Figment

The ping mechanic is bad, as are some others. Frankly I don't get why they stick with them so stubbornly.

RTS CVs were poorly balanced as well, particularly against one another. Their concepts of scaling up to top tier has never been logical nor reasonable either. A tier difference would simply guarantee a loss, because it wasn't skillbased, but purely DPS based interaction. Well, we can't discuss the inability of basic reading comprehension of the random idiot on the forum either. But that doesn't stop them from posting and making up dumb arguments. Right? Learn to bloody read some time: When I say some random player doesn't get to say what the game was intended to be by the developers (coincidentally his personal ideal), when the developers did something entirely different from the earliest stages of developing the game! That is just common sense! What he's trying to do, is argue that his vision and only his vision of the game is correct by creating a "Truth" that is the exact same thing as his utopic vision. Which is just a lie and a completely dishonest way of argueing. Now. Nowhere have I said or insinuated you can't critique the company for their choices, but this game was never designed for players who claim there were only supposed to be surface to surface warships, so claiming such is historic revisionism and requiring appropriate correction. In fact, constructive critique is one of my fave pasttimes. Bashing and personal bias, is not. For some reason the wish for people like you to deliberately completely strawman other people is completely incomprehensible to me, even though I understand it's the lame person's way of pretending to have an argument they can win, when they utterly fail at even basic debate principles. Egads. You understood something. But yes... Against most CVs (save a couple higher tiers) this works quite well, particularly in combination with... AA! Ever since RTS. The extend to which it's effective differs, but it's definitely a basic counterplay to incoming torpedoes and other ordinance like dive bombs and rockets... Did you know that if you get out of their optimal firing line you reduce the chances of all their ordinance hitting? EGADSES. You learn something new every day... Why should it prevent strikes exactly? Mitigation is enough. If you could prevent all incoming fire from another ship, you just made it obsolete. So no, preventing attacks completely isn't the goal of AA in a game. What you need is AA and agility that is effective enough that you reduce the damage taken and perhaps even avoid damage. However, it should never be possible to avoid all damage, as it should never be possible to dodge all shells an enemy fires at you. One way of mitigation is taking down aircraft during an attack on you, however, with RTS aircraft you had higher attrition to the point that it mattered in the late game, something which you don't have today unless you face say a Shokaku at T9-T10, as then it'll lose a lot of air even against DDs. A CV is a unit that should be supportive and require time to make a kill, it should be logistically challenged where most other units have more instant gratification. To date in the current setup, the main logistical challenge to overcome has been flight time and maybe approach angle. Attrition is of too low importance. WoWs has never played with flight time limitations either for instance. But while AA as is can be extremely effective (try playing a Friesland or Scandi high tier DD), it isn't supposed to be providing any form of invulnerability, as in this game any player should be able to beat another in conditions favouring their unit. And CVs can be easily killed once detected and in line of sight. If they were always in line of sight, they'd have no defense and there'd be no CV gameplay. So you have to accept that there will be indirect gameplay. The key is creating a fair limitation on capabilities, which WG has never even attempted. Most whiners about CV want to be able to ignore CVs because they're either not smart enough to deal with, or not interested enough to play against an opponent by proxy fights because they prefer a more direct gameplay. They're both basically too egocentric to tolerate other forms of gameplay. Often times they're too obsessed about their own interests to even consider getting creative to find a workable solution. Much easier to just suggest there's no solution as if by some wonder they'd listen to that you get a dumbed down game where you only need to concern yourself with basic gameplay. That said, the way AA has been setup tier wise and aircraft HP works is just stupid. IMO AA and air to air combat should have been more module based, with closer balancing between tiers and luck being a bit more of a factor in A2A, while S2A should require some more decision making, like how focused fire (Ctrl click) of the RTS period helped a lot in making AA + movement effective at dodging by taking out specific squadrons first. The current AA boost setup is in comparison a pretty poor design. Similarly, CV last second decision making has been made too easy in this variant. During RTS the locking in of attacks made it so you could focus on dodging one squadron while keeping the other in your AA focus. The multi-pass you get today makes it a lot harder (but not impossible) to dodge. Anyway, we're getting off-topic.

