with nary any stat changes (though it shares the post-nerf detection bloom as the other 130mm-armed Russian destroyers on the tech tree) and it can ''still'' compete. Finally, all three Close Beta access ships (the ''Gremyaschchy'', ''Sims'', and ''Yuubari'') have a 1 year exclusivity period before they will be on sale again...then Wargaming came out and say that they're very reluctant to put the ''Gremyaschchy'' on sale again, unlike the other two. However, as of Patch 0.6.2, stealth firing has been removed which significantly brings down ''Gremyaschchy's'' power level. But even after that, ''Gremyaschchy'' is '''still''' basically a better version of ''Gnevny''. Sitting at Tier 5 while ''Gnevny'' is Tier 6.
*** ''Tirpitz'', the Tier VIII German battleship, is the most expensive premium ship in the entire game, and it certainly has the performance to back it up. The reason it's so strong is because it wasn't play tested in its current form. The developers had modeled and had balanced her more famous sister the ''Bismark'' with the intention of building a whole German battleship line in the near future. It was decided that adding a premium German BB would help promote this line, and turning their work on ''Bismark'' into ''Tirpitz'' was the easiest way to do that. The problem is that Tirpitz was heavily modified during construction after the famous loss of her sister, which allowed ''Tirpitz'' to be superior the the ''Bismark'' in many ways but not suffering any consequences for those improvements. So ''Tirpitz'' ended up getting more AA, a much better rudder, and ''torpedo launchers'' with no negative effects. While the 6km range of the torpedoes is nothing special, in a close-range brawl (''Tirpitz''[='=]s specialty) their high damage output makes them basically equivalent to getting citadel penetrations with all 4 forward guns. To make matters worse the German BB line and with it the free ''Bismarck'' were postponed in favor of other ship lines, making ''Tirpitz'' not only a powerful ship but a very unique one too. And then Patch 0.6.4 buffed ''Tirpitz''[='=]s secondary range to the same 7.0km base as '''Bismarck''', even further improving her lethal brawling power. And then ''Bismarck'' and ''Tirpitz'' '''both'' got their base secondary range increased to 7.5km. This was to compensate for the fire chance of German 105mm secondaries getting globally nerfed to correct their stupidly high fire chance of 9% (almost certainly a typo that never got caught before) down to 5%, but whether a typo correction should be compensated at all is dubious.
*** When German battleships finally came around, people were in for quite a shock when they saw what ''Bismark'' could do. As expected it loses ''Tirpitz''[='=]s torpedoes but go use of a unique consumable (for battleships), in the form of hydroacoustic search (and German hydroacoustic search has better range than other nations). Unexpectedly it received better speed, better AA, and better secondaries as well. These last two are particularly confusing as they are seem to represent the improvements made to Tirpitz because the actual ''Bismark'' sucked at them. The combination of hyrdo and much-improved range for secondaries have made ''Bismarck'' fairly overpowered, as with the right captain skills and a competent player destroyers have a hard time safely attacking. The base range of the secondaries is 7.0km (compared to 4.5km for ''Tirpitz'' despite their being ''literally identical guns''), and with a combination of Secondary Battery Modification 2 (+20% range buff to secondaries), the Advanced Firing Training captain skill (another +20% range buff) and a Mike Yankee Soxisix signal flag (5% range buff) that can be increased ''over 10km'', with as a bonus similar improvements to rate of fire and dispersion of the secondaries. Any destroyer that gets detected while making a torpedo run will get rapidly lit up by the secondaries, and very possibly sunk without the ''Bismarck'' player even taking direct action against them. If destroyer tries to hide in smoke, ''Bismarck'' is well-equipped to simply ''charge into the smoke after it'' to kill the destroyer and steal its smokescreen (a tactic that would be outright suicidal for most battleships) because with hydroacoustic search activated everything within 5.58km gets auto-detected. And against cruisers and other battleships those same destroyer-melting secondaries (which amount to having a Tier VI cruiser strapped to the side of the ship) provide a pretty reliable stream of bonus damage on top of what the main guns inflict. While they lack the massive single-hit damage potential of ''Tirpitz''[='=]s torpedoes, ''Bismarck''[='=]s long-range secondaries tend to inflict more damage over the course of a battle. While ''Tirpitz'' has the same potential damage output from secondaries, the shorter range (with all possible range boosts, ''Tirpitz'' can't fire its secondaries as far as a '''stock''' ''Bismarck''!) means that they'll never actually achieve that potential the way ''Bismarck'' can. Nor is it just a matter of comparison to ''Tirpitz''; none of the other Tier VIII battleships have secondaries with range as good as ''Bismarck''. In fact, ''Bismarck'' has better secondaries than most Tier ''IX'' ships. However, more recent patches have reduced the range of ''Bismarck's'' hydroacoustic search and given ''Tirpitz'' the same base range for secondary guns, putting both ships more on par with each other...and leaving both of them still overpowered compared to the rest of Tier VIII battleships.
