El2aZeR

"CVs are good at their designed role, which is why we chose to exclude them." Wat.

What matters is the balance between the T10s. Ironically, T10 is where in-class balance in CVs is among the best in the game in context of clan battles. An AS Midway has, technically speaking, better scouting potential (both get 2 DB squads, but Midway has both larger squads and more reserves). Haku has strike potential in addition, which may or may not get used. Since strike potential is not something Midway will ever have in AS, she has better air control and far larger plane reserves as well. This makes the choice between Haku and Midway a tactical one instead of simply choosing "the more powerful ship". If your clan strategy relies on your own teammates to do the damage, picking Midway may actually be the better choice. If strategy dictates that having strike potential is desirable and you're confident in your skills, by all means pick Hakuryu. "You know as well as I do"? All I see is you demonstrating your massive ignorance. Says the guy who thinks this game doesn't need to be balanced.

Ever seen what happens when a Haku decides to attack multiple T10 capital ships? Or just a single DM? Heck, even just a Zao with DFAA? Even clans nowadays are too stupid to teamplay in a team game. Unbelievable. I guess we should remove every class then, because in-class balance isn't given in those either. What a joke.

Visuals and balancing/programming/etc. are done by completely different departments (or should be in a dev team as big as WG), thus updating visuals and addressing other problems simultaneously shouldn't be that big of an issue. The question should rather be about introducing new ships vs updating existing models, really.

The thing is that with a TB squad Hiryu has to worry about letting a strike through. He has no such concerns when you're playing AS. What difference does this make? Plenty actually, because it threatens and puts pressure on your opponent in ways AS can only dream of. You could e.g. use your DB to scout, pull one of the fighters out of position then tie up the remaining fighter and strike with your TB, which is infinitely more useful than just scouts that will spend more time flying away from enemy fighters than actually scouting. You don't need strafes to deny scouts, simply put them on attack command and chase them around a bit so they can't scout anymore. Or if your team decides to brawl for once your vaunted fighters will get wiped regardless of their superiority as enemy AA will only have your fighters to concentrate on, leaving Hiryu free to strike whatever target he pleases. Or simply having to cover two flanks is enough to make an AS Ranger completely, utterly useless because it puts you into a dilemma. You either cover only one flank with all you have, which makes your other flank vulnerable, or you divide your fighters and risk losing air superiority. I could go on, really, but you should get the gist. AS Ranger is always in the position of choosing the lesser evil, always coming out worse for wear no matter what decision you decide to make. It's even worse against skilled opposition, since they tend to know that AS has fundamental limitations that cannot be overcome with skill. I've had an easier time dealing with two AS CVs alone (since my teammate was afk) than trying to shut down one well played USN strike CV.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He only needs to pull a single fighter. He can still commit to a strike as soon as you or one of your allies moves out of position. He can also still scout more effectively than you (since he can actually deny your scouts) and as soon as you move to intercept his scout he can move in with his TBs to exploit your opening. You don't need fighters at all to commit to a strike. You're always on the backfoot playing USN AS, no matter what you do. It is by far the worst setup with no merits at all.

Upgrades: MA mod. 1 - no brainer, unless you seriously hate getting detonated AA mod. 2 - cruiser guns are plenty accurate, you need the extra AA range anyway (more on that later) GFCS mod. 2 - range makes you much more flexible, reload is already plenty fast, but if you really feel like you don't need the range, pick reload instead. Radar mod. 1 - if you have it. Take DCS mod. 1 or DFAA mod. 1 if you don't Steering Gears mod. 2 - faster rudder is always useful Concealment mod. 1 - you live and die by your concealment, there is no alternative Core skills: Priority Target - the best T1 cruiser skill, take it Adrenaline Rush - for hilarious DPM Superintendent - for extra radar and heal charges Concealment Expert - see above AFT - this + the upgrade almost makes your AA range equal your air detectability, which means CVs will have a hard time keeping you scouted. And, as said before, concealment is love, concealment is life. Other skills (pick these to your liking): Vigilance - highly recommended, DM does not fare well against torps BFT - not useful, your AA is already very strong Manual AA - same, even less useful than BFT since the bulk of your DPS comes from the medium caliber guns Expert Loader - personally I've never found it useful enough to warrant taking it as DM already reloads very fast, but some other people will disagree Expert Marksman - there are times when I find DM turret traverse to be painfully slow (even if it is really not). Might be worth it if you think the same Jack of All Trades - DM bristles with utility. Cutting down their cooldown a bit certainly doesn't hurt Demolition Expert - You like setting the world on fire? Then pick this. Rest of the skills aren't worth even considering imo.