Yeah! That is why CVs were included in… alpha and beta testing with a lot more of them in game per nation than today? Hmmm… Or… maybe you’re just projecting your idealization of the game a “how it was meant to be”. You didn’t code this game, the ones who did put them in. Those devs determine how it was meant to be, not you. As for your “no counters” crap… Every ship is outfitted with a rudder, so there goes that theory. AA is effective, not for every ship and CVs certainly start a tier too low and get a bit nuts at tier X and the devs have tried some insane balancing that would never work and didn’t try obvious range limitation and attrition mechanics that would easily reduce their impact. But incompetence at implementation doesn’t mean they never intended to add them in some way. As for subs, the developers of old didn’t intend to put those in. I think they should have considered them, but again, the implementation is pretty poor. Doesn’t mean they can’t ever be in. One of the main problems is very loudmouthed players who think their preferred playstyle is holy and the center of the universe and nobody else has a right to disagree with them. That leads to toxicity and lack of constructive feedback that reduces the quality of development as it drowns out and bullies out sane, constructive people from these topics.

Look, if you quote and make letters larger, that doesn’t mean you understood the quote… And you didn’t. I understand your confusion though and maybe I should have phrased it clearer: What I said and meant was that you don’t need to rebalance them against one another (within the BC class), because they’ve already been balanced against one another. They can just replace an amount of BB slots with BC slots in the MM. That isn’t the same as putting them in the MM as BB vs BB though. I know people love dragging sentences out of context, but you should be careful about doing that. Gneis is German and has improved citadel protection. However, it is substantially worse at citadelling even cruisers than most BBs. Scharn is pretty equal to the Gneis with its lower caliber, but has a few differences that makes it a bit more versatile. Scharn is better at dealing with BBs imo and I think it shows in its comparative stats.

No, I did not say that. :/ They are supposed to be balanced to BBs as is, but that doesn't mean they're properly balanced as is or that you should consider them equals at all times per se, but there are ways in which the BB captain skills don't always match that well with the BC class' strengths and vulnerabilities. In some ways they are more like cruisers after all. Some assymetry is fine, but when one side has more ships that are slightly likelier to get citadelled or is more situational than the other side, it's not entirely fair MM. Doesn't mean it's a difference so unfair that it can't be overcome, but there can be some (dis)advantage to it and I'd rather not see differences in team gear rather than skills determine outcome of a match. Making sure there's an even amount of BCs on each side is IMO just a bit fairer, so I would not be against such a minor change. Gneis is a pretty poor BB if you look at people's average statistics on BBs on that tier actually. https://wows-numbers.com/ship/4182718256,Gneisenau/ Lowest av. frags / battle, lowest av. damage / battle, worst K/D ratio by 0.12 (that's a ~10% difference to the next ship at 1.14) and lowest av. experience. That said, it's the ship that has been played the most on that tier. I presume a huge problem is people overestimating their chances to use torps and secondaries, but otoh it is quite reliant on that to do well in battle as citadelling with a Gneis or hitting at range can be relatively hard. But even if you compare for the top 5% of players on those ships, the Gneis performs near the bottom: lowest damage / match, 3rd lowest frags/match, 3rd lowest winrate, worst exp gain and together with Scharn worst K/D rate.

Depends on whether you want both sides to have the same amount of BC and BB. If one side has multiple Gneis vs multiple proper BBs, it can become a pretty bad experience for instance.

They don't need rebalancing if they're kept as is though, with BB captain skills and all. It'd just influence the MM. Captain skillpoint wise, I could see how a combination of BB and CA skills (possibly with some tweaking) could make for some interesting variations.

