eliastion

Well, whatever they were using, it's not working. I don't say it COULDN'T be working - I can imagine that it would be different if, say, the attack wing was 6 planes instead of 3 (so that you could deliver a lot of damage in one hit without increasing the theoretical damage potential of the entire 12-plane squadron). But when you have the same 12 planes as Midway, the same 3-plane strike wing but your bomb's alpha is below that of HE bomb - and Midway bombers carry two of these each... then something doesn't seem right. I understand that AP bombs would be less versatile but at least against the perfect targets (like Kurfurst in this case) I'd want the feeling "yay, AP bombs" rather than "oh, my AP bombs might work here... although I'd still prefer the HE ones, I think".

Some time ago I was pleasantly surprised to see a very important (and good) change to spotting mechanic. The spotting penalty for firing main guns (that's at a ridiculously long for smaller ship 20 seconds) was so long only if the ship affected remained within line of sight to the enemies. Breaking the line of sight meant that the enemies were losing sight of the ship and the penalty was cancelled (just like it's not applied when you fire the guns while not within anyone's line of sight). I considered it a huge improvement in some patch I missed, but alas... Hey, WG. Since the game actually improved by accident, how about keeping the improvement instead of discarding it? Not to mention that it's pretty common sense and quite consistent - if you fire guns from place where they don't see you, the penalty is removed. If you fire guns and then move into a place where they don't see you anymore - the penalty should be removed as well. @MrConway, how about nudging someone up there that the change - even if not intended - was actually a good one?

You might be right, I somehow missed this one. Are there any other? Anyway, this thread should be closed, considering that it's redundant to the older (and more robust) one.

The entire spotting mechanics are unrealistic. But they are there for gameplay purposes. Your suggestion would make a lot of ships unplayable. Not to mention that it wouldn't be realistic either. Returning fire based on your idea wouldn't work like spotting in WoWs does - it would be closer to shooting into smoke with the help of a spotter plane. In fact, blind-shooting into smokes (or, less often, behind islands) like this is precisely the players utilizing the localization method you're talking about: you identify the place of origin of shells and send your shells into the general idea. But you know nothing about what the enemy is doing: just where the shells came from.

Well, we're talking game mechanics that have nothing to do with reality (the arbitrary penalty equal to maximum gun range - so the further you COULD shoot the worse your detection becomes). So I wasn't bringing up any real-world positioning method, just the game logic, where if you're not immediately spotted due to penalty, the penalty is waived. But if you disappear right after, the penalty persists for 20 seconds.

No, they don't. I don't dispute the non-healable damage part but the quantities are pitiful. The alpha potential of Midway's HE drop is SLIGHTLY lower (assuming all pens) than that of Haku's AP drop (assuming all citadels). And, let's face it, your chances of getting all Midway bomb on target and penning with all is significantly above the chances of scoring a complete set of citadels with Haku bombs. And that's assuming targets that can be reliably citadelled. Kurfurst is a great target for these purposes - a good drop usually rewards you with 2-3 citadels (if you get less than 2 then you can assume that the drop just wasn't good enough). However, that is more of an exception - most targets are less inviting. So, all things considered - in practice Midway's DBs have comparable Alpha, can strike much wider range of targets (HE bombs don't overpen), don't need to be quite as precise when striking the targets (wherever you hit on a ship counts) AND can start fires for some additional DoT. It's a bit as if Conqueror was split into two ships: a HE Conqueror with no AP ammunition and an AP Conqueror that only has AP... only that AP has around 40% nominal Alpha of that HE. Which one would you prefer to be sailing?

This doesn't really seem to work for DBs, though, that's the point. If you trust the original reticle, you'll find yourself overshooting your target. And don't get me started on what happens with the slighest movements... all that is a serious problem for a weapon that really requires pin-point accuracy (more so for IJN DBs that basically deal no damage unless you citadel the target).

Personally I wonder how many CVs will die to IJN torpedo bombers after the rework hits. Even with easy control over the hull pre-rework we see a lot of airfields - and now things get harder AND we get Hakuryuu capable of dropping 8 torps on one approach without even getting too close to the target... These long-range drops are extremely hard against any moving target (you don't even get a DD-like lead indicator to help you gauge if and how fast the enemy is moving - you need to estimate based on minimap or get close enough to see the movement and the smoke) but a stationary CV? I expect to see a lot of underwater airfields...

