TheIdesOfMarch93

I've been citadelling Fusos at max range with spotter aircraft with my first salvo upon spotting them the moment my plane goes up into the air. :p Nasty shock for them! Arizona guns are godly with their dispersion and accuracy. Literally point and shoot. Under 8km you barely even need to lead any shot just aim for centre mass of the ship you are brawling and let fly. I rushed two Texas players in my Arizona and nuked them both in as many salvos. Granted I had help from a friendly Gremyaschy running HE interference but still, the feeling of taking 23k health away from a battleship when you're only in Tier 6 is just a chuckle to be had!

Stealth nerf to her accuracy or not, Arizona has got to be by far my favourite battleship to play now, even more so than my venerable North Carolina and Montana. She's like a New Mexico with better accuracy, and if you go down AA build for your mods and captain skills you can buff her AA to a respectable 50++ score (not including flags) which is enough to make a Ranger think twice about trying to hit you with his planes. About seven battles in her so far, six victories one defeat. What's noteworthy is that in all my victories I only survived in one, but I still made top three, if not top scorer on my team each and every time. Brilliant ship. WG did her justice!

I'm worried that if Arizona gets the same matchmaking as New Mexico she's going to get absolutely shattered by T8 battleships. She's only marginally improved in hull armor from the New York, though she has the same number of guns the New Mexico has. WG probably could consider giving her preferential matchmaking such that she'll run up only to T7 maximum battleships IMHO...

I had the good fortune of getting into my first match of the night with my Lexington pairing up with Kann_Nix_Extreme in his Essex. He will gladly attest to how I've managed to pull off a very good game despite being half drunk! :p Glad to see you around, and thanks for drawing the enemy team's attention to your higher-tiered planes.

Simple answer: YOU DON'T. You run as fast as you can away from them and kite them to chase you until your team gets the range to back you up with covering fire. A Tirpitz will get munched by any Tier X cruisers.

I once sailed blissfully broadside to a Yamato at 15km range because I was too busy brawling another North Carolina in my Tirpitz a couple days after I bought her.... Guess what? I got away with major overpenetration and a mere 10k health reduction after Yamato opened up on me. And I survived till the end of the match which my team won. Sometimes luck just has it for you. :p Kek

I've done surprisingly well in my Lexington. My advice is to neither use AS setup nor strike, stock setup gives you the best flexibility particularly when you go up against another fellow US carrier. Gamble on the chances of him going full strike as well just to outdo you in damage output, and you basically have free reign of the skies with your fighters cutting him down slowly but surely, whilst still having significant damage potential. You really do not need the extra two DBs, they are not a worthy tradeoff for that fighter squad you will need for fleet and self defence. Oh, and get good at manual drops for TBs and DBs. Like, seriously good. Lots of practice, you won't go wrong!

In the latest upcoming 0.5.6 patch there is this new provision added under the newly revised criteria to designate players as teamkillers and punish them with corresponding penalties, as shown below: "The ‘Teamkiller’ status now takes into account allied aircraft destroyed in an Air Squadron Assault, launched by pressing [Alt], as well as damage to allies from fire and flooding" I personally find this absolute BS, because when you're a CV player sometimes sacrificing planes is part of a legitimate tactic in order to even the odds against an enemy CV player with fighter superiority either numerically or quality-wise over you. We know that USN fighters while being markedly superior to Japanese fighters will still get overwhelmed by more than 1 enemy squadron at a time. So what is one to do then if you know you're going to lose a fighter squad, but that fighter squad is tying down two full-strength enemy squads that you can barrage to death with either your other fighter squad (if you are running Air Superiority loadout) or your ally's fighter squad? Nobody has ever complained about their planes being TK-ed by friendly carriers before, why meddle with something that isn't broken? Now after 0.5.6 there is effectively no way for a US carrier to counter an IJN balanced or AS loadout any longer with the "bait and barrage" tactic. God knows if you do that in a 1v1 CV scenario would you still become a teamkiller for killing your own planes, and in a 2v2 scenario it is pointless to cooperate with your teammate and take down enemy fighters tied down by his planes that are already set to lose their engagements. So what is one to do, just give up with US carriers altogether because there is now almost no way to beat IJN CV captains at killing fighters without an outright individual plane superiority over them? My Ranger fighters fully upgraded and maxed (other than the 5 point Air Superiority skill though) can easily trash a Hiryu or Shokaku squad in a 1v1 scenario, but in a 1v2 fighter squad scenario they still end up losing anyway. So what's the point if Wargaming now decides to punish CV players for using bait-and-barrage tactics to help even out numerical inferiority? Any thoughts? I hope Wargaming takes such objections seriously!

