I don't understand why people are still saying UK is friendly to beginners. It's not like the old days when top ship level was 70-80-ish and Nelson had 14*4L blockshot whose range was a little shorter than othe nations.

Given the typical range shortage of UK, I won't say it's beginner-friendly any more. Before you can hit others in GB with at-level crew, you're probably pwn-ed by BB4-5-6 from all other nations, no matter how much armor you put on.

(Although, technically, there is one exception: if you use King George V, you can put on lots of deck armor and you can probably survive quite a few salvos from other BBs. However, this situation only applies when you use 15*2*3 main gun setup which means, with at-level crew, you can't do much damage to your enemies because 1) 15*2 gun's spread is horrible with at-level crew and 2) 15*2*3 has little firepower, which means a slow grind in GB anyways)

As a beginner, I would recommend you to play Italy because:
1) Italian ships are so freeking small that it's very, very, very, very difficult for any ship to one-shot you

2) Italian has low gun angles which means less hangtime in the air, which means advantage in both rushing and run-gunning

3) Italian shells have above-average shell damage and average range.

4) Italian has EOC guns you can use in leveling in Blitz, which I consider as bug guns because these guns have reload time of an FF gun + shell damage of a CA gun (or even BB gun) + range of a CA gun (or even BB gun).

5) Take a look at the size of Italian CL Romani. Isn't it ridiculous that it has FF size but also more damage point than many other CAs? SDE designed it this way because SDE begs you to play Italy.

What you say Jedi makes sense but NO new player will be playing range or making use of RM's advantages.  In fact even a lot of experienced players (but bad) players will put armor on RM, no scout, and try to fight point blank in blitz with all types of ships.

And about the EOC guns - they become available in the mid 30s.  Most players won't be playing a level 15 DD at that point.  The bigger ship makes me better mentality means they'll be torping it up in a CL by that time.  I also assume that the lack of speed will turn a lot of newer people off of RM.

Just  take into consideration the bad info that gets passed around blitz + the tendencies of new player and bad players = armor, torps, close range fights.

You're seeing a handful of players like me using RM dds.  It's a slow and fragile ship.  Hardly any new players are going to stick around and wait for level 34 gunners to use it properly.  Anyone who plays an RM dd without the 34 guns is food because it lacks speed and R slots.  There have been arguments made by RM players that they had the worst DD.  I argued it had the best dd only if equipped right but at-level it's awful.

It does make average-bad players better of course but they tend to make enough set up mistakes like by lacking scouts, putting on ridiculous armor, and also using torps to render them mostly useless.  Of course there are going to be good ones that do everything right but that's the exception and not the rule.

if you are new and want to play bb through to BB6

please choose the IJN- japan  or KM- german

if you make it to BB6 and can handle yourself well you will be able to migrate to any other nation and play it really well with the skills you have learnt in your first grind.  

dont pick the easy route first as you will be disapointed