TheIdesOfMarch93

That's a bloody nightmare. Was hard enough beforehand when all you needed was 30 at the minimum, now I'll literally have to memorise all the loadout specs for all the carriers I'll possibly run into in the game just so I can know how many planes do I exactly need to kill. Thanks for the enlightenment anyway, should help! And oh I've seen you play before, you're a scary good CV player haha.

I was one of the battleship players that ABSOLUTELY HATED on the Tirpitz when she first came out last year. Screamed countless times in chat and irl when I couldn't citadel her even at full broadside. Finally shelled out money and bought her in a bundle package during Christmas last year as a gift to myself, and safe to say I've not regretted it since! Tirpitz is a VERY DANGEROUS ship if you have a battleship captain with a DD mentality driving her. Get in close, keep angling keep your opponents guessing, charge the enemy and make him craphis pants at your recklessness and you can very possibly come out of a 1v1 against an Amagi or Norca smelling of roses in the morning. Her secondaries are very good and her torpedoes give her a very good short-range punch. If you're fighting a Tirpitz, don't expect to kill her with citadels because like any other ship she will take big alpha damage hits easily enough. All you have to do is shoot as soon as you spot her and keep going till she sinks. Or if you're a CV divebomb the hell out of her: as a Tirpitz captain I'm scared shitless when I see a Ranger DB squad making a beeline for me, and that's even with the AA flag up and my ship AA-specced.

I sold her the moment I could move up to the Budyonny, never regretted it. I don't think the large calibre guns the Kirov has is sufficient compensation for her being about as flimsy as T6 or 7 Russian cruisers when their rate of fire is so bad anyway.

I think I recognise a few familiar names here on this thread. Anyone here seen me round before? I usually play T8+ games now, unless you're lucky enough to catch me coming out with my ARP Myoko or Kamikaze for some low or mid-tier fun.

I think for a premium Tier VIII US battleship we should instead go with the USS West Virginia. She's basically a Hull C Colorado-class BB but with the 5-inch DP turrets that were mounted on the Norca-class BBs onwards. Buff her armor value up to at least Nagato level and she can stand her own ground against a Norca or Amagi owing to her excellent armor layout which allows for very good angling. Or knock it down to Tier VII, it's no big difference really.

I see you posted this on the forum as we were discussing in game!

The torp mounts on the April Fool's ships aren't fixed!!! Just very limited traverse!

I'm on the Budyonny now (and I hereby christen her the Buddy Ship!) and she's an ABSOLUTE monster. She reminds me a lot of early OBT Cleveland before the nerfs came in, with Omaha-level AA (but then again how often do you see CVs nowadays??) and with 4km quintuple torpedo launchers on each side. Excellent ship to kite with and play backline with. Stay behind battleships, get the gun accuracy mod and watch the Buddy laugh at the idea of dispersion and land at least 7 out of 9 shots on target provided you aimed correctly and the target is sailing in a constant line. Her fire chance is a little insane at the moment, each match I play her in regularly nets me at least 9 or 10 fires set. But she's not OP when it comes to armor though. If you thought Nurnberg was a glass cannon this one is like a cheese cannon. You're basically a huge floating citadel and if a battleship catches you at the right moment you can get wiped out in a single broadside. So plan ahead, use as much cover as you need, and stay in packs with your fleet. Budyonny + Tirpitz = carnage for the enemy, because both are quickfiring ships and with high speeds and good turret radius you can play bad cop/worse cop by constantly showering the enemy with HE whilst Tirpitz wrecks their faces with AP, all whilst you're running away from them and kiting them to chase you. And yes, for some weird reason at the moment nobody's really shooting the Russian cruisers a lot in mid to high tier gameplay. Don't ask me why, but this is like the Second U-Boat Happy Time that the Germans had during WWII!

*Press spacebar for jump* ------ Now for the duration of the April Fool's Event almost no torpedo kills are possible! Ought to teach Shimas a lesson! :p

The DD tree looks good. But just one small quibble. A T10 destroyer with no torpedo tubes?? That's like a battleship with only one turret, even if it's a Yamato one with three 18-inch guns. Just seems weird to me. Even gunboat DDs like the Gearing and Khabarovsk have torpedoes and pretty decent ones at that.

