eliastion

I'm trying to think hard of other possibilities. "Ignore it because it was poorly aimed in the first place" comes to mind but it might be classified as "dodge"... Actually, just because a ship was OP doesn't kill the incentive to play her after she gets tuned down. The problem is that overnerfing (and in a way that targets QoL more so than the power itself, making the ship unfun) might scare people away and they won't necessarily come back. More reasonable nerfing, in stages (as in: you nerf something, look at the result, if still OP then you continue with another nerf) would probably retain more playerbase. And as for 4x3 TB loadout (4-plane strikes) specifically - it seems like they made it pretty much unusable. It's not good to have unusable loadouts. If they had no idea how to fix it on such a short notice, the should've removed it temporarily, leaving Haku with just the 2-torp strikes, balance around that (it's the loadout more consistent with the previous tiers) and perhaps re-introduce the alternative only after coming with an idea how to make it work without being broken.

ORP Orzeł as a premium submarine (if they ever appear in the game) and Jan Grudziński as a Polish/pan-European special commander with improved Last Stand and Andrenaline Rush skills Or at least some more anime girl captains that don't need to be bought for real money

For most ships it's not a good idea - basically, you'd end up with ships behaving differently depending on battle match-up and that's not a good thing. Balancing would, in fact, become messier. Now, specifically for CVs and related stuff, that might actually work, since many things are somewhat simplified, dealing with % increases (based on tier difference between the ship and the CV) in plane hp and effective AA damage. This could be fine-tuned with AA and plane hp progression so that the effective difference would be cut by half (being two tiers below would feel like being a tier below, being a tier below would feel like 1/2 of a tier. Unfortunately, that would require the devs to go over the entire system so that you don't end up with ships carrying unexpectedly strong AA - a very strong AA ship at low tier "treated" with a standardized buff might surprisingly end up outperforming AA ships two tiers above her - and that wouldn't be a good thing. Complications like these make this solution extremely unlikely to ever make an appearance in the game, even if WG were to consider something like this in the first place.

It's a skill that 1. Makes it faster to change the reinforced sector 2. Makes the reinforcement more pronounced (for most ships it means that rather than 25% of your AA firepower you're moving 50% (25+ 1/5 of 125, it's a bit messy in the description)). Since both effects directly relate to sector reinforcement, you won't get any effect unless you actually decide to reinforce some sector in the course of the game.

I was explicitly looking at your stats in post-rework CVs at the moment of writing. Didn't even check your pre-rework CVs. And if you want to bring up Ryujo... Right now your patch (pre- and post-hotfix) for the ship are: 5 victories 2 defeats average damage 29 038 average kills 0.86 per battle In the old Ryujo that I supposedly cherry picked to make you look bad... you had over 47 thousand average damage. Slightly above your global average for all t6 ships. And remember - the new CVs lost their fighters. They are supposed to be more focused on just dealing damage now. They are THE most damage-oriented class right now. And yet... among all your many t6 ships, only 3 have less average damage: - old ognevoi (a DD) - old mutsuki (a DD) - new Ranger (a new, glorious CV) So... Yeah. I'm going to stick with my claim that you're getting your stern handed to you. But the thing is, you see: you aren't much of an exception in that. You are an exception in that you have more fun in the process than most Which is awesome, since having fun is what the game is about in the first place - but it doesn't invalidate my other statements... PS: I think we should end this at that, because we're going off topic. I mean, there's nothing we really need to discuss. I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not trying to stat-shame you. I'm stat-shaming the new CVs and questioning whether many people in your situation would be actually enjoying themselves as much as you do

I wasn't dissing your skill in CVs. I pointed out that your enjoyment of post-rework CVs is not correlated with your results with them. Your gaming experience might be fun, but it isn't an experience of someone getting them to work but an experience of someone having fun while regularly getting their stern handed to them, as you neither win much nor regularly achieve very much in the battles you lose. Whether it's due to the ships being weak or your skill being insufficient is not something I pass my judgement on - in any case, it's irrelevant for classifying your fun as borderline masochism To put it simply: I'm not saying that you suck (assessment of ability). I'm saying that you are suffering (assesment of results) and even if you seem to like it (I don't judge ), that's not a sentiment that's likely to be very popular. And (although it's not good to generalize based on a single player that didn't play all that much) it also suggests that CVs might be too weak rather than otherwise.