I did read carefully. But the buffs for IJN AA is still fairly cosmetic by the looks of it, because IJN AA guns are never comparable to US AA guns in terms of damage dealt and DPS.

I suspect the way the devs want high-tier CV gameplay to be like is to remove altogether the "kingmaker" status that carriers can have in one-shotting a ship by buffing high-tier AA defences so much that you wouldn't want to attack a ship that hasn't had her AA mounts whittled down significantly by surface action. So instead of carriers being good at physically removing any ship from the enemy team carriers would now be relegated to picking for scraps and finishing off heavily wounded ships that are unable to put up a substantial AA wall or take too much punishment. It's a mixed feeling for me, because despite the fact that as a US battleship captain I absolutely adore how my high-tier US battleships can drop entire attack waves from the sky I do see how carrier players would now feel frustrated that they can't make a meaningful contribution to the game without their surface fleet team cutting down the enemy AA defence odds some.

Only US battleship AA is getting buffed significantly? IJN ships do get some form of AA buff but it's really cosmetic due to the abysmal damage properties of their AA guns anyway. In any case even before 0.5.6 US battleships are often the last ships a CV should ever want to target.

Unfortunately auto-drop for divebombers are still crap, because I've never seen a DB squad land all its bombs even on a STATIONARY target, and even if they do 4/5 bombs do NOT equate 4/5 fires set. Divebombs are far more reliant on RNG to help them because their base damage dealt is so pitifully low (until you get to the 1000-pounders) that without setting fires you might as well have been throwing pinpricks at enemy ships other than destroyers.

I'm on the Ranger and with 10k xp to go before getting the Lexington. My personal recommendation? Go for stock loadout. Full strike loadout is pointless because you sacrifice any form of self-defence (both for your planes and your ship) in exchange for an extra DB squadron which has absolutely random damage dealing qualities (even with manual drop, RNG still decides if you hit or miss, or if you even score a fire on your target if you hit him). Air Superiority loadout used to be fairly feasible before 0.5.5 and the reworking of the "Clear Skies" achievement, due to the fact that you only needed a minimum of 30 plane kills to get that achievement and the corresponding AA boost flag. Now after 0.5.5 killing 30 planes isn't enough, you need to wipe out at least half of all planes potentially present in battle (including floatplanes launched from surface ships), and after 0.5.6 gets into effect bait-and-barrage tactics effectively becomes illegal (because apparently killing your own planes or your teammate's willing-sacrificed planes constitutes teamkilling). Couple that with the fact that you rarely get into 2v2 CV scenarios nowadays, and there is precious little point in you chasing the "Clear Skies" achievement for the AA boost flags and sacrificing any meaningful avenue of dealing damage (your loss of the only TB squadron you have). Stock, whilst not the best to go against an IJN CV will do quite nicely against another US CV (provided he is not running AS loadout) and you get to dish out considerable damage and contribute to your team winning. Torpedo bombers will always be far better than DBs, and you still retain at least a fighter squad to fight off carrier snipe attempts or provide limited air cover over your fleet. Of course having a single fighter squad means you have to pray your planes are in the right place at the right time, because you won't have enough time nor planes to cover everybody. And ultimately, if you want to progress up the CV tree you will need to deal damage to earn any worthwhile amount of XP. So stock is the only way to go, although it's best described as the "lesser of three evils" loadout for US carriers.

Am I the only battleship captain that rubs his hands with glee whenever I get into a 2v2 CV match when I'm driving my North Carolina, Iowa or Montana? *snickers* Only time I'd be worried about carriers in a battleship is when I take Tirpitz out. I regularly pray for a huge air battle whenever I play my US battleships, even my AA gunners need practice you know!

Probably once we get more Russian high-tier cruisers we will see a return of carriers to high-tier gameplay, since Russian AA is not as murderous as US or German ones.

Chapayev is a godsend of a ship. In fact I'd say the Russian cruiser line feels almost exactly like playing the Cleveland-style US cruisers (albeit with much weaker AA). Chapayev is a good DD hunter but personally I find that to be a waste of the ship's potential. She feels more like a flamethrower and cruiser killer and fits in very well with my playstyle of standoff range firing. You don't get kills much but you get to rack up a disgusting amount of damage dealt with her guns, and her HE shells are no slouch when it comes to setting absolutely everything on fire. As usual, don't get caught alone and you'll be just fine playing a support role. With her sheer RoF the presence of a Chapayev to back up any flank or fleet group is often the deciding factor between turning the tide or getting steamrolled down one flank.

