DrMechano

I don't know, remember the Graf Zepplin on release...that things was so awful they actually pulled it off the store and offered people refunds for it....I don't think they've ever done that before or since. I think that wins the worst ship ever released.

I do find it rather chuckleworthy that the people usually doing the "stats are bad" have hidden stats, take a look at what you're doing wrong with those stats and see if you can improve. Me? I'm literally JUST above average, hovering around a 51-52% win rate. my PR is in the average band of 1166, my average damage is 48k which according to WoWS status is actually purple (huh...that probably shouldn't be right). Compare that to someone like El above, 79% win rate 87k average damage and a PR of over 2k, literally over double what I have. Now I am a 100% solo player who doesn't do clan wars etc. so I'm more at the mercy of lord RNGesus, also I SUCKED when I started this game, went up the trees way too quickly, I tank my IJN BB stats but eh, I'm not starting over on EU, I'm going to live with my legacy of suckage on this server. However compare and contrast my NA account, Yandere_Roon where I never go above tier 7. WR 54%, PR rating 1598, damage is actually lower at 44k. There were a few things I knew on my NA account that I didn't when playing my EU account. For example I SUCK in Carriers...like big time, I'm a detriment to my team when I play them. DDs are...by and large..the same deal. BBs and cruisers are where I'm sort of decent so I learned to avoid those pitfalls since they didn't mesh well with my styles, I also learned that high tiers don't tend to mesh well with me, the playstyle is far more defensive and I tend to be far more aggressive, a little TOO aggressive at times, for high tier play so I'm planning to stick with tier 7 and under for my NA account.

Hell the thing with the Izumo is that it's basically one of many paper concepts for a Yamato style ship. This means they can easily change to one of the OTHER designs for the Izumo (where one DOES have the Nelson style set up of all three guns superfiring IIRC). The Yamato by contrast maybe give its mid and long range AA a buff...other than that it seems fine.

Yes but your original comparison to 'only the top people get to see endgame' is largely invalid because of that, changing the goal posts to 'LFR = Co-Op' so I don't care about it does not change the fact that casual players get to see the same content as mythic raiders apart from a mythic only phase on the last boss of a raid tier.

Well I know at least one thing that counters reworked CVS. Me when I'm playing them because I am shockingly bad at playing CVs...to the point where I'm like "eh you know what I'm more a detriment to my own team when I'm playing them so probably just shouldn't..." but then I'm also pretty bad in DDs too so...yeah...

If you've played WoW you actually know that statement is completely false. It WAS True about...3-4 years ago but with the introduction of the much more casual LFR difficulty you can now see every single raid rather easily, in fact LFR is basically a massive cakewalk. The only thing that applies to is end raid bosses having a mythic only phase. I was easily able to PuG (and raid lead those PuGs on occasions) my way through normal mode raids back in Legion (I quit during BfA because by god that expansion got boring real quick). What they 'deny' you is higher tiered raiding which a casual player will not care about. like I said the casual player will play through the raid with ease in LFR for the story and a few times for loot, they don't actually deny anyone content.

Hmm the version with 10 16inch guns is definitely doable, who knows we might get it as a premium ship.

I get people don't want wonky yet fun premiums like the TOG II in WoWs (I mean that already kind of exists with the Ohotnik aka the longboat) but I'm curious what kind of oddball ships we could do that would be pretty different but also fun to play. I like the idea of the Courageous being a 2 x 2 x 15 cruiser like Uglesett suggests, hard hitting for a cruiser with cruiser accuracy (since it only gets 4 guns), no armour, decent speed...it could work as a sort of lower tier super cruiser.

I still say we bring in the BB version of the Furious at tier 6. two 460mm guns with cruiser accuracy and a shedload of secondaries + AA but bugger all for hull armour. I mean its within the "no guns above 460mm" ruling. I do love the idea of a ship that is kinda wonky and unique. It's why I loved the KV-2 in WoT, the KV-2 cares not if its bottom tier...it's still going to have some fun. Edit: Apparently I've been downvoted or something but it was KIND of a joke guys...not sure if that came across.