Homing torps are easier to dodge because you have influence over their route (!). You can goat them and steer them into terrain. You don't need to be behind islands constantly, you just need to be intelligent enough to use the island as a shield by leading the torps into it. When you turn behind an island, the homing torps try to cut off your route by leading you (the target) straight through the island, which means by simply changing course a little, they'll steer away from you far enough to be driven into islands. You don't even need to get behind the island in full in order to abuse this mechanic to your benefit. And no, subs don't just sneak around those islands with as much ease as you pretend. That takes a lot of time investment and where a DD can just make a sideways strafe run along a straight, a sub has to turn into it in order to fire, which makes it vulnerable as it limits their escape routes and chances. Subs generally want to go for targets in open water as they need line of sight and torps need to have room to maneouvre. Of course, if you do get caught by surprise by laying still behind an island and not having the speed to dodge incoming torps, that's entirely your fault. Actually they can dive and disappear as you say, but only for a limited amount of time. Late game a lot of subs are incapable of diving for any duration, often depending on how much pressure has been put on them by the opposing team. And yes, there's a lot of bad teams out there. Like say teams full of people who think running away towards open water is useful. Or maintaining distance to a stealth unit that is highly vulnerable when discovered is useful. I mean, by all means give them more time to reload and recharge their dive capacity... In practice they're pretty easily discovered, forced underwater where they're not very useful and while down they're extremely limited in situational awareness and popping back up can be a huge gamble. "Just dive" is also an exageration, since it takes time to dive and even once under water depth charges can be a pain. If you know speed and direction of the diving sub, usualy you can lead your depth charges well. Of course, lots of people aim depth charges on the spot a sub was last seen, rather than where the sub is going to be by the time the depth charge sank deep enough to explode... Fixed.

You can have the BBs and BCs total be limited to 5-6, with BC and BB required to be equal on both sides if you're worried about an increase of heavy ships. Wouldn't make things worse compared to now, at most that'd balance things out per side a little bit better.

Btw, regarding the depth charges in that Flamu vid... The sub might actually be in a perfect position to minimize direct hits from charges dropping too far out on both sides by only receiving near miss damage. This because the depth charges drop on both sides of the sub and thus there's some distance between the explosion and the sub, not right on top. And in terms of depth charges, they don't explode on proximity, but on depth setting. So if the sub is not at the same depth, the distance between explosion and sub increases. Can we tell what depth the submarine is at in relation to the explosions? We know it's below the fourth turret, but that's it It'd been nice to have seen the submarine's perspective to see how close the charges were when exploding. Simply being over it doesn't mean much if the charges don't explode right on top (and that depends on the depth charge drop pattern and configuration of the ship and damage of individual charges which differs by nation and ship). if Flamu had brought this ship a bit more to the side so the charges would be right on top there's a chance damage could be much higher. :/ A single test like this doesn't really say much if we can't see what's going on.

I've not played since januari, so can't comment on whatever recent changes were made. So I'll take your word for it. Heard they were going to be made a bit sturdier so it's definitely not impossible they overdid it. They appaerntly increased depth charge damage and increased time between repair charges recently as well to compensate?

Pretty much the same amount. While you can also send in airdropped bombs while firing your regular ordinance (even airdropped bombs from ships that aren't aiming for you and have no line of sight for their shells), so effectively the DD sees less fire thrown at it. You can of course choose to ignore this additional ordinance being fired... But then of course, that's what biased people would do. And you're not. Right? ;)

By judging a unit on a single statistic where there's barely a difference and without considering context and more limited engagement options for the submarine? I would say most definitely the guy doesn't quite understand what he witnessed as the value judgment is pretty biased and not based in effective gameplay application. Vulnerability is also measured in agility and capacity to return fire with short term firepower being delivered especially, once one is engaged. A DD scores much better on those subjects than a sub, which might even be reliable on maintaining a ping lock to even deal damage. So yeah, I'd say that sub is very vulnerable. Also consider that there are more weapon systems that might target those subs like airdropped depth charges, which do not hurt DDs that are fired along side the regular ordinance.

