Uglesett

If the CV felt like a non-factor, your team probably had the better CV player. But at least with RTS CVs, if you managed to dodge a cross drop you felt like you accomplished something. You'd cost them time and effort, and it would take time to set up a new strike. Whereas this....

Even if you account for the lower player number, I don't think I was one-shot by RTS CVs any more than I was by BBs or DDs. The one shotting aspect was highly overrated. Yes, some specific mechanics were utterly stupid (*cough* AP bombs *cough*) but overall CVs were perfectly alright to play against. The long turnaround meant that you could live with them because once they'd spent their ordnance you'd have some time to do something. Whereas the rework CVs are just incredibly irritating. It's death by a thousand papercuts, and you're just never left alone. They are so incredibly annoying, without any really redeeming qualities.

Again, only if your own cv player was worse. It was mainly relative skill that mattered, except in the cases where both CVs were potatoes who couldn't hit surface targets. Erm.... you were the one who claimed the rework was pandering to 4% of the player base, by which I assume you meant the preexisting CV players

Previously, CVs were only annoying if you were on the team with the worse CV player, now it's annoying for both teams regardless

Erm. It's more a case of screwing those 4% over in a failed attempt to pander to the remaining 96.

Kiibayashi is pretty much on par with Musashi in terms of earning potential, and she's different enough that the one makes for a nice change from the other.

As T8 premium BBs with Kobayashi camos go, I went with the Kii instead. It has the same economic bonuses, but actually looks good. And with the latest round of buffs her gunnery is essentially identical to the Amagi, which in my not at all humble opinion makes for a very satisfying experience.

I was never really interested in playing RTS CVs, but I always felt they actually added something to the game, and I can acknowledge that they were genuinely interesting to play for the people who enjoyed that play style. Whereas the WoWP-model is just overall dull for everyone. And one of the nice things about the RTS CVs was that you had a lot of counter play options, and if you made use of those and survived, you had tied up the CVs resources for a fairly long time. It would take them a lot of time to recycle those planes and get another strike assembled, time during which you could actually reposition and get something done. There was easily enough time to secure a cap before a follow up strike could reset you. Whereas now it's "oh look, I took some damage that I couldn't avoid, and now I have a grand total of 30 seconds to reposition before I get the next hot load dumped on me".

I've seen far more stagnant games with both teams blobbed up and none of them doing anything post rework than I ever did before it.

Grinding all that exp in a stock Izumo sounds like a nightmare.

To be honest, neither of these stats are actually bad. Don't obsess about raising your statistical hit rate, because it's going to depend a lot on what shots you take. It's better to be willing to take speculative shots that are probably going to miss than to not take them just to keep some statistic higher. I mean, sure, practice leading your target correctly and getting the most out of your salvoes when you have a good target to shoot at. But personally I don't care about my hit rate statistic with either weapon type, because hit rate is going to depend a lot on what you're shooting, at whom and at what range. Some weapons are just never going to get good hit rates if you use them at longer ranges, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take shots at max range. Shooting at a dodging DD at long range with a US or RN light cruiser, you'll be lucky to score one hit out of maybe 50 shots. But every one of those hits is going to be felt. And torpedoes are as much an area denial tool as an offensive weapon, don't be afraid to use them even if you're sure they're never going to hit anything. I suspect the key to your improved win rate may lie here instead. Unfortunately, staying alive is also a lot more difficult to learn than the basic mechanics of moving and using weapons. I'm not terribly good at it myself, because I tend to be overly aggressive early on. But I have some tips. The most important thing to remember is that you can only shoot at one enemy at a time, while a lot of people can do significant damage to at you at any one time. If you get focused you die. So the trick is to put yourself in a position where you reduce the number of people who can shoot at you at any one time. -Learn how to mitigate damage by angling your armour so you can bounce AP shells and make yourself a smaller target in the process. Unfortunately this is one of those skills that are tricky to really practice in the lowest tiers, because a lot of the WW1 era ships require you to show a lot of broadside to use their armament. The important thing there is to avoid showing broadside to a lot of enemies at the same time. Pick an isolated target and focus on them while you keep your armour angled against other opponents. -Learn how to not be seen. This includes positioning yourself in relation to land masses so that you can turn behind them and go unspotted if you start taking too much fire and learning what the concealment of your ship is and when to hold fire and go unspotted. -Learn how to use islands as cover. And I don't necessarily mean making them your waifu and sticking to them like a japanese body pillow. Keeping a land mass between you and a large group of enemy ships while you can fire freely at an exposed opponent is a good way of getting the most out of your guns while keeping your hull reasonably intact. -Don't isolate yourself. Stick with your team (or at least a decent portion of it), even if they do seem to do something stupid. Ok, DDs can sometimes lone wolf it in non-CV games, but other than that you want to have teammates within reach. It gives the enemy team someone else to shoot at, and it means there are more guns available if someone on the enemy team does something stupid.

