Randolf_Gunn

I don't play CVs. But if a CV gives me useful AA support (requested or not) or helps me at a critical moment, he will get +1. (Same applies to any other recognizable and useful team play.) Some other thoughts: Perhaps only the game should be able to give negative karma. The current system just increases toxicity. Reports of bad behavior could be handled by other means. Or perhaps reports should be only considered if there are more than two of them a) from the same match and b) they are not from the same clan or division etc. Possibly giving repeatedly negative or positive karma could affect your own karma too. Giving many reports would give you -1 for being toxic. Giving many compliments would give you +1 for being supportive.

2750 base XP is a serious challenge. Some luck is required too. I got lucky with Minotaur. Unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot. But as I remember, it was 4 kills, 227k damage and probably two captures.

I would welcome some buff to close range accuracy of Bismark and FDG to encourage brawling. Poor close range accuracy combined with small number of barrels is sometimes very annoying. For me GK is fine as it is.

In one game we had a rental Montana that totally carried us to the win. We were losing. Monty solved the problem simply playing well. It was awesome. (Yeah, some other rentals have not been stellar.)

I reached my goal of rank 5 playing mostly gun build Grozovoi (35 games with Grozovoi, 5 with Yamato). My WR has been about 75% so I would say Grozovoi is viable at least in ranks 12 to 6. I have not yet played in ranks 5 to 2. One thing is tricky. It's very difficult to save the star in a gun boat. Also, it's tricky to hunt other DDs with concealment of 6.7 km and no RPF. But it has been fun -- nerve-racking kind of fun.

I don't think there is any special problems with Z-23 in CV games. I got Z-23 in 11th March 2019 and my WR after 47 games is 65%, average damage 53k. Well, I did have 19 point captain and possibly some extra luck. I play DDs mostly AA off and try to avoid planes (or use smoke) and usually cap very carefully. Anyway, I liked Z-23 and still like Shimakaze in the current CV era. Though, being spotted early by a CV can be bad!!! Fortunately, that doesn't happen too often. FYI, I don't like CV rework mechanics in general (AA balance, spotting). But I can still enjoy playing all classed. CVs are the only boring class to me.

I got kicked out from a ranked match too. I did get in after a couple of minutes. But then I had half HP left and a BB firing my Kitakaze from 4.5 km. One player in our team got disconnected and never returned. We lost.

I'm fairly disappointed as well. Yesterday I played 11 games with an AA specced Grozo. I learned to use AA sectoring well enough and used DefAA as well. The AA was good against T8 and potato CVs (e.g. 26 and 30 plane kills). However, when a skilled Midway repeatedly attacked me or flew by I got only a couple of plane kills in 10-15 mins of gameplay. I would guess that he avoided ALL my AA puffs. Also I couldn't stop his single squad from making three torp runs into a nearby NC (<2 km). I tried to support the NC with AA sectoring and DefAA. The NC sank even though I was so close to him that had to evade torps too. While AA Grozo didn't fear planes that much the new CVs often prevented me from focusing to anything else properly. Being repeatedly spotted made surprise attacks (AP or torps) and stealth capping randomly difficult -- removing some tactical gameplay. Smoke often invited immediate and repeated plane torps or rockets. Using AA sectoring constantly was a hassle (watch planes, flip sector and/or turn ship) and prevented me from focusing on more interesting gameplay. For some reason the new update seemed to encourage camper gameplay from bigger ships. We have always had campers but i would say that the problem is definitely worse atm. I blame CVs that spot everyone and worse concealment? For obvious reasons there were more than the usual amount of Montanas, Worcesters, DMs and Minos in T10 matches. That wasn't so bad for AA Grozo (14.8 km gun range), but didn't invite me to try Shima. From 11 matches only 4-5 were enjoyable. Two of them didn't have CVs. As CVs get better I expect DDs to have even worse times.