Syrchalis

1. You're exaggerating. In 90% of games, there is no CV. In the 10% there is, there is enough potato CVs that have zero impact. So CVs decide maybe 3-4% of games at best, and that's only because a unicum is playing it against an idiot CV and most other players being potatoes too. 2. You probably never played a CV, because it requires by far the most skill and attention of all classes - not just that, CV scale harder with skill than any other class. In fact, nearly all classes are click click, CV is actually using much more keys and buttons than any other class. So using that clicker meme is equivalent to saying "I have no idea about the class, but I just assume it's easy as hell, because I regularly get my [edited]handed and it can't be that other players might be better" - do yourself the favor and stop using that meme if you don't want to out yourself as idiot. 3. Economy is crap, but it's not that important, what we really want is fun gameplay - that doesn't mean CV buffs, it means we want the activity of playing CV to be more engaging and fun, not CVs to be stronger

No, but really, what is the point of this thread? We were telling WG what was wrong with CVs for over a year now. Guess how much they did? Pretty much nothing. I mean there were a few things, but most didn't affect CV gameplay as a whole. Only defensive AA fire on high tier CVs broke the stale sniping meta, but that was it.

quoted post removed Nah, it's the other way around. BB prevent CA from pushing, because if they get closer they get citadelled to hell. CA prevent DD from pushing because radar. DD prevent BB and CA from going to caps, because they will take massive damage and flood. CV will screw your butt wherever you are, so you better go in there and do something before you're picked off at the back camping with 25k damage. As long as you stay together with cruisers (who are - of course - infront of you because they have less range) you're save, so camping gets you killed, but pushing with your CAs allows you to ignore the CV.

Just wish I would get the offer one day. >_>

Or so people like me could play more than 1 CV game per day without getting a cerebral aneurysm. Not sure cruisers need buffs. Honestly, among themselves cruisers are pretty balanced. US CAs struggle, because BBs outperform them heavily in the AA department and other cruisers are similar in AA too, so they have no advantages. The problem is that compared to the impact of DDs (capping, countering the strongest class) and the overpowered BBs (who also happen to counter them), they simply struggle from the current meta - which is "BB is super versatile, CVs are dead, DDs are ineffective, so no one can stop BBs, so cruisers suffer". Also staling meta. I think all that is required is BBs being nerfed, either so they die earlier (WG admitted they live far too long) - so cruisers don't have to wait 15 minutes every game before they can stop hiding, or they need to counter cruisers less hard - say a reduction in their AP damage against cruisers by 25%.

I don't see a problem with that. They keep selling the Atago after all. The Texas is also a straight upgrade. There have been a lot of premiums that are clearly superior to silver ships. The difference is that those ships are not simply OP, like Nikolai. They just outperform their silver counterparts. E.g. the Atago is superior to pretty much any cruiser except maybe Kutuzov and Chapayev - however, Atago still gets crushed by BBs. Nikolai doesn't really get crushed by anything. For it's counters, DD/CV, it's just too small and maneuverable.

I am not nice to stubborn people who aren't even willing to see the other side. You will NEVER see the game from the other side. I think you didn't understand anything or twisted it to fit your stupid anti-CV agenda. Decreasing skill cap will NOT lead to CVs performing better. Two equal players facing each other will constantly deny each others attacks. But yeah, there is nothing I can say or WG can do to change your mind that everything is a CV buff.

Don't waste your time, this guy will NEVER EVER realize that CV are harder to play than any other class, because he will never touch them. I'm actually glad he is such a stubborn guy, because it means he will keep raging about CVs and never learn any way to counter them or play around them. That makes him just as so many other 0 CV game victims an easy target. As long as his class has a counter and he isn't literally invulnerable he will keep whining about whatever class touched his ship. Again - don't waste your time and effort.

Nearly beat my world record.

What this guy wants to say is: CV require no skill, because they are so horribly OP that even the biggest dumbest potato can play them. But his game gets ruined because of the skill difference between his and the enemy CV. Changing CV so that skill difference hasn't that huge of an impact isn't a solution to him, because obviously that would mean that the class is fairer and more fun for everyone - but that's not his goal. He wants to have fun, but it's very important to him, that others do not. Especially people who don't play his class.

