u/AprilWhiteMouse, I was shown the NA forum thread about San Diego yesterday, so let me use this chance to drop my 2c on the matter (I don't have a NA account).
First of all, there is one thing that, I'm sorry to say, I agree with WG - San Diego IS NOT ATLANTA. I thought it obvious from the start that the combination of bad rate of fire for 127mm guns combined with SAP and unlimited MBRB made this ship a downtiered Austin, but I guess I was the one thinking outside of the box, whatever.
That being said, San Diego not being Atlanta is not the main issue IMHO. Rather, it is the following:
Until we see an armor model, I will assume San Diego uses the same model of Atlanta, which means 16-19mm everywhere except on the citadel plating and turrets. Atlanta is already a very fragile ship, and combining that with Tier 8 matchmaker plus no heal (not just no improved heal, but no heal at all) makes it exceedingly difficult to survive in.
San Diego has 16km base range, that's unheard of for any CLAA we have in the game (so the USN and PA ones). That's great! The problem is, if San Diego uses Atlanta shell ballistics, that range is useless because that far out the arcs and shell velocity make it near-impossible to hit anything, except maybe slow-moving battleships. It is an advantage only on paper, and IMHO the only way for this range to make sense would be for San Diego to have arcs and velocity like Sejong/Jinan - a middle ground between Atlanta/Flint/Chumphon and Austin.
I saw this brought up at some point in the NA thread and I'm sorry if I sound dismissive but - WG does not care about a ship's real life history. San Diego is the second most decorated USN warship of WW2, but that is essentially irrelevant as far as balancing is concerned. It is still a problem because I heard the stories of what happened with Alabama, and I suppose something similar might happen again with San Diego.
Lastly, I don't think trying to reason with WG staff on a platform WG controls can produce any meaningful results. I do agree with them in that players are pushing for an insurrection way too early, but I saw Askance's attempts to highlight San Diego's ups and they were embarrassing - technically he did not lie, but I don't remember him mentioning anything about shell behaviour when praising San Diego's range, just to name one.
And that's all I wanted to say. This comment will probably get downvoted badly but oh well, we'll live with that.