VC381

Your maths is wonky. 10% is 10% no matter how small or large the initial reload is, the total buff to damage is the same. With very short reload ships, it's easier to think about it as getting 110 hits when you would normally be getting 100. Basically it's still worth it on gunboats for hosing down BBs. But, you are right. The only reason everyone got BFT before is because it was a 1 point skill and nothing else was really worth it. At 3 points, it's competing with a lot of stuff and 10% doesn't seem worth it. I don't think I'll be getting it on any ship that used to have it, because there are just so many more good or necessary skills. Adrenaline Rush gives 10% reload at 50% HP, which let's face it is not an uncommon position for most DDs to be in, AND that buffs torpedo reload as well, AND it gets better as you take more damage, AND it's only 2 points. With smoke and concealment, a DD could be on 1 HP and still doing damage as if it was on full, it's the class that's least affected by being "almost dead". Think, 20% reload and 20% torpedo reload buff in typical late game situations, could be very strong. But even that competes with EM for some ships that need it and LS that ALL DDs need anyway. So yeah... tough choices!

I was in a similar position to you. I really enjoyed Konigsberg, probably the second best T5 cruiser (after Kirov), for me anyway. But I didn't feel motivated to carry on, because Nurnberg is basically the same thing a tier higher, and Yorck seemed pointless because it doesn't have the signature AP (note this doesn't mean I think it's weak, I haven't played it, just didn't want to). So why did I say I'm in a similar position? I don't know what motivates you to try new ships, but I did always want a Hipper just because the class is beautiful and has lots of history. Also, after playing US cruisers a lot, I was after something else with great AP but that was different as well. Eventually the way I compromised is I gave in and bought the Prinz Eugen on sale, that way I got the only ship I wanted to actually play in the line without the grind. Basically since it's a Hipper clone then what I say should count for that ship as well. After reading a lot of bad press about Hipper/PE but wanting the ship badly due to looks+history I was ready to get disappointed but my god... I was so shocked... by how good it is! It is just so comfortable to play, long range, fast reload, fast turrets. I actually used my random German BB captain in it (so no DE) and even then HE felt OK. The AP is amazing. If that's what you're after it does not disappoint. Cruiser citadels at 17km, no sweat. BBs even slightly angled, 5k to 8k salvos, no problem. Range is safety and you don't need to compromise because it's laser accurate. That might be the "gem" of the line you are looking for. As for higher tiers, I don't mind project/never-were ships but Roon and Hindenburg are complete fiction and I have little interest in them. However I respect them when I face them and it seems they have the same combination of traits that I enjoy in Prinz Eugen.

Oddly enough, last night in my Lexington I ended up in a situation where the fiery take-off skill might have saved me or even turned the game. My team collapsed and I had nowhere to go with an Atago chasing me but we had some BBs left elsewhere on the map. I don't think that makes it worth it as the situation doesn't happen often, but it was odd.

Wouldn't switching to AP be more effective in many of these circumstances, as you get better penetration and higher base damage? Granted AP can be defeated by angle but most people don't specifically angle against ships they expect to be HE spammers.

Thank you for the detailed analysis, refreshing after waves of "New skills suck" threads. I may be tempted to give this a go as well.

I think certain mid tier BBs (Warspite and Dunkerque for a start) could benefit greatly from this. Not sure if it's must have at higher tiers, but then again I don't really play high tier BBs.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying I think DDs are OP and deserving of a straight up nerf and I have a lot of respect for good DD players. All I'm saying is the skill makes some sense from a game design point of view because it provides counterplay to tactics that previously didn't really have any. Now it may be that these tactics require skill to pull off and are the staple of many good DD players, and I understand your frustration that those options are weakened, but it shouldn't be impossible to adapt to it especially since a DD can use it just as well as having it used against them. Ultimately it's a tool and the deciding factor is the player using it.

