Capra76

The problem with that is it rewards the already OP class by ensuring that they can only ever face 3 x capital ships (i.e. ones that can really hurt them), hence they survive even longer, run up even bigger damage scores and gives players even more incentive to play them, thus making the situation even worse. Anyway, WG have said this is not going to happen, trying to fit 40%+ of the games into 25% of the available spaces would cripple MM and cause many players to leave the game entirely, but the seem to be intent on buffing BB ever more and nerfing other classes so I've really no idea where they think they are going with this game.

I agree, personally I think the balance between cruisers and battleships needs to be looked at so that BB counter CA about as strongly as DD counter BB (i.e. not very), a massive DD buff isn't going to happen and if it did we'd have no end of complaints about torpedo soup until WG nerfed them again. Personally I'd be looking at things like reducing or even removing citadels, reducing CA citadel damage to maybe 50% of maximum, buffing maneuverability, whatever it takes to get CA numbers up and BB numbers down. So instead they've using the new captain skills to give BB a "look out there's a DD about" warning, nerfing fire (possibly severely) and if rumors are to be believed they're about to remove invisible firing and firing from smoke. I just don't get WG's reasoning, the game needs the different classes to be fun, they spend substantial sums of money developing RNCL and KMDD lines then make them "high skill cap"; surely they don't want the game to be 12 v 12 BB but they're doing everything they can to move the game in that direction. I despair.

Worrying comment on: https://thearmoredpatrol.com/2016/12/25/wows-tap-insider-news-25-xii-2016/ "From a Russian dev, I would not trust it, could be a joke, could be real, who knows? : Haven’t abused the invisi-firing before? Haven’t abused the ability to spam shells while sitting in the smoke before? Better do it quick before something which is going to happen soon"

The problem is that PT isn't covered by an NDA, and even if it was there's no way WG could enforce it, so you'd see in game footage on YT long before the CC's get their NDA lifted, which would screw them and wreck WG's marketing strategy for new lines, so no, I'm afraid we aren't going to get a sneak peak at new ships on the PT. It's not the end of the world, there's a PT session every few weeks so you can try out new ships long before you'd be able to grind them and is probably the main reason to use it.

Why not just remove every class that isn't a battleship from the game?

The developers clearly wanted to break the long range camp and snipe meta that developed at higher tiers, so they gave Bismarck the tools to do just that, the problem is that the other ships don't have the same tools so Bis is incredibly effective at the sort of aggressive play that wins matches whilst other ships are set up for passive long range play. Thinking about it, I don't see WG nerfing Bis, she is doing exactly what they want her to do, the problem is that in doing that she renders every other ship in the game obsolete. I'm wondering if the new captain skill tree is designed to be a secret buff for NC/Amagi? With manual secondaries and AFT on level 4 it seems unlikely that Bis captains will choose the new KI skill as well, but NC/Amagi possibly could chose it giving them similar immunity to torpedo DD.

Personally I think the broken part is the insane secondary guns rather than the hydro, I managed to melt a Moskva on the PT server in no time at all a couple of patches back and frankly that's just stupid. BB can push into my smoke with hydro if they like so long as I can burst out and give them a salvo of torps at point blank range, but with KMBB that's going to result in major pain even if you get your shots away.

Yep, this upgrade probably more than any other apart from the concealment mod on T8+ DD changes the ship like no other, without it the ship's a dog, with it the ship is reasonable.

Bear in mind that they are also (allegedly) reducing the XP requirement for captain skill progression so 18 or even 19 point captains are going to be far more common than they are today and a a 3 x 4 captain might be perfectly possible at relatively low tiers. The big problem I see is that highly skilled players might not use it, but potatoes will, and the mere possibility that a player is using it is enough to tip the risk/reward balance against stealth torpedo attacks. Also, MS + AFT are key level 4 skills for KM BB but USN/IJN can do without them and given the few carriers at higher tiers USN can possibly do without manual AA in which case there's quite a lot of skill points available to take KI. In fact I wonder if this is a disguised buff to USN/IJN BB to bring them up to parity with the KM (because OP DD get nerfed, UP BB get buffed). I'm interested in what you think a 15/18 point USN/IJN BB build should be with the new skill set.

Does Zao really counter BB? It returns fairly impressive damage figures but that's mostly fire and 100% repairable so the net result is in reality much less. And of course stealth-fire looks likely to be the next nerf incoming for anything that dares to hurt BB.

What I think is very likely is that you'll see a mod emerge which uses KI to allow divisions to share the information and perhaps triangulate the position of DD, possibly even sufficiently accurately for a firing solution. You don't even need the BB to use this skill to make torpedo DD essentially redundant, the mere possibility that they're using it is enough to shift the risk/reward ratio so that it just isn't worth risking closing to 7 km if BB likely have 2 minutes warning of incoming torpedoes and you have a very real risk of detection. Game-breaking.

