eliastion

Well, the "monthly" is actually pretty useless, seeing how it just aggregates by month rather than giving us a proper timeline... The "by day" is the only one that can be used to assess some trends here.

I think you mix up a couple issues here. You see, there are quite many DDs (mostly because not everyone wants to play a BB and DDs struggle much less than cruisers) but the problem mentioned even in the thread title is pretty simple: DDs don't counter BBs as they should. Yes, there are many DDs, very often more than there should. But the reality of this fact is that DDs mostly play against DDs. For IJN DDs its more of a stealth play and baiting of enemy gun-oriented DDs to overextend. For gun DDs it's mostly the effort to deal with enemy DDs without overextending. Neither can really strike at BBs properly - not until there's just a few DDs left. And then... taking out enemy BBs either takes a lot of time by shooting guns and evasion tanking. Or it's extremely unreliable when you need to set-up a torp strike and wait a LONG time until you can try it again if the previous attempt didn't work (and missed or scored just one inconsequential torp hit or sth).

I wouldn't overestimate the convoys. EU suffers a drop there but so do the other servers - so the causes are more likely to be of more general nature. My guess? People were playing, then Christmas/New Year/holidays came and they stopped playing... and figured out they just don't feel the urge to get back to the game. I'd guess that - rather than an effect of some major screw-up right then and there - we might be in fact seeing the real effect of previous screw-ups that finally caught up to the game.

I must disagree with BBs not being too strong. Let me explain what I mena this way: imagine a match. A match where you've done your best but however well or badly it went for you, you're dead now and the confrontation is coming to an end. And you look at the remaining ships bar and you see the following: BB, CA, DD vs BB, BB, DD Would your thought be "good, our team is better rounded, we have an advantage" or closer to "damn, they have 2 BBs"? Becase I must honestly say - for me it would certainly be the latter. Sure, depending on tactical situation, the actuall ships, their leftover hp - all that might be more important than class composition, but the thing is: when it comes to battle, double BB will probably make short work of the cruiser and be able to gang-up upon the lone enemy BB. DDs, at the same time, will somewhat cancel each other by screening their allies and potentially spotting the enemy for other ships to shoot too... Cruisers aren't necessary here. Now, let's take another composition: BB, CA, DD vs BB, BB, CA Who's at an advantage here? Well, once again I'd say: double BB. DD is a serious threat in absence of friendly DD but if the cruiser plays it somewhat safe, he should be enough of an asset to keep the BBs alive. At the same time enemy cruiser should die relatively quickly and then there would be one BB against two BBs with cruiser support as the DD can be a nuissance but, baring a serious misplay by BBs, said DD shouldn't be able to deal damage fast or reliably enough to have the fight go his way. Once again - BB advantage seems to be worth losing on one of the other classes. The difference can be made up for to significant extent by properly smoking your BB and cruiser and then spotting for them - so the match-up is much, much less obvious than the cruiser-less option, but still. Finally two other combinations where (only) one class is absent: BB, CA, DD vs CA, CA, DD and BB, CA, DD vs CA, DD, DD And now - only now, when it doesn't mean losing on BBs, the balanced team seems superior. Not THAT superior, mind you - having a BB doesn't mean an auto-win by any means, but (As long as the cruiser doesn't run off and stays close to BB) having the Big Boat does indeed provide an advantage... Of course the above scenarios are EXTREMELY simplified. WoWs has no ship called "BB", "CA" or "DD" - they are different, sometimes very different ships. The end game (even as presented above) can start from various positions and if a BB (or one of BBs) starts separated, it's not the best class to quickly re-group with the rest of the fleet. And, of course, it's unlikely to get to a 3v3 situation with everyone bieng on their full hp... All that said, having more BBs does seem favorable to having more of one of the other non-CV classes. And lacking a BB seems to be more of a problem than lacking one of the others. This is more of a gut feeling, of course, but think about it - would you honestly prefer to have one of each class against a team that lacks one of the others but, instead, has two Big Boats with their armor, hp pool and firepower?

