VC381

Thanks guys, I'll have a look at some of the videos later but that's good general advice. Last couple of games against a Taiho though he just came for the air war, not bypassing my fighters. He soundly annihilated both my fighter squads and I was so 100% focused on that I couldn't even get a strike through in the meantime. You say force him to multi-task, but trying to bait his fighters with a strike while not losing mine forces me to multi-task instead! I assume I should win fighter click-fights but I don't have Dogfighting Expert (yet) and with the lower tier fighters a few times this wasn't the case.

That's just a tricky question in general. Having an early cap advantage can put the enemy team on a timer and force them to make mistakes, but spreading out and losing a couple of ships early can make it easy for a grouped enemy team to snowball back from a cap disadvantage.

Right, middle cap, will try that (smartly) and see how it goes and where I go from there. What about that awkward moment where you and the enemy DD are sitting at opposite sides of the same cap unspotted? Is it a waste of time denying the cap like that?

Unfortunately many people agree with you but I stand firmly by my opinion that this is simply not the case. If there is a perceived problem with cruiser play something else about the game meta needs to change, but a big direct buff is a lazy solution.

Yeah Okinawa is a special case. Fault line is another horrible one like that. But on some more symmetrical maps you go east, enemies go west, even if you take cap with no contest a quarter of your team is dead before you're back in position to do some useful damage and then it doesn't matter. Is it worth holding back a bit until you see the situation develop? But then if you're not scouting who is? If your cap is contested is it better to stay and deny it or bail immediately and try to find something better to do?

I have no use for this module either. If your concealment is bad it's worth buffing (and you get better returns on the %). If your concealment is good it's worth maxing. On some cruisers, rudder mod for troll dodging times. I think some BBs maybe can use TAM if you really hate torps. Alone it's "meh" but it stacks with Vigilance so maybe like that it's worth it? But a high tier module slot and 3 captain points is a steep price to pay just to get away with being a bit lazy with WASD... Yeah, TAM could use a buff to be an option people would actually want. It would actually be perfect if sight range was overall reduced, I never understood why we can see further than we can shoot. Dispersion reduction to stack with the other module that does that (or let you take something else) would be pretty good too. In the spirit of the mod, maybe it could buff your radar range as well. That would really put the cat amongst the pigeons.

No. Cruisers are a bit harder to play but they have the tools to avoid damage, so while I know not everyone agrees with me, I don't think they need help in this area. Also my experience with RN CLs tells me heal isn't as helpful as people expect, since if you screw up in a cruiser you are taking a lot of (usually AP) damage very quickly, something heal doesn't really help with.

Hi all. I'm having a bit of trouble with Essex. Still stock but there are no upgrades for fighters and TBs so doesn't matter much. I did the Lex grind back when she had strike setup and took a break from the game. Thing is, I'm not really good at this strafing thing and I'm not sure how best to dedicate my time and attention to achieving air superiority. A lot of the time my strike planes are just idling while I'm trying and failing to deal with enemy fighters. I do fine in Hiryu and Shokaku but there I often have the advantage in number of fighter squads or there is some other assymetry I can leverage. In a "fair" 2 fighters vs. 2 fighters (vs either Essex or Taiho) I'm a bit lost. What's your general battle plan and action-decision flow when playing Essex? I might need some strafing 101 as well.

Can I have a dodging ribbon for my cruisers please? In fairness, little rewards like this, even if cosmetic, do work as incentives as lots of games use achievements for things like this. In MOBAs I used to play they tweaked reward and achievement system and suddenly everyone was trying to play support. But in WoWs I think it's playing with a symptom. The real problem is complete lack of education and understanding of what battle roles are. The win should be the reward for team play and doing the right thing but the damage mentality means everyone is expecting someone else to make the move, which means either nobody does or the ones that do get punished because nobody supports correctly. You can't blame an unsupported DD for not capping, a lone cruiser for not supporting the DD or a BB for not pushing without scouting. Each one is going to blame the other but it needs to happen at the same time for it to work. Unfortunately that requires trust...

