GulvkluderGuld

Agree 100% this is the core of the troubles of high tier gameplay. Min-maxing causes gameplay to become increasingly volatile. Also those low skill floor (easy to play) ships like Smolensk force wg to add low skill floor counters (Kremlin, says hi!). Insane HE spam vs Insane armor and tankiness. None of them with any counterplay for the opponent unless he sails an equally "balanced" ship or are much more skille to begin with. And in the middle is the supposed "spotter" ships who are the first to get rekt if spotted. Is it any wonder we have a passive meta at tier X? Contrast it with lower tiers, where "deadliness" of making a mistake i lower due to both lower ranges, lower dispersion and much lower DPM and ships often live to get into brawling range (without the intervention of a cyclone). As to CVs, I'll continue to argue the RTS skillgap was even larger. 10k damage would take a special miracle for some of the wonderboys who got themselves deplaned and went afk after a few minutes. The reworked tier X CV stats paint a very interesting picture if one takes a closer look. Audacious is best if you look at ALL players. True. But if you look at top 25% or above, Hakuruy is top dog in ALL stats as you no doubt expected =) Clear evidence of a difference in skill floor and cieling? WG actually came out and said Haku with the x4 stealth torps would be (paraphrase) too much of a universal CV, before they removed them

Eh?....RN CVs are the kind of DoTs They have a higher average damage than the other CVs of same tier.

Could be right. But players might also not bother with the captains when they can get T9 coal ships for almost the same price. If WG charge the same for the French commander, I'm not buying, nor will i participate in the events grind fests anymore. #MakeCampaignsGreatAgain

Watched this. Strikes 1. Good scouting at the start with RF, you ended up finding a DD and delaying B cap - good. 2. Then RF again, you went C trying to strike a Cleveland (since enemy CV covered the Kidd with fighter)- dont like this. 3. Then DB on the exposed fuso, good hits and fires. Carrier moving up toward C - good. 4+5. Warspite commits kamikaze by Budyoni torpedoes. No choice but TB the solo Budyoni, he is close to detecting your CV - good. 6. Using RFs to strike the Hipper once for 6k - dont like this. 7+8: DB then TB strike on Fuso - good. Game ends (loss). Evaluation 2: Not sure why you didnt return to B and keep focusing the DD untill it smoked up or left the cap. You might have prevented B getting capped. If the DD had TRB, you could kill him. 3: Notice the DD has taken B and nobody contesting. Also A i completely lost, so the strike there was wasted 4. DD gets itself killed. B still in enemy hands and remains so untill the end. 6: Game probably lost at this point due to potato team, but if try-harding: Hipper is irrelevant. Help the friendly NM by killing one of the 2 enemy BB. I would strike the 25% Fuso again with DBs, maybe using a slingshot strike on the (closer) Arizona on the way. Keep focusing Fuso untill dead (either another slingshot DB on Arizona to help kill off his AA, or drop as many TBs on the Fuso as possible) 7+8: you do as above - excellenty executed too. Setting fires or burning DCPs on multiple BBs will help you kill them off faster if AA allows you to strike both in one sortie. Conclusion Loss mostly due to your teammates playing reckless and dying when they shouldn't. You scouted well and moved the CV closer to the action - very good stuff. Strikes were partially or fully on target (only 2nd RF strike missed). You're a bit too fond of RFs in this game and target selection was a bit optimistic. Strike 2+6 had very little actual impact. Instead you might have killed enemy DD in B or prevented the B capture, thus delaying enemy point gain and bought time to kill the Arizona, buying further time for your team. In the best case, you and NM would survive on C, B would remain uncapped and enemy would still be on A. Still probably a loss because of enemy HP/ship advantage, unless you are much better at farming damage than enemy CV while dropping fighters for your NM, but it would be the only way to win.

KDA is fine, damage is on the low end ( i hit 95k back in 8.2). Probably your pathing is inefficient (spending too much time travelling and too little doing damage). In addition to what has been said: Never go out of your way to provide AA cover unless you can make enemy CV waste even more time breaking through it (= endgame, and be critical) This is even more true for slow RN planes Stay close to the front lines if reasonably safe (not in the corner or map edge) - especially when using slow RN planes. Usually best in the area where your team has an advantage. Sometimes you will die if team comes apart....learn from that what position is safe and when to fall back. Also likely: RNG hates you and WR will improve eventually (you had a random losing streak). EG see my Mogador stats:

Probably only because ships have very short range Also yes, more teamwork than I've seen in weeks of random battles.

Half the games i play people just go in, guns blazing at any ship (including players) in sight. A few games has seen a truce suggested in chat. One of my first games with truce, a couple bandits on my team broke it at the end, sunk an entire other player team and lost one themselves, and I picked up all the filth with my BB

Imagine an invasion around every island waifu and the outermost 2 rows/columns of the map by Sharks with lasers strapped to their head. ....Unless BBs and HE spammers pay WG 1 million credits

Players: 175.000 coal is bonkers WG: deal with it Classic WG next up: french commander will cost even more (240.000 coal?) because prices go up and up and they've still got to feed the server hamsters. Quote With all due respect, coal = grind wall..... Actually subO is halfway wrong about that. The grind wall is gated by time too, you cant just farm coal 100 games once a month. Which is maybe intentional, but really punishing for the players.

You might want to look at some CC videos of shimas then. I know for a fact Flamu did one (youtube) on the shima and RPF torps although it is probably a year old by now. If you can stand the guy, he is quite good at explaining his decision making.

