steveraptor

Nope, you didn't, go back and read my previous posts and try again, way before you even posted. I'm not going to repeat myself.

You didn't address any of my points and reasons why Minotaur is currently not viable. Instead you write that Mino is a capable ship in the right hands etc etc. Nobody said it a bad ship, Henry is also a very capable ship on the right hands. That's not the point, the point is those ships are currently not viable at the current meta due to XYZ reasons mentioned above, which you chose to ignore. Also, I play surface ships as well, and my gaming and tactical sense are fine, thanks for asking.

Do you remember the last KOTS? some teams had Mino in their line ups and all they did was sitting at the back lines, hiding behind a rock. In some games they didn't even fire a single shell. None of the teams got any value out of that ship and there was no CV around, because a mino will never work vs passive, camping play. CV has nothing to do with the viability of Mino or other ships for that matter. The problem lies in the "Alpha dominates everything" meta and Stalin/Venezia power creeping everything.

100% agree with all of this.

Mino was always dead because the entire meta revolves around "bow-in and trade", and mino deals 0 damage when not flanking and gets overmatched by stalins. One mistake = dead, extreme risk, no reward in CBs. If you need smoke to push caps, why, pick a venezia ....need radar? why...you have 12km on Stalingrad..., need good AA? pick either Venezia or Stalin? need to delete DDs quickly? Pick a venezia.... The power creep is beyond absurd with those 2 ships that fill ALL roles.

Exactly why stalins and venezia are the problems.

Yeah, we CV players are playing with fire every time we come out to the forums.

This is true, and you also saw what happened to RU vs EU games. Russian lost hard nearly every time they tried to play aggressive vs EU teams. I was actually rooting hard for RU teams because it was a joy to see them playing aggressive with Kremlins and pushing in general, it was simply more interesting to watch.

CV is the cause, true, but I don't see it a problem in my eyes. From what I have seen in previous competitive tournies, namely KOTS, the only tactical gameplay was camping and trading. All that "strategical maneuvering and tactical pushing etc etc" is a stuff of legends. And I will disagree with any attempt at saying that the "life before CV" was anything interesting or tactical. KOTS was the most boring tournament I ever seen in any competitive gaming. Its obvious the the meta has changed and ships can no longer be parked isolated behind every island. So now, ships needs to have strong AA and have to operate in groups of at least 2. Stationary targets behind islands, are easy picking for CV, especially if alone. But Open water cruisers with good agility like Venezia and Henris are not, especially if they move in groups of 2-3. Open water cruisers in general are more resistant to CV spotting due to them firing/trading at will anyway and are on the move. Open water cruiser gameplay is also something new to didn't really exist when CV were out of the picture, so I see it as welcome change. When you put several stationary/bow-in pushing targets together, namely stalins for example, you can effectively ward off any drops, and even if the CV gets the drop, and gets jackpot RNG and nails 25k with AP bombs, it usually cost the entire squadron of 12 planes, out of 20 to get that, and its simply not a worthy trade for the CV player. Defensive AA was never supposed to protect a lone ship from CV, but when you have 2-3 stalins use it at the same time, even the best CV players will have extremely difficulties to get a drop and its simply not worth it. You call that blobbing in a negative way but that's not true, blobbing is pushing one side with 6 ships, which nobody does and instantly fails due to crossfires. Instead clans tend to play 3-3, 4-2, and I even seen NOCAP plays 2-2-2, some mix open water cruisers with long range stationary, the CV can also camp stationary fighters on top of stationary targets to keep them safe from bombers for the entire game. This is why I, and I think Yosha as well, see as the game more dynamic compared to the previous stationary campfest we had before. I think that the players point their fingers at the wrong culprit for the stalemate of the current meta, CV open up more tactics but the cause of the issue here are Stalins and Venezia. Simply, Alpha right now dominates the meta. people complain about getting hammered by the occasional 25k ap bombers. Is everyone fine with getting 15k SAPed by venezias consistently? CV spotting DD is one thing, but what gets them killed are 3 venezia insta killing them on the spot. Stalins are effectively battleships with rail gun accuracy at 20km and both have excellent AA. Do you think that ships like Zao, Hindy and Henry went extinct because of CVs? No, they dissappeared from the meta long before it, because they were power crept by venezia and stalins. DPM ships pretty much went out of the window due to how powerful those 2 ships are. The higher you climb the quickly you notice that every enemy comp you face is generally one out of possible 3: - 3x stalins 3x venezia 1x haku - 2x stalins 1x halland 3x venezia 1x haku - 4x stalins 2x venezia 1x haku With the occasional PR mixed once in 10 games for radar instead of a Venezia. Here is how diverse and interesting is the meta, and it has nothing to do with CVs. Those are the main issues. And on top of it all, notice that at top leagues, only Haku sees gameplay, because Haku strives against stalins and moskvas, so a problem drags another problem, the constant presence of russian ships destroy the CV pick variaty. If you limit stalins and venezias, midway would be more viable because while it can't land 25k Alpha, its more effective at dealing with non-stationary targets than Haku and you will see a variety in CV picks as well. Finally the spotting issues. Spotting hurts not because the spotting itself, but what follows that, namely, again, long range accurate Alpha damage, which is ruled by, again, Stalingrad and Venezias that can SAP you and AP you for half hitpoints in moments across the entire map. Everyone went through the following scenario: Game starts, everyone move to position and show broadside to one another. Then rocket planes spot every side and people trade shots, within 30 seconds someone is going to find himself with half HP gone. The immediate one to blame here will be the CV for spotting that early...but is it? the only ships that can snipe that easily at 20km are ofc Stalins... if there were no stalins and instead a mix of DM/salems Zaos...So CV would spot the positions, but it would be impossible for anyone to blap each other that hard and that easily. The fact that a ship can snipe at such an insane range, for so much damage, from spawn to spawn and with such ease is a balance flaw in my opinion. If you could ban russian ships and limit venezia picks from one CW season and keep CVs, I promise you that the gameplay would be far more enjoyable, for every class. I think that those are the roots of the problem and not CVs.

