GulvkluderGuld

Assuming BBs sailing straight lines? Can't imagine how that strategy would land hits on anything with working a and d buttons As you I didnt like the Cleveland. I never understood the Cleveland hype. I find both the pensacola and Omaha are better ships with better shell arcs, and i happily sealclub Clevelands in either by kiting them to death. The trick with the Pensa is upgrading it befure judging.

Appreciate the advice vs Tirpitzes. Amagi specifically I dont have problems with I think most of my woes are born from facing Tirpitzes in my Colorado. I only fought a few in my NC, and the superior speed of NC should allow me to keep them out of easy torp range. I'll try shooting under the forward turret. Question: Once Tirpitzes have turned to drop torps, you need to dodge. I've seen NC's turn away (exposing broadside) and even done it sometimes, but what is your experience with this? I always squeeze my stomach waiting for the Citpens (since the range is < 10 km). Iowas I only fought a few of, and that was before I upgraded NC and learned where to aim. Izumos have more HP than NC which makes them tough, and their beltarmor seems surprisingly thick or trollish, but at long range NC will pen them through the deck and hit massive citadels. Will try out the anti-burn build.

Used Kiev in S2 ranked (started late, made rank 4) and Tash in S3 fo 25 games, but swiftly ditched it in favour of my Benson. RU dds are fine for Random battles, but imo not really competitive when it counts. Tashy is simply put just a bigger, slower Kiev with more HP to make up for being a bigger target. Kiev was great and was able to dodge torps reasonably well. Tashkent is basicly a torpedo magnet even with Vigilance with that terrible rudder shift. Although rumor has it Udaloi and Khaba have better guns than Tash/Kiev, I decided to leave my Tash in port awaiting RU dd buffs before I will grind onwards. So here's my problem with RU dds: 1) you want to cap? Go IJN or US dds 2) you want to smoke + shoot? US dds have better smoke and dodge sucker torps better with superior rudder shift (my most frequent cause of death in DDs are sucker torps across all nations) They can also take Demolitionist, giving them 8% fire chance/shell (something RU dds can't do due to needing AFT) and with experience, they can hit BBs reliably from 10-11 km away. AP is a little meh though. 3) you want to support other dds? Stealth specced mogami does the job better. 4) you want to 1v1? Benson can actually go toe-to-toe with Tashkents in a gunfight and do everything else the Tashkent does better (being only ~5 knts slower) about 4: Benson has faster rate of fire and will be close enough (detection range 6 km) to easily hit the Tash with every salvo, which makes up for the higher dmg of Tashkent shells. Also a smart Benson will aim for the frontal turrets and make the Tashkent cry What do you guys think?

That's a pretty big shaft in practice. Pepsi has larger detectionn range than the tier 7 US BB Colorado, so guess who all BBs turn and points their guns at first? Pepsi players need to just AFK the first 2 mins of every game

I can add to the above that IMO the pepsi plays a bit like RU dd. Instead of never showing sides, i found myself constantly tapping the a and d keys to keep moving unpredictably, thus throwing enemy shots off. Aftee a few salvos or when your pepsi draws fire, swing it around and kite back to disengage. Always stay near max range tp buy time for your rudder to move you suprisingly maneuverable pepsi out of the shells way. Rinse and repeat. I started out with a rage thread almost like yours upon unlocking the pepepsi, but now when i sometimes have to play t7 ca with a friend and take it out, I easily do my own hp worth of dmg using above tactics. I've even carried games in my pepsi.

It isnt just you man. I'm in the same situation, but from reading the forums I did know the NC had worse shell-velocity (due to arcs) and worse armor compared to the Colorado. I still keep my colorado in port and after fully upgrading the NC, I still dont aim as well in her as do in the Colorado. As others have said, forget about the rear turret, unless there is only CA oppostion. Another consequence of only having 6 guns I learned, is never engage >2 CAs unless you want to die. Contrary to the Colo and NM, the NC simply put doesn't have the firepower for that. Most CAs on tier 7-8 have very high %fire and lots of guns (compare cleveland %fire to Mogami %fire!) so inaddition to you having less guns, the CAs you shoot also have increased chance of causing fires. Advantages: Rudder shift + turning circle + vigilance makes the NC great at pushing vs carpet torps if only you have someone proteting your flank (a CA or DD). I had amazing games where I carried hard in this ship, even vs T10 shimas / khabarovsk and CA opposition (couldnt have done it without CA support to hold my flank!). Also AA was excellent prior to 5.3. The problem for the NC starts when she runs into equal/higher tier BBs. She can deal with Amagis and any lower tier BBs, but not very much else (and she hates tirpitzes with their damn torps). If I have to fight BBs, I tend to pick IJN opponents, since they have the weakest armor (save T10). I tend to play my NC games very strategically (contrary to my Colorado games), often going Bow-on and using islands to cover one broadside for the first 5-10 mins @ 15 kms and pick off CAs and any BBs that are stupid enough to show a broadside. I find the NC to be more accurate and reliable at landing multiple CitPens than the Colorado, once I got the aim down. Also, penetration is way better. After 10 mins most enemy CAs in range have been evaporated, which makes it safe to push (if you were outnumbered on this front, you should already have conducted a fighting retreat). But for Gods sake, dont ever push anywhere where you show a broadside > 30 degrees to another BB. Tier 8+ have finger of God penetration. Use her better armor to tie down enemy BBs 1v1 and go bows-on into brawling range and deny citadels while you wait for the enemy to make the first mistake (turn) or your CAs to roast her. If the enemy BBs does the same, dont be shy about raining HE down on her and using (hopefully) your teams numbers advantage (or your superior aim)