You keep saying this in half of your posts about DDs. I mean, not the exact words, but your claims that DDs are all about torps and as much as picking a gunboat is playing DDs wrong, cheap and contrary to what DDs are supposed to be... I've never met on these forums another person who would be as well described by the phrase quoted as you. And I say this with certainty despite having read SkybuckFlying preaching about the proper way to use CVs in Ranked.

But... it's not right, the video is just an illustration of the issue, NOT some "looka t my game, my game is amazing" thing fitting to the "community area" section!

(Sorry, just realized I've already commented here and it's a resurrected thread, not a new one )

April's fools is all about the unexpected turn of events. And seeing how everybody expected some kind of event, the complete lack of one is most certainly in good spirit of April's Fools

One thing to be remembered is that IJN CVs suffer from this choice (AS or strike loadout) to significantly lesser extent than USN ones do - basically, IJN loadouts are much less specialized so that you still get to have fighters on your strike loadouts (so you're not completely defenseless) AND your fighter deck actually still has some punch (although it is significantly weaker, especially since everyone and their mother tends to focus torp bombers with AA). So, while I believe IJN strike loads to be superior to AS, the latter is imo significantly more viable than US fighter deck.

USN CVs generally are inferior to IJN ones but the difference in average stats is inflated by two factors: 1. CVs are always matched against same tier CVs. This leads to a situation where if one option outperforms the other, the difference might look much more severe than it would've been between two same tier ships of any other class - it's just that USN CVs have no other ships around to "get back" on from losing against IJN ones. Regardless of nation, the most crucial aspect (well, not necessarily at t4-5 now) is the skill of the player. Evenly skilled, the IJN CV pllayer has an advantage but this advantage is less pronounced than it might seem, especially since... 2. The results of USN CVs are brought down by AS loadouts. Basically, in US CVs it's very tempting to load your boat full of fighters and go destroy the opposing CV game, farming sweet plane kills and enjoying unmatched air superiority... but it's a trap. You FEEL like you're winning. You see enemy planes dropping left and right and when the game ends, you see pitiful position the enemy CV has in XP - you did, after all, destroy him in the air. Only you didn't. Not really. Because the main job of a CV is to deliver heavy damage to big ships and/or to force them to make maneuvers that cause them to stop shooting and/or receive heavy damage from other sources. So, even if you did prevent the enemy from enjoying the match, it's unlikely that he didn't get even 1-2 good strikes in the game. In 12v12 match you just can't be everywhere at once and a cautious opponent will get to manage a couple solid drops more often than not. And your damage will be pitiful due to lack of strike planes that could deal the damage. Result? You spent most of the game fighting enemy CV while said enemy CV influenced the battle more than you did. So, if the teams were otherwise evenly matched, the enemy probably won. The effect described above can be somewhat lessened by the fact that you're more or less free to do air spotting for your team (since you hold air superiority) but this contribution usually isn't enough to offset the lack of damage. So, despite seemingly winning the air battle, possibly getting more XP than enemy CV, you're actually a burden for the team because you didn't manage to completely shut down the enemy CV while being unable to offset his contribution with your own. The above is the big problem with AS set-ups that brings USN CVs down, especially since their loadouts are more specialized and so someone thinking to play fighters is more likely to pick US CVs. And what's the most sinister about this: many fighter-deck players aren't even aware why they're not winning as much as they think they should. After all, it's very counter-intuitive: you win the air battle, you shot down all enemy planes, the enemy delivers maybe one or two strikes tops... you have a justified feeling of having done a good job. The game even tells you you did a good job: you have big number of planes shot down and solid XP, you're probably much higher in your team than enemy CVs in their. Everything from gut feeling to game feedback tells you that you were an asset to your team... while the reality is that the enemy CV simply contributed more, regardless of what the results show. This is a very nasty trap for players indeed - basically it takes a bit of pondering over what it means to contribute to your team as a CV to even discover that the story the game and your instincts tell you might be a big, fat, nasty lie. And most players don't play a warship shooter to be so reflective - they pick the loadout to help their team against enemy planes and they do their best to contribute - and by no fault of their own they are lied to by the game that they ARE contributing. Which, unsurprisingly, leads to them repeating the same mistake over and over again, without even realizing that their poor results aren't the effect of either bad luck or even their lack of skill with their CV - they just unknowingly pick the inferior deck composition and place themselves (and their team) at a disadvantage from the first minute of the game.

