HaachamaShipping

Speed is a quality of its own and on a CV it is basically part of the reload. You wouldn't call a Worcester weak, just because its alpha doesn't measure up to a Zao. Nor would you call a Mino bad, just because it is notably more difficult than most other T10 cruisers. And average stats confirm, GZ is doing quite well.

If you aren't triggered by the lack of Stukas (come on WG? Why?) or how CVs in general can be silly powerful still despite rework, Graf Zeppelin is a good ship. Don't buy it if you have no interest in CV play or if you like Stukas, but if you just want some solid performing CV at T8 that is German and has meme-worthy secondaries, well, here you go. This is a ship that imo, likely is second only to, if not on par with Enterprise as a T8 CV, but you need to wrap your head around it. I'd like to play it more (don't have time atm), but I can see a good bit of potential in the ship. I must warn people though, if you don't invest into CE, your ship is visible from half the map away. If you want to be optimal, pick CE, if you want meme secondary range, get AFT instead and mind your CV position. Also, the ship is being sold for 50€, you don't have to pay 80€ unless you really like all the extra stuff.

He said he has to learn the ship, not that it's bad. And I trust a good player to be able to gauge if it's the ship or their own skills, especially when they agree that it's their own skills. Graf Zeppelin by no means is a bad ship, it basically is just different, which throws people off, but with some practice, it shows results. I'm not even good at AP dive bombing with the GZ and my damage average of the few games I played is my second best among my T8s (second only to Monarch). Given that while I'm not unicum I'm also not terrible, I'd say, those torp bombers sure aren't bad, as one has to always keep in mind, often GZs dpm comes from substituting alpha for plane cycle time. If something like Kaga is a Zao that gets its damage in from huge strike groups and DoT stacking, GZ is a Minotaur that just has an insane reload cycle thanks to the planes being so fast. You don't deal mucxh damage at once, but your planes are back for a follow-up faster than anyone else's. Of course it relies on planes not dying, which basically requires proper target selection and planning ahead.

Against typical random build, any build can be lulz. Played her last weekend with the 6.4 km torps and TRB... Frankly, Monaghan is strange, but far from terrible. Just not great. I take the Benson torp variant over the Icarus though, given you can at least do something useful.

Bots have it on, unless you turn off the bot attacking completely. You'll notice it when your planes take damage.

Ah, ok. Only T4 I played was Hermes. Can't even recall the rocket aim there. I just know the torps and bombs were lulzy. On T8, I think the issue really is that your speed on the planes prevents quick turns unless the enemy has AA on and gets spotted from 5.8 km away.

If the ship has AA turned off and you spot at like 2. something, wouldn't that kinda throw off the aim? I feel like the sole fighters that I could aim at this short notice would be GZ ones, but their reticule prevents me from making much of a useful attack most of the time.

Spot, then circle around for the attack. Planes are usually fast enough that the DD has a very predictable location still, so even if the DD shuts off AA to avoid staying detected, just start the attack run once you are closing in again and do the fine aiming once the DD gets detected again by the incoming rocket fighters. Alternatively, if the DD isn't heavy AA or has AA cover by friendlies, activate a fighter ontop to keep them spotted.

Given I'd likely get scolded if I just post terrible memes, here have an Ooi instead. We are still recruiting!

It is the economically sound decision for as long as Mac is basically not established for gaming. As it stands, Mac is a small share of the market, typically not used for gaming and hardly supported in a proper manner by a good lot of games, reinforcing that people typically don't go for Mac if they are looking for a gaming PC. And there is not a lot of signs that this is going to change. So, for WG, even long-term calculation would make it sound to put resources elsewhere than to port to a system that likely is not going to pay for itself and where a port can likely be done later if there are ever signs that Mac users actually start becoming a greater share of the gaming community in general. I would fathom though, that this would first of all require Apple to go and make greater attempts at getting established. And for an enterprise, the economically sound decision in this case is the correct decision, given there is neither a legal nor moral obligation to do otherwise. And god knows what else you want to base your opinion on, though WG's opinion is mostly what matters here anyway.

Sadly, the main issue I have with CM is that unlike Henri, I don't see much of a reason to play it over the IJN version, except for the range. Not saying there aren't differences, but I just find that unless I want to spam HE at 17 km, the Mogami or Atago got me covered, depending on whether I want the dpm or tankiness. Henri at least gets 50 mm pen, 30 mm mid section and some outstanding AP to play around with. Definitely am not trying hard though, given regardless of what I get, my role in CB won't change for a while.

