El2aZeR

You realize you can both mute in a match and block in harbor, right?

They're iconic, they're powerful, they tend live long (or at least longer than other classes). Playing a BB is easy. Playing a BB well is hard (and team dependent more often than not, though that applies to all classes). It's the class I started out with and still very much enjoy to play. Also Trump Wagon prints lots of money.

I feel like Belfast itself is largely fine as a ship, it's her toolbelt that makes her incredibly overpowered. As such all you'd need to do is to put Radar and Hydro into the same slot, making Belfast players choose between general utility (Radar) or feeling safe in smokes (Hydro).

I mean, aside from the general problems with AA as dasCKD has pointed out I don't really see the problem. DM is an AA cruiser, it's supposed to wipe planes.

Well, the OP obviously wanted to know which loadout is the most effective, not the most fun. I answered and in addition gave him several reasons as to why he should never ever play AS (in short: because it's useless), as any competent CV will utterly obliterate you. If you think it's more fun to get stomped on by every competent CV you meet, then by all means, continue to play AS. Don't let me stop you. It's however still simple fact that AS is the inferior loadout, no matter how "fun" you think it is.

So you're basically doubting your own words? Let me reiterate what you said. So there were fewer CBT players, but a large percentage of them were willing to educate themselves by visiting the forums, etc. when they started out. And now we have a large playerbase that is mostly unwilling to learn the game from third party sources when they're new. Doesn't that simply mean thorough ingame tutorials should be a necessity, something that WG has neglected far too long? Without even trying? Let's face it, WG hasn't done jack to facilitate teamwork in the current meta, which was formed when CVs were largely extinct, automatically making it incompatible with the basic design of the game and bringing with it an incredible amount of problems, such as DD torp soup, BB/DD overpopulation and, most recently, stealth firing. WoWs in reality isn't even close to RPS. All classes have a hard and one or several soft counters, CVs not excepted. RPS can be at most used to explain the basic game classes to new players, but it is in no way representative of the fundamental design. Wouldn't that be a tremendous buff to CVs? Fewer squads but more planes kinda cancel themselves out, while giving players more control will obviously make strikes more likely to hit (with appropriate skill level ofc), thus increasing the striking potential of CVs overall. I'm not against this change, it sounds like a fun idea, but I feel like all it'd do is increase the skill gap between average and good which is already far too wide.

Which is obviously something that only applies to Belfast and nothing else. Oh wait. Seriously, this shouldn't even remotely be an argument regarding balance.

It doesn't need to, we all started from 0 at some point. All you're pointing out is something I've been complaining about all along: WG has done absolutely nothing to facilitate player guidance. If anything all you're saying shows that given the proper introduction, which most CBT players had to and were willing to do themselves, basic teamplay is more than achievable. Nice shooting yourself in the foot, mate. As for your whole "CVs are strategic weapons"-stuff, there are plenty of games out there forcing strategic weapons into a tactical setting, and yet they're somehow all successful. A game does not need to reflect real life.

Wouldn't this be too big of a buff against all other classes as well? Fires and flooding may hurt less in cruisers/DDs numerically speaking but combining it with the damage they take from a strike, their smaller HP pool and their (for the most part) inability to repair this may hurt them much harder than it does for BBs. CVs are doing very good (and perhaps too good) against DDs already and they're not really supposed to target cruisers, they don't need buffs in these areas. Maybe reduce the effectiveness of BB TDS against air dropped torps instead? Same effect essentially at least for flooding, but only targets BBs.

They most definitely won't be able to learn how to play effectively with AS either as playing AS in itself makes you automatically fail. So you'd rather recommend new players to play AS loadouts, potentially crippling them for "life", than recommend playing strike and gambling on the off chance that they will git gud?

Trust me, it's not. You can waste your planes at most once, maybe twice with a T10, but any more than that and you're starting to seriously limit your future striking ability. And regardless of how beefy high tier planes are, their counters tend to melt through them extremely fast. Something I thought about as well. As it stands right now CVs are perhaps too good as DD hunters (which they already counter by spotting), yet somewhat okay to bad at killing BBs (depending on the BB). How about giving them a +/- damage modifier? For example, take what we have currently as base damage against cruisers, then give them around +5k against BBs and -5k against DDs. You said that CVs fail at their role of enforcing teamplay. I pointed out that, historically speaking, they performed that role rather well. It has everything to do with CBT and how the game was developed. We were all novice players at some point, yet we managed to reach a state in which teamplay was prevalent more often than not, since it was and still is a necessity to counter CVs. What does prevent novice players now from reaching it as well given proper guidance? CVs have problems, but their basic design is not one of them.

So you would recommend inexperienced players to go with AS and be bad all the time instead of making them learn how to play CVs effectively? You're funny, I'll give you that.

Funny, considering this is precisely what happened in CBT.

1. No new CV line will be introduced until the rework. When is that? Soon™. 2. I believe it was stated once that KM would not get a CV line because there are no ships to fill it, paper or otherwise? 3. All nations start with cruisers.

You misunderstand. The reason why such murderballs are necessary is because cruisers are lacking. Cruisers are what allow small groups of ships to split off and, for example, flank. They create no-fly zones that CVs should not enter if they value their reserves. Heck, nowadays it even works with a bunch of BBs. So you actually believe CVs are fine? Because this is precisely what any skilled CV player thinks if he loses the majority or all of his strike force. 15-20 planes is an incredibly substantial number and can easily lead to you being left without reserves towards the end of a match, even if you're playing a T10 CV. You'd know this if you'd actually play CVs. (This is not a jab at you not playing CVs, I can more than respect that, but a simple fact. As a non-CV player plane reserves might seem endless to you, but they're far from it and more easily depleted than you'd think) Honestly, I beg to differ. The average player, regardless of how bad they are, still wants to win and if they're told that teamplay is actually the best way to do so then it may become more prevalent. Which leads to another fundamental problem: WG has done absolutely nothing in terms of player guidance. If it works in other games, why shouldn't it work in WoWs? Pointing out some principles on which this game is designed on is somehow twisted into me wanting CVs to be OP. Classic.