Flooding in WoWs is reserved for REALLY CATASTROPHIC breaches. Think about it - torps have a flooding chance. Even IJN torps don't always cause flooding, USN ones are frustratingly inconsistent in that regard and airdropped ones... flooding is mostly ensured only with an 8+ torp hit, if you hit less, you might or might not get the flooding, depending on how (un)lucky you are. Now, dear OP (and other people arguing realism in context of AP overpens causing flooding), please compare the hole from an airdropped torpedo exploding - and that of AP shell going cleanly through. The former kind of hole is the one that MIGHT cause flooding in a fraction of cases. How does the latter even register on this scale? If AP were to have as much as some chance of causing flooding then any kind of torp should have assured flooding AND there should be some mechanic to allow the real flooding sources to deal much more damage to reflect the scale of the difference. And the game would become a World of Floodings. For now, the mechanic simply ignores minor holes - and the shell (over)penetration holes ARE minor on the scale where flooding is considered.

I don't say they should necessarily sell her HOWEVER she would be a hilarious reward ship (imagine a whole campaign about torp use with Kitakami as the final reward)

Ramrus. You fail to grasp the basic game mechanic here. It's not up to debate, it's the fact that ships appear 3 seconds after they start being spotted and disappear 3 seconds after they stop being spotted. It's that simple. You might be unaware of that because WG changed the logic behind situational awareness so that it goes off only when you actually stop being visible rather than (as it was previously) when you break line of sight to the enemy spotting you. But the underlying mechanic of spotting doesn't change - there's a 3-second delay on both ends. And of course it's calculated on the server - it's just calculated differently than you think. Although, for the sake of clarity: the delay is not "render time". It's a forced delay that originally was there to combat ships blinking while laying smoke at high speed. If you have problems with your computer (generally severe lack of RAM) you can suffer from actual "render time" delay (especially as the battle starts) that's not determined by the game and in no way accounted for by spotting mechanics. But it's a completely different thing than the 3 second delay that's just a hard rule of how spotting and disappearing works in WoWs.

No. Their conclusion would be "there are too few cruisers, how can we buff BBs to fix that?" No, seriously, I try to complete the last stage of weekly mission (cruiser required, just had a game with all conditions other than the 200 ribbons met -_- ) and it's really painful compared to either a BB (I'm big, I have big guns, nobody can hurt me) or a torp-based DD (big dumb BBs to hunt everywhere)...

