Syrchalis

They buffed it hard (from 10% to 33%) for cruisers because cruisers always were kind of weak and BBs strong enough. A single lucky citadel could ruin your game back in the day, even in high tier cruisers, so WG did something smart for a change.

Welcome to World of Battleships. As a major annoyance to them, you're not allowed to have fun or gain rewards like proper victim classes (cruisers).

So since there is a 14 page discussion about just the Takao already, I want to discuss the rest of the event. Because I am honestly rather pleased with it. Not everything is sunshine about it, but there seems to be a whole lot more positive things - or rather the positive things are more relevant. The mission objectives I like that WG went a bit more creative and actually did some interesting mission requirements. They also all seem doable for any player of any skill level - which is rather irrelevant to me as a player, but I like it as a designer. The best are actually those you have to go out of your way to get, like the secondary hits. However, not all is good, as I said. Because especially those you have to do unusual things for don't really work that great. Yes, getting lots of secondary hits is a nice challenge, but it's quite hard to really go for it, especially if you don't own a Yamato or Bismarck (or T9/10 KM BB). I would much rather have missions along the line of good achievements. Something like "stay in a cap for 10 minutes and stay alive". Things that are somewhat challenging and really make you do unusual things. I know it is hard to design those, because you will have hordes of players doing them, but others just want to play normally and win the game, so the mission can't work against that (sth like "move less than 5km in a game and win" would not be so great). Two things stand out though - killing 20 RU ships is hard with barely any around, especially at T8+. And 200 torpedo hits, not counting CV torpedo hits? That's just mean, especially for a mere Kongo. The compensation I feel like this is where WG could have done a bit better. While the mission objectives are somewhat complaining at a high level, this isn't. A port slot as reward if you already have the ship? I honestly expect more. You did not only do a rather lengthy "quest" to get the original ARP ship, but you also did the new mission and all you get for doing both and being an active player at two very different times is a port slot? I mean, at least it's a port slot, one should say - but yeah, at least give us some credits. The rewards So at first I was skeptical. Everyone can get the ships others and me earned partially even a year ago with much more lengthy missions, now for much less work? The 1mio damage for Kongo is a joke, I did that in 6-7 battles. But honestly, this turned into a positive point. I actually don't care. I find it cool I can get the few ships I missed myself (all Myokos except Haguro, which I furiously grinded so I have at least one "premium" Myoko and Haruna) - so I'm not really "getting" anything out of it. I had one of the Myokos, I had three of the Kongos, getting more of them doesn't give me much aside from colors to choose from. Exclusiveness is a nice thing, but I prefer it like this. Takao will already be exclusive, due to the mission requirements. And I somewhat like it this way. I rather have an Atago be the exclusive ships than a certain color of one of the Myokos or Kongos - simply because it's a tier higher and a premium ship one actually would need to buy. It sucks for those who can't get it though. My beef here is that everyone who didn't focus on one line or is rather new will have little chance to get it and that's a bit meh. Yeah you can grind a T9 in two months easily, even without premium, but that adds a whole new level of effort to the mission - but at least it's possible. So overall - if we exclude Takao - I'm actually pleased with this event as a whole and I would hope WG keeps doing events like this, where there are lots of rewards, with lots of fun missions. The rewards could be better though (if you don't get the ship you get a mere port slot).

Didn't log into Warships yesterday.

WG simply is a failshow when it comes to CVs. The issues not fixed and the issues worsened by their changes are countless. The actually positive things they did can be counted on one hand, even if you lost a finger or two. Defensive AA for high tier CVs (broke the stale meta - it's not really a "good" solution, but it IS a solution nevertheless) Inverted spread for IJN TBs and Saipan TPs Remove the retarded jumps in power of fighters (T4-6: 30dps fighters, T7+: 90dps fighters, wtf? Basically they did something really horrible and fixed it, still I count this so we get at least 3 things they did well) They needed a month or two to fix Dogfighting Expert being 10x too strong... TEN TIMES, A MONTH OR TWO. Please. That's like if a Boss in WoW has only 10% of his HP - that would be fixed within hours. Excuse me if I sound negative, but I've been waiting over a year for them to fix the class and they made it worse with every patch. If they at least wouldn't have done anything at all...

Anything CV related really. WG doesn't care about a class no one plays.

I find attacking enemy planes the real trouble. I can't even see them with my planes when straight ontop of them.

StuntMan0369, on 08 November 2016 - 03:15 PM, said: That game would have been a Solo Warrior if I had won as well, the end was 5 on 1. That really would have reinforced the 'Nikolai OP' topic And this doesn't?^^

People don't like clickbait, that's not a secret. I still thought an exciting title would be better than something overly descriptive like "look at those games where you did really well, but still lost, which are noteworthy enough for you to have made a screenshot to remember it, because you enjoyed it, despite it being a loss".