Except a competent Hiryu has an easier time demolishing 2/0/2 than 1/1/1 at equal skill level. With 1/1/1 he at least has to worry about you getting a strike through. With 2/0/2 he can be confident that you have no strike and scouting potential whatsoever. Yes, you can't scout with 2/0/2. Pull your DBs to scout, you give up on your already paltry damage potential and your scout can be easily chased away or even completely denied. Pull fighters to save your scout or scout themselves, you leave your team open for a strike. Any competent Hiryu player will recognize the openings you give them, and as soon as you pull your planes to do anything but hover above your teammates you're giving them an opening. 1/1/1 is much more flexible, thus effective, in this regard.

If you had watched the entire video you could've seen Fara demonstrate how truly easy it is to avoid a manual drop from these things. (7:45)

It is as if it were forbidden to introduce a new BB that is not overpowered. Heck, you could probably put her a tier higher and she'd still do fine. Either the the dev team still hasn't learned how out of touch they are with their own game after the GZ debacle or this is another stupid idea forced on them by the marketing department. I refuse to believe anyone is capable of both understanding the game in it's current state and at the same time coming up with a ship like this.

What I meant is penetrating the turret roof then the barbette roof and nothing else, as that also results in a citadel hit. (Or only the barbette roof, but the surface area to only hit the barbette roof and not the turret is so small that you may have to sacrifice around three goats to RNGesus to get a hit on that.) But thanks for testing it. Guess we can can that theory.

Barbettes = citadel

Fara just put up a video in which he oneshots a Yamato from almost full health with 82k damage dealt. (9:35) On the other hand he also demonstrates how easy a manual drop is to dodge. He talks about how RNG AP bombs are against ships that are not KM BBs. Normally, having experience with AP bombs in the Enterprise myself, I'd very much agree. However I think I made an interesting observation. Notice that the strike area shifts directly over to the front turrets when the bombs actually hit, even disabling one of them. It could be possible that he simply penetrated the turret roofs and the barbettes, thus getting citadel hits with the majority of his bombs. This would mean that for every BB line that has an effective deck armor scheme, you could target the turrets instead for massive damage returns. Anyone care to test that in the training room?

lol this ship. This ship is amazing.

I thought it was announced quite a while ago that Musashi would be a clan battle reward or sth similar. Not sure why everyone is acting all surprised tbh. :P

The thing is that you don't need to be super 300 apm unicum to abuse Saipan's ridiculous strafe mechanics. It's broken and has no reliable counter, regardless of your or the enemy skill level. But since nerfing Saipan is an unrealistic prospect (to say the least) fixing the UI to make the one counter it has (strafing after the escaping fighter) actually viable every time should be a priority, yet any change in CV UI seems far off at this point, WG instead preferring to release more lines of ridiculous gimmicky and overpowered ships.

No, it can't. Saipan either strikes fast enough that fighter cover doesn't matter or straight up wins any fighter engagement.

Take a look at the armor scheme ingame. It's still slightly above the waterline. If you cannot hit that, well, that's not a problem of the game then.

