dasCKD

The French have good range, moderately low shell drag, and good fire chance. They work well as long ranged HE spammers.

The Henri kind of sucks to be honest, she should have just been to the Saint Louis what the Hindenburg is to the Roon. That said, I'm pretty sure that if you go back to the corresponding cruisers of the lower tiers you would find them to be as disappointing as the French cruisers are to you right now. I went back to look at the Mogami that I had quite fond memories of, and my performance in her were utterly pathetic. The French cruisers really aren't weak, the tier 8 and 9 in particular are terrifying to battleships and formidable against other cruisers.

With a far wider torpedo pattern, significantly less damage, and with a far harder squad setup. Comparable, sure.

They should have just left her as a tier IV cruiser.

-_-

That was indeed mentioned. The problem ultimately is that this is a poor way to balance the game considering how AA works. Kaga is shown to be a poor idea in this regards, and she is kept down by the fact that the Saipan is a thing. A Midway with 2/2/2 will have superior air power to the Hakuryu, superior strike power, and will only be stopped by heavy AA is basically a tier X Kaga with no natural enemy.

They are going to at least take the Midway's TB size to 5 per squad right? 12 torpedoes dropped line abreast with American torpedo damage seems a little much.

It says what? That the game ended far too early with neither team having done anything eventful because matchmaker screwed up?

What does it matter if I do? The destroyer can just run back and hide behind the AA screens of the cruisers. Their destroyers will still remain alive, I'll still keep bleeding planes, and my team is no closer to winning the game. The enemy Gearing spend the entire game perpetually within their Des Moins's AA range or close enough to, and the Kagero moved with a Kutuzov. Even if I dropped perfectly and killed both of those destroyers as fast as my planes could reload, we would still have lost a 2 cap advantage by the time I manage to kill their destroyers with literally no ship available to take them back. Even if the team pushed the moment the destroyers are dead, the enemy would already have them flanked and the game would end with a loss regardless. I could have played perfectly, and it would still have been a loss. Yes, the cruisers and battleships should have just sailed up in a completely open map with no islands where the enemy already had them encircled within minutes thanks to the fact that they had destroyers to lay a concealed advance for them and shot at the destroyers. Sure. Right. Great. Sure. Whatever. Hey, why don't we remove carrier mirrored matchmaking? It's not a matchmaker issue, it's just a team issue! The team could just form ranks, could just lay smoke perfectly to push their advantage, could dispatch perfect formations with a fleet of long ranged AA defense cruisers that can almost entirely deny the carrier any spots! It's just that easy!

Yes, it's not like destroyers have, what do you call them again? Smoke screens do they? No, that would be silly! I didn't try what? Spotting and bombing the destroyer? Just how did you think a tier 8 carrier managed to come third in a tier X match with a Baltimore, Kutuzov and Des Moines? By trying to bomb their main fleet?

How about we assume that the enemy carrier isn't so stupid that he would let me hover my fighters over his allies for the entire team without interfering?

I sold my Kutuzov and Belfast, but I never liked either of them. Even without this change, I would have sold them if I had the chance along with most of my other premium ships. Ultimately it's up to you. The change really doesn't affect either the Kutuzov and Belfast play style much. You have to be more careful, but you don't live long if you aren't careful with those ships anyways. It's why I dislike those ships: much to fragile.

The carrier is a bit rubbish to be honest. You might eclipse any real carrier in terms of striking power, but the filth makes it nearly impossible to use anywhere near the maximum potential of your ship. You're necessary to protect the destroyer and cruisers in particular, but overall you're a bit weak. The destroyer is one I haven't tried, but for a reason. The fact that you specialize in alpha when up against the overwhelming power of the other two ships makes you largely redundant. Destroyers are necessary for the first stage of the mission thanks to the fact that flooding was one of the few effective ways to take down the Transylvania, but that's not necessary in this mission. The cruiser is incredibly powerful with the torpedo armaments and excellent DPM that can be used to rip ships to pieces. There are issues with the ship however, like the gun reload consumable delay bug or the fact that you have a cruiser's health pool and are dependent on your carrier to not be a complete idiot to excel. Your shells also shatters inordinately often against the battleships, which is presumably the 50 mm German plate armor at work. I ultimately say that the best ship in this event has to be the battleship. Proper use of the invulnerability consumable is incredibly useful for ripping the enemy fleet apart, especially the larger enemy battleships. Your poor maneuverability means nothing when you can press a button and make all torpedoes and shells useless against you as you can just spam damage control. With just two battleships, you can just chain heals and rip apart the entire enemy fleet without need for the rest of the team. I know this because I went up against the entire enemy inner fleet alone and still came out on top and alive despite our carrier dying in the first few minutes of the game from chronic stupidity. The only complaint I can really level against her is that with everything else, her main guns are a tad rubbish and often annoying to use at the engagement ranges of the mission.

It's just that having a clan war reward ship is something that I am highly against, if for no other reason than that ship will inevitably be premium and immune to nerfs. I've somewhat tolerated premium ships that are more powerful than regular ships for some time if for no other reason than that they will always inevitably end up fighting an uphill battle against superior enemies that could just roll over them sooner or later, ships like the Belfast or Saipan notwithstanding. Having a tier X premium though is just something that I did not want to ever see happen.

Way to go around, putting words in my mouth. Because the majority of the things that naval vessels are used for is protecting cargo ship and routine patrol. What is actually interesting is just a small part of history, quickly exhausted, and is completely impossible to implement into the game at large in any meaningful way. Historical events of exploiting unequal technology and situations for vital advantages have no place in a grind heavy game built around leveling up a set of ships with a largely arbitrary value assigned to it for game balance reasons, fighting against other ships with equally arbitrary game play value to either kill the enemy or sit in certain parts of the ocean until a timer with no real word relevance ticks over a certain point. Saying that real world naval lore is equivalent to WoWS lore is like saying that I could populate the CS:GO lore with declassified counter-terrorist reports.

