Gudgeon

In a nutshell, you won't counter a CV in a DD if the CV is determined to focus out DD's. He will keep you spotted and between him and the rest of his team will reduce your HP to zero and crush your soul in the process. You could try playing the Oland, Kidd or Akizuki in ranked, as they do have some AA. To be honest I would skip playing DD's in ranked, unless you want to end up at the doctors needing blood pressure pills. To be honest, will you enjoy playing ranked in any class of ship (except easy mode CV's)......? If you don't need the steel, I would avoid griefing yourself. Is steel really worth the aggravation of this mode?

It is quite simple. Can you please stop the nonsense that I have just witnessed (as the losing team) where a try hard division of an Enterprise, Östergötland and BB rock up. This was a super unicum clan padding numbers. The point being that the CV is tier 8 with a tier 9 DD that conveniently has AA and the DD captain running radio location. Can you tell how the enemy CV can pin point the DD's instantly? Yes, nice, not only can the CV recycle planes constantly, the radio location of the DD acts like surface radar for the CV too. Totally broken. And you guessed it, our cv was at a total disadvantage, without taking into account that they could not walk and chew gum at the same time anyway. I have better things to do than play this nonsense, like creosote the garden fence with my toothbrush. But this is a call to the player base, please DO use divisions to do this crap, so the game is unbearable for the majority of the player base and maybe something will be done about all these kinds of exploits that the opposing players have no control over, except 'suck it up'. Maybe, maybe, one day WOW's will become fun again?

Can you tell my they took a tier 8 CV with a tier 9 DD, with the best AA at tier 9 and a tier 9 BB? Why did they not just play two other tier 8 ships with the tier 8 CV? Don't try and be clever and think we are naive, it is pretty obvious what is going on here....you know.....a DD the solo CV will struggle to kill, and if the solo CV player is still learning, said player will waste planes and time if he focus'es the said DD player. Radio location is just the icing on the cake to allow enemy DD's to be intercepted and hunted a lot quicker by allowing the planes to home in on the map square radio location is pointing to. It is called gaming the system and quite easy to control, just only allow divisions with ships of equal tier. At least things should be a little more balanced regarding ship attributes within the division. This is a legal but dubious tactic. Perhaps it is time to play a tier 8 CV with two tier 9 AA DD's and use radio location to triangulate targets and truly refine the tactic. The enhanced AA of the DD's will negate CV guy if he is inexperienced. Winning is everything and fun is optional. This combination of CV's with other ships of higher tier (to take advantage of the high tier ship characteristics and gain an advantage) has been done before, so not new, but I guess, as it as taken four years to allow customization of the consumable buttons, something more fundamental to the game may take, say, 10 years to fix.

All true. The is the core problem here, the skill disparity between the best and worst player in lets admit, tier 10, is huge, without the force multiplier of a team of three good players in a division. Let me be clear, I have no problem what so ever with three 60%+ WR's in a division in random battles, they are only playing the game like the 45% guy they are up against. Heck, if it comes to it, follow the division and help and try and play as a team? The 45% guy has run before he can walk because the game finance mechanics has allowed it, nothing else. Jeez, I did not go above tier 6 in 2015 for 1000+ battles. The players were too good for me at that time. Just get rid of the crappy exploitable game mechanics and perhaps the 45% guy might actually survive long enough to learn something, or even feel that camping or yolo'ing is not their best option.

To a point, good players are mostly only going out in trio's to reduce the throws from the not so skilled players. And whatever you say, radio direction allows you to fly the planes straight down the radio direction track with 100% certainty of spotting the DD. As it was a standard battle, the DD was not lurking around one of three cap points.Just a random square in the map, but closest to his DD radio spotter and the DD was instantly spotted and attacked from air.

WargamingPete, I was in a DD, I came second on points for basically being forced to be passive and was last ship sunk when trying to actually do something. The team lost on points, positioning and anything else you wish to think about. It was a standard battle and I witnessed our Yugumo try and play at the start and the rocket planes homed in on the said DD like some kind of magnetic attraction. Repeatedly. He went back to port quite quickly, through no real fault of his own. And yes, he smoked, but 1 minute later that has cleared and the cv goes back and continues their work. I was in an tier 9 DD with AA, but no smoke, so I could kind of stick my finger up to the CV, but in reality all he has to do is keep spotting me and forcing me around the map, not really doing anything constructive, unless I decide to yolo. It is a 'GG' pretty much from the start, unless the enemy team really messes up. Did they not stop CV's running radio direction? Correct me if I am wrong as I did not play the game with any real regularity for about a year.

This mode is the only way to have consistently fair match making........avoid tier 8 at all other times if possible.

The above posts describe the current game state in a nutshell, speaking as someone playing since 2015 and 13K battles. I am not in a particularly active clan battle team, but I could not believe the meta when I played some clan battles at the start of the season. Basically every game felt like Groundhog day. Not very interesting. Ranked has been dire this season and for some unknown reason it is not possible to at least distribute similar number of radar ships across the two teams by now? Very unbalanced. The worst ratio I witnessed was 3-0. I mean, WG managed to count and balance DD's after 2-3 years, so why not radar ships? I thought it was me, but is there not a problem if random's are no longer fun and that seems to be a more and more common opinion? I barely play the game these days as it is hard to feel you have had fun.

