eliastion

I get it. WG EU wanted to avoid the players being angry about german DDs so they introduced something else that got people even more pissed off.

Well, they didn't manage to make the voices we have now especially convincing - you believe they are capable of adding the "reporting chaos" that would sound right while serving no practical purpose (just the immersion)?

WG - the glorious masters of introducing more f*ck-ups while fixing their old f*ck-ups

I'll just leave this here...

It's not "US cruiser hate" - they are simply considered slightly sub-par by most. That being said, a decent player in a ship that suits his temperament (so that he can adjust gamestyle without straining himself) can do well even if "sub-par" ships. And there's not guarantee that an objectively great ship would be great for everyone. If you enjoy US cruisers - good for you. Keep having fun with them, that's what the game is about (well, other than spending money to fill WGs pockets, but that's WG's, not players' priority ).

There is no killstealing - I might agree (not entirely, there are special cases, but in 95% cases you're right). There is something else, though - withholding fire. Where you COULD fire a salvo - and bring enemy to low hp, but don't do it. Why? Because you're unlikely to actually sink him. So you wait for someone else to take the shot to weaken the target enough for you to finish off... This is, in fact, much more problematic than typical killstealing known from many games - because it actually makes the life of your target longer, perhaps letting him fire one salvo more, or launch torps or, if you miscalculate: find concealment or hit repair or something like that...

It was implied on several occasions that somewhen (now it's a word, deal with it) they are going to perhaps include some mechanics that would reward people for having a good Karma score... It was, however, always (afaik) pretty vague. Perhaps in a couple years we will see some token rewards for that - but I have my doubts about that. I mean, I do have a positive Karma meter, around 20+ or so when I last checked, but I also get the feeling that if it became important, many people would actually start downkarming (now it's a word too) people out of pure spite, while for now they usually don't bother. Another problem is that many reports are... not very fair. And I'm not talking deliberately being an [edited](reporting someone for killing you) but just the fact, that people love to blame (and report) others, especially people playing some class the reporter ( ) doesn't understand. This way every unspotted DD and every enemy strike plane that gets anywhere close to allies are allied CV being a noob that does nothing. Every not contested point is DDs not doing their job, no matter how many Radars are in the vicinity. Every enemy DD that manages to do anything is the proof that cruisers and CV (if present) are slacking and, yes, even BBs get unfair sh*t occasionally because retreating with 20% hp to heal up a bit is obviously the same as sniping from the map border the whole game.

You see, one of the things you seem to miss is the fact that the number of planes is not just "health bar". US fighter groups have more PLANES. And more PLANES means - more DPS because each fighter shoots. And when you atart by losing a plane? Well, the enemy firepower advantage just increased... Then it goes downhill all the faster.

Glad to be able to answer the question before it was asked

Well, for me that battle was additionally funny since it was a 4v4 - so I can truthfully brag that one of my Solo Warriors was me killing the ENTIRE enemy team - and in a ship considered to be underpowered to boot! Still, I do prefer t5+ BB experience

Boring? I mean, yes, it's severely underpowered... BUT. At times you get a really hilarious battle. Especially if enemies aren't quite aware what they face. Let's take this battle... I'm not sure if I managed to even shoot at something before all my allies were dead. What I was left with was a bunch of damaged enemies... ...who weren't quite aware of what exactly might be scary/dangerous about that strange bulky ship still afloat...

To hell with Accuracy - imagine if Mikasa had workable secondary guns RANGE And you can't get lower tier BB than Mikasa

Well, there's little reason for that, though. Despite what our pattern-seeking perception tries to tell us, in reality someone who opened 100containers and didn't get a single SC has the same chance of SC on his next draw as someone who has just got an SC yesterday. On the other hand, if unlucky, you can open another 100 and get nothing but 5-flag bundles...

T3 and T4 BBs are, indeed, a painful experience - but even there we have the exception of pretty good german ones. The rest is not necessarily bad, mind you, but combination of low speed, short range and long reload with bad dispersion makes them very frustrating. At t5 all BBs I've actually played are very good ships. Not sure about USN option but it seems to have its fans too. The rest? Possibly more fun than t6+ where BBs are generally considered to shine more and more... As for combined tree - thank the Devs for combined tree! Yes, there are useless skills and no-brainer skills (too many of the latter) but the possibility of actually, you know, choosing your build is invaluable. This isn't a MMORPG where you define what your character is through choices - the basic choice, what ship you take out, defines A LOT. What you can do is tweak your ship and I see absolutely no reason to split the tree into several one-class-only trees (not to mention that captains can actually be moved between classes - how exactly would you do that if you made the trees class-exclusive)? Why can't BBs have AA upgrades (although they should be separated from secondary upgrades, but I digress)? Why make stealth DD only? You complain about lack of choice in the tree and at the same time you advocate an approach that would reduce the choice by forcing "appropriate for this class" skills on each captain!

