Panocek

The moment said cruiser stop showing full broadside, Montana falls off dramatically due to lack of overmatch. And for abusing clueless broadsiding scrubs, you don't need 406mm guns either When you have broadsides for days to abuse, then 9gun broadside from Iowa can be more painful than 6 barrels on Georgia. Issue is, when facing T10 cruisers with 30mm plating and they are not dumb enough to keep showing broadside, 406mm just don't cut it. And you determine strength of a ship whether it can stay effective despite enemy efforts to minimize your effectiveness. For "better options" at tier 9 BB... mentioned premiums would be one, though 380mm armed Jean Bart didn't liked armor changes either. Izumo I suppose is not as such travesty as she was before, after being repeatedly hit with a buff stick, FdG always was... eh, Lepanto and Alsace at least can deliver 12gun broadside giggles while not being cripplingly slow like Minniesota. So, in a sense, tech tree T9 BBs seems to be decently balanced, Iowa included, as they all are unimpressive. Not much of an advantage when hull is sidegrade to tier 8, not an upgrade. Guns are modest upgrade as well, only a little bit of shell velocity and penetration.

-Concealment Expert still exists

If you're overpenning Smolensk, have you tried loading HE in this case, as clearly you have too big guns to arm on 70mm citadel? You know, AP fuse arming threshold is the same as usual HE penetration at the same time, 70mm plating is offering no protection whatsoever from CL guns, let alone anything bigger. But how such things would be known by heavyduty BB main? And thank god Germans totally don't benefit from equally artificial increased HE pen, nor Brit CLs and DDs have negative drag on their hulls. Or 38mm plating on US BBs is convenient enough to ricochet all AP shells, including super battleships but also print overpens from anything bigger than CA guns when caught broadside. Russian ships screams "russian bias"... When they are in their niche, where they can put their virtues into action. But outside of those, they are amazingly mediocre. Petro and Kremlin could use some toning down though, but as you've said it yourself, its WG playground and their toys. If you don't like them, you can always change them, your or mine opinion is irrelevant to them unless it can be monetized with little to no effort.

Seems to be the case, though rumor is, Yae is material for 2.3 or later. 2.2 might be husbando patch, with Thoma and Gorou. Speaking of the latter... Sadly Xinyan is matching Amber and Yoimiya when it comes to "pyro disappointment team" Sayu might be a little gem though, both useful as healer and hilarious as beyblade with Kaeya and Xiangling ults spinning around it

You're trying to reee at something that is, I presume, in game since alpha as one of the core mechanics - shell ricochet. Just because someone had "freak citadel" and decided to study the case doesn't suddenly mean bussian rias at work. If anything, ask IJN for their habit of combining smokestacks is such fashion it allows some shenanigans in some game made 70 years later

*looks in contempt sitting on enough pulls to hard pity two 5* characters* And what I'm supposed to say after Yoimiya going cute overload?

IJN ships happens to have angled parts of the funnel that just happens to be capable of ricocheting shells the right way. And you need 280mm guns or bigger to stop ricocheting (overmatch kicks in) from usual 19mm plate, used for majority of superstructures. In game shells do not lose penetration power with ricochets, while usual 150mm or even 200mm citadel deck armor is not an issue for 203mm shells at such short distances. So sadly this is case of literally working as intended - shell ricocheting from the plate, encounter next plate, usual ricochet-pen checks apply. Whether its in horizontal or vertical plane, its the same rule.

Primary issue with "large cruiser" caliber guns is not fuse delay, but arming said fuse to begin with. 305mm guns and the like require usually 50mm effective armor plating to arm the fuse. Most common platings that aren't main armored belts you will encounter are in 25-38mm range which you're not going to overmatch, period. Even 38mm plating, seen on US battleships needs to be in "ricochet possible territory" to gain enough effective thickness to arm the thing, while thinner plates are effectively impossible, even Alaska with improved ricochet angles struggles to do so. 0.033s fuse delay can cause "citadel overpens" at "yolo" kind of ranges and by that I mean 2-4km. But said delay also increases odds of shell detonating in citadel on ships with layered armor, as you've found out the hard way. If anything, 0.01s fuse would be a boon against BB or maybe even cruiser superstructures - those are overmatchable by CB calibers and shorter fuse means increased odds of scoring penetration hits.

Only captain skill actually useful is Concealment, rest are "nice to have but won't make a difference in the end" kind of skills. To get to CE, go with whatever skills you find least useless. I suppose this build should work okay-ish -Turret Traverse OR Gun Feeder -Priority Target, if you're used to having it -Superintendent OR Adrenaline Rush -Concealment

Was there an event in recent WoWs history that wasn't basically this?

On paper its the same accuracy - same dispersion and sigma. At the same time, both are BBs and both are prone to RNGesus whims as well both aged somewhat poorly with IFHE/Armor changes. Then there is case of shell velocity - while MK7 aren't as slow as MK6 on NorCal/SoDak battleboats, when switching to these guns after getting used to other, higher velocity boomsticks one might indeed notice "where muh ribbons" as shells land behind target or otherwise are dodged away.

