GulvkluderGuld

Actually at the highest ranks, smart BBs load HE when shooting the other sides BBs

In that case you must've sacrificed enough goats for random punishment to be inflicted on someone else Indeed Now not looking so much forward to Newport anymore.... just winning Newport was about as hard as getting 5 stars in any one of the other 3 operation. Earning more than 3 was a real challenge despite 300k dmg Ryujo games (at least for me playing with random punishment).

Very nice! There is a OMNI video on youtube / reddit showing it too :)

Did you use rpf or just sail there like me and see the planes launch?

Wouldnt stop him playing Strike Indy in ranked and trolling everyone that way

You cant to friendly fire in this gamemode. On my 2nd playthrough one of the other DDs decided to 2nd line torp the schnellboots and emptied his entire set of tubes into me, sailing about 1 km in front of hm Fortunately, he couldnt kill me

Tried looking in the bottom right corner where the planes spawn already. They just fly in across the map border. I didnt proximity detect anything down there, but got targeted by a hell of a lot of bombers!

At least it has heal!

I see what you mean. Some maps still have good ways to block caps (fault line and Ring comes to mind), but overall the caps have shrunk and become open - thus killzone? The problem with maps like North and Land of Fire was/is that some spawn positions were just clearly superior, because dd could only hide on one side of the cap (A cap on north, A cap on fault line). If WG would only give BOTH teams ways to block BOTH caps (or add 3 caps - Strait style) then we might see some more fun risk/reward playstyle and tactics. I love my Ring and Fault line games for this reason. BBs dont have a counter anymore and push out way to high alpha. I've seen 10k AP volleys on dd. CAs ofc just get deleted. BBs was already present back in S5 and it has only gotten worse since. They should put a cap on # of BB. Maybe that way people would play other classes with there are 1000 BB in queue. We dd players will gleefully take out or Khabarovsk (untill WG decide to remove its guns) and feast on the tears and rage off friendly BB players demanding "dd cap" while we burn down enemy BB from the edge of the map.

Killzone? Many maps havnt changed, so what exactly do you mean? (although new have been added) I'm a dd player and from that perspective I see little change, except more BB AP pen damage these days due to the meta

Very well written and sadly accurate post. Unfortunately I feel the same. I've been playing since release and loved the first 1½ year of the game, but over the last year-ish, the game has changed and become something different from the game I played and loved at release. Lots of BS changes I dont agree with and the result is exactly as predicted. I'm already at a point where I dont bother playing random battles anymore due to a changing meta back around winter 2016/2017. Whats fun about stomps in 5 mins anyway? The only things I care about is Ranked and possibly operations (they are too easy though), and I steadily play the game less and less, especially since the stealth fire nerf. So far I've kept playing through all the BS WG has thrown at us, but if they remove the last skill-based play, I'm affraid that will truly be the end for me. I love DDs, and if they remove smoke, ranked and Randoms will finally be 100% BB. I wonder if next they will remove khabarovsk from the game because BBabies are scared, then HE from all cruisers and after that torps from dds. After that Reintroduce Khaba pre-nerf as premium and only premium ships can have HE and torps. Because, Vodka. Completely disagree here. Smoke meta in ranked is because T6 has no radars...basically a throwback to the first ranked seasons. WG in their wisdom decided to reinvent an old problem they already fixed

But generally there is less potatoes and solo assholes that R5-R10 and people generally know how to stay alive. I found R7 and R6 to be the hardest ranks with a tiny shout-out to R3-R2. This is over multiple ranked seasons. Rank 10,9,8 and 5,4 are generally a breeze if you are a decent player (although you may have to adapt to a different meta when changing leagues) This ranked season I spent 20-30ish games going from 7* to 7*** and back and winrate dropped to 55% ish. Then i started playing Anshan exclusively and earning 4-5 stars over 10 games and now winrate is back up to almost 60% I think. The reason those ranks are harder is because you are placed in teams of R5R4 or R10R9 players and as the highest ranked player have to carry them - or save your star. Unless the highest ranked player on the other team is a potato ofc :)

R2-R5 bracket is where ranked actually gets fun this season - thanks to the BB meta, because it is usually 6v6 dds with the odd bb or cv. Below there is a lot of ignorant solo play and not much overall map-awareness and strategy. People usually huddle in one big group at one cap instead of actively contesting both, or if contesting both, it is suicide by enemy team by trying to cap both instead of just denying them. Had so many awesome close games this ranked where nobody had capped 10 mins into the game and only 1-2 ships had gone down. Very close games. Love it. Especially in the days where Random battles = 5 min facerolls and the only thing "random" is who gets facerolled.

Kutuzov is the only cruiser that is as OP as Belfast (or even more, considering Belfast has very limited range). The only other ship in the same league is the Saipan. I'm excluding the Ranked reward ships Flint and Black as they arnt generally available. Belfast has a weakness: AA. Kutuzov just doesnt have one. Or to put it another way: Kutuzov is one of only 3 HE spammers with a smoke, the other 2 being Belfast and Flint. And not even Belfast can smoke while going full speed and remain smoked. Kutuzov could use a radar though ..... wonder when they give it Chapayev Radar?

Do you actually play T10? The potatolevel there has reached so high I honestly think most good players have fled into their favorite T4-6 sealclubbers. This night i played a North game with: - A gearing saling to the 1 line near A cap and pretending to be a shima instead of smoking my Baltimore and capping A (he proceeded the imitation by overextending and getting rekt by another gearing) -.A hindenburg and Tirpitz capping D Tier 6 ranked reminds me a lot of the early 2-3 ranked seasons before Radar was introduced. Only there are tonnes more BB in the lower brackets and even in the R2-R5 where the other seasons saw 7v7 dd. It is still somewhat P2W (shinonome, Anshan, Arizona) although not as bad as t7 and T8 which now is completely P2W. I like it.