Do we know if there is a ship line leading up to the Stalingrad? A miniature line of Soviet large gun cruisers or something to that effect?

I like a game to have lore. A game just about warships and death is just dull. Many people always go on about realism and immersion, but I would far prefer for WG to approach the game with some cheerfulness and mirth in development at least. It makes the game far more endearing and would probably contribute to the life of the game. Ships of navies people would like to play are finite, the random lore and events of a somewhat goofy game with deep mechanics on the other hand are close to infinite.

A-poi-calypse Now II: what killed the IJN destroyers? Not a guide, not about the update. Do not move! Yeah, we're doing this again. The poster girl this week is Yuudachi of the Shiratsuyus by the way. We won't be talking about her. I recently returned from a prolonged and painful surgery to correct various extreme medical injuries, self inflicted during and after playing the Shimakaze. Needless to say, I needed to have several of my teeth forcefully extracted from my tongue. I'll also have to drop by a nearby church for some supplies to clean up the things I managed to summon with my guttural screaming whilst playing the Shima. That brings me back to something that I would like to discuss however: the state and the future of the IJN destroyers and torpedo focused destroyers in general. The Shiratsuyu will be nerfed, as many may know. The Shiratsuyu, War Gaming's last attempt at introducing a fleet destroyer after the menace that was the Shimakaze in early release, was designed in the game to fulfill the role as a fleet destroyer despite her quite weak torpedoes and small size. War Gaming has decided that she was too strong however, and they decided to remove the last non-Akizuki Japanese destroyer that could genuinely be considered good aside her peers. Even now, it appears that War Gaming has no place to put the high tiered IJN destroyers. Reminiscing about: torpedoes The Golden Age of IJN DDs Whilst only the Shimakaze has the official designation as fleet destroyer in the game (for the Japanese tree), many destroyers of the IJN line used to act as fleet destroyers. They distinguished themselves from the lower tiered destroyers by being utterly lethal area denial and fleet destruction weapons. Before they were neutered and nerfed into the ground. F3s and the Minekaze The problems with the Japanese destroyers from tier VI onward basically all stems back to a simple change. The Shimakaze was the scourge of the sea in her golden age. After the first drop in carrier players, there was nothing left to stop the Shimakaze to become the dominant ship. Poor concealment but having the fastest speed of her time, she could keep any enemy at arm's reach and fill an entire map area with torpedoes that even destroyers struggled to dodge. A Minekaze needs 80-100% of her salvo firepower to kill a battleship. A Shima could kill most battleships with four torpedo hits, and most cruisers with two. Due to the escalation of arms, more players kept gravitating towards the Shimakaze until it was not rare to see half of each team made out of nothing but Shimakazes. War Gaming stepped in, as they probably had to, to begin the collapse of the IJN destroyers. The Captain's Skills All good things comes to an end, and the age of the Japanese destroyers slowly died. The first death blow was the changes to the captain's tree. Namely the removal of sixth sense and the fifth line of captain skills. The addition of destroyer lines The last cause of the death of the IJN destroyer line is perhaps the addition of more destroyer lines. The IJN line maintained the weaknesses they had in their earlier and far more dangerous phase, whilst lacking any of the strength of the other destroyers. The KM line is introduced almost as a 'fixed' IJN destroyer line. They are designed after the Minekaze playstyle. The issue with map size and ship distribution has gone unaddressed by War Gaming however, which means that the German destroyer lines are primarily played as anti-destroyer miniature cruisers. The IJN destroyer line is dying due to their lack of distinctiveness and the rise of awareness in the player base that makes the playstyle of the Minekaze style torpedo sniper more and more nonviable as time goes on. Ultimately, the Shimakaze will most likely not get restored to her old glory. I am unconvinced that such a thing could even be done without breaking the game. Ultimately though, there is little I could do or say. The problems with carriers is caused by gross incompetence and lack of comprehension of the class from the developer's standpoint. The problem with torpedo destroyers are far more intrinsic, and I can't say how they should fix it if it could be fixed at all. There's not much I could do, but watch it slowly vanish into the dark of the night without being able to say even a word of farewell. Addendum: I do realize that IJN DDs are still around, death is a literary device used in the editorial. I'm putting this here because no doubt someone will try to start a semantic argument with me down in the thread about this. To that guy, screw you!

You know, when she was first released the Kamikaze was inferior or equal to the Minekaze in every way. Even back then, she still eclipsed the Minekaze in performance. The Kamikaze simply remained unchanged whereas the Minekaze was hit with nerf bat after nerf bat.

I might be alone in this, but the gap in player skill between a player who has a tier 7 ship and a player who has just got their tier 8 for 1 match really isn't that much. It's the tier 8 and 9 grinds that really builds a player usually. Besides, it's not like a player with tier 7 experience will fare that much better against tier 10 veterans in their pimped out doomfortresses than a player with a game in a tier 8 ship. Honestly, I don't understand which idiot thought it was better to put up the third most unforgiving tier X cruiser up for rentals but what do I know about game design?

Actually, the Minotaur has a repair party as well.

And two battleships, too stupid too think, decided to go chasing a single full health Montana they had 0 chance of killing whilst there was a Khabarovsk in play. They ran off and died, costing a game that we could easily have won.

Being morons and drip feeding their ships one by one into the enemy fleet.

Bloody amazing.

The Kutuzov I will sell, I never liked her much and I will find far more use out of the doubloons I get off her. The Belfast I might sell. Again, I never liked her much and I find the Saipan to be a far better tier 7 seal clubber. The Perth stays however, I'm not giving her up anytime soon.