Imagine yourself in your shiny battleship, well above 50% hp still remaining. Suddenly, from the side... a wild unavoidable spread of 4 torpedoes! "Please let it be from a plane." The difference between losing at most about 1/3 of your hp even if you catch them all + MAYBE suffering flooding... and - in case it's NOT a plane - kissing your stern goodbye and going to chat to rage about OP torps congratulate the enemy Yugumo on a devastating strike.

1. I don't think a torpedo released this close would arm. 2. Planes falling down are a purely cosmetic effect, even if one were to land squarely on your ship, there would be no additional effect. 3. The torpedo bomber falling into the water means that it was shot down (if not by your AA then by one of your allies) showing that AA does work. 4. Kamikaze attacks never were a serious threat, especially after they became a "tactic". The reason for that is because to perform a successful Kamikaze attack you'd need a competent pilot, preferably in a decent plane fitted with explosives. However, both decent planes and - especially - competent pilots are much too precious to waste in this manner, so the planned kamikaze attacks were performed by undertrained pilots who were forced to throw their lives away in outdated machines with hardly any combat potential otherwise. The increase in AA power was a response to conventional aviation threat (both land- and carrier-based) and NOT to kamikaze attacks in particular.

Well, on one hand it is, but on the other: it certainly isn't what they SHOULD be doing A CV, on the other hand, is actually supposed to hide that hull, making it more similar to arty in that regard... although - surprise surprise - unlike a BB (and arty in WoT) a CV is actually forced to take risks because the planes are significantly less expendable than BBig shells and you can't attack enemies without exposing your panes to danger. I mean, ok, technically it's possible to stealth-torp with one single plane configuration in the game. Not that it's very effective, but yes, there exists that technical possibility.

But where did the guy you're quoting ever saying that Haku, in particular, was balanced? It's obvious that the ship was OP. A separate matter is that it got arguably overnerfed in the hotfix and - worse than how hard the nerf was - what was nerfed the most was QoL rather than the power itself, making the ship frustrating and unfun to play rather than "too weak". But, back to what @Arakus said - it's a thing easily observable in the players' reactions that people are allergic to taking damage from CVs. Although, frankly, I'd go further with that: people are allergic to eating damage from ship that play differently than theirs and have significantly different playstyle, especially if they consider that other playstyle "safe". BBs whining about smoke-shooters, HE spam from behind islands and torps from invisible DDs is basically the same phenomenon: lots of people people don't perceive the risks taken by the opponent and only witness their own "unfair" demise. And CVs are the most obvious target: their hull is far away, usually invisible and they have spare planes... or, worse, "infinite planes"! Well, it's clear that they are OP cheaters that take no risks, right? You can see a lot of these opinions around, stated honestly and seriously. It has nothing to do with balance - it's all about CV's being "risk-free" in the perception of a large portion of the playerbase.

