xxNihilanxx

Not calling you out on your stats, calling you out on the nonsense you were spewing. I can see from your reply, though, that it was all in vain. Just another CV player telling DD players they need to L2P/adapt-or-die while simultaneously avoiding DDs like the plague. "WARNING - Credibility levels approaching zero. All personnel have 16 minutes to reach minimum sane distance"

Hmmm.... best changes?... best? changes.... Well there have been a fair amount of changes but whether or not any of them were good is up for debate. WG introduced more ridiculous weather effects that serve only to irritate people. (Well me.) We've had a few new lines, which I guess is a positive. A load of new premiums, which I guess is typical. The CV rework, obviously, which has proven to be about as popular as a pork pie in a synagogue. WG changed the detection mechanics such that your gun bloom drops as soon as you go unspotted which was met with overwhelming approval but, of course, that turned out to be a bug so got removed. They have promised to reinstate it SoonTM but I wouldn't hold your breath. The playerbase on the whole still leave you wondering how they were even capable of turning on their PC let alone finding the right desktop icon to click. But that's no change, I guess. I'm sure there are others but I'm bored of this already so... Oh... Oh... of course the bestest change so far is that you have a really sexy new clan mate

Oh how people like to use myths to dismiss people out of hand. I have been back in the game for three weeks now, that's 21 days for the CV players cos they all can't do maths (see easy isn't it?) and according to my stats I have a 75% WR out of 45 DD games in that time. Now I am sure people will be aware that I am one of the most vocal detractors when it comes to CV so how do I figure into your little imagined scenario? Incidentally, in the same time you have played 4 (yes FOUR) DD games and lost half of them. Maybe you should turn your f***ing AA off or , better yet, just stop posting inane nonsense on the forum.

That's because you are a potato with terrible stats. The fact that you have recently performed far in excess of your actual skill in the reworked CVs is indicative only of how broken this rework is and not of you suddenly improving miraculously overnight. Every post you make is testament to this fact. Once WG feel they have taken "marks" like you for as much as they can get and swing their "global-changes" nerfbat hard against the face of all CVs your stats will return, once more, to those of the true King Edward of Spud Mountain. Do not doubt that the inevitable nerf is coming, anyone who has spent any amount of time with WG products will know this. If you think this has a happy ending.... you haven't been paying attention.

I can feel the disdain oozing from your every pore and it pleases me. Oh how it pleases me. Trust me, mate, if you were one of the green DDs you would be ecstatically happy to see me playing the Belfast as "wrong" as I do.

Strange belated double post removed

Obviously, given that WG don't, and never will, release this kind of information to us it is incredibly difficult for either of us to quantify. I base my asserions on the sheer scale of the disgruntlement that exists within the playerbase since the rework launched - disgruntled customers tend to spend less than those who still think the game is "the best thing since sliced bread" and I believe many are totally withholding payments to WG as a form of "protest vote" over what they see to be an abhorrent prevalence of aircraft in game currently. I know that I, personally, kind of fall into this category as the state of the game has turned me from a prolific spender to a F2P player. Of course, we can never know, but a good indication will be to watch how much they ramp up the cash-grabs. Putting the premium CVs into their gambling boxes at the same time that they put them on sale in the store was an indicator, I'm fairly sure they don't usually do this kind of thing outside of the Santa crates. I think WG took a gamble with the rework, hoping to make CVs appealing to a much larger audience than they actually managed. I think they also misjudged the scale of the resentment that they would cause with it too. I think, despite how they deal with us, that they know it has been of a disaster and are trying desperately to grab as much cash from it as possible. The fact that they made the T10 CVs the only ones that seem to be truly effective (in normal hands - I'm leaving freaky outlier cases like out you of the equation here) struck me as an obvious ploy to try to tempt people to spend money to freeXP their way up to T10. Remember, WG don't do anything by accident - they are very calculating about everything they do. As a regular Belfast player I can tell you that the smoke penalty hits hard, particularly for those who, like me, play the ship in a very aggressive manner. The problem with her is that while she has a 15+km range her effective range is much smaller. Open up at 15km and the target will just turn and sail out of range and it is only really BBs that can be reliably hit at that distance, anyway. As a result of this I found it was most effective to wait until your target is around 10-11km (less for a DD) before smoking up to engage. This way the enemy cannot just turn out of your range without having to endure quite some volume of fire in the process. With a 5.3km smoke detection this gives quite a small window of opportunity, esppecially if the enemy has the sense to push towards you as quickly as possible. With a detection of 8.9km, the Belfast captain also has to figure on an escape route and so will need to ensure that, even if he stops firing before the enemy reaches that 5.3km, he will still be able to escape from the situation without suddenly being 7-8km from the target he has just been annoying. If anything, ofthe two ships, I find that the Kutuzov has less of an issue than the Belfast despite having that 7.7km (iirc? - I don't play Kutuzov anywhere near as often) smoke detection as the base concealment of the Kutuzov means that it doesn't tend to get played quite as far forward as the Belfast would. I know they "claimed" it was to stop BBs camping in smoke but as most know that was never really a problem that needed solving. Any BB firing from smoke was generally a BB that was eating a phuq-ton of torps in the next minute or so. What WG say and what WG mean/do are not always in perfect alignment, shall we say.