*** ''Konig Albert'', the Tier III premium German battleship, is seen as being a lesser version of ''Imperator Nikolai'' when it comes to brokeness, being essentially a Tier IV ship that's ranked at Tier III. Basically it's a ''Kaiser'' with only slight nerfs that don't at all make up for the more favorable matchmaking (''Konig Albert'' will never face higher than Tier IV opponents). While every other Tier III battleship can fire a maximum of 8 guns at a target, ''Albert'' can fire 10. ''Albert'' has the best armor of any Tier III ship. often by a wide margin. It's also the fastest Tier III battleship, outpacing several ''cruisers'' at its tier. And it has the strongest secondary battery in its tier. These are supposed to be balanced is a surface detection range longer than its max firing range and poor shell dispersion, but the rest of Tier III aren't actually much better in those areas and those weaknesses don't really come into play if ''Albert'' is used for close-range brawling, the basic specialty of German battleships. This eventually resulted in Albert being permanently removed from sale.
*** ''Atago'' is the only non-British cruiser below Tier IX that gets the Repair Party consumable[[note]]it can restore it's HP mid-battle[[/note]], and even more importantly it's got amazing stealth for a cruiser. Its base detection range is 11.5km, which by itself is excellent. Not only is this the best concealment of any cruiser at its tier, it's the best from ''all cruisers Tier V and up''. On top of that as a Tier VIII ship it can mount the Concealment System Modification (10% reduction in detection range), dropping down to 10.3km. With the Concealment Expert captain skill (another 12% off detection range), it drops down to 9km detection. Its torpedo range is 10km, giving it the ability to fire torpedoes from stealth, something that is otherwise exclusive to destroyers. This stealthiness also gives the ''Atago'' a decent range band in which it can fire its guns without being detected, which is an incredibly powerful ability. While its armor isn't great[[note]]Though it is substantially better than that of its tech tree counterpart, the Mogami. Not only is the citadel armor thicker on the Atago but it has its torpedo blister cover most of the citadel giving it an extra layer of protection.[[/note]] and its gun layout is not ideal, an ''Atago'' trailing a few kilometers behind a friendly destroyer and stealth-sniping everything it detects can be devastating. As for ''why'' War Gaming made it so good...[[note]]Basically its designed to be a game breaker because it replaced the premium Kitakami. This was the first time War Gamming has ever completely removed a premium; their normal policy was to just not sell unbalanced vehicles ever again. So to make sure everyone who paid for a kitakami was happy, they made a ship that was a pure upgrade over its tech tree counterpart[[/note]]
*** ''Flint'', a Tier VII premium American cruiser that's the reward ship for getting Rank 1 in 3 separate seasons of Ranked Battles. It's a modified ''Atlanta'' that loses the wing turrets (thus 2 fewer guns per broadside) in favor of better overall AA. Okay, nothing OP about that. ''Atlanta'' has massive DPM potential but falls firmly in the DifficultButAwesome. Its torpedoes have just over double the range of ''Atlanta''[='=]s. Useful, but still not OP since it can't fire from stealth. Or can it? Here's where the game gets broken wide open. While neither the torpedoes nor the guns have the range to attack targets without being detected in the open, ''Flint'' is just one of three non-British cruisers in the game that can lay a smokescreen. And it's an ''amazingly good'' smokescreen, giving 2 and a half minutes of invisibility and once the smoke dissipates there will only be 30 seconds left on the cooldown before it can lay ''another'' smokescreen (if premium consumables are used). A destroyer firing out of a smokescreen and lighting ships on fire with HE shells can be extremely dangerous, especially fast-firing American and Russian destroyers. ''Flint'' doing the same thing is equivalent to ''two'' invisible Tier X ''Gearing''s firing from invisibility...against Tier VII opponents. To make matters worse, as a reward ship ''only'' highly skilled players can even get their hands on a ''Flint'' and thus anybody playing it will likely be able to get the most out of it. The introduction of the Inertia Fuse for HE Shells (IFHE) skill just makes ''Flint'' even stronger, allowing the HE to cause direct damage whenever it hits armor plating up to 27mm[[note]]Without the skill it can penetrate only up to 21mm, which results in a ''lot'' of zero-damage hits.[[/note]]...which is what the extremities and decks of most Tier VII and below battleships are covered in. And then the IFHE skill got buffed, so that instead of losing 3% of its fire chance, ''Flint'' and every other ship with 139mm or smaller guns the reduction is only a paltry 1%.
