HaachamaShipping

Provided the DD has any AA worth mentioning (so, not Kagero with its lack of explosions), about the same, because either CV is good and just dodges flak bursts, or they are not and fly into them, losing ~5 planes in one go. If I remember correctly Cleveland has 7 long range bursts and 9 mid-range bursts. I would need to check, but I'm pretty sure you can get like 7-8 bursts on an Akizuki (Harekaze with mod gets 6, that I know) with a long range that is not compromised by mid-range that the IJN DD does not have. That's enough bursts to wreck those who fly into the flak anyway, while for the rest... AA might as well not exist on either ship.

As a Neptune player, I would request to please not hand out premature reports. Ship isn't easy, but certainly not a bad pick. Provided you play it with radar and know something about positioning. If you pick up 2 stealth buffs, you also can counter-radar. In general, skilled Neptune/Seattle should make great DD hunters and should be appreciated. Yes, they get easily deleted, but I'd wait to see their actual in battle performance and then decide whether that person deserves a report.

I find it silly how WG managed to meet so few of its objectives. CV spotting is still oppressive and even when it is not, the threat to DDs to be assaulted by faster planes is enough to make venturing off a death sentence vs competent CVs. The skill gap is not closed at all. Unicums are racking up new damage records, while I had legit games where I couldn't kill planes because they died too fast to allied AA and only 1 reached me, as they just flew into every flak cloud. Counter-play is imo even less of an interaction, as basically my best approach is trying to dodge, but with all measures at my disposal as a target, what counts is the CV's skill, while mine is more or less pointless. Someone who cannot get the drop right and cannot dodge flak will fail vs potatoes just as they fail against skilled players, while good CV players will dodge flak bursts anyway. In the old system there at least was the point where if you timed defAA properly, you could counter. It wasn't much, but it was less like this. Alpha strike is less, but DoT can be just as oppressive and the approach to change it has obvious implications for all the classes that don't spam out a torp set anywhere as frequently. Lastly, even when I tried playing CVs, I found it just frustrating. I'm not a good CV player, I know, but basically as someone who has no clue and just knows the input WG gave me, I can't see how this is ever supposed to be fun. I basically played Ryuujou, had a hard time lining up drops and dodging flak and felt little of the supposed "fun". If people don't know what insane potential they can unlock, I wouldn't think it'd be very popular in the long run, yet, to me knowing others do 100k+ games easily makes me just feel useless and rather play other things. I felt less useless in my old CVs, despite being not very good either. GG WG, what is this crap?

I mostly go by what the ingame description says... So, don't blame me...

It increases explosions, not continuous dps though.

defAA imo isn't even that much of an issue. I feel like the bigger issue is lack of guns, as most have just 25 mm guns with short range and maybe 1-2 explosions if the crappy 12.7 cm guns are DP. Combined with mediocre maneuverability. I tried the Sims yesterday and honestly, my main factor in surviving was the mobility, while the main reason it shot down anything is that it has basically 4 explosions (7 with AA sector focus) (and unlike Atlanta has no crappy midrange).

Stock it's underwhelming, fully researched it's borderline OP, imo.

Finally got around to see the trainwreck that is 8.0. Not yet testing CVs, because too tired for that crap, but AA-wise... eh... feels like it's either frustrating or farming plane kills vs people who fly into Flak clouds. But when I just stopped giving a damn and tried playing some "AA ship" (mostly because it has the best chances to dodge rockets), it can get pretty "fun"... The 7 km torps are pretty nice.

If it wasn't against WG's policy, I'd just change the torps to something non-retarded altogether, like 10 km normal DWT (maybe reduce damage to T7 level, to avoid OPness) and smoke/TRB in same slot. But hey, you buy a ship that relies on MM, you should've seen it coming that sooner or later, such a battle will occur.

Kind of always was an issue, as most of the AA was in the 3.1 km base range 25 mm guns, not in the one 12 cm gun. I'm pretty sure though that the range nerf to 25 mm guns didn't help. Maybe one day it'll get adressed, together with ways to make atlanta an actually good AA ship again...

Depending on where the rest of the game goes meanwhile, I'm excited. Cleveland is a good ship. Premium cleveland certainly would be nice. AL collab ships would be incredible. Well, I still don't think T9 Azuma will be good, but at least there'll be torps at T10... one day. I'd take this concept over Asashio's any day of the week. Well, prior to CV rework. It's now up to WG to make 8 km playable when solo DD just up and dies.

AA kills at least demonstrate the efficiency of AA armament. In the other categories: What class is most resilient to damage? What class is least affected by being spotted for prolonged periods of time?

I mean, if you want to look at that. Hmmmmmmmmmm....

A secondary build is half an AA build and given AA mods and Manual AA got nerfed, a secondary build now should be closer to the best you could get out of the ship than it was prior to 8.0. And yes, the majority of the Bismarck's secondaries, which are the 105 cm DP guns are also AA guns. Always was?

