Aotearas

Considering how the CV rework plays like, any hope for anything even resembling a hybrid ship got buried in an unmarked Gulag massgrave. As bot ships in an event mayhaps but player controlled, never.

Kek. Well, it's easy to have a high PR with such few games. I'm more impressed by the dude who got nearly as high rating with 283 games in that ship.

Still farming snowflakes (hardly played at all over the holidays and new year so I got plenty of ships to go through) ... first game of the day: Well, that's a good start

As opposed to lower tiers how?

Strategy and tactics in randoms? That's a good one

I find the opposite to be true. In the lowtiers people are either new and have little idea where to go which lets them pop up at the wildest places at times (not always a bad thing), or it's more experienced players just having some fun in and doing whacky stuff ... whilst in the high tiers it plays a lot more formulaic as most people have by then figured out what works and what doesn't (the usual potato exceptions apply). The low tiers are for the most part hilariously chaotic brawls and just fun.

Getting a spotty internet connection after returning from family vacations, so I figured I might aswell blow off my lowtier premium snowflakes where it won't risk ruining a hightier match when the internet decides to drop out (so far it's behaving and yes, if it drops again I intend to spend the remainder of the day in CoOp). I totally didn't intend to sealclub I swear! I was just there, minding my own business when suddenly they all fell into my shells that I've been expending at the ocean. You can't prove anything!!!

Edinburgh isn't nearly as much a citadel magnet as the Neptune or Minotaur due to its citadel sitting a good bit lower and not as prominent above the waterline. Rest of the RN CLs' armour is paper thin and will get overpenned by basically everything. If in doubt, shoot at RN CLs when they're angled. In a BB you'll overmatch their hull anyway and even if you don't hit the citadel as a result, you'll at least get regular penetrations instead of overpens only.

Not going to happen, because how will WG sell all their Ranked ship bundles to the gullible fools who think they're going to play better with a premium ship?

Prior to any of that WG could also refrain from plastering maps chockfull with islands that make actual flanking crossfires near impossible against a team that has a lick of sense where to put a ship like a Stalingrad where it simply can't be shot into its sides. I'm not joking when I say Ocean would make for an interesting addition to CBs. And even without jumping to the extreme like that WG could do with working on a map design philosophy that doesn't result in obvious HP trade corridors. A map design philosophy that didn't do too well in WoT either unless what I've read about that game is hopelessly exxaggerated/untrue.

Not sure why we'd need the A-150, let alone why the Yamato would in any way be uncompetitive at tier X... someone is going to have to explain that argument to me in real simple terms because I seem to be too stupid to understand the reasoning here.

No easy answer here. IJN DDs are pretty straightforward stealthtorp machines, but not really good at anything else and their efficacy drops sharply the better your opponents are (i.e.: know how to WASD). Bonus is the split line going into the Akizuki and on, which are very, very strong gunboats. USN DDs are excellent brawlers and in the hightiers get pretty damn good torps and concealment to the point where they mostly supercede the IJN DDs in most aspects, but the early tiers can't stealthtorp so you have to play them as ambush boats which isn't particularily easy for beginners. PA DDs strike a balance between IJN and US with good stealth, guns and torps but with the caveat that those deep water torps can't hit DDs at all. VMF DDs are very good gunboats, but lousy at torpedoeing anything outside spitting distance. Early tiers are also pretty bad at brawling due to slow turret traverse. Funny and effective to play if you like zipping around and letting your guns work for you, but horribly outclassed by basically all DDs the moment you have to be stealthy.

Over christmas/new year you mean? Exactly zero as I had said it would be the case for me, CBs that is. In grand total I played a handful games (single digit number) over that time, a couple CoOp games to blow of some snowflakes on an afternoon where I had the house all for my lonesome, otherwise I was more or less constantly engaged with family&friends stuff. Didn't even manage to open time for our haphazardly planned DnD session, but I'm sure our benevolent DM @Loran_Battle didn't kill my character (again) over that, right Loran? Loran!? That question answered I'm looking forward to see how lively the last couple CB sessions will be.

Nothing unusual there, most ships' aft are not nearly as aggressively angled as their bows are, meaning there's plenty chance that a shell hitting those bulbous hulls isn't impacting at an autobounce angles, at which point you got only 32mm of armour which most ships will punch through easily and in case of your Yamato you got your typical Yamato citadel right behind that, cue sitaderu. The RN ships in particular are prime targets when they try to angled arse in since their afts are nearly perfectly flat targets.

