Let’s start with the bad news: Hood doesn’t have very good weapon systems. Her main battery lacks penetration and her secondaries are horribly placed. These elements really hold the ship back from being truly excellent.

Secondary Battery: Fourteen 102mm rifles in 7×2 turrets with three down each side behind the funnels and the last mounted rearward on the center line.

Hood has fewer secondary guns than Colorado and they’re largely placed towards the rear half of the ship..This creates large blind spots forward preventing them from being brought to bear when on the attack until a target is 35º off her bow. More often than not you will only have one or two turrets firing at most. While they may pick up the occasional low-health kill, it would be a serious mistake to rely upon these weapons or the specialize into improving their performance.

Hood’s 381mm/42 MkII guns superficially resemble those off Warspite. In fact, looking at their stats in port, you would have a hard time finding much in the way of difference between the two ship’s guns beyond range and rate of rotation. It’s within her hidden stats, namely shell normalization, AP fuse timers and penetration that Hood steps further away from Warspite. Hood’s penetration values are bad. To compensate for this, Wargaming made Hood better at avoiding ricochets and damaging lightly armoured targets. The exact changes are as follows:

Hood shells auto-ricochet at 67.5º instead of 60º like Warspite.

With the notable exception of Hood, all Battleship shells that do not overmatch the thickness of armour will auto-ricochet if they strike a shell angled less than 30º to the horizontal regardless of the relative penetration power of a given shell. This value is common in most warships in the game with a few notable exceptions — the most common being the high tier American Heavy Cruisers. Hood’s shells will not auto-ricochet unless they strike at an acute angle of less than 22.5º to the horizontal.

This is designed to make Hood more likely to penetrate vessels taking an aggressive bow-on attack posture and to ensure she has fewer shells that careen off of funny angles of turret faces and the like. Note, that this does not provide any bonus value to penetration or normalization. An armour plate at the acute angle of 31º to the horizontal effectively doubles its relative thickness so while a shell might not ricochet from the angle of impact, it may still shatter against the relative thickness of the plate it encounters from a lack of penetration power.



Hood has faster fuse-timers at 0.015s instead of Warspite’s 0.033s.

An AP shell’s fuse arms by passing through a sufficiently thick piece of steel plate or striking a structural divide between ships sections. After a small delay, the shell detonates. For most ships with 330mm guns and larger, this fuse delay is set at 0.033s while those of a smaller caliber have 0.01s delay. The shortened delay timer makes it more likely that her shells will explode inside a target — particularly narrower sections of a ship, such as the extremities battleships or the broadside of light cruisers at close range.

However, the fuses still only arm when they strike thick enough metal so this doesn’t guarantee that they will penetrate soft skinned ships like destroyers and French cruisers. Hood’s fuses need to strike a plate 64mm thick (or a structural divide) in order to arm. Striking at the maximum angle, Hood would need to hit a minimum 25mm steel plate in order to arm in this manner, so it’s still very possible to see over penetrations from a broad range of targets.



Hood’s accuracy is slightly worse than Warspite’s with 1.8 sigma instead of 2.0 sigma.

While Hood’s shell grouping aren’t as tight as those of Warspite, she’s still a Royal Navy Battleship which brings an accuracy perk. These vessels have some of the tightest horizontal and vertical dispersion in among the current dreadnoughts. Due to the lower shell velocity of her 381mm guns, the overall dispersion area per shot is comparably less than that to any other nation. This does mean that you can drop some rather accurate shells on unsuspecting targets. Aim well and pick your targets right and Hood can still perform.

Without a target lock, the shell dispersion patterns seen here are roughly double what would be seen when firing at enemy ships. There is approximately 350m between nav buoys. Shells are traveling from right to left.

Hood has approximately 7% worse penetration than Warspite at all ranges.

