Kartoffelmos

She is hard to citadel, but not hard to penetrate (observe the amount of repairable damage and you will see that she didn't take many/any citadel hits). Exactly how hard she is to citadel requires some in-depth testing, but it seems that you need to hit one very specific location (height-wise) in order to get reliable results. If you say so: If you hit the bow, they won't bounce (again, overmatch). As for the rest, that is literally the same for all other same-tier battleships, so I don't see that as a weakness at all. This isn't arguing semantics, but cheers anyway. Of course, but an accurate battleship is inherently a problem no matter how you look at it. If you reduce the alpha, you will end up with a cruiser with much better protection which will make her extremely valuable in early-game versus destroyers as well as against any cruiser in general. In addition, she will be quite good against battleships simply by her ability to land more shells. I don't know, even if WG reduced the stealth and damage output, the ship could potentially force (bad) players into long-range sniping and that is not good for the gameplay either.

I'm sorry, but how is that different for any other tier 5 battleship? Prepare your foot notes and read up on the game mechanics while you're at it. The fact remains that the GC has weaker armour (hard to citadel though if my assumptions are correct) and low HP pool but gains accuracy, concealment and silly HE fire chance in return. The combination of these means that she is strong when played properly (angling, abusing concealment, etc) and that is not enough? She also plays different than the other battleships due to the 1,9 sigma and overly good concealment, so your earlier argument is invalid as well. The last thing this game needs is yet another strong battleship.

Seriously? A 320 mm calibre gun can overmatch 22 mm of armour. Considering that tier 5 battleships have 19 mm bow plating, the GC can overmatch all the bows of same-tier battleships. "Unfortunately", tier 6 battleships have 25 mm bow plating so the GC will not overmatch these. Then again, neither will any other tier 5 battleship, since the highest calibre at this tier (356 mm) can "only" overmatch 24 mm of armour... What is it with battleships that attracts so many invalid complaints?

The problem with Conqueror is that she can do Zao's duties better than the Zao herself while also being equally effective as other battleship in the battleship role due to the heal, submerged citadel (heal is even stronger because you take no completely "irreparable" damage) and the concealment. Now, I would understand if the line as a whole traded fire chance for increased HE damage (making HE shells a tool when AP isn't effective), but as it is now, the HE shells plus resulting fires are simply too universal compared to the situational AP. I mean, why bother with AP at all if you can spam HE at most ranges and be rewarded for it while AP "only" works against broadsides?

The page for the destroyers was somewhat hidden, but here's the current information: Destroyers Anti-targeting system forces the enemy to stop attacking your ship. Tainted Engine Boost enhances engine performance and repairs damage when inside The Taint. Repair efficiency grows with total damage dealt in several stages. Steam Torpedo Reload Booster works like standard TRB consumable and reduces torpedo reload time. Source.

Both the cruiser and the destroyer have their own way of healing as well, so it looks like WG/Lesta is aware of that particular issue .

Yes. Aim like you normally would, but you have to adjust your lead to the new direction vector (if the ship is drifting along the map edge). Sadly, the aim assist (aka target lock) is not that good at recognising "map-surfing behaviour", so you will most likely have to adjust your aim after the first salvo despite leading properly.

If I remember correctly, the first (beta?) loadout was said to be too strong against destroyers due to the meme-pattern and three squads. However, this version will perhaps be too weak against destroyers due to worse fighters than the competitors. I would argue that carriers shouldn't be able to deal massive damage to destroyers (spotting is enough) and thus this GZ is a step in the right direction, but that is another discussion entirely.

The strength of Fire Prevention is that it unifies your two most common fire-starting areas, namely the midship section and the superstructure. As such, it is extremely hard to get more than two fires if the enemy can only see your front, since your superstructure is in the way if the enemy wants to hit your aft. Additionally, since BB HE spam is a thing now and since we have few carriers around, Fire Prevention is currently extremely useful in general. Not only will it help with the former, but if you do meet a carrier, their dive bombers will have a harder time setting multiple fires. This. The front/bow, two in the centre and the aft.