I really feel the need to disagree with that. I can't really speak "from the other side" (I'm a decent DD player, although I do have my f*ck-ups, of course) but when I'm in a DD and meet a much weaker DD player (even complete potato), I need to take that DD into account to much larger extent than when I'm playing against a much weaker CV player. And that's the case whether I play a DD-hunter or a torpboat. Not to mention that there's also the fact that - there are more DDs per side usually - there are many non-DDs that can proactively counter DDs while an AA-cruiser usually can't really do the same to enemy CVs unless the latter just feeds them planes of their own volition and - when a DD gets wrecked, it's a dead DD rather than a pitiful player with teeth pulled out that kinda sticks around for the rest of the match without ability to influence the battle anymore

What you miss is that on PTS player-controlled CVs mostly faced bots. When the CVs from PTS meet actual players with actual AA builds and sometimes even the sense to use AA sector swapping and react to planes BEFORE they drop the load, the power of CVs will be much lower than what you've seen. It's really not that hard to completely carry a match with bot team against bot team in a surface ship, while racking huge damage numbers in the process. A CV being able to do the same is only natural. And the problem with flak bursts is that they are "big damage but avoidable" but the last part doesn't always work because the planes don't turn that well. Sometimes you find yourself with "big damage no matter what" and planes just explode with you being unable to do anything - which should be more of a domain of the constant damage auras, not the flak. Personally I'll wait to see how CVs perform on live server (both when sitting in them and playing against them) before giving my opinion on how over- or underpowered they might be. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that IJN CVs are in need of some buffs relative to USN because while torps and rockets seem roughly balanced between the two, DBs on IJN carriers are a joke (although, to be sure, they seem to be a "my other planes are reloading and I need to occupy myself with something" kind of weapon for USN as well). Oh, and this is actually a problem - being not newb friendly is one thing (although it gets ridiculous on IJN DBs that are the hardest type of plane to use right now but don't really deal all that much damage). The bugginess, however, is real. Or rather than being buggy - the reticle just lies to you, so that you need to learn how to adjust for this "feature" or you have no chance of landing proper drops. It's one thing whan you need to guess the lead and account for target's maneuvering - and another entirely when you need to fight against your own sights at the same time... Although this isn't really a matter of balancing and can be worked around once you get some experience (even I almost started landing my drops during the couple days of PT I participated in ) leaving only the "normal" difficulty of playing DBs, but I'd still prefer UI to not be lying to me for no reason.

I'd love to see some recent stats but have no energy to fight with Maple Syrup's output to get something useful out of it, so let's leave this on "respectfully disagreeing", considering how different a value we seem to attach to certain aspects of these ships' performance. And taking into account that it's an offtop here - we have a much more interesting (in the context of AA of variiious DDs) table... In fact, the values right now seem actually pretty impressive once I look at them. She spits insane amounts of flak explosions... although I'm not sure how defensive fire consumable actually works right now? Does it affect flak in some way (be it number of explosions or damage dealt by them), or only serves as a multiplier to aura DPS (that, for DDs, probably won't do all that much even when multiplied)?

Wait. Do I see it right that Z-52 has the best base AA among all t10 DDs? Best DPS AND best flak all the way from 0 to 4km and then long-range AA comparable to the rest of them? She has better base AA not only compared to the consumable-equipped DDs - she's better than Harugumo at everything but the extreme (4-5,8) range... Did Z-52 always have good AA (although irrelevant by lack of def. AA) or is it a new addition?

Or I can look at the things sailing around, you see. Most notably, both Grozovoi's and Gearing's guns (and torpedo tubes) have two ends - and being on the wrong side of those belonging to Gearing is just significantly more scary.

Sorry, I won't

Gearing powercrept? By Grozovoi? While she has Fletcher's torps, when compared to the anemic things Grozovoi carries? Yeah, sure...