Actually had a chance to play Algerie a bit now. I would rate that top 3 of current T7 cruisers actually. Excellent all-rounder.

Wow... salt is really real on this one. As a cruiser player I can safely say I don't especially fear this compared to any other BB. Huge dispersion, no penetration, nothing to fear as long as you keep an eye on where it as and when it's got guns on you. Plus half the people playing it seem to think 16 guns is an invitation to fire HE, which without RN special shells just makes it a fail choice.

Wut?! For... one extra Hydro you'll never use?! Not worth it on Omaha alone, only if this is a captain you plan to take to higher tier ships later.

I have a Shiratsuyu I unlocked ages ago but never played. Some time ago I used a free reset on my IJN DD captains and now I'm almost done retraining one for this ship (using Shinonome to train). I have 14 points at the moment but only spent 10. I wanted to make a hybrid gun/torpedo boat and I also plan to use torpedo reload booster instead of smoke. So my skills so far are PM - EM - SE - CE. Not sure what to do with the last 4 points. BFT? Or AR + LS? Edit: I'm not taking this captain to Akizuki.

Been having a bit of fun with the ship as hybrid. So much actually I've been forgetting to use smoke when I play other DDs that have it.

Well, all 3rd row skills give only a small bonus and most are completely useless for a T5 cruiser. Omaha base fire chance is 12%. +2% from DE makes it 14%. That's quite a nice gain. I completely agree it's fun to citadel cruisers with AP but often in this ship you don't have the chance to do that. In T7 games you need every tiny advantage to help burn down those BBs. Even if DE is not amazing you have to get something, and everything else is even more useless.

Vigilance doesn't do what you think it does. It makes you see enemy torpedoes further away. Personally I find this skill useless, you have hydro for that. 3rd row skill for Omaha, Demolition Expert no contest, it's a fire spammer.

You've got what, 53% average WR? That's good, but it's not surprising that's how you feel. I mean, in the long term if everyone had the same skill we would all have 50% WR. This isn't exactly how the maths works but basically think about it like this: In every 100 games you would play as an average (50% WR) player: - 25 you play badly and lose - 25 you play well and lose anyway - 25 you play well and win - 25 you play badly and win anyway The difference of 3% average WR is basically taking 1 or 2 of those games from category 2 (played well and lost anyway) and turning them into category 3 (played well enough to turn a loss into a win). In other words there are 1 or 2 games out of every 100 that are statistically close enough for your skill level to be the thing that makes the difference. Strictly speaking that's not your absolute skill level, but the difference between your skill level and the average baseline skill level. For a 60% WR player that would be 5 games out of every 100, and so on. We're all passengers to an extent, but that's not a reason to be demoralised. If you do consistently well that average creeps up. There is also an illusion at play that makes this "passenger" feeling worse. If you're above average, even slightly, and know what you're doing, it's actually much easier to rack up a high personal score in a losing game. You have more targets that other people aren't dealing with, and you feel like you "did more" fighting outnumbered to the last point of HP. On the other hand, you could be playing perfectly but if your team stomps the enemy you won't feel like you got to do much. I don't agree with your conclusion here and actually think you should be quite proud of that game. 1k base XP on losing team is a decent run. Remember winning team gets +50% boost to base XP. Remove that and you will see that the scores are almost the same all the way down the board. From that picture alone it looked like a very close game actually. You did a lot better than their Zuiho (his base XP would have been <800 if his team lost) and almost as good as their top scoring Jianwei (~1100 base XP before win bonus). So it's a question of attitude my friend. You've chosen to focus on the negative here but really picked an example that doesn't support your argument. Think positive = play well. I know it's easier said than done but it's true. And see what I said above about playing consistently well. You can play how you did in that game and rage every time you lose anyway (which will be often, statistically), or you can keep playing and enjoy playing well and you'll see the results in the long term.

Again, what more do you want? You can be top 3 on the losing team with 1k base XP, probably some flags from achievements in your heroic but futile defense, decent credits (I think these don't depend on win/loss?). Other than just losing being frustrating, you haven't explained what you don't like about the reward system.