WG: gave BB (Torpitz) torpedoes Players: *rushes smoke to torp DDs* Thought experiment: WG: Buffing cruiser secondaries Players: *shows full broadside for secondaries and rushes BBs to brawl*

Not sure what you thank me for (using concealment is hard!) And no, F3 dont need anything, that would make the other torpedo options redundant. As for torpedoes, they have been repeatedly nerfed (latest: flooding nerf thanks to CVs) and any buffs should be towards increasing torpedo effectiveness in general.

Oh I completely agree. Hitting 4+ torps only works against newbies and bad players as you so rightly point out My argument is that F3s and 12km torpedoes are used for different purposes, and that the 12 km torpedoes can do the F3s job, but not the other way around (they lack range for area denial, torping choke points and camping spots) The only way F3s can do the 12 km job is either 1) if shima is allowed to flank by enemy DDs and radars or 2) if shima spots and wears down / kills the opposing DD, thus opening the door for those close torpedo passes we discussed. Note that option 1 depends on enemy mistakes and also, a CV can completely shut both playstyles down (most random battle CVs are too bad though). What is left is taking advantage of the superior concealment of the shimakaze to spot the enemy DDs for your team to kill, denying spotting to the enemy team. This is a very big deal and how you win games in a shima, and it requires no torpedo hits at all. A well-played shima can and will kill even a harugumo over maybe half a game, but it requires a great deal of skill and patience as well as a team capable of staying alive during that time. In the end Shima does work in competitive, but other boats arguably bring better utility and safety (Daring, Gearing, Grozovoi)

Giving up the range is not worth it in my experience. This is especially true for the Harugumo and other gunboats, since they care more about burning enemy damage control than getting tons of torpedo hits, and the extra range of the 12 km torps makes that significantly more likely. If you can close to 6 km without getting murdered by enemy CV, DDs and radars, then 8 km torps may give a slight advantage. However, those situations are quite rare in random games where CVs are allowed.

@Seraduxos: Agree with the general build philosophy as succes depends increasingly on survivability and gun damage. Personlly I've got BFT instead of RL on my Z52 since you can always pop hydro if you get spotted to detect the offender. Once you get Legendary module, you can use that in slot 5 (kicks concealment to 6,3 though) for 15% torp reload AND use main battery mod 3 in slot 6 for the best possible offensive build for random battles. Wouldn't use Legendary in competitive because of the concealment penalty, and i might well default to the standard RL build you use on the captain.

Urashima: I find CE is fairly useful on Urashima to avoid getting shot and losing health and especially, modules. I guess a case could be made for DE since it sometimes takes the entire game to get a single fire on the damned Gorgon (fires are NEEDED when soloing it). My is PT, PM, LS, AR, SE, SI, TAE, CE - and considering to drop AR and PM for DE. JOAT is not needed since you can alternate the T and Y skills without any cooldown at all.

Destroyers (except Khabarovsk): Always go Propulsion mod 2 for disengage (instant full reverse + smoke will make every player except unicorns miss their first shot - as soon as you are smoked, move to disengage before radar/hydro/torps). Khaba is njormally played as a light cruiser with rudder shift mod 1+2. Cruisers: Depends on their role and rudder shift time. Usually go rudder shift except for island huggers that benefit a lot from propulsion mod. BBs: Usually Damage control module is better (standard for tank build with damage control & fire prevention on the captain)

No. And while you have a lot (2x4 each side) they have a 167s long cooldown.

Can't find a division of seven so no even trying it without CV.

20 km are great for those lemming games where you farm the pushing enemy team from close to max range. I get a surprising number of hits with those, especially when players try to pass and ignore my Yoshino.

You appear to be correct. I was able to damage a Gneisenau almost no matter where i hit it, even when i went bow in. It kinda have to be that way so the ships can do SOME damage in all situations i feel. Also (like all cruisers) the tier V takes a ton of damage if anyone even sneezes in its direction. I would expect CLs to bury it with ROF not the other way round, unless you fight at extreme range. All in all the tier 5 looks like a tier 5 Schorhs: Big floating citadel with geriatric turret traverse designed to fling Long-range SAP and struggles hard if anything makes it into close range (=glass cannon)

Just got my Montecuccoli, so testing that will be interesting. Can it really push out any damage vs a bow tanker? I thought even SAP were supposed to bounce on heavily angled targets? So far Smolensk seems superior to Henri for flank control (concealment) from what I see in KotS, plus two of them can perma-smoke each other. My Yamato and Kremlin would like to have a word about that (both commonly seen in CB - otherwise, you are correct)

Met @Estaca_de_Bares in what was almost the only win in my Mogador by doing reverse psychology on RNGesus. His side of the team stayed alive beautifully holding C on tears, while those BBs on my side acutally pushed forward into B cap, helping he gun down a Zao that ate a torp. Despite the win, apparently I am become Potato.

Not exactly. I said more testing needed, which also applies below :P What i mean is their impact is disproportionate on one class (DDs), so more balancing should be done to increase their effectiveness vs other classes while reducing it vs DDs.

Whatever can be said if italian CAs in general, SAP certainly seems too strong vs DDs, also at mid tiers. Sailed my Mogador yesterday and faced off with a TTT amalfi. He shot me twice, almost stern on (only back guns could fire) and I still took 4-5k salvos from 10 km Yes TTT is good, but there are limits to RNG (either RNG blessed him with incredible amounts of hits or the alpha dmg is rediculous). Needs more testing. Cant help but thinking WG really put themselves in a poor spot balance-wise with SAP. Too little dmg and DDs can bow-tank and yolo- rush the cruisers (PTS) Too much and DDs get flat out murdered (possibly the current situation) Frankly there are already so many counters to DDs we dont need more at high tiers, so I hope WG will put the limiter to dmg against DDs back into place (with balancing)....