One thing I forgot that I wanted to explain - people are "obsessed" with win rate in WoWs because it actually stands out and means a bit more. It's not a perfect stat, but it has some weight. In LoL for example we have very tight skill-based matchmaking. When people start out, their win rates can be very weird until they reach the rank they belong at. If you win a lot you get matched against better players. Until eventually you hit 50% win rate. In other words - the game makes sure your win rate is 50% or at least approaches it. Only if you are in the top 100 players world-wide will you have relevant win rates because there simply is no one better who you could be matched against. WoWs has no skill-based matchmaking. This means that you will generally always face the same skill level, regardless of your own skill level. In a situation like that you can have win rates other than 50% after 1000 games. This means that high win rate = you must be better than the average player, thus win rate actually means something. Of course you can focus on winning or not, you can division a lot or not, play only the OP ships or not, but they only have so much impact on your win rate, plus you can see division and played ships, so if someone really only plays say Bismarck in 3 man divisions with unicums ... you can see that. Win rate is - as I said - not a perfect stat. But it has a meaning in WoWs, due to the lack of skill-based matchmaking. It's more important than other stats and more reliable - again, not perfect - but it's not as worthless as say K/D ratio, which literally doesn't mean anything.

First of - most of what you said is true. I just have to voice my disagreement with this statement, because even with more credits (tutorial is irrelevant for me) I wouldn't touch CVs. I actually haven't touched them much since the Essex/Midway rape that WG did. The problem is that CV is simply and OBJECTIVELY not fun. Some can pull out more enjoyment than others, but overall the enjoyment of the class is incredibly low - and that is the main reason we don't have many CVs. People play for fun. The effectiveness of the class, the learning curve and the extrinsic rewards (like credits) are secondary at best. Okay, half of the people choked on their coffee when they read "objectively" - but there are clear design rules if you want something to be fun and CV breaks a lot of them. If I truly want to explain it, people would need to understand game design, but maybe I'm able to describe some issues at least. Counterplay - its incredibly boring for CVs. Defensive AA fire? Run away, lose lots of planes anyway. Enemy turning? Position so he can't avoid anyway. AA? Uuuhhh... no counterplay at all? It's a boring immolation aura and that's all. No wait, it's also random. Generally - there is no choices to make, binary at best, but mostly just one simple solution that a robot could do better than a human. Clunky unresponsive UI - doesn't need an explanation, that is simply not fun. Imagine if when you click your guns fire at a random delay 1-5sec from then, that's how CV gameplay feels. Burden of knowledge - you need to know SOOOOOO many things if you want to do okay in a CV. The AA rating of every single ship. DCP timings of every single ship. Loadouts of every single CV. Reserves of every single CV. Turning radius and rudder shift of ships, especially DDs. How to manual drop. How to strafe. And even so much more still. And more that I can't be bothered to explain in detail right now. To repeat: CVs aren't fun. And that is their main problem. Fun and weak = not optimal, but would still see play (no class was ever nearly as extinct as CVs are right now, not even at their weakest moment). Balance is secondary. Problem only starts when stuff is fun and strong, because then it generally diminishes the fun of other classes - and that is what BB is right now.

I'm happy to relief you of any conspiracy theories evolving. Because you see, you made your conclusions in the obvious, but wrong order. Of course, as a player you see everyone dying except for yourself and someone else. Then check whether the game was rigged against you and find out - it was. The reason you checked was because of how bad the game went. However, simply due to the random nature of MM you will find yourself eventually in a match with tons of bad players on your side and good ones on the other. It will happen, that's just a statistical certainty. This game will then stand out because you lost so hard. And as such, you are likely to check why. If you would check the 100 games before that, you would notice that you're probably on the rigged side with lots of good players the same amount of times. And as for rigging - WoWs is not a game you can carry that particularly hard in, but due to the huge skill differences you can definitely carry and thus overcome even possibly rigged matches. I remember my 8 kill games with beyond 200k damage that I simply carried 1vs5 even. It's not realistic to do that often, but it's possible. If you division with two more decent players you can really overcome nearly anything, that's why divisions have such a good winrate.