I "hold onto that" as you put it because I am fairly sure that I understand the reasons behind their design decisions and, while it would be convenient to put it all down to their ineptitude when it comes to game design, you have to bear in mind that the one thing greater than their ineptitude is their greed love of our money. They had to make the reworked carriers "appealing" in order for their cash grab to be as successful as possible BUT they aren't stupid enough to do this indefinitely when they know it as at the expense of the other three classes. The number of premium CVs that they will be able to sell is outweighed by the number of premium DDs, CA/CLs and BBs they will ultimately be able to introduce. This is simply a case of numbers as there are three times as many surface classes as there are CVs. As we can see from the response to the elevated number of carriers in game, the players who prefer the other classes are feeling, for want of better terminology, hard-done-to. WG know they are walking a fine line between the immediate sales of CVs versus the longer-term sales of the other classes. This is why I am convinced, having watched their commercial behaviour for some time now, that they will, once they feel they have milked the rework for all it's worth, introduce a global change that totally neuters CVs so that they can, once more, maximise income from the players of the other classes. Does anyone here honestly believe, for example, that the "smoke firing change" was, in truth, anything other than a deliberate effort to nerf the Belfast and, to a lesser degree, the Kutuzov. The power of these two ships was pi$$ing off their other potential purchasers too much. Of course, in order to maximise their profits they first had to wait until the RN CL line had ceased to be the latest new thing. This is, I am sure, how it will go with the CVs. I am a little foggy on the chronology here but wasn't the Saipan the only premium CV available at the time that that came about? You will know better than I on this one. Bugs aside, you have to understand that WG do not do anything "accidentally" and that all of their decisions are made to maximise their income. To this day surface vessels, and predominantly BBs, are the biggest cash-cows - they won't jeopardise this for long. WG are every bit as skilled at extracting cash from their playerbase as they are inept at their game design. They know what they are doing.

On balance I would say that this is the carrier you are looking for..

Having come back to the game after a break (to allow the CV rework to settle down a bit) my take on this whole subject is that, no, DDs are not impossible to play but they are incredibly frustrating and totally devoid of enjoyment, particularly in games with mulitple CVs per side. That said, this is also true of most classes when multiple CVs are present. There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel here. Friday 12th April saw the (re)release of the premium CVs and so WG have started their cash grab with regard to the carrier rework. What this means in real-world terms is that it will not be too long before they have made essentially as much money from the rework as they feel they will be able to make (after all there isn't really a large pool of potential premium CVs that they could further introduce). Once that point comes they will, (and I am convinced of this), introduce one of their patented "global changes" to CVs that will make them wholly unappealing to all but the most masochistic of carrier players. At that point CV numbers will drop dramatically to pre-rework numbers and the game will return, once more, to the product that we have known, loved and enjoyed for so long. Be patient, guys, the end of this debacle is in sight.

I literally began the post you are replying to with "Putting aside @Beastofwar's self-delusion..." so what on earth makes you think that those self-same delusions could form any part of a cogent response? Compared to you the growing number of "flat-earthers" appear to have something akin to a solid proposition.

