I'd bet that the Cleveland is still a good ship for the way I played it, which is as a Des Moines Light. My Cleveland stats are from before the AFT change but I'd be shocked if more than 10% of my damage came from AFT ranges anyway, since it was very difficult to hit targets reliably. It's also one of the toughest cruisers to citadel, so it's more forgiving of careless broadsides. It's not an astounding ship by any measure in its current form, but it's still an excellent close-range brawler that absolutely destroys opposing cruisers with AP, and is a destroyer-slayer second only to the Budy. The Buddy is slightly more fragile then the Cleveland, but other then that it outclasses its American rival in every way possible.

It is also why you want to avoid close range brawling if at all possible, and if you can't avoid it do your damnedest to make sure the enemy is dispatched with your opening salvo. The only really downside to the ship is that just like the Kirov it is derived from it is fragile as hell which means any sort of focused fire will melt you. If they decline to show you some broadside then load HE and have fun being a flame thrower because both the AP and HE on the Molotov are quite good. When facing any cruiser, and even a lot of the battleships, just load AP and have fun sniping for massive damage if the enemy shows you their broadside. The 180mm guns and ammo that it carries around are not the ones from the Kirov but instead are the ones from the tier 9 Soviet cruiser. As far as play style goes the Molotov should stay back and snip whenever possible. Both its skill floor and skill ceiling are quite high so bad players will do awful in it and good players will be like Zeus casting lighting from the heavens. The Molotov is the exact opposite of the Cleveland. So, while it is a very forgiving ship that will let new / bad players feel like they can consistently accomplish something in most of the battle they take it into experienced / good players will find it very lackluster since the ship lacks any sort of definitive asset that can be exploited. On the flip side the skill ceiling for it is just barely above the floor. The Cleveland is still probably the most popular tier 6 cruiser in the game since it has a very very very low skill floor.

World of warships cleveland or budyonny