El2aZeR

While the difference in draft is questionable, I don't believe Gearing needs a buff beyond the AP pen issue that plague all DDs. She's a very strong T10 DD if played well. Though I wouldn't particularly mind if it was changed, either.

Is the new punishment system already active? Because that relegates you to coop for a certain amount of battles I believe.

Well, not that it needs DFAA considering base AA already surpasses the value of most cruisers with DFAA active. A very slight nerf to DP gun AA range would hardly impair the Minotaur. Like from 8,6km max range down to 8,2km maybe.

"Teamwork is essential. It gives your enemy other people to shoot at." If you're still hung up about going into B solo, don't even bother. As for Haven, you lost the same way. By camping. Hardly an issue with CVs. Which was my entire point to begin with but hey, if you want to deny that like you always do, go right ahead. :) Yes, without proper analysis. You're just throwing around the usual things you take at face value, going silent the moment everything speaks against you. While true, that hasn't been the case with you. You have demonstrated your inability to play against CVs not only in word but in actual gameplay. You're utterly incapable of reading when the next strike is gonna come, how much leeway you have until then, which target is the most likely to get struck or how to position yourself accordingly. That you believe I could've struck you and your buddies in B proves that much. It is so extremely easy to shut a CV down yet you make it sound oh, so hard. Besides, who would you trust? The people who have actual experience in every single aspect, or the guy who lies, quotes information without analysis and has demonstrated nothing but incompetence when it comes to the subject?

As I previously stated, I regard spotters to be a fairly soft counter as you can usually defeat them by moving around a bit in your smoke.

Then again I don't have many premium ships in the first place, out of which I only bought and actively play one.

So you want to nerf CVs on the basis that the average player is abysmal. Then the same argument can be made that CVs actually need buffs because the average player is abysmal with them, too. And while we're at it, we should also buff DDs, cruisers and especially BBs because the average player is so bad with them as well! If it is news for you: Game balance only works if you assume that the people playing actually know how to play the game in at least a decent fashion. And before you go for the whole idiotic equality in potential match influence again (which apparently still only applies to CVs, I certainly don't see you screaming for BBs to have radar/hydro to increase their match influence to at least utility cruiser level), you have still failed to name a single game in which fundamentally different classes have the same potential impact on a match despite saying that literally every game apparently follows this principle. Yeah, if you try to cap B alone you're going to die against multiple opponents. Big surprise. I guess the very concept of teamplay in a team game is foreign to you. It most likely never even occurred to you that with "flank" I meant all the ships on your flank, not just you. And I'd have hoped it's obvious that it is counterproductive to push out of B if you intend to take it, making the Alsace irrelevant, or that you can use the east island as cover, giving the Mogami no clear firing line unless he pushes out. Guess I was expecting too much. Also a simple test in the training room reveals that your experience with sfAP is not only greatly exaggerated but that it is actually completely impossible for a Minotaur to kill a bow on Zao as penetrable areas saturate before the HP of the Zao can be reduced to 0. This includes damage from torpedo hits and without taking heal into account. Time to reduce the HP of a bow on Zao to ~500 was approx. 4 minutes, far longer than any smoke or a potential engagement would've lasted. And yes, you would've been safe from me. Not only is my next TB strike 3 minutes out (which you could've easily asserted by looking at the minimap), but I had no approach vector if only one of you had stuck to the east island. I'm not a particularly big fan of losing all my planes for nothing, as a strike against 2 top tier cruisers and 2 BBs will inevitably result in. See that Tirpitz? He killed more than half the strike despite them spending the shortest possible time in his AA bubble. I sure wonder what more ships, each with a better position and a far more effective AA suite, could've done. (assuming Izumo is playing the top hull ofc) Besides, the alternative would've been to sit back and farm damage. Which is what you did. Look at what good it did to you.

So basically "I'm right, you're wrong, go yourself!" None of the people I play with even have a Minotaur. My CV stats actually improve when you filter for solo stats. I'm primarily a solo player and I'm saying Mino could maybe use a very slight AA range nerf but is otherwise fine. If you're not interested in discourse just say so in your opening post instead of asking for opinions.

Are you joking?

Has anyone ever noticed that CV DFAA buffs IJN mid range guns by 75%, but USN mid range guns only by 25%? Because today is the first time I've actually realized this.

Here's a solution: Don't spot with fighters. They're too valuable to be wasted on something that can actually kill them quickly. While I do believe Mino AA range is a bit over the top (it's higher than the actual detectability of aircraft), I don't particularly mind that their air detection range equals their AA range. RN CLs live and die by their concealment, they have plenty of downsides to compensate. If you could keep them spotted without any penalty that'd be a death sentence for them the moment their smoke runs out. DFAA in general is an archaic mechanic that needs reworking anyway, made to counter aircraft that are no longer in the game. Also CV DFAA doesn't only panic, it's the very old version of DFAA that buffs only the mid-range guns. (25% for USN CVs, 75% for IJN ones. Don't ask me why IJN DFAA is so much more powerful.)

I used AP bombs to great effect in Lexington. The popularity of ships vulnerable to AP bombs in your tier bracket basically guarantees that you have viable targets in every match. With Essex however you should switch to HE.

Which was implemented to make fighters actually useful. Before strafing existed fighters were utterly, completely useless against massed strikes. Fighters were basically always expended as scouts or simply to lock enemy fighters so that they cannot interfere with a strike. They were inherently incapable of doing the job they were designed to do, so strafing was introduced to address that. No one cares if it is realistic or not. Gameplay trumps realism. No one knows what the rework entails at this point considering it's still very early in development after only 2 years. If I had to make a guess strafing would indeed be on the culling board, if only to narrow down the skill gap.