Hakuryuu also has a 2 torp option that was quite powerful because you could easily deliver 5-6 strikes on a somewhat isolated target, dealing quite a bit of alpha and stacking some flooding. Problem is: this was already solved by the AA change (you just can't linger around BBs or cruisers quite as long, even when they are alone and not known for great AA), and then there was the fact that flooding chance got cut in half. But that wasn't enough - they just HAD to be given abysmal aiming characteristic - because nothing says "fun to use" like two torps that just go all over the place if you as much as touch the mouse (let's nt even mention keyboard) anywhere close to the attack run. You need to perform the attack run while pressing the right mouse button because just keeping your hand on the mouse is likely to mess up the spread @MrConway AA being so powerful is the lesser problem for Haku (I won't speak for lower tier IJN CVs but I expect it's not that different for them either) compared to the fact that the handling of your iconic weapon - the torpedoes, regardless of configuration - is simply abhorrent. It's not my planes dying when I overcommitted or picked the wrong target that made me give up on playing Hakuryu - it's the fact that even if I end up having a good match, I'm just not having fun (and let's not mention the BAD matches). It's ok when I have troublesome enemies to deal with and need to overcome their terrifying AA or pick isolated targets. But when my main enemy is the abysmal handling of my own weapons, then something's not right there. Torpedo spreads that wait forever to start shrinking and then grow ridiculously at the slightest twitch of the mouse, so I need to start the run from really far away and keep RMB pressed for most of it. The AP reticle that outright lies to the player as to where the actual aiming reticle is going to appear (and more often than not appears either closer or further away than expected). Well, I guess the rocket planes are reliable. But I'm not so sure if "the only weapon you don't pull your hair using is the rocket plane" really fits into that whole "let's reduce the pressure on DDs" idea. Other than driving away the CV players, that is. After all, making CVs unfun to play due to frustrating controls means less CVs and with less CVs around, the lives of DDs will certainly be easier. So... good job helping DDs, I guess? Well, lookie here, a positive!

What's hilarious is that the whole balancing of anything DoT-related goes right out the window in 8.1 when the flooding supernerf hits. These all-powerful permafloods caused by CVs striking with torp planes repeatedly? Basically a non-issue, they become comparable to fires (a bit stronger but not many times stronger as before) on BBs and weaker than fires on everything else (unless engine power reduction kills you). And they are short enough that a little bit of anti-flooding build (an anti-DoT module that most BBs have already + an anti-flooding signal) can be expected to work wonders. And yet WG is frantically trying to balance TBs that are very powerful despite relatively low alpha mainly due to their ability to first inflict and then re-apply flooding in a single sortie. Seriously, these flooding changes appearing in a different patch is as if they introduced the new CVs but waited for the next patch with the new captain skills or something.

You should take into account the fact that you're quoting a masochist that allegedly enjoys CVs despite failing to do anything resembling consistent damage and achieving a WR of 33% Anyway, I won't talk for lower tier CVs that - I heard - fare even worse but as for Haku... the main problem is not that the power was nerfed - but that fun was the first casualty. You see, it's ok that you need to plan your strikes more carefully and plan escape vectors. Problem is, that the attacks have became a pain in the butt to set-up. You're struggling with controls and even when you do perform a perfect strike (because you managed to get your aiming cone to something resembling a reasonable spread or were lucky with RNG)... you're rewarded with two low-damage torpedo hits that usually don't cause flooding. It's just not much fun to play like this. What's worse, this particular change didn't actually limit the power that much - I don't feel like my torps are that much less consistent in landing on their targets. The real reduction of my firepower stems from the changes to AA that make it impossible to turn around for as many strikes as before. What the aiming nerf does first and foremost is making the the torps more annoying to use. Basically, as I said - this particular nerf targets the "fun" more so than "power". Making it just a bad nerf, because the ideal is to have ships that aren't overly strong while still being as fun to play as possible, right? Well, I wouldn't say that Haku's 2-TB set-up was "OK" pre-hotfix. You could set-up 5/6 of your strikes even against targets with heavy AA - that was just too powerful. Problem is, that problem got basically solved by AA changes alone. The aiming nerf on top of that, at least this severe, was just unnecessary. And even if it was necessary to introduce some more significant nerfs - they should've been directed at some other characteristics of these torps, not the aiming.

I have played pre-hotfix Haku. Yes, she was OP. She was the most powerful ship I have ever played. She was stronger than a Kamikaze R in a matches with no CVs. In fact, even with her nerfs the main problem isn't that they made her useless - it's that they made her unfun. The extreme nerfs to torp handling were really unnecessary, especially what they did to the 2-torp loadout that got hit extremely hard by AA changes. I mean, yeah, maybe they were a tiny bit too comfortable before, but they most definitely didn't need to get THIS bad - where they are now just a chore to use.