1. Are you sure you checked the requirements? I don't remember but it might be limited to certain tiers. Or maybe to US ships? 2. Do note that crate XP counts the XP you get. Most missions just take base XP (possibly with Premium time included). So, if much of your XP comes from flags, camos and first wins - these are simply not counted for the mission.

In lower tiers it might be a problem due to distinct lack of AA (although it should be noted that each plane lost hurts CVs at these tiers that much more due to limited reserves). It should be also noted, however, that players who consistently manage good manual drops are very likely to not be CV beginners but rather experienced sealclubbers who believe it to be a great idea to go to lower tiers and use their skill advantage (and nowhere does it show so much as in CV play) to dominate enemy CV and wreck unexperienced players in ships with weak AA. So... well, it's not unlike being wrecked by a much more skilled player in some other class, abusing its strong points and punishing mistakes new pllayers make as they are still learning the basics. That being said, basic concepts of how to deal with good CV opponents stays the same as in high tiers. 1. Try to not sail alone. CVs often pick on isolated targets, and they do so for good reason - AA stacks. If there are a couple ships relatively close to each other, their AA overlaps, making each attack more costly 2. React to torpedo planes BEFORE the torps hit the water. It might seem counter-intuitive since (obviously) a CV can adjust the attack vector. But planes don't turn that well. Enemy will usually attempt to drop from the side. If you start turning towards the the enemy can adjust the attack vector but it will take time - time in your AA bubble (and preferably - AA bubbles of your allies that were close to you). It also gives allied fighters more time to do something (if there are allied figthers nearby) and it's much harder to perform a good manual drop on an enemy that is turning. You have good chances that a good portion of the torpedoes will miss you because the opponent fails to gauge your speed/turning speed correctly. Not to mention that he might mess up completely, dropping too close - if the torps hit water too close to the intended target, they won't detonate on impact. You shouldn't count on that but the possibility is MUCH bigger if you do turn to throw enemy's aim off. One more thing to remember is - air raid takes a lot of time. Even with no planes lost, surviving an air raid is comparable to sustained barrage from enemy BB. When sailing a BB, you can afford to take 1-2 torps (unless your damage control party is on long cooldown and RNG decides to grace enemy CV with floodings). Aerial torps themselves don't deal that much damage. It SEEMS to be a lot because it's delivered all at once, and because we see torps and think "that thing DDs sink BBs with if just a couple hit" - but air-dropped ones are much inferior in their destructive power. Oh, and one more thing - if you (along with allies) manage to shoot down some enemy planes, it doesn't only count towards this one attack. Planes are a very limited resource. CVs do have a supply of them but it's most decidedly a limited supply. And planes tend to dictate whether CV is still in the game - even if the hull is undamaged. Yes, it might seem like you're not doing much to the carrier itself but that's not true: CV that stays afloat but without planes is pretty much a map decoration. Yes, it technically is still alive, but it usually doesn't matter anymore (save for point calculations that might or might not be in a state where CV being considered dead or alive changes the outcome).

Well, that one statistic is completely useless, though. The thing is, WG (for whatever reason) both calculates its highest/average XP numbers and feeds API with XP... that includes Premium time. Making it completely useless for comparisons between different players.