You are completely ignoring the fact that the ONLY legit problem with SF was a very specific scenario: - the BB (or sometimes a cruiser tough with these this happened much less often) ends up more or less alone (there's literally no help to call upon) - the DD is capable of stealthfire (with generous SF window to account for possibility of BB trying to get away) In this scenario the problem surfaced because the DD was capable of firing on BB and there was little the BB could've done with it. Re-cloaking simply doesn't have this problem. All the BB needs to do is roughly pre-aim the guns and just don't fire at other things (and the problematic scenario usually means there aren't many things to fire at). DDs can't possibly relocate fast enough to deny BBs their chance to shoot them with visibility bloom lasting some 10 seconds or something. And even with shorter blooms it's very unlikely. Basically, the only problem with invisifire (that there's no counterplay) simply doesn't exist if the tactical use of stealth were to rely on fast re-stealth rather than staying unspotted while firing. Oh, and there's one fallacy you made there. You said "it made DD play more skill-dependent and therefore better". You miss an important distinction as to what "skill-dependent" means: - did the nerf make certain DDs harder to play? Yes it did, in that aspect they indeed became more "skill dependent" in the sense that you need a more skilled player to perform as well as you did previously - did the nerf do something where skill is rewarded? Hell no, it actually took away much of the reward that could be gained from properly managing your hp and stealth through positioning Making something weaker and taking away tactical options always makes playing it harder but to make it actually "more skill-based and therefore better" you need more than just a nerf. To put it simply: removal of t4-t5 CV manual drop also made them much harder to play and to get a decent result you now need much more skill. But I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find many people willing to agree that new low tier CV gameplay actually is more skill-based in the sense of promoting skill, right? To lesser extent, of course, but the same is true for DDs. The patch - not removal of SF as the general idea but the way it was implemented - took away tactical options and gave nothing in return to facilitate (possibly less annoying and more interesting than it was) stealth play. This is making DD play duller, more static and less varied - not sure on what planet that means "better". Also, there were also many other ideas as to how SF could be dealt with without butchering stealth play options. Gun bloom time adjustment seems the easiest to implement, but there were others, for example: firing at someone making you spotted by that someone regardless of your visibility range (as long as there's LoS) so that your target can always return fire but you don't get focused by whole enemy fleet unless you happen to actually get spotted normally (through normal spell bloom). The thing is, SF was never a problem as a super-powerful kill-them-all mechanic that made DDs overpowered. It was just a way to get tactical utility from being a stealthy DD while using your guns - and the one problem it had was the frustration of being on the receiving end without the option to retaliate. WG didn't fix the problem though - they didn't look for ways to ensure the possibility to retaliate. They just removed the option, killed SF and a couple other applications of stealth combined with guns (shooting over islands, for example - maybe USN DDs can still do this but IJN ones have arcs flat enough that being able to shoot requires staying far enough from the island that something - not your target but something - almost always spots you). So no. WG in no way, shape or form improved the DD play. They just made it more frustrating, less varied and less forgiving. Although the BB play actually has been improved - frustrating aspects of playing certain class aren't good so removing something occasionally frustrating for BBs does certainly make them more enjoyable to play. But DDs? No. They got nothing actually rewarding any skill, they got nothing to reduce frustration, all they received was a heavy nerf and tactical options noticeably narrower than they were.

Do you literally just suggest as a possible abuse of the system... the approach where YOU FIRE ONE DD SALVO FOR EACH ONE THE BB FIRES!? It makes about as much sense as worrying that a BB has a hard time avoiding being rammed by a determined DD due to the difference in speed and maneuverability.