That's not what I meant though. The citadel may sit quite high, but it is also located at the centre of the ship: The waterline is located at the middle of the yellow citadel armour (72 mm) and is represented by the blue line in the following image. Now, when shooting the broadside of the ship, there is a couple of things that can happen: You aim too high, hit the casemate and have the shell bounce off the 31 mm internal deck (regular penetration) as represented by the uppermost red arrow. You aim correctly and hit the belt armour, but your shell arc is not flat enough and the shell is stopped at the flat 81 mm "turtleback roof" (regular penetration) as represented by the black arrow. You aim correctly and your arc is flat enough and the shell reaches the 72 mm citadel armour (citadel penetration) as represented by the middle red arrow. Your shot enter at the same place as 2. and 3., but the shell travels even lower, into the 24 mm turtleback section (most likely regular penetration, testing is needed to confirm). As such, I do wonder how reliable or how close you have to be to the enemy to reliably get scenario 2. Additionally, since you must aim downward at closer distances, which ships will have a flat enough arc to achieve this? It would be quite funny if cruisers (lower placement of turrets) will be able to pull it off more reliably than battleships.

So your opinion is that divisions have too much of an impact (there is a reason why the MM tries to distribute divisions, you know) and so you will enforce a rule that only accepts try-hard divisions? Interesting. To be honest, I do not think that was the reason for WoWp's failure. I'd rather blame poor gameplay, bad controllers, questionable tech-tree choices and bad graphics instead.

Interesting. In order to hit that zone, you will either have to go through the 130 mm casemate, the 31 mm deck (good luck with that) and then the 72 mm citadel armour OR have shells with flat trajectory (or be really close) and go through the 220 mm belt armour and then the 72 mm citadel armour. I wonder how viable that really is, considering you will always have to shoot downwards in order to reach that zone .

Really? She showed full/slightly angled broadside to two enemies and ate "only" regular penetrations. The reason I know this is that she healed 50 % of the damage taken, limited only by the repair party duration. You can see this later when the ship use repair party again and still has more "healable" damage. In fact, the ship was able to heal right back to half health if the player had "wasted" the final repair party at the correct moment. Can you truly call this bad protection? One could argue that all shells missed the citadel, but that might be to push it a bit far. I would not expect my Kongo to escape that situation without at least one citadel penetration, either from the Orion (not sure if she has enough penetration/Krupp) or from the Kongo (this was the other battleship and she shot the GC from a range of 13 km). I think the low HP pool makes damage taken seem more dramatic compared to other ships. In any case, I'm not arguing against the fact that her armour is weaker in thickness (excluding belt armour) than her contemporaries (in-game, that is), but she has other features that mitigate damage taken, whether that is "turtleback"/spaced armour or the ability to choose when you engage an enemy. Well, it will work against Iron Duke and König and those ships are quite common at the moment if I remember correctly.

Kongo is not known for being unpunished while showing broadside either, but what I meant by fancy is that GC is protected by the belt armour, then 25 mm turtleback and finally 40 mm of citadel armour placed at a distance from the turtleback (if gamemodels3D armour viewer is accurate and it usually is). Yes, she will eat a lot of regular penetrations similarly to German battleships, but she will be somewhat resistant to citadel penetrations, at least when angled. In any case, you will (as with Kongo) use the belt armour to tank shells and not the turtleback armour. Yes, I'm interested in that as well. The spaced armour at French cruisers can be really annoying and I wonder if GC will act in a similar manner.

I wonder, does anyone know how her dispersion curves are? The nerf might not be as bad if the accuracy greatly increases the closer you are to the target (similarly to US BBs). Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see the results of the second iteration, but I feel that a BB with cruiser-level concealment is just continuing the trend of questionable BB designs lately.