"it wasn't a failure, we have even managed to achieve secondary objectives with the rework"

Only cosmetic.

Mentally underage cruiser get

That is universal problem, be it at land, air or sea though you can somewhat alleviate it by adding more people you can screech at via voip to the battle. With emphasis on "somewhat", with hint of "sometimes it might work". When spreadshiet demands it, they will add all the zeros

And this might be key ingredient to "CVs OP reee" - red team always knows to focus fire targets of opportunity

Its not like it has changed much from proof of concept till today

I don't know whether tested guided missiles were guided WSAD style, like current planes or "missile follows crosshair", like various ATGMs back in Battlefield games. Given former is already occupied by carriers, I guess comeback to missiles would be of latter kind.

WG already tampered with guided missiles in the past, nothing stops them unshelving the idea and combining with existing gimmicks. Thus, guided missile destroyers, cruisers, battleships and finally subs, but only after adding hybrid subs (I-400 class + weeb version from Arpeggio). Guided anti ship missiles for CV squadrons would be cherry on top That said, early missile that WG could put onto then "leaked" Kildin DDG, SS-N-1, had, according to RU wiki, only 320kg HE warhead. For reference, Midway uses 2000lb/900kg bomb, with 450kg explosive filler... and drops 6 of them in one go. Said missile also was subsonic, so 300m/s velocity at best, compared to 700m/s+ on most naval guns. So, for all intents and purposes said missile would be damage equivalent of airborne European torpedo, guided, but single launch instead spreads and possibly able to be intercepted by AA. Also ship in question had NO guns that would be even remotely considered as "DD main armament" by game standards... so MAJOR buffs to the missiles would be in order to make Kildins even remotely viable. And looking at wiki, next RU DDG that had actual guns, Sovremenny class is from 1980s

If CVs haven't killed the game, odds are, subs won't do either. Some old disgruntled customers will probably leave, but new ones will come, baited by das boot promises from various ads. Dutchies are mediocre ships with single outrageous gimmick that's somewhat effective against brainlet tier players at best.

Issue is, naval theme is quite niche on its own and then dislodging established monopoly is nigh impossible. War Thunder tried to do so with WoT with Arcade game mode, haven't really achieved that and went with their own kinda-realistic approach + expanded past ww2 setting. Armored Warfare tried to copycat WoT with their own spin of modern vehicles and associated mechanics, failed at it and only thing holding game alive is pve niche. Steel Ocean tried to take on WoWs and failed considerably with game being dead, very dead tier dead. Simply put, if you make a "comparable" game to already established title, you're not going to succeed because why anyone invested in WoWs should move into "WoWs 2.0", unless former make some spectacular oopsie and manage to ban or otherwise outright drive away half of the playerbase in one go. And then question is, if longterm "WoWs player" want to continue playing ships. If they are already considering switching game, they might as well take on entirely new genre instead "here I am, grinding through Colorado, again" Closest to "competitor" of naval PvP variety is and will remain War Thunder and that game is whole can of speshul on its own, to the point WG shenanigans are suddenly not that bad in comparison.

Even best case scenario - Massa/Georgia/Ohio pre rework secondaries struggled to intercept yoloing DD, post rework and then after another scheduled secondary rework, it will remain especially the case. WG simply don't want you to have too effective fully automated means of dealing damage

Not going to happen, WG don't want players to recycle their ships into their original currency whenever they get bored of them or they fall out of favor, unless major rework happens AND Wargaming decides to open refund window, like it had happened with Belfast/Kutuzov and smoke firing changes years ago.

In terms of hamfisted rush b cyka blat gameplay with secondaries blazing, only Germans are capable of that. Russians can be outright nasty, but unlike Germans, when you're caught broadside, you go to gulag. US BB line is painfully slow until tier 8, and then tier 8, North Carolina is IMO highlight of the line - reasonably accurate, good range should both teams refuse to press W, adequately fast and marvelously agile for a BB. Iowa is hardly an upgrade, what you gain in speed you lose in maneuverability while being bigger target. Montana aged somewhat poorly with IFHE/armor changes and struggles against cruisers that aren't completely braindead. If you have no interest in Iowa/Montana, you might as well save yourself the trouble and buy Alabama, functional clone of NC. Frenchsters are fast, but somewhat vulnerable, so considering them "battlecruisers" instead "battleships" is good starting point. That said, 32mm plating on Richelieu onwards is adequate as long as you're not molested by Yamato class. Heavy cruisers will score HE pens on you, true, but CL running IFHE are rarity nowadays. I haven't played pepperoni class battleships, but short range, questionable accuracy and slower than average reload doesn't mix well in my book.

Its case of grass being greener on other side. Whenever you have Range mod equipped, notice smaller maps or battles unfolding the way this extra range is nigh useless, while with Reload mod, you get the opposite