Ok, first of all the removal of SF - while in opinion of many unnecessary - isn't really what's voted for here. The removal of SF has been announced long before but the reaction on the Forum has always been wary rather than hostile to the change. Where WG dropped the ball is HOW they went around it, as if completely ignoring that it's an important part of the game and extant balance. They also did this the easiest way - they didn't change the mechanics to give stealthy ships some way to use their stealth to their advantage without the old 0:1 system "you get shot at by everything":"you're completely invisible and invurnealble". No, they just burdened stealthy ships with ridiculous gun bloom and changed nothing else (well, nothing except pretty much eliminating firing penalty to concealment of shorter range BBs... because, you know, BBs needed a buff). They even had the audacity to say that they don't really see this as a DD nerf. To quote Noster, I think "on what planet is that not a nerf"? It was obvious that they are nerfing many ships - and pretty easy to identify ones struck the hardest, like Akizuki (possibly worst case) or Yugumo (a ship that pretty much traded some of the IJN torp potential for good supplementary guns). Even if they really had to remove SF in such a ridiculously heavy-handed way, they could've at least thought about these couple ships that were going to be affected FOR SURE. They didn't think of a more complex way to remove SF without removing stealth from stealth-firerers (say, the "offender" appearing only for the target, everyone else seeing just the outline on minimap). They didn't bother to compensate for the mechanic removed in general (say, shortening drastically DD exposure after they cease firing) And they didn't compensate the ships affected. They extended some ranges - a move that, for some ships, became an incentive to not only drop AFT but actively look for ways to reduce the excess range... They just f*cked up. Not because they wanted to get rid of stealthfire scenarios, but because of HOW they approached the issue. And, as for some things you mention... DD on DD stealthfire is not a thing. It just isn't. The only ship that could possibly spot a DD from a range where she could stealth-fire is Akizuki vs some soviet DD. And, let's be clear here: if soviet DD wants to close the distance on Akizuki, it won't take long. Not to mention that chasing her means exposing bow only and Akizuki is notoriously bad at shooting such targets; even if she has IFHE, it's pretty painful. Now, DD on cruiser SF - once again, most DDs capable of stealthfire do it on ranges comparable to cruiser concealment range. If the cruiser goes silent, she just disappears. The one DD that indeed averts this heavily is, again, Akizuki... that has 33 kn speed, turns like [edited]and needs an exposed broadside to deal decent damage to anything. Oh, and one other thing for other DDs - it's often a problem to hit a cruiser at invisifire ranges. And if the cruiser happens to be sailing away... Invisifire was a tool to be used and decent concealment after firing had some other uses as well, but class balance didn't really suffer from it. Cruisers still countered DDs, just like BBs easily counter cruisers despite occasional death by fire or cruiser torps. And as for invisifire being a nuisance to BBs - you're mostly right save for two things: Akizuki (she's special in that regard ;) ) and IJN HE used to set fires. Fires to try and bait torps. Fires to take advantage of repair used after successful torp strike. IJN DDs (especially Yugumo) really benefited from the ability to throw a couple safe salvoes on a BB in hopes of getting some DOT going - since, let's face it, torps very rarely contribute that way just because flooding is always plugged if only possible... and BBs with repair on cooldown usually are overextended and die to the torps themselves or shortly after from concentrated power. Now these couple salvoes are going to be given up on or they're going to be extremely risky, because if the enemy team gives you attention... and they usually do... you'll find the hard way how low your max hp is and how long 20 seconds are.

I voted that braindead way they went around the "problem" of stealth firing (while it wasn't a problem AND even if it was - it should be dealt with in a manner much better thought-out than this sh*t they pulled here). I do, however, feel the need to mention that the reason why I picked this one was because the CV issue is still on the table. Basically, taking away manual drops is, in my opinion, even worse than stealth-firing "fix" - it is, however, by WGs declarations, a temporary measure. They claim that the actual CV rework is still a thing to be done in the future, so while their recent move is disastrous, they don't believe it to be setting things as they should be. As for SF, on the other hand, they really believe they improved the game with that and seemed surprised when people called it a DD nerf. So. It's the intended permanency that pushed the SF "fix" to the lead position as the worst change WG made to the game this year.

It wouldn't. And "not on BBs" for the obvious reason: BBs are more powerful and more numerous than they should AND most of them have the excess range for such an update to become a free dispersion improvement. No need for a buff in the form of an upgrade that would actually be more useful to (most of) them than to other classes.

Finally tried her today on live server (weren't really in much of a hurry, as you might expect) and the experience of playing my favorite (before this patch) ship is truly dreadful. Perhaps I'll keep playing her for weekend first wins for now but where once she could carry quite a bit on her own, now all she's good for is spotting and perhaps leeching some damage while being carried by others...

I think the ALT removal does have a significant impact on the game balance and CV meta. - IJN torp bombers drop 4 torps, the gaps between them are much bigger. Avoiding auto-dropped IJN torps is MUCH easier than avoiding auto-dropped USN ones - IJN bombs have a great manual drop grouping (in fact it sometimes seems too small as it's hard to set many fires on bigger ships when you tend to drop all bombs on one section) but their auto drop dispersion is outright abysmal The above differences would mean that the actual strike power of USN CVs at t4 is much superior to IJN equivalent while also having better firgters. At t5 the choice is between, again, a much better strike power or fighter loadout... And when fighters are involved: - IJN fighters are at a big disadvantage compared to USN ones. If you are more skilled you can try and abuse strafe to even out the odds - of course if the enemy plays just as good or better, he'll win, but without ALT attacks your chances of evening the odds are much worse - you can try and lock enemy fighters within friendly AA... but the AA at these tiers is so weak that it might not make any difference unless the enemy is stupid enough to let you lock his fighters right on top friently ship (or even ships). So yes, while it's been a long while since I last played any IJN CV below t6, I'd say that removal of ALT attacks does affect the balance of nations a lot. Then again. Balance between CV nations is pretty bad and has been for a long time. And at most tiers it's the US CVs that are at a disadvantage...