I also rather think those two things are less related to each other and more to what players wanted. With premium camo you can play T10 without losing credits, if that's what you want. Others enjoy farming credits in their T6-8 premiums, others would rather do it in their T10, and now they can - it's an option and more options means more fun. And the economy change was an answer to the old repair bill being punishing towards good players, who don't sit at the back, trying to minimize repair cost, but instead trying to push, trying to win.

Not sure how you would read that into it? I just want to see the most ridiculous losses of everyone, just for the fun of it. I was actually quite happy after that game.

Who in their right mind would play T10 all day long? Might as well stare at a wall, is more fun.

Well not all of it. They deal more damage than other ships - just look at any statistics. Alpha is superior to dot. Citadel damage can't be healed, fire and flooding can be 100% healed, HE damage as well. DPM is irrelevant because DPM is a fictional value that has nothing to do with real DPM. Most HE bounces on BBs, even on superstructure or deals no damage because it damages an AA gun. How ridic the difference is can just be shown with two fictional scenarios - BB vs CA at 2km, both broadsiding. CA can shoot HE or AP, BB shoots AP. Guess who survives the first salvo? Hint - it's just one ship. Now BB vs. CA at 10km angled. Guess who gets 5k penetrations and random 12k citadels and who gets maybe a 2-3k HE salvo? Yes, exactly. I'm not saying CA should beat BB, but their difference in power is beyond good and evil. A DD doesn't utterly rape a BB like a BB rapes a CA. If we put a DD and a BB at 2km broadside, the BB will get probably oneshot by a torpedo spread, but not before secondaries (not just german, but ANY secondaries) plus one salvo, no matter if HE or AP will tear the DD a new one. So the DD might not even survive, but if it does, it is really low on HP. Meanwhile a BB could easily delete 5 cruisers before it would die to them. So no, if you get countered you're fucked, except if you're a BB because you can just deal with it, heal up and all outplay potential is on YOUR side. If you mess up it's not a big deal, if the enemy messes up, you win.

We're not here to judge him, but help him.

I was exaggerating with the 600m turning circle radius. The whole fact there are BBs with that turning radius is BS, because nearly every cruiser has more after T5. Yamato might have best, but it's still bad compared to T8. And that's what the problem is. Below T10, BBs just turn too fast and in a too tight circle. Guns also turn too fast. It was officially said by WG that slow turning guns are a downside of BBs, yet they buffed that to stupid levels, because hurr durr KM BBs have to brawl. No, you help us understand. So you want BBs to: Have by far most health with most heals, starting from tier 3 already Deal the most damage Have overpowered secondaries that deal with their main counter, DDs Have hydro, so even braindead people can dodge torpedoes from their main counter, DDs Actually, they just shouldn't be countered by DDs at all, they should just be a small nuisance to the big mighty BB, so it doesn't get bothered while dealing three times the damage other classes do CVs are dead, but just in case someone plays one - BBs should also have the most powerful AA so that CVs have no chance against them either CVs should attack what exactly? Their ACTUAL counter, CAs? Tiny and hard to hit DDs? Yeah, we are at the latter already - we prefer going for nearly impossible to hit DDs, because BB AA is so stupid Weaknesses? What? BB doesn't need weaknesses, clearly they were the most important vessel in WW2 and they are to this day! Are you serious? The sad part is, that this is THE CURRENT STATE - BBs are so beyond broken overpowered that I can't even play them with a good conscience anymore. There is nothing that can touch me, aside from other BBs. If I don't do at least 100.000 damage in a BB from T5 up, I feel like I failed - that should give you an idea what the class is capable of.

It's important to note that BB don't need many weaknesses or harsh nerfs, they just need a few defined weaknesses. For example, if all BBs were limited to 25 knts and slower, then that would be a very good weakness, because they would just be moving fortresses - hard to stop, but slow. Right now they are just too fast and maneuverable. I don't feel like I gained much maneuverability in a cruiser compared to a BB and I think that's part of the problem. Only the biggest CAs like the Moskva should be somewhere close to BBs in turning circle and rudder shift, everything else should feel significantly superior. So far I really only think that T10 does it alright. Yamato is really hard to turn, especially with those slow turning guns, yet it's STILL considered the strongest BB in game. Doesn't that speak for this kind of balance? 72sec 180° degree turning time, slow rudder shift, huge turning circle and still good? Why does every BB and their mother have to have fast turning guns and a 600m turning circle? It's unnecessary and barely felt power that these ships shouldn't have. Last but not least, having bad rudder shift, turning circle and slowly turning guns is FUN. It creates interesting problems to solve. All the more reason to nerf those things across the board for all BBs.

