VC381

Had some success, the ship feels pretty similar to her 10-gun counterparts in the US and German branches. The HE strong but TBH it's a gimmick and a bit of a noob trap. I switched back to firing AP only and got solid salvos and arguably better performance all round. It's definitely a solid all-rounder, but boring. The funnel is annoying but it could be worse, she still mostly looks authentic, but I'm not getting great "classic dreadnought" vibes off her like I do from e.g. Mutsu. Still, if it's T5 and not flying a hinomaru it isn't a keeper in my opinion, Iron Duck included. Verdict: 100% meh, will happily ruing looks with hideous halloween camo to get past it quicker.

I was looking forward to this ship until I saw that turret traverse. What the absolute ? Warspite was bearable before buff but nevertheless the buff was welcome. It may be strong (I don't know yet), but I fear it isn't going to be fun.

Basically it's a problem of attitude. Nobody cares if you're a good or bad player, but with <1,000 Games you have to accept that you basically know nothing about the game right now. The fact you went so fast to high tiers just makes it worse. If you are a new player and say "help how do I do this" people will be nice. If you are inexperienced and say "X ship needs buff/nerf" you will be destroyed by this community. It's not really fair, but that's how it is, and the truth is you don't really have a right to ask for buff/nerf with how little experience you have of the game. There is no quick answer to your problem, it's just practice. I don't think lower tiers are easier, so play what you like, but try to think about what the enemy is doing. You don't want to play DD, fine, but at least look at what your team DDs are doing, try to understand how DDs think. After that, move unpredictably, turn sometimes for no reason. Torpedoes take a long time to travel to the target. If you are dodging when you see them, it's too late. You need to dodge them before you can see them. Yes I know this sounds like 6th sense, but just moving randomly and not going to predictable narrow places is enough.

Oregon City as a premium variation of Baltimore? I would be tempted. Guess it would have to be some kind of Free XP or reward thing though. Problem is, apart from US nobody really built cruisers of the size and power the game uses for T9, so the opportunity to use real ships is very limited and "what-if" designs probably won't generate the same interest. Unless they settle the Alaska debate by making her a T9 premium CA... Now that I would grind for, or similar ships from other nations.

Too easy, maybe. OP, perhaps. But that example is still an outlier near the top end of what they can do, so it doesn't come across too well, so much whine for an isolated incident. And I think the problem is worse at low tiers due to generally low cruiser armour. Anyway, one thing I did notice is that games were taking longer, so for all the outrage over the HE spam, it seems it's taking longer to achieve the desired result. Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's blatantly designed to be noob-proof and that it's a bit too strong. But I think noobs will be noobs anyway and you need to use both ammo types wisely to really get the most from these ships. I would rather see how this all works out instead of joining the hysteria that it was bound to generate.

18k damage is 1 citadel + 2 normal penetrations with AP. So if he was firing AP that would only take 3 shells instead of 5. If he hit 5 shells in the first place he got lucky with RNG anyway, and if he was that lucky with AP he would have deleted you even from full HP.

The win rate says more about the player than the ship. The high damage count is misleading for two reasons. Firstly because there are so many BBs in games it's much easier to farm damage, and secondly because fire damage can be repaired so it takes more damage to sink those BBs. I also got a couple of 100k damage games without breaking a sweat in Iron Duke, 2 tiers lower, and it just felt stupid at the time. But thinking about it, I also took a lot of damage because I wasn't sinking things as fast. I still think it's a bit too strong but ultimately it's more just easy-mode. I'll test if AP has the same impact.

Well, I'll be starting the line at T5 thanks to blueprints but haven't had a chance to play yet. Anyway I re-specced my 10-point Warspite commander to PT-EM-SI-CE. I'll see where I take it from there, but AR is likely to come in as soon as I have 12 points.

+1 for a well thought out suggestion. I would extend it so that locking a target always gives a stacking accuracy buff with each salvo, unless you or the target turn. But really, the main gunnery stat they need to tweak to remove boring bow-play is auto-bounce.