Icarus killed my interest in grinding the line fast. 7 km torps that reload slow, speed that is underwhelming and has no speed boost, guns that are a pain to use, AA that is bad even for a T6 DD. All that for great turning qualities and a short range hydro. And sure, the torps within their range are decent, but I really rather use anything with 8+ km on the torps or with some gunpower. I have more fun in my Monaghan. Not to even talk about ships like Anshan, Shinonome or T-61 (Christmas containers sure were generous with T6 DDs).

As a special spotter plane, it's fine, imo. Attack helicopters kind of did not exist really and would be murdered by flak. Not to mention, heli carriers didn't exist back in the day. Seaplane tenders would make more sensible addition to the game and would already raise enough questions on how to not make them suck.

A ship that allows someone to do way more than is justified for a certain skill level isn't good for the game, even if there's limitations on skill ceiling. Same reason why I absolutely detest the concept behind Asashio. It doesn't help that a potato in one of those ships will likely never carry, they would never have done that anyway in a properly designed ship either. But that they can crap all over other people's proper gameplay with little effort and get disproportionate results for what they actually did is just dumb. The changes to Conqueror at least make it a little bit less of a stupid ship to play, it still has allround HE potatoes can use to farm damage from 20+ km away.

Scharnhorst already has more HE pen than an Iowa. Does that mean it has 406 mm guns? Certainly not. Also, just like with Scharnhorst, the 10 cm AP beats the 10 cm HE by a disproportionate amount in dpm output, just people don't use it because a. there are practical limitations, b. many people just are lazy and no longer switch ammo type like in the good old days before pen changes. But Scharnhorst has similar issues at times when it cannot overmatch T6s or T8 cruisers. And you might think that yes, the AP differences between 283 mm and 406 mm are drastic, but to a degree, so are AP differences between 10 cm and 152 mm. Just maybe hard to notice, because people tend to forget that CLs actually have AP unless they are British and are forced to use it (or they are one of those special Cleveland players that somehow spams aP at everything, dunno why). And compared to the AP performance of 152 mm guns, the 10 cm gun also falls short by about as much as the 283 mm gun falls short of the 406 mm guns. Yeah, but go try the single purpose guns before that. There are reasons why I can't stand playing Icarus.

CVs in CB, imo, make Stalin more useful rather than less useful. Stalin is next to the BB the only other ship in the lineup that can citadel the crap out of enemies spotted early trying to move from spawn to whatever location. Stalingrad is a ship that already cannot count on concealment to save it much, aerial spotting hurts the rest of the T10 competition more than it hurts Stalingrad. Lastly, CVs reduce the weakness of Stalingrad having only defAA with no option for hydro. I'm not going to argue that CVs are a great addition to CBs or that Stalingrad cannot be hurt tremendously by them (Hakuryu citadels them easily and dodging torps is hard), but compared to ships like Zao, the Stalingrad has a far smaller performance drop-off when CVs show up. Naturally, Stalingrad is best used in moderation, like any ship, though I guess some love their meme compositions. This season RU clans throwing a wall of 6 Moskva + BB at us actually happens more often than one would think. Also, yes, Henri certainly seems like the best allround pick for flanking cruiser. Sadly I don't feel like grinding CM and Saint-Louis to get there. Frankly, Stalingrad's supposed OPness mostly stems from the fact that it is great at punishing mistakes. Against people who put themselves in a bad position, Stalingrad can do great, as it can citadel ships with ease. Naturally, in randoms, that makes Stalingrad quite a good ship to get nice damage totals in (though I hate playing it in randoms, because unlike CB, you cannot trust your team to actually hold anything and when a flank gets overrun, as soon as you get shot at by multiple BBs from multiple angles, you're dead). In CB though, Stalingrad against coordinated play can get countered quite well and is imo hardly OP. It adds some capabilities, so bringing one can be a decent idea, but 4 is just stupid and relies on running into people that have not figured out how to kill a Stalingrad. It's basically like our clan running 4 Minos (sadly not all of us had Minos) in Bravo and somehow having gotten 75% WR in all matches we played using that composition, because we hardly ever encountered anyone that could adapt to it. If you however know where the Stalingrad is and know how to play around that, it loses quite a bit of value. Unless I'm in Mino meme comp, Stalingrad to me is certainly not the most threatening cruiser around. Henri certainly is always a solid threat, Moskva imo beats Stalingrad against teams that cover their flanks well and have an idea what angles to keep and how to use terrain.