Adding to what miragetank said: They don't counter those ships because they do not play passive, they push, radar smolls/woosters/minos out of smoke and blap them, yoshes also get citadel ed easy by stalins at long range. Also, there is no reason to bring Yosh instead of Venezia. Generally any DPM ship is useless because long range Alpha dominates the meta, that's why Venezia and Stalins are everwhere.

Try again.

Have you ever considered that fact that some people like Apples and some prefer Oranges instead?

Oh nice, glad to see i'm part of the list, although i still have a long way to go.

My guess is its the same reason as the majority of this player-base. Refusal to adapt to something new, they rather stick to their stale game play instead of changing strategy, camping islands takes far less grey cells than anything else. The biggest advantage of having a good CV in your clan is not only the players capability of playing the class itself, but the knowledge to adapt the strategy of the clan and counter- play the class itself. Since the CV population is already extremely small and the amount of good CV players is borderline almost non-existent, very few clans have access to those benefits. That's why some have advantages over others. Some clans simply have no idea how to play against a CV in CW and it shows, my clan was one of those before I joined. What? you think it will be different when subs will be introduced? it will be the exact same thing.

You actually do speak about individuals. That's 4 clan out of..what 2200? You don't see, and you will never see the bigger picture. Only WG can.

I'm enjoying the game as it is, both Solo and when in doing divs with my clan. I recently devoted more time to DDs and Cruisers and i'm having just as much fun as playing CVs. This is my first CW season and I enjoy it a lot, far more than random battles.

10 is not enough....

In my experience, HVAR is superior to Tims at tier 8, and vastly inferior to Tims at tier X, I will not go further than that because I already had a thorough discussion about that with Yoshanai some pages ago in this thread. But anyway, yeah, at tier X Tiny Tims are MUCH better, and FDR gets the HVAR rockets, so the least fair thing WG can do is to give them the widen narrow elipse instead of the circle, but I doubt it will happen. Also I agree with what Sunleader posted, I think you can clearly see that any future CVs that are being released are far less powerful than what is currently at the game, so WG hopes to "split" the CV playerbase between the current, overperforming CVs and the new ones which are more.."balanced", probably because its harder to balance the current, "old" CVs (Shokaku, Lexi..etc...) without completely overhauling them. The only way this can backfire in their faces is if eventually people will realize that the german CV line, for example, is far weaker than the others and will simply stop playing them. So eventually almost no-one will play the line and everyone will go back to the old CVs.

I actually saw an FDR once in my games on the enemy team, but the guy playing it got deplaned 5 min in so it was hard to notice how it performed. I may be wrong, but on first impressions it looks like a downgraded midway. Your stuck with HVAR at tier X, which are terrible at this tier especially if they have the same reticle as midway's, no TiTs, worse torps, you drop 8 of them but they deal 4k per torp, which makes it harder to get good value out of them. Dive bombers are slightly better but that's about it really. Planes are also slower, which is a pretty big disadvantage all around.

As a CV player, my negative karma will probably overflow the gaming code and break the client if karma could go below 0.

Heh, unfortunately that's how the majority of the human population is now these days, not only in gaming. Very few can actually accept criticism or even criticize themselves, adapt and improve. Many prefer to choose the easy way out, complaining/quitting, blaming everyone but themselves.

Yeah true, it makes parking isolated cruisers around every island in the map and trading shots a lot harder to pull off. Very interesting tactic indeed, latest KOTS was all I needed to see those "interesting and aggressive" strategies that exist only in myths.

It won't, potato will remain potatoes regardless, but this way I can have at least more reports for all of them.

The people I generally report are people who just playing extremely bad, like BBs that go on a luxury cruise on spawn or sometimes entire lemming trains that go and camp behind islands and then insta-lose the game. Don't think I can report those to costumer support. But I feel a bit better when I can at least report them.

You're not alone.