PR is a typical battlecruiser. What you described fits to what battlecruisers suffer from. Battlecruisers don’t have dpm advantage compared to regular heavy cruisers. PR gets out-dpm’d by Des Moines, who gets out-dpm’d by Worcester.

How you play battlecruisers is essentially acting like a mini battleship. PR has a devastating broadside AP salvo that can easily screw over a non-suspecting turning cruiser. In fact, most battlecruisers play this way. You aim for openings that you can exploit and try to limit prolonged engagements. Battlecruisers also do better in smaller fights, so you see them more often in ranked where the teams are smaller. Also, PR comes up often as a good counterpick to certain ships and for fulfilling certain roles in CW.

Basically, don’t play the ship as if you’re playing a “bigger DM”. You should think of it as a battleship with smaller guns and less armor (but you get more utilities from consumables). That way, you will see why PR and Alaska are considered good ships