VC381

That depends what flavours WG wants to give the split lines and what projects they dig up. Real ships only you're still looking at T7 to T10 for USN and T5 to T8 for both RN and IJN, which is already more than both DD split lines. As for differences USN and RN can be split by light/heavy and the IJN branch can be the aviation cruisers for some real uniqueness. But as you say, Italian cruisers first, that should be a pretty good line, all real to T8. I think the odd Dutch premium would be nice and would make a few people happy, but the fantasy required to fill an entire line makes me hope they don't.

Hmm, raking a Tirpitz at 10km should produce better results than that, even with her armour scheme. Maybe I'm wrong actually and that is a normal hits to damage ratio for RN cruisers (I don't normally pay attention to that) but I do manage to get more damage. Having said that, 36k is a respectable outcome for a T8 cruiser stock, so maybe you're expecting too much? Actually, 147 hits does look a bit low to me. Maybe you need to make sure you have more targets in range for longer. Server average damage for Edinburgh is 42k, which with the same proportions (36k/147) you would need ~172 hits to reach, so you really aren't that far off. ~25 hits is probably 4 to 6 salvos, or 30 to 45 seconds continuous fire on target. Could you have done that in the game the screenshot is from?

Also, vary your aim point to avoid damage saturation and set up your smoke traps at closer range so you can hit where you want without losing damage to dispersion and where you're more likely to penetrate medium armor. Where are you going on the map and what ranges are you fighting at? The fact you don't have DDs and cruisers in your sights too often suggests you aren't positioning to deliberately intercept them as you should. Edinburgh is not an easy ride, but neither are the tactics required completely different to what came before. I would suggest stepping back to Fiji and/or Leander to practice positioning and aim points.

I agree that fire prevention is a strong skill but I find it very hard to justify its point cost. I tried it on Warspite (which is my equivalent experience of always being on fire) and was initially impressed, then I played the ship with a cruiser captain and realised being set on fire isn't a problem when you have amazing concealment and if you watch your position better. With Amagi specifically, she's not a brawler but it's not black and white to be in the middle of the action and always on fire or riding the map border. You need to find a mid-range balance where the ship works best, you have the speed to decide your engagement range. I ran a full concealment Amagi build for a bit and it was pretty fun. I now switched to a survivability build but using no 4-point skills at all. Just stacked High Alert, Jack of all Trades, Superintendent and Basics of Survivability. Between the shorter burn duration and shorter CD on damage control managing fires becomes trivial, and the whole setup is much more versatile for dealing with other damage. For the 4 points you spend on FP, which really only does one situational thing, you can get HA+JoaT for versatility, or CE for sneaky shenanigans.

Just took her for a spin and have to say the concealment buff is very nice. It's now just agility vs. Radar that differentiate her and Pensacola. I would say each ship has it's place but Indianapolis is very nice. Not that it wasn't before but I'm cool with a ship I already like getting a bit of a "quality of life" improvement.

Some of the existing nations (US, British and Japanese) can easily support a split line similar to Russian and Japanese DDs. That would be top of my "most wanted" list as far as new cruisers are concerned, before obscure nations or "composite" trees, because we're still missing many iconic classes from the main combatants.

I have nothing against copy-paste sister ship premiums at the same tier but they shouldn't have a clear edge in one area without a corresponding drawback elsewhere. That's what causes P2W whine. Koenig is probably right, there is room for a premium IJN BB at high tier that has closer characteristics to the silver ships in addition to the earlier dreadnought types. But I disagree that e.g. Mutsu is quirky or somehow not "a performer". Dunkerque and Scharnhorst are quirky, Mutsu is in line with the IJN BB tree just with the strengths/weaknesses exaggerated a little. It doesn't need a dedicated commander spec, it performs solidly in both random and ranked, and I personally don't feel the shells make any difference. If you're after a specific thing and Mutsu just doesn't do it for you that's fair enough. But I don't think your assessment of Mutsu, and by extension the potential of Ashitaka, is really fair. Hell, your own stats in Mutsu are pretty good, not really reflecting how much you complain about it.

Given how few CVs there are and more to the point, how few are actually good, the AA power of the ship is largely irrelevant. And being a battlecruiser you're more likely to be near your teams cruisers. Also, I strongly disagree with the idea that lacking in one aspect keeps something from being in game. It can be made stronger in other ways. One of the things that can make ships like this really nice and unique is how they can be min-maxed and specialised.