Maneuvering ships are viable, if you aren't some Kurfürst or non-C-hull Izumo. And those get the armour to not care as much. There's no reason to nerf USN DDs to the point that they are a joke beyond 5 km. Them firing shells at 10 km is still not "camping".

Look at pre-buff Leone and tell me how that would still be playable. Even WG realised that it was retarded.

My steel ship ambitions got nerfed. VU gets tiered into a tier where it's basically just crap with good concealment. Alaska gets delayed. Well, guess I don't need to feel bad about being too busy with work in February to play. Maybe I'll return in March. Maybe.

Without IFHE, the Akizuki HE still pens up to 24 mm, which means all DDs (except Khaba belt), most cruisers till T7 and RN cruisers till T10. Without IFHE, Akizuki guns still are better than other DD guns without IFHE.

3x1800=5400 6x1200=7200 3x1800x15=81000 6x1200x20=144000 Artillery rating of 3x1 127mm/54: 27 Artillery rating of 3x2 100 mm/65: 18 Pen of the 100 mm guns beats the pen on the USN guns, AP difference is even more pronounced than AP difference. Basically the only thing the USN guns are better at than the 10 cm guns is turret traverse, but in all other aspects they are straight up worse, be it damage per salvo or dpm. If turret traverse was the measure, then the Kagero guns would be least, not close second. And if these numbers represented only damage per salvo or even just damage per shot, the Kagero guns would need to be top, not the USN guns. There is basically no meaning behind the number and you can try be snarky about it, but it doesn't change that fact. And it also doesn't mean you can go and tell people that at any time they can take this number as an accurate representation of firepower, because even if the game says B-hull Harekaze has the worst guns at T8 with that rating, anyone with half a brain and who knows Harekaze knows that it has one of the best main armaments vs DDs and second best vs everything else among the T8 DDs.

So, the 3 Midway secondaries with worst dpm at T8 are obviously best option, slightly outperforming Kagero guns and leaving 3/4 Akizuki in the dust?

Even then, ratings are often just BS. Concealment is likely the best category to even derrive anything from, but the rest is just pointless.

Ok, better torp protection helps, but I don't consider it major, because I typically try to avoid eating torps in the first place. Guess with new CVs, it matters more now. Upgraded engines might just help overcome the effect of weight gain, but I don't see higher top speed. I'd not even think this was really much of an upgrade beyond making the engines more economical. At the very best, I could see the Hood accelerating faster. Upgraded fire control would be what? That last 0.1 sigma to 2.0? One thing to keep in mind: Hood '42 if given proper ammunition might just powercreep on the Vanguard, being 30 s reload instead of 25 mm, but far tankier and blessed with decent turret angles.

I mean, the Soviet industry had more issues getting the armour plating than it had building silly pen guns. Most RL Russian guns of that era have muzzle velocity that is kind of retarded and theoretical ranges that are silly (as a result), but that was just the Soviets ignoring that barrel lifetime is a thing. Most ships look more like they were designed to impress Politburo with fancy numbers on gun performance and speed, not with actually sound ship or gun design that wouldn't be an issue if used IRL. Obviously, in WoWS these minor issues are hardly an issue here (apart from the absolutely atrocious handling of all ship classes if you don't want to just steam in a straight line), but we also aren't having IJN ships randomly capsize in cyclones or USN torps chronically fail to detonate or swim in circles. On the pen numbers, I really don't mind much. 605 mm pen at 20 km is nice, but 510 mm is typically sufficient. Kremlin can't shoot much farther though, unless you mount range upgrade (and accept 33s reload), so the rest of the pen curve beyond that is pointless most of the time.

While I see some point to the overall issue, I see not much of a point in the example given of CV removal and RU BBs. In both cases, it's not like you really had great alternative options. Examples I would've given that are a bit more in line with the matter at hand is French mid-tier BBs, where Normandie and Lyon are ships with absolutely bonkers refits in terms of speed and none of them were ever built, while the historic design in this tier was relegated to premium. Unlike Scharnhorst/Gneisenau, this isn't even a case where you can argue about the consistency in performance, as Normandie basically just as fast and small caliber guns as Dunkerque. Or how about PEF that could as well be put into the game at T5 in a more historic layout instead of being T6 with a fantasy refit? These are the cases where I wonder what the hell WG is smoking, because these aren't necessary moves, unlike filling RU BBs with paper, cause there just is nothing after Gangut. It's basically a Hood with 32 mm at the ends, better AA and a seaplane? I would hope it'd at least get Vanguard ammo, because otherwise, that's a bit meagre. Also, call it Hood '42. Given how WV is handled and that all other Hood names were taken up by actual ships later on, I'd think that's the best approach.

Hmmm, there's a lot coming up for RN in AL, it seems... While they give me flashbacks of playing low tier RN CLs and thus my expectations of performance are minimal, neat designs. I like the ship emblems. Also, never enough Maido.