eliastion

@MrConway, @Sub_Octavian, during a discussion regarding the functioning of AA, and after having watched the newest How it Works video about AA, an important - at least after the hotfix change in the rules for plane returning - question came to me. Namely: Are the planes returning after a strike a separate squadron for the purpose of taking continuous AA fire? If yes, then it would mean that after the squadron splits, it starts taking double damage, since each of the sub-squadrons (now two - the active one and the one climbing to return altitude) is targeted by AA separately. Also, a related question - can the returning planes be targeted by flak? If so, then that sounds... bad, considering that climbing altitude in a straight line, outside player control, sounds predictable enough for flak to be REALLY deadly. Obviously if they climb very close to the target of the attack (a very natural situation for dive bombers and probably the case for rocket planes as well), that particular ship won't be able to shoot medium+ range AA at them. But if there's any other ship in the vicinity...

Actually, they don't return like you describe. Once they really start returning, they are out of the match (not taking damage, not spotting etc). Problem is that WG - trying to combat the infamous gtFo abuse - increased the time it takes to reach the stratosphere... by a lot. While it was somewhat effective for the worst cases of "oh, I might lose some planes, F!", it also - combined with AA changes - had some extra effects: 1. The F-spam was hit... but so was the normal use of F. Basically, it tends to be a suicide button right now. But, well, there are people who say that you shouldn't even be allowed to disengage with F if attacked by AA at all and, at the very least, using F is your decision. But there's something more, and that is... 2. The returning planes suffered from the same change. Basically, they perform their attack, detach from the squadron and try to flee as a separate pseudo-squadron... and that's when they die. Before reaching the required altitude, out of your control and - though I'm not 100% sure about that, I should take some opportunity to ask about it - being treated as a separate squadron, causing them to take "their own" damage instead of being hit with only part of it as is the case when being part of a larger squadron.

That's false, actually. You underestimate Grozovoi AA build. An AA built Grozovoi has 20:180 distribution of AA and 4-second reinforcement switching, so if the player pays attention, the planes will always be on the reinforced side. Then comes DD-grade AA consumable that triples the AA. Now your reinforced side is at 540% of nominal AA power. And that's before taking into account any minor buffs from the build that I'm not sure how exactly are supposed to interact with the AA consumable. Anyway - that's enough to drop quite a few planes. Sure, you won't completely stop a rocket attack from t10 CV but the CV will pay for it with planes. And, obviously, don't get me started on what happens to a t8 CV trying their luck... Of course, this depends on def. AA quite a bit - so if a CV just baits it and waits it out, Grozovoi becomes much less dangerous. But as long as def. AA is active? The CV can avoid every single fart of flak and a couple planes are bound to hit the water anyway. If it doesn't happen, it means that the Grozovoi is not using sector reinforcement properly and/or didn't take manual AA (making the AA build incomplete).

Smoke, friendly AA, your own AA (if you're an AA DD), never getting found in the first place (we were talking about the general concept, btw, not the current state of things - removing the "you're spotted" warning from planes would be a balancing change meaning a lot to DDs). Of course, depending on the ship you're sailing, sometimes a dedicated CV will be able to permaspot you - just like a dedicated stealthy DD can do that to a lot of enemies. The difference is that a DD that permaspots you can very often try to attack you at the same time (with torps) without incurring extra risk while a CV wishing to provide vision of big targets must either give up on attacking or expose the planes to AA.

BS. The skillsets needed for, say, Hakuryu and Yamato are completely different. Or he just, by comparison, sucks in the other. Yes, I know you said it. Which is why I said you were wrong.

Actually, "wait, we can't possibly enforce this with reasonable level of efficiency" is an argument that does influence creation of law quite a lot, depending on the topic. Also, we try to not give "bad people" opportunities. Like, instead of making a law "it's forbidden to pull this shark-releasing lever" it's usually a better policy to simply avoid having a direct connection between the public swimming pool and an aquarium with sharks.