Shiratsuyu was OP in her released form. Most youtubers remarked on how strange it was for the gunboat T7 dd to have smoke and TRB in seperate slots while the Akatsuki had them in the same slot (afaik). That effectively made Shira a better torp boat than akatsuki. So swapping them around makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of natural progression in the ijn dd lines.

Winning 40 out of 45 games? Can I have some of that please?! Played 70ish games to reach rank 7*. Then another 50 games later I went up to 7*** and ended up at 7* again. Finally lost the curse and reached rank 4 now in just 10-15 games, but I had to play a different ship and skill the captain.

I use leander in ranked too, currently R6. Its a fine ship. Its a great ship for killing DDs. To play it to its strengths, try to catch enemy dds and always, always have an exit strategy that involves hard cover (islands) between you and BBs when your smoke ends. In practical terms, the smoke makes it an excellent independent ship and hydro counters torps, so at the start of the match, I use it like a gunboat dd to push the "off-cap" - where I think the enemy dd will to to cap. Then try to do alot of dmg and reset their cap. It is rarely possibly to kill the dd - that requires overextending beyond island cover and getting OMGWTF nuked by the enemy bb. Afterward, try to go for the dd or camp behind islands their bb wants to push and threaten to torp them.

All the noobs trying to torp the bots and dying in the first wave is nothing short of mind boggeling. And often they miss their own torps! It reminds me of the good old days when the Tirpitz came out and every Tirpitz and their mother tried to torp my DDs If you know how to Ryujo, Newport isnt that bad. I average 250k dmg in mine, best dmg i think was a bit over 310k, Not sure about winrate but 2/3 at least. The key is stopping the 3rd wave before it crosses the green line.

I never quite understood when you get the Hiruy and when you get the Izumo. Usually if you get the CV, then the Izumo will spawn, but I thought it was related to how the initial waves spawned. Playing ranked now so cba to check it. You are definitely right the mission is much easier with the CV than without him. I only got 5 stars when the Izumo spawned, which I realized it because we have that CV. WG is known to release premium ships to the live server with experimental consumables/characteristics (Flint, Kutuzov, Missouri etc) I see no reason they couldnt do the same with scenarios. Never said I approve of their methods, just that I understand them

Med the Earl of Northersk in his Shino. That didnt go well. Then played with KaraMon in his cleveland. Someone on the other team recognized him and there were much friendly banter in chat. He was our second ship to sink, but we carried the match.

This Newport was the only PvE mission I didnt get 4-5 stars in the first attempt. It was a challenge to complete more than 1-2 seconday tasks (killing the Hiruy if in a Ryujo was absurdly easy - just spawncamp it with all 5 squads) The other 3 missions could almost be solo'ed in the Ryujo. 1) Actually the design of Newport meant I spent more time on Newport than all other scenarios combined. It was the only challenging operation that wasn't an auto-win, auto 5 star. The others we so damned easy and boring after the first playthrough. Sure the reward for getting 5 stars in every game is okay, but no living person can suffer that level of boredom more than 2-3 times. (and I imagine WG has taken this into account, thus the coming "hard" and "normal" difficulty setting for operations) 2) Uhm, you DO get extra support if the team does badly? Remember those 2 dds spawning if 4 or more players die? Maybe it is a matter of numbers tweaking, and increase the number and type of support ships showing up on the "normal" difficulty setting. I suspect WG is using Newport as a testbed for the "hard" mode, while the other ones are "normal" mode games.

With 4 BBs on each team, Cleves dont even need a death wish to get obliterated. Getting spotted once is usually enough to lose 50% HP. As to CVs i had some fun in the sub rank 10 area and even took my AS Ryujo into ranked in the 5-10 bracket. Alas, it is just too APM intensive and every game is hard, and for that I have Starcraft or some other real RTS game. So now I'm back on my faithful Farragut and Leander. For every ranked game I think this and want to quit....then I Imagine playing Ocean every single game.

Hmm, you may be right. It felt like an eternity from the time i torped the dd untill my torps hit Flamu, and even longer before you fired - but really it was close enough for a double kill award. Time really slows down when adrenaline is pumping. In fact you I think you are right....The torps probably wouldn't have connected with your hull in time, not unless one of the other guys on the other cap had survived. And you were high hp, this is true. I expected our Shinonome to be alive, but something happened to him and I didnt see what. However and this is theorycrafting, If you turned to use the rear guns, you'd HAVE to kill me, because then you would still be broadside on when the fishes arrived. I dont think Arizona has the torp reduction to live through 4 torp hits? Anyhow to lose after kill all dds, pushing you back off both caps and having both of you BB quite low (esp. Flamu) was a real heartbreaker. The close ones are always the best, but this one never really felt close untill the end :(

1) probably loading times if they suddenly wake up after a couple minutes. This isn't LOL, games don't wait for players. 2) Nothing (but bad karma...and I dont even know where to see my own karma!) 3) See post #2! Most people arnt very good. Get used to carrying the dead weight. Work with the few players who can play. Even in high ranks (talking 1-5 here) people still occasionally sit broadside on in smokes and get torped og go off completely alone doing their own thing (the dds solo-contesting the cap where the red lemming train is headed, the dds who sail behind enemy lines to "spot and torp" and inevitably get rekt, the Fusos camping at 21+ km, preferebly on the edge of spotting plane range to the caps) I think a fair amount of players also try too hard and take big chances in situations they dont really know that well and when crap hits the fan they react too slowly.