Ah, so basically people think they're safe because Conqueror 457 cannot technically overmatch 32mm but actually the better bounce angles mean they will take normal pens in places they don't expect. I'm very familiar with this trick on US CA AP, so that makes sense now.

I thought the workings of the overmatch mechanics were well established, how is it possible to be uncertain if the 457s do or don't lol-pen? Is it that they don't quite pen 32mm while Yamato's 460s just do? Then where's the trap?

T8 CVs can only come one per team, but I guess in a T8 ship you can see 2 CVs on the enemy team if they are 6&7, but in that case they should be little threat to you. Unless it's a Saipan I guess but that thing isn't representative of all CVs in general. German BBs have a decent combination of AA and agility, the rest is just practice.

Not that I'm likely to get this ship for a very long time, but there are already two 12-gun BBs at T10. If I wanted that I would grind a Montana as "lots of guns" feels like more of a USN flavour. Even if the 419 are better I would go 457 just because it's more awesome and unique, and feels more British.

The win rate spike is not coincidence, it's because IJN CVs are harder to play. So past T7 only people who are good didn't give up. At the same time, US CVs are more famous ships and easier to play so overall have more appeal for casuals to continue to T10. Global WR is a pretty vague and useless thing to base a comparison on. Usually it reflects more the kind of people playing a ship or the difficulty, not just the power of the ship itself. And there are many who enjoy the current state of bombing or even AS play, so really the variety is important.

That's OK, I also don't take people seriously who preach exaggerated absolutes and refuse to give any leeway to other points of view.

Sure it would be nice to have closer to an even split between being top tier and bottom tier but as I said before I don't see why the MM should be balanced around the portion of the population that play in the middle of the night. Most evening and weekend time T8s have fairly decent MM. Still bottom tier a bit more often but not 90% of the time. Anyway I already proposed a better solution, which is limiting the number of top tier ships in a game, but that got ignored. Anyway, doing anything to the MM that might even slightly increase queue times is like WG's kryptonite, so nothing will change, especially since getting clubbed incentivises people to pay up to "speed progression". Also @ForlornSailor, people are entitled to their opinions. Just because someone has a different experience to you doesn't make their argument invalid.

Sneak and dodge better mainly, but it does open up some options. I'm not saying T8s are the same power as T10s, guess what, they aren't supposed to be! I'm just saying there are mitigating factors, and it's not the hell everyone is making it out to be. As someone said earlier in the thread, "less QQ more pew pew"

There is a huge power spike in some areas, usually HP and DPM, but I still consider some aspects of T10 ships a downgrade from their earlier cousins, especially in cruiser and DD lines. Being huge, sluggish and spotted from across the map is never a good thing in those classes, even if you're way more powerful in other ways. Anyway, I've had some of my best games in NO in T10 matches. Just now 90k damage even split 30/30/30 between HE, AP and fires. That was pretty fun, citadelled a Hindenburg while I was at it. A few weeks ago got a double strike and came within inches of a Kraken while filling for our dead DDs and taking cap late game against a Shima, Des Moines and Edinburgh. As I said before there is actually a lot you can do as long as you know your place, and in fact there are some things you can do that a T10 can't.

Exactly what I've been trying to say but I think we're in a minority. Remember they tried to reduce BB bow "armour" so that bow tanking wouldn't work anymore and there was a huge uproar and the change was dropped

Just to get this straight, normalisation is now the same by caliber but US 203mm shells have a different (larger) autobounce angle. This is what gives them their nation flavour, they pen angled targets much more reliably (on top of whatever good pen they have from heavy shells, although only T9+ have super-heavy). RN 152mm AP have something similar I think, on top of their short fuse.