I'm primarily a high-tier BB captain now, and I play more games in my North Carolina and Montana nowadays than my New Mexico. But even so I've still kept the lovely New Mex on in my port, primarily because she is probably the best US battleship tier for tier. Great armor when angling, great torpedo belt that can take hits and still you won't flood, and the next time you get 12 guns to play with is when you get to Montana at Tier 10, and trust me in WoWS firepower volume works wonders as long as you aim right. A New Mex in a competent captain's hands can easily go dancing against a North Carolina or Tirpitz and still come out victorious. Her relatively slow speed makes her a great dodger of torpedoes and her AA complement isn't something to sniff at either!

So somebody explain this match above for me. How is it that I went up against a Ranger and Ryujo in my Air-Superiority Independence, roundly trounced both their planes with 63 kills, got my kills either through focused fire or catching them in my barrage, and I still didn't get the "Clear Skies" achievement?! "Clear Skies" and the corresponding reward flag that gives an AA boost to any ships equipped with it is pretty much the only reason why I play carriers at all. WoWS has been horribly inconsistent with how to record plane kills for the achievement, because I've gotten "Clear Skies" before 0.5.5 with barrage fire also included, and more than half of enemy planes killed credited to me. Quite clearly that is the case here so why is it I still didn't get the achievement? Those ten flags mean a lot to me when I take my Tirpitz out, because Tirpitz without any sort of AA boost, be it flags or stats (and don't tell me to use cruiser escort because it almost always never happens anyway) is just xp meat for even Independence manual DB drops! (On a side note whoever said that playing AS doesn't pay is talking through their noses. Sure you don't sink ships and you might still lose the match because of your surface fleet teammates, but at least then it's their fault for not being to shoot straight instead of you just glory-hunting for ship kills and leaving your team devoid of any air cover at all.)

"Passive" play by mid to high-tier battleship players? Well well well... you haven't met me go full ham yet in my Montana!

Totally agree on the speed. It's painful to see a Tirpitz being able to outrun me in a straight line when I take my Iowa out. Only way I can get to the historical speed of the Iowa is with the speed flag equipped. Iowa with 3 extra knots would help so much!

The fighter plane setup for battleships is useless in my opinion, because unless they happen to go right in the way of an enemy squadron they won't do squat in disrupting their attacks on you. I always pop my spotter aircraft up in the first minute of the match just to get some eyes on the enemy fleet for my team. When it comes to killing planes I still prefer to trust my AA, and imho having something but not needing it is better than not having something and you get caught with your pants down!

Now I miss selling my Bogue. I used to eat planes for breakfast lunch and dinner in that splendid little ship. With the Independence you rarely get matched up against stupid CV captains anymore.

This is what you can do with a AA-maxed Montana. I had this epic game earlier last month where me and another Yamato went full YOLO into B cap on Shatter Map against the two enemy Yamatos. Together we sank them both, but the real story here is how the enemy Essexes were sending in every single strike they could to sink my team's Yamato, getting their planes within 4km ranges of me and I simply chewed all of them up before they could do any damage. After that both Essexes decided it would be a smart idea to then go for me instead. And the plane kills in this match show the epic result! Definitely recommend you to maximise your AA for Montana with an AA build. Sure you run into fights without CVs, but trust me when you're a T10 battleship chances are you will need every single bit of AA buff you can get against T8 and above carriers who can often have a couple planes survive long enough to hit you with bombs or torpedoes. Very useful to keep allies around you too: simply tell everyone you have AA rating of 100 with a 7.2km coverage radius and everyone around you would tend to stay close to utilise your AA umbrella. Can't hurt to keep friends around!

Iowa isn't a bad ship. Generally all battleships from T8 upwards will punish you hard if you lack situational awareness and expose your flanks. She's still a monster in bow-forward fighting, and if you division with an Izumo or Yamato the pair of you would be virtually unstoppable. Always keep an eye on the minimap, don't tunnel vision, always keep your angling as much as possible, utilise your speed, and get really good with your shot leading. Iowa is a bit of a troubled ship for myself too (I think it was because of the captain coming from my jinxed pre-buff Colorado!) but she plays decently well on a good day.

I thought Die-Hard was the most rare?? Most rammings end up in both parties getting killed!