The whole "IJN needs a good high tier premium BB" thing is really skewed by the fact that what makes a "good" BB varies so much from one person to the next that there's no way to make everyone happy. I think the downtiered 1920s hulls as premiums is a fantastic idea but I also know it produces ships that a lot of people will dislike. I don't think WG should give in to the whine and make a boring or OP premium BB for the IJN, partly because, from a pure captain training point of view, Atago already does the job pretty well.

I feel battlecruisers are pretty unique as far as BBs go in game, and yes I'm counting Mutsu in with that label just from a playstyle point of view. For me it's something unique to have BBs that are that fast without giving up something about their armament. Only Kongo, Amagi, Ishizuchi, Mutsu, Hood and Iowa fit that style relative to their peers in my opinion, so I for one welcome premiums along this line. As for Ashitaka specifically, I expect they are just delaying while they were rolling out some more exciting premiums over the summer (Enterprise, Gallant). But also, it's a fairly low effort development item (the model already exists) so I doubt they would cancel it when it wouldn't take much to implement. I hope so at least, I would be interested for one. Kongo and Amagi have been some of my favorite BBs in game, and now Hood and Mutsu are right up there as well. I guess most people just look for something else in a BB though. I expect part of the reason why some of these ships didn't sell well is because they aren't straight up OP. That's really sad, and I hope it doesn't put WG off doing similar interesting things in the future.

Err... good for you but personally this ship didn't do anything for me. Was glad to be rid of it only to find the next one just as (if not more) disappointing. Just goes to show it's a matter of what fits your playstyle, the ship sure isn't OP.

Whichever as long as they have the correct 3D model and camouflage for the name. Yes I nitpick but with my pixel ships I care more about how they look than how they play. Especially with BBs since their playstyle is boring generally and this is likely to be on the more boring end so the only reason to play would be to chill while basking in the awesome looks and history. So I just hope they don't get lazy and call it Nelson but sell her with Rodney's iconic camouflage while mixing up elements of both ships or of early and late war fits.

Tried doing this and talked to others who did as well, the success rate is extremely low. Even if it was as bad as people make out (which it isn't anyway), it doesn't work reliably enough to impact much.

Always glad to see a happy player! Makes me wonder if I should try this ship again. The IJN cruiser line was the first I played, and the Kuma was the first ship I skipped with Free XP. I hated it at the time but I loved the Furutaka (pre-C-hull) and never looked back. Maybe I'm just weird like that.

Controversial opinion here but I don't think there is a camping problem. Bad players will play badly regardless of what incentives the game gives them. If they're forced to get closer they'll just make mistakes and sink quicker. And actually there is nothing wrong with ships that can be effective at longer range using some of that range. I'm not talking about max range sniping, but if you're in an appropriate ship there is a benefit to maximising your threat radius. What actually makes high tier games so punishing and twitchy though is the fact a lot of the ships involved can effectively threaten huge areas, while defensive abilities lag far behind because all classes are bigger, more sluggish and less stealthy. This results in the above mentioned "tallest poppy gets its head cut off" issue for people trying to be aggressive. What the gameplay needs is actually either more space or different island cover that better splits up the map. Camping is only a "problem" because the game force funnels everyone into small areas. This leads to the paradoxical complaints that campers are useless because they don't help their team but those same camping BBs are OP because their range lets them nail anyone anywhere once they've sailed into the pre-designed shooting galleries, that they have to enter if they want to win. The issue isn't range, it's relative position, and even overcrowding. Basically, the game at high tiers needs more space so that both long and short range play is viable depending on your ship's strengths and so that all classes have some choice about where to be and some breathing room to do their job.

I wouldn't say no to a buff but I love the ship as she is and can't say I'm doing badly. Try varying your engagement range and aim point. She's optimal at closer ranges than you might expect so don't play her like she's a Nagato. Also, by aiming a bit higher on enemy BBs you get fewer belt shatters and a nice collection of regular penetrations that give you a steady damage output.

Well, if you take a bad player and watch him fail repeatedly, he will eventually get a random good or even great hit. They get lucky sometimes and they're happy to gamble on that. So probability itself unfortunately provides easy "evidence" for the theory that there is more going on. I still find it very unlikely. There is also, as I said, an element of skill in accepting the randomness and inaccuracy and playing accordingly to stack the odds in your favour in the long term. Good players still have far more average damage than bad ones, the RNG is applying equally to all of them, so actually it's not equalizing the skill. You can pretty much search any BB in the game and find threads complaining it's inaccurate. People see what they want to see.