You forgot creditfarmer scrubs like me who makes 100k on average in the Indy (pre 5.3 as I'm currently taking a break from wows)

That would surely be a pain to DDs who mainly relies on torps for damage. Shima spam fixed

What you liked: - cap zone size on some maps (north in particular) got balanced (in S2 south team had a safe camp spot) - shatter with 3 cap zones forced a lot of action and strategy. Contrast to North and Land of Fire which ended up as a stale camp-fest. The downside is most games are "over" in 3 mins, but at least the winning team will accrue points faster, which means less slow and painful losses. - nice with rewards every 2 ranks or so. What you disliked: too many Destroyers (3 is ok, 4+ on each team is silly). Silly nation/class distribution (all IJN dds vs all US dds) Carriers very rare - leads to the DD spam. Same rewards for rank 1 as last season Suggestions for the next season: Cap the number of dds or reduce the DD influence somehow (maybe make CVs more viable, which increases demands for CAs)? More maps with 3 cap-zones (it forces action, which is nice) Permanent flag displaying you max league/rank (historic for all seasons) for those of us who dont get to rank 1 (got discouraged by the DD spam and w/l/w/l streaks) Make top dog on losing team NOT lose a star if he got 1k+ base xp or epic medal (high caliber, kraken, confed)

Dont ever scout in a Tashkent. Ever. (Maybe except the unlikely scenario where the enemy has no DDs) The Tashkent likes to skirmish. Dont go near big blobs of enemy ships. Go to the cap nobody wants to go to. Fixed it for you

Probably quirky hours. It usually is only a few tier sixes in the match,but i has happened for sure

How come my Hosho gets matched against Fusos and New Mexicos then? Not talking CVs or divisions here.

Agree the Hosho TBs are incredibly fragile against tier 6 (but it is a two tier difference, so they should be). Playing CV without running out of planes is hard - just like playing strike/balanced setups into AA decks is really hard. So if you play "lets ruin the game for the enemy CV" 3-1-1 Ryujo and lose to "lets ruin the game for the enemy CV" 2-1-0 Indy, then it must be WG's fault and you come here to cry?

Tbh I only compared plane stats at tier 6, since I use the Indy as my credit farmer. The difference per plane is 15% advantage to the US on the testserver in both dps and hp compared to around parity on the live server. The Indy pays with a 40s rearming time on the figher instead of a 12 s as of old. You will have to check the numbers for other tiers yourself though

Farragut is without a doubt the worst, most painful tier 6 grind. Be happy you dont have to repeat the nightmare with the tier 7 Mahan like those of us, who played it before the torp buffs. Yes Benson is really quite weak (LOL) Please buff the wet paper ship that currently only constitutes 50% of every Ranked team. What we'd have then is World of Bensons Dont Banzai a full hp BB if you need all torps to hit. It's allowed to use your brain ;-) Wait, or use the guns to light a fire and take 10k hp off it before going banzai. Farraguts can stealth fire, and if that isnt possible in your dd, then use a smokescreen.

MrConway, on 08 February 2016 - 05:05 PM, said: 34. All American bombers: The area size of the alternative bomb attacks now matches the area size for the automatic attacks Sounds like manual Divebombing will now be pointless. First is this true? and if yes, why would you remove skill-based options from the game? Really, this seems like a particularly stupid and pointless idea. Want to write something sarcastic, like why not remove manual torpedo and fighter barrage too. That way RNG is completely in charge and a bot-program will do just aswell as a human behind the keyboard.

daki, on 08 February 2016 - 07:05 PM, said: 34. All American bombers: The area size of the alternative bomb attacks now matches the area size for the automatic attacks WG claims they want to give players options, but then they go and do the exact opposite? I get that bombs are used for fire dmg not direct dmg, so even combined with +30% dmg that looks like a net nerf.

