GulvkluderGuld

AFAIK fubuki can kite pretty well, but RU dds will beat IJN dds most of the time. As IJN dds, dont forget your cruisers. Dont even want to know how you got into a T X game with a T VII, sounds painful

If you want to close to 6 km in a Tashkent to fight my Benson/Blys/Mahan, then by all means be my free Xp pinata Even without getting a turret knocked out (which is very common), the Tash will lose to the sheer damage of US ROF and HE alpha dmg - not to mention turning like a brick and being a torpedo magnet.

Interesting build. Maybe worth trying on my Fletcher when I get back to the game. It truly amazes me how many people sit broadside on and stationary in smoke even these days. Last week in my Udaloi, a single 2x5 torp launch from me sunk a Benson / Lo Yang division who were sharing smokescreens. Sitting broadside on without Hydro in their smoke - thats a paddling! The best part is, boy were they salty in chat afterward.

Not just bias. There is a real difference on tier 5, and he plays tier 5

Hmm. I think the Udaloi with a 15 point captain is better for its tier than Kiev, just like i consider the Blys superior to the Kiev at tier 7. Both can do everything the Kiev does and more. Udaloi has the guns to burn BBs and CAs, the AP to seriously damage armored CAs at tier 9+10 and a boatload of torps that it can launch from stealth. Plus it has good enough detection and maneuverability to play like a DD - something the Kiev utterly lacks.

These people probably never make it past rank 15. Above 15, I only had a few dc'ed guys on the team who all came back (including myself once). A good player can easily hardcarry games for a 70%-75% WR in that bracket (even playing Strike Ranger), so we are talking 3x5 = 15 games (or is it 4 stars per rank = 20) which is 20/200 = at most 10% of games needed to reach rank 1. I dont see a problem. In fact, it is very convenient to be able to do both grinds at once.

You can play the Udaloi as a DD, anytime no Fletcher or Gearing is around. Panocek is right about the other RU dds playing more like CAs though. Also in answer to your questions - DDs have smoke while CAs have BB magnet citadels - with RU dds, pick another DD (preferably IJN) and follow 1-2 km behind it.

It basically depends on which SN ship you are planning to use the captain on: Kiev: get the 3x4 build of DE, AFT and SE. - No clear benefit from CE as torps are 4 km range and you can't really bust the concealement down in a meaningful way without the 2 mil concealement module. Trashkent: 3x4 and AFT+CE both works (with concealment module), playstyle choice. - with CE concealment can be dropped below 8 km and allow stealth torping aswell as a small zone of stealth fire. - 3x4 is the build for gunslingers since the main damage from guns will come from fires. - personally I used the CE build in preparation for Udaloi, and I liked it a lot (stealthfire on bow-on BBs = ohm nom nom) - Basically the ship is trash no matter what you do though. Udaloi: AFT+CE has the edge, but the 3x4 is better in preparation for Khaba. - CE allows 7,2 (7,0) km detection with 8 km torps, and the Udaloi has A LOT of torpedoes (3x5 in Mahan configuration). This gets you the best of both worlds. It can do a sick amount of torp damage and still do a ton of gun damage. Also: - The main damage from Udaloi guns comes from AP, so it benefits relatively little from DE - conclusion: I consider the Udaloi the best (most fun) tier 9 ship, and it is very competitive in tier X games too. Definitely a keeper. Khabarovsk: 3x4 is superior from what I hear, (dont have this one yet) - Main damage from the Khaba comes from fires and HE, so DE makes more sense. - maneuverability and concealment is naturally more similar to the Tashkent than Udaloi and Kiev, so less likely to use torps (see its turning circle)

The same player was a vocal proponent of playing Strike Ranger in the 4th season, so ANYTHING is basically a step up Let me guess....playing Strike Ranger? Only met him once, sadly on my team.