I struggled with this ship as well but it's slowly growing on me. Thing is, you're a super tempting target so you have to work around that. I prefer speed flag + both rudder shift modules + reload mod. Use the speed to flank, position to reduce the number of enemies that are in range to shoot at you and narrow the set of directions you can have incoming fire from. Your range is enough without extension but better stay near the max in the beginning just to be safe. Bait, dodge and DPM, kite as needed, rinse and repeat. Later on, use the speed to get where you're needed to impact the battle.

Yes, actually there is a parameter that determines how often you get bad shots, it's Sigma. Also, Hood has quite bad vertical dispersion, so when you do get bad shots, they can be really bad. Unfortunately, randomness just works like that and you can get streaks of great shots followed by streaks of awful ones. Having said that, I have not felt this problem to be particularly bad for Hood and she is one of my best performing ships (although not that many games played yet). It might just be how I play her, or what I expect from BBs generally. I do get close, because the speed and HP allow it, and I don't let myself depend on good dispersion. If I get some bad shots I just accept it and move on, if the position and aim are correct then the average damage will show through if you keep shooting. And I'm sorry but I find it very unlikely there is some secret code or RNG voodoo that compensates you. Humans have a lot of trouble understanding randomness and we're wired to see patterns everywhere, even when they aren't there. Most BB RNG complaints are observation bias in my opinion. I personally feel Scharnhorst is a horrible inaccurate ship but the numbers and other people's opinions don't back that up. I have my biases too, it's just better to step back a bit and don't try to read too much from it. Hood is indeed balanced using worse dispersion but she has the tools to make up for it. If you are not doing as well as you would like with Hood, think about your position and targets. Use the speed to always have someone to shoot at in optimum range (something Colorado can only dream of doing) and over time that will add up even if at times it feels you're not hitting.

Edinburgh is significantly less agile than Fiji, but she's still more agile than most other higher tier cruisers. I found you could be very aggressive with Leander and Fiji but for Edinburgh I had to become much more sneak+smoke dependent. That is... until I realised her concealment is so good, you don't really need the concealment module. And there's another rudder shift module in that slot. That's a game changer for me. Combined with the super-heal, it makes her play much more dynamically. You still have to watch yourself due to the T8 MM, but it's not all doom and gloom and point-and-click.

Smoke will not be "useless", it just means you can't just sit there and farm free damage forever. If a ship relies on smoke to survive, it can still use the smoke to survive, exactly like today, it just means you need to learn to stop firing and accept a bit less damage as price for your survival.

You got super unlucky. Normally T7 ships have very good MM, but 10 games isn't enough for a static to mean anything. Also, most people who play T6 are probably playing ranked. You might have more luck after the season ends.

And here I was assuming everyone compulsively stat-checked in the hope of finding something to use against people. As I said before, I play RN cruisers and to be honest I noticed in my Fiji a lot of games I barely use half my smokes and even when I do I'm forced by some other circumstances to leave them some time before they expire. So yeah, I don't see this change being crippling to my RN CL playstyle.

You lay a nice long smoke across a key vision gap to deny as much as possible from the enemy (the actual intention of smoke screens) and your team-mates can now reposition at will without being seen (dynamic play) and concentrate invisifire from behind the smoke without getting close enough to it to dispel it, while you spot from outside the smoke and shooting as well depending on situation, using your agility as a CL/DD to survive while also playing dynamically. As opposed to you laying a tiny smoke that benefits only you and farming damage statically. Team-mates being dumb is a non-argument as far as I'm concerned. It just comes across as a bit arrogant and entitled to argue in favor of something because you can use it in a selfish way to do better, on the assumption you're carrying your team in the process. Also, smoke meta is far more static and boring than the exaggerated so-called "problem" of BB camping.

"OMG the world is going to end bla bla whine" This is an amazing change. Smoke play is static and unrealistic. It's frustrating for the guy getting shot at from smoke and it's boring as hell for the guy sitting in smoke and shooting. In its current form it's unhealthy and needs to go. I play the ships involved (RN cruisers, Belfast and Kutuzov) and while I do use the smoke, I use it wisely and when necessary, and sometimes I run and gun and do other things and play in a way where using smoke is not optimum or even necessary. The ships can handle it if you can just dare to imagine a different playstyle. Honestly, I will not mind this change and it will make me use my smokes to block firing lanes and help team-mates more while I do something else.