I have. The ship already promoted that kind of gameplay. Not to mention that the accuracy was good enough to punish cruisers at most ranges. Now it gives the cruisers more of a fighting chance. As for spamming HE, again, the ship already promoted that behaviour with 35 % fire chance and good dispersion. Indeed. The accuracy had to be toned down, but since WG is hellbent on her having 11,7 km concealment fully upgraded, they went for the most "logical" option. A slight reduction in concealment and decreased accuracy and fire chance (something the RN BBs should have received as well) and I believe she would be more balanced. But alas, the gimmick seems to be excessively good stealth...

Not really. With worse accuracy, you should go for larger targets which yield a higher hit chance. It also seems like WG want every new battleship to spam HE as well so there's also that. Yes, you can ambush cruisers but my opinion is that the old version promoted that style of gameplay much more due to the accurate guns. As for armour, she has a similar belt thickness as Kongo, while having her citadel protected by a fancy turtleback. At the front Kongo, has 110 mm citadel protection (internal, flat) while GC has a an extremely sloped 48 mm (internal) section which a shell must pass through to reach the 80 mm citadel armour. The lower health pool is offset by the fact that you can disengage much more easily.

He used Flamu as an example and it does not change the argument the slightest: WG does not balance ships around CC opinions, but around stats. Yes, the feedback from CCs and STs are taken into account, but they are by no means the deciding factor. If it were, we wouldn't have the "questionable" RN battleship properties at certain tiers nor would we have ships like Belfast. As for Giulio Cesare, the dispersion had to be nerfed, and preferably some of the concealment as well. In any case, if they did not change the sigma value, expect feedback from the second testing phase to result in further changes if needed.

I have not noticed that, but I've noticed that you often get the same map over and over. Yes, because this will obviously not hurt cruisers at all. Not to mention that the general firepower of these ships will obviously not be enough to make up for being unable to torpedo destroyers... Better give them radar as well! If you ask me, they should make the DW torpedoes a toggleable option in-game (I would rather see this as a feature for IJN DDs but I don't think that will ever happen). If you either have to choose the option right after launch or if you have a "window of choice" until 20-30 seconds remain of the torpedo cooldown, you could have ships with stealthy anti-BB weapons as well as weaker general-purpose torpedoes (similar to US ones, but with higher detectability). The end result is a line that poses a larger threat to battleships compared to the US DDs, but weaker against cruisers. Suddenly, there is no need for radar or other gimmicks, as their "gimmick" will be the DW torpedoes. Oh well...

But was that his first or second detonation of the day?! That IS the question!

I meant that maybe the planes might have a shorter "attack run distance" to compensate for the low torpedo range. Then again, that will punish cruisers harder than battleships (not that WG cares about that), so your guess is as good as mine.

Possibly short(er) minimal drop distance?

I also like how the "not-anything-wrong-with-this class" ships are limited to one per team as well. I mean, you could fix the issue instead of artificially hiding it, but I guess that's too much work... As for carriers, I can understand how the Hakuryu powerhouse was removed in a 7vs.7 format, but then again: why did it have to be a 7vs.7 format if one of the classes had to be removed because of it? In addition, since it's tier X only and only one battleship per side, wouldn't the amount of cruisers seriously prevent the domination of carriers? Or is this WG's way of saying that tier X carriers are currently too strong? I don't get it. EDIT: Read the official article now and well... Conquerors for everyone! Also, I wonder how 5 battleships per team in random battles affects gameplay . At least they are looking for ways to implement carriers in clan battles, but I guess that will happen after the CV rework. In any case, I find it humorous that the main reason for the class' absence is the consequences of uneven skill levels between the two opposing carriers: the team with the better player will receive much more information.

But why would you use that when you have a nice and simple launcher though? I've never tried it myself (and reading about it tells me that it is "merely" the launchers and game sites combined), but if the game centre does not have the same functionality as for instance Steam, I don't think I will use it anytime soon.

The sad part is that the BBs in question never needed a high fire chance: their HE shells are dealing enough damage as it is. I mean, the selling argument for the HE performance was that the RN BBs must have something to counter angled ships, but why do they need an absurdly high fire chance to do that? Isn't good HE damage and decent accuracy enough?