You exaggerate. 90% of these cruiser players don't remember they have torps at all ;)

I can definitely appreciate your approach - it's great to see people who prioritize winning the battle over accumulating damage (or whatever other stat)! There's just a problem with that. The problem being: this approach should lead to more victories, right? If I saw a player with abysmal average damage but great winrate - I would most definitely still consider him a great player because whatever he's doing - apparently works. I could in fact imagine a CV god that always plays fighter decks and makes enemy CV lives hell, shutting them down completely and then proceeding to spot enemy DDs, spotting incoming torps to give his team advance warning etc - basically, an ultimate support player that doesn't do much damage himself but time and time again hands his teams' victories on silver platter. As mentioned, however, being praised for seemingly non-standard approach requires the latter to work. And your approach - whatever it is - just doesn't seem to be working. Your winrate isn't good, not your global winrate nor recent one. That's a big problem because while going with the rest of the fleet is not axiomatically true, that BB going to the other cap might be a viable tactic... if it works. Does it? One victorious battle doesn't prove much in this aspect - I've won battles where I got deleted easily due to stupid mistake before the battle truly started. I've seen AFKers win battles. But if - over larger number of battles - player's win% doesn't really get to around 50% range, something must be wrong. Either his strategies are crap or he lacks skill to pull them off. Maybe in most battles the lone BB doesn't manage to attract attention of half the enemy team and instead it's his teammates that (lacking one BB) are easy to dispatch for the enemy? Or maybe he does attract attention but enemies shoot straight and dispatch him promptly, gaining a quick 1 ship advantage? Maybe they aren't such great shots but he makes it easy sailing broadside-on in a straight line? What's certain is that he loses a lot and at some point it must be acknowledged that it's not just a bad streak - he is doing something wrong. He's being a liability for his team, not an asset. And in such circumstances - perhaps he should swallow his pride and accept the fact that people who DO manage to win battles, who do - apparently - have combination of tactics and skills to pull the former off and emerge victorious... These people might actually be onto something. Of course, they're not infallible, not by a long shot. But if overwhelming majority of them seems to be in agreement about something - they might actually be right, you see? After all - whether they try to pad their Damage stats or not, whether they really care about victories or not - whatever they are doing apparently does win them battles in the long run.

Nothing personal, but this suggests a positive impact CVs have on the game For quite some time now we suffer from painful oversaturation with BBs

Not today, rather two days ago, but... My greatest defeat yet Time has run out with last enemy Cleveland still standing, what a pity My (below 100hp ) Shiratsuyu might've still won, given some more time

This seems to be factually untrue. I'm pretty sure I've recently seen 2v2 CV at t7 or t8. Regardless, the unusual abundance of CVs seems to strangely coincide with this mission chain. Seeing how nothing else changed that could endear CVs to people, it seems to be directly linked. As mission ends, I'd expect CVs to disappear too. Maybe a small fraction of players will stick with the class a bit (realizing how rare AA cruisers have become) but I wouldn't count on noticeable lasting effect.

The reason might be... comparison. Basically, she has bad concealment and while she boasts a good 3x3 torp set-up, her "gunboat" cousin has a torp reload booster. What it means is that Shiratsuyu, while carrying less torps with worse reload in her 2x4 launchers, is overall much better in torpedo department. When it counts, she can quickly put up to 16 torps in the water. When being more stingy, she can drop 8 of them and still have the emergency "will get torps back in 5 seconds" button just in case. And, as I mentioned - while slower, she has 0,7km concealment advantage, allowing for significantly more comfortable stealth-torping, or even making torpedo acceleration a skill to consider (not really an option on something with 7,4 km spotting range and 10km torps). Akatsuki can - over time - drop more torps than Shiratsuyu (I didn't do the math but even with premium torp reload booster the TPM of Akatsuki is probably better) but overall Shiratsuyu just seems better when it counts. And then come the guns. And here the problem is that while Akatsuki actually has one gun more, it - once again - has worse concealment. And slightly less range. Shiratsuyu can be built to stealth-fire to supplement her torpedo damage (and maybe bait some repairs from unwary torpedo targets). Akatsuki can't really rely significantly on such capability - and low hp pool makes being spotted while firing very dangerous. Not to mention that the firepower is still nothing to write home about. Basically, Akatsuki doesn't really seem to have any actual advantage over Shiratsuyu. I mean, she's faster but that's about it. Shiratsuyu just has the tools to be much more fun, to do better in right hands AND to be more forgiving (better stealth to torp range, not to mention hilarious 16 torp wide walls of skill at t7) in bad ones.

I get the feeling that lately something's off with detonations. In the last week I witnessed A LOT of them. One match actually both of my team's DDs detonated (me and some other guy) right at the beginning (first two deaths). I also caused... I think two detonations in the same time span. And saw even more. It's just my own subjective observation rather than anything statistically significant, but they seem much more frequent than they used to. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that some bug appeared/was squashed in one of the latest patches and made them more common.