eliastion

Order is just one of many possibilities offered by Chaos

That's... not completely true. My main prey in her is also DDs but yesterday played two battles and in both the super-bloom gave me some trouble while DD hunting, namely: a DD from other cap and (at second occasion) a cruiser at the back kept spotting me after line of sight to my target was already broken. In one case it was more annoying than dangerous (the IJN DD trying to contest the cap managed to hid behind an island), the second situation was more dangerous - the enemy managed to smoke up, me being spotted gave him some free damage I normally wouldn't have taken. Sure, such situations won't happen every match (I was just unlucky) and Błyskawica's original bloom meant that some situations like this one cpould happen in previous patch, but it's most definitely a problem even for DD hunting. Not a HUGE problem (Błyskawica is pretty hard to nail from greater distance AND she can get away and/or turn around and smoke up reasonably fast) but the nerf does come into play even if you don't practice shooting on old invisifire ranges at all.

That might be true, but from my experience - I hardly ever encounter people knowing how to fight Akizuki; rarer still are those capable of really pulling it off without putting themselves severely out of position (leading to their death either way). I don't say I never got outplayed that way - I distinctly remember the frustration of enemy DD angling, denying me most of my damage and finally sailing away with a kill. It did happen. Once. All the other times? Well, I do lose some damage, sure, but never to the point where I decided to pick IFHE - HE I use only to start fires and I don't feel the need to chaange that (and hurt my fire chance in the process).

Cruisers are also much harder to hit from invisifire ranges, so they didn't take nearly as much damage as BBs. I mean, ok, Akizuki could invisihurt them but certainly not with HE. Of course, the above assumes the cruiser potatoing in a straight line, but one that does that should fear torpedoes much more than any HE spam from invisible HE spammers.

Even a survey here on forum would be more representative - who, outside of some people really interested in the issue - would even click the link and go take this survey?...

No, it might actually be - but it's quite obviously a game where almost all of that damage was done to DDs. And while OPs reaction is going overboard where it comes to a ship with Gearing's torps, smoke and handling... well, his point about problems with contributing with guns against anything slightly bigger than a DD is hardly challenged by a t10 game below 60k damage.

Because there's a significant tactical difference between firing at 10 km while being spotted from 15 and firing from 10 km while being spotted from 10. Contrary to popular (or at least WG) belief, there are things like: - islands that cover you from the view of your target but not some his ally 13 km to the side - smoke clouds you're not in that do the same as islands above - situations when your closes enemy died, hid in smoke or otherwise broke line of sight (hiding behind some rock or something) but has a friend within your firing range that keeps you spotted for a third of a minute after you stopped shooting Currently having range in excess of what you are going to really use is a liability that, in some situations, can get you killed, force you to use smoke or stop you from even firing your guns to begin with

Stealth fire was a big advantage of Błyskawica in certain situations, giving her some extra versatility. However, it should be noted: it gave her versatility, not really that much raw power. Without AFT the stealthfire window wasn't that big and it wasn't so easy to stealth fire at enemy that wasn't sailing towards you. With AFT you got some range but arcs weren't too comfortable at such a distance anymore so the increase wasn't as great of a deal as it might seem. What's more, Błyskawica is capable of hitting big enemies at ranges where they struggle hitting her AND she is generally capable of outrunning more powerful threats save for soviet DDs... and woe be to soviet DD that decides "hey, I have more speed and more firepower, I should chase that Blyska down" - Błyskawica projects her power backwards pretty well and with advantage of being the one running away in a quick chase, she is pretty capable at taking on enemies that supposedly outgun her: these couple km of effective range created by being the one who kites makes up for pure power disadvantage and worse arcs. Of course that's assuming comparable tier. Is Błyskawica hit hard by the changes? Yes, she is, her SF was an important aspect of her suite. Is she a bad ship now? I really wouldn't say that. While she did lose some of her versatility when it comes to fighting BBs especially, she is still capable of stealth-torping with her not very impressive BUT fast reloading torps AND she is still a great gunboat when it comes to fighting other DDs. She's still fast and reasonably stealthy. She'll be less enjoyable and she'll have less tactical options. She'll face more bad games because her stealth fire was often the most important when either your team was sh*t or you yourself lost too much HP (but survived) in the opening phase of the match. So, yes, Błyskawica does suffer a lot but I expect her to remain a solid ship and one that, in decent hands, can pull off very good games with some regularity (the best ones usually didn't require much invisifire and other effects of abysmal bloom are less of a problem for a fast ship).

It's not, russian boat is OP

Or they'd make it available to BBs. So that they'd get better dispersion at 20km instead of their usual one at 22km.