There is no problem with just 2 torps... or, should I say: there WAS no problem with that because in return you were getting great "handling" on them. They were pretty good for spreading the love in a controlled manner or for making a couple turns on the same target to reapply flooding. Then hotfix happened. The hotfix AA changes were pretty harsh for the 2-torp loadouts because they spend quite time in enemy AA to deliver all their payload. This alone would've been enough of a nerf to that loadout. Flooding chance nerf wasn't even necessary at that point - but it happened. And then, on top of all that, the torp handling became abysmal. So now you have two low damage, low flooding chance torps with terrible aiming performance - and then there's the AA balance that prevents you from getting too many strikes even against a single target (unless it's a DD but 2 slow torps with bad arming time and telegraphed plane attack pattern aren't exactly a weapon suitable against DDs).

Actually... The only thing they did for (most) DDs is slightly lowering the number of attack planes coming after you. The "consistent AA" actually works against DDs "playing the objective" since the AA rarely pushes close enough to really support them while it does make target selection much more limited. Now the only viable targets are the lone ones, preferably lone and AA-light. And the ships most often fitting the description are DDs. I know that when I played Haku post-hotfix, I was focusing on DDs even more than before. Because I basically had the choice of going after DDs or waiting for other opportunities doing nothing. The one place where the AA changes directly help DDs is by making it so that AA DDs can prevent hovering over them... which is a tactic hardly any CV uses anyway since it's usually more viable to drop all the rockets and then quickly come back with another serving of the same. Now, I'm not saying that the hotfix did little for DDs - but the most beneficial effect is very indirect. Basically... some CVs became borderline unplayable and these that still can perform managed to become pretty unfun despite still holding quite some power (dealing with IJN TB handling is just a chore also you still can get Haku to perform). Results? MUCH less CVs in the queue. Lots of battles without CVs. Very few battles with two per team. This brought DDs back from the dead - often there are no CVs and when they are, it's usually just one, making it much more manageable (especially if there are 3 different DDs - the CV usually can be only ruining the day for one at the same time ).

They don't block AA. They block spotting and if your planes aren't spotted, they don't suffer from AA. If, however, something spots them (other planes, some ship on "your" side of the mountain") the AA gets you right through any obstacles. I'll try to aid you, but my experience with children might be lacking, so you'll have to excuse me for that. So, let's start with your reasoning. While you very aptly point towards significant differences between planes and ships, the problem with your logic is that, following it, the game shouldn't also have things like, for example, shells. After all, I'm sure you'll agree with me that a shell fired from a gun is more dissimilar to a ship than even a plane would be, right? A shell flies (somewhat similar to a plane but not at all like a ship), is pretty light (lighter even than a plane, usually) and doesn't even have a propeller or a crew (two major points in common between a ship and a plane). A case could be made for the presence of torpedoes (they move in the water, at the very least, which is one of the defining qualities of a ship) - but shells are clearly out of the question. One could also dispute the presence of guns - they are mounted in place and just turn a bit - but a strong case could be made for them being integral to the ships they are mounted on, justifying their presence as long as no shells are fired from them. Of course, there is also a different way to look at things. To put it simply, the general idea is to interpret "World of Warships" as a game that has a theme that goes beyond just "ships" and taps into the broader subject of "naval combat". If you take that perspective, suddenly a lot of things get clearer. For example, it's only natural that ships will not only have guns but that these guns will be firing shells in order to inflict damage on other ships. Similarly it makes sense that aircraft carriers will, well, carry aircraft - and, what's more, that these aircraft would need to have the capability to take off and attack ships away from the hull of the carrier itself. Carriers, as we know, are ships, and them attacking other ships constitutes naval combat (so the situation falls under the theme) and the primary means by which carriers fight is by using onboard aviation to deliver payload (usually bombs or torpedoes) to the intended targets. Now, to sum up our findings: a game focused on looking at ship models would have no need for shells or on-ship aviation (at least as long as we're talking functional aircraft rather than deck decorations meant to underline the character and role of aircraft carriers). If, however, someone was instead planning to make a game about naval combat, it would be necessary to implement means by which the ships in question fight, be it vaguely ship-like objescts like torpedoes or implements completely dissimilar: shells and armed, flight-capable aircraft. There would also be, of course, a necessity to design relevant and engaging methods by which a player is given control over various types of armament - in many cases this could be done by still retaining the ship-based PoV (at most switching between various turrets and torpedo launchers) but, obviously, the same approach wouldn't work for airplanes that (unlike shells and most torpedoes) retain much more ability to react to changing situation even long after getting separated from the hull of their ship of origin. Ok, that's all. I tried to make the explanation reasonably accessible to 6 year olds and I think at least some of them would understand it, but I can't be sure about all. I did my best, though. If that's not enough, you'll have to ask someone smarter and with more experience with explaining things to preschoolers, sorry. I do hope that I managed to be at least a bit helpful; if not - I wish you more luck with finding someone capable of explaining it in a simpler manner