Really hope the IJN DD rework doesnt hit untill AFTER the season. Anything else would be totally unfair to the IJN dd players and basically guarantee we have a world of Bensons again, since the Tashkent remains totally uncompetitive and nobody would have time to unlock the new tier 8 IJN DD. I really really wish WG would do something for the Trashkent to bring it on par with the other tier 8 DDs, just for the sake of variation. (maybe give it Udaloi guns or some more armor) I like the tier 6 idea. I also like to keep the tiers used for Ranked changing (to prevent monotony), especially now we get nice advance notice! Tier 5 is more meh, as it has multiple OP ships: Gremnyaschy, Murmansk, Kamikaze R, CVs (due to a lack of aa) and the aa-proof Texas. Overall lots of strong silver ships too though, so I could be wrong. It might work to use the lower ranks as a testbed. Tier 7 repeat of last season would be a mistake, and I suspect, dominated my Gneisenaus, Blys and Saipans. Tier 8 is just P2W (Tirpitz, Kutuzov/Atago) and lots of Bensons and Lo Yang. At least the CVs are better balanced than at tier 7. For Ranked, WG really need to look into making certain ships competitive for the sake of variation imo. Worst candidates are - T7 Ranger (no just no) - T8 Tashkent (useless in the current meta) - T8 silver Cruisers (not competitive with premium CAs, especially NO)

CV

Your data seems to confirm my impression and reason that tier 5 ships are no fun to play atm. They mostly are ok vs tier 6 ships, but it is nothing like being top tier and racking up the damage, like other tiers can. I realize tier 5 can be top tier in a tier 4-5 spread, but that happens is 1/10 games tops, so for practical purposes, tier 5 ships are 'always' bottom tier. Which really sucks when you have to grind them! I have no statistics, but I seems Tier 4, 7, 9 and 10 are sweetspots for matchmaking in terms of getting top tier games atm, while 5 gets shafted big time and 6 is no prize. There are usually enough people playing tier 8 to make for fairly frequent top tier games.

You know I'm a US BB player now grinding tier 5 BBs, both Konig and Kongo, and I really really hate the Kongo. I imagine the Konig would beat Kongo easy, because it has armor + fast reload and contrary to the Kongo, it can hit what the guns are pointed at from 15 kms. Kongo just can't. I'm so tired of my hated Kongo I am resorting to ramming tactics more than I ever did before. At least that way there is no RNG in whether I hit or not! Konig is the complete reverse. Railgun accuracy, excellent damage and penetration, excellent armor. Love that ship. My only complaint is the teams I play with suck balls, so my winrate suffers.

It will require a change i playstyle for the DDs, but I doubt much will change. Last season was each team sitting in perma-smoke and one or two dds trying to spot for each team. Radar ships mostly parked behind islands close to caps or didnt use radar at all. Smoke will still be there, and CAs will still be oneshotted early by BBs ASAP. Doubt any CA will want to get close to a smokescreen when it has two BB sitting inside. HAS will make pushing more safe for BBs though. I

Welcome to the CV cliff tier of tier 6. Suddenly there're no more easy low AA targets, plus you get to meet tier 8s. Don't worry, we all got frustrated by that tier, but in a dozen games or two you will mostly have adapted. Learn to fear the AA cruisers, learn which BBs are planetraps and learn to kill dds. Which means playing strike deck Ryujo actually has pretty good reserves, it has 1,5 full squad reloads. The Independence has almost 10 planes less in reserve and only 1,0 reloads. Zuiho is very OP, even with the permanent AA Bogue infestation. I've got 60k average damage on it, which is the best of my tier 4-6 CVs.

Just had my 2nd CV game post-patch in the strike Ryujo and for the second time met this ship. It's AA is beyond ridicolous. It is worse than a fully AA decked Colorado (which at least have the excuse of being tier 7 and fully AA upgraded). A cleveland with DF down doesn't even compare. And the ships in question aren't even set up for AA - they are secondary setups (I asked). So at most AFT and BFT, no aa module and no manual aa perk. First game: Bayern in B cap on trident, a Kaiser is 3 km away. No other ships nearby (there are only 3 BBs left on the enemy team and the last was at the other end of the map) 2x4 TB squadrons, tier 6 planes vs a tier 6 ship. NONE of them makes it into normal manual drop range. Then tried attacking the Kaiser 3 km away, hoping to at least be able to hit that: NOPE, 7/8 planes shredded before they can drop. Same story for DB attacks. You stand a better chance of hitting the aforementioned Colorado. Second game: Trident, a Bayern in the A cap and a Farragut in the B cap alone. No CAs nearby. Didnt notice that the BB was a Bayern class, so I tried to torp the DD. Lost all planes before making it into range. So you ask, what about a full deck strike against this ship using all 4 squadrons? How about using DoTs? Yeah well, I tried that in the second game when the Bayern came after me. He just killed the TB, took the DB hits and I didnt get a fire. And....even if set on fire, he can repair without fear, because no single DB squad will ever make it into range to light another. So what is your experience out there? CV captains and Bayern captains.