To be honest, I'm just glad I get the same build for 10 points instead of 15. Gonna experiment with concealment expert on Shokaku (let's see how close and I get to reduce my cycle times) and AA on my Lex, because there's nothing funnier than that one time someone does try to snipe you and nothing makes it to the drop.

or you accept that WG doesn't want DD flanking and solo plays to be a thing and adapt your playstyle accordingly. You can be the closest and the enemy will know your general direction but if you were doing anything they would guess that anyway. Also they can't actually see you, they can't shoot you, and if you don't stray from your cruisers it would be suicide to rush/chase you. So you can be up close, spotting, torping, smoking your team-mates and RPF won't mean a thing to you and your opponents wasted 4 captain points (they might have even sacrificed CE for it). It only prevents Yolo-plays...

If that's the purpose then why fighters? They could just be scouts with no armament except a rear gun. If they provide fully controllable vision they are already incredibly powerful without any other perks. The complete flip of this would be a ship that fully utilises the CV interface and all the ships guns are AI controlled with a "click to target" mechanic. Not as strong as if a player was aiming them but much, much stronger than typical CV "secondaries".

Yes, my DD experience is a bit low but as a cruiser player I do try to support the DDs and I sometimes get solo caps in a cruiser after the DDs have run. I know teams aren't always great but if everyone played from the first second of the match with the assumption everyone else is bad nothing would work. I always give team mates the benefit of the doubt and if I end up somewhere without support I always take the blame on myself for not checking where my support was actually going. It's easy to focus on negative experiences but doing your own thing doesn't make things better. The fact that in a DD you can pull it off is only due to the concealment, but stealth mechanics are inherently hard to balance and frustrating for the people on the receiving end so I think WG are going the right way with limiting them in situational ways. If it slows the pace of the game a little as people approach caps more carefully and in groups instead of the race we have now that's actually good as well. At the moment the team with the best DDs usually wins, and usually that win is decided very early because of the cap race. That's not always fun for everyone else. I believe no class should have the ability to make that much game impact from a solo play. If WG saw that too then they could have picked a really brutal solution, like global DD concealment nerf. But instead they gave people a tool, that they have to choose to use and make other sacrifices for it, that only situationally counters some unhealthy tactics but is actually weak against generic good gameplay/teamwork and therefore encourages it in opponents. That's actually not terrible game design, at least I can understand the logic.

RPF becomes useless if it's pointing at a mass of ships, some of which the enemy can see anyway. It gives little to no information in that situation. God forbid the game should encourage sticking together. To be honest, those solo-DD flanks are a frustrating tactic to everyone except the user and are unrealistic to boot. I won't miss them. At the very least, it might discourage those "I know best" type DD captains that go off on their own to hunt something irrelevant instead of sticking with the team where they're needed. Until the other day I had no strong opinion on this skill. Maybe I'm just the contrary type but the more whine I read, the more I become persuaded it isn't actually that bad a skill to have in game...

Am I the only person who was looking forward to this? More level playing field and cheaper for that extra charge. Oh well, guess we wait and see if it was silently dropped or turns up later.

That whole thing about premium consumables being cheaper but also not as strong? Or was that not meant for this patch?

If your BB is at least slightly stealthy it might be worth taking the thing that tells you how many people are currently targeting you, so you know when to stop shooting, but really if you aren't taking fighter not sure what else.

You might be on to something. While the game might not be big on realism, that's kind of what tended to happen in WWII, so that could be your "why". It might be an undeserved nerf to some DDs but it's a welcome buff to cruisers, both in the fact they can make good use of the skill and that it shifts the meta in their favor a bit (DDs being more cautious means less being perma-spotted).

Maybe it decreases options for some DDs but it also encourages sticking together. Nobody is going to chase an RPF arrow into a pack of BBs for example. Ok that's too obvious. I'm waiting for the RPF baiting where a gunboat DD chases his magic arrow and gets an epic "oh crap" moment as his quarry runs him into a stealthy radar cruiser. I think there will be ways to play around this even without having it yourself.

I think the use of smoke screen expert could be to give you more wiggle room. I find it fairly easy to nail RN cruisers stopped in smoke because they're nearly as long as the bubble and I've had it done to me as well. Without access to the propulsion module trying to move back and forth and change angle while in smoke e.g. to be unpredictable or re-position for getaway becomes a tedious and risky operation. With a bigger bubble you could do a 3-point turn with less stress.

You get a marker to show when you've been "detected" by RPF so it's not like you don't know it's being used against you...

