Dutchy_2019

See above, announced in a dev blog earlier this week: Removal: 0.10.1 Roughly 3 months away.

IMHO JB is not a ship where you go looking for a brawl, but you do not necessarily have to shy away from one either. Especially when you can get her secondaries into play.

Personally: On EU I have Massachussetts Black. It is a fun ship to play, even in Co-op. In general it is a fun ship to play. I am SERIOUSLY considering getting Massa for my NA account (which I try to keep non-whaling as much as possible, only paying premium, and limited amount of doubloons (for instance to complete campaigns) - glad I have time to make use of (I hope) the Christmas coupons. If you like brawly ships, she is great good fun.

I opted for too expensive. - I am seriously tempted by the looks of the Yamato. - Yamato has to compete with the upcoming BLACK ships for my money allocation; I have to choose between the two, and then Black Ships win.

About the only money I will have to spend (and probably will, as it is such a fun ship) would be on a Massa for my NA account, if I want one there. All the others I do have (as normal or Black version) or should be within reach. Georgia and Alaska have been rumoured to be the next ships to be removed from the moment Jean Bart was taken out. Thunderer is also not a surprised (often listed as an alternative), and if popularity is an issue, Massa is not a surprise either. Frankly, I am stunned by the removal of Smaland. I would not be surprised to see Georgia return next year as a Georgia Black (much like Jean Bart now), especially if the Jean Bart sells like the proverbial hot cakes, as many expect it to happen.

I think there are a few factors in play here: - WG KNOWS they f-ed up badly with CV's and the CV-rework; see the completely different approach they have taken to the introduction of submarines, which were/are potentially just as problematic. - They have taken out Smolensk for its toxicity; - They might not even reintroduce Kitakami, due to its toxicity I think there is a massive problem with company LEADERSHIP pushing all kinds of stuff down the throats of the developers and comminity contributors, while not having any clue (and caring) about the reaction of the player base, or at a minimum all about saving face (therefore NEVER openly admit you made a mistake).

And here you have your immediate answer why people despise CV's in general.

So PLEASE explain to me the following: When playing low tier/mid tier (say T3 to T6 ships) how, I can properly defende myself against the following situations (against single, let alone double CV); especially when playing against uptiered CV's. - I have NO AA - I have such impressive AA, that it makes the Asashio look like that if a specialized AA cruiser (or Halland on steroids). - When what little AA I had at the start of the game, is burned away within the first 5 minutes, leaving me with NO AA - When my BB's and cruisers are very slow and sluggish in comparison to the aircraft. - When, because of the small map size, especially when facing double CV you are spotted 70% of the time if you actually want to engage in battle (since your guns have short range, especially in a cruiser) - and often in range of enemy BB's in very squishy ships. - What you can do when - in the case of double CV - the enemy CV's decide to co-operate and cross-drop. - When CV damage control makes you invulnerable to floodings and fires for a very long time (the only ship class).

Bring reality in there? OK, CV's are soooooo much the queen of Naval battles that it took the full might of multiple CV's to sink a single ship. And they are so untouchable that they needed a whole fleet to protect them from the enemy ships that could easily sink them. The CV's have only become queen of the surface ships because they were (a) relatively cheap, and (b) easily replacable (especially the crews) so you could fling enough crap at ships that had hampered AA to get them down. Guess what? NONE of the vulnerabilities of CV's have been taken into the game by WG. To have CV's taken out of the game is FAR from irrational for the following reason: - In low tier, where double CV seems to be the norm, this means that surface ships that actually want to fight (cruisers and BB's) are pretty much perma spotted. - In lower tiers, especially when facing a higher tier CV, cruisers and BB's have NO effective defence. Most are too clumsy to make dodging feasible (especially when the two CV's target you simultaneously) and that does not even address the issue of exposing your broadsides to much of the enemy fleet. - Unless the CV player is a complete potato, they operate a 'cannot miss' weapons system, which in reality out DPM's most ships by a massive marging. - CV's themselves, once spotted are way too difficult to sink for surface ships. Especially the German CV's are an abomination in that regard. - The absurd spotting issues with CV's. - As Erazer has stated multuple times: CV is the VAST majority of the time the one engaging the enemy on his or her terms. The rare exception being when an enemy DD goes CV hunting (which is actually often extremely bad team play) and succeeds in finding the CV (often the result of the CV being stupid and the team being stupid).

