jss78

So if I understand correctly, in the new implementation the job of opposing the enemy carrier will fall more evenly on the entire team, not just on your friendly CV. It seems like this will definitely remove the #1 problem of current CV's, the effect of CV skill disparity on game outcome. Because your CV has no special responsibility in protecting his own team. My first thought is I'll miss the old CV game. But I never heard of a good solution to balance it when there's a big difference in skill -- short of nerfing all CV's to the ground -- so I guess it had to go. My second thought is this new CV game might possibly be a fun one. We'll see.

I guess most of us will just use some ship we happen to have. I don't think it matters that much, I got 5 Stars on first try on PTS. Among the ships I have, I think I'd use the Farragut. I think the AA-focused C hull makes sense here. Gunning down those Schnellboots seems mostly a matter of leading well, not having a the biggest broadside. And the defensive fire would definitely help. My captain has BFT and the ship itself has the AA range mod. It helps. I don't think it makes sense to spec a high-point AA-dedicated DD captain, just for this operation.

Well, yours is the experience of the good CV player in the present implementation. And it's perhaps symptomatic of the problems. As you say, you can reliably play around the enemy CV. And -- forgive me -- judging based on your 85% winrate in the Enterprise (N=1080), it doesn't appear the enemy AA are giving you too much trouble either. And that's a ship with a particularly harsh MM and vulnerability to AA because of the weak planes. My point was simply that whatever the CV implementation, there needs to be a more interesting contest between CV's and their targets -- to make the game experience robust to situations where one CV can't oppose the other. As I said above, I actually quite like the current CV implementation, apart from how the games end up when the CV skill disparity is too big.

This is true, but equal skill gaps exist between players in the gameplay of all classes. The problem is that CV's exist in this 1-vs-1 near-vacuum. If I play a CV, my main problem is the enemy CV. If he doesn't oppose me effectively, I have pretty much free reign. Smart enemy DD/CL/CA/BB can do some simple things to oppose me -- turn into TB approach vector, group up, hit DefAA button -- but it's fairly limited. This is not the case for any other class -- if your team's BB sucks, there's a decent change the rest of the team can fill in. If you want to balance CV's, this whole interaction between CV's and their targets need to change. It needs to be an actual game, where they fight each other, even when the defending CV is absent. If what little filters through about the CV rework is true, this is exactly what WG is going for. Supposedly as a CV you "control one squadron at a time", "action style", while "AA is going to change". Perhaps some manual, skill-based AA gameplay, where there's more to it than hitting "T" and hoping for the best?

In a hypothetical case where they're roughly equally skilled, yeah I do. I genuinely like the whole needing to work with AA coverage, considering the presence of planes, getting spotting help from friendly CV. It becomes a richer game. I also like playing CV's myself, once in a while. As a proviso, I do prefer CV games when I'm in a division. It really helps to have a couple players you know you can work with.

I guess it's fair to note it's quite recently that people started to really loudly complain about T10. Flamu's video was about a month ago. So WG haven't really had a place where to do any changes, assuming they're willing to. So let's see. On a personal note I do agree. Planning to do Ranked maybe up to T12, that last big batch of signals. Otherwise it'll be the good times of mid-tier Random matches.

Yeah, all fair points -- with "similar" I really meant "not half as small". With present mechanics they'd really be tricky to balance. You couldn't justify the planes being individually better I think. As @Riselotte noted, I guess you could simply enlarge the air groups beyond any historical analogues. And you're right about the tankiness of course -- it'd be one of those things that produces a hilarious situation maybe 1 game in 50. Sure you can implement it for national flavour, but it couldn't really be used in the balancing equation. I guess it's moot speculation until we see what exactly the CV reword entails. Maybe plane reserves won't be as decisive at that point.

I can't wait for the RN CV's. Great, great looking ships, and finally some variety for CV matchups. I do wonder if they'll be implemented assuming deck parking and thus similar air group sizes as with USN. Otherwise the balancing will need some inventive solutions.

Jolly old Canceror's still got it. I tried to ram a Montana for a Kraken, but the bastard ran away.

Solid post. Really the #1 thing I'd say is the CV is not your personal air force. First you must help yourself -- consider your own AA and how much friendly AA support you'll likely need, and act accordingly. Depending on CV matchup and plane loadouts, the CV might have limited map control and may need focus on guaranteeing his own strikes get through. As a luxury he'll then try to cover some friendly ships. Depending on situation this might not be your ship -- if this happens, be a grownup about it. As a CV player there's also a prioritization factor. If I see friendly ship A doing something evidently stupid, such a sailing in glorious isolation in a BB with weak AA, while friendly ships B and C do something intelligent -- I'm likely to prioritize keeping ships B and C alive over ship A.

I've played F2P shooters with a skill-based MM. You'd be sorely disappointed how little it reduces lopsided games. In random-team game modes with little communication, it's small random things that often decide games. A couple DD's make a bad call early game and die --> near nonrecoverable game. They might've been good players, did a stupid thing this one game. One guy leading the pack makes a good call, a few others follow --> win. Or one goes to a dumb place, a few others follow --> loss. There's also a snowball effect -- the loss of one ship means increased relative efficiency of focused fire for the other team. So the team to lose the first ship is more likely to also lose the second -- and progressively onward from there. This is why even in comp games, between two nearly equally skilled teams, stomps are common. It's not a MM skill imbalance that's causing most of those lopsided games, and they won't be solved by skill-based MM.

