DrMechano

You'll see in the original post that I mention that its armour is terrible thanks to that big box turret (which even from the front is easily penned) and having a tier 5 hull on a tier 6 tank. The armour is adequate at tier 6 but then that advantage it has over its rival in the "King of Derp", the Godzilla sized Japanese heavy in the O-I is that it isn't as big a target and because it isn't so focus on armour (which as pointed out, matters very little when facing tier 8s) at the cost of everything else plus it has the infamous 'Russian track spaced armour' where if angled/side scraping the tracks can just devour shots that would otherwise pen even from tier 8 guns. The other advantage is that the KV-2 has a better AP round with more pen should you be so inclined to fire it and slightly better accuracy. For a true KV-2 Experience we'd have to have a ship at tier 6 with say 6 457mm guns that only fire HE, terrible accuracy beyond 10km and standard tier 6 armour layout. I imagine that a) Such a ship never existed to even consider this as an idea and B) Would be pretty bad for the game.

No...bad...ok...Tech tree only ship then! *smacks El2aZeR with a rolled up newspaper* Yes I know that HE works differently between the two but the idea still stands. The KV-2 is a tier 6 Tech Tree Tank that can actually put up a decent fight against tier 8s and I'm curious what people would think would be the equivalent in WoWs. My personal suggestion would be the Arizona or the Queen Liz. both are slow, their armour doesn't hold up too great at top tier and while it can't just smack around the tier 8s the Arizona is pretty damn accurate for a Shotgun BB allowing it to surprise blap cruisers and while the Queen Liz turret traverse is just awful, the accuracy on the 380mm means it can deal with tier 7s pretty nicely.

I'd actually, personally, say the Lion is much worse than the Iowa, having played it, the guns are almost German levels of inaccurate despite what the stats would suggest, I couldn't stand the Lion but then I couldn't stand the Iowa...and yet I love the Musashi which feels way worse than the Iowa did (but it also has slightly better velocity, felt the Iowa shells were just a bit too sluggish for my tastes). However that's all personal opinion, I'm sure there are some people that feel the Lion is fairly accurate.

I said, all BUT the Yamato. The Yamato with both its legendary mod AND the Aiming mod is pretty much the most accurate BB in the game IIRC with -14% dispersion (-7% from each) and a 0.2 Sigma. With the -11% dispersion mod the Iowa is supposedly more accurate than any of the tier 9 BBs at 15km or less, though that was before the Izumo accuracy buffs were implemented.

Well then...just...why WG, just why?

I thought Spotter plane consumeable still did?

Quick question are you using the reload mod or the unique -11% dispersion mod that American BBs get at tier 9 and 10? The Iowa apparently (because I've played 2 games in her and then remembered I'm not too struck on high tier BBs with miserable velocity AP) with that mod becomes more accurate than all but the Yamato with legendary mod and the aiming mod at less than 15km IIRC.

They're basically a poor mans hydro in my opinion. You use it if your ship has no other option (there are several where they ONLY get spotter plane in that slot), can actually make use of the range/angle to fire over islands (looking mainly at the Zao here, think its one of the only ones where the spotter plane is actually useful if you're combining it with the legendary module), if you suspect a non-smoked enemy DD is nearby and you need to spot him/his torps.

The only reason I got some of the aircraft mission does was because I was in a tier 8 game in a Massa (secondary specced, naturally) and proceeded to rampage down a flank with mostly on tier 6 ships against me (seriously guys, if you're in a bottom tier cruiser, closing the distance to use your torps on a massa is just asking for death by secondary bullet hell). I was threat number 1 which meant both the Lexington and the Ranger threw everything they had at me, thus 48 planes shot down which thankfully completed 1 of the directives.

They should have left the rocket planes as is and just introduced the -20% air detection buff for DDs only. Instead they went full mongo and slammed in dozens of other changes and gave every ship a -20% air detection. WG don't seem to understand what 'tweaks' are. Changing one thing, seeing how it works, if it isn't enough, maybe add some more tweaks, nope they pile all of them on at once and make things miserable.

I'd actually say that effected CVs MORE than DDs because DDs still have very high alpha strike torps, while CVs have very, very low alpha strike torps and they were designed to be a DoT style class with fires and floods. Getting a flood in the first place was luck of the draw for a carrier, now even if they do get a flood, its basically worthless.

That's what makes me laugh...it's like they really, honest to god, have no [censored]ing clue WHAT they want out of CVs. They want the class to be played more, they want to close the skill gap, they then use a sledgehammer to nerfs CVs into the ground which means the tier 4s are now completely freaking useless, the tier 6s are fairly useless, the tier 8s are pretty useless and the tier 10s are kind of useless and they only people getting something out of it are the unicum players that just keep on doing what they do, meanwhile newer players just throw their hands up and give up on the entire thing. I know I did, managed to unlock the midway, played it for a few games and was just like "WTF is this?!" and just sold it, I was having zero fun in the Midway.

At this stage I've honestly got to wonder just WHAT is the plan for CVs. They've mentioned closing the skill gap but all these nerfs widen it further and further so soon we'll be back to the old RTS way of things where 1 good CV player will still managed to do some work while 1 bad CV player will do bugger all and be nearly out of planes 5 minutes into the battle, the only thing is the good CV player can't shut down the bad CV player directly anymore. Along with the upcoming flooding nerf I've got to wonder, if they planned for CVs to be a DoT class, then why nerf the best DoT they have? They certainly don't maintain the Alpha Strike like DDs will. If they're going to nerf flooding the Torps on all CVs need a large alpha buff.