Which is precisely why this... ...is just not right. It is pretty hard to do and no matter how hard you try and how good a filter you make, it wouldn't be very effective anyway.

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. For many reasons: 1. People do have very different results in different ship classes, or sometimes even ships that play differently within the same class. And CVs, while not as removed as they used to, are still an oddball of a class. 2. Timeframe is extremely short, the number of battles extremely low. This makes WR basically worthless as a measure - it's a great stat but it just doesn't work at all until you have a couple dozen games at least. And even then it's quite wonky until you hit hundreds. Stuff like damage might stabilize faster but is useless for comparisons between classes (or even between playstyles - DD-hunting gunboats have relatively low damage, BB-burning gunboats enjoy really high numbers; and some ships can be either dpending on the player). 3. If you compare just recent results, you cut into the size of sample even more. If you compare global results, then you're potentially drawing in sub-par performance from when people were just learning the game. 4. "Known CV players" specifically are people who are pretty well versed in dealing with things like AA, for example. In fact, by account of one of the best known ones active here on the Forum, the hotfix actually made him bring out his prior skill and knowledge because A LOT of that became relevant again and the challenges of the post-hotfix play are very similar to pre-hotfix, giving experienced CV players one hell of a head start. Depending on how committed they are, their other class results might also be uncharacteristically low - simply due to never putting in the effort. The comparisons you speak of might make sense... after maybe a week, and made by WG - with direct access to stats of MANY players, letting them pick the correct time-frame and make up for low number of battles with large numbers of players. You said that CVs were a broken and OP concept with no counterplay. This is simply wrong. The only thing that - by concept alone - has no counterplay is the DDs with no real AA capabilities. And for these - the relatively small concept changes I mentioned would be enough to fix the concept-level issue. The rest is just a matter of balancing power, with the concept itself being ok.

No. Word filters really, really, REALLY don't solve this sort of issue. Language is a wonderful thing and human creativity when it comes to doing dumb stuff - even more so.

I think I can explain. OP wants two separate queues (a "veteran" and a "normal" one) but CV players - no matter how new to the class or even the game - are forced into the "veteran" queue only.