They have 100 mm guns. They just get HE penetration like 152s.

RN 120 mm are actually worse ballistics-wise. Also, pre-buff Leone. Maybe even post-buff Leone...

You do see a lot of T10. But honestly, I find T10s not that much more threatening than T8s. They have better dps and more explosion damage, but if you can successfully manage to not die to T8 AA, you can apply same lessons to T10. Something like a Montana is basically NC with 2 more explosions (and while Monty explosions do more damage, it's not like NC isn't hard hitting enough to shred your planes if you don't dodge). Worcester and Mino are no-fly zones, so you don't even have to ever bother (though the long range isn't that special, mid-range is where they shred). I'm no CV pro, but I can manage with the bit of experience I had from playing T6 in T8 games. The better question maybe is, do you want to spend 40-50 Euro on CV gameplay? I know people who just don't like it, for them it'd be an utter waste. Personally, I think the rework hasn't adressed any of its objectives appropriately (skill gap, CV influence, spotting, CV murdering unncovered DDs all still exist, though with more CVs around the chances that one of the CVs in the match is unicum that goes and murders everything in their way are lower), but WG aren't going to ever address that in the coming years and as a CV player, these aren't exactly the issues you feel (even if enemy CV is great, they likely won't snipe you and cannot counter you much in other ways anymore, DD suffering is your damage counter going up, skill issues can be overcome by just learning how to play). Thus, I did put some money in, as I was interested in actually learning the new CVs and getting at least some iconic ship. But it's a lot of money. On the upside, apart from Saipan, which I haven't yet played, I didn't experience any CV as terrible. So, if you are interested in for example your namesake ship, if you do like the new CVs, the Zep is a bit special, but can be a solid performer and in terms of premium ships investments, I'd say it's worth the price tag (when you compare it to other T8 premiums, like Tirpitz).

Can a better CV player give me a rundown of the advantages of full stealth build? I'm considering switching over in my Kaga, after I did some math and realised that I get not even 3 planes per type on a ship that has a 24/36/36 hangar anyway, so I thought maybe making the Tenzan spam sneakier would be more useful. I guess it gives less reaction time to targets when they see the bombers only at 6.2 km and you can spot Minos/Worcesters/Seattles/Neps from stealth, as well as avoid some of that Russian long range AA on ships like Moskva/Stalingrad. Anything else though, apart from that and not getting blapped as often for getting your giant carrier spotted?

firepower will get better on later ships. On CAs, citadels should happen at very close ranges at least. Against BBs, superstructure shots are all you get often. But as said, if a BB pushes into your smoke, you got a fair number of torps to keep them out. your gunnery is going to discourage a Kongo as much from pushing you as Mino guns will discourage a Yamato. It's the torps that keep competent BBs from going in recklessly. In general, you need to use the concealment to get into good positions at the side of distracted targets. The lessons you learn here are going to accompany you all the way to the Minotaur, given dpm and pen will increase, but the basic limitations of AP won't go away.

My commanders do smile!

Tbh, getting two coal containers in a session isn't hard. Getting three needs a bit, but usually also manageable. Unlike some grindfiesta like PEF missions or Exeter missions, you can play just whatever and all exp counts for containers. So, you basically do it on the side. Conscious grind for coal would be more like Ranked Sprint, but that's typically not too hard (and basically 1-2 weeks of coal containers in value). Personally, the amount of coal I have is enough that if it ends up at 300k coal, I'm not sure whether I reach that first or the date for me to get a new coupon in June. And I don't even try to get all daily containers.

The problems experienced in the video are plain and simple: player did not properly inform themselves prior to the fight how to use the aircraft and was surprised by the sudden dive of the dive bombers. player did not properly set up torp drops, which need time to aim. They admit in the comments that they were too used to British torp planes that aim faster. SLM in general is a very average player, where these results actually can be seen as pretty decent for a T8 ship. If you actually have a clue about how to plan entry and exit paths ahead of a drop and not just fly straight into AA, GZ is pretty solid.

Other times you get hit for three salvos and don't get a single fire. Not to mention, this stuff can be datamined, but sure.