*** ''Kamikaze'' and its Halloween-themed twin ''Fujin'' have now joined ''Nikolai'' and ''Gremyashchy'' on Wargaming's "too OP to sell" list. (''Kamikaze R'', a reward ship version of ''Kamakize'', was only ever available once to begin with.) The very similar ''Minekaze'' was still considered overpowered after losing its 10km torpedoes, because of its stealthiness and the 7km torps being quite fast at 68 knots. This changed in November 2016, when the 68 knot torps were replaced with 57 knot ones that also do less damage. This transformed ''Minekaze'' from one of the best non-premium destroyers to one of the worst. But while ''Minekaze'' got dramatically nerfed, the ''Kamikaze'' triplets...didn't. As usual, premiums don't get nerfed. Basically they're the same ships as the pre-nerf ''Minekaze'', with the main difference being that they're ''even stealthier''. Their performance (in terms of win rates and damage dealt) is so close to ''Gremyashchy'' as to be statistically insignificant. While they're much more specialized than ''Gremyashchy'' and would be at a distinct disadvantage against it in a 1-on-1 duel, they're '''very''' good at what they specialize in: being ninja torpedo assassins.
*** ''Belfast'' is generally considered to be the most overpowered Tier VII cruiser. First of all, unlike her regular British counterparts, ''Belfast'' can fire both AP AND HE shells, already making her far more versatile. Not only that, but she can also take smokescreen, hydroacoustic search, AND radar consumables at the same time! Finally, for some inexplicable reason, ''Belfast'' also has access to the Tier VIII upgrade slot, allowing her to mount the Concealment Module. With a full stealth build, ''Belfast'' can reduce her detection range to 8.7km. Combined with the fact that her radar has a range of 8.5km, and ''Belfast'' becomes the ultimate destroyer hunter. If a ''Beflast'' is detected by an unseen destroyer, it needs only to pop the radar and within a couple of seconds the destroyer will also be detected. In addition, with the sheer number of consumable she can mount, a popular tactic for ''Belfast'' players is to deploy their smokescreen and then use their hydroacoustic search to detect incoming torpedoes while using their radar to detect threats to fire out. If positioned close enough to the enemy, ''Belfast'' can (unlike nearly all other ships) reliably spot for itself from inside of smoke. Suffice to say, even though ''Belfast'' has relatively weak guns, her ability to fire from within smoke and the sheer fire rate of 12 such guns gives her massive damage potential. And then there's the prevalence of multi-''Belfast'' divisions, staggering their smoke to remain hidden and staggering their radar to spot the enemy more frequently. Another popular choice is to include 1 ''Fiji'' or ''Atlanta'' with 2 ''Belfast''s in a division; while they can only provide either smoke (''Fiji'') or radar (''Atlanta'') rather than both at once like ''Belfast'', their torpedoes cover the the one major weakness of ''Belfast'' by providing an immediate alpha strike in case a battleship charges headlong into the smokescreen.