Again the Conqueror has to be seen in order to fire on you unless he is relying on someone spotting for him and firing from behind and island (a very shallow one) he's only firing once every 25 seconds ish. Like I get you think the Smolensk is somehow fine despite...quite a lot of the Community Contributors AND other people saying it isn't...I get that...it's probably your new hotness or whatever but there's a reason they removed the Belfast and the Kutz from sale or didn't give the RN Cruiser line smoke and HE. In fact they outright stated that was the reason that the RN didn't get HE because it would be 'overpowered' and yet here we have a ship that gets smoke AND HE AND torps AND a heal (the Belfast gets Radar in place of a heal IIRC which makes the Fiji have an edge over it at times). Not to mention unlike the RN cruisers who have just enough armour to set off high powered BB AP, the Smolensk does not, you can get overpens on citadels... So yeah I think the Smol is a problem, it's not fun for anyone on the end of it. Just like the initial carrier release wasn't fun because they could just crap all over you with very little response and AA might as well have been useless.

Yes because three Henry/Zao/DM DON'T GET SMOKE which forces them to have to use islands etc. limiting their field of operations. If a Worchester/Gearing combo is smoking up, again it has a touch more counterplay than just 'oh guess I'm going to die today' I'm sorry but I refuse to see how the Smolensk is a fun ship to play against are you seriously trying to defend this practice?

The problem is that it just isn't fun to play against ESPECIALLY when they're in a division, you get 2 or 3 of them together and everything just melts with little counterplay beyond radar. If they had those guns but no torps it'd make more sense since you could push into their smoke screen without fear of getting torped. Just had a game where I was in the moskva and because I was the biggest threat with radar three Smolensk proceed to just melt me before I could even hope to turn away. Lighting them up in radar did bugger all because all the BB shells that hit seemed to do scratch damage and I was too busy trying to get away in order to bring my guns onto them. It didn't help our DD was hiding behind the Battleships and cruisers despite having a good opportunity to dump smoke into their screen.

Just having a thought that, with the introduction of the Thunderer that a second British BB line which focuses on AP instead of HE is sadly no longer possible. With the split heading off from the old Queen Liz you could have had the Hood at tier 7, The Vanguard at tier 8, a 'WG Special' at tier 9 and the Thunderer (which is pretty much a WG special since the Conq didn't exist) at tier 10. We're missing literally 1 ship in order to make a full second line that is about good AP accuracy and not just spamming HE with terrible accuracy (looking at you Lion....)

Ah yes you were correct, my bad, it was indeed the Furious. Yeah it is basically a way of instead of including alternate playstyles for a line as silver ships, they put it in as premium ships instead. I know a lot of people weren't happy with the fact that the RN was reduced to HE spam mobiles and an alternate AP focused Branch would have gone a long way to that. Heck we could have, by now, at least 1 German super-cruiser/battle cruiser line starting from tier 6 with the Graf Spee, tier 7 the Scharnhorst etc.

Ah a British man can dream...sadly such things will never come to pass. Much like my idea for the Indomitable at tier 6 as a 460mm armed BB (don't worry people it has 2 of them) with cruiser accuracy and good secondaries but...well it's got 2 main guns...

Now I wouldn't say tier 10 is unplayable but I would say the playstyle is unfun. Compared to lower tiers it involves a lot just sitting..and waiting...and usually it's a case of whichever side gets bored first and tries to push loses since the ship that tries to push gets hit by a hail of gunfire and burns to death. I admit I suck in high tier ships but that's because I find that style of play just so BORING.

Got the T-61 which apparently according to you guys is the best one to get...trouble is I'm a SHOCKINGLY bad at playing DDs..so..well...here goes I guess.

Sweet Jesus...didn't think I'd be able to pull this off in this clunker of a cruiser (which I got out of a supercrate) but yes, you read that right 9 Kills and 89k damage at tier 5 (in a top tier game admittedly)

Personally I think the reason we're seeing a dearth of tier 9-10 premiums is that because of the way the matchmaker was/is where a tier 8 would often end up being bottom tier a large portion of the time. This drove people off of tier 8s because why by something that's just going to constantly be bottom tier? So people stopped buying the tier 8 premiums in droves which caused WG to then switch tactics to providing the tier 9 and 10 premiums.

that's actually an interesting point, up until probably tier 6 the Japanese would actually be on the allied side.