I think it's bugged, I'm pretty sure for me it leveled up after I lost a battle (and star) and then won a battle (and a star, obviously) so it would seem that it counted the star twice - contrary to explicit rule against that. Although the star was initially gained for progressing to the rank, so maybe the 1st star earned for advancing and the first star for winning were considered two different stars? Either way, I have doubts whether this is working how it should.

That's because the RN CVs seem to be pre-hotfix-Haku level of OP

But not because it was powerful. It was a problem because it was toxic for the game. And now Haku long-range TBs were "hotfixed" so that they are worse for targeted long-range attack (worse spread, worse speed). I wonder, will we see less or more "torpsouping" from the users of this loadout? Is this still relevant at all? I've sold my USN CVs so I can't really check right now but while the TBs were pretty annoying as far as aiming goes, they also dropped more torps so even a bad spread wasn't THAT bad. Are they really still harder to aim now compared to the IJN 2-torp drops that grow like crazy from touching your mouse (nevermind keyboard) while sending only two fish in the general direction your planes are facing?

I recommend playing some CVs, especially tier 8, especially now post-hotfix I wouldn't bet if that the average % of remaining planes at the end of the battle (or moment of death) is actually above the average % of AA power And that's despite the fact that the numbers are probably buffed by the DBs that nobody really uses as long as they have any choice

No. If noone uses one option, they know that nobody wants to use them, even when other squadrons are partially depleted. That's data about how they perform as well. The point is, however, that there are plenty DDs that have guns that suck OR torpedoes that suck. And they focus on using the kind of armament that performs well, rarely reaching for the other. It was the same obvious reaction with CVs - people were using the strong armament and leaving the weak alternative as a very situational pick in special circumstances.

Yes, yes you did miss that. There was a reasonable amount of feedback about DBs - especially IJN ones - being useless. But people were just saying "they are useless" and not bringing this up as a serious balancing problem - because CVs have 3 plane types. "I have Rocket Planes against DDs, Torp Bombers against everything else and Dive Bombers when I am bored because I misplaced the first two kinds and need to wait for them to come back and maybe regenerate a little". The design of AP DBs that are hard to use, fragile and do little damage even when used well is strange - but it doesn't break a CV if only two plane types are viable. It's just like you can have a DD with good guns and underwhelming torpedo armament, for example. If WG rolled out a new DD that's a great gunboat but has poor torps, you might see people complaining about the torps, but it would be pretty ridiculous to say "you didn't whine about the torps and didn't use them at all, sticking to the OP guns - it's your fault that there was no feedback about bad torps" after WG nerfs the guns to the ground and the DD is left with both torps AND guns being unreliable.