*** ''Mikhail Kutuzov'' was added to the banned premium list despite once being considered quite underpowered [[note]]She was released shortly after a major mechanical overhaul when it came to light cruisers and the devs didn't change her stats accordingly[[/note]]. She really doesn't look like much, most mistake her for ''Chapayev'' that trades radar for smoke. However the ''Kutuzov'' boasts ''way'' better torpedoes and has a lower citadel that pus her among the talkiest cruisers of her tier. To top it off she has the best AA of cruisers in her tier and can mount defensive fie and smoke at he same time. This makes her counterintuitively a much better open water cruiser than not only ''Chapayev'' but most its tier mates as well, but she still gets a smoke screen if she needs one. To top it off ''Kutuzov'''s guns have vastly superior range to the other tier VIII cruisers and remains accurate up to the maximum range of of her guns. The end result is a rapid fire sniper that's very good in a brawl and can disappear in a puff a smoke three times a game. Quite literally no ship type is strong against a ''Kutuzov''. Battleships can't hit her, she can murder Destroyers in a second, outrage other cruisers, and shoot down every plane flying near her.
*** ''Kidd'' has quickly earned a reputation as being one of the most powerful Tier VIII destroyers in the game. She is essentially a Tier IX ''Fletcher'' with one torpedo launcher, but she makes up for the lack of torpedo power with an insanely high AA rating for her tier and the inclusion of the Repair Party consumable. The ability to heal herself means that ''Kidd'' can afford to be extremely aggressive in destroyer fights and take fights that would normally get any other destroyer sunk. Her extremely high AA rating, combined with Defensive AA Fire, allows her to mow down even Tier X aircraft.
*** ''Giulio Cesare'' is widely considered to be the most overpowered Tier V battleship. Specifically designed to be able to stand up to Tier VII ships, ''Giulio Cesare'' is fast, maneuverable, well armored, and has very accurate guns. However, the fact that she can take on Tier VII ships means that she is leagues above her fellow Tier V ships, making her extremely overpowered at her tier.
*** ''Missouri'' is basically a carbon copy of ''Iowa'' in all respects except for one critical difference: ''Missouri'' can mount the radar consumable. Suffice to say, having radar means ''Missouri'' can more easily engage and sink destroyers, which are supposed to be the intended counter to battleships. And since ''Missouri'' still retains ''Iowa's'' thick armor and high AA protection, she has very few (if any) weaknesses.
** Nearly all premium battleships are game breakers from economical standpoint. Battleships earn money at a higher rate than than other ships which is normally offset by the fact that they have high repair costs and have to put their hit points in the game to be effective. Premium ships multiply the amount of credits earned and reduce repair costs. This allows premium battleships to rake in piles of credits.
*** For similar reasons, if you're dying to get a premium camouflage, you will get better saving and earnings for battleships and aircraft carriers than you will other ships.
** Most of the Soviet era cruisers, which have some of the highest win rates in the game. While all but the tier X one are poorly armored compared to American and Japanese standards (and substandard turning circle and rudder shift), they are still better armored than the Germans and have sizable health pools. This isn't really a problem for Soviet cruisers though, since they all have excellent long range guns. The problem is that they also can do well if forced into a knife fight, as they are equipped with fast "knife-fighting" torpedoes and their guns have good traverse speed, and their AP rounds have deceptively high penetration.
** The ''Shimakaze'' was a very big one until it was recently re balanced. Like all Japanese destroyers it has a torpedo range that exceeds its detection range, but none can quite compare to ''Shimakaze'' with a torp range of 20km and a ''stock'' surface detection range of 7.6 km. What made this overpowered is that these torps were also blindingly fast and it can put 15 of them in the water in a single salvo, which combining with their low detection range makes it extremely hard to dodge them. This has since been rectified by increasing detection range of the long range torpedoes and decreasing their speed. ''Shimakaze'' players now have to choose between fast torpedoes with short range and lower detection range (which does put them in enemy radar range) and ones with extremely long range but with slower speed and high detection range that are therefore easy to dodge. It's generally held by ''Shimakaze'' players that Wargaming overcompensated for its previous GameBreaker status by going too far with the nerfs.