Yeah the main problem is different tiers have their clear 'winners'. In WoT tier 6 was clearly dominated by the pre-nerf KV-1S which ran roughshod over the frankly awful competition it had in all the other lines. Tier 7 was dominated by the US with the T29 a clear winner. Tier 8 was, once again, dominated by the Russians. Tier 9 was a bit of a mixed bag for everyone. It was a surprise when it turned out that tier 10 wasn't dominated by the Russian...but by the french autoloaders. Since at this time they were the only autoloading vehicle branch in the game and you'd often see tanks swarmed by Batchats and obliterated before the medium wolf pack would move on to their next target.

Confrontation was National battles. Basically all the tanks of a given nation but they could be in their non-historical configuration of upgrades. Confrontation lasted a single patch and was removed due to being imbalanced thanks to things like fleets of KV-1S's with the 122mm gun vs M6s with their 90mm gun so the game went to whoever had the most alpha since 3 KV-1S could blow away an M6 but 3 M6s would take several shots to kill a KV-1S. It balanced it much like a regular random battle and did mirror matching as best it could. That was introduced in 8.11 and removed in 9.0 the very next patch. Historical battles were bought in in 9.0 to try to replace Confrontation. It had the tanks in their historical configuration and balanced the sides via a sort of clan wars style points system. The Germans in the American scenario were allowed to pick from Tigers, King Tigers, Jagtigers and Pz IVs. So naturally everyone on the German side picked a King Tiger or a Jagtiger and would usually only have 3-4 tanks per team whilst the American side had a full 12 tanks but they'd all be 2-3 tiers lower like the various Sherman variants, the Hellcat or the M36 Slugger/Jackson. In the Russian Scenario, however, you'd see hordes of SU-152s with their 152mm guns derp guns so you'd have like 8 of them and 4 T-34-85s or KV-1s or IS-1s vs 3 King Tigers and a a Jagtiger. This usually meant the T-34-85s would sneak forward, spot the lumbering german behemoths which would proceeds to get shelled back to the stoneage by the SU-152s then once 2 tanks were down the hordes would descend upon the last 2 remaining German tanks. Historical managed to last a whole TWO patches before it ended up being removed with words that they would 'work on it'...by which they meant they'd ditch it and never touch it again.

Actually, having played the Historical Battles as they called it the problem was that they couldn't balance what kind of tanks you took in to it. The idea was that you'd have 1-2 people in big high tier vehicles like a Tiger II or Jagtiger and the rest made up Panzer IVs. Naturally this didn't happen... So for the Germany vs America (since the Brit tech tree wasn't in place at the time) you could take in a stock Tiger II or Stock Jagtiger with their ridiculous armour and fairly good DPM (so that's a stock tier 8 and a stock tier 9) against Hellcats, Shermans (Regular, Jumbos, Easy 8 variants) and M36 Sluggers/Jacksons. Only the M36 had enough a high powered 90mm gun. This meant that the US side usually got roflstomped really god damn hard unless you had people playing REALLY smart using the Sherman Jumbos as hull down distractions while 3-4 Sluggers would sneak around the flank and proceed to jump the German lines and try to take out the 3 Tigers 2s and 1 Jagtiger. However most people would take in their hellcat and then wonder why they didn't have the 90mm gun so you'd have fleets of 76mm armed vehicles up against these steel behemoths they stood no chance against. By contrast the Russian vs German fight let the Russians being in the SU-152 which could use its infamous 152mm HE derp cannon and when you got like 4 of them all firing on the higher tier but outnumbered King Tiger. Since the 152mm didn't care about how much armour you had and having multiple of them hitting your tank would often cripple crew and modules alike it made it much easier for the Russians.

Yeah I get the feeling that WG don't see the CV lines as 'profitable' at the moment. The way they did the Reeework did a lot of damage to peoples views on CVs and I think the RN CVs was done just because they were already in the pipeline before the rework dropped. So I imagine it'll be subs first before we get either a 2nd CV line for IJN or US or another nations CVs.

I would love to get full English voice acting for the AL captains but considering even the international version of the App has them speaking Japanese with subtitles (IIRC) I doubt it will happen.