Ictogan

In that regard I have to agree with this post from Ishiro32: I know that I will stop playing CVs if they continue like this.

What about the other side of the coin? I recently was in a battle with 3 Des Moines in the enemy team in my Shokaku. All of the other non-DD ships always stayed in the AA range of the Des Moines. Guess how fun that game was for me. If WG wants CVs to be pure scout ships and will balance them to be that, have fun seeing one CV every ~50 battles.

First of all I'd like to point out that I never even mentioned the word "utility" so I have my doubts whether you even read my posts. And if you played CVs in team battles, you would know what they are in an environment with strong teamwork even without the buffed AA in 0.5.6. They can only do three things: #1 scout and attack DDs #2 prevent the enemy CV from doing #1 #3 punish ships who go off on their own Although #3 only really happens when playing against bad teams or when a team has already lost most of its ships. And attacking ships in random battles is also, surprise, teamwork. If for example the enemy is pushing into our cap on one side of the map and we don't have enough ships to properly defend our cap on that side, I can attack the pushing ships to make it easier to the defending forces and slow them down. But apparently that's just damage whoring and not doing teamwork.

Actually CAs don't have to give up the AA consumable to get radar, they have to give up their fighter plane for that.

AA is a thing that in the current meta only works with teamwork. They are making work without teamwork, but at the same time making the effectiveness of AA with teamwork completely over the top. Now I think that lone US AA specced BBs should be able to defend themselves TO A CERTAIN POINT. But they shouldn't be immune to air attacks.

Apparently you haven't read this part of my post: CVs aren't almighty against teams with even a bit of teamwork. But instead of trying to encourage players to do teamwork, they are removing the need for teamwork.

What's the reason? Not being taken seriously in a discussion if he's crapat playing the ships he's discussing? Because, as you can see here, people with disabled stats get taken just as seriously as people whose stats show that they have no idea what they are talking about.

I didn't say that what I described in the part you quoted was a PROBLEM, it's simply the way game mechanics works. I'm fine with it, but I'm not fine with AA being balanced in a way that allows BBs going alone to be able to properly defend themselves against CVs.

The thing that differentiates AA as a counter to planes from almost any other counter is that it affects attacks not only on the ship that counters it. A BB can still citadel a broadsiding CA even if there's a BB next to the CA who's smart enough to angle. One member of the group countering the attack isn't making the other ships in the area safe from it. But a CV can't attack BBs who are next to AA cruisers even if the BB itself has weak AA. How you think the rock-paper-scissors works for CVs: DDs and CAs counter CVs CVs counter BBs (no idea how you came up with the idea that CVs shouldn't attack DDs - they're the class that's most effective at countering DDs) How the rock-paper-scissors actually works for CVs: CAs with particularily strong AA counter CVs Groups of ships counter CVs CVs counter ships which aren't sailing in groups and don't have particularily strong AA But WG seems to have the intention of balancing AA so that ships which aren't sailing in a group will be able to defend themselves properly. And CVs will be completely incapable of attacking groups of ships instead of just being weak against them. This means that in games where ships only sail in groups and not on their own, CVs will be only useful for scouting&attacking DDs. This can already be the case depending on how strong exactly the combined AA strength of each group of ships is, but it will be the case a lot more often after the patch.

There are only two things a CV can do to loose less planes: the first one is making sure to do the attack runs a way that makes the planes spend the least time possible in the AA range of the enemy. The second is to select targets with weak AA. And mind you that I'm not talking about just the AA of the target, I'm talking about the AA of any ship that's near the target. So I would rather attack a Montana than attacking two North Carolinas sailing next to each other. But if there are no targets sailing on their own, I have to go for groups. The problem with balancing AA to make even ships sailing on their own be able to properly defend themselves is that it will make CVs not even have a chance to attack targets sailing in groups.

If it was a buff to good players, why do most good players choose the 12km torps now? Before, the torps had 15km range and 1.7km detection range, so you could still choose TA and have them at 72kts over 12km. Now if you choose the 12km torps with torp acceleration you can get merely 9.6km out of them, which is sometimes too little against targets sailing away or when there is a large risk of being killed when closing in due to planes and/or radar. The 8km ones are nice, but a 4kts buff over the old 12km 72kts doesn't make up for the 4km less range and increased spotting distance. So it was definitely a nerf from the old 12kts torps, no matter whether someone is now using the 8km, 9.6km or 12km torps. Not gonna complain about the Shima being weak now, but calling it a buff to players who take risks is BS and I will continue to hold my position that the Kagero got fucked over by changes which were only really targeted at the Shima. The Kagero simply doesn't have the speed or guns to make it work with a risky play style.