No. It's not "facing another good CV captain". It's "facing another CV captain very close to your skill level" - and that's the problem. To have an enjoyable match you need to meet someone close to your level because if there's a difference in skill level then the weaker player gets utterly destroyed and hardly anyone is having fun - the winning CV has the satisfaction of winning but it's not a very satisfying victory (you yourself in your post said how easy it was for you to win because most people either don't know how to strafe or how to do that properly) - the losing CV spends the whole duration of the battle (even bad CVs tend to live long, such is the nature of the class) unable to really do anything - the winning CV's team feels carried by their CV and that doesn't really feel that great even when they are winning (which is usually the case) - the losing CV's team fights an uphill battle with slim chances of victory; on very rare occasions they manage to pull it off (if the better CV's team is really potato) but usually it's just an exercise in futility, extremely frustrating for those who manage to do some work and likewise extremely depressing for those who - due to heavy presence from enemy CV - end up doing hardly anything (this mostly applies to DDs) I have about 52% winrate in CVs. I am that mythical, supposedly non-existent "average CV player" that wins more often than loses but not by a huge margin. And I can tell you: actually, you're wrong. Overwhelming majority of CVs - more than 80% - actually do know how to strafe. What they don't know is how to do that "properly". You're a great CV player and the nature of pre-rework CV gameplay makes it so that this skill difference between you and most makes you fail to notice what they can and can't do - because for you they might just as well go AFK at the start of the match. And this is precisely one of the reasons why we need this rework. The very reason @Mr_Snoww mocked with you later concurring. Personally, I will agree with you on one thing: on the rare occasion when I happened to meet an enemy at around my skill level, it was enjoyable for me and not a bother to the rest of players (those with slightly less flat ships, armed with these strange things called guns). When I met a complete potato, it was much less satisfying, although I do admit I still I had the modicum of fun that comes naturally from winning and seeing nice, big damage numbers. But then, when I was meeting a unicum then I was pretty much just wiped out of the air and the enemy probably never even realized that they were fighting an over-50% yellow player rather than a sub-40% tomato. But the fun I was getting out of wrecking potatoes and patently un-fun experience of seeing it done to myself, coupled with these few precious good games where I met my match just wasn't enough to keep me playing. So finally I pretty much gave up and almost stopped playing CVs that, up to some point, were head-to-head with DDs as my most played class. And that's perhaps how average CV players were going extinct (or, well, less numerous and less often playing the class). Because the truly satisfying matches were few and far between and the rest was divided between easy victories in the air (usually leading to victory in the match as well) and ignominious defeats up there (likewise usually resulting in a defeat in the match as a whole). And, sorry to say, but unicum CVs just don't realize how playing CVs looks for everyone else - because they only sit on one end, finding themselves in enjoyable matches against other unicums or crushing effortlessly some noobs. What they (like you here) don't realize is that these complete noobs are actually everyone below unicum level: red, yellow, even green - little difference. Because it doesn't take being all THAT much worse to be utterly crushed, while the nature of CV play basically forces a 1v1 aerial battle, so it's not like you can just avoid that more skilled nemesis and focus on other things you can do. Because said nemesis will shut you down even if - or maybe especially if - you try to not fight them directly. And you even kinda write of this yourself too, see? 1v1 in a team-based game, where a difference in skill that goes beyond slim translates to crushing defeat of one side AND the result of the 1v1 is usually decisive for the result of the whole match. Sounds like a problem, no? Which is why we are getting a rework. To what extent it will really solve all the issues remains to be seen (I'm a bit scared of what the rockets do to DDs, although that might be tied to the fact that DDs are my primary class) but at the very least we should be getting rid of the 1v1 nature of CV gameplay that just really doesn't fit a team-based game. Seriously, if someone really wants to face up "against their opposite number", shouldn't they be playing something like Starcraft instead? Or some other game designed to be played 1v1 and capable of making use of all the advantages of that, including a proper ladder based on ELO system that lets you actually meet players of similar skill more often than not.

I'm getting confused

People are taking DE on some firestarter cruisers for similar gains. I don't remember my build for Zao so I'm not sure if I actually use it there, but even if I don't, I know it's not considered a worthless pick by some people I consider really good players (Flamu has it in his recommended build, for example). Two percent point increase in fire chance on 19% shells is comparable (a bit lower actually) to one percent point for 9% chance rockets - so that's basically what you're getting here. A bit of an extra firestarting capability on top of your great firestarting weapon to push it that half a step further.

Well, that's a strange sentiment in light of statements boiling down to "Radar not going through islands is too complicated for players" and some of the plans from dev. blog that can be roughly described as "We need to adjust all the Radar ranges up because range increasing as you go up tier is confusing"... the new non-overlapping zones seem VASTLY more confusing for both CV and AA ship players. But, leaving that aside - if this is necessary (and I can understand why you might not like the straightforward idea that the closer you are the more it hurts), is it really necessary to have all these different ranges for every AA gun in the game? Couldn't it then be just set up as 3 zones, each with known range (common for all ships or at least standardized across nations or something like this), each wide enough that all zones have their purpose on all ships - and then simply assign each AA gun as working for one or more of the relevant zones? I already mentioned it, but imagine having, say, these range brackets: Short AA aura (0-2km) Medium AA aura (2-5km) Long AA aura (5-8km) Now, the heavy AA would work only for long-range AA. Light AA would only provide short aura. There could also be middle-range only guns, but short+middle and middle+long hybrids would also appear, depending on how big the guns are, how good they should be at tracking fast targets and how you plan to balance the particular ship in question. Then - instead of listing all the guns for each ship - you could provide players with a comprehensive "this much AA in short, this much in middle, this much in long-range aura" and this kind of information would actually be meaningful without noting down the specific ranges of specific guns on the ship and trying to figure out how much AA in what range brackets (sometimes very short) this particular vessel provides. Right now we have a lot of gun ranges, some pseud-AA that only works within a couple hundred meters because it's range is only slightly above that of the shorter category... it's a mess that makes it extremely hard to even evaluate your own ship's actual AA capabilities, forget about predicting what to expect from the enemies. With non-overlapping auras their varying ranges become unnecessary complexity that's much, MUCH harder to keep track of than the Radar ranges... and you're planning to standardize the latter, aren't you. Well, AA seems to be in much more need for standardization so that people can actually have some idea of what they are really getting and what they are really facing.