Currently on NA: Containers collected: 12 Unique items: 7 Duplicates: 5 Unique items left: 9 Containers to go: 19

This was in Co-op. And yeah, that is me dead in the foreground; then I looked at the mini-map and saw where the rest of my team was. I guess they want to keep the paint on their ships clean, and think they can fire through mountains.

All Co-op on my way to get myself the Bismarck Cathedral camos. - First game: Mainz, final game to get myself the Bismarck camo on EU - Scharnhorst game on NA. Very quickly it was me and a Fiji left, with by the time I was on my own, my only ship kill was the Fiji, and roughly 50% health left. Thankfully the enemy bots decided that coming at me more or less 1 by 1 was the way to go. Think my highest or second highest base XP score in Co-op ever, and Co-op damage record for Scharnhorst. - The second Mainz and the Königsberg games were games on the final - get ribbons - mission for Bismarck Cathedral camo on NA. Got that one this morning. The Königsberg game was a nice 6 kill (kill record in Co-op T5), and that Mainz game netted me well over 300 ribbons, and probably my 2nd highest Co-op Mainz damage score ever.

To be fair: A large part of the current EU (and world wide) player base does NOT have English as its first language, or even more or less formal English language training. I think there are quite a few people out there who actually have tried to learn English fully by themselves through movies and games. And then some terminology can be very confusing.

The idea behind the key battles is not bad at all. My issues: 1. They do not count towards daily missions. 2. No Free XP of even credits can be earned. So completely useless in that regard. 3. The rewards you can get are of very limited interest. I know many people like the Halloween camos, but I am simply not interested in them at all (I find them ugly). Even the captains themselves are mwêêh. If I am going to get them, it is for adding them to the collection, no more. 4. This game mode competes with other grinds and events going on. Completely incompatible with the German Bismarck camo grinds Completely incompatible with grinding any other ship lines (in preparation for the Snowflakes and potentially the Christmas Dockyard event) Only of use with the 2nd US BB crates event, but then again, tha event can also be combined with grinding for the Bismarck camo (and in fact it might even be easier to do the missions that way). 5. It is an addition to what is becoming an increasingly arduous continuous grind.

You also see the the colour those numbers are in? And also the number of games you actually played in them? I have a pretty good idea how to play BB's in Co-op to maximize damage, I think (considering where my avarage damage ranks over the number of games played in them) for some of my ships (I posted some of them in another thread). Just saying that your approach does not always work for various reasons. You are also - obviously a pretty decent to good Co-op player. But the very colour of those numbers is indicative that your results are well above average. And with your assumption of someone wanting a Bismarck camo actually owning the Bismarck is wrong. As I want them (both on NA and EU) and do not have a Bismarck on either of those accounts (I am at T5 and T6 respectively on those accounts with German BB's). And for NA I had to actually grind my way to the T5 ships in the past two weeks to get ships I would feel consistently comfortable in playing them in Randoms.