Ok, reality check: Is the ship blatantly overpowered? Yeah, stupidly so, there's no counterplay, when it comes to cap denial this seems to basically be a "needs to be banned in any semi-competitive mode at her tier" kind of ship. Will this ship break the game? O course not, it will be extremely rare, certainly for the time being, but even in a couple seasons time - the amount of people having it will be small and even those having her aren't going to use her all the time.

A sea farmer named Russianbias? Sounds like a perfect captain for certain BB

They have AA (well, some of then do) but it's not the attacking-me-is-deathtrap-for-your-planes kind of AA. Also, it usually requires fully upgraded ship AND making use of AA requires good reaction to planes - even monstrous AA of NC (assuming CV of equal tier) can be overcome if you just sail in straight line allowing a perfect drop with few to no adjustments within AA bubble.

Reading (and checking things up) is a hard thing for you, isn't it. You just told a player with 662 matches overall, 81 of them in carriers grinding both CV lines (t5 in both) to stop sealclubbing. He's not a sealclubber. He's the one you believe WG saved from them evil sealclubbers. Oh, how rejoiced he sounds. Sure, CV sealclubbing was a problem but what you miss is that WG's "solution" to this is to make t4-5 CVs a CV equivalent of playing a ship that has main guns marked as secondaries. The sealclubbers wil likely move up or stop playing CVs. It's the "seals" that are the real victim here - because they want to play CVs, apparently, and yet are forced to grind through two whole tiers of this nightmare. Because WG couldn't be bothered to actually think about consequences of their actions.

It really depends on the ship, though. The obvious example would be Akizuki: - she CAN quickly kill a DD - her shell arcs at long ranges are TERRIBLE (she has good initial velocity but the shells lose it very quickly) Basically, her current max range of almost 15 km is completely unnecessary, you won't hit sh*t at that range unless it's an AFK BB. Basically, AFT would only make sense for a specialized AA build (and AA build on a DD without defensive fire... not so tempting). It's debatable whether it's even worth upgrading the range, really, as Akizuki's new stock range is pretty much her (somewhat) effective range anyway... either way, any additional range improvements beyond fully upgrading the ship are most certainly giving up stealth for range you'll never really be able to use effectively. I believe it might be similar for infamous (for their arcs) USN DDs too.

It would be nice to see some special (pity that we didn't get an ARP one ) tX ship/ships. HOWEVER a ship like that would REALLY need something more than just a freeXP cost (which is, let's face it, just a different kind of "pay us for gold to convert your XP" for players willing to pay). I think the ship itself - or the right to buy it if purchasable - should be definitely tied to some special requirements impossible to complete without having at least one tX in your port. ...then again, I'm a person who believes that premium ships in general should only be unlocked to people after their first battle in a silver ship on appropriate tier. Maybe not the same type of ship necessarily (although woe be to a Saipan player who never played CVs before) but the tier? I don't think that would be an unreasonable requirement, really...

Akizuki: 5-3 = 2 - assuming we're talking the current state of the game, not the one from when the thread started... well. I don't think I need to explain why I downvote a ship I actually supported more than once. Shell arcs don't let her engage on long ranges; handling doesn't let her engage on short rangers. There's always smoke but her speed doesn't let her retreat if it's pushed (and it's no US super-smoke either). Benson: 36 Lo Yang (Mk. 15 mod. 0): 11Atago: 37Chapayev: 11Mikhail Kutuzov: 40North Carolina: 25Tirpitz: 16Bismarck: 11+1 = 12 - this thing is scary. Will get even scarier now, probably.Shokaku (2/2/2): 26

I have to disagree. You WOULD be right IF permanent loss of modules was a common occurence. Which is simply not true. Permanent loss of main armament modules does indeed happen but it's EXTREMELY rare. I've never heard nor seen a replay where a ship was incapacitated by losing all guns and torp launchers. In fact, the only situation where I've seen a ship losing all of either of these was a de-torped Akizuki (since, well, one launcher). So no. The way ships get incapacitated isn't by loss of armament - it's by total loss of HP. Therefore for CVs the usual equivalent of hap is planes - because THAT is how they generally get taken out of the battle. Their hull HP is a secondary "now you die" switch that only ever matters if the carrier is grossly out of position. Or in quick curpstomp battles where the team crumbles fast enough for enemies to get to the carrier relatively fast BUT not fast enough for the match to end with CV still afloat (as is often the case in curbstomp scenarios).

