Sharana

I had the same impressions the first time I saw this in alpha. There were tons of feedback on the forums, but as you can see nothing has changed since alpha and they know about it. So i got used to it and see it as a feature that's in the game rignt now and use it when I need it in CV or BB. I hope this will change before the release too, but right now it's just not "abuse" of anything (bug, feature, etc). You are welcome to try and score their results with CV if "anyone" can can play CVs with "4 apm".

The low tiers are completely ridiculous right now with that buffed auto drop and tier X torps against ships that don't have anti-torpedo protection. http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/16232-tier-5-usn-vs-ijn-strike-cvs-really-broken-low-tier-cvs/page__p__292625#entry292625

There was always stacking, even in the old USN 2/2/1 Essex. Stacked Haku with 4 TBs gives you 12/16 hits even on afk Yamato, while the stacked Midway will give you the same 12/12. It's just easier to score 8-12/16 then 8-12/12, but they do more damage, so that evens it out. From the damage point of view nothing changed, it's just harder to stop so many planes and the IJN line profits there, otherwise it will just be totally outshined by USN and there will be no point in grindig it. After ~40 battles in Midway and HIA on the PT I would say the IJN line is worth it and not outshined in randoms, even against air superiority Midways. On the other hand that's causing problems. When someone is comming for you, you can just spam him with planes (small attacks 2 squadrons each) and he won't get you. Also fighters stop your strike package way too easy when it's concentrated in only 1-2 groups like in the USN line, while such massive wave 4+4 can go through with 50% losses and still do damage, because there is no way not to be frustrated when random "bob" click on your 2 TBs with his jets and they are gone, so 4 minutes are wasted, 0 skill involved. So it's hard to say exacly what's the problem, because simply cutting the IJN to USN sizes will just make them completely uselss if they don't make 15K per torp hit. Right now when the MM fails and puts 2 top players with strike Hakus against only 1 Midway with balanced setup it's more then crazy. I was too busy to take screenshots that game, but here it is how 2 Hakus look like, just exchange 2 fighters for TB and DB: So he was some russian with strike Haku too and he has to be one of the top player there judging by his attacks. The enemy Midway was scared and was hugging the border with fighters above him + 2 cruisers, so guessing that we just went for the BBs with combined attack of 8 TBs and 8 DBs in capable hands. There were huge fps drops because of so many planes in 1 place (72+enemy planes), but we 1shotted the first ship (Yamato) only with TBs (mine port, his starboard) and attacked the Montana near him in waves of 2 DBs keeping the fires, so 50% of the Montana was gone too in a minute. As it was North we just parked behind the huge island in the middle to be close and spam an attack every 3 minutes, while the enemy just retreated to the cap forming 1 huge blob. The rest of the game was fun for us both, while really bad for the rest. With 16 bomber squadrons we were picking them 1 by 1 in that blob despite all the fighters in the air (all BBs and CAs with fighter) scoring hits on multiple targets because of the permanent huge spread. The results was 8 kills for us (5+3), 1 team kill on their side and the rest 3 were killed by our DDs, so everything died to the OP torps, our BBs were just sailing and sniping on max range while observing the bombardment. The chat ... I don't want to say anything about it. You can imagine discussions about sky cancers and swearing in russian, english and other languages I don't recognize. Can't wait for 2 CVs per divison during the OBT when the population is big enough to form 2 vs 2 battles for CVs as on the PT (on the high tiers at least)

Those guys were impressive, nothing more to say. You really need skill to catch the 0.4.0 auto drop with DD...

Btw if it's bug it's going to be fixed. If it's like this ... as long as I remember then it's a feature you can use for now, not "bug abuse".

Official: see above. Also "believe it or not, only part of the CVs use the manual drop. The ones who play with fighters don't need it so they can take another perk, while skilled players with TBs who need it will have take it instead." Real: cash milking (500 gold to retrain) or forced to play many battles with auto attack (or fighters) on the high tiers. Also 2 points less for skilled players who use it, so they don't take the -10% service time for TBs instead.

They overdone that .. a lot. You can't even imagine the stock Taiho fighters with 162 dps...

I doubt you will be able to play balanced setup in such games. It will depend on the tactic - either air superiority and play with ships or combination of strike/balanced Hakus and Midways to "play slowly" as with arty in WoT. My point exactly, and you carry easier with all IJNs while you grind. 1 Airport vs group of ships - waste of slot. But if you play with CVs (like 4 or 5) against ships + 2 Midways for air cover it's hard to say. if they have lots of DDs and cruisers and rush you (fewer ships, because of the CVs) it's clearn, but if that's BBs with cruisers? But Midways in 3/0/1 will be more common of course, way more. I guess the strike HIA will be like FV 183 and WT(F) auf E-100 in WoT. Pure fun in randoms, either UP or OP depending on the situation, but rarely used in CWs (and in homeopathic dose).