You're mixing the cause and effect here. DDs aren't powerful because spotting is so valuable. It's the value of spotting that's greatly inflated by the presence of DDs. You see, in a match with no DDs the value of spotting drops drastically. It doesn't become unimportant, but it's much, much less crucial of a factor. It's DDs that need to be spotted because otherwise they will torp you or contest the objective and cap them safely as you can't do much about it. BBs and even cruisers don't really play that way - even the stealthy ones tend to gain control of caps through power rather than stealthiness. CVs can be one hell of a threat to DDs (due to spotting) but they can't do the DD job. Even Haku's ability to deter pushes with torps is very limited and no matter how fast the planes are - you can't contest caps with them. Decap: yes, especially if the DD in smoke is shooting or at least forgets to turn off AA. But CV is only fulfilling the anti-DD part of a DD job. Just like Radar cruisers can make the lives of DDs miserable - but still can't do the DD job in their stead. A good start would be to not focus the nerfs on CV QoL. I've said it a couple times and I'll say it again: what is putting me off in the post-hotfix Haku isn't fragility of my planes. It's the fact that I hate my TBs and DBs, with passion, even when I'm able to make them work. And, obviously, in the matches where I fail to get them to work, I hate them even more. It's not the matter of power or safety but of fundamental fun of using them - and that is just so tedious and annoying. Even when I manage a good match, I just have no fun. And I dare say that I'm hardly the worst of the players, or that Haku is the worst of CVs - considering that the same terribad nerf to 2-torp/strike set-up seems to have been applied to all IJN CV TBs... Well, I saw him mentioning overnerfing, so I responded to that There is a fundamental problem with comparing average WR between ships of different classes. I have yet to see a match where there are different numbers of CVs per side. And when you have 2 CVs in team A and 2 CVs in team B, and the team A wins, that means 2 victorious CVs and 2 defeated ones. Basically, the comparison of "cruiser WR" and "CV WR" is meaningless because - with current MM - both cruisers and CVs have globally a 50% wr, maybe slightly skewed down by the super-rare draws and ever-so-slightly messed up by middle-of-the-night MM that can't put matches together and starts dropping some of its own rules. Well, you're just wrong here - with the sole exception of non-AA DDs that are extremely vulnerable to CVs no matter what... and even that could be amended by just three small tweaks: - no "situational awareness" telling when planes are spotted (only when they come under AA fire, that shouldn't work through mountains, however) - disallow RPF on planes (only really relevant after the first point is completed) - slightly improve the air concealment of non-AA DDs With just these changes, finding a torpboat that doesn't want to be found would be a tedious, challenging task, meaning that a DD could either completely avoid plane-based detection (especially if the CV wasn't actively looking based on some previous information) or at least gain enough time to reposition so that at the moment of spotting there won't be a whole team of nearby enemies ready to blast you out of the sea. Both, actually. Haku still has some power left but is extremely unfun. The lower tier CVs never were quite as powerful, though... and received the same nerf (I was playing the 2-torp set-up so I'm not commenting on the specific nerfs to the alternate loadout, just to the ones that hit all CVs and these that impacted all IJN TDs). But how do you even assess that? Based on average damage? Well, I explained why CV damage is "worth" much less than that of other classes. Based on WR? Again, since both teams normally have the same number of CVs, it's impossible for CVs as a class to have bad WR - a specific CV can be very bad but that's always compared to other CVs because the defeats of the really bad CV will only boost WR of other CVs - as long as it's not allowed to have more CVs on one team than the other. In fact, I'm pretty curious how, say, 1v2 CV matches would look like now. Post hotfix - I'm actually pretty sure that you'd be surprised, based on how much impact I see most CVs having now

I agree, playing Shima when there is a sizable CV population, generating a not-so-insignificant number of double-CV games, shows complete lack of understanding of the game That applies anywhere near as strongly only to... basically one line of ships: IJN torpedo boats. The others fare significantly better (and at the very least still counter IJN torpedo boats ) and there even are DDs that actually spend most of the time spotted, their main engagement method being long-range artillery attacks while steaming at maximum speed and drawing fire from frustrating enemies that probably would've been better spending their firepower by directing it at easier to hit and sometimes more immediately dangerous ships. I'm a unicum DD player with merely "green" CVs. I say that CVs were overnerfed (and, what's worse: that the IJN ones were nerfed in a way that targets the enjoyment specifically by making the aiming so frustrating that you don't get to have fun even in the GOOD matches where you actually get to perform). The pre-hotfix HAkuryu was clearly overpowered, of course, but the nerfs making the TB behavior so annoying and unreliable just weren't the way to go about nerfing the ship - not to mention that the specifics of the 6x2 TB loadout were such that just fixing the AA would naturally solve a lot of problems, because that particular set-up (consistent with the previous ships of the nation that were in much less need of a nerf, btw) relied on performing many consecutive low-damage attacks (up to 6 in ideal conditions) - which is precisely what relevant AA makes impossible due to accumulating damage. I'd like to bring up an issue you seem to be missing: the damage isn't all equal. You see, the amount of damage dealt isn't a very good indicator of the impact this damage has. The easiest rule of thumb is: the earlier the damage is done in a match, the more impact it has. Early damage helps tip the result of the match in your team's favor. Late damage is much more likely to be either a desperate effort in face of inevitable defeat or a clean-up job in a match already won. It isn't ALWAYS like this but it happens often enough to be very relevant statistically... And now let's get to CVs. Their most prominent feature (even more pronounced by the no-you're-not-allowed-to-waste-all-your-planes-in-5-minutes mechanics of replenishment in place of big initial reserves) is that they tend to stay in the match and deal damage until the very end. If a match is a wipe-out, the CVs usually die one of the last. If a match is a point-victory - the CVs are usually the ones to survive. This already shifts their damage-dealing more towards the end because other ships tend to die earlier, so their contribution is more concentrated in the first half of the match. Now, let's take another issue of CVs: the AA. At the beginning of the match, there are a lot of enemy ships, often clustered together, with AA intact. These are whole areas of the map that are not approachable by the CV. Now let's take a look at the end game: there are few ships, dispersed over the map, many with AA damaged to some extent, often more concerned about getting a bit extra XP from damage and kills rather than about winning the match - because the match is already decided. And, once again - the early situation is extremely unfavorable for CVs with the late game being, by comparison, a damage buffet. By comparison, that's when other ship classes struggle to accumulate damage, because even if alive, they need to find some enemies to score the damage on - something planes are much better at due to the obvious speed advantage. Now, this is why CVs can have very high damage numbers without being OP. Because a big portion of that damage is of low impact. I've had a lot of games where 2/3 of my damage comes from the late phase of the game where the victory or defeat is basically assured already. Now, it should be noted - CVs by being so strong in the late game actually can re-open some seemingly closed games, especially when the other ships fail to recognize that late-game threat and just disperse like headless chickens in situation where such action really isn't dictated by tactical situation at all. Comebacks are,therefore, more likely than in non-CV games... but they are still quite rare. More often than not, the late-game damage that contributes A LOT to the impressive CV damage numbers remains extremely low-impact. And THAT is the main reasons why CVs should be expected to rack up huge damage numbers. Because only a relatively small portion of it (compared to what the other classes get) is relevant to the result of the match.