It's actually pretty clever game design. After all, how else would you force 12 random people to work together? CVs are by design here to enforce teamplay and if the majority of the players still choose to disregard it then that's not a problem with CVs. There are some common misconceptions here that I feel like need to be cleared. - CVs can currently only do so much damage because the average playerbase is so hilariously bad. The striking power a CV can deliver rises or sinks with the average skill of the opposing team, even if you're not factoring in the skill level of the opposing CV. As it stands now the average player doesn't even know how to dodge or manually target enemy squads for more effective AA. And they most certainly do not feel like they have to play as a team, usually making them easy pickings for CVs as designed. You only need to look at how clan battles are played out to see how worthless CVs are in the damage department when up against a well coordinated team. Obviously such a state is pretty much impossible to reach in randoms but the most basic teamplay should be more than just possible to attain. Now, without damage CVs are left with their two additional roles: Scouting and interception. Without these a CV would be mostly worthless if even the most basic teamplay existed, making them a necessity for this class. - CVs do actually have major drawbacks and risks. CVs are entirely reliant on their team, if the team fails there's literally nothing a CV can do about it. CVs also come with limited armament that are far more fragile than even the most basic DD turret. Contrary to popular belief plane reserves are highly limited and for most CVs, even high tier ones, 1-2 failed early strikes will mean that you're gonna have no squads left in the latter half of the game. Planes need to be carefully managed, targets carefully selected, they are by no means an expendable resource. If you get good damage into an enemy ship (or even a kill) but lose all of your planes then that is a failed strike, even if it doesn't look like it. Which brings me to this: AA as a whole is an incredibly unfun mechanic on both sides (although I do believe it does it's job). Take the above situation, both the target and the CV will think they've failed. It should be redesigned, but the question is how? Any changes that gives players more control over AA is an indirect buff to CVs, as I can guarantee the average playerbase will not be able to handle it. And while I do believe some AA values need to be looked at and perhaps BB AA nerfed to make them more dependent on cruisers for support, as it stands right now CVs shouldn't be buffed in any direct manner. That does not mean CVs are a failed concept. On the contrary, if the beta has taught us anything it's that CVs worked marvelously in the role they're supposed to play, even if they were overpowered at the time. WG making CVs go pretty much extinct is the root cause of so many problems we have today.

Remove T4/5 CV manual attacks to prevent seal clubbing. Give out one of the most effective and overpowered seal clubbers for free in the next event. #justWGthings

You have obviously not been around for long enough to see what WG has done with a few premiums. I only need to point to the hilarious Kutuzov buff because it was "underperforming" (aka in the upper mid in terms of stats).

Actually if you play strike Ranger and enemy Hiryu wants you dead, you're dead. How? Simple, really. Go with torp bombers first, force flooding and damcon, then burn him to death. Ranger is gonna die unless RNGesus intervenes. It's the most basic sniping strategy. Question still remains as to why Hiryu should even attempt a snipe early on, though. After all, you're effectively cutting your own income by making yourself unable to shoot down enemy planes.

So forcing teamplay is bad apparently. Really, let's examine why CVs currently "do not work". CVs are supposed to punish everything and anything that attempts to go solo aside from their counter class, which are cruisers. Guess what class is severely lacking in player numbers, currently? That's right, cruisers. What classes are currently the most popular? BBs and DDs, both of which are more than legitimate targets to CVs, they're the ones you're supposed to kill. So without cruisers people cannot make pushes or flanks with a few ships work, forcing them to huddle up. That in itself is, like lemming trains, imo not a bad thing. It's what you're doing with it that can become a problem. Being a big murderblob does not necessarily mean that everyone is going to camp at the edge of the map, it's that the average player prefers to do so rather than pushing aggressively as a unit. Again, CVs do not enforce such a behavior. A blob of ships is not static, it can very much move. If the majority however decides not to do so then that's not the CV's problem, no? Combine that with the hilariously low average skill of the playerbase and you have an environment in which skilled CV players easily thrive. After all, there are targets aplenty which your class is supposed to counter, driven mostly by scrubs who like to disregard even the most basic teamplay completely, with very few ships around that are able to counter yourself. How do you solve it? Taking care of BB overpopulation to make cruisers more popular would be a good start. I feel like WG will never do that, though. As for your inability to "dodge damage", you're not supposed to be able to do that. If a CV has the time and space to comfortably set up his drops, you deserve to die. End of story.

Nah, your stuff is imo very much readable with proper formatting, use of spoilers and awesome pictures. ;)

And before you do all of the above actually put some research into naval battles you're pointing at. There is so much wrong with this that I cannot even bring myself to read past it and the whole "give ships realistic range" stuff.

Nah, because of stronk russian teknology they will be getting speed boost, smoke, radar, hydro AND def aa.

While I agree that this is complete and utter nonsense, Hood's AA is actually very pathetic according to preliminary stats. Even with Def AA she's at best gonna be a nuisance, nothing more.

What is it caused by? Lack of counters (CVs/Cruisers) Why does no one play high tier CVs? Various reasons. Why does no one play high tier cruisers? BB overpopulation. Solve BB overpopulation and the number of DDs will go down accordingly.