eliastion

I had a good match in my Yugumo, amazingly high flooding damage! 15k.

...wrong January...

Not sure if you want to troll DD players or DD haters, but... what does it have to do with anything? We're talking a very specific damage type that requires luck to deal. You can deal literally hundreds of torp damage and still little to no flooding since this requires... 1. A torp hit 2. Repair on cooldown 3. Enemy surviving pretty long after getting hit The 1st and 2nd kinda contradict the 3rd since torps deal lots of alpha AND ships with repair on cooldown usually mean ships in heated battle where they get hit by HE shells a lot, quickly draining their hp pool regardless of however deep it might originally be. Result? Even on great DD games I very rarely see more than 2k flooding damage... and here we need 20k.

Ok, so... 1st of all: you don't know how much damage he dealt, you can't check that in post-game result screen. 2nd: it seems that he actually... well, effectively killed one ship. That ship was you. He shut you down and killed your planes, reducing you to a floating corpse of a carrier. 3rd: he probably had a lot spotting damage, torp spotting etc: small things that got him some more XP. Basically, he outplayed you and managed to do well in a pretty underpowered (though admittedely frustrating for CV enemy) configuration. 4th: I myself hate skyc'ancer a lot when I play my CV. Yes, the dynamics of these set-ups make it so that picking these feels like griefing. But the thing is, you see, picking AS decks actually puts you at disadvantage. Yes, you rule the skies but in Randoms people scatter or at least split into two groups. It's usually pretty easy to find some targets enemy CV just can't protect effectively - and when you're in an IJN CV you even have some fighters of your own to make shutting you down much harder. Think about it: even if you have problems going through and dropping fast, you can literally intercept half of his fighters with yours to ensure a more comfortable drop. And if you manage, say, 2 good drops in the whole match, that's probably more contribution than the enemy CV will manage (especially since - despite having air superiority - he just lacks squadrons to counter you, deal whatever damage he can AND try spotting DDs on top of that). Facing US AS decks is extremely frustrating but might actually be the easiest match-up when it comes to pulling your weight understood as "being more useful than enemy CV". Sure, you're unlikely to have a great game against such an opponent but you're not really at a disadvantage. As long as you accept the fact that there are powerful fighter groups in the air and you need to play more carefully than usual to get some damage AND see your planes return home from their sorties.

One of the funniest things with CVs is actually with auto-drops. I don't do that often but sometimes I do, as part of my DD cross-dropping effort. What could go wrong with auto-drop, you ask (well, beyond not hitting anything due to being too easy to dodge)? Glad you ask. A torp squadron gets locked into an attack. But doesn't attack because the target turns and messes up the attack vector. So the planes (already locked for the attack run and not responding to any orders!) circle trying to readjust the attack vector by themselves... but still messing it up! Seconds go by, the rest of the attack has long ended, AA of the DD and possibly other nearby ships are firing full power... and the torp bombers just fly there, unresponsive, like a bunch of drunk flies wanting to get swatted.

The only thing I would consider somewhat close to your proposition would be: extra XP for winning team only for winning fast. Basically, an incentive to do your best to win rather than (as sometimes happen to me) look at the score and hope that the cowardly enemy that started by giving up on ALL the caps somehow manages to kill a couple of my allies to prolong the game.

This thread reminded me about this one photo...

You might actually want to consider this because - from what I heard - it has one additional effect on BBs - other than upping their hp, it ups their healing ability since that one works based on ship's total hp. So, while the increase in hp might seem underwhelming, you actually gain also some virtual hp on top of that since you can repair more. This, of course, doesn't make it worth it, usually (although is an important factor on cruisers with healing) but, if you really don't see any other skill that you expect to be useful to you? Still, when in doubt, I'd stick to AA and secondaries. It's not like you can always angle perfectly against every threat around you, so - as long as there are some semi-decent secondaries, even if not placed too well, they might be worth a shot.

I remember how I tried to fire my BB shells into a smoke where a DD was hiding. ONE of my shells got a down-and-left dispersion, nicked an allied ship and started a fire that dealt an equivalent of an AP citadel hit in fire damage... These things happen, a combination of heated battle, binocular view and a bit of bad luck on firesetting can be truly disastrous... And, frankly, while I consider team damage a necessary part of the game, I really think allied shells/torps should be unable to cause fires, floodings, detonations and maybe even citadel hits. Punishing carelessness (nevermind intentional damage) is one thing, but bad luck shouldn't be extra punished.