It’s the drop in penetration power that’s telling and largely dictates why her guns have sub-standard performance. She has less penetration power at 10km than Gneisenau has at 15km. Due to her lower shell velocity, her volleys come in at a higher angle than other battleships which further increases the relative thickness of plate against which it strikes. Thus even armour you might assume Hood possesses enough raw penetration to best can end up shattering her shells. At ranges greater than 12km, you can’t expect Hood to reliably penetrate the belt armour of any enemy battleship you come across. Instead, aim a little higher and try and hammer the upper hull or superstructure.

Looking back at port values, two statistics should stand out: range and gun rotation. On paper, Hood has the second lowest range of any of the tier 7 Battleships, though it pays to keep in mind that Colorado can boost her reach from 17.1km up to 19.9km with her Artillery Plotting Room 1 upgrade. Unfortunately for Hood, she doesn’t have access to the same. Hood’s 18.6km reach will often feel insufficient, especially when she gets up-tiered. Unlike Warspite, she doesn’t have access to a Spotter Aircraft to temporarily boost her range, functionally giving her less maximum range than her tier 6 cousin. All of Hood’s main battery drawbacks could be done away with if she was a good brawler. Her penetration woes would fall away. Range wouldn’t be an issue. This would really exemplify the strengths of her improved auto-ricochet angles and the decreased shell fuse timer. In truth, she does have some qualities that would make her a good medium to short range brawler, such as her agility and protection scheme (see below for more on that). On top of this, her gun angles are excellent. Her #4 turret can engage enemies 30º off her bow and her #3 can do so with enemies at 31º. If only she had decent secondaries or working torpedo launchers to back them up. So while Hood has arguably the worst guns (both primary and secondary) at her tier, they’re not without their merits. While their performance will not do players any favours, proper target selection and aim can go a long way towards mitigating their drawbacks. What about her gun Rotation? At the time of writing this, HMS Hood had a 3º per second main battery rotation speed — 60s for 180º turn which is pretty terrible. Unconfirmed rumours had mentioned that Hood’s turret rotation would be buffed up to 5º per second before release. I don’t like to write my reviews based on rumours, especially not ones Wargaming themselves cannot confirm or deny. As it stands, with her original traverse rate, this is another drawback to her weapons, albeit a minor one. Her excellent firing arcs makes it very easy to mitigate this issue by locking the rear turrets in an ‘over the shoulder’ position and just apply small touches of rudder to unmask them before slipping back into a more aggressive, not-quite bow on stance to emphasize the strengths of her armour once more. Should Hood receive this turret rotation buff, this would give her some of the fastest turning turrets among Battleships in the game — just behind the quick turning rates of Friedrich der Große and on par with the likes of Bismarck and Dunkerque. This will again bring up the question of brawling with Hood and … while possible, it’s still a very dangerous game to play, especially without good backup weaponry in the form of torpedoes or awesome secondaries. Still, it might be the play to make in select circumstances, but I wouldn’t rely on it. Summary: The gimmicks of shortened fuses and improved auto-ricochet angles are nice and all, but they don’t prop up what are ultimately the weakest guns at their tier. Hood is under-armed with low DPM, low penetration and low range.

Her secondary’s suck moose balls.

Her accuracy is good, though, being as good as (or better) than some of the 2.0 sigma warships at her tier grace of the tighter British dispersion.