Carriers can carry, as obvious as it sounds. I don't have 74% winrate in Saipan because I'm lucky. Step one, stop blaming your team. Sure, in 10 battles you can be unlucky, but over 100 battles you will have the same amount of bad people on your side as on the enemy side - in fact, on your side will always be one constant, and that's yourself. If that constant is high enough, you can win battles that would otherwise be lost.

You said it yourself already. That's your problem. If you didn't even go through the low tiers, then you have no chance to do well in the Saipan. It's (surprisingly enough) one of the most skill-reliant CVs in the game, because it trades raw power for consistency. To really get much out of it, you need a 15 point captain anyway. That is no issue, because you can use any CV captain because it's a premium, but if you of course haven't bothered with CVs much yet, you won't have one. I can still try to give you some info on it. The 3/0/1 setup is much easier to use and obviously aimed at beginners. It's potential is not great, but you can get a lot out of it with little skill. Three strong fighter squads give you easy air superiority and a huge dive bomber group with heavy bombs allow you to severely cripple DDs or put hurt on a BB that has no DCP ready. 2/0/2 is where the real power lies. Two fighter squads can still beat any CV, except for fighter-focused Ranger or Hiryu - in this case you have to outplay your enemy (you already see why this is the skill-heavy setup). Six torpedo bombers is not a lot, so you have to make their attacks count. Their speed and durability allow you to do that - but you still have to hit. If you aren't convinced, check my Saipan stats.

I don't think this is a good design philosophy for any game, but a game that is PURE e-sports. Now, first, let's please realize, that WoWs is a casual focused game (this is a fact). It has no place as an e-sport (this is my opinion) - because the factor that skill plays is not dominant enough. With this disclaimer out of the way, let's talk about what a good design philosophy is. Why not take one of the most successful competitive games? League of Legends. You described a situation from Street Fighter and I think this is what is best for everyone. A champion with a high skill cap should be more powerful if played at top level. A champion with a low skill cap should not be that powerful. The reason here is simply that a high skill cap comes with high risk, because there is so much you can do wrong - and high risk should come with high reward, which in this case is more power than an easy champion. However, the skill to power ratio shouldn't scale linearly either. So a champion twice as hard shouldn't be twice as strong - obviously. A game needs easy to use mechanics. Whatever that may be. In WoWs it's BBs, especially german ones and in League it's champions like Annie, Sivir or Sona. They give a lot of power for a low amount of skill. At a casual level, they will easily outperform other more skill demanding ships/champions, and that's okay. However, they just cannot be the same strength than the difficult ships/champs at top level - simply because due to much lower skill cap, the risk of doing a mistake is much lower. Humans are not machines, not even the best players. And this is the problem with BBs - they demand little to be effective. That in itself is good, because the game needs something easy to use. However, if played at top level, they outperform all other classes and that's just wrong. They can't be both, easy to use and the most powerful at top level. Their popularity is simply from those two things - every noob can have some impact in BBs and feel like he contributed and every great player can carry harder in them than in other ships.

Hitting torps on a BB is insanely difficult, because they are FAR too maneuverable. Hydro really adds insult to injury there.

I think BB and cruiser range should be much closer, especially in the mid tiers. In T9/10 it's fine, due to concealment and other factors, but in T5-8 it sucks that cruisers are basically stuck on 15km range and BBs have partially 35% more than that, even at T5. I'm fine with ships like Kongo, that don't have too high a caliber and small broadsides having a lot of range, but ships like Fuso or New Mexico cannot outrange cruisers this much, not while the cruisers have 12-13km detection range and are constantly revealed by DDs. When I drive my Arizona I really feel this overpoweredness in range. I rarely take damage before I deleted 2-3 ships. The Warspite is a much better BB in terms of balance. It's strong, durable, fast DCP (60sec CD) but it has just 16km range and I think that's totally fair. As for the CV side of things - AA is too strong, period. It's not massively too strong (at least on most ships) but everyone specced for AA can stay totally safe by themselves and I feel that's stupid. BBs have the weakest counter already, which is DDs. Torpedoes are incredibly unreliable, fires are as well. DDs simply don't have enough damage potential to properly counter BBs - especially with german easymode BBs with hydro so that you can dodge torpedoes even when you're playing with one hand. If AA was weaker they could still look for cruiser support or stay in groups if they are scared of getting attacked by the CV - but they would also at least run a risk if they go alone, not like now where certain ships, like the North Carolina are just permanently safe, no matter what. In short - BBs need more defined weaknesses. Right now they are just not risky enough. If I turn broadside as CA I die, if I do that as BB I maybe get a citadel, but I can heal up and just keep going. No, really - what weaknesses do BBs really have? They turn SOMEWHAT slow, but compared to CA's it's a joke. The only BBs that turn slow enough are T10 BBs. Their turning circle is pathetic for a ship of that size, especially compared to CAs. They are slow? Not really - US BBs are up to T8, but that's it. All others go 30 knts. Close-up they destroy everything due to tight dispersion, secondaries and even torps on some. They have the most range, so on long range they excel as well. Mid range they are also really good. There is just no weakness to exploit.