I always took BoS then I realised the situations where I would leave a fire burning on a CA were so few and far between and generally if I was forced to I was f***ed beyond hope anyway. I run High Alert at T3 which was much more useful, although I only have one T9 cruiser plus Atago so my experience is mainly on cruisers without heal. Having said that, BoS will be a 3 point skill as of tomorrow so much less appealing, and while some of the new 1-point skills look nice for cruisers it will be easier to squeeze expert loader into a build. On the 8" ships of course, the 6" cruisers don't need it.

This is really just a thread to raise awareness and share experiences, and hopefully get some of those people who think AP is just for BBs to broaden their playstyle a little and reap the benefits. I've recently been enjoying US cruisers a lot, not least due to their AP. Because of that and as I've been improving as a player, I've also been trying out greater use of AP on other ships that might not straight away spring to mind. I think a lot of people do use AP on cruisers but "it's situational" is an overused phrase while the ammo itself is still underused and underappreciated. HE is said to be more reliable but over-reliance on it can come at the cost of not being able to do enough damage when you really need to. For example, just the other day I got a double strike and a third kill in quick succession in a Kutuzov, de facto fire spammer, a feat that would have been impossible had I stuck to HE instead of switching back and forth to AP at the right times (in fact I would have been on the seabed). Cruisers are much more accurate than BBs so aren't really at the mercy of RNG, if you stalk a target and know when to switch, and your aim is good, you're in for multiple citadel rewards! Even against BBs, pushing through 5k to 7k salvos on an opponent that is angling against someone else can bring them down quicker than the DPS from fire and save yourself or another team-mate a lot of damage. It doesn't take a full broadside or point blank range to get great damage out of well timed and well placed AP salvos, whatever the target. I also feel that after the skill reset, expert loader will become a bread and butter pick for me on my heavy cruisers. I know a lot of you know this already but as I said, raise awareness! Try it out on ships you might not usually, share stories and post screenshots!

It is situational but all I'm trying to say is it's less situational than most people think. I defer to your greater experience in terms of absolute optimisation for ranked, but that doesn't mean greater AP use isn't viable and very fun in randoms where the dynamic is different and there are more targets. Also Atago and IJN CAs at higher tier in general are a bit of an exception, since their HE is by far the strongest and most reliable while their AP leaves something to be desired except in ideal conditions. In other words it's more situational than most. Still, it can and will delete unsuspecting cruisers. Anything German I would go for close to 50/50 AP use. As part of this "experiment" I took my Prinz Eugen and used AP about 2 salvos out of 3, most of the game targetting at 15km to max range. I was getting 7k salvos on Tier 8 BBs angled up to 30 degrees and sometimes 4k salvos on BBs bow on, and I ended with 100k damage most of which was AP. IJN HE could match that performance but the PE's own HE would not. There are no "hacks" and as with BBs RNG can sometimes mess you up, but far less due to cruiser dispersion being better. It's just knowing when to switch and where to aim on different ships. As for taking the risk to switch and coming up empty, yeah it can be a gamble but a lot of people are predictable. You can see when someone's distracted and can't or won't angle against you, and you can feel when someone's going to take that risk to turn or get their rear turrets on target. If you're ready it's reward >>> risk. Also I now run Expert Loader on most cruisers.

If you click on it you can change it. I don't remember what you can take instead if it, but you have to have something there. At least if you just take the free one you don't have to use it, not like it does anything bad just sitting there.

I've got this idea that it will have a small squadron of bombers that will execute an auto attack (no change in view) on a designated target. You just click "U" or whatever consumable and they fly there, try to bomb and come back. Your idea is much simpler to implement and could also be quite strong, with better scout and fighter coverage, kind of like an IJN AA BB/CA with fighters instead of the def AA consumable.

Akagi still had an enormous funnel in her final configuration with an updated power plant. The installed power is similar (130k shp for Amagi/Akagi, 150k shp for Yamato). Also the slanted funnel makes sense as a design choice to carry the smoke away better than a straight one. I do agree the forward connection of the funnel doesn't 100% make sense since you're right, the boiler room would likely have been smaller, but the overall size and design isn't implausible.