For the same reasons I outlined when talking why permanently destructible AA is bad. Imagine if you start a battle with exactly 20 planes, then within the first 6 minutes you lose, piece by piece, 10 planes. Then you play more carefully but after another 6 minutes you make a huge blunder and lose the remaining 10 planes all at once. The match has up to 8 minutes left, it's barely halfway over, and you're going to spend these 8 minutes with no planes whatsoever. Now imagine the new system. You start the battle with 10 planes and when the deck has less than 10 planes, you're "regenerating" 1 plane in 2 minutes. Within the first 6 minutes you lose - piece by piece - all initial 10 planes. In the meantime you regenerated 3 so you can still fly, although you have little to work with, so you're very careful. But not careful enough - after another 6 minutes you mess up and lose all the remaining planes (within 12 minutes of the match you regenerated 6 planes, but one has just appeared and couldn't be up in the air yet, so you lose 5). So, you're down to 1 plane and there is 8 minutes left in the match. You can still fly with that one plane. If you wait, there will be more. You are crippled, yes, but you can still do something. 2 minutes before the end of the match you might even take off with a squadron of 4. That number of planes might even be able to do something! Its more than you had right after you wasted the initial ten! To sum up the difference for our simplified 20-plane one-plane-type carrier: - you didn't get more planes to use in the match at all. In fact, you have less because even if you theoretically can regenerate 10 planes in 20 minutes, the last one won't ever appear (you need to take off before you start regenerating) and even if it somehow did - it wont' even have enough time to take off - you are, however, never completely deplaned. Even if you were to lose your very last plane, unless the match is basically over (less on the clock than on your plane regeneration timer), you can wait and you'll get something to take off with. By giving you only a limited number of planes up-front and letting the rest pop up as needed from the hangar, the game makes it impossible for your enemies (and your own mistakes) to put you in a situation where you're completely defenseless, still in the game but only with that floating coffin of a hull. That was explicitly why they went in this direction. It makes CVs weaker than if they were given a comparable hard cap on planes (that's actually in the ballpark of old CV reserves for the big guys) with the option to use them any time they are needed. It's like giving a kid weekly allowance instead of handing out the whole sum for the entire year on January 1st. WG just know that a lot of kids can't handle their money responsibly and if given too much at once, they'll go and waste it all in the first month or so and be left with nothing for the rest of the year, making them unhappy So they get the allowance instead. Even if they spend it all, they just need to wait for the next week and behold: they'll have some spending money again! But you wouldn't say that this way the kids were given unlimited money, right? As a final note, there's also one other aspect: low tier CVs. While blatantly unrealistic amounts of planes in the reserve would be immediately visible (and not make much historical sense, making a lot of people angry) by changing this to a more abstract "replenishment timer" WG has given themselves much more balancing options when it comes to the number of available planes. That way even small CVs (the ones that suffered the most form easy de-planing if they mismanaged the planes despite being the introduction to the class that should be more rather than less forgiving) can potentially be given more planes than they "should" be having. Basically, a number that used to be pretty restrained by historical design of the CV (the size of the hangar) became one of the "softer" stats that can be heavily adjusted for the purposes of balance. I hope I helped. Part of this (the "never be out of planes") is directly from what WG representatives said about the reasons for the change (I just elaborated on how it works compared to a generous but hard initial limit). The other part (the "more balancing options") is my own conjecture but I'm pretty sure it makes sense and was also considered as a big + of the system, although I don't remember hearing a WG employee talking about that

You do realize that at the high tiers the theoretical maximum of planes (the starting reserves + theoretical maximum number of fresh planes acquired over 20 minutes) actually is similar to the number of planes the old t10 CVs used to be getting from the start, right? CVs only have unlimited planes in matches of unlimited duration. I personally am not a fan of permanently destroyed AA (I'd appreciate them being somewhat recoverable - to some % of initial capability, for example) but it's not because CVs have infinite planes (they don't) - it's because it's not fun to invest in AA and then find yourself with no AA (or an amount so insignificant that it might just as well not be there). The same actually applies to main guns and torpedo launchers but it's quite rare to lose all of the latter (even if you have just one) and I don't think I've ever experienced losing all of the former (the worst I've had to deal with was being down to half of my turrets).