Ugh, you'll have to re-check that part about Kagero being faster than any CA at it's tier. And heck, after the patch even an Iowa will only be 2 knots slower than it.

That's just complete crap. If my fighters are fighting against multiple squadrons of enemy fighters, I want other CVs in my team to strafe over it and when I see an allied squadron fighting against a far superior force of enemy planes, I will strafe over it. You can now get pink for just doing teamwork. I also often strafe over enemy bombers near allied ships and shoot down allied catapult-launched scouts or fighters. But I don't think my allies mind losing their fighters/scouts when I've killed 10+ planes which were attacking them in one strafe.

SA would still be the default choice people make. It's vital to know when something even stealthier is around or someone is using radar. And with stuff like radar in place, DDs really need to have last stand to be able to survive.

Just because you seem to know so much about it:

How do you know that the devs all play all classes? Because to have any idea of balance, playing all classes is pretty much required. Statistics don't mean anything if you don't know how the different classes interact and how the interaction is perceived from both sides. Not saying that they don't play the game, but I doubt that the devs are playing anywhere near as much as dedicated players. So just because they have access to some numbers that we don't, it doesn't mean that they always know how exactly the balance works. If they always could properly balance things, why are US CVs at t7+ pretty much complete horsecrap when compared to IJN CVs? Why is the Montana still worse than the Yamato? Shouldn't they know how to fix this easily by looking at the detailed stats?

If you think that, then why do balance issues ever exist longer than a single patch when the people at WG KNOW exactly which changes will fix the problem based on the data collected by them? Why didn't they predict that after the huge nerfs to them, CV population would collapse and let torpedo boats ruin the high tier meta. You may be suprised, but the employess at WG are human and can make mistakes when trying to identify balance issues and ways to fix them. They aren't some magicians who just look at numbers and can identify where the exact problem lies and what the exact impact of balance changes will be.

Just a follow up on my previous post: I think WG has severely misunderstood the issue here. The reason why CV average damage is so high is not because they are overpowered or other ships don't have enough defences against them, but because people don't properly counter them. But WG thinks that the issue lies with ships having too little defences against them, instead of making other changes that would make people actually learn how to properly counter CVs.

One problem I see with looking at CV stats is that the way to counter them is far different from countering anything else in the game. They are also the last played class in game and ships get into fewer situations where they have to counter them than they have to counter other ships. Thus, the weaker CVs are, the less likely people are gonna learn how to properly counter CVs and thus CVs world gain an advantage in stats by being weaker. Obviously this doesn't cancel out the being weaker part completely in stats, but it's something that WG should keep in mind when doing balance changes to CVs.

No offense, but what does it have to do with this discussion? If anything, you contradict your own argument that CVs should be equally balanced by stats as other ships because you are admitting that they are a lot different than them. And experience in other ships helps a lot when playing CVs and it also applies the other way around. It's not like comparing WOT to WoWS.

So for the Shima the problem was that there simply were many bad players playing it, dragging the stats down, which made comparing the stats directly with other ship types useless. But do you really think that directly comparing the stats of the ship class that is the most different from any other and has the lowest amount of players players to stats of ships which are played by a much wider and different population is applicable?

Hindenburg is actually one of the few strong AA cruisers that I'm willing to attack in my Taiho and sometimes even in my Shokaku, because a lot of them are running hydro instead of defensive AA.

Nope, nope and nope. Weather can be fun at times, but the uncertain timing of it and the different effects that it can have on the battle depending on the current situation adds a lot of stupid and unnecessary RNG, which we definitely don't need.

I might be the only person in the [edited]universe who thinks this, but in my opinion ships should be balanced on the base of good players playing against good players. Otherwise they will completely [edited]up the meta for any competitive parts of the game, such as team battles or clan vs clan battles.

So what you are saying is that every single balance change they make is right because they balance it on server stats, right?