** The ''Khabarovsk'' is now considered to be one the bigger ones because its it is a much better brawler than any other destroyer. While it already had the most guns of any tier ten DD and had incredible shell characteristics combined with high speed, this was at least somewhat balanced out by its poor detection range and the extra firing bloom penalty that Russian destroyers got. However after the split of the Soviet destroyer line it was given the ability to trade its smoke screen for damage repair and all Russian DD guns were given an extra 200 points of HE damage. Now no other DD has even close to its gun DPM and can't beat it in a damage trade with its healing ability. While you would think the loss of smoke would make it vulnerable to cruisers, its fast speed allows it leave any situation where it would be vulnerable very quickly, along with making it difficult to aim at (often you have to aim so far ahead of a ''Khabarovsk'' that it's '''no longer on the screen''' to account for its extreme speed). To top it off its torpedo armament may be substandard but is still workable so bigger ships will still have to keep their distance. In addition, the ''Khabarovsk'' is both the most heavily armored destroyer in the game and the fastest ''ship'' in the game. Unlike other destroyers, which are completely composed of 13-19mm of armor, the ''Khabarovsk'' has a whopping '''50mm''' of armor on a large portion of her hull, making her practically immune to low caliber guns and highly resistant to larger caliber guns of up to 203mm. This armor protection combined with her extremely high 40+ knot speed make the Khabarovsk almost impossible to hit and damage, much less sink. The presence of that 50mm belt armor and a larger HP pool than any other destroyer has led many players to say it's not actually a destroyer at all, declaring ''Khabarovsk'' to be the best light cruiser in the game, especially after the repair party option makes it play even ''more'' like a light cruiser.
*** Wargaming has responded by nerfing ''Khabarovsk'' several times...but they refuse to touch that 50mm armor. Instead they greatly increased the rudder shift time to slower than most cruisers at 11.1 seconds (making it practically mandatory to mount the Steering Gears Modification 3 upgrade instead of trying to mitigate its lack of stealth with Concealment System Modification 1) to impede close-range brawling with enemy DDs. Then they removed the option to mount 8km range torpedoes, requiring the use of suicidally short range 6km torps that are also very slow (but cause a lot of damage). This means that aside from surprise encounters when sailing around an island, the torpedoes will pretty much never be used. While these changes ''have'' closed the performance gap, they've also made ''Khabarovsk'' even less of a destroyer than it already was. It's not good for contesting caps and isn't particularly good at hunting enemy DDs (because they'll all spot it ''long'' before being spotted themselves and run in the other direction), and since repair party is usually the better option it can't lay smokescreens for its allies. But it's great at peppering cruisers and battleships from maximum range and using its speed, armor and repair party to survive any return fire, pretty much keeping the guns firing for an entire battle and burning down as many ships as possible.
** To those who think the ''Flint'' is already bad, say hi to the ''Black'', Tier IX American Destroyer that can only be acquired by getting to Tier 1 in ''5'' ranked seasons. She's a ''Fletcher'' with a higher damage torpedo that goes extremely slowly...and gets a radar. This means that she can easily flush out other destroyer from their smoke at ''much'' longer range than the German destroyers (who have to rely on hydro for that job). Even a nerf to her radar range and duration doesn't make people think she's balanced. The radar range might've been nerfed but it's still greater than the ship's own detection range, making it the only ship in the game capable of stealth-radaring enemy destroyers in open water. And its carrying both smoke and radar at the same time means ''Black'' can also self-spot from inside its own smokescreen, an ability shared only by ''Belfast'' (considered overpowered in its own right, but at least ''Belfast'' has '''some''' weaknesses). Repeated calls (including from the very unicum players who were going to be among the first to receive a ''Black'' of their own) to put the radar in the same consumable slot as smoke instead of letting it carry both simultaneously were ignored.