What's more, there are some situations where some problems (be it with Internet, client or something else entirely) force the player out of the game or don't let him load - but aren't permanent. I've had matches where I needed to re-start my client (usually loading freeze or crash) or router (internet problems caused by old piece of junk) and either loaded very late (but not necessarily too late to impact the battle significantly) or managed to return (of course this usually requires the problem to happen mercifully when you're not on the front line - enemies don't tend to ignore ships just because they suddenly stopped firing ). These situations are somewhat hard to reconcile with substitute AI... The one change I'd really like is for Ranked battles to be dropped if any of the players didn't load after 1 minute from the game start. It's still too early for any team to do much, the lack of ship is often an insurmountable problem in 7v7 AND the penalty for defeat is harsh - I'm pretty sure people would prefer to experience some drops ("damn, I thought we had a game but here we go back to queue") rather than find themselves in 6v7s because an ally just didn't load... Of course there should be some limits/penalties to discourage attempts at rigging ("oh, no, I don't like the match-up, better kill the client process") but I'm pretty sure it could be handled in a way that allowed some breathing space to people with game client problems without being easily exploitable. Maybe some "more than 1 in 5 games loading failure -> 1h Ranked ban; increasing for repeated offenses" rule.

I have to disagree. Unless we take "extent to which it takes place" to the extreme. You see, rigging matches requires two things: - possibility - need (and reward for doing so) Possibility of course exists in pretty much any game of this sort. The second part doesn't check out, however. In WoT you get some really hard (to the point where it's ridiculous) campaign missions with big rewards at the end. In WoWs? What for, really? The missions are usually either easy to do normally in time provided or not rewarding enough to bother, or both. Surely, if, say, the high-tier campaign required ALL tasks completed to get a ship, we'd sure as hell see some "I won't repair my clanmate's flooding to give him liquidator" or "let's feed each other planes while playing CVs in non-primetime to get high tier clear skies" or "ok, so where do I need to go to be the first to spot you in your DDs" things. But it's not the case, these stupid/hard missions aren't vital for anything. And lack of incentive to rig matches pretty much guarantees the practice to be a marginal occurrence. Sure, it probably happens, but the extent is most likely so miniscule that it's not worth even worrying about it as a serious threat to gameplay.

That's simply not true. On really small maps that might make sense, but think about what happens when two teams actually decide on neighboring caps vs flank caps strategies: 1. Team X goes for points A,B 2. Team Y goes for points A,C The XB force is flanked, the YA force is flanked. The XB force turns toward A, the YC force follows but shooting retreating (from their perspective) ships is hard while YA force is caught by enemies advancing from two sides. YA force is likely to be destroyed, YC force unlikely to even briefly take B (because XB force can shoot back too, if needed). Basically, while it's true that the B gets initially flanked from both other caps, they generally can just fold towards their allies, cleaning that flank before the enemy can really utilize the 2-caps flanking position to gain any advantage from that. That's why the "base" optimal strategy would be for smaller force to go side cap, the bigger one: to the middle (that way because if enemy abandons this side cap, the force that went there is effectively out of the battle for a bit and then the team with bigger force at B has an advantage). Of course the reality is that people lemmingtrain to one side cap abandoning the rest of the map OR they just disperse completely but, well, online gaming. Of course, individual maps can change the optimal strategy depending on how much cover is there on the way to - and between - specific caps...

That would actually be a master troll