Manoeuvrability Top Speed: 32.0 knots

Turning Radius: 910m

Rudder Shift: 13.4s

Turn Rate: 4.08º per second HMS Hood’s agility is a story of contrasts. She’s very fast, but she takes a long time to get up to speed. She has an enormous turning circle, yet she can change her heading very quickly for a ship of her size. It’s all too easy to dismiss Hood’s handling as “bad” — especially with her turning circle of 910m. This is the worst at her tier, and by a significant margin. While it’s true that requires a lot of room to turn around, the rate at which she does turn is surprisingly fast for her size. Hood manages just shy of 4.1º per second in a turn grace of her high speed. This is well ahead of Nagato (3.7º per second) however it falls short of all of the other tier 7 battleships. This still puts her ahead of ships with smaller turning circles, like North Carolina and Arizona. So while Hood’s ability to turn isn’t “good”, it’s not terrible either. She’ll surprise many opponents with how quickly she changes her heading or how aptly she can wiggle and dodge. Her rudder shift time can be dropped down to a mere 10.7s which only adds to her responsiveness. The only downside to this agility is that during play testing, she was out turning her turrets and by quite a bit. If Hood has a real shortfall it’s in her acceleration. Compared to her closest contemporary, Gneisenau, she’s slower in the turn (23.9 knots versus 24.1 knots) and she takes longer to accelerate to full speed from a dead stop (73s versus 65s). The difference between the two in manoeuvres is more telling — Gneisenau recovers from deceleration faster, reaching her full speed again within 30s while Hood needs 35s. This can limit Hood’s ability to dictate engagement ranges unless she sails in a straight line. Indeed, the strength of her high top speed — as fast as or faster than any other Battleship she’ll encounter short of the Iowa-class — is predicated by sailing on a straight line course. Pray there are no torpedo armed destroyers able to draw a bead on her. If there’s room to pull this off, she can effectively kite opponents that attempt to give chase. Even destroyers (particularly the slower IJN Destroyers) will struggle to keep pace with Hood when she has a mind of opening up the distance. This has the added benefit of pointing her badly positioned secondaries at whatever is pursuing her. On the attack, Hood can dominate slower Battleships and unwary cruisers, using her speed and handling to bow in, angle against incoming fire and close into her own optimal firing range while. Cruisers cannot comfortably outpace her without sailing in a straight line and Hood will punish them for moving predictably. In the latter stages of a match, Hood can really make all of the difference, with her high speed allowing her to power from one flank to the other and address the needs of her team mates. This even makes up for some of the disparity of her range. High speed should never be discounted — it’s an incredibly powerful asset. Finally, Hood’s manoeuvrability combines with her excellent firing arcs of her guns and her fast rudder shift. It’s quite easy to keep the ship heavily angled, touch the rudder to unmask turrets 3 and 4, fire and then touch the rudder back to return to a defensive stance. When she elects to take a brawling stance, her speed and handling doesn’t let her down.

Om nom nom, Atlanta. Hood has the speed to chase down many cruisers, especially if they don’t turn tail and run flat out.

Durability

Hit Points: 67,700

Maximum Protection: 25mm + 305mm + 40mm

Min Bow & Deck Armour: 25mm

Torpedo Damage Reduction: 16%

Hood’s reputation for fragility precedes her, so it may be a bit of a tough sell for me to declare that she’s rather well protected. There’s some obvious points to get out of the way — she’s not German so her citadel can be penetrated. She’s also tier 7 and not tier 8, so this hamstrings her with her tier mate’s 25mm bow and stern armour which can be overmatched by 380mm guns or larger. But overall, she’s not an especially fragile battleship.

Hood’s citadel protection over her machine spaces is comparable to Nagato’s, but she rides much lower in the water. This fully immerses her citadel beneath the waterline, which is an immediate plus. The downside is that this also immerses most of her belt armour, leaving only a bacon-thin stripe over the water’s surface. Without angling, the large slab sides of the ship are vulnerable to letting in AP penetrations from even cruiser-caliber guns, so be careful about giving up her flanks. Her armour scheme works best at medium to close ranges where she can turn in against incoming firepower. Like all ships with turtlebacks, Hood has to be especially wary of long range fire. Most of the citadel damage I’ve taken has come from long range shell strikes from distances greater than 15km. Giving up your flush broadside is also asking to have your machine spaces blown out.

Her vulnerabilities lie primarily with her turrets and barbettes which aren’t as well protected as her contemporaries, leaving them vulnerable to direct fire. It’s quite common for these guns to get temporarily disabled, so Main Armaments Modification 1 is a sound investment. Preventative Maintenance on your ship’s Commander wouldn’t be remiss either.