Yep! Looked very closely and that was most definitely 1-2 secondary shots going straight into the DD. No primary armament shots around to confuse the issue. Not much comment on secondaries in general since I'd want manual control over the things, and afaik that was tried in the beta with predictable results (dds getting decimated). They seem to be fit their intended role right now: It's impossible to bumrush tier 7+ IJN BBs in a dd. Even a full hp one. Tried it and died horribly a few times times (Kiev/Tashkent: looking at your horrible 4 km torp range here!). The damage they do (easily 5-6k for a nagato) combined with main armament dmg is enough to finish any dd by the time it reaches 2 kms.

Messing around with my Hosho, I discovered you can make a US-style torp wall of 8 torps if you stagger the TBs right. Did it against a St. louis who went like WTF in chat after eating 4-5 torps. It is bloody hard to replicate though I think it might be worth experimenting with in a training room. In 5.3 IJN fighters seems to bem nerfed 15% in dmg AND hp compared to the pararity they have now with US planes (at least on tier 6). On the other hand, US setups tier 8+ gets rekt. Curious how it will pan out.

We more or less agree I think. Unfortunately, it is often the first wave of torps that take away 50-60k hp because it is unexpected. I'm talking 5-10 mins into the game, where the DDs will have had time to cross the map and group up somewhere and you havn't seen any torpedoes yet. At this point usually the map is divided up into a strong and weak side for each team, and it becomes mandatory to push. One of my favorite DD tactics is showing myself in one spot, then sail to a completely different place and start torping (or shelling). As to situational awareness, you are correct. I didnt really try that on BBs, only DDs/CAs (great for DD hunting). Maybe I should get it for my high tier BB.

Error 404, No CVs found I didnt notice any big problems playing tier 6 CVs. You lose a bit more planes attacking BBs and will have to be a bit more cautious in target selection, but TBs also fly 20-30 knots faster pr. tier in 5.3. Thus, they will cross the aa perimiter faster. The only "problem" is that it will become boring to play CVs against good teams, since they will literally never get a plane through the CA screen before 10 mins. Thus the CV has zero influence on the game because it will be too dangerous to strike before most CAs are sunk. Fortunately, those teams are rare in Random battles!

*sniff* WG put an end to my favorite sealclubber, the B hull omaha with AFT. Oh yes, there were many people using AFT on their low tier CAs. Why should they get a compensation? Good AA was supposed to be the US national trait. It was rediculous how litte difference there was in the aa capabilities of and IJN CAs. Nobody was playing US (anti-air) CAs because all CAs could shoot planes down. View is as an indirect buff to the US ship's national trait. Now IJN ships have torpedoes but cant shoot down planes and US ships cant torpedo stuff but can shoot planes down. Funky consequence: The winner is german CAs which can do both!

Hey I'm not predicting doom here. I'm in complete agreement with you - one Shimakaze is not a problem, but 3 in each team will dictate the flow of the entire game with their torp walls. Your statistics and argument are sound, the only thing I might add is this. I think the large IJN Shima population are also in part due to how OP the Minekaze was/is(?) and how comparatively punishing US DD were, so lots of people started on the IJN dd line. I were responding to and clarifying a specific post discussing how wellplayed Shimas can wreck faces (and that very few ships can stop them, only another Shima, a US DD or a surprise CV comes to mind). Post here: Oh and yes we won that game, but it was mostly due to the enemy team outplaying itself - one Yamato sailing to A10 to chase a bb, the other enemy Yamato showing its broadside, and the enemy NC blocked by a mountain. Strategically, we won on points, tactically, we were screwed You've got my argument the wrong way round. I were saying that since Shimas are never detected, it is impossible to know where torps will come from. One can only make an educated guess. Watching the minimap is of no help, since the Shimas are generally never spotted. I dont see the benefit of having Situational Awareness on a BB since it is detected most of the time anyway.

Some people read what they want to read. Go away troll. The post was written first to express my appreciation for Karsuns efforts. Second I enganged in some wishful thinking about the other subject that has generated a lot of threads on this forum, namely the combined aa and cv changes. It would be of interest to me to know what WG wants to achieve with the changes (to CVs in particular, since the AA changes has been pretty well explained already). My favorite CVs are actually getting buffed in 5.3, since I already decided not to grind US CVs beyond tier 6.

Wargaming Europe actively talking to the community. Great work Karsun, thank you for the elaboration! Now if we could also get to know what is going on behind the scenes with US CVs, and particularly why anyone would still want to play US CVs...? Langley and tier 8+ in particular. Why rework CVs and AA in the same patch Why not nerf Tier 8+ US CV torpedo alpha damage instead of removing the 2nd squad?