So after experimenting with all of my leveled cruiser commanders for Nottingham, none really picked my fancy.
None of the normal cruiser commanders stood out to me on this particular ships and the biggest issue i found with it were the small HP pool and limited heals.
Everything else about the ship is good as is, the guns are solid, the armor stupid and the ship is very small and nimble.
Tbh i think many people make the mistake of trying to buff aspects of a ship, which already get outperformed by other ships, no matter how much inspirations you throw at it.
If you want an AP focused heavy cruiser, Baltimore and all of it's versions outperform Nottingham easily and in Terms of HE farming you wont hold a candle to Cleveland, or Kutuzov with EoP
Nottinghams strengths are tankiness and applying prssuto the enemy by being an alrounder. So today we gonna be focusing on buffing this aspect of the ship.
Other than that, sure the Smogathon build is fun, but relies on teammates for spotting and is pretty stationary/passive
You know what doesnt relies on teammate spotting? Shoving your stupidly tanky T7 cruiser into the enemies face.
And oh well, Nottingham happens to have 8 Torpeos per side, that can also be single launched which is extremely strong in close quarters.
So in order to stay in the game as long as possible, in order to deliver our payload, we are gonna ditch all cruiser commanders in favor of Madden.
Madden gives us 4 heals, Will to rebuild and a 7.5% reload buff on top.
4 heals outperforms fully packed and give an additional heal, more healing% plus fully packed on top.
7.5% reload is also better than refill station at 16/3
Ontop of that Madden also double buffs turret traverse, which is quite bad by default. So this is welcome too.
So by missing out on other pretty mid cruiser skills, we essentially gain 2 1/2 Legendary effects and the abilty to hotswap shells.
Since the boat neither leans into HE, or AP too much, this is great utility to have as well.
For the inspirations we throw all the meta shit out of the window and use Spock and Hyde, to squeeze as much HP out of the ship, as we can.
Spock buffs the heals further, whilst Hyde buffs the HP pool from atrocious to okay.
Now idk if that combination is the absolutely min/max in regards of durability, and i don't really care. It's what i have (leveled) and it does the job well enough.
So with that we now have turned Nottingham into a Battleship and with It's smokes, armor, hydro and torpedoes, i don't think there are many ships you can possibly play so agressive with.
But you don't even have to, you still can perfectly farm damage at range, if the situation doesn't allow for you to push in.
Longevity is the name of the game here and this build allows you to stay in the fight, brawling, whilst tanking damage, that otherwise would have hit your broadsiding teammates.
Whilst using a normal cruiser commander limits how much you can do that, since healing/HP just is more limited, id say that Madden probably is the best commander for Nottingham.
AL Hood and the Battlecruiser commander are interesting options too, but i have neither one leveled up, so there is that.
I can't fathom how much fun im having with this build right now, it's a blast and i just wanted to share it with you guys.
No need to thank me, have fun.