Capra76

Sounds like a nerf to me.

So, IJN DD were nerfed not because they were OP, but because there were just too many of them, but the fact that they're now horribly UP is being used to justify further nerfs against USN DD.

Reading up on this I did find a source that suggested that "In the 1930's, a theory arose that a big cruiser armed with a large number of 6" guns (usually 12 to 15) might overwhelm a heavy cruiser armed with fewer and slower firing 8" guns at short to medium range", so perhaps the problem we have is that the game forces players to fight at much longer ranges than those that would be optimal for these types of ships. Either way my point was that in terms of armour and size these light cruisers were on a par with the heavy cruisers in the game, and if WG aren't going to give the 6" guns the ability to harm other ships then what on earth was the point in bringing them into the game in the first place?

Are those real life stats or just the in-game ones?

Just looking at T8 and going off what's on Wikipedia, in real life the Belfast's armour is comparable or better than the New Orleans or Mogami and the ROF from the 6" guns would have compensated for the smaller caliber. Maybe what we have is a game mechanic problem, where the simplifications introduced by the game make the ships look bad, because IRL they were perfectly capable of fighting against anything else currently at T8.

Thing is, they're not. These are ships similar in size to USN/IJN equivalents but with a deliberate decision by the RN to mount 6" rather than 8" guns, there's no reason for them to be any more fragile or difficult to balance than any other cruiser in the game. I think the term "light cruiser" has got the developers badly confused, they obviously think the word "light" means they're small, fragile and no match for the heavies, the reality is it is simply a distinction introduced by the London Naval Treaty and only relates to the caliber of the guns.

Good advice this, so what I've done is: BFT Last stand Vigilance Demolition expert And 2 points towards CE. Can I have a free re-spec please?

I saw a post on the NA forum a while back with a similar but somewhat different explanation. The point is that the game models some characteristics of ships (guns, armour, speed) but ignores others (range, seaworthiness); the choice of which characteristics are modeled and which aren't favours some nations over others. I can't remember all the details, but a couple I can think of are that: US/RN ships were designed to have much longer ranges than IJN/KM, obviously carrying an extra 10,000 tons of fuel is going to need a bigger ship, which implies thinner armour for the same weight; US/RN ships tended to have lower muzzle velocities to prolong the barrel life, again so they could spend more time at sea, the former has a huge effect in the game but the latter isn't modeled.

Thanks, the reason I asked is that the post is pretty much what we already knew, so it might be out of date information, but if it isn't and the ships are still in a terrible state then it's time to worry.

I suspect WG fear many players would chose option 3, go and play a different game.

How well informed and up to date is Getfun? Is he getting this directly from the developers or is this stuff that he's picking up from other sources?

I get the impression the real problem isn't the guns but the survivability, they seem to have been made intentionally fragile with huge citadels on the understanding that their weakness would be balanced by smoke, with the smoke gone all they are is easy target practice for other ships, who gives a damn about what the guns can/cannot do when the ships are being obliterated from any angle by everything. Engine boost? Is this a joke? What use is that? Is this an intentional snub by WG? Look at our new line of RN cruisers, they're especially good at running away. Repair consumable of 40% in 5 seconds? That the developers think this is balanced shows exactly what the problem is. Bin the line completely please WG, I'd rather sail fantasy Soviet battleships than this line of insults to the RN.

Possibly you could reduce the number of T8 BB games by making them wait longer, I don't know what the queuing times are like for those ships, I'm not sure WG are going to be terribly keen on a solution that stops players from playing the game though (particularly in premium ships). I'm dubious about this, I don't think that most players tend to jump between classes that much, they might alter the number of games they play a bit but most will tend to stick with what they know. In the long run players might shift, but the classes (for me anyway) require significantly different skill sets so the process is likely to be slow. Also, the other problem is that the biggest threat to DD is other DD, so the population tends to be self-limiting and 5 a side games tend not to be that much fun. It's true that BB are also the biggest threat to themselves but they can still generally perform in BB heavy games, in DD heavy games it's quite possible for the DD players to cancel each other out and do nothing themselves.

I'm not sure what you mean. DD game numbers are about the same as 6 months ago, Shima's down about 6,000 but Gearing/Khabba are up a similar amount. BB numbers are up by a couple of thousand. BUT: T10 BB numbers are being kept down by players grinding lower down the German line; there's a tidal wave of KM BB players heading towards T10, possibly enough to double the number of all T10 BB within the next few weeks.

Is this any use: http://maplesyrup.sweet.coocan.jp/wows/ranking/20160917/eu_week/average_ship.html T10 doesn't actually look that unbalanced, very roughly 15,500 BB, 15,000 CA and 20,000 DD. What's actually killing the T10 balance is the 130,000 Scharnhorst/Gneisenau at T7 and the 100,000 Bismark/Tirpitz at T8, which when added to the 55,000 other BB means there are about the same number of T8 BB as CA/DD combined.

Interesting, I didn't know that. We'll have to wait and see, but that 805 m/s is still a lot closer to Cleveland than the German/Japanese ships at 925 m/s.

That's just a bit slower than the Cleveland's 812 m/s, but now with another 4 km range. I suppose anything's possible, but I can't see them adjusting that to the point where they come even close to some of the other cruisers in the game. The problem I see is that, if the ships are going to be AP reliant, they are going to have a hard time getting penetrations from the kind of distance they're going to need to operate at, even if WG do buff the bounce angles.

I don't know if you've seen different stats but my understanding is the guns have a fairly slow muzzle velocity, coupled with fairly light shells I'd expect that to translate into US style freedom ballistics that'll have a hard time hitting a DD much beyond 7 km and will have a hard time hitting anything at longer ranges.

I'm not so sure about this, BB numbers were already at about the limit of what was tolerable before the Germans joined the game, the KM pushed the numbers well beyond what is acceptable and I don't see the numbers coming down sufficiently without outside intervention. RN CL may help, a little bit, but I'm doubtful.

Why is it always "nerf Khaba" rather than "buff Shima"?

That's the EU server average for the last 2 weeks.

Absolutely spot on, fire accounts for well under 20% of the damage a battleship takes, it should be far more.

The BB players on the RU forums were kicking up a fuss about fire being the worst thing in the game, which supposedly is what is driving this, and to be fair 150 round per minute with an 11% base fire chance (+3% DE) would've generated a lot more than 53 rounds with a 19% chance from Zao, although this may have been balanced with loopy shell arcs similar to Cleveland and USN DD. Fair enough if they can develop an AP shell that reliably penetrate BB at long ranges, but they may then be problematic against cruisers.

I think my point was the heal takes 5 seconds to work, that might be a problem.

I get the impression that tier 8 and up are the ships that are really struggling, just going off the stats the lower tier ships look better armoured than the German line, possibly a bit under-gunned, but that depends upon the arrangement and damage values, and lacking in range but nothing that shouldn't be unsolvable. I'd love to know what the real problem with the T8+ is. The video does mention a "relatviely slow" 768 m/s as the speed of the shells which sounds Cleveland like so maybe they just can't cope with the higher tier long range sniper meta.