** ''Fletcher'' is by far considered the most powerful non-premium, non-Soviet destroyer in the game. Her fast firing, fast turning, accurate guns means she can defeat any other destroyer in a close range fight. Her extremely good stealth rating makes her able to sneak up and ambush even Japanese destroyers. Her good AA rating and the ability to take the Defensive Fire consumable means she can defend herself from air attacks or quickly eliminate scout planes (and unlike preceding American destroyers, ''Fletcher'' doesn't have to sacrifice the 5th gun turret to gain Defensive Fire). Her long range, fast moving, fast reloading, and highly stealthy torpedoes also allows her to effectively engage larger ships to a much better degree than even her Japanese counterparts. In short, ''Fletcher'' is a jack of all trades and master of all of them. To the point that it's considered debatable whether the Tier X ''Gearing'' is actually an upgrade over ''Fletcher''.[[note]]While ''Gearing'' very obviously outguns ''Fletcher'' (6 guns with 3 second reload compared to 5 guns with 3.34 second reload, and a better layout of the gun turrets to boot), ''Fletcher'' is more agile, slightly stealthier and has overall better torpedoes (''Gearing''[='=]s torps have longer range at 16.5km, but the 10.5km range of ''Fletcher''[='=]s is usually more than adequate and they do more damage and reload faster than ''Gearing''[='=]s.[[/note]]
** The ''Clemson'' is by far the most powerful Tier IV destroyer. When fully upgraded, ''Clemson'' make all four of her guns double barrelled, effectively doubling her firepower. This means that she can potentially bring six guns to bear on a target when other destroyers can only get three to five. Plus, three of her turrets are mounted on her front arc, so she can point directly at her opponent to minimize her profile while still being able to consistently get four guns on her target, while other destroyers can only manage one or two if they try the same tactic. Coupled with her high speed, ''Clemson'' is capable of chasing down and outgunning any destroyer she can face, and she's only grown more powerful now that Tier IV ships have protected matchmaking against Tier VI. Due to her superior firepower and the fact she is not a premium ship, ''Clemson'' has become a favorite among sealclubbers. Even moreso after the main competitor at Tier IV, the Japanese ''Isokaze'', got her previously slightly overpowered torpedoes substantially nerfed.
** The Tier IX and X Japanese carriers ''Taiho'' and ''Hakuryu'' are widely hated among non-CV players (and among players of American CVs for that matter), mainly due to their ability to bring three squadrons of torpedo bombers. With three squadrons, ''Taiho'' and ''Hakuryu'' players can simply stack the drops on top of each other to deal massive damage to larger ships, or cross drop them in multiple angles to get hits on smaller more nimble ships.
** The ''Saipan'' is considered the most overpowered Tier VII carrier since she carriers Tier IX planes. Naturally, Tier IX planes have much higher stats than Tier VII planes, and are more resistant to anti-aircraft fire from Tier VII ships. With faster and more powerful fighters, a ''Saipan'' can easily seize control of the skies. This was compounded in a later update where carriers could disengage their fighter squadrons from a dogfight using the oddly-named "strafe" mechanic[[note]]Normally used to target a specific area of the sky for a fighter squadron to sweep through with guns blazing, shooting at everything in their path (yes, including any friendly planes that have the misfortune of being there) rather than targeting a specified enemy squadron. Nobody seems to know why it's called "strafe" when it bears no resemblance to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafing the real-life tactic of that name]].[[/note]] but would have to suffer the automatic loss of one plane, but the ''Saipan'' was specifically exempted from this downside, so her fighter squadrons can disengage freely.
** The Tier IX and X British battleships ''Lion'' and ''Conqueror'' have quickly been seen as this shortly after being introduced to the game, as they beat their other similar tier battleships in almost every parameter. Their HE shells have double the damage and fire chance, their AP shells have better normalization angles and short fuses to reduce overpenetrations, they have extremely high concealment that's better than half the equal tier cruisers, their citadels are underwater making them practically impossible to hit, and they have extremely powerful repair party consumables that can heal up to 60% of their HP in mere seconds. Coupled with the fact that the ships have no clear weaknesses, it's not surprising that they have shot up to the top of the leaderboards just weeks after being implemented.