No. You just don't. Pre-hotfix this was fixable through last-second course adjustments once the smoke and/or wake of the ship become fisible but now that's far too late for adjustments if you want the spread on your torps to remain in acceptable bounds. In fact, for dive bombers it's much easier because you only commit to an attack right before it happens and you have a more elevated view beforehand. Dive bomber aiming sucks but problems with target's speed and course perception isn't what causes it - that part is easy to adjust last second and you don't need much information about that while you're still far away (when the binocular view would actually be of help).

There is, actually. They help to give meaning to AA DDs. A DD normally has pitiful AA that wouldn't matter after the def. AA stopped impacting the aiming spreads directly. But when you take manual AA, you get a 20-180% distribution of AA, almost doubling the "correct" side's DPS. You can also maneuver better than bigger ships AND (especially with that manual AA you've taken) you flip the reinforcement very quickly, letting you pretty effectively keep the enemy planes within your reinforced zone - as long as you can focus on that (as in, all your attention isn't completely focused on the incoming enemy shells). Slap improved (+200% rather than +100% the cruisers get) defensive AA on top of that and you can briefly become a quite respectable AA platform, actually capable of defending yourself from rocket planes (it's not like you avoid all damage if you're alone but an equal tier CV will suffer for trying to go after you - and woe to a lower tier one that tries to hunt you down), wiping the sky of spotting fighters or providing considerable aid to the AA blob of nearby friendly ships when it's not you that's coming under direct attack.

Yes. But seriously, it was so annoying when the words left me as I was writing that post, but I refused to give up and made my own words, some of the best words

Maybe he's double-classing though? You never know.

This is one of the lesser problems (though made more prominent by ridiculous IJN CV torp aiming nerfs) but yeah... With no DD torping indicator to help you AND no binocular view, the only way to determine if (and in what direction + how fast) a ship is moving is often to take your eyes off the screen and carefully study your minimap... not exactly a comfortable situation, I'd say. Especially since the minimap isn't really designed for such detailed observation.