It's like a Russian version of the US Pensacola at T5. Mediocre AA, paper armor and an engine that just loves to be knocked out, but very good guns and shell damage. She can citadel herself even from the bow (yep no kidding I just did that in a previous match) and you're almost always guaranteed a fire whenever you fire HE at any ship. Just angle a lot, keep moving keep twisting, and never get caught alone because you will get eaten up by AP shells from quickfiring enemy cruisers.

This skill is useless for US battleships, simply because there aren't enough secondaries to make it worthwhile and all the secondaries fire HE shells. Without this 5-point skill you can already put out some decent fire with your secondaries on a US BB against an enemy destroyer provided you know how best to position your ship to uncover as many secondary firing angles as possible. 5 points for this skill? It's a nope for me.

Torpedo quantity loadouts should be significantly limited. Infinite torpedoes make for unbelievable wastage of firepower and horrible impact on gameplay especially at high tiers (think Shimakaze flooding any open areas with 15 torps every 2 minutes). Either that, or make ammo replenishment prohibitively expensive so as to discourage hair-trigger gameplay. It isn't funny when you're driving a New Orleans and surprise a Shimakaze coming round an island 6km away and he dumps all 15 torps just to kill you when he could have very well smoked up, ran away and saved his torps for the Yamato/Montana on my team.

I've noticed that Yamato shells are regularly failing to pen or citadel me in my Montana, even when I am bow-on to her which in the past would have still earned me a beating. Lots more bounces and outright spalling of shells. On the flip side, the US 16 inch shells seem to spall a lot more as well at medium-to-long ranges even against cruisers.

Not true. If you ask me, frankly the fighter plane loadout for battleships is even more useless than the spotter. Sure at extended range you cannot land accurate shots unless RNG really favours you in that match, but at the very least you already have a scout ahead of you and a bird-eye view of what's coming. And the fighter launched from a battleship is still equally useless when it comes to detecting DDs or deterring air attacks on you, because it still needs to be over the right patch of sky at exactly the right time to spot the DD below it or intercept an enemy torpedo or divebomber squad. Until WG invents a way to let you vector your fighter aircraft without it just being stuck in an automatic circling pattern you can't even control the speed of I'd say the fighter escort plane is pretty much a useless gesture.

Totally agree with you here. Many people forget that the first task of a carrier is to establish air superiority or supremacy, THEN the second task of going after ships will make sense. Even if the enemy thinks and manages to get one squadron past your fighter umbrella over your fleet it does not even guarantee a kill (ships can still evade your drop you know), and you just run out of reserve planes and still manage to do negligible damage at all. It is not fair nor wise to bank on your carrier to do your ship sinking for you. You've got guns that load and fire way faster than any CV torpedo squad turnaround cycle, use them!

Since the Germans only have one notable attempt at carrier technology (the Graf Zeppelin) perhaps they could put it as a single-ship CV tree in the German line, linked with BOTH the cruiser and battleship trees. So in order for you to get it, you need to have Admiral Hipper AND Bismarck researched. I think that's a fair way to represent this ship in WoWS, since it follows German doctrine about perfecting their surface fleet before trying their hands on carrier aviation.

Going by all the talk here from guys saying they like racking up shipkills over planekills, you better pray you do not run into me when I sail my Bogue. Given that I have no intentions of going up the CV tree (since it's not really for me, I'm still a battleship captain at heart) I keep my Bogue solely to troll enemy CVs by denying them the chance to do anything worthwhile. It is true that an air-superiority Bogue's worst enemy is enemy AA, especially from cruisers like the Cleveland and battleships like New York upwards, but if you meet anyone who is smart with what he does he will never send his planes to chase yours. He'll simply park his fighters over his own fleet and help scout for DDs and catch the enemy strike planes coming in for the attack. Oh, and one word of advice, learn how best to use manual barrage. It is a massive boost against enemy planes if you know how to catch them right where you want to. DBs don't suck that much either actually, particularly since USN CVs have smaller aiming ovals for their DBs than the IJN counterparts.