The problem isn't "dragging people out of their comfort zone". The problem is... No, the two problem are: 1. Missions encouraging bad play. "Kill a CV" being a good example - DDs should go after CVs as targets of opportunity if an opening presents itself but, more often than not, chasing after a CV is a bad idea - there are more important things for them to do. Not to mention that you first need a match with a CV in it. 2. Missions that have some absurd and/or luck dependent requirement. Currently it's 20k flooding damage. Seriously, 20k flooding damage!? In a DD!? The thing is, flooding damage for DDs more often than not serves one purpose: force a repair so that fires stick. People - unless forced otherwise or unaware of any torping threat - keep their repair for floodings. And when flooding, they usually repair instantly. And people without repair up usually mean "currently engaged in heavy combat", meaning that even if you do manage to torp them... you either finish them off or deal enough alpha damage that they are quickly dispatched by your allies, again leading to pretty low flooding damage values. I really hope that one day WG will learn and we'll see weekly mission chains that AREN'T broken somewhere with some ridiculous mission nor encourage bad play... but that day is not today.

Furutaka. And I mean old furutaka, before they added another hull for her. She was a painful experience for me (as for most people, I wager) as a hard change from machinegun light cruisers with guns facing in all directions to slow-reloading, slow-turning (oh god, how they turned) guns of furry taco. And then one learns to use the ship. Learns to pre-aim guns, to waif for the right moment to fire. And gets to wreck equal and lower tier cruisers that don't really know what hit them because so far they've only faced light cruiser machineguns and terribly inaccurate BB guns that fire once every blue moon. Before I was done with her, I actually kinda liked my Furutaka. After the buff I actually bought her back, although I don't really play her much - if I go to tier 5 I generally use Gremmy or one of my colorful Kongos... but I certainly have some fondness for old Furutaka still.

Ok, this one is easy: sealclubbing. They're sealclubbing due to combination of factors: - slightly overpowered AA on high tier and severely underpowered at low tiers - god-awful economy at higher tiers - CV vs CV enagagements being by far the most skill-based match-up in WoWs - many people being unambitious assholes preferring easy wins to challenge - class having severe gameplay problems and steep learning curve meaning that new players often give up early and we seem to have ended up with % of experienced players generally higher than in other classes (basically: you either give up early or stick with the class and become experienced, much less middle ground than in other classes); sealclubbers scaring off newbies don't help, obviously. Now, as to the main points of your post. I disagree with your conclusion AND it seems that you have severely distorted perception of CV (and, to an extent, other classes') gameplay. But let's go step by step. 1. All (non-CV) classes are similarly affected by RNG. That's not true. - BBs suffer from lots of RNG on the offensive side. Their shots are devastating or miss completely depending on the roll of the dice. - Cruisers are much more consistent offensively, they shoot with better accuracy on lower distances and they shoot often enough that even fires are somewhat consistent. They do, however, suffer A LOT from BB RNG characteristics - cruiser's health can just evaporate with one good and lucky salvo from BB... or it can end up being a bunch of overpens and misses with a salvo similarly good but quite unlucky So, ok, the two might be considered equal - but even they are affected by RNG in much different ways. But then we come to.... - DDs. Torps are almost independent from RNG. They don't have citadels nor guns punchy enough to really score citadel hits too often - and when they do, the damage numbers aren't that great. Spotting mechanics are RNG-free and they shoot accurately enough that the actual RNG in their shooting is about lighting up fires. DDs really suffer from RNG in one case - when being shot on by BB. Then, yes, dispersion is very important and each hit hurts but it's still much less pronounced than in case of cruisers So, let's move to the next point of yours: 2. CVs aren't affected by RNG. Again - blatantly false. First: dive bombers suffer from it quite a lot, considering that every "salvo" takes several minutes to "reload" (get to target, drop, return, service, take off again). Torp bombers indeed don't really suffer from dispersion... but unless we're talking low tiers, there is that thing called AA. That works purely on RNG basis. The same AA might drop half your strike force one time (on approach) and measly 2 planes another time. Two "equal" fighter squadrons engaged in a dogfight can end up with total wipeoput of one side with 1-2 planes missing from the winning side. Or it can drag on until both (initially full) squadrons just run out of ammo and return home, each on half strength or so. And finally - there are floodings and fires. Oh, god, floodings and fires. On a cruiser or a DD you just shoot until fires start. CV? You have your 2-3 (at best) DB squadrons, you drop and even with perfect hits on stationary target... it's not rare to see 7-8 bombs AND NO FIRES WHATSOEVER. Floodings? Well, in a DD almost every torp hit is a flooding. CV? You need 4-5 torps on target to get somewhat consistent floodings/strike. And if you happen to drop from panicked torp bombers on a target engaged in battle? Well, you sometimes hit, say, 2 torps. It's a pure roll of the dice whether you'll get a crippling damage over time or some raw torp alpha without much impact on bigger targets. CVs are about as or more RNG dependent than DDs. They indeed are, however, less luck dependent because they don't really suffer from "the enemy was oblivious and sailed straight for last 5 minutes but now just randomly turned and happened to dodge torps by mistake" thingy. So yes, I can agree that there is less luck in CV play than other classes, but not necessarily due to RNG deficit. 3. It's a good thing to have more RNG Well, I respectfully disagree. Carriers take LOTS of time to perform a drop. Compare damage potential for BB salvo and for CV drop. BBs have their potential SEVERELY restricted by RNG because it's so incredibly high. CVs damage potential is much, much MUCH lower. But you can count on getting much closer to that potential if you play your cards right. If you increase RNG factor, the CV gameplay (already bad) would become MUCH more frustrating for CVs and if you increase the damage potential to compensate for more RNG, CVs will also become much more frustrating for everyone else too! Basically... no. More RNG is the last thing CVs need now.