As always with these threads... Your team is not the problem, the enemy has 7 idiots, you got 6 The worse the average player, the higher your impact Ranked is a grind, not a sprint - you will need over 100 battles to get rank 1, even with a really really high winrate I casually got rank 6 the last few days, playing Kutuzov for fun. I even played my Takao in ranked, just to enjoy the ship and in the meantime get some rewards. I don't always win - but I do consistently well, which means that no matter the situation, I will do my part. Most of the time, that is enough to tip the battle in our favor, but not always. By being consistent - even when you lose - you will save yourself a lot of stars on matches where your team just wasn't up to the task. You could look up my ranked stats and how I do in my three most played ships, just to get an idea what impact you need to have for a certain win rate. Note that the stats are slightly inflated, because I didn't bother with rank 5+ yet so the enemies are usually worse than me. What I want to say is - with my stats, I reached rank 6 in 46 games from rank x (I didn't need to play any T6 matches so idk which rank I started, maybe 15?) - so you can guess how long you need with your stats to get rank 6 or 1 for that matter. If I really wanted, I could grind rank 1, but I don't want to. It's no fun to me. I only want to get the rewards up to rank 6. While I would love to take the rank 3 flags, I just doubt I'll bother.

I would not touch US and KM cruisers (and I actually haven't). US have as their strength AA - which is useless since WG is not going to fix carrier gameplay any time soon, so CV numbers will only keep decreasing, while they are already low enough that any form of AA specialization is a waste. KM cruisers are simply generally underwhelming from my observation. Kind of like a less extreme version of the UK cruisers. Bad HE, strong AP, very short range torps (6km). I times where DDs and BBs are the most important targets, you can't get by without strong HE. IJN cruisers are obviously extremely good right now, since they have very good HE. Their AP isn't lacking either though. Many have long range torps as well and many of them. They are quite fragile, but all cruisers are to an extent. You simply will be able to take a citadel less than other cruisers. Their AA isn't good though and they don't get radar. RU cruisers are also a good line. Even more fragile and less maneuverable than the IJN they do have more range and bring strong HE and AP. Their torps are of limited use, but they have them, which is always a plus since it gives you options. They also can carry radar, so they bring the same utility as US/KM ones. Their AA isn't too bad either. RN cruiser I can't say too much about, but the lack of HE really hurts in the current meta. They aren't bad, since they come with heal and smoke from early tiers, but they are paper thin. If I have to play a floating citadel, I would rather play RU or IJN cruisers to be honest.

I know how you feel. I gave up on CVs, because WG does nothing to them. Since a year they are in this crappy limbo state of absolutely UP for anyone but unicums, but for them they are still too strong. I am luckily really good with CVs, so I can just win at will in them, however, in ranked I need to grind and that's why I hate playing CVs there. I much rather play a fun ship. Cruisers are loads of fun. More active and less waiting than DDs, more agile and versatile than BBs. As for the heal - I heard there is a special interaction between it and the SE skill, aside from that I know exactly how it works, what damage can be healed and what not etc.. I don't think the Atago is bad by the way. I think it's incredibly strong, far outclassing the silver ships. Kutuzov is just a bit better for ranked imo.

I would rather say it's the other way around. Especially in MOBAs, if you are ahead enough and outskill your opponents greatly then you can 1vs5 them. In WoWs you cannot achieve much alone, because there is not much you can do in most situations. Your health is limited, you will always take damage. DDs can stealth torp, but there is radar and not just that - torps are incredibly unreliable and you don't have the time to wait for 7 players to make mistakes and run into your torp spread. With health and time as resources constantly ticking away, you will eventually fall, even if you are much better than your enemies. The main difference is that in MOBAs you're generally matched against evenly skilled enemies, while in WoWs, if you're a unicum, you will barely ever face someone equally skilled. So the skill difference is minor in MOBAs, but huge in WoWs. However, the impact of that difference is the other way around. It's huge in MOBAs and minor in WoWs. In WoWs, you might win a 1vs2 if you're much better, in a MOBA you most certainly will win a 1vs2 if you're that much better.