Chaos_Umbra

Kong should have been on the Kongo

So we will just be left with AA, Anti-sub and Torpedo skills on Cruisers

What you mean by halving the amount of viable skills for Cruisers?

I was bored because all I was doing was spotting and shadowing this Mogami that no one wanted to shoot at, and with those 50knot torps it was impossible to hit with them so I just went for it as I has smokes and was full HP at the time, basically the ship gets it's damage from BBs that don't dodge it's torps cause they don't know what WASD does and shooting AP at broadside ships that ignore your existence cause you are not a threat. Even fighting a DD with 1/4 your HP is a challenge. One good aspect of the ship is the accuracy on the guns that allow you to kill steal really well, got a Kraken this way was 500 points below the top scorer on the team. Another issue I have had with the ship is being able to launch the torps because they are so slow it is easy for another friendly ship to sail in between them and the intended target never had such an issue outside of Italian Cruiser Torps...

I tried that on a Mogami and got 1 citadel... Then cried while I tried to fight it with 4 150mm guns with only good AP and a 8s reload whilst dodging 15 155mm IJN HE shells every 10s... Luckily a BB on the other Flank was able to smack it for me. I did manage to out gun a Harekaze II after he took 1 of my torps while hydro-ing me and support from my team... Is it meant to be this hard to fight everything? I swear the ships unique characteristic is that it has an improved Base XP modifier...

Yeah the majority don't really care about the game and thus don't voice their opinions, they are just happy sailing around firing their Big BB Guns from 20km for 20 minutes and doing the same all over again...

Well it is easy to decide for the T8 and 9 slots for worst Cruiser: T8 - Albermarle T9 - Neptune Both floating citadels that explode when looked at, not that you can't get good games in them, but it relies on the enemy BBs ignoring your existence which rarely happened to me, I had BBs ignore broadside BBs at 6km to shoot me at 16km in these ships... For tier 10 it is hard because there isn't really any bad cruisers some meh ones but no absolute dogs, would probably be either Zao because of the HP pool or Henry IV for the Colorado level acceleration that it was nerfed too. While I wish I could include the Italian Cruisers in here as I hate how SAP is designed, but the line becomes playable at tier 8 and thus it had to go to other ships and at tier 10 they are no longer giant unarmoured citadels. Also why all the hate for the Tallin out of the 4 Hippers in the game I rate it up there along with the Mainz, one is just a long range HE spammer, the other an AP flanker with radar and short fuse AP that can smack DDs? And it being less armoured is not true really, sure it looses the 27mm upper belt but it gets the best combination of Ice Breaker Bow and Turtle back armour of all the ships... And accuracy isn't that bad if I can get 5 citadels in one salvo twice in one game...

But what about the DDs specifically designed for ASW that were not fitted with Depth charges but instead had Hedgehog and Squid Mortars? Will they just have no ASW capabilities?

Odd because I have always had the issue of my RN CLs not being able to stop?

Removed to save the Developers from having to do extra work with future ship lines, we don't want hull upgrades that change more than a few AA mounts... Also they removed it so they could sell it as a T4 premium along with all the other most historically accurate hulls, now it is World of Fantasy Ships...

Yeah but it was the secondary option that made the ship unique, other wise I would have not got it and just kept the Agir...

Yeah but the 3D artists are the only ones doing good work so they are at least more competent than the Balans Department...

Like Roma/Littorio/Veneto being all identical...

I'd say it is more of a T10 Haida than a Cossack, same number of guns both have an longer range hydro and crawling smoke with a speed boost and only 1 torp launcher. One thing I will say about the Vampire is that it is a real ship and you can still visit it in Sydney so that might be a consideration to some on the ship.

Got most of mine from the missions before they were removed only missed out on Yueyang, Khaba, Shima and Midway. Only one I thought could be interesting to try out was the Audacious one and try a full stealth build on it, but unless they changed how the skill works all the concealment skill on CVs does is kill your planes as they take longer to reach a safe height. But as I'm not much of a CV player anyway it would be far down on my priority list.

I run acceleration upgrade and the 8th slot Steering upgrade, I run concealment on the captain, though this was my pre rework build, but TBH I don't touch any of those gimmicky skills as the downsides and cost outweigh any benefits.

They can't do much worse...

Yes cruisers have had their upper belt and deck buffed recently, I remember back in the day when Zao was considered tanky because it had a 30mm deck that could bounce Montana shells... Then WG added the Russian Bias with Moskva's 50mm Deck that protects from even Yamato shells. Now a 30mm deck is standard and all CAs have a 30mm upper belt, so you would think this has made cruisers tankier, but it hasn't back then there were only 4/5 BBs at tier 10 (Conqueror doesn't really matter as that just spams HE ignoring the Overmatch mechanic) Of which only 2 (Yamato and Republique could overmatch 30mm. If you look at all the tier 10 BBs in game now you will find 30mm overmatch is standard at tier 10 with only 6/14 not able to overmatch 30mm of which 1 is Conqueror and the other Cristoforo Colombo which both have an alternative to AP that is more effective. So this 30mm plating only protects you from less than a 1/5 BBs, where as before it protected you from 1/2 of them. only ones with more are Venezia and Goliath with a 40mm deck and the Russians with their 50mm. As for the overpens that is more of Smolensk issue, so basically the majority of your complaints about Cruisers being too tanky can be pointed at the Russian ships... What a surprise...