Oh, I have no problem with ships being easy to play. I have a problem with what they, and Asashio in particular, imply. Asashio is a DD that can only exist in a BB heavy meta. In any other environment it's not a ship even worth considering if you want to spend money on this game. Basically this means WG is not intending and will never intend to solve BB overpopulation. Every issue that relate to it will remain as it is, Asashio is basically the final notice to everyone that we should get used to it.

The only few times I've been chat banned was when I tried to tell teammates that they should please go do something useful (aka please go take that cap, please don't go CV sniping and so on). I've never been chat banned for doing something akin to this (please note that this is NSFW for excessive swearing): and I do it rather often. 10/10 working as intended.

Well, that is why smoke exists. Or rather existed. You see, smoke was a direct counter to a CV's inherent ability to scout. By providing smoke cover for nearby allies you could easily take a cap and be completely safe from air attacks while having fire support if enemy surface ships show up to boot. Technically speaking this still works, but your allies will most likely have to silence their guns entirely less they get spotted, making the entire point of smoke cover moot. By whining about the "smoke meta" and having WG change it people have inherently made CVs more powerful. This is exacerbated by the fact that high tier maps are usually terrible for cruisers (Sea of Fortune is the only map that comes to my mind in which AA cruisers can cover a cap without compromising their ability to exist). Hardly the fault of CVs, no? The moment the ability to strafe ships gets useful for CVs is the moment it becomes broken. But if it isn't broken it is useless. There is no middle ground to be found because the entire basis of the mechanic you're trying to implement is flawed to the core.

Well, I too would prefer something along the lines of HSF, but those camos already existed in the anime, thus could be used as references. AL has no such thing. Any camo created would have to be completely new, so we have no idea where it'd go. General AL UI is fairly sci-fi, that'd be my reference point if I had to create a camo based on AL. I honestly doubt they're going to create camos based off the actual girls (though if they do it'd be a sight to see one way or the other).

Yeah, no. There is no simple reasoning like that. There are a ton of reasons as to why CVs are doing as well as they are, almost none of them have something to do with CVs themselves. Just off the top of my head: - BB overpopulation - CV scarcity - the necessity to run AA skills and upgrades - average player is abysmal - basically non-existence of AA ships in low and mid tiers - existence of extremely punishing noob traps in CV play - lol RN BB HE - lol smoke nerf + everything else I missed Everyone with some experience in CV play can tell you that. To say that everything comes down to the skill gap between CV players just shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. Then it's completely pointless to introduce such a mechanic in the first place, no? It'd just be a waste of fighters, aka a noob trap. If you want to create an ability with which you want to compete against the ability to scout and contest air control, then said ability must be sufficiently powerful to warrant such a trade. So unless you make strafing ships stupidly powerful, which would be stupidly broken, there is no reason for such a mechanic to exist other than baiting bad CV players into using it.

Except you have lowered the standard of play even further by introducing one more noob trap. As if we don't have enough of those already in CV play. And it still eliminates the entire point of AA. Imagine you're captaining a DM providing air defense for your teammates (as you're supposed to), only for the enemy CV to not give a because he can simply suppress it with a bunch of fighters. Strong AA is supposed to deter strikes. Unless you have the support of your teammates you should very much be incapable of doing anything against an AA ship or a strong formation aside from spotting. They exist to counter you, thus you should not be able to counter them. This makes CVs team dependent, a desirable thing considering this is in fact a team game.

Aka you will make bad CV players waste all their fighters on AA ships and hand air superiority to the gleeful enemy CV who doesn't even need to do anything. Giving people a choice isn't always a good thing. Besides, AA is supposed to make your life harder as a CV. By being able to suppress it that eliminates the entire point of AA. There already exists a way to diminish AA from an enemy ship. It's called HE spam and basic teamplay. Heck, RN BBs can strip ships of their entire low and mid range AA suite with just 2-3 hits (which is really stupid but apparently WG likes it that way).

The UI doesn't even support more than ~90 apm. And in general CV play is incredibly easy (and rightfully so) compared to a true esports RTS if you really want to go that way. All you need to play CVs is some basic map awareness, knowledge that certain core mechanics exist, some basic target selection ability and being able to cope with the extreme that the UI tends to throw at you. That alone catapults you easily into ~65% WR territory, because the grand majority of the playerbase is so abysmal at the game. Asking even for basic map awareness is far too much.

Benson with bunny ears. Belfast in maid camo. Fuso with cat ears. Kaga with fox tails. A bald eagle for Enterprise. The possibilities are truly endless. On a more serious note, I believe the best we'll see is a collection and some captains. Maybe some general AL themed camo if they're feeling generous.

You can repeat tasks for stars. You're just not getting rewards if you do so.

I'd say shelve it, not because I have any love left for BBs but because this is once again a ship that caters to the lowest possible denominator. Not that our opinions will ever matter. WG has most likely allowed BB overpopulation to persist precisely because it allows them to sell stupid gimmicky stuff like this. If they don't care about the health of their own game, what do you think they care about us?

Don't get me wrong, the gap between good and bad AA is too wide (primarily due to the various AA skills and upgrades) and it is one of the things I'd love to see addressed, but I highly doubt that will change player behavior which is the primary problem when it comes to air defense. Considering that if they normalize AA too much it'll easily increase the amount of targets a CV is capable of striking compared to now. A single AA ship will no longer provide adequate protection, nor will a previously fairly small group of ships. If they go overboard on it the amount of ships required to deny air strikes will actually rise, with sailing off alone being more dangerous than ever. And if there is one thing WG's balancing department is known for, it's balancing with a sledgehammer.