Surfaced sub yes, but immobile DD and immobile sub aren't the same as moving sub and moving DD. Chances are the DD will be harder to hit, or has a much higher threat level from torpedoes dispersed at close range angles as at close range a sub cannot keep up the rotation whereas a DD has much better angles and reaches angles to fire from much better. It's a pretty poor test in that sense as it barely results in a representative comparison. In terms of relative combat power that sub is likely much easier to kill safely than engaging a DD. So simply focusing on a single stat (and then even saying look it had 24 hp left where each shell can have variable damage on both targets) is a bit... well... too simplified to reach any final conclusions regarding vulnerability. In practical survivability, I'd rather be in that DD.

The strange thing about that Flamu vid is that most shells hit the top of the tower, so the bit nearest to the surface level. Even when aiming a bit lower. I don't get why that is, because that means saturation is going to be more of an issue right? Seems like the aim assist is playing tricks there and I'd say it has way too much influence as AP shells should be possible to fire at a water level penetrating depth, whereas the HE should be possible to be fired shorter or longer on target as well if you want to give lead. Why it should be magnetically attracted to the top I don't understand. As far as the surfaced sub he fired at with SAP I think, it's just two volleys to kill it. Yeah, so it had 24hp left by accident, so he needed three volleys. But come on, how likely is that to be the standard damage left and at that particular range, normally secondaries should matter. Two volleys to kill an enemy sub seems more than fair as a single volley would be pretty impossible to work with as a sub user given that ship won't be the only one firing at it most the time. Besides, a DD can dodge much better with its agility and range more effectively and get away faster, so I wouldn't say the tested sub is effectively tankier in game.

So it's not counterplay BUT YOU CAN HIT WITH IT AND YOU NEED X AMOUNT OF HITS, so it's... counterplay. Yeah. Good argument. You can argue (and complain most likely) about how (in)effective it is, but counterplay needs to just have any effect to be named counterplay. But 15-20 hits, no. Sounds like you confuse near misses with direct hits, because it only takes a few good hits to kill a sub. A direct hit from a torp, cannon or depth charge would take off huge percentages of hp that cannot be restored.