If anything I want CVs to actually get some High Alpha strike capability back against BBs, currently they do very little damage against them and there's like...maybe 2 really crap AA BBs at high tier. Even the Yamato has ridiculous short range AA (851 damage per second and that's without the reinforcement, the Yamato is easy to close the distance but hell to drop against since you're probably going to lose the planes dropping the torps/rockets and you're most definitely going to lose at least 2/3rds of your Dive bombers thanks to their attack pattern) that makes it a pain to drop against. All I'm saying is, DD captains can laugh at Battleship captains when they moan "Oh I got torped" or "Oh I got spammed to death by a Harugamo in smoke I couldn't see!" then everyone else should have been allowed to laugh about them moaning "I can't yolo anymore because of Rocket Planes" or "I smoked up in a real obvious place and got punished by radar despite knowing there was a radar cruiser there!"

The same could have been said for DDs and rocket planes. They could have both A) Stuck with their fleet for AA cover and B) Used the WSAD to actually MOVE so that they're bow or stern on with the incoming rocket planes, meaning they'd be tagged by very few of them. However apparently this idea that maybe DDs had to stick with their fleet for a little bit for AA cover is somehow galling to DD captains yet BB captains are held to the same standard.

WG really seem to be balancing Carriers with a slegehammer. They overreact with the nerfs and underreact with the buffs seemingly to satisfy the moaning majority. I get the feeling that the Russian servers (who are their main market, lets be honest here) must despise Carriers and they're only going to be happy when they're nerfed into the ground. I say keep AA as it is now, ditch the whole 'multiple strikes' and just have the whole squadron dump their payload at once, giving them back their big alpha strike ability. The damage on their torps has been nerfed, flooding is getting nerfed. Give the rocket planes back their ability to turn and juke whilst aiming but give them a wider aiming circle to compensate for the mass rocket bombardment. The larger circle means a DD would only be tagged with 3-4 rockets anyway at most. The larger dive bombing aiming circle might actually make them worth a damn for the speed with which they die.

Jesus man, keep that sarcasm in check, my sarcasm detector just blew up and nearly killed my cat

The only reason I think their output is so low is to balance them against the fact that most tier III battleships literally have NO AA. However that's great if you're in a tier IV game...if you're in a tier V game eh...certain ships basically make you a limp noodle.

Yup, I'm really not sure why WG REALLY don't want to implement this rather simple fix. As you said carriers at +2 basically get free reign to do whatever the hell they like but at -2 are basically useless since even non AA specced ships wipe out squadrons fast.

Just that they way it works as intended IS a mess... I mean great fun being the only tier 8 on my team in an otherwise fully tier 10 game >.>

Yup still screwed when uptiered, I get the horrible feeling this is by design so people spend money on getting the free XP and credits in order to skip straight to the tier 10 and avoid the horrible tier 8 grind completely.

Yeah the problem is if they completely removed CVs they'd probably need to offer a straight up cash refund for now removed Premium Carriers. So there is very little chance of that happening. The problem is CVs, more so than any other ship, suffer from uptiering to a ridiculous degree. Even before the update tier 8 going up against all but the worst tier 10 AA would still get their planes shredded and most of the time in tier 8, because we have a reverse pyramid of players (most play at tier 10 with fewer players going down the tiers) means that they're constantly thrown into tier 10 games. You see a tier 8 BB still has the same armour, most of the time have at least competitive firepower and are all usually fairly quick. What the tier 10 gains is usually more Alpha strike but all but the Yamato still can't bow pen a tier 8 BB. They don't suffer too badly from uptiering. Cruisers and DDs also suffer more for being uptiered but they still have their advantages (the Chappy for example is actually kind of stealth compared to its tier 9 and 10 brethren with their BB size detection ranges and benefits from IFHE with the 152mm it uses). However Carriers suffer massively from being uptiered since they're relying on planes. Tier 8 CVs have smaller squadron sizes, less alpha strike potential, less mobility and much less health. This much less health means that while a non-dedicated AA cruiser can only take a chunk out of Tier 10 planes, they decimate tier 8 planes.

I'm more partial to the Nobilis camo for the Lexington myself since you don't have the odd looking 'normal ship parts' combined with the funky Halloween stuff. Plus you know, steampunk aircraft, who can say no?

Erm I'd just like to point out in War Thunder that ONE plane can take out multiple big ships because they're packing bigger bombs since they're not restricted to carrier launched aircraft (Say hello to a 5000lb bomb which can knock out multiple cruisers). Oh and they can do it from high altitude where your AA literally cannot hit them. So yeah...erm...good luck with ships in War Thunder...oh and don't forget you can't play big capital ships and the War Thunder devs have stated, on record, that anything bigger than a cruiser will not be playable. So you won't be able to play your precious battleships in War Thunder...heck its one of the reasons I don't want to play it.

Are you surprised they wouldn't play the incredibly boring, even before the hotfix, tier 4 carriers. They're widely considered to be just [edited]. 1 Torp per run..ooh...wow, hold me, I don't think I can handle all these torps and my what incredibly speed those planes move it...