I'll tell you a secret. With current MM, when the system stuffs you into t10 match, the enemy team normally gets a corresponding t8. When your t10 team has you in a t8 ship, they are at a disadvantage, yes. But you're mistaken about the cause. The disadvantage isn't that there's a t8 ship and t8 ships being useless in t10 battles. It's the complete opposite. T8 ships are also very important in t10 battles - and your team is at a disadvantage because in one of their t8s sits... you. A newbie player with no experience, no knowledge of game mechanics or tactics used in the game, struggling with basic gunnery... The problem isn't a t8 ship in t10 battles. The problem is a t3 player in t10 battles. But, let me tell you - it's actually lucky that you are in a t8 ship rather than a t10 one. Because t8 ships - while important - do have less power and therefore less responsibility for the result compared to top tiers. And boy, would your teammates be angry at you if you happened to be one of their precious top tiers.

Try them and say the second part again, with a straight face I mean, I don't say it's impossible to have fun in them. In fact, I even know of two players who actually do have it. One has fun despite struggling quite a bit (while overall being a pretty decent player in things that are not CVs) and another is a notorious super-unicum that currently plays Midway exclusively and has quite outstanding results. The same super-unicum also mentioned having checked out what he considers the second-strongest CV right now - and promptly deciding that, for now, he won't be planning on touching anything other than the Midway

Unlimited planes are a myth. Imagine two oversimplified CVs, each with only one type of planes. Option A: The CV has limited plane reserve: 25 of them altogether, and they have to last him all game. Option B: The CV has unlimited planes: there's no hard cap to the reserve. The CV starts with an initial set of 12 planes but as long as there's less than all 12 on the deck, he's regenerating 1 plane each 90 seconds. Option B (the post-rework system) was implemented to address the issue of de-planing. Even in worst case scenario when the CV player manages to lose each and every one plane available to him, the worst-case scenario is that in a minute and a half he'll once again have something to take off with. That way even completely throwing his planes away, a player can't tun out of planes and become just an empty hull - as long as there's more than 1:30 on the game clock, there WILL be another plane available to fly. Sounds neat, right? But let's look at the numbers again. You might've already noticed one very important detail: the battles do have a limited time (literally can't be longer than 20 minutes). So let's crunch the numbers, shall we? Our CV with unlimited planes starts immediately with a full squadron of, say, 8 - and then then keeps flying, taking off again before the previous planes return, also suffering some losses along the way as well - for the purpose of this exercise let's assume that never again does the deck have 12 planes ready for takeoff. Even if there happen to be more planes available, enough of them is always in the air. This means that the planes never stop regenerating. So, the player gets a brand new plane after 90 seconds. Second one in 3 minutes. Third in 4:30 etc. Finally, thirteenth after 19 minutes and 30 seconds from the first takeoff. In less than 20 minutes, the post-rework version of our simplified carrier managed to retrieve from the bottomless hangar produce out of nothing 13 planes. And now, some easy math. 12 (the initial reserve) + 13 produced during the battle. Altogether, the player could've launched 25 unique planes. But then comes a sudden epiphany. Unlimited planes turned out to mean 25. And in this particular case this 25 happened to be exactly the same number as the old CV with finite planes had! But that one had limited planes and the new one has unlimited - so how can the number be the same? What's more, the CV with 25 planes could end up being completely deplaned - but the new one can't! How can one 25 be finite and the other one - infinite? What's worse, that last plane that appears 30 seconds before the end of the match? You probably won't get to use it much, right? So - is infinity actually LESS than the finite 25 - even though it still can't be exhausted while the finite 25 can!? The mystery, you see, is quite similar to the idea of weekly allowance. Parents know that many kids aren't very good at keeping their spending habits in check. So when they want to give their children some money, they don't just give them a big sum on January 1st. They give them weekly allowance. That way the kid doesn't spend all the money within a month, leaving themselves penniless and sad for the rest of the year. They only get a little bit money but when they spend it all, they just need to wait for the next week's "payout". Similarly, WG noticed that many players have problems holding onto their planes. They lose them all within the first ten minutes and then they are sad because they picked a CV to fly some planes and there's nothing left to fly - but a lot of battle to basically spectate uselessly. Not fun. So, the WG decided "let's give the players only a small number of planes to start with - and then provide a plane allowance that replenishes the reserve if there are free places on the deck". And that's how "infinite planes" came to be. But they are not infinite. Sometimes you could get more than your CV would have in the reserve in the old system. But our used-to-be-OP Haku, for example, actually has the upper limit of torpedo bombers LOWER than he used to. Haku's TBs are limited more strictly than they were - but they remain "infinite planes" because there is also an even stricter limit on how fast you are allowed to throw said torpedo bombers into the ocean (with kind help of enemy AA). To sum it up: infinite planes are finite. The main conceptual difference between "finite" and "infinite" planes is that with "finite" you get your full complement up-front. With "infinite" your early-game reserves are limited in favor of the replenishment system that lowers your ability to hurt yourself in said early game - because you obviously can't waste the planes you haven't yet received. Also, at low tiers with smaller CVs this opens the way to balancing by letting you have more planes without explicitly providing you up-front with more planes than could possibly fit into your hangars. Similarly big CVs can potentially be more limited without raising questions of the "why does this carrier start battle with hangars half-empty" variety. So, the system actually makes balancing easier. But I digress. The point is: don't believe in infinite planes, children. Infinite planes exist only if you have infinite time. And that doesn't happen - just like having a weekly allowance doesn't mean that your parents have given you infinite spending money. Even if the allowance magically never seems to run out and there seems to always be the next couple bucks waiting for you next week - your money isn't unlimited.

