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She has a concealment advantage as well in addition to a more "safe" playstyle, so I'd say unless the rest of the team has already crumbled the extra 30s cd isn't too influential. Whether that playstyle actually translates into some serious advantage however I wouldn't know, but Conq should in theory maintain a lead over Monty due to her being capable of punishing both the enemy BB and enemy cruisers regardless of angles via thermonuclear HE shells. Doesn't mean Monty is a bad choice, I can certainly think of situations in which a Monty is superior to a Conq, but generally speaking Conq should provide you with more flexibility.

...there was a need for CVs to hunt down other CVs? o_ô Not opposed to this change but I don't see why it is necessary? If this is meant to buff DDs going CV sniping then boy are they on the wrong track. 30s DCP uptime will easily allow you to get your squads airborne and kill any pesky DD harassing you. Besides, DDs going CV sniping is utterly worthless more often than not anyway. Don't know why this behavior should be encouraged.

My friends, I have caught a glimpse of heaven. If the new USN loadouts play like this but can reliably target all BBs with their AP bombs sign me right the [edited] up.

Hiryu may actually be a better option than Saipan depending on how exactly the scenario plays out. Saipan's strengths do not translate as well into PvE.

To be fair to the OP stock Phoenix is indeed a horrible ship.

Whether you'd need to replace Balti is debatable, but once you make a decision to do so you must obviously replace her with something better to ensure tier progression. Oregon City is a straight up copy with no changes at all, as such she simply doesn't fit. Imagine if you'd put a renamed NO at T9 with literally no changes right now, ensuring that you'd have to grind through the same ship across two tiers. That'd be Oregon City. Sure, some may see fun or a challenge in it, but the great majority would ask themselves why they would want to keep playing a ship when the exact same one is a tier lower and thus gets better MM. Too few would be motivated to complete the grind and another good chunk will likely end up detesting it. Whether Buffalo is the best design to replace Balti though remains to be seen. You know, purists like you piss me off the most. You make the most ridiculous claims with no regards to gameplay nor game design only to satisfy your selfish desire of seeing "omg reeel ships!!111".

Balti isn't exactly bad but she's hard to play. Replacing her with something more forgiving is well within acceptable limits. And again, Oregon City would be literally no different than Baltimore. There is no progression to be had.

Honestly I'd believe Conq kills cruisers just as fast if not faster than Monty since, as you already pointed out, a lot of cruisers can simply angle and auto-bounce Monty shells. Especially considering the amount of cruisers running around forcing DCP and then burning stuff to death with thermonuclear HE shells should be a cakewalk, not to mention the value of zombie heal. What Monty does excel in is killing DDs. Her faults in terms of gun performance actually work in her favor here (high arcs = better chance to hit deck = auto pen damage; slower shells = less likely to overpen). Don't think Conq is accurate enough to slap DDs around for huge damage totals at ~12+km ranges.

Same thing happened with Langley when they replaced her 1/1/0 with 1/1/1. Was actually a hilarious nerf to her since USN TBs can oneshot almost anything at lower tiers while her DBs remain rather useless.

Because the Oregon City class would be literally no different than the Baltimore class in terms of gameplay, only in aesthetics would they differ. It would literally be a straight up copy. And if you haven't noticed, number of guns decide what AA values you get, not the AA layout. Oregon City has the same number of AA guns as Balti, so nothing changes there either. Paper ships should be used when nothing else fits, as is clearly the case here.

Nothing is final yet, though I think this is the right way to approach it. I can thoroughly understand why they chose to downtier Midway TBs. Having two squads of USN T10 TBs has been proven overpowered back in CBT. Also remember that those T8 TBs are effectively T9 ones sans the speed thanks to the strike plane health upgrade. With AP bombs you're likely never going to send these against capital ships very often anyway, instead using them to hunt down DDs. Experience with Enterprise will likely pay off huge dividends when playing the reworked USN loadouts. Still, against T10 AA that might be pushing it a bit, but hey, that's what testing is for, right? (Assuming that WG will actually listen to the skilled CV playerbase for once, which they apparently tend not to do out of principle.) Having lower tier fighters on the other hand may actually be an advantage since now you can (or rather have to) take the DE skill (if you haven't before), which would benefit USN squads tremendously due to their larger squad sizes. Lower speed and higher vulnerability to AA will still give skilled IJN CV captains room to outplay you, so overall I'd say that this change will put both IJN and USN on equal footing when it comes to air control, which is surely a great thing.

