tocqueville8

I think you mean "bugged". They work as described, so they're not b-u-g-g-e-d. But they're still broken: they just don't fit with the gameplay, they encourage and enable griefing, and they're the class most immune to Dev Strikes, meaning they're far too survivable even in the hands of potatoes. Those potatoes are still going to score at the bottom of their team, but they're going to be super annoying in the meantime. There have been multiple threads explaining why they're broken and, at least on two recent occasions, offering suggestions in good faith.

I've already complained about the Ohio in a different thread. She might be great for other players, but I just find the Montana more reliable, so that fact she gets crap ASW "for balancing reasons" just adds insult to injury.

...and? If my Iowa can summon magical seaplanes out of thin air, why can't my Kearsarge? Oh, I know: she's overperforming, so gotta give her crap ASW... Depth charges do next to nothing to subs, making the class essentially foolproof. Then again, it's mostly being "tested" by 40% potatoes, so it's gotta be. When DD captains play as badly as most subs I've seen, getting spotted in the middle of the enemy team, they get blown up in less than 10 seconds. When cruisers show broadside at close range, a fellow cruiser will blap them for half their hp. And BBs can citadel them through the nose. Heck, I once got a Dev Strike on an Austin with one shell from my Shikishima. Cruisers are that punishing. Meanwhile, subs take something like 10, 15 depth charges to sink. It never ends. They have to be dumb enough to run out of air 6 km away from you so that maybe you can gun them down. Unless some harebrained consumable allows them to dive again, or whatever. That's still absurdly long. A full-smoke-build Vampire has less than 3 minutes of smoke, and it can still get hydroed, radared, torped, etc. while it lasts. And its going to give out its position. But a T10 sub can just submerge before the cap, go grief some poor sod who's just trying to play BB behind the B cap (crossfires, remember? trying to be a good teammate instead of lemming to the flank...), and he's going to have 6 minutes to do that freely? Come on... Also, why would battery depletion happen faster if the sub is spotted? What is this, quantum mechanics? The observer effect? You don't solve the problem by making it more complicated! Get a grip.

I have two theories. 1) WG is very fussy about resource usage, avoiding waste and wasted potential. For instance: - people stockpile flags? they remove flags from achievements - people stockpile credits? they add a coal auction as a credit sink - a premium is "too popular"? they remove it from the Armory - a premium is hardly seen? they give it out for free (if it's low-ier) Basically, they noticed most people were running out of compliments or, more likely, reports, so they gave them more to satisfy the "demand". 2) They figured some people stop playing for the day once they run out of reports, so they raised the ceiling to keep them hooked.

So far so good, and I don't have an élite captain yet. I pulled a sort of "reverse Ohio": - main gun accuracy, instead of secondaries, in slot #3 - secondary & AA, instead of accuracy, in slot #6 (I didn't want to make the turret traverse even worse by going reload) On the captain, I still took both secondary accuracy and range, as well as CE and FP. Turret traverse, too: Vigilance is attractive, but I like quick turrets. The idea is to play her as a sniper as long as the game allows, and going for accuracy in slot #3 encourages that. Once there are fewer enemies around, I have the secondary firepower to take on brawls with more confidence, even though I'm missing the perks from the 3rd slot. One might go full tank, but all the secondaries penetrate 32 mm of armor, so I think it'd be a waste of potential, if anything because sometimes it's the enemies that push into you. If you need more survivability, you can always buy some flags.

Not much and no. In Randoms, I find the rearward firing angles very frustrating, to the point where it's almost safer to go nose-in and then maybe reverse, like so many high-tier BBs. She's also a huge target, with a high freeboard, so she takes AP penetrations even when you're being diligent and using your engine & rudder to dodge every salvo. Compared to my other T9 supercruisers (Alaska, Agir, Azuma), Carnot scores 3rd for HE DPM (only Agir is worse, though she does penetrate a few more platings, e.g. Izumo's and Yamato's deck) and 4th for AP DPM, so she has trouble getting kills. Unlike Alaska, she gets no radar. Unlike Azuma, no fast heals (nor the extra heal). Unlike Agir, no torps. She gets a speed boost, but while that's useful for relocating between fights, it won't help her win one very much. The AP is powerful, and I did get a number of Dev Strikes on cruisers, but I often found myself outtraded by BBs, and without the sustain of the Azuma. In Ranked...I'm not sure what the ship would bring. Early flanking, I guess, but you won't find as many opportunity targets to punish with AP, I fear. Imho in Ranked you have to bring utility, DPM or a brawling threat, and the Carnot has none of these. The deck has 36 mm of plating, which will shatter a lot of cruiser HE (though not an IFHE-Seattle or Donskoi), but the bow is 25 mm, so any Alsace or Tirpitz will punch right through, unlike with Agir or Alaska. The ship looks very nice, as does the camo, and I did have a couple of games around 3.0k base xp, but I found it hard to make her perform consistently in Randoms, and she's far down the list of ships I'd bring to Ranked.