Oh, there were even players playing Haku and saying that it should be nerfed and then whining about the nerf. Amazing, right? Almost like they thought that is should be nerfed but still kinda fun to play afterwards, just without being brokenly OP! What stupid ideas won't people come up with

One of the ideas behind the rework was to make CVs less about battle for air supremacy and spotting (that's why fighters and many-squadrons-at-once went away) and shifting their focus towards attacking the surface fleet and dealing damage. I won't be able give you specific sources right now, though. And even if you object to them being the MOST damage-focused class, I'm pretty sure you'll agree that they should be up there with the big damage dealers? Actually, I played WoWp 2.0. It was pretty ok. As for WoWs - I wasn't referring to the planes being clumsy here (sure they sometimes feel like they should be doing much tighter turns but that's not the point - I was ok with that) - I referred specifically to what they did to IJN torpedoes and to how bad the dive bombers (especially since AP bombs require good precision) handled from the very start. I just don't have the feeling like I'm in control of my weapons. When I attack a target, I should be thinking about the enemy, the AA, the tactical situation... not about "damn, I touched the mouse, now even best case scenario I'll deal with the equivalent of DD wide spread!" And a lot of times when I do get a good strike it's not because I ensured correct lead and the way the enemy was going to turn, no. It's because the spread got stupidly wide and the RNG trolled the enemy more than myself and one torp hit the stern, the other the tip of the bow and that's how I got two strikes not mitigated by the torpedo bulge + a lucky flooding. Oh, and the point of release is usually the closest possible NOT because I opt for "get through the AA and drop close to him to not let him dodge". It's because "I started the run after spotting that ship and had to make one miniscule course correction during the attack run, meaning that I just barely get a decently narrow spread right before passing the point where my torps won't have time to arm". It's not my decision whether to drop from close-up or from afar - it's forced on me because 90 degrees of torpedo spread angle is not acceptable if you're hoping to hit anything with one of the whole two torpedoes you're dropping. Enemy AA? Picking targets? Sure, these became harder to deal with but I barely even remember them as a problem compared to how I hate my own ship and its squadrons! Not something that would motivate me to play it a lot. And the problem is that isn't only a feeling I get after a BAD match - even a good one leaves me utterly disgusted with how my carrier played... and while being frustrated after a bad match is ok, if I'm only marginally more satisfied after a good one... then, well, we have a problem. Although, admittedly, it's one easily solved by shelving the ship that brings me such consistently negative gaming experience. I know I could overcome the problems and learn to perform well more consistently - but I just have no motivation to try. Playing Haku is a chore - and chores aren't what I expect from a video game. And from what I heard - the other IJN CVs are worse. I'm not sure about the USN ones but I haven't heard that much good about them either. Well... yeah. CVs do have limited spotting power with just one squadron, even if it's fast - but that becomes a moot point when you see 2 per team, each flying around looking for targets, spawning fighters on top of spotted DDs etc. And then there are the legendary battles (I happened to be lucky to never participate in one) with 3 per side. Now THAT must've been crazy.