And once you meet an equally or more skilled Shokaku or Enterprise player it's all for naught, because they can strike anywhere they want while completely denying your game influence. Though I am glad to see WG is finally doing something about the godawful USN loadouts.

Counterstrafing still exists. Also why would I even attempt to strafe when I hold the 2vs1 advantage anyway? All I need to do is dodge your inevitable strafe and I'm in a position to wipe your squad no matter what you do. Which matters little once you have inevitably lost air superiority, as every strike you fly you'll have to content with enemy fighters. DBs are less reliable than TBs as you've already pointed out. It also means you cannot simply delegate DBs to scouting roles if the situation demands it as they form an important part of your strike package. So no matter what area you look at, USN CVs are worse than their IJN counterparts. Air control capability is worse, scouting potential is worse, damage potential is worse (alpha strike itself is at best on par if RNGesus loves you, but overall damage is far worse when considering selective targeting as well as strikes per game). Flexibility is key in CV play, as it allows you to fulfill your fundamental roles (these aren't optional and cannot be compromised on). Any CV that is incapable of affording you such is simply bad, no exceptions.

Please, what strengths? There is literally nothing an USN CV does that an IJN one doesn't do better regardless of loadout. I've stopped grinding the line because playing Ranger was literally physically painful. There is nothing to adapt or change, you're still expected to fulfill your three roles (air control, scout, damage) but you're given a straight up worse platform to do so no matter what you do with it. Because trashing a potato surely shows off how good the Lex is. Any decent 2/2/2 Shokaku/Enterprise player should be able to shut down a Lexington regardless of what loadout the Lex picks or how skilled he is. It's boringly easy. Literally the only thing that's easier is trashing a GZ, which is hardly a benchmark to break.

Yes, WG should make fire more realistic. By making it a lot more lethal than it is now. And while we're on the topic of realism, torps should also be able to start fires and fires near magazines should lead to detonations if untended for too long. Now that we can trash realism, here's the deal: The damage fire deals is fine. Heck, against BBs it's perhaps even a bit too weak. BBs camping 25km in the back is not understandable. If you burn to death immediately you have severely misplayed. T9 BBs targeting T7 cruisers at close range with HE is idiotic. Warships in WWII burned when hit. And if you still think fires are too powerful, l2p.

Don't they have the same dispersion? If only the sigma value differs you'll probably never notice too much of a difference considering sigma is basically just how much your ship's pastor/chaplain/whatever prayed to RNGesus. For reference: Source: LWM's Hood review http://shipcomrade.com/news/305/admiral-class-battlecruiser-.html

Apparently not. Oh, well, I'm sure using the fan translation patch will work just fine.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/745880/__Hidden_Star_in_Four_Seasons/ Awww yisss

Your mistake is playing a Ranger. Future mistakes: Playing a Lexington. Playing an Essex. Playing a... actually Midway is fairly okay from what I've heard.

ST, new scenario "The Final Frontier". The frontline that is drawing nearer and constant air raids on the Rowen atoll threaten to disrupt the Japanese engineers' and scientists' project. To avoid a catastrophe, a transport air squad is sent to the location to evacuate the personnel and valuable documents. The warships are called in to provide a safe approach for the planes and allow for timely evacuation through the airfield. Only available for the Tier VII ships. Source: EDIT: Ninja'd, but meh, whatever. :D

I almost always manual drop. Must be "muh elitism", as others would call it. In my experience AP bombs never get those huge damage numbers against higher tier KM BBs anyway, though.

Uhm, Helena is basically an upgraded Brooklyn. (The St. Louis class was in essence a Brooklyn with improved machinery, layout and AA.)

BBs good at fighting BBs don't get used in a gamemode in which only one enemy BB is present. Who would've thought?

It is more or less in the game via training room, which is used for the more competitive side of WoWs. Still doesn't mean this game is meant to be a competitive one on a fundamental design basis.