Now does Harekaze II out DPM the new German T8 DD

Lets just say Veneto is the worst BB I have ever played, even preferred Kansas an Minnesota. I already own a Roma, so as a straight comparison Veneto is the same in armour and tankyness and has a little better AA because the copy paste upgraded hull has the lifeboats and vehicles replaced with some Italian Bofors, the stealth is 1km worse and you do notice it, the big difference is the guns... Roma feels like a Slava compared to Veneto the accuracy is just that bad and I hardly noticed much damage difference between firing AP or SAP as the amount of damage you can do is 100% reliant on your dispersion. So basically it is a ship designed for the part of the player base that doesn't know how to aim and so no matter the skill of the player the spreadsheet will say the ship is balanced as on the whole the damage numbers will be competitive with other same tier BBs. Lepanto is a little better, though the stock range is painful, but it is mainly better as you can mount the Reload Upgrade and the fact it has 3 more guns so you have more chances of hitting something. I did try out the Colombo on the PTS and that thing is obscene at close range on broadsides, you can quite often get 3 or more cits a salvo just because you fire so many shells, and the 360deg turning rear turrets make it an excellent bow tanker as you can quickly switch your fire power to the other side... I see this thing being nerfed soon, to try and get players to free xp past the T8 and 9 as a resource sink.

So are we going to get camos like this if they name the ships after pubs?

Well the Lepanto seems playable... Though the Veneto has got to be the worst ship I have ever played beating the Trento in that regard... My Veneto WR is half that of my Roma WR and it is all due to how inconsistent the guns are, Roma used to be considered having inconsistent guns, but Veneto is on a whole other level... I found that at range there is very little difference between the damage output of SAP vs AP as it more comes down to what RNG says about your dispersion more than anything like aiming and having the correct ammo loaded. Once again an entire line has been ruined by the stupid Gimmick known as SAP, probably the worst designed gimmick in the game at a conceptual level!!! Well at least I suppose with the ships having such inconsistent guns it will mean that player skill in aiming is not a factor so the 40% WR crowd will be able to deal just as much damage per shot as a 60% WR player, only difference being how long they can stay afloat. Thanks WG for once again ruining the Italian ships, they will be spending their time looking pretty in port when I have finished Grinding them... And it is not that I had already pointed out all the stupid designed attributes SAP had when it was first implemented for the cruisers and all my thoughts on it back then have proved correct... PS: The actual hulls on the ships are decent like armour, stealth and manoeuvrability, but the guns make all this invalid as you can't reliably do damage due to all the RNG so you essentially end up with a Gian torpedo with some guns as decoration, when playing Veneto I was jealous of the enemy Gneisenau because he had accurate guns, that were more reliable at doing damage than mine...

You are pretty much spot on with your assessment, only thing I can add is that at T8 the SAP becomes more reliable and usable, though a perfectly bow in target will still cause your damage to drop to 0 unless near max range, and the T10 Venezia is not a floating citadel like the ships from T6-9 because it has spaced armour. Long range SAP spammers where the only situation you will switch to AP is when there is a broadside cruiser around 10km from you, then you can punish it with a load of citadels in 1 salvo. The underlying issues with the line are; SAP is a terribly designed gimmick and is 100% detrimental to the game having what is essentially a HE shell with a higher alpha than the AP is flawed from the start as it makes ammo choice essentially void (All other cruisers except the RNCLs have at least some reason to use both ammunition types even a Worcester using AP has it's uses), secondly the ships give up far too much for the SAP and the exhaust smokes (namely having almost BB reload and having none of the Cruiser Utility tools like Hydro that can help with ambushing DDs in smoke and screening for torps, especially as cruisers can no longer pick Vigilance commander skill), lastly the smoke itself is poorly designed as it is too powerful, but at the same time so limited that you kind of want to not use them unless 100% necessary (TBH they would have been better having a 10s duration with more charges, so they are entirely a disengagement tool instead). Venezia is basically the only good ship in the line and is a pain to fight unless you have no other ships to worry about as you can invalidate almost all his damage except for torps, unless he opens up the range. TBH the only fun Italian cruiser for me to play is the T6 Duca D'Aosta as it has all the normal cruiser tools, spaced armour that is decent for the tier probably the best in agility at the tier and HE + AP on fast firing guns where there is a good incentive to use hit and run tactics supporting your DDs then disengaging, but unfortunately WG for the Tech tree had to reach into their Box'O Gimmicks and ruin them. The SAP gimmick is also what has made the Italian BBs unfun to play as there is little difference in damage on what ammunition you use and it all depends on where your shells go which is 100% reliant on RNG and it makes it very difficult to turn around games in it... In fact in the Veneto yesterday I was jealous of a Gneisenau cause it had accurate reliable guns...

But that is the Z-23 which is losing it's historically accurate 150mm guns for an armament that wasn't ever mounted or considered being mounted on it...

If the reload buff also increased the chance of Detonation it might be fine Making it mimic the Battle of Jutland