Plus carriers are only ever going to be the closest ship in an end-game when it's already decided so this rework is actually no change at all.

Source: https://sea-group.org/?p=1869&lang=en So the developers weren't happy with the way this game-breaking cancer (sorry MTM) of an idea was working so they've changed it and..........................................now....................................... it can't detect carriers. What the f***?

That may have been the case closer to launch, but they've now been out for what? 5 months? We're still seeing the same over-performance by Bismarck and in fact all German BB and you're surely not going to tell me that Nassau's stellar performance is down to a significantly different player-base.

Fun fact: there are more Bismarck/Tirpitz games played per week than THE ENTIRE USN DD LINE COMBINED.

So considered opinion, after 41 games (53.66 WR, 29,991 dmg): it's terrible and I've free XP'd the last 5,000 to Leander. Getting detected at any point before the end game is instant death, it's slow, handles like a brick, the guns are terrible, the AP is more special needs than special, the T5 MM is especially brutal for cruisers and it's not even that stealthy, but for the smokescreen it'd have a hard time in a T2 game. You cannot play aggressively in it, you can grab the occasional cap if it's uncontested or if you have support, you can torpedo tunnel-visioning solo BB (although if it's KM then expect heavy damage from secondaries - 12,000+ from the last one) but mostly it''s hide at the back and hope for a close game where you can have an impact towards the end. First impressions of Leander is it's a lot better, you can actually take the odd salvo from other ships without automatically seeing 80% of your health disappear for a start.

Er no, for such a popular ship it's huge. Think about it for a second, if you have 3 x Bismarck on each team for every game then the average WR for the ship will be exactly 50%, the "small" 1.5% advantage only comes from games where you have 3 x Bismarck against 2 x Bismarck + NC/Tirpitz/Amagi, which is going to be a minority of games, if the Bismarck were a premium where you could expect to be the only one in the game (e.g. Missouri) then the difference would be much more noticeable. And of course (according to you) the captains are all potatoes, if they were any good the difference would be even bigger. On that basis can we ignore torpedo damage in all discussions pertaining to CA/DD, since BB don't have them? Thought not. Damage is damage.

And still the Bismarck has better stats than the USN/IJN T9 ships, how OP would they be if the captains weren't potatoes?

My guess would be relatively soon possibly we'll see them in the next PT session.

"High skill cap".

The thing is that low tier BB are terrible, but if they really are trying to get new players into the game shouldn't these be the ships that are stupidly OP with the game becoming more balanced at higher tiers once the newbies have got the hang of it? Instead don't we have the exact opposite with hopelessly UP low tier BB that become more and more dominant as the game progresses? Also, getting new players into the game is all fine and well, but isn't keeping the existing players even more important? If the game's going to be 1 line of uber-powerful battleships and everything else trash that's only good for artillery practice then it's going to get very boring very quickly. Just my opinion but the game took a wrong turn when the IJN DD nerf happened back in April, Shimakaze wasn't the problem, the BB players might've hated the torp walls but isn't that really the point of a hard counter? The problem was that battleships are just too OP against cruisers at mid tiers and beyond and that was leading to a binary choice between BB and DD, but instead of fixing that imbalance they nerfed the symptom of it making BB even more OP so that now the 11 most played ships on the server are all BB.

I think it is brilliant................... .............the video that is, the game mode is retarded.

Then why did WG feel the need to nerf it in the first place? Also, as others have pointed out the nerf has knock on effects such as rendering the hydro consumable mostly redundant. What grates is it feels like a rushed last minute change brought in because potato BB players latest whine is invisifire and the whole line seems designed around the principle of keeping them happy.

I'm sorry to say this, but looking at your stats you're just not doing enough damage or contributing enough to the team to break even. I'll leave comments on your BB results to others, but you appear to have free XP'd the IJN DD line all the way from the old Minekaze to (I presume) the old Kagero then ground on to the Shimakaze, which is not a good idea unless you are already a very experienced DD player, quite simply you've missed out on a great deal of learning at T6-T8 so you're now a T5 player in T10 games and the difference in skill and difficulty is huge. To put this on context compare the stats for the Kamikaze R with the old Minekaze, they're basically the same ship but the Kamikaze is mostly played by experienced higher tier players and the difference in the performance of those ships is huge, that is the gap you are trying to bridge playing in T8-T10 games. My suggestion would be to drop down to lower tiers until you can maintain damage/WR averages above the server average until moving up to the next tier. Edit: One other point, your survival rate in IJN DD is very poor, to be effective in those ships you really need to live as long as possible to keep putting out torpedoes, if you're getting into gunfights with anything then you're doing something wrong. I don't want to die for my country, I want the enemy to die for his.

What's wrong with her?