If it worked as "once on fire in two places => no more fires until one goes out then you'd be right, the skill would be a minor thing. That's why I wasn't worried about the skill (even considered it somewhat underpowered still) when I first saw it. But then, by reading te forums, I learned that it's not how it works. It makes your whole superstructure susceptible to no more than 1 fire. With superstructure being by far the most often lit up place, the actual result is that the skill significantly reduces instances of being on more than 1 fire. 2 fires will be rarer, 3 fires - not that much more common than 4 fires currently because it would rely on 1 "easy" and 2 "hard" fires while currently it requires 2 "easy" and 2 "hard" ones. Sure, it's not a "cut fire damage by 1/4" skill but it's far, far superior to "a skill that will just save you from your 4th fire" - it will most likely be the... well, second fire with possibility to still get the 3rd and 4th one Overall the changes as I see them are: - BBs end up ahead. They can even specialize for both AA and secondaries (especially with how they STILL keep these skills mostly combined for some reason, while making them separate would include THE choice of what to pursue for BBs, letting them be great at one but not both). Yes, their most precious t1 skill gets uptiered - but the same happens for everyone, BBs aren't suffering here, they are simply subject to the same change that strives to remove obviously overpowered skills cost 1 skillpoint. - cruisers are in an interesting spot. They get to up their anti-DD game significantly (esp. with certain skill I won't name here...) but the buffs BBs get will reduce cruiser effectiveness (already not so great) against bigger ships. At least for HE spammer cruisers. BBs will just become tougher to whittle with fire. - DDs suffer by far the most. The skill I mentioned but still won't name is potentially extremely harmful to their gameplay (though I expect it to be far less common than many believe), they get no buffs, they get a nerf to DE (much more important for them than for cruisers)... overall, an all-around nerf that will reduce their effectiveness. The only exception is DD-hunters that might actually benefit from this, as they will get a great never-be-outplayed-by-a-stealthy-torpboat-again skill. Ok, maybe not never never, but you get what I mean. - CVs are in a strange spot. Unlike other classes, get front-fed a couple cheap powerful skills, making low-skill captains much more viable. Air Superiority being possible on 10 skillpoint captain rather than 15 skillpoint one is a big thing. Also BFT gets more expensive so low tier CVs will face even less (slightly but still) AA. Hard to say how the dynamics of sealclubbing will change here. However, the changes will be a alight nerf at high tiers - AA (at least on BBs) being generally too strong now gets buffed with the change from +10% aa to +20% aa on BFT. Not a big buff but a buff nonetheless, since even BBs going secondaries rather than AA will get BFT. Overall, BBs are slightly buffed (bad thing), DDs nerfed (didn't need that), cruisers nerfed against BBs (very bad thing) and buffed against DDs (whatever) and CV receive a slight buff where they didn't need it and a slight nerf where they didn't need it either. Although, as for carriers, I see the changes much more positively than I might sound because I do believe that the availability of AS much earlier in captains' career is a much needed change, making it actually viable to grind more than one CV captain rather than constantly re-train that 15+skill one because of how crucial his t5 skill is. To an extent the same applies to DDs too - Concealment Expert, a very important skill, becomes more accessible, making DDs with less advanced captains more viable. I guess that's something. Although it doesn't offset BB buff against them (and don't get me started on what happens if they really remove stealth fire, especially if they do it with the same grace they did it on KM DDs), it might be a welcome change that makes mid-tier DDs suffer less when facing higher tier ones (where the stealth module is available) and generally makes sealclubbers with experienced captains have less of an advantage due to access to this particular skill. So, while overall they are still nerfed against their supposed prey, it's one welcome change out there.

As Rob said - the rewards for inviter and invitee are different. Also, don't lose faith. You happened to choose possibly the hardest line in the game as your starting one - so you've set yourself up for a hard start...

Russian cruisers around tier 7-8 seem like they would be perfectly capable of that? Although I myself admittedly did that one with my Takao (aka free Atago with nice blue paintjob).