Players have had years to get the Montana, but only a few months to get the Preussen, and that's assuming they wanted to regrind the FdG (which many had to buy back, nevermind captain retraining) or had ~250k FXP to spare. The circumstances are more than different enough to account for a gap that would invalidate your "third-best tech tree T10 NB" comment. We simply don't know that the player populations are the same. Not within a 0.5% WR margin, which is why you had to backtrack to "similar". But hey, you saw an active thread and had to go "actually..." with a meaningless stat instead of doing something helpful, like sharing your build or whatever...

How are they controlled? How do you know that the average BB WR of people playing Preussen over the last 28 days or whatever isn't 1% higher than that of people playing Montana?

The fact that the 5 best-performing Tier 10 BBs are hard-to-obtain freemiums suggests that these WRs are mostly measuring who's playing these ships rather than how strong they are. Personally I like the Preussen, but I wouldn't bring up a 0.5% WR difference as validation or refutation of anything. It's simply not a controlled environment.

I don't even understand WG's business model here. Giving superships to noobs just makes high tiers even more toxic, which, if anything, is going to lose them veteran players. If they want to make money out of noobs, they should just give out coupons for Tier 6-8 premiums.

Don't have her yet, but when I do I'll probably try something like this: ...or maybe turret traverse instead of Brisk or Vigilance. You only get 2 heals to start with, so I would absolutely take Emergency Repair Expert. More AP damage for longer fires/floods seems reasonable: you're mostly going to be shooting AP, like a Yamato, but you have 10.6 concealment to disengage and use dmgcon, if necessary. If you find yourself burning too long, take the flag and it will cancel out the penalty. Preventative Maintenance seems a good choice on a 3-turret BB that will occasionally use torpedoes in close quarters.

It does work if they're a bit angled, instead of flat broadside. It's counterintuitive, but it works.

I've pretty much stopped playing CVs rather than grinding the Soviet line, and I played maybe 4 games in total with subs, a few months ago, to see how boring they actually were (turns out: a lot). However, I've got the bad feeling that, seeing player population is low, WG is going to apply the negative-feedback-loop-from-hell and buff CVs and subs so more people would play them. Damned if we do, damned if we don't

It's a radar Mino...

Unless you plan to keep a permacaptain on them, I'd go for the one-use camos, which give much better bonuses.

1st daily resource container

That's subjective. Once you have most Tier 10s in the game, there are more things you can buy with coal than with credits.

UU Minotaur, the cursed offspring of a Druid and a Vampire

I don't feel that way at all. I mostly play T9-10 freemiums for the credits, xp, Ranked rewards and to avoid being bottom tier... ...but it's nice to change scenery and play mid tiers every now and then, as long as I have a decent captain. I'm currently regrinding 5 lines, so that I don't feel I have to play a particular ship, but many are a pleasure, anyway: Fiji, Mahan, Myoko, Iowa, Oland, etc. Today I was in the mood for Ranked, so I played that instead, but a few games at mid tiers, enough to get the 1st-win-of-the-day bonus on a couple of ships, are far from a "slog". The RB is far more enjoyable if you think of it as a "kill two birds with one stone" thing to do as you play some mid-tier favorites. Just don't pick a line with a horrible Tier 9...

I got a few for RB points: 1) Kléber: often frustrating, sometimes hilarious. It's still worth it for a unique playstyle, while you can always gunboat in the Mogador. 2) Henri IV: you can do a lighthouse build without it, the UU just takes it to the extreme. 3) Z-52: what was I thinking? 3) Audacious: a straight upgrade imho: you lose some plane speed/hp for more speed boost, but you also get a stealthier, nimbler hull. It didn't end my struggles in the ship, though 4) Khabarovsk: with decent range, she can actually do her thing. I got it as she moved to coal ship status, which I think was a reasonable investment.

After considering the P. Eugen and the California, I got myself a Duca degli Abruzzi with the unexpected coupons I only won 2 out of 5 so far, but the last two losses were encouraging

Well...she IS unique in terms of looks, and also gameplay somewhat. And she was a real ship, built in steel. But she was a relatively cheap freemium for about 4 years, so most collectors probably have her already, I reckon. I think some people are definitely going to put 25k dubs on her, but she'll probably go for closer to 20, unless only very few winners are selected. I mean...the Schlieffen went for 25k, and that's a tech tree ship...but also a Tier 10 and a sailing meme.

If you add subs, and give an existing ship (much) worse-than-average ASW, that's a nerf in my book. This isn't a global change like the IFHE rework or giving subs more hp: it's a targeted balancing decision that makes the Jean Bart, and the Jean Bart specifically, worse than in the non-sub meta. That's a nerf.

It's exactly what they're saying. And it's stupid. The JB is indeed a stronger-than-average ship (52.3% WR overall), but she's not exactly a break-the-meta monstruosity (hello, 2019 Smolensk!). They could've given her "average" ASW planes, and no one would've complained. No. One. Instead, they got anal-retentive over it and gave her worse ASW range than the Dunk, as you point out. Same with the Ohio: she's overperforming (54.3% WR), which can largely be explained by her being a Research Bureau ship (she needs at least 8 grinds to Tier 10, unlike something like the Yamato that requires...one), so they gave her 6 km ASW to the Montana's 11.