There's a lot you can do actually in terms of maneouvring and avoidance, as wel las deploying counter measures. I don't really fear the torps, the problem is more picking a direction that doesn't show broadside to other enemy ships, particularly as a cruiser. Please note I havn't played WoWs since januari, so some things might have changed, I've not kept up to date with game updates since halfway through januari. There's a lot to extrapolate though. ASW use: Keep in mind that outside of Ocean, you have more information to work with in terms of likely positions. Subs are relatively slow and turn slow and need line of sight to ping. This quickly reduces the options where they are. Especially if they ping you from the direction of a straight or narrow. Even better if it had been spotted before, you can deduce its position by drawing a rough range are from its last known location and direction and the ping you received. Remember that you can often also combine "who is spotted when" information as well. Subs have some further limits. View range can be an issue. Particularly if they're forced to stay under water, so check for allies in the vicinity to determine where the sub cannot be or it would have been spotted. This usualy limits proximity or further away range a little. If you have a CV nearby that listens and cooperates, well that's even better. Point out the line of the ping on the map and the CV can usualy find it quite quickly, to see it covered in ASW shortly after. Often times you can expect them to be around 7-10km away, so should be within ASW range at that point. Longer range torps sound like fun but are only useful as dumbfire IMO (which makes pings useless until the very last moment). Way too easy to dodge if you alert targets at long range of your presence. A ping has limited range and even more limited effective range, so that limits the distance it can be from you, it also had to have had straight line of fire, so you can ignore any positions behind islands as optional locations. You can usualy assume that a sub pinging you has its nose pointed mostly in your direction if it is firing torpedoes (a smart one might ping after turning away though), that gives you a rough estimate of their movement. Most ASW aircraft paths are long enough and have sufficient range to now effectively target a sub using just ping information combined with environment knowledge to at least get a hit on it. Especially if you have multiple ASW to launch and you'll have plenty of those as they recharge pretty quick. But that's just your ASW launch: you also have allies. Contact them and be sure to include info on where you think it's going so they can lead the target as they will likely have a more angled or even orthogonal flight path with their ASW to the sub's path. They will need to lead their target. Many people completely forget they got ASW because they're busy targeting other stuff, so you really need to keep reminding them to actively use it. This can be utterly devastating if the sub is close to a group of enemies. When attacking subs, remember to lead your target and not just drop it on top of it. Most your ASW should drop in front of it. The sub will likely try to move to the side of your depth charges, so if you have multiple, launch a second volley with a slight overlap somewhat to the side you would expect the sub to turn to. Most subs will want to keep their nose aimed in the direction of the enemy or towards an escape route if the enemy is close by, so you can usualy guess the prefered exit route. So yeah, there's a lot you can do on that front. With respect to dodging, things are trickier. Anti-torp dodging based on a ping When a sub is pinging you it is for one of two reasons: making you use the repair button early in panic, or actual targeting because torps are launched. Question of course is, when are/were the torps launched? Regardless, the best thing for you to do is to wait with removing the ping until you're sure it's going to make a difference. That means seeing the torpedoes. Steering however, is not something you wait with. What a ping gives you in terms of information, is how you should be angling. Depending on where the rest of the enemies are and you relative to islands, those options might be limited. Regardless, you want to give the torpedoes a lead that doesn't go straight for your bow or stern, so never sail straight at or straight away from a ping. You should never keep them in your broadside unless you can ensure the lead means the torps will hit an island. Your optimal orientation with respect to the ping direction should be a small, but not too small angle. Why? Because homing torps will come in at a small angle and most importantly, with a lead. Once you deactivate their homing with repairs, they will still have that lead direction on you and you only need a minor turn into the ping direct and preferably a speed reduction to dodge all or most of them. Whereas if you had steered straight into the ping as you might do when faced with DD torps, those torps will be heading straight for your bow with an ever narrow spread, giving you no chance to evade even if you remove the homing, as their lead will be such that even if you turn last moment, they'll hit your bow or side. Some DDs might be able to drift dodge, but most bigger ships will not. Of course, if a sub fires at you from within your ASW minimal range, they'll likely be spotted and vulnerable to secondaries and your main cannons. Subs shouldn't want to be there, way too dangerous. Yet in some cases it's also the most reliable high risk way of actually hitting with sub torps, which IMO is harder than with DDs since DDs have much better firing angles due to their location options. All in all, I havn't been hit or sunk often by subs. It happens, but it is relatively unlikely. To people in general... As I've said in the past, I'd have designed subs and sub systems quite differently from their current implementation and I'm not a big fan of the recent implementations. I'm at most tolerant of them as a meh, but workable enough solution for a work in progress conceptual class (one problem I have is it's not much of a WIP, but a to-be-balanced-out-with-what-is-implemented-class and that makes me less positive about the development direction. I do play them at times, but mostly to test their abilities and experiment with positioning and strategies so I can better understand my enemy). So please don't pretend I am a big sub fan, just because I'm realistic and not as bitter, more tolerant and generally not as hyperboling pessimistically whiny tantrum throwing or condescendingly sarcastic towards the class or users as some other people can be. Like CV's, there's a place for subs in WoWs IMO, I'm just not happy with how either has been done or how the counterplay works as is. That doesn't mean "you can't do anything about them or in your defense". People who say that need to adapt and relearn to play, of course, they don't want to, so they'll make themselves deliberately vulnerable to subs by refusing to take them into account properly, or to enemy pressure by overcompensating out of fear. Thing is, there's so many people here making ignorant remarks about current sub (counter) gameplay because often they refuse(d) to play subs themselves for whatever reason. Played a couple matches maybe and think they know it all. Apparently not as little thought and nuance seems to have been put in remarks regarding homing torpedoes throughout their implementation. And yeah, playing subs can be boring and unfruitful, or just be a sub duel and just a few thousand damage and very expensive to run, especially without premium account. Though in some cases if the enemy is dumb or outmaneouvred as a team, it can be really easy and profitable, there's little in between usualy. Still, know your enemy. :/ If you yourself opt not to know your enemy, don't blame the enemy for using your ignorance against you. Either way... If you don't play certain modes because you might encounter a sub... Don't consider yourself an expert.