AA fire is, generally speaking, pretty... placeholder-y. Simple trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and machine gun visuals, with little regard to what you actually shoot with.

Whoa, that's some black magic, thread necromancy at its finest. Ok, maybe not finest, the thread is a couple months rather than years old, but still...

Basically, it would be really hard to program bots to be somewhat proactive with just the information provided currently to the client. So yes, the bots - while they don't exactly see you (they aren't allowed to fire at you, for example) - do have sort of a crutch, a homing instinct that lets them move towards their unspotted enemies. This is, generally speaking, a useful mechanic but it does have its problems, especially when it comes to confrontations between bots and players in stealth-reliant ships...

But you know what? In times like these a warm, fuzzy feeling comes to me: there are so much worse communities than WoWs ...although the way we - as a community - treated poor lost OP doesn't exactly reflect all that well on us...

You presented yourself as someone with some sense where it comes to balancing CVs. The skills suggested at the end proved that to be... inaccurate. Did you literally just suggest a t3 skill that gives high tier IJN carriers more than +25% alpha damage (+30% for Hakuryuu) on their main damage dealers!? And don't get me started on what +20% HE would do to cruiser and gunboat DD balance... Are you kidding me!? Do you have ANY idea how absolutely broken that would be!? IJN dive bombers (unless panicked) would drop bombs down the chimney (much less time ahead for required drop planning + much tighter spread). Manual drops with torps could be adjusted pretty much instantly, punishing good players that know how to make CVs' lives harder by proper maneuvering. Basically ANY of the following points could be a separate skill and, if such a skill was added at 4-point cost to the playtest tree they would be: - -30% turn radius - a must-have, perhaps to be taken before air superiority - -40% point of no return radius - a must-have, comparable to air superiority - -10% torpedo bomber drop spread - a very useful thing to consider as either 1st or second t4 skill (depending on how much someone cares about fighter games) - -30% dive bombers spread - for IJN a nice buff, for USN carriesrs a must-have, possibly more important than air superiority - -20% of the debuff from defensive fire/fighters - a powerful t4 skill, probably to be taken after AS though there would probably be people picking it first Basically, these are 5 skills of which at least two are about as good as air superiority (the skill you want gone because it's op) if not better. And you combined these 5 skills together AS ONE SKILL. This is so brokenly overpowered that I keeep staring at it in bewilderment.

Stopped reading here. Are you mental? Yes, they were performing well. Since there were dozens of them for every bigger ship. The idea of DDs being a 1v1 equivalent to ANY battleship or cruiser is ludicrous - and yet that's the premise this whole game is built upon! How delusional do you have to be to bring up realism as balancing factor in this case!?

Because - as you would notice if you weren't so preoccupied with your rants - ivisifire ships are not out of balance. Nobody here disputes the fact that if you have two ships, in 1v1, where the objective is to kill the opponent without time limit, the ship that stealthfires has advantage over the one stealthfired upon. The problem is - this particular situation is irrelevant because ships are balanced for group battles with objectives and time limits both hard (the timer) and soft (points). And for these battles invisifire is balanced. It takes a lot of time to inflict serious harm with invisifire. It gives up the initiative to the enemy when you invisifire (you may stop the enemy from capping but not from entering the cap, nor can you push someone out of the cap this way). It can be only performed against front line enemy ships - a ship that retreats behind allies or one screened by an ally with better concealment is immune to invisifire because reaching such enemy means being spotted by closer allies. Compare BB not-so-stealthy firing where a single volley has potential to literally remove a cruiser from the game. BBs that can push enemies out of caps while tanking return fire. DDs with all their torps and invisifiring don't counter BBs NEARLY as strong as BBs counter cruisers. And while DDs' potential for countering their prey falls off significantly when the latter have escort (other ships to spot both you and your torps make your life miserable), BBs don't really care - they just click and fire away, it doesn't matter if there are other enemy ships in the vicinity, unless their presence means some juicier target to switch attention to. If WoWs were a game of ship duels then yes, invisifire wouldn't be a balanced mechanism. But it's not how WoWs is played. So yes, it is true that - given enough time - a ship capable of invisifire generally can 1v1 dispatch the Big Bad ship without risking much. But that fact changes nothing. Invisifire is balanced - because it's part of the 12vs12 format with various classes where DDs are supposed to counter BBs. Invisifire is one of the reasosns while they kinda still do, although it's far from as hard a counter as BBs are to CAs.

There's no need to do that. It literally works like that already - sniping from the back is not beneficial. Doesn't stop people from doing just that.

I, as a DD player, would actually be all for floatplanes being useful. JUST LET THE F*CKERS DISAPPEAR BEFORE THE MATCH ENDS. These things just seem to never go down. The ship sinks and these buggers keep on circling for minutes on end...

Wait, what would "the reverse" be?