Reinforced side has 180 degrees, attacking from the front you're always either on one or the other side anyway, so it's not like you can avoid ever being on the reinforced side by approaching from ahead/behind. Switching sides takes pressing one button on the keyboard and clicking your mouse once. And BBs actually have a lot of time usually. DDs and rapid-fire cruisers need to stop the barrage to do extra things. Plus sometimes they are dodging things constantly. A BB can't really actively dodge much and as for firing - there's a lot of time between salvoes. If it's sparing some attention on planes, BBs have it the easiest, really.

Planes are fast, but they don't teleport and are usually spotted from reasonably far away. And with some practice you'd actually be able to set the AA to flip sides so that the, say, TBs attacking you from one side fly over you about the same moment as your reinforcement flips. And predicting the initial side of attack is usually pretty easy too. That being said, the manual AA might be the most useful for AA DDs, actually, as it lets them flip almost the entire AA to one side, change the side in a couple seconds AND they are nimble enough to keep the enemy planes approaching from ahead of them or behind on the "correct" side of the ship. Coupled with defensive AA these qualities can unexpectadely give AA DDs some real power in bringing planes down (especially now when the AA in general is... well, pretty strong, let's say).

Well, it was WG side who said that dealing damage is CVs main job. THEY see CVs as primarily the damage dealers. Also, this... Is less relevant here since that's just the "how" about being a damage dealer. No, these weren't issues with CVs being primarily damage dealers. These were issues with CVs being too good at that. If you introduced a Yamato with half of the normal Yamato's reload, the problem wouldn't be with Yamato being focused on dealing damage to enemy BBs - it would be the ship being too powerful at doing the job. The AA changes are a step in the right direction (though arguably too big of a step). But "challenging" and "creative" aren't the word I'd use for messing up your weaponry so that you struggle with the controls more than with the enemy AA. The rework was bound to introduce huge numbers of CVs. Allowing more than one per team per battle, however, was WG's mistake. They did the exact opposite thing they should: instead of stricter MM limits (so that the excessive numbers of CVs don't translate to excessive numbers of CVs per battle) they made them more flexible, resulting in lots of double CV matches. And sure, killing the interest in playing CVs certainly solved most of the issue but that's like saying "My leg used to hurt in the mornings but thankfully after the last operation it's gotten permanently numb and I just don't feel it at all". Technically the problem solved itself but I wouldn't say that the surgeon did a good job Well, unless they roll back most of IJN TB change, I doubt there's a chance of balancing IJN branch at all. They are annoying and frustrating to play due to bad control over their main weapon, so the only way I could see them being played in the long term in numbers remotely close to what WG declare as their ideal... they would have to be OP. Basically, a feel that is comfortable to play might see quite some fans even if it's slightly underpowered. But the opposite - ship that extremely inconvenient? Inconvenient but OP would still draw some people. Inconvenient and perfectly balanced power-wise sounds like something most people will avoid in the long term. Some of these CVs need a bit more power - but more than anything else they need QoL. Because that's what's going to get people to actually play them. And one of the stated reasons for the rework was to get people to play CVs in the first place. Which makes this hotfix - in basically everything that's directed at IJN CVs specifically - a move that goes directly against WG's stated intentions.