Xevious_Red

Yeah it was lower than I expected too. Now I'll happily admit there may be other factors which could affect this - I was using Manual AA (+50% AA to one side, -50% to the other), because I wanted to try it out, and because in order to test a "full AA" then I needed to take it. This meant there were occasions (particularly during fly overs) where the planes would get into the "weak" side. I tried to minimise this as much as possible. Something that I did think of after the test was that I positioned myself with the smallest profile that kept him in the stronger sector, to minimise how many rockets hit, and that the ones that did hit would land on the already saturated super structure. However I'm not sure (I presumed they didnt) if the AA has firing arcs. If they do, then the positioning may have affected how many guns were firing.

With that I didnt even lose a huge ammount of AA (if the UI can be believed). According to the UI when I died I still had 100% short range, 100% long range and 62% Midrange. So it took out about 1/3 of my midrange.

The average players desire appears to be: " Dear WG *the ship class I play a lot* should be the best class in the game. They deserve this. *The ship class my ship is strong against* have it far too easy. They need to be punished more! Also *the ship class that is strong against me* are OP and easy mode, they should be much harder to use. Maybe even remove them.

The russian cruisers got the largest range radar in the game, and when cruisers all got hit with a nerf bat and lost the extra range from AFT they released the MK with a 19km range on its guns and the ability to sit in a smoke cloud while doing it. The Gremmy spent quite a while as the most OP ship in the game The russian DD were the fastest, happily able to gun a BB to death without needing torps, can heal, and the khaba can shrug off most HE and bounce Yamato AP. The Nikolai has guns with no real vertical dispersion (so they hit well), is virtually immune to HE, and they put it at tier 4. The Okt Rev has a tiny superstructure, and the rest of the ship is covered in armour thick enough to ignore all HE than isnt BB HE. It also has a decent amount of guns, and anyone that puts out 1 fire to immediately get 2more isnt punished because of how hilariously low the CD is on the damage control.

Well the PTS also had 4v4 games, and games where 22/24 players were bots. I wouldnt imagine that will be the case on live either. We probably wont know until the patch notes, because I doubt they would commit to confirming info beforehand.

Where does it state this?

From my experience using them/seeing other people try to use them; "Good" players, by which I mean anyone capable of maintaining a WR over 50% and under standing basic game mechanics shouldnt have a hard time doing lots of damage to DD with rockets (at higher tiers). Rockets are the easiest to use, the least sensitive to when you activate them/how much you wiggle. Aiming is simply lead the ship a small amount. "Average" players, by which I mean the hordes of 47% reds that seem to rival bots for least game awareness seemed to struggle to hit DD with the rockets, presumably by aiming wrongly, not allowing the circle to close properly etc etc.

The rockets are an interesting one - I think the lower level IJN rocket planes are actually just about right. You dont get very many per plane (e.g. at tier 4 the attack run is 2x2 rockets). They're not hugely damaging. Their accuracy is actually pin point, which means if you dont aim exactly right they all splash into the water instead. The problems arise at the higher tiers, particularly with the US. The Midway has HVAR's which launch a wave of 36 rockets (nerfed down from earlier PTS where it had 48!), each with 2k alpha, each with 33mm pen. It doesnt need to be accurate, it just saturates the area. The pen means it always pens any DD it hits apart from a small section of the khaba. Similarly its other option is Tiny Tims, which "only" launch 9 rockets, but each one has 5400 alpha with 68mm pen. These also make short work of DD.

Sort of, its hard to do and not very effective though. The only one that can do it is the tier X because it gets long range torps (8km) with low detection planes (7.5 TB). All others have too short range to do it. Pulling it off is awkward too- you only have a limited window for stealth (the best the planes can get with all concealment bonuses is 6.1). You need to start the run outside of 8km so you have time for the planes to drop into attack position and run through the several seconds of prep time/narrowing of the attack cone. You then need to trigger the attack and still have enough room to be able to pull up and turn away so you dont get detected at the end of the run. Where with a DD you can sit sideways and launch, with planes they have to be speeding towards the target so they chew up the diatance very quickly. The planes will be doing 150kn+ with limited ability to slow down AND a quite wide turning circle. Lastly you need to connect the torps - you have no lead indicator and the torps are 50kn so its like trying to connect long range torps with the Sims. I.e. half the time they randomly turn and miss them anyway. Gimmic wise it's comedy if they do connect. Realistically you're better off dumping them at close range.

Then I really hope they sorted out AA, or plane health has been drastically lowered (or they no longer respawn), because in the PTS it was hard to make them run low on planes and that was when they only had 14 in a hangar. It also makes the slot 5 equipment (5% faster respawn, +3 hangar size) significantly less useful if it remains as it is

Have they changed the hangar sizes? On the PTS the midway had a hangar of 14 TB (17 with the module). This has the saipan listed as having 16. On your blog it now has the midway having 39 in the hangar. Or is this just showing the "old" (RTS) values?

You mean 8. There will be the tech tree RN CV, and theres a premium tier 8 RN. When the RN line hits there will be 8 CV at tier 8, and 9 CV at literally any other tiers combined.