No, it is literally, by definition, damage mitigation. The act of angling alone can only mitigate damage and thus is a defensive action. If there were a specific angle that one could set their ship at that would reflect incoming the damage to the opponent then that might be considered counterplay but as that is, obviously, not the case then angling in and of itself is the epitome of defensive, damage mitigation. Counterplay is a positive, opposing/aggressive action. Mitigation is the reduction of a negative action. The reduction of a negative does not equate to a positive, it just means less of a negative. In the specific case of CVs IF, for each aircraft killed did actually lose part of its hull HP until it eventually died, then it would be possible to consider that AA defense was, in some part, counterplay to the CV but as that is currently not the case then it does not apply. I have tried to point this it before, in order to counter my aggressor, I have to be able to end the engagement by killing said aggressor thus preventing any further attacks on me or my team by that ship/player. This is how it is with all other classes in the game but, for some reason, this is not the case with CVs and the apologists think this is fine, fair and balanced. Merely surviving an encounter is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination - regardless of mental gymnastics - counterplay.

Putting aside @Beastofwar's ridiculous self-delusion for a moment, what is actually being demonstrated here is the outrageous survivability of CVs as a class. The fact that two CVs made repeated, concerted, synchronised efforts to kill an enemy ship and FAILED solely because the target they chose was another CV is testament to how broken the impementation is. I would be quite surprised if any other ship in the game, including the most intensively AA-fit, AA specialist ships, could withstand that amount of pressure and survive. I know that the CV apologists will come out with reasons as to why this is "perfectly fine and totally balanced because... blah, blah, blah" and, frankly, I am sitting here waiting, with a sense of growing amusement, to read those incoming excuses.

I understand that but it is precisely this failing of yours that I and others have tried repeatedly, in vain, to point out to you. Just because you don't see something, doesn't mean it isn't there. The Tiger is incredibly well camouflaged against the backdrop of light and shade at the edge of the jungle. You don't see the Tiger but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Someone with more acute vision can see the Tiger and warns you of it but, unable to see the Tiger, you proceed as if the Tiger isn't there. Doesn't stop you from getting eaten by a freaking Tiger. Precisely, "in a broad sense, technically" - so if you turn your head to a particular angle and squint in exactly the right way through these special glasses it can be made to seem that.... - This is the kind of mental gymnastics that I and others refuse to engage in. In a real sense with no technicalities required it totally isn't even remotely like that at all. You should not need to rely on such mental gymnastics if your argument is sound. (Just like the HP of a CV is the f***ing HP of the ship - there is even a f***ing HP bar on the CV that identifies itself an HP bar - no mental gymnastics required. None!) It is entirely the crux of the whole issue but yea, let's not go there shall we?

I think I found why it is difficult to argue with you on this matter, you are confusing your terms somewhat. What you describe as "counterplay" is actually damage mitigation. Counterplay is something entirely different. counterplay in British (ˈkaʊntəˌpleɪ) noun 1. a positive or aggressive action by the defending side, esp in chess verb (intransitive) 2. to make an opposing or positive action from a position of defence Shooting down aircraft or avoiding their attacks is merely the "position of defense" - it is a defensive action. There is no option to oppose the enemy player (CV) only mitigate his damage (defend). In order to truly counterplay we need a way to not only defend against the CV's attacks but also attack them ourselves. I guess, due to your confusion over terminology, we have been talking at cross purposes all this time.

I'm not trying to shame you, fella, you are doing a much better job of that than I ever could.

You can believe what you want, mate, but the only person behaving like a bit of a cult is you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we have found David Dunning and Justin Kruger's original test subject.

For premium CVs you wanna go.. Preventative Maintenance Expert Marksman Adrenaline Rush Vigilance Basics of Survivability Manual Fire Control for Secondaries AFT. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about...

^^ This is your answer, mate. They will make so-called "global changes" that affect ALL CVs so that they can say they haven't directly nerfed the premium ships and therefore players have no recourse to a refund. Tried and tested method, it's what they do.

So now that WG have made their cash grab the cynical experienced side of me wonders how long before they make one of their "global changes" that nerfs all CVs without the need to give refunds. What do we think it will be? Halving the speed of aircraft? Vastly reducing the aircraft respawn rate? Something else?

Nope, for some reason the game always puts me on the green team. No idea why. Over 10K battles and never managed to get on the red team once.

Not sure where you get this idea from. I see teamplay in every single match I play. EVERY. SINGLE. MATCH.

I left tonight so I have the full three days. Cheers, looking forward to it.

Well I can definitely offer certain "favours". As you can see from the pic I posted I'm quite the MILF and a bit of a goer to boot So if any of you guys are interested my postcode is SW1A 2AA and the house number is 10. Just tell the guy at the door that Tess called you round for a "Tinder date" and he'll sort you out. Hope to meet soon.