... or are at least worth considering and thinking about - maybe to really unveil the problems CVs have. I couldn't really think of a better title. This first one was originally meant as a joke, but slowly I'm feeling like there is more merit to it than humor. Bot CVs in PvP games One of the problems with CVs is not being able to tell if your game is going to have one. I saw many complain about that. Now, another huge factor in a game is whether it's standard battle or domination. Standard battle is extremely rare in high tiers for obvious reasons, but it's still in the game and I see no one complaining. Domination is more fun and fairer, because the mode takes power away from BBs, who otherwise would dominate everything. Now CVs are the other way around. You rarely ever have a game with CVs, most of the time there are none. And I think this is a huge problem and very unhealthy for the game. Why? When CVs get more popular this balance is gone and suddenly you have CVs in a third, maybe half of your games again. This change in popularity makes it hard to predict what consumables, captain skills and modules you want, because during some times AA modules are essentially worthless and then later they are nearly required again. Also learning to play with and against CVs is very hard if no one plays them. So I suggest that 75% of battles should have CVs in them - if there isn't enough players playing them, take bot CVs. Bot CVs are wonderful for everyone involved, because they provide easy attacks to dodge, planes to shoot down for xp/credits, sometimes spot, sometimes drop on someone beached - aka give dynamic to the whole game. But they can't actually hurt someone, because they are bots and only use auto drop. They still provide wonderful opportunities for beginners to learn. You could even match players who do poorly in CVs against bots (that would need to be tested first though). I can see some complain about this idea, but I can't quite see many disadvantages. Bots are equal in skill. Bots are barely a threat to players. You can rely on having a CV in most games, so your AA modules and skills are never really wasted - but you will still have games without a CV at all, so that this part of the game, the CV-less games, aren't lost on us either. CV-less battles are essentially like standard battles in high tier. Rare, but because of that appreciated. Remove fighters entirely Yeah wow. That's a huge change. But honestly, I don't see any merit to these planes in this game. They only exist for themselves. Without fighters, there is no need for fighters. A non-"CV veteran" will say "but fighters shoot down bombers" - true, they can, but they actually can't. Two same ships fighting each other (say two 2/2/2 Shokakus) will always lock up their two fighters with each other. After the dogfight one side will have 1-3 planes left with no ammo. What are they gonna do? Nothing. Fighters only really start becoming useful if the enemy CV is out of them. AS setups are not worthwhile including in the example. Why you may ask? AS setups are no fun to play or to play against. Thus they add no value to the game, they actually deduct value. Yes they give an alternative, but if the alternative is 1. ineffective 2. isn't enjoyable to use and 3. isn't enjoyable to play against - then it really shouldn't be in the game. So fighter balance here or there, AS setups shouldn't be in the game in their current state. WG's original vision for CVs was "vulnerable ships that support the team from long range". Fighters add nothing to this vision, because they have no value aside from fighting enemy fighters. Bombers can spot just as well and spotting is the only thing fighters can do in games without an enemy CV (or with the enemy CV being dead). True, CVs probably can't just get full bomber layouts without some damage nerfs, but I don't see a problem with that. What about CV sniping in T4-7? New consumable: Fighters. Basically like the single fighter planes that some ships have, just a whole squad that (more effectively) defends the CV. Higher tier ships could even get two of these consumables. It might even eliminate the need for defensive AA fire. I'm not saying this is THE perfect solution. I'm just saying that this is probably better than what we have right now. It would severely decrease the skill floor and cap of CVs as well, so games would be much more balanced.