For the people who see CVs as a "sniper" (like WoT arty) that other players generally don't interact with. Let me suggest a perspective that should make things clearer. Imagine that there are no carriers at all. People don't play carriers - the actual "unit" in game is "carrier strikeforce": some planes with fighter escort and limited resupply for when planes die. Is that sniping? There's no carrier to kill at all: there is a finite amount of planes (engaging at super-close range, very vulnerable, super-fast) that the player controls. Planes have a couple extra lives for their planes so that you can initially re-stock the squadrons but it's a limited resource - just like hp for ships. And just like with hp, losing some HP doesn't cripple a ship, losing ALL hp, however... well - kills them. An airforce player is the same: he can trade some planes but if he loses all - he's dead. In fact, he's at slightly worse position in that as he nears total destruction, his force weakens: no longer access to all plane types and/or squadrons without full plane complement. The above shows the REAL mechanics behind carriers as they are. The hp of the carrier is her planes, not the hp on the hull. The hull is added pretty much as an additional risk-reward aspect: you get a critical weakness, so you can die despite still having most of your health (planes) remaining. On the other hand, by positioning this weakness closer to the enemy, you get the benefit of shortened cooldowns. To sum this up: the belief that CVs aren't threatened by ships they attack, the concept that its just sniping at faraway ships with no risk to yourself - this way of thinking is inherently flawed because the actual hp equivalent for a carrier is the plane reserve - and this resource IS directly threatened by anything that finds itself closer to any enemy squadron than max AA range.

And that's exactly where the concept of different spotting ranges in different directions fails.

I'd really like to consider it a joke, unfortunately... Well.

I don't agree that it's easy and intuitive. I'm pretty sure we'd see quite some frustration with such system. No, if such a concept were to be implemented, there shouldn't be any cones - the most complex viable system would be "given line of sight, the target of your artillery barrage can always spot you regardless of distance". We even already have a mechanic this could be based off - the "incoming fire" alert. So we already have some system for detection of whether you're being shot at or not. Although I'm not quite sure if ICA currently gives warning if the enemy shoots "blind" (without locking on on you specifically)...

And that is pertinent to "HE spam" problem... how? The chart shows that cruisers don't get killed by HE or fire, whatever the source of the two; their true nemesis (just like for BBs) is AP. Either way, if you want to keep whining about HE and fire damage on your cruisers, please do create a new thread for just that, probably in Gameplay or Ships section. Please don't pollute this thread anymore since it has nothing to do with HE and fires - no changes on PTS are about HE and fires. The discussion here should really be restricted to - removal of invisifire, feedback on whether it's a good idea, whether it was handled correctly and/or how it could've been handled better - removal of manual drops from low tier CVs, feedback on whether it's a good idea, whether it was handled correctly and/or how it could've been handled better - feedback on changes in ship ranges - feedback on changes in some US CV planes drop characteristics - feedback on other changes on PTS that affect game balance Since I don't seem to recall HE performance to be changed on any ships, the whole discussion about HE balance is a massive offtop here. Please be so kind and create some dedicated thread for this - this unrelated discussion has already taken far too much space here, drowning actual TS balance feedback. Also, to everyone else (whether or not ThinderChief decides to stop posting about his massivve problem with enemy HE spam) - please, try to refrain yourself from replying to any further posts about this issue - as well as others similarly unrelated to the intended topic of this thread. I myself will do that from now on and I hope we'll be able to perhaps get discussion back on track or at least stop the offtop from continuing.

That's literally a chart WG used to show players that no, HE spam and fires aren't overpowered and are nowhere near being as powerful as some believed. I'm pretty sure that they consider it both a fact AND a proof that HE spam isn't overpowered. Oh, and the numbers now are probably slightly more in favor of AP since from then we got a bigger BB population (and few BBs load HE for anything nowadays, really) and a whole line of cruisers that don't have any choice in the matter since they just don't have any HE ammunition. Here, dear sirs, is a player who mains IJN torp boat and believes that picking gunboats is a) cowardly b) being a jerk Let me (as someone who plays a lot of DDs) give you some more obvious cowardly and jerk moves: - picking any ship equipped with radar - picking Hydro over defensive AA - cowardly using planes to spot me from above Of course, there are also some cowardly and jerkish moves I notice when I play a CV: - speccing your ship for AA instead of offense - picking defensive AA over Hydro Then there are these cowards (and jerks) I notice while playing my BBs - choosing torp boatats instead of proper DDs relying on guns to fight it out amogst ships with small guns designed to fight each other (or, better yet: instead of choosing some REAL ships, like cruisers or BBs) - speccing for stealth and torping me without getting spotted - picking CVs to torp me from afar, with planes (so cowardly) - cruisers setting me on fire from behind islands or from smoke, or from max range instead of coming to fight me like a man should

Oh, yes, make all DDs play completely the same, great idea. (that was sarcasm if you haven't noticed)