It’s against high explosive fire that Hood is surprisingly adept. She shares the usual vulnerabilities of her superstructure to all gun calibers and her bows and stern can be easily damaged by 152mm guns or larger. However, like the German Battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, amidships, her deck is too thick for even heavy cruiser HE shells to damage. Similarly, above her armoured belt, her plate never gets thin enough for high explosive to damage either, being immune to everything up to and including Battleship caliber HE shells.

Hood is highly vulnerable to torpedoes, however. Her long keel presents an ideal target for broadside spreads. Her propensity to want to sail in straight lines to maximize speed can set her up for disaster, so keeping a wary eye on the minimap is necessary to avoid unwelcome surprises.

Concealment & Camouflage Base Surface Detection Range: 16.2km Air Detection Range: 13.9 km Minimum Surface Detection Range: 13.5km Main Battery Range: 18.6km Hood is a large ship and she understandably has a rather large surface detection range. It’s perhaps a surprise that it’s not the worst at her tier. She sits comfortably in the middle — outdone by 500m when compared to the commerce raiders Scharnhorst and Gneisenau but ahead of Colorado by the same margin and with nearly a full kilometer’s advantage over Nagato. This happy middle ground evaporates when her aerial detection is concerned — she has the largest surface detection by a large margin. You’re not sneaking up on anything in Hood. Even if you specialize in concealment, you’re still going to be sniffed out from the air at a range of 11.9km and from the surface at 13.5km. This can put a real hurt on her efforts to take up flanking positions, as she’s more visible than most of the American and German Battleships (especially when they’re higher tier and rigged for concealment) and she stands little chance of catching a cruiser off guard. What really hurts Hood’s concealment is that without allies, she has to do her own spotting. She has no access to Hydro, Radar or some kind of catapult aircraft to give her early warning about another ship’s approach through concealment or obstacles. So not only is a she a big ship, she’s also a blind big ship. Destroyers can approach her confident that she won’t spot them early and that her secondaries are ill placed to fend them off. This allows Hood to be out played by another ship that can control vision. Were it not for Hood’s speed, she might be surrendering all initiative to the enemy because of this deficit.

I ran lots (and lots, and lots) of tests of Hood’s anti-aircraft ability, both against bots and against volunteers like Lert. The more heavily specialized she became, the more more brutal her AA power became under the Defensive Fire consumable. It’s almost meme-worthy, but don’t swallow the hype wholesale. Anti-Aircraft Defense AA Battery Calibers: 178mm / 102mm / 40mm / 12.7mm

AA Umbrella Ranges: 1.5km / 5.0km / 2.5km / 1.2km

AA DPS per Aura: 50 / 56 / 69 / 8 Much ado will be made about HMS Hood’s anti-aircraft defenses. Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: Hood is selfish. Whatever you feel about the final values of Hood’s AA power, she isn’t designed around fleet-defense. Her dual purpose, 102mm guns may have the reach but can only do so much to help to a beleaguered ally, even when fully upgraded. Instead, Hood’s flak is meant to selfishly protect herself from enemy air attack.

The only redeemable quality of Hood’s anti-aircraft defenses comes solely from her two unique features — her anti aircraft rockets and her Defensive Fire consumable. On the surface, her rockets are pretty lackluster too. She has five mounts, each adding 10dps to the collective whole which isn’t spectacular. Worse, they have only a 1.5km range. Stock, they are utterly incapable of engaging enemy torpedo planes before they make their drop. At best, they can engage enemy dive bombers on their final attack run. Worse, her Defensive Fire consumable only affects these rocket mounts, meaning that the disruption effect provided by this consumable only touches planes that have slipped within this 1.5km window. Clearly, we’re not off to a great start. Thankfully, it gets better.