Because ship guns (or any guns) are not perfect and 15km is a long distance so your shells won't land in exactly the same place you aimed. Even if you bolt a rifle to the ground and fire it 20 times at a target the shots won't all go through the same hole. Basically every shooter game has to have RNG to represent this spread. Even in real life it's affected by so many changing factors it may as well be random. RNG itself is not a bad thing.

There is another psychological effect which enhances losing streaks, the fact the frustration makes you play worse, notice other people playing badly more (which makes you even more fruatrated), or just take unnecessary risks because you think you need to do more to win. I lose games where I'm trying too hard and have more enjoyable wins when I'm just "in the zone". Basic way to break losing streaks is to play something completely different, ideally have dedicated "chill ships" that you either do well with naturally or just enjoy playing no matter win/lose. Also don't focus on what your team are doing more than basic facts to input in your decision making. If you're sunk, don't watch your team play out a loss it's infuriating and damages morale. @Shaka_D I agree with your psychology points but not sure what you mean about rewards. We already have performance based XP and credits with a slight bonus to Base XP for winning team. What more do you want? After all we need incentives to play to win not incentives to camp and farm damage.

Threads like these make me lose faith in the intelligence of some of the best and most respected players in this game/community (and the rest of the playerbase as a whole but there wasn't that much there to start with). Believe what you want to believe but consider this: Have you thought about how hard it would actually be to code these algorithms in, have them work as you describe, subtly enough to trick everyone they aren't there but well enough to be worth it, and without causing horrendous bugs/glitches that would instantly out them? They could develop the whole game from scratch without any bugs or MM issues with the development time required to make this so-called "noob protection" work properly. It's completely implausible that such a system exists. No volume of anecdotes is evidence guys, especially since nobody is doing controlled trials!

1) observation bias 2) I've also been in T10 games most of the time with T8/9 ships, because... 3) French BB release skewing the MM, lots of BBs at mid tier causing long queue times and pushing other BBs up into top tier games.

Yeah, got LS as well as AR. With these ships though, I find you can hold on to your R if you plan your disengage after a hit-and run, and not take critical damage again. But LS is a nice additional backup.

Spending 6 minutes trying to get to the enemy CV is also not a great use of time. You need to think in terms of game impact not individual actions. The easiest way to think about this is ask yourself "what did the enemy do that he would not have done if I wasn't there". Even something as simple as an enemy changing direction because he saw you, or trying to fire at you instead of a team mate, is useful game impact that can't be measured. But for this you need to be where the enemy is. There's a fine line between over-caution and over-aggression. Also, there is a time element to game impact. Think of what the enemy can do while you're doing your thing, and you might see that even if you succeed it will be too late. 5,000 damage to the correct target at game minute 2 can be worth more than 100,000 damage across 5 targets at game minute 15. You need to get the snowball going instead of relying on your team-mates to do that. Numbers matter a lot. Even a potato will do some useful damage but if your team-mates die fast even a great player will struggle. So think of where you can be and what you can do to divide enemy fire, save team-mates and let them do more damage, and reduce enemy numbers quickly for your team to snowball. EDIT: it's hard to say from one game to another what you did wrong, since you can't win every game. But if you follow general rules over time WR will average out to better. Remember there are 11 players on your team who could be bad, but 12 on the enemy team.

The main reason I don't take TA is because it would cripple my Shinonome when I use the captain there. But I was tempted. Anyway EM + turret traverse mod brings it down to 19s and AR offsets the reload time loss. As creamgravy said I think the gunnery on this ship is surprisingly comfortable and therefore worth investing in. I'm not planning to go around dueling full HP dedicated gunboats, but being able to take chunks off people in between spotting them for the team and having an effective and reliable damage source between torp reloads is very useful. I've been playing Shinonome as a hybrid with this captain as well and that works for me too (although that sees cruisers it can citadel more frequently, which is just hilarious).