*lays smokescreen in randoms or ranked for approaching cruisers and BB, all three ships choose a path to sail next to the side of the smoke or if it is in their path sail right through it to pop out on the other end...*

That makes sense, sorry to hear you suffer from that. Though tbh, most players are worse than bots and you can just pretend they are if you turn off the chat. ;)

Been playing the Johan de Witt lately and it is getting excruciatingly frustrating that I'm doing around 80-100K matches with top 1-3 positions in TX matches, often hold my corner of the map against 5-6 ships who for some reason don't dare to push, cap a zone, kill the local DDs early and severely burn up camping cruisers or BBs with air strikes and kiting 5-6 ships firing at me whenever I'm not disappearing at 10+ km, only to look around the map and see the other end of the map completely collapsed. Usualy the side with most of our players in it, as it let itself get slaughtered and overrun by the opponent's DD-BB start combi, because they either allowed those in mid to fire into their broadsides or just ran into the DD's torps en mass... Or simply ran and never pushed waiting till we got overwhelmed elsewhere or let enemy DDs sail through mid and get behind them. Really frustrating that the damage output is good, but people just don't focus fire on weaker targets. I've seen a lot of situations where someone sits in a Satsuma or so and marks the highest health enemy ship and fires AP at the nose of a Rusky cruiser, with one or two HE-salvo ships or broadsiding cruisers right next to it... WHY!?

There has never been a good experience in coop. :/ It has always been extremely dull yolo-everyone-but-everyone-stays-alive-while-the-bots-ram-eachother-mid-map. Most people only go there to finish up harder missions like X times citadels and have no time left. There's a reason people get 100% coop scores without even trying, with old or new bots alike. Not to disrespect you, but I really can't imagine why someone would be a coop main. At least in randoms, ranked and some other modes people may surprise you with their actions (good and bad), but every single coop match is the exact same of a previous match. So it just leaves me to wonder, what is the fun of playing coop? I mean, the Operations are somewhat challenging at times due to the sheer outnumbered situation and scripted routes that require people to make good on their DPS and get to certain positions with minimal damage taken and there is at least varying starting positions for some bots in some missions that gives the AI some sort of leverage, so I can nearly imagine someone being an Ops main... But coop? Just can't wrap my head around it... :/

Not saying I carried, but... I carried. 3194 base Exp. Not the highest damage (230K last week or so), but still quite engaging. :) The enemy complied very well with its positioning. Plymouth loved eating some blind fired torps at the usual corner (aimed for Montana) for half damage and was pretty much out of the match from there on. A Shima sacrificed itself to catch a torp for the Monty which had ran aground in the Shima's fog, who then also still wanted to take in torps and died right after (double kill). Halland came after me but for some reason didn't want all his guns trained on me while letting me train mine just fine: gunner kill. Double backed to torp + shoot the Plymouth who liked sitting still in smoke. Unfortunately my teammates were rather suicidal and kept trying to run into enemies carelessly, hence I even hit 3 of them with torps that had been launched a decade earlier from 12km away. Conquerer for instance was about to eat 4-5 torps when our still quite healthy Stalin went in for the ram, 2s later my torps hit their corpses. Thunderer decided to check out Shima torps from close range, but at least he spotted it in smoke just before he die and had damaged it severely, so I could quite accurately guestimate its location. Final kill was a couple volleys of blindfire (3K) on the Shima in smoke from over a hill for the Kraken. :) Quite a fun match to watch I think. 20220111_105602_PASD013-Gearing-1945_42_Neighbors.wowsreplay

Yeah, that isn't a situation you want to be in, especially since both of 'm have hydro, so your main weapon, torps, are disadvantaged. And forget about hiding from long range hydro in smoke...

Can confirm that, as Marceau vs Schlieffen is very tricky business in ranked. There's so much volume of fire going, one of them will set you on fire or destroy a module. :/ And they got the better angle over hills at times too!

Yes, obviously. But how does one sacrifice and what kind of animal to influence the RNG devs of the dice to make custom dice that let me win when my friends use the same dice? Surely it should be some kind of goat to escape the blame for failure.