Its probably a variety of factors. The obvious being that up until very recently you had to be pretty good to get one. Secondly they're by no means a weak ship. The flint can absolutely club tier 5 ships, its an atlanta (which are excellent in the right hands) that doesnt have to find an island. Thirdly, generally where you find 1 unicum, you find 2 more in a division with them. I've seen plenty of flints. I dont think Ive ever seen one that was NOT in a 3 man purple division where one of the other two was a saipan/kaga

Counterpoint: People play a naval warfare game, wonder why they have ships covered in AA guns with no planes to shoot, wonder where all the CV they've heard of (Midway, lexington, etc) are.

TBH I never thought the rework was about balance, but rather popularity, and the $$$ that WG can earn from them being more popular. Theres loads of premium BB/CA/DD, but only 4 CV, and one of those was sold for a very limited time. If WG's claims are accurate, only 4% of players play CV, which isnt a huge amount to sell new premium carriers to. If they can make them a lot more popular, they have a much wider range of people to sell premium CV to - including "rereleasing" old favourites saipan/kaga, making GZ available to the masses, as well as many new potential premium CV. In order for them to be popular they need to be easy (ish) to use and not frustrating. It also helps if they are OP or *ahem* strongly competitive. This then drives the premium sales. For all people complain about balance, stuff thats OP sells way better than stuff thats balanced.

We have a guy at work who is incapable of working anything (computers, phones, printers, coffee machines). Of course despite the fact that everyone else is fine using them he overlooks, and constantly blames, the item in question - calling it stupid, useless, badly designed etc. Guess how seriously everyone else takes his "feedback"

This I wanted to ask: Do they drop all the bombs in one go so they all fall in one spot, or do they do something like drop 1 bomb a second for 8 seconds?

Well actually you'll get to annoy about 3 CV before the repeated team killing rewards you with orange status and you cant play anything other than coop. Of course you could probably kill about 3 more in coop before you just get banned instead.

I can confirm that I couldn't do a lot, nor reposition. The whole 4 mins was spent trying to give him the worst possible angle to drop. If I'd tried just sailing away to reposition I think I would have died a lot faster as he would have had his choice of attack angle.

Tier 4: Dont care, its either tickle damage or map is small enough to just go shoot the carrier. Tier 6: Fine. Tier 8: Fine. Tier X average CV: Will take some decent damage, probably fine. Tier X that knows what they're doing: Gonna die.

Conversely theres no other enemy that I need to angle against, so Im free to sail around completely broadside in an attempt to mitigate the planes. Thats the other reason im waiting to try it on live, because theres the possibility that 2 AA spec'd ships together provide enough continuous DPS to bring planes down, and a flak field dense enough to not be dodgeable. However the initial indication that a ship reknown for AA, specced with literally every AA skill you can take, and every AA module you can take, and the AA signal flag, only shooting down 1 plane of the 33 that came near me isnt great

The AA at tiers 6/8 is fine - plenty of plane kills. The AA at tier 4 doesnt really exist. The AA of tier X against tier 8 is fine - lots of plane kills. However the AA of tier X against tier X is where its weak. Myself and El2aZer gave it a go in the training room - full spec AA worcester vs midway. Result was shot down literally 1 plane

Its not quite like that, their reserves are fairly limited, and the respawn rate of planes is fairly low at high tiers. E.g. the midway starts with 14 torp planes, cant have more than 14 (theres a slot 5 equipment that competes with conceal that changes this to 17). It respawns 1 torp plane every 90~ seconds. Which means for an entire 20 min game it only respawns 13 torp bombers. Currently the AA isnt really a threat to them (it doesnt shoot down enough), while catapult fighters are a threat to them (a squad caught by fighters loses an equal number of planes in a very short space of time). While there are ways for good players to mitigate this fighter damage, most get caught by them. In the test, fighters were fairly limited to the CAP ones the CV auto launches, the 6 consumables "on call" the CV squad can launch (i.e. you need them to leave you one instead of just flying off somewhere). The catapult fighterw on ships can actually be cery strong - Yamato launched a wave of 6 at a time. However on test the bots didnt use them, and most players were either in CV, or using ships that dont have them as an option (worcester/minotaur). Its unknown until we get to live how much people will use catapult fighter as it competes with some popular choices (spotter for zao, radar for DM etc)

Asashio is one of the destroyers the least affected by radar. It loves open caps (better field of view for torping BB) so it sees almost all radar ships before they're in radar range. You therefore decide if/when you want to dip into radar range to bait it/check if its active. With the lowest dection of any ship you meet (shared with kagero and harekaze) you can't get ghosted by another destroyer. You instead control vision and decide if/when you are going to be spotted. You dont need to stay in a cap. Its not a sumo ring, you dont auto lose if you leave. Just keep the radar ship spotted and it'll generally die quickly. BB love shooting radar cruisers. The only exception is a DD that is faster than you using RPF to chase you, and some of the DD that have 5.5 detection because the margin for error is very small. With these you start a kite, and can use smoke to break line of sight (dont stop in it!) Which either ends the chase or gives you a break while you run towards your team.

The trick here is to quickly guage how competent/incompetent the other DD captain is rather than just assuming you will lose. For example it turns out most US DD captains can't hit for squat at ranges over point blank. So while on paper an asashio should lose hilariously badly to a fletcher, in practise you frequently encounter ones you can just bump off with no real hassle. If every DD captain was skilled? Yeah it might well be a problem. But reality is that most arent. Especially as most seem to get tunnel vision about the "easy asashio kill" without noticing you're kiting them into your own cruisers. If you meet one you determine to be competent, and you'll on paper lose? To quote monty python "RUN AWWAAAAAAYYY"