All I see is you demonstrating your incompetence tbh, Pretty much the only thing you got right in your first point is that BBs are getting coddled, while characterizing one of the most braindead and overpowered BB lines as "fine". Because having SI, BFT & AFT mandatory is such a limitation. No, you don't necessarily need MS. It was actually proven that MS hurts your long term damage on a single target due to damage saturation. It is an option that can be recommended, but is in no way mandatory. Meanwhile NC needs SI, AFT & CE. It is actually really funny seeing you judging which skills you should take on a ship you do not even have. A statement that is laughably false, as expected from your experience playing CVs considering your laughable statistics in them. NC had her citadel lowered long before Bismarck, or even Tirpitz, existed. In fact, it was one of the most early balancing changes ever done after USN BBs were introduced in CBT. I highly doubt you are capable of judging whether or not it was justified. And really, if you seriously believe NC's citadel now is hard to hit, I have some seriously bad news for you (and to you only, everyone else seems to have picked up on how much experience and skill you really have in this game). NC becomes most effective somewhere between 12-14km from the enemy. If this is far away to you, well, sucks to be you then. A CVs role is to kill or contribute to killing DDs and solo sailing ships that are not AA cruisers. NC becomes strike-able by same/lower tier CVs when through a thorough shower of HE shells. The same applies to Bismarck. Both ships can be easily targeted by higher tier CVs regardless of their health and setup, though considering your paltry high tier experience you probably don't even know that. Thus their actual AA values do not matter at all, as the same conditions apply to both of them. Really, if the game were balanced KM BBs would have a list of drawbacks a mile long for being basically impossible to citadel alone instead of getting coddled and compensated at every twist and turn. Meanwhile the USN BBs you're calling overpowered have serious weaknesses and evaporate quickly when out of position, unlike their KM counterparts, to balance out their strengths. Also 50% of torp damage is recoverable, it's only 10% when hit near the magazines. 10/10 demonstration of basic game knowledge. Again. And you ofc completely neglect everything that Bismarck does better than NC. Hint: It's a lot. But that wouldn't fit your pitiful narrative, no? But nah, "WAAAH WAAAH MY SHIP IS NOT OP IN ALL ASPECTS! LOOK AT THAT SHIP WHICH IS BETTER ONLY IN THE FEW ASPECTS THAT MY SHIP IS MISSING! IT IS UNFAIR! KM BB LINE IS TOTALLY BALANCED! I DON'T HAVE TO L2P, YOU'RE ALL WRONG AND ONLY GET LUCKY ALL THE TIME!" Says the guy talking about BB bias and making the game more forgiving while at the same time defending the second most forgiving, braindead and overpowered BB line in the game, their crown only recently stolen by the newly released RN BBs. Biased yourself much? Really, before RN BBs the BB line that by far needed nerfing the most is the KM one. Now it's "only" second in line. Trying to defend them while at the same time condemning BB bias is nothing short of absolutely idiotic. That you actually believe USN BBs are overpowered and perfect for camping on top only adds to the hilarity of your incompetence. So yeah, how about you actually go and accumulate some experience playing high tiers instead of talking about things you have no understanding of? Or, even better, get a NC yourself and see how she works out for you sniping at long range? While it is really amusing to see you insult others while you yourself are demonstrating hilarious incompetence at the game in both statistics and statements, all the while having less games played total than I have in T8+ games alone, you do demonstrate perfectly how ridiculously stupid the average player in WoWs has truly become.

Wat. 2 squads of fast cycling TBs that enjoy loads of survivability along with default air superiority is something Kaga can only dream of. With Kaga you simply hope your opposing CV sucks. She's the CV that by far scales worst with enemy player skill. Kaga does literally nothing a competent Hiryu cannot do, she's simply more noob-friendly with a bigger strike package, gimmicky torps and loads of reserves. She pays for it by being extremely horrible at contesting air superiority, which eventually compromises her strike ability. This is fine considering most of the playerbase consists of idiots but you will become next to useless against a competent player using a relevant CV (aka not Ranger). Saipan barely cares how skilled or what CV the enemy opposition uses. The only real threat to her is another Saipan of higher skill level and getting severely up-tiered (and even then she fares better than her contemporaries). She's by far the most team-independent CV in the game.

Speed is a non-factor tbh, it's just a matter of lead. Grozo is a far longer ship and has anemic handling, this makes her a much easier target for TBs in my experience. I usually can kill her off with multiple hits from only two squads (which is just as well considering one squad will inevitably bait DFAA).

Well, time to place bets, people! What stupid gimmick is another BB going to get? - radar - smoke - hydro - DFAA - speed boost - super heal I got my money on DFAA + radar. It'll get sorted out with the USN CA/CL split, which will occur sometime next year apparently. Look at WoWs Blitz for reference, there both Pensa and NO get bumped down a tier with Wichita at T8.