You misunderstand in-game dispersion. This was discussed at length in another thread and confirmed by a mod. The horizontal and vertical dispersion in game are calculated in an imaginary vertical plane through the target, and in this sense the horizontal is more than the vertical. But the actual pattern on the sea is, correctly as proven by screenshots of firing tests, longer than it is wide. But, the other guy misunderstands crossing the T. This is a squadron concentration of fire tactic, not a 1v1 angling tactic. Actually another issue is that the guns in game are too accurate, so it makes it viable to trade away 1/3 or even 1/2 of your firepower for the horrendously unrealistic survivability you get from being bow-in. Anyway, I don't see why your reaction is so negative. Actually, all ships should be able to bow overmatch their own class and smaller.

Well, I don't think it's a problem that BBs can lol-pen cruisers (cruiser mains here) but it is a bit dumb that BBs can go bow-in and be practically immune to each-other. Let me explain. I understand that the game needs some simplification and in that sense I think overmatch and auto-bounce mechanics are fine in principle. But a lot of a ship is NOT armour, and even where it is, there are different types of armour that behave differently. A cruiser is not designed to withstand BB shells and so here the overmatch is at least realistic. Cruisers have other tricks, this isn't a problem. A BB is designed to take the shells of another BB but usually only at certain ranges, and this armour makes a box around important stuff (the citadel). The bow, stern, most of the superstructure, this is pretty thin, low-grade steel that is good enough to keep water out and split a wave so the ship can move, but it should basically be "invisible" to shells. So yeah, BBs can lol-pen cruisers, that overmatch is OK, but also BBs should be able to damage each-other better. Then they will shoot at cruisers less and won't bow camp.

To be honest, unlike T5 to 7 and T6 to 8, a lot of T8 ships actually have some small advantages over their T9 and T10 counterparts. In almost all lines the ships at the top tiers are bigger, more sluggish and less stealthy. Sure they're way more powerful overall, but as long as you understand your place as the bottom tier you can leverage the strengths of your particular ship and have fun and do well for yourself. +2 MM is fine because it adds a lot of variety to the ships in battle. It would be very boring otherwise. The only thing I would change is to limit the number of ships in a game by tier, so for example a T8-10 game would be forced to only have maximum 3 T10 ships per side, 4 T9 and the rest T8. This at least gets rid of the "only T8 in game" syndrome which can be a bit tough. It may increase queue times slightly, but to be honest I don't think game balance should be sacrificed to improve queue times for people who don't sleep. In normal afternoon and evening times battles at all tiers are basically instant.

Yeah, I would not spec Fiji with BFT+AFT. British cruisers need Superintendent and don't really benefit from AA or secondary builds (at least not until T9). SSE is pretty fun with RN cruisers. The bigger bubble means you can pop smoke at a slightly higher speed and still stop in it, and you have more space to wiggle back and forth while smoked. Similarly, if you're moving the captain I would say Pensacola and New Orleans also don't benefit much from an AA build. If I were you I would get DE on the third row for Cleveland. More fire is always good. AA builds in general I feel are a bit pointless given current CV population since you're spending potentially up to 7 or 11 captain points on something very situational that doesn't do anything when there isn't a CV around. AR is good on basically everything but not as a first choice in that row. I got it on a lot of ships but usually only at 14 or 15 points depending on what else I feel I need. I would also avoid getting IFHE for now until we see how future patches play out as there were rumours of massive changes to that skill. Curious, you don't use Expert Marksman on anything? Sure, it's a playstyle choice if you don't think you need it, but I can't live without it. Fiji and Cleveland out-turn their turrets even WITH it. My current setups: Fiji (10 points): PT, EM, SI, CE Edinburgh (ex-Fiji, 14 points): PT, EM, SSE, AR, SI, CE Cleveland (10 points): PT, EM, DE, CE Des Moines (ex-all US CA, 15 points): PT, EM, AR, SI, DE, CE

If you actually want to play aggressive, impact and carry the game, lead the charge and inspire your team-mates to give the other side a damn good thrashing while looking about as awesome as it's possible to look in a ship, you only have one choice. Hint: it's the not the slow fat one