Lots of Midways on the PT and most of them are either fighters or balanced. Still I manage to sneak and do more damage then they would do for 3-4 games in this setup. They can only deny me some primary targets, but if those primary targets are "bobs" who can't turn the tide then they are wasting their time. Yes you don't depend on the MM with 2/1/2, but it's not the same fun and it's frustating sometimes when you know that you could have won this if you were dealing the damage instead of defending those id players hoping they will do that damage. When the division are back air superiority Midway (3/0/2) + strike Haku (4/4) are very good combo, had such games - he was escorting my bombers and denied enemy bombers primary targets + no fear of being sniped. So we were lots more effective then the 2 enemy balanced Hakus. Stock Midway (2/1/2) + balanced Haku (2/3/3) are also good combination, striking together, while Midway is busy with enemy fighters and the Haku is shooting down bombers (can't win vs USN fighters).

The balanced setup is still bad idea if you are good with the bombers, you can only kill other bombers and those float fighters. On the other hand the IJN CVs are pretty good with the strike setup, they don't have the high tier american alpha, but they have consistent very high dpm, literally spamming with planes. Just had a game with 2vs2 CVs and I was able to do very good game. With all those float fighters it's very hard to attack group of ships in USN CV. NC,Iowa and Amagi + Ibuki I think - when they saw my bombers there were instantly 4 fighters in the air + AA barrage. I lost planes just retreating and attacked with 50% of the squadron in panic, and those fighters leave the empty bombers and attack the next wave ASAP panicing them again. Without them I would just 1shot one of the tier 8s, now I damaged 2 ships, because of the spread, but killed none of them. It should be this way, but the ramdo warriors will always cry CVs OP. The same game when the others decided to go Yolo style and I was picking them 1 by 1 later . Their CVs were "bobs" also, from the 4 CVs in that game only I knew what to do with it

They made much more difficult to achieve the same results, not impossible. If I was playing the same way pre nerf it would probably be like 190K+ avarage Pape played way more battles after the nerf, almost 200, and his avg damage dropped from 180K to 168K, so it was nerfed of course, no doubt about that. I play the PT a lot actually in Midway and Hakuryu. I was sure Midway is better and I will go for it in OBT, but after the "live test with 2 vs 2 tier X CVs situation and lots of tier 9-10 ships in the battle I'm not so sure anymore. I can't see my stats with HIA, but I had games with 300K damage vs strike Midway (sniped him faster), but I also had 80k damage games vs good players in Midway with 3 fighters where I was literally out of planes in the last 5 minutes. Avarage battles 2 vs 2 CVs with avarage bobs is still ~140K damage I would say. Midway is a lot harder to judge. It's way more easy to stop it's strike package, because there are only 2 TBs and the fighters get them, however if they reach the target unopposed I was 1shotting Yamatos (9 torp hits for ~60K damage, 3 DBs for ~20K direct damage and 2-3 fires finishing them off).

I didn't They nerfed the firepower by 30-40% true, but after adapting and starting to play more careful and picking my targets better I started to score pretty much the same results, with more efforts of course. Pre nerf I was 139 battles with 181K avg damage, now I'm 191 battles with 178K avg damage. The drop is insignificant

The japanese camouflage is so ugly, just look at the airport

All new hulls: Myogi stock Myogi top Kongo stock Kongo top Fuso stock Fuso top Nagato stock Nagato top Amagi stock Amagi top

There was fuel. There were also more squadrons (like 3/2/2 for Essex). I was not able to play so early alpha, but the guys who did say that was real skill and micromanage with so many planes and fuel (so not everything in the air as now). If it's removed then WG is dumbing their gameplay down. To make it more easy they even made roles now - 1 is playing bombers and the other fighters (not both as before) so you can just click few times and that's all. With the current auto drop you can play on your iPad with the same results...

Group of 2-3 BBs and 1-2 cruisers is really annoying right now, it's like squadron of fighters, but they panic 1 squadron each

You get the same 3 TBs from tier 4 to tier 8. Only 9 and 10 get 1 more. The damage is the same, but the ships get more hp and better anti torp protections (less damage per hit there). You can kill everything in every tier if you know how to do it. But WG should hire you, they always think like do. Can't balance something? Add RNG and problems solved.

new tier 8 and new premium t8 instead of Kitakami.

Myogi stock Myogi top Kongo stock Kongo top Don't have the others for now I played for Midway. Will add them later.

The layout duration and smoke duration itself were nerfed to aviod perma smokes many complained about. It's also harder to make huge clouds to hide the BBs there.

It's doing damage. At least 1 week ago.

It's working exactly like that, the target marked with X. To avoid any macros and stuff that will remove the marker just a moment before firing the shot they increased the dispersion a lot for blind fire (without target lock). That means that if you fire your main guns and want the normal dispersion we know you have to use the X. When you shoot at DD in the smoke, shoot against ally or simply somewhere the dispersion will be bigger.

If they don't add Bismarck or Saipan soon after OBT start then I will probably have to buy this one even if I don't really like cruisers

Only Cleveland was 20 and it was fixed today. All others had 40 sec.

They blocked it with 0.4.0 otherwise you don't need the spotter (and it's not permanent and can be shot down).