I've been having great success with the Kutuzov in ranked. However, multiple people pointed out that the Atago was the best ship for ranked. I don't own an Atago so I couldn't test, however since yesterday I have the Takao, which is - aside from the camo - the same gameplay wise. So what do you think is better? Is it close or does one overwhelmingly win? Kutuzov Pro 19km range Smoke Incredible AA Fast Reload High Fire chance (for 8sec reload - it's 16% with flags and DE) Large salvo (12 shells) Good shell speed (time until on target) Good shooting arcs (can angle pretty hard) Fast Turret Rotation Relatively durable with 40.000 HP Torpedos Kutuzov Con Bad shell arc (very high, meaning it's hard citadelling ships further away) Low caliber Slow, 8k range torpedoes with low damage Bad torpedo arcs Just one 5x torpedo launcher per side Relatively slow for a cruiser (34,6knts with speed flags) Mediocre concealment Atago Pro Fighter Plane (spotting over islands, disrupting CV attacks even without defensive fire) Repair Very durable with 40.000 HP and repair on top of it High Fire chance (22% with flags and DE) High caliber (can citadel cruisers well and HE does large amount of direct damage) Good shell speed (time until on target) Fast Turret Rotation (especially for IJN - 26,1sec with Expert Marksman) Very good torpedos One launcher per quadrant of the ship, giving nearly 360° torpedo firing capability 10km range (often a huge difference between 10km and 8km) Great concealment Fast (37,6 knts with speed flag) Atago Con Mediocre shooting arcs Very long reload (16sec, twice of Kutuzov) Bad range (15,8km) Horrible AA Weird gun layout, so only 4 barrels when shooting forward/backward Of course I didn't mention everything. Both get easily citadelled, like pretty much any cruiser, so that wasn't worth a mention. In my opinion, I feel like the Kutuzov wins. Not by a large amount, but it's somewhat noticeable. While in a straight 1vs1 the Atago probably would win, ranked is not a 1vs1 scenario, nor does it happen much between cruisers. The Kutuzov can really lay down the hurt on DDs, which is really important. It has insanely accurate guns and at the same time fast reload. It absolutely murders DDs. Think of it like a 155mm Mogami, just with better reload, shooting arcs and turret rotation. Against BBs it doesn't have much option to use torpedoes, due to 8km range and their slow speed. However, it's huge broadside with fast reload allows you to set fires much better than the Atago. I got Arsonist twice in the same ranked game once. I get Witherer easily 1 out of 3 games. But that's not all. With 19km range and smoke you can safely burn down BBs, while the Atago gets deep into the danger zone just by having limited range. At 18km, you can easily dodge BB shells. That the Kutuzov for some reason has better turning circle and rudder shift than the Atago, despite being a RU cruiser, doesn't help. For cruiser on cruiser fights, the Atago seems superior. Most damage dealt by other cruisers will be overpens, pens and HE damage, so the heal will make you tanky like a BB. It's higher caliber allows you to really destroy another cruiser if he shows broadside. And your torpedoes can often be used as well, due to their range and the nearly 360° arcs of the launchers. Given how many BBs and DDs are in ranked compared to cruisers, you can see why I prefer the Kutuzov. Opinions? Also - how does heal interact with Survivability Expert? I heard you can always heal those 3200 HP of it, so it makes the heal a lot better, is there anything to it?

Problem with AS setup is also limited bombers. You can't lose nearly as many bombers. If a ship has a XY AA rating it will always shoot down around X planes - this is a flat number. Say NC with 95 AA rating shoots down 9 equal tiered planes. If you are strike setup thats maybe 9/16 planes of your attack. You still get a nice hit. If you are AS setup it's 9/12, which is really bad if your intention isn't to feed the NC planes and tickle it. And of course you got less reserve as well. Hakuryu is better in AS setup, but that's only and I repeat - only because it retains 2 torpedo bombers and 2 dive bombers while beating any other setup from any other ship. It craps over all Midway setups and bomber Hakus. Every other ship is very lackluster in AS setup. Taiho semi works, due to the same reason, but 2/3/2 is kind of superior. However if WG was to make all AS setups have considerable damage then two things would happen. AA would be too strong and the low amount of bombers of these setups would get eaten alive, essentially making them worthless. Or they would completely dominate strike because they can deal too much damage and win the air war without much effort. Either way, they aren't beneficial to have for the game.