Well...Hopefully spotting damage will be implemented sometime sooner rather than later. That should help quite a bit! TBH spotting and carrying the team to a win is the main reason I started the IJN line. I want to test the ships for Ranked use. I dont really like the torp-wait-torp-wait playstyle, but I saw how incredibly Mutsu/Hatsu/Fubuki could carry teams in ranked - and how few used them to that effect. My plan is to fit them for max concealment, ROF and smoke, not torps, so as to be able to trade with the gunboats. Currently I'm having perfectly good fun taking gunfights with other IJN dds in both Minnie and Mutsuki or to bait gunboats to overchase and have my CAs slaughter it. It makes for very relaxing experience compared to my gunboat playstyle, and it does the job of securing the cap. Also IJN guns does a surprising amount of damage. Maybe higher tiers will be different...time will tell.

Thanks Forgive my asking critical questions, but I dont think we are going to agree on this matter. Everybody has Situational Awareness now. Everybody will know a dd is around. So according to that logic....good luck to any dd getting torp hits. I would say the woes of IJN dds getting spotted is more related to everybody going hunting for them, due to how threatening they are/used to be. That combined with their speed, makes them quite uforgiving, since (except Shima) they don't have the speed to run. On the other hand, I still see many Shimas, kageros etc sailing solo, meet a gunboat and sometimes die horribly (other times the sucker torp the gunboat). IMO, If you go solo, you deserve what happens to you. The really dangerous IJN dds are the ones sailing 2-3 km in front of a CA or BB. Those that spot the gunboats/Russian dd for the bigger ships to obliterate. Those are the ones carrying games in ranked mode. Once the gunboats are off the map, IJN dds reign supreme. Radar or no radar imo. Essentially I agree with this statement:

What? You want to play risk free? Why dont you try CV? Why is it IJN dds can't torp from inside radar range, when I have no trouble doing so in my USS and RU dds? I know perfectly well tier 8-10 IJN dds 20 km torps were nerfed (and good riddance). What I fail to see is how that is a bad thing for the game (unless you owned a shima). The same thing happened to the Midway and the russian DDs.

If you talk about IJN ones,tbh I have little experience with them vs radar so far. I only have a Mutsu The ones I met in ranked either played well and spotted for the team, assasinated low hp targets etc - or they were just bad and going off alone. Why would undetected long range torp spammers have more trouble with radar than gunboats? I'd think CVs were their main problem.

Uhm, so DDs are indirectly nerfed, but will it balance out the increased number of smokes spamming HE at BBs and everything else? Last ranked season was a DD fest for a reason: smoke usage was sooo powerful (both defensively and offensively) I'd happily see that meta pruned back. Since WG refuses to use anything but a heavy handed approach to solving balance problems and refuses to fix CVs, radar buffs are the next best thing. As to RN cruisers and breaking the meta with them, we are on the same page. WG should really look at how smoke works and fix CVs instead of proceeding with this nonsense.

Don't really see much of a problem for DDs. The meta was already shifting toward using hard cover (islands) and staying at range 10+ km. My tier 7-9 dds are doing just fine after radar was introduced. Khaba isn't going to care either, nor is Gnevny/Gremy/Blys. USN dds can shoot over islands, IJN dds has the best detection and should be able to stay safe, if not in the face of bbs. The problem is more a smoke + RN cruisers = a repeat of the Russian DD line launch mistake, where every RU dds could invisifire and keep an entire flank of BBs running away by itself.

Yeah, Russian cruisers are underperforming. WR only 5% above other ships. Buff the Stalinium

Russian cruisers get buffed while USN ones dont (ok not Cleve, but Pepsicola for christ sake?). 404 Logic not found. USN fighter change is a direct Saipan buff as other USN CVs dont really care about loadout (they already have plenty). Terrible ideas.

Sorry to hear that, although I must agree. Russian DDs (and USN to be fair) are my favorite high tier sealclubbers. Currently 160k Xp off the Khabarovsk, but I can already tell you the Udaloi (even stock) is a keeper. Upgraded, it reminds me of the pre-nerfed Kiev except at tier 9. This is more or less what I talked about. Thanks. Means I can still count on getting some torps in the water, although it costs half my hangar Suspected AFT/BFT is what I encountered and is enough to really mess up T6 planes (hiryu uses T6 TB). This is my point aswell. I'm perfectly okay with a dedicated aa ship being a no-fly zone (Cleveland, NC, Iowa).....but this is an effectively "stock" ship with nothing invested into AA defences, and it just mows down planes anyway. Wut?