Sometimes when I'm in my Bogue and have a Hosho/Langley on my team I will work with him to gang the enemy carrier fighters together. He sends his out to bait them to gang him, then I just simply send in my fighters and barrage my way through everything. Yes my friendly CV loses his fighter squad, but in all due honesty 4/5 friendly planes killed in exchange for downing 10+ enemy fighters is a tradeoff anyone would make. Besides if you're teamed with me in my Bogue you don't need fighters, because I always run fighter setup on my CV and troll enemy carriers by playing air defense. Since I'm not looking to advance past the Bogue I'm quite happy to make life a living hell for enemy carriers. And oftentimes once I neuter the enemy CVs my surface fleet teammates can then focus better on killing enemy ships instead of having to watch the skies for air strikes.

Just a quick reply here. For modules, pick the ones improving secondary battery accuracy/survival rates. Your secondary five-inchers are dual-purpose, so the more of them that survive in battle the better your long-range AA will be. The accuracy doesn't hurt too. For the other three modules, pick the Damage Control, Improved Steering and Improved Concealment modules. Your basic range for your main guns are good enough as it is, you don't need more range to get into sniping matches with other BBs. For captain skills, max out your Firing Training skills. As for the rest, just pick the usual Situational Awareness (VERY USEFUL FOR HUNTING DDs), improved turret rotations and loading time, Superintendent and Damage Control. Oh, and one more thing. The NC is like a baby Iowa. Same guns as the Iowa, just a bit less armored but she can dish it out very well like the Iowa. She's a keeper for sure.

Never play too close in a Colorado. Always stay with the fleet because if you get caught out alone that's it for you. Improve your leading and choose your shots carefully. When you can get upgrades getting the -20% rudder shift time upgrade is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Try to use islands as much as possible to pick shots off. Colorado is like a sniper rifle. RNG likes you, you get 3 citadel hits and can possibly one-shot a Nagato and more than one-shot an Atago. But Colorado is hampered by speed (which isn't so bad if you think about it) as well as the general WoWS gameplay where people just don't like sailing in groups and think they can Rambo it alone.

Not sure who I've run into here before, but if you do run into me, say hi. Usually a BB captain. As well as the one giving tactical orders in Domination

I screamed a couple of times when I was playing my Colorado and ran into a cruiser swarm or a Nagato. Once I damn nearly got oneshotted by a Nagato that got lucky with her salvo. I can fully understand the hate for the Craparado (as I call it) as even the AA buff isn't much when you consider that most of the AA guns are short-range point-defence ones that don't shoot at targets till they get within like 2 or 3km range, which is way too close. RNG dispersion is hellish to gauge in the BB and with four less guns it just means an even wider margin of dispersion for less shells. Would be happy with an upgunned New Mexico really, the armor protection is about the same as a Colorado right now anyway and I get four more guns which is a lot. Colorado works only as a base defence ship but then again it means you're absolutely next to useless in helping to push to cap bases with your teammates due to your low speed and horrendous shell dispersion, not to mention long reload times.

Am I the only person that genuinely does not experience shell dispersion problems bad enough to wreck playing BBs for me? I find that with shell dispersion issues proper leading and shooting helps alleviate it substantially.

Learn to lead, and learn it fast. Shooting at range is your best friend, but don't be afraid to close in more when the situation arises. Know your surroundings, watch for sneaky destroyers! Always try to pre-rotate your turrets ahead of any directional changes you make, very often that one or two extra salvos you get off with pre-planned turret rotations will be the difference between you winning or losing, or between you taking someone down with you or you just dying for nothing! Teamwork teamwork teamwork. Sail with the majority of the fleet, stand off at distance and rain fire down. Once you get the hang of first salvo hits you're pretty much unstoppable unless you're stuck with a horrible team. And no, this is not a game where the complaint of "aimbots" is going to work! So take heart that your kills and hits are your skills and your skills alone!