Play T9 CV with premium and deal 150k damage and shoot down 50 planes. Lose money. Then come back and say "all are fine". Play cruiser against a unicum BB and watch how you are in port again before you even got to hide behind an island.

What a typical BB player answer. Hurr durr I may do 100k damage per battle, but beware if any other class does even half of that! All other classes are there to support me, the mighty BB. CV that supports? Good dog! AS setups are ultimate moron setups because they are deceptively doing nothing. People just don't get this concept. It doesn't matter how much damage the AS CV prevents, as long as in the end he deals less damage than the enemy CV he is worth less. And an AS bogue deals pretty much no damage at all. So if a Zuiho hits just one torpedo attack, good bye contribution, you just lost your game. Of course every BB noob likes to see AS setups, because it limits the damage of both CVs considerably, except if the strike one is really good. It is like a DD game with just US DDs with 4km torps.

I think you're confusing something. Strike is hard, especially zero fighter strike setups, because you have to outplay your enemy. Fighter setups require little skill because you don't need to do anything that requires skill to outplay your enemy. Everything is point and click, especially for US CVs, as they have only DBs. And that's why barely anyone likes AS setups, neither as enemy nor to play them. Where skill actually shows is beating an AS player with a strike setup while also winning the air war with inferior fighter numbers. Or in strike vs. strike shooting down his fighters AND bombers. But that exactly is the problem. Someone like me can do that to someone mediocre or even slightly good player and utterly crush them, taking complete control of the game. That is one of the major CV problems. Bot CVs actually are little RNG and you can 100% dodge their attacks. Manual drops are harder than BB guns, because BB guns is aiming and pretty much at the same spot every time. All adjust you have to make is for speed and distance. Drops need to be done not just judging current speed, but you have to very carefully drop at the exact right distance or torps won't arm or enemy can dodge too well, plus you have to account for him dodging. If he does hit S hard and turns in you will miss a lot if you aren't prepared. That sounds pretty stupid, but I would say it's just the wording. And if you read my topics, I do work as a game designer, so if I understand one thing than making and balancing games. Fighters increase the skill required to do okay and do great in CVs considerably. We need to lower CV skill cap and floor, because they aren't approachable by noobs and at the same time good vs. bad player games are extremely one-sided with the team having the bad player at a major disadvantage. Right now fighters simply serve no purpose in the game other than artificially making CV harder to play. Sure they give some depth as well and I don't like losing that, but the little depth you lose is worth the complexity and mechanical skill requirement that you remove. IMO WG did it wrong all along. Buffing AA was never the solution, they just had to nerf CV damage. Now we still have the same damage values over a year later, so in a lucky game with bad enemies or stock ships you can still get 300+k game.

I explain. DDs generally focus on caps. If you are in a battle with 1 DD on each side, chances are you are on opposite sites of the map - you are at cap A, he is at cap C. You don't need to overcome the DD to deal with the other ships. The more DDs there are, the more the DDs actually prevent you from doing a lot to the other ships. But even then you can easily avoid them. Also if you're facing more than 1 DD, you have a much better game than the CV does, because there is 3 nations and there can be many different tiers in the game. So variety is HUGE. CV is a boring 1vs1 you can't avoid. Since planes are about 5x faster than ships the map is essentially 5x smaller. Plus most CVs have several fighter squads so you can be at several locations at once. 4 fighter Hakuryu? Map is essentially 20(!) times smaller than for a DD. Also there is just two nations and you will always face same tier CV. T8+ can't even have 2 CVs per side anymore, even if people would play them. This was my main argument against CV mirror matchmaking. Overall it was indeed necessary, but it made the matchups insanely boring. Especially now that US CVs are total crap you will nearly always have IJN vs. IJN. How fun would DD be if there was only one tiny cap per map, a 1 DD limit and you would always have Fubuki vs. Fubuki or Fletcher vs. Fletcher. So CVs situation is simply A LOT more severe when it comes to this. DDs still have plenty of options. P.S.: I'm actually really surprised how many people like the bot idea. WG should probably consider it.