"a few games ago i launched a full salvo to another NC at about 18km" There is your problem. A lack of experience by rushing up the tiers. You need to learn positioning and not expect to dev strike ships from 18km for one thing. I'm afraid that all the BB's you have played previously are slow, so you are always chasing the battle in those ships, unless you know how to position. It is harder to play slow ships correctly than fast ones, as you have to make the correct decisions and plan ahead or you will be in trouble. You need to open up 2-3 other ship lines and expand your in game experience. It is not really that time consuming, considering the time you will spend being ineffective in a slow BB. The Iowa is OK, but you will be punished if not positioned correctly with taking multiple citadels. And yes, tier 8 and above is a different game to the tiers below.

I understand your feelings fully. There is a lack of balance in the game that did not used to exist in the heyday back in 2016-17-18. There were unbalanced ships back in the day, but I'm afraid the main balance problems now are more fundamental and concern actual game mechanics and a class, than sink the OP Kami/Guillo/Gremmy/Belfast and swing the battle towards your team. That was the classic period of wows and many hours of fun were had, win or lose. I have scaled back over the last year and a half, but just drop in now and again to test the water, so to speak. If I ever uninstalled, I would not re-install, so that is the main reason I have kept the game installed, just in case I have an incentive to play more often. As time goes on, I cannot see a renaissance in this game.

And I so wanted to keep losing in ranked too. It is character building.

I am a 57% WR player in randoms (13K battles). 50% played solo. I cannot get past rank 10. Rank 11 is easy to go through, but you cross the invisible line when you reach tier 10. I can win 90% of my battles at rank 11, but probably 20% at rank 10. I am bounced backwards and forwards through this invisible line and this is not a co-incidence it is a proven trend for me as it has happened five plus times this season. I see crazy things going on with player actions and feel powerless to escape the quagmire that exists at rank 10. As a side note, I have ranked out twice before in 100-130 battles previously. This is just too much to bear this season. If you don't get to rank 8 or above in the first week, I think you will need to be super unicum to escape this mess at rank 10. At rank 10, if one of your important ships is not very good/inexperienced (and I mean a DD or Radar cruiser as the important ships, not a BB) you probably may as well quit to port. If you are really unlucky your Sinop will get RNG blessed by the almighty and come top after firing 1-2 good broadsides the whole match while everyone else actually tries to win the battle.

As much as I am frustrated by the general player base, you cannot penalize bad players as the game will cease to exist very rapidly. There is no way the developer will actively seek to punish players for 'doing their thing', as bad as it may be towards contributing to the team. You just have to accept the actions of the players in your random team I'm afraid.

Try reverse psychology and constantly create threads in the forum praising how great submarines are and what a brilliant addition to the game they could be, then see if WG still do the complete opposite to the perceived player base opinion and NOT implement them?

The Venezia is not OP, you just got wrecked once. A Venezia has to take risks to be in an OP position, Stalingrads don't, they are OP from all map positions. Tech tree ships should be left alone, it is certain reward ships that break the game and you should complain about. Said ships will not be nerfed as they are a tool to keep the player base 'engaged' with the game in the chase for a truly OP ship in its tier. Having actual 'fun' in this game is not implemented I'm afraid.

At least RTS cv's countered each other. It was just the discrepency in player skills that was the problem....OH WAIT....nothing has changed in this respect....good cv player v bad cv player =.......

This is making the CV rework look good. Please, spend all this time, money and effort in game design improving what you already have, not implementing more broken game elements. You have the basis for a good game still, it is just buried somewhere deep in the last 2 years work. Bring it back and forget this nonsense. Bring back RTS CV's too. There will be two classes that are immune against counter play. That is not good.

Yes, sounds familiar then to what has gone on here since February last year. That is me over and out then. I can use the space on my SSD for something that is actually fun to play, not something that just provides grief in my spare time. This game used to be fantastic in 2016,17,18.

A decent CV player and the radar situation at tier 10 (which will only get worse with the RU cruiser split) + all the sonar makes DD play practically impossible these days. It is not worth the hassle of playing DD's at high tiers these days. You mention DD's stealth firing? That has not existed for how many years.....firing from smoke....with all the tools on the ships these days, that is a quick route back to port if the enemy knows what to do.

Exactly my thoughts. In any case, the Mosko has been power crept badly and the RU cruiser split will probably render it obsolete. I have barely played this game since the CV rework, and nothing on the horizon makes me want to spin the game up to the extent I did in the heyday of this game. The shame is, tier 10 is horrible to play in general, and the MM renders lower tiers a misery 70% of the time too. Basically "I won't get fooled again" regarding perma camo's etc in this game.

What is wrong with seeing wall to wall CV/cruiser/Stalingrad team line ups? DD's and BB are soooo last year. Great job by the balancing department for creating this meta. It rocks. It really does.

DESTROYERS!!......have been power-crept out of the game by wall to wall radar and the cv rework. If you are getting torped by DD's and getting sunk repeatedly, you might want to try zigzagging, starting you engine and/or not bow tank for 10 minutes etc. Review you play style before blaming a class that has been power-crept out of the game.

Exactly the problem. You can make money at tier 10 by playing abysmally if you have premuim account and camo's etc. I play WOT badly, and for all its faults I do feel that you have to try and play well at tiers 9 and 10, or you will break the bank. It motivates you to improve (if you have that mindset of course). I learnt warships when only USN and IJN lines existed. I played 200 battles in my tier 6 Cleveland. That is how I learnt to play. When I went to tier 7 and above, I was always conscious of not being the potato on the team. These days there are always 5 potato's on any team, any tier.

Just think, he would have sunk three BB's in 30 seconds in a Smolensk.

There is a very wide skill base in this game. Nothing will change.Working as intended.