The question is: how relevant will BBs really be in a game mode where a lot depends on snatching buffs? This sounds like DD playground, so big guns don't matter, but the same can't be said about Radar.

Or in less detail, actually. A lot of the problems would disappear or become more manageable and easier to balance if the ranges weren't determined on gun-by-gun basis rather set as something like: Short AA aura (0-2km) Medium AA aura (2-5km) Long AA aura (5-8km) And that's hard-set for all the ships, or at least for whole classes/lines (not necessarily with these exact values, I've just made them up on the fly). And then you just assign the appropriate guns into each aura and determine the power of these auras based on that. Since WG is all about standardizing Radar ranges, why not standardize the AA ranges like this as well? Sure it's an extreme simplification but it's something you could properly balance, while retaining a lot of flexibility in designing AA armament, including having ships with "holes" in their defense (very weak short-range aura or lack of any long-range AA), you could even account for special cases by having some guns count for more than one aura (dual purpose guns can shoot into the air and at ships simultaneously so I don't see a problem with some AA being active as, say, short- and medium-range simultaneously if it's deemed appropriate). There would be ships crying over their non-existent AA capabilities at certain ranges but it would be always non-existent at these ranges by design rather than - as it's shaping up to be in some cases - by accident, because someone's short-range AA was actually not short-ranged enough.

It also creates really weird balancing situations. Take Grozovoi and Khabarovsk (I base this on current values that don't directly translate to the post-patch system, but they show the problem): Grozo: 50 dpm at 5,2 km 82 dpm at 3,5 km 16 dpm at 3,1 km Khaba: 49 dpm at 5,2 km 66 dpm at 3,5 km 14 dpm at 1,2 km It looks like Grozovoi (even without AA consumable) has superior AA, right? But the problem is that, in reality, Grozovoi only has significantly better AA for these 400 meters between 3,1 and 3,5 km and arguably between 0 and 1,2 - but in this range both are worthless. Apart from that... - at long range the values are almost identical (50 vs 49) - then comes the 400 meters of Grozovoi superiority - and then, between 1,2 and 3,1 km Khabarovsk has over four times the dpm Grozovoi has. If the AA consumable worked like it did pre-patch and the DPM directly corresponded to the AA power post-patch, it means that for almost two kilometers (that happen to be more or less the range where the approach for torpedo bombers and rocket planes happens) Khabarovsk has better AA than Grozovoi with AA consumable running? I don't know how these values really translate to the new system, but this just doesn't sound right - Grozovoi is, basically, severely punished by having short-range AA with relatively long range. And that's just one example.

The problem lies elsewhere. Right now there are tremendous skill gaps in the game. In fact, I'd be willing to say that there's a similar difference between a unicum DD player and a potato DD player. But there's a big difference between the way DDs interact with each other and between what CVs do. An air-superiority CV, when significantly better, gains (surprise surprise) complete air superiority. The enemy CV is still in the game (and likely to stay for the whole duration) but can't do sh*t. You get a frustrated CV player and the team that basically player without a CV in a meta where CVs are the main counters to CVs. This gives the dominating CV a tremendous impact, both through damage-dealing and spotting, effectively shutting down (or even sinking) the second most impactful class among the enemy team. That's where the ridiculous WR% of good CV players come from. Now, as a DD facing a much more skilled DD is not nearly as disastrous. He will be more successful in dealing damage and he will provide his team with precious intelligence data but it's much more manageable. What's more, you usually have a couple DDs per side. And on top of all that - if you find yourself effectively hunted down by an enemy gunboat... you just die. You don't sit in the game for 15 minutes unable to do anything - you're dead and off to the next match. And even if it was a 1v1 DD match, there are Radar ships and other chances to counter that pesky DD - so the teammates you've just orphaned are usually less screwed than they would've been if you were a sunk/shut down CV instead. To put it simply: the skill gap between CVs is more problematic than when it happens to any other class. The problem isn't that someone is much better than the opponent and comes clearly on top from their 1v1 engagement - the problem is what it does to the rest of the match and the experience of everyone involved when it happens.

Sure. But this, this and this look ok to me.

So far all the old ships (when tiers were changed during line splits) basically got renamed and remained in the database. I'm 99% sure that we should expect the same to happen here. We'll see entries similar to this on the stat-tracking websites https://wows-numbers.com/ship/4180555216,Kiev-06-03-2017-/