In an ideal world... yeah. Otherwise I rather have CVs interact with 11 enemy ships than just with each other. Currently you mostly interact with the enemy CV and that is a huge problem. It's not much fun and it promotes the severity of skill difference.

Not sure it will be of much value though, because it just means that those single fighter squads will be locked in a dogfight for 20 minutes every game until either CV runs out and then you have the same problem with AS/strike matchups. Or IJN versus USN fighters, USN will always win and have tons of ammo to spare to shoot down bombers. If you of course entirely remove fighter vs. fighter combat...

Yes, so why is it so hard to believe BBs dominate everything right now? Because you play them and don't want them to be balanced or god forbid - be below the other classes. BBs NEVER were weak. They always were top-dog, except for open beta where CVs handed their asses to them. So BBs being "balanced" is just your obsession speaking. Even WG admitted they are overperforming. If WG admits something like that, then you better believe it's dire. Domination mode keeps their OPness in check because they make the objective something a BB can not do easily. Try playing a CV in co-op. They use only auto-drop. Yes other ships have perfect "aim at the middle of the ship at waterline"-aim assist, as seen in many of Flamu's bot battle videos - but bot CVs are hardly a threat. Even trash tier players are better than bot CVs. Beginner argument is perfectly valid, because playing against people seal-clubbing them doesn't necessarily translate into much of a learning effect or fun. Playing against auto-drop bot CVs will actually help them. CVs are good for the game because they provide a dynamic environment. Battles are so stale because of battleship dominance and danger of DDs. Bot CVs wouldn't spot DDs properly - even randomly they would barely reveal them for more than a few seconds - and that's exactly the dynamic. If you can't deal with being spotted for a few sec in a DD, you took too great a risk and have to live with it gone wrong this time. Or a BB bow on, pushing with nothing to punish it - CV decides to strike it and it needs to turn or take the damage. There is lots of things a CV counters that are frustrating to deal with otherwise. The problem people have is what I explained - that uncertainty. Most go into battle at the moment with the attitude "no CV anyway" - and then IF there is one they are like "oh crap now I'm not prepared and my whole plan is ruined and the game too, wah wah" - if you have to expect a CV nearly every game, even if it's just a bot, people adapt and won't be caught off-guard and then feel frustrated about it. Bot CVs would be 100% balanced, because both sides would have bots. So you complain about battles with CV players not being equally good, but two perfectly balanced "players" don't look like a nice thing to you? Only bot vs. bot. I said a really bad CV player could get matched against a bot CV if there is a reason to implement this feature. Bot vs. good CV will NEVER happen. Just because you don't care for CVs doesn't mean you can just ignore half the words in a sentence. No good arguments. I don't listen to the BS people want me to do in CV. Most CVs don't, especially the decent ones. They listen to stuff like "here is a shima prevent us from doing anything" and will spot it and make the team win, but they won't send fighters to defend and leave their bombers to die. And really, how many CVs did you meet that actually coordinate with you? Bots could even respond to certain commands which makes them even better than a human player. The other thing is simple - there is no choice. AS setup is BAD, NO FUN, NO FUN FOR ENEMY - that's a calculation not a choice. It's like putting your hand on a hot stove, you COULD do it, but you won't, will you? It makes permaspotting actually a lot better design wise. If you permaspot a DD with bombers you lose valuable bomber to it's AA (eventually) AND more importantly you can't use those bombers for attacks. It's a trade-off not many are willing to make. Permaspotting is done with fighters nearly exclusively because they ARE USELESS and it's the only valuable thing you can do with them. Thats why fighters should go in the first place.

If you know how to dodge a CV attack and have AFT and manual AA (no AA module or BFT) you will destroy every plane of a same tier carrier and take 0 damage in Bismarck, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. If that isn't "strong AA" I don't know what is. But I guess BB players will only see AA as "mediocre to good" if it shoots down every plane before it can drop a torpedo if they stand still broadside to the incoming wave.