Capra76

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Far more BB than DD at higher tiers these days, especially if you exclude the Russian CL DD, and with German BB on the way it's likely to get worse.

TBF, the NA forum seems to be pretty worried about the proposed strike rules, in particular that the strikes never expire and result in permanent sanctions.

Yuri, load the Stalinium. Stalinium loaded sir. Yamato deleted sir.

So spend a lot of time on the PT server, give as much feedback on the forum as possible, try to make yourself known to the developers then cross your fingers and hope.

I'm not convinced, it's part of the problem, but I suspect a bigger problem is the extra accuracy and firepower of the ships at the high tiers promotes long range sniping.

I have a theory that at least some of the AFK are malfunctioning bots, could this be connected?

Thanks, the current set up is fine for most ships but is problematic for the faster firing ones, can you imagine trying to keep up with a Gearing's 20 RPM?

Try that with a USN DD.

Just a thought, but are DD easier to model than other ships? No citadels to worry about, no real armour either, I would of thought getting that right is a large part of the development process.

Not sure about that, it isn't as if there's a shortage of USN/IJN DD for her to back up anyway so adding one more to the team shouldn't make much difference to her. I guess the question I'm asking is if her WR is down to MM giving her team effectively one fewer DD and one extra cruiser? Provided that there are sufficient other DD's to spot/screen and contest the caps the extra firepower could be advantageous. Just a thought.

Would changing MM so that it regards Khaba as a cruiser instead of a destroyer be an option?

Possibly, but the WR could also be a function of MM and the comparatively small number of players meaning that the Khaba is much less likely to be matched against another Russian DD. Hypothetically, Khabba + 2 Gearing v 3 Gearing isn't going to be at too big a disadvantage in terms of capping, in which case the higher damage output of the former could well translate into the higher win rate we observe.

I'm not convinced by this. If you look at the stats for the top players over the last two months (where one can reasonably argue the captains are of a similar standard) the Gearing players are getting average damages ITRO 60k-80k but Khaba is more like 70k-120k, so it isn't obvious that the average Gearing captain could be getting more out of his ship if only he were a better player. I think what the stats actually show is that the Gearing gets a lot of its XP and wins from capping and shooting other DD whilst the Khaba is much more reliant upon causing damage to cruisers and BB, in which case a higher damage output isn't unreasonable or all that surprising.

To be fair to WG, a quick search of WarshipsToday only brings up a couple of suspicious accounts from the last week rather than 20+ the last time I looked, so if the bots are out there maybe the users are being a little more cautious.

Fair enough, it's not a tactic I particularly like with all the torpedo armed ships around, every time I try it seems to go wrong for me and I've torpedoed a fair number of DD who thought it was a good idea in return. That said if you do want to use that tactic then DE is a good choice.

I just don't find spamming HE at BB to be a particularly effective tactic unless he's sailing away from you and torps are not an option, the ability to stay alive for longer and do real damage with torps seems a better option. Just throwing around some rough and ready guesses as a suggestion, other numbers are equally valid, but 50% hit rates at invisifire range? That seems optimistic to me.

I'd say don't do this, at least at first. My advice would be to concentrate on one line at a lime and take the USN cruiser line to about T5/6, which should give him a reasonable understanding of how the game works, what the various ships are and what they do. Once he's done that he should then start experimenting with destroyers and battleships and see which class he likes and see if he wants to take anything up to high tiers. Be aware that low tier battleships can be pretty painful to play and that generally the Japanese line is stronger than the US one (but low/mid tier cruisers is probably the exception). The Soviet/German lines are not complete and are probably worth skipping for now. Final tip: learn how to use your captains properly, my biggest mistake was starting a new captain on each ship, which is not a good idea.

I liked the Mahan but against a Benson with a 15 point captain you're being spotted almost 2km further away, which is the difference between launching your torpedoes at 8km or at 6km and the extra torpedoes are only of limited use because their side mounted arrangement means that 8 is all you can usually fire.

Damn website's just lost my reply. Basically, no you don't need to grind, start off with USN cruisers and take it from there.

90 shots per minute out of Benson/Fletcher, lets say 20 hit (generous for those guns at long range), each fire does 18% damage so you need a minimum of 6 fires to take 100% of his health. With an 8% fire chance reduced by 50% to 4% statistically that's 150 hits, which is ITRO 7.5 minutes firing. You will of course get HE damage on top of that, but BB can repair fire damage, use their repair party and if all else fails their WSAD hax so, real world, unless the BB is AFK, I'm not convinced it's even possible to kill a high tier BB within the time limit imposed by the game.

I think it's more accurate to say that Benson is a huge step forward from the Farra/Mahan and can be OP against lower tier opposition, Fubuki is a good T8 DD and I don't think Benson is particularly OP against her. Fletcher is less OP against lower tier opposition unless MM gives you a game with lots of T7 DD but Kagero has been over-nerfed and is UP compared with Fletcher.

Late tier ships have up to 50% fire resistance, so DE is probably a good choice up to about T6 when the ships are pure gunboats, once they become more like torpedo boats from T7 SE is probably more useful.

Maybe terrible is too strong a word but the lower tier ones are difficult to play and weak compared to the IJN equivalent. Personally I quite liked the Mahan, Farragut and Nicholas were the two I really didn't get along with. Suicide range torpedoes are okay at T3 but once you are getting into T7/8 not so much.

I guess it depends upon what tier you want to play at. USN CA and IJN DD are very strong up to T5/6 but become comparatively weak after that, USN DD are terrible up to T6/7 but are extremely formidable at T8+.