No need to apologize. I was just pointing out a technicality. Happy new year of the CV.

Because CVs don't have to risk getting fired upon whilst farming damage. The prevous rationale was that their combat effectiveness was measured in form of strike aircraft numbers rather than ship HP and that's why CVs had to pick their targets to preserve their striking capability, but with infinite plane reserves that argument crashes straight on the runway before even taking off. And with those aircraft being so much faster now you don't even have to be close to the action to keep your strikes cycling fast enough to do damage. A potato can go straight for A1/J10 in a mapcorner and still attack ships on the opposite side of the map in a handful seconds tops, not like the same playstyle wasting precious minutes when trying the same nonsense right now.

? Pretty sure no one has to accept anything. Accordding to our wows-numbers clan page we still aren't "allied" to anything. What other clans put into their allies/enemies box is their thing but I'm fairly certain it gets listed under their "relationship status" regardless of whether we accept anything or not. In other news, guys: the year of the CV is finally upon us. For realz this time comrades!!!

All is well then. Best of luck and may RNGeesus smile upon your sails @MortenTardo. Of course this means we get to call you traitor now ... you know how it goes.

So, Alaska and Azuma get their fire duration increased. Let's see if that goes live and if yes, if the Kronshtadt and Stalingrad get the same treatment (they should, obviously).

In the end, the biggest hurdle in trying to get objective data about the Staligrad is that it's hard to get at somewhat representative data from CBs. Randoms can give a solid impression only if enough players of varying skill level play the ship and as the nature of how the Stalingrad is obtained we'd be looking at a looooong timeperiod until we'd ever get something approaching a reasonable playerbase representation regarding that ship. And CBs are an entirely different beast alltogether however so even if the stats showed the Stalingrad were overperforming (upon a time when not only unicum players have access to her of course), that wouldn't necessarily reflect the ships strengths/weaknesses or even raison d'etre in CBs where ships are selected for an environment that quite frankly is largely incomparable to normal random battles due to the sheer impact of teamwork that's the standard in CBs that I've never even come remotely close to experiencing in all my random games, including divisions. If there's anything I'd adress at this point, it's to make more open maps for the CB mappool to facilitate flanking strategies without there always being a convenient line of islands segmenting the map and providing limited crossfire opportunities on a push. And map design criticism is hardly a new thing where CBs are regarded.

The one decisive argument is that a Stalingrad, to some lesser extent, bypasses the 1 BB rule. Sure it can't overmatch so you can angle against her, but its combination of incredible alpha, insanely good ballistics and very good accuracy make her just as punishing (of not more due to the decreased impact of RNG dispersion compared to a BB) once it gets a sufficiently non-angled side (and with better pen angles and her ridiculous penetration she doesn't need much side, just enough to not autobounce is all she needs). She's also ridiculously tanky thanks to her large HP pool and overall strong armour plating. All that on its own wouldn't be too much of an issue since she does have some distinct weaknesses such as bad concealment and an exposed (though still strongly protected) broadside citadel. However since WG can't into map design and saturates maps with lots and lots of islands for Stalingrads and other ships to slip behind and next to it makes it very easy for players with decent positioning to migitate most of those weaknesses. And then the only argument left is that Hindenburg and IFHE HIV can "just burn it down" ... which is laughable because that's hardly a distinct weakness and with the huge HP pool it takes a whole while during which a competent enemy team can just relocated someone to help out on the threatened side where the enemy committed.

2% for CA/CLs and 4% for BBs ... hardly the world. Plus with those aircraft zooming around at 300+knots wherever they want on the map within seconds it's not like a little surface concealment nerf for CA/CLs and BBs is going to change much. If anything it was a sensible method to clamp down on surprise radars after running into a cruiser and not being able to turn around before getting lit up by a reaction radar and for cruisers vs BBs it was arguably even better since those BBs illogically got a bigger concealment boost to offset their base concealment, which combined with a stealthy BB (and its ludicrous in the first place that that's an apt description for anything battleship sized!) like a Conqueror, Alsace (or the recent Bourgogne) let them comfortably outspot a fair number of cruisers ...