For one thing, average damage isn't really that important, it's what you get out of it that counts. DDs tend to spend roughly the first half of the game engaging other DDs (that have lower health than other targets) or keeping their guns silent and evading the DDs that can hurt them. They do less damage for that reason. Torping battleships is something to do if you survive to the late game when most of the other DDs are typically dead. Secondly, I think you're an optimist if you think this is going to give the DDs higher average damage numbers, because while that may be true for the highest skill bracket of DD players, the average is probably just going to die more quickly from not having the situational awareness skill. I mean, it's going to be so much fun to be radared when the first indication of it is a salvo of 8" HE smacking into your hull.

I assume, judging from your initial post, that you're referring to DDs as the class being punished. But... well, that's just wrong. It's just as, if not even more limiting for vessels with slow, high alpha damage guns. Personally I find that the value I get out of it lies primarily in allowing me to avoid a paddling from BBs when I sail cruisers. The only time it's really punishing for the DDs is towards the end game when you actually have the opportunity to torp isolated ships. Most of the time in the earlier game it's hard to differentiate between being spotted by a DD about to torp you and just being spotted by someone else, and other threats dictate your movement patterns more than the threat of a torpedo attack.

Let's not. I mean, it's going to make BBs.... maybe get torped a bit more, but otherwise not going to make much of a difference. It's going to raise the skill floor on DDs a fair bit, but not really make them any less powerful in good hands. And it's going to make thinly skinned cruisers even more of a pain in the arse to play than they are now.

Yes. Aside from a few occasions where I spent a few hundred free exp to make up the difference I needed to unlock a module or new ship (because I just couldn't be arsed to play one more game), I don't spend free exp on tech tree ships.

Hatsuharu and Shiratsuyu are indeed a bit odd. Now, I like both boats, but I consider them "alternative torp boats" rather than "gunboats".

Why are you so hung up on the overmatch mechanics? That's probably the least important quality. I pointed out several other aspects of her that make her far stronger than the other T9s. And "gun performance" is far more than just overmatch. Armour penetration, shell damage.... there are reasons why most of the T10 BBs that retain the guns of their T9 counterparts have 33% more guns.

What point are you trying to make here, actually? I mean, it seems to me you're agreeing that CVs are always going to be a game within a game. And they already had a pretty decent implementation of that before the rework that mostly needed some user interface changes and some tweaks to the CV-vs-CV interaction to work pretty well.

Yamato gun performance (albeit with marginally worse dispersion and turret traverse), Yamato armour protection and Yamato health pool, but in a ship that can face T7 opponents. Or do you actually think she should be the measuring stick against which all the other T9 BBs should be balanced?

Erm.... yes, she's weaker than the Nagato, but that's why she's a tier lower. She should be compared to the Fuso. Well, yes. But an absolute beast next to the Izumo, and probably one of the most stupidly overpowered premiums in the game. I mean, when people talk about premiums being weaker than tech tier counterparts, it's generally implicit that we're talking within the same tier.

Everything is just spiffy, aside from the minor detail that seven out of the fourteen collection items I've received so far have been the "800 Naval Air Squadron" emblem

Yeah, my first and only 19-pointer so far is my Yamato skipper, who also works perfectly well on the Musashi and the Kii. You can rack up a lot of elite captain exp in one night with 200% first win bonus.

To be fair, even if you can't do well in the Neptune, chances are you'll still enjoy the Mino. Neptune is sort of the odd one out with the combination of in many ways being even more fragile than the Edinburgh while having worse concealment and not particularly impressive maneuverability. It's got excellent firepower, but lacks a lot of the other qualities that make RN CLs enjoyable. I loved the Leander, Fiji and Edinburgh (still have them in my port, in fact), absolutely hated the Neptune (sold as soon as possible) and I love the Mino. It keeps everything that was good about the Neptune (the firepower), while giving you better maneuverability, faster turrets and better concealment.

You're making too much sense, go to gulag.