** In terms of captain skills, there is general consensus that the Inertia Fuse High Explosive (IFHE) skill makes any ship with low caliber guns a potential GameBreaker. Due to how it works[[note]]HE shell penetration is calculated by dividing the caliber of the gun by 6 and rounding down. For German battleship and (as of 0.6.6.) cruiser HE, however, they divide by 4 instead. IFHE increases HE shell penetration by 30%.[[/note]], IFHE allows low caliber guns of up to 155mm to penetrate large sections of battleships with their HE shells that they weren't able to before, significantly boosting their damage potential for the relatively minor (for 150-155mm guns) loss of 3% fire chance. The biggest winners from the introduction of IFHE are considered to be a pair of already very powerful premium cruisers, ''Belfast'' at Tier VII and ''Mikhail Kutuzov'' at Tier VIII, followed by ''Mogami'' with the stock 155mm guns equipped (particularly after patch 0.6.4 when 155 ''Mogami''[='=]s previously horrific turret traverse was buffed to a reasonable level) and ''Atlanta''/''Flint'' (whose 127mm guns more often than not caused zero damage when firing at battleships because of their small diameter; 3% lose in fire chance is huge for shells that only have 5% chance to begin with). It's also considered practically mandatory for the Tier VIII Japanese destroyer ''Akizuki'', whose [[MoreDakka 8 fast-firing 100mm guns]] are incredibly lethal against Tier VII and lower destroyers but struggle to do damage against Tier VIII and above...until IFHE is applied, at which point not even Tier '''X''' destroyers are safe if they encounter an ''Akizuki'' at knife-fighting range.
*** When first introduced for testing, IFHE was considered a pretty lackluster skill. Instead of a relatively minor 3% reduction in fire chance it had a near-crippling (for 155mm or less shells) 6%[[note]]For ''Atlanta'' that would reduce fire change to '''0%'''![[/note]] and only a 25% instead of 30% increase in penetration (which is just barely too little to allow a 152mm HE shell to penetrate 32mm the extremity armor that's so common on high-tier battleships). The seemingly small buff in the 2nd round of testing to the current version of the skill changed it from questionable value to borderline overpowered, even with the change from a 3-point to 4-point skill making it more expensive to employ. Then in update 0.6.11 the IFHE skill was buffed for guns of 139mm or lower caliber. While it's unchanged for larger-caliber guns, or DD-caliber guns the lose in fire chance is now only 1%, making even more of a no-brainer mandatory skill for ''Akizuki'' and ''Atlanta''/''Flint'' (as well as HSF ''Harekaze'' if the 100mm gun option is chosen), and possibly even a viable choice for Tier V through VII American and Russian destroyers and the Polish Tier VII ''Błyskawica''.
** During the Closed Beta Test era, aircraft carriers in general were a ''notorious'' game-breaker, with such overwhelming strike potential that CV players would actually deliberately get their bombers shot down after completing a strike, because that allowed new squadrons to get in the air faster than flying back to the carrier, and each strike was an almost guaranteed kill of an enemy ship. Not helped by the fact that the matchmaking was much worse at that time, meaning a Tier X CV could easily get to pick on Tier VI enemies, and there wasn't even any guarantee that the enemy team would have a carrier of its own to counter them. A big part of the reason that [=CVs=] are considered to be in bad shape in the live version of the game is that the changes made to address this problem rendered them the hardest ships in the game to play well. The problem now is that a CV in the hands of an expert is ''almost'' as broken as the CBT-era [=CVs=], but a CV in the hands of anything less than an expert is much weaker than before. This means that any team lucky enough to get a Unicum CV player on their side has dramatically higher odds of winning.
*** Update 0.6.14 gave major buffs to non-premium American [=CVs=] (which had been notoriously underpowered relative to their Japanese counterparts since the Open Beta Test, finally removing the much-reviled unbalanced plane loadouts (which required the player to choose either an air superiority package with minimal anti-ship power, or a strike package with no fighters at all and thus completely at the mercy of the enemy CV) and also adding the option of AP bombs for their dive bombers at Tier VIII and up. In the process of this the Tier X ''Midway'' gained a second torpedo bomber squadron (the first time since CBT that any American CV could field 12 torpedo bombers at a time), which combined with AP bombs make it arguably even ''more'' broken than it was during its CBT notoriety. Tellingly, the week after 0.6.14 was the first time in the game's history that ''Midway'' averaged a higher win rate than the Japanese Tier X ''Hakuryu'' (itself previously seen as a GameBreaker), along with averaging 15-20 thousand more damage inflicted per battle.