You can't go wrong with something like this, a pretty basic "tank" build. I tend to switch BoS for Vigilance, just a personal preference. Good on literally any BB. I deviate from this if I specifically want to spec for AA and/or secondaries. Rationally I think it's not worth it on any BB in the game -- but secondary builds are fun and I run quite a few of them.

One good thing though is specifically all these T9 premiums handed out. The more of these WG makes, the better it'll make the lopsided MM in Tiers 7-10. People are loath to play T9 silver ships, but with the increasing number of credit-earner T9 premiums in the queue, we should gradually see more T7-T9 games etc.

I'm not sure why you'd ask for more range as a buff. You have a cruiser with standout low concealment and no HE -- any range beyond a few km past concealment range should be meaningless, arguably even a hindrance (you'll draw fire from more ships). Also I'd look at the stats with a grain of salt. Sneaky low-concealment cruisers are inherently hard to play -- razor thin margin between dominating and getting insta-deleted. And in Tiers V and VI lots of people are still learning this stuff. Also Tier V and VI is hard for any cruiser with the MM, but I wouldn't treat this problem by buffing them past their same-tier peers.

Yeah, you're right, they probably don't care like you or I do. Maybe they should care more, maybe they shouldn't, who knows. But I can't emphasize enough the part of my answer where this is what we find, specifically, in that open random queue. There are game modes exclusive to competitive players, but the random queue is explicitly the other place. I don't see the wisdom in going there and then being shocked to find it full of filthy casuals.

I understand the frustration... ...but I've never known of a free-to-play online shooter (or near-equivalent) where people didn't ask the same question. In each of these games, for as long as I remember, you've had the most active 5% asking on the forums why the other 95% is so bad. (Reasonably the mistake is yours if you go to an open random queue and expect focused, high-skill gameplay.)

Only planning to play a few games to get to T15 and get that flag and a bunch of signals. Bismarck + Enterprise, most probably.

I noticed the servers were a bit iffy last night, I'm entirely willing to believe someone gets pink this way. But I don't see the big deal. Just play a couple games and you can work off your dunce cap. Do co-op if you feel self-conscious about it. These are actually quite common in some genres. Especially if you fast-forward the parts where they talk.

I don't understand the HE spam argument. Sure they'll spam you, but if you're not there, they'll spam that team mate of yours with no heal + lower HP pool. So get in there, focus fire, and kill them. (I will agree HE spam cruisers are some of the less interesting ships in this game.)

Nah, it's a legit concern. Place yourselves in the new guy's shoes -- it's not terribly fun to see that 3 x Black Swan division flying Jolly Rogers. Yes, I've seen that, and yes, they did win. (And yes, to witness that, I was ALSO seal-clubbing in a T1 game. Not proud, and I have since corrected my ways. ) That said, I don't think this is cripplingly common in this game. It appears to be worse in both Tanks and Warplanes. My buddies and I have a real affection for low-mid tiers, but we consciously try to keep our divisions at T4 or above.

With CV's, I'm definitely in the boost AA camp. Really I think the big picture is that beyond Holy Quintet of skills (for 11 points), the CV skills matter very little. I take CE unless the concealment range is already really short, because I'm of the school of thought that I play close to the front line. So low concealment = improved DPS, because of shorter flight times. But thereafter, between all the "occasional scenarios" you might prepare for, defending against CV snipes is still #1 for me. They do happen, and successfully defending against one can be close to swinging a game. The enemy CV just wasted a few minutes of his game, suffered possibly crippling plane losses, and you'll have the upper hand for the rest of the game. (But admittedly my CV experience is limited to Tiers 5-7.)

Yeah, some of these are weird. Manual AA suggested for all ships except CV. In reality it's just about backwards -- it's something approaching a meta choice for some CV's, due to general lack of universally useful skills after 11 points. Who really uses it otherwise? I don't understand why Preventive Maintenance and Concealment Expert aren't recommended for BB. I don't have a single BB without the latter. Otherwise I guess they're OK, the novice will at least avoid some skills that are absolutely, categorically useless. A lot of the skills suggested I can see you'd use in some specific build. As far as Emergency Takeoff, Expert Rear Gunner etc. -- I guess it'd be awkward to admit that we've put in CV-specific skills which however aren't recommended for CV's.

I can confirm this works quite well. Though I have no idea what you're talking about as far as 14 points. Go 19 or go home. (Though it's not really an optimal seal-clubbing division. Sometimes you run into a division doing the same with 3xOrion, and you can be quite helpless against them. The K. Albert doesn't uptier particularly well.)

I like the ship, but yeah sounds like the silver tree will be something totally different. I just use a 19-pt Conqueror captain in it. Concealment Expert, Superintendent, Vigilance -- works nicely. If you happen to have a suitable captain in another ship, and would like a tier 3 DD, why not.