I will take your repsonse, but also includes my opinions regarding OP: 1. Base XP: Average Base XP not only depends on the skill of the player, but also on the fleet available. High tier ships tend to get you easier high Base XP numbers (especially in Co-op), but even in randoms. Note also the multiplier effect to Base XP in randoms. If you end up on disastrous teams in lower tiers, you have to have done a (really) good job getting 800 Base XP or more. On NA I was dependent on a T5 fleet to get Base XP done. I think I crossed 1400 Base XP once (and that was top score on the team), despite being top 3 in a good part of the game, and I think top 5 in most of them (wins and losses). 2. 3 million damage: An average damage of 100k in Co-op (again, a higher tier ship is a requirement), seems to be VERY good to me. Just looking at the example of Pommern, maintaining a 100k Co-op average would put you in the top 10% of Co-op players on EU server (as per wows-stats). Even in higher tier German BB's and heavy cruisers (Odin, Aegir) a 75k - 80k average puts you solidly in the top 50% if not top 25% of Co-op players. I think a more reasonable expectation for good Co-op players - assuming one has high tier ships - is somewhere in the 60 to 70k per game. 3. Defended ribbons: Depends on the ship you have, maps, games and even teams on your side, and even on fleet. If you are lucky, you can get this done in two or three games. But yeah, you have to be extremely unlucky (or bad) if this takes you max 10 games or so. 4. 30 Co-op wins: Frankly depends quite a bit on the time available to you to play the game, and the randomness of the teams (and your willingness to yolo-run). I think it took me about 5 to 6 hours total. 5. 1990 ribbons: Again, depends a bit on the fleet you have available to you. But yeah 250 ribbons average seems quite reasonable. Should be doable in 2 hours for the vast majority of players. I think his estimate of 24h is way too much for most players, though if unlucky and having a low tier fleet (T5 and T6) it will take you some time. Where I think OP is rather pessimistic, I think you might be somewhat optimistic. Also, indeed, whether it is worth it, is indeed one's own opinion.

OK. Thanks for your response, I get where you are coming from and it looks like you and I are more or less in agreement at what the issue actually is. Personally I think that the problem as here identified with the MvR are also applicable to (German) CV's in lower tier - where I had a Weser eliminate roughly 50% of the HP of my König. That said, I disagree with you about the solution to the problem. In theory your proposed solution - increasing the difficulty of drops - impossible: 1. Note: I did not play the game at the time of the CV rework. Allegedly one of the primary reasons for the CV rework was to narrow the skill gap between the players who could play RTS CV (and thus murder the enemy team) and those who could not; which meant that the skill gap between RTS CV players largely determined the outcome. We all have experienced the difference between having one (or two) good or competent CV players on your team and two not so good players. By increasing the difficulty of the drop mechanic, you would widen the skill gap again, making the impact of the quality of the CV player(s) even greater than it is now. 2. Even of the surface ships have the ability to dodge, the problem is that that would unly work where it was surface ship vs CV. Usually there are islands and enemy ships that are somewhat complicating factors, either by blocking manuevering or by potantially being able to punish a broadside with a number of citadels. 3. Introducing more manueverability to surface ships might make it more difficult to hit with bombs (though I would argue it would make little difference for the good players), while also making it a lot more difficult to hit ships for enemy surface ships - including top level players. Which means that - compared to surface ships - CV's remain very powerful if not OP. To me, the only workable solution IS to nerf bombs (and or citadel RNG). No, such a nerf will not increase player enjoyment for non-CV players, but my gut feeling is that the solution you propose will also do little to increase the enjoyment for other non-CV players.

If I follow your argument correctly, the difference is made by RNG / Chance. Put it this way: For a BB a 35% hit rate is considered (very) good. What is the average hit rate of bombs AP bombs with those planes? Then next step: what is the chance of that hit turning into a citadel. And even more fun: the hit rate for BB's at long range is massively skewed by either firing long range or mid- to short range. While bombers are still dropping from close range anyway.

To be honest - assuming that your blue BB aimed at some other ship - I actually could have been either one of those BB's.

In Co-op having a bot Edinburgh fire a near perfect line of single fire torps (emptied the rack). I knew they were coming. And of course, in my Scharnhorst I caught them all perfectly head on with the tip of the bow.

There is not a SINGLE non-CV ship at T4 that can adequately defend itself from a CV, let alone a double CV attack. They have little to no AA, or are too slow to dodge the first, let alone second and third attacks. It becomes real fun when both CV's attack at the same time.

I know some of the players are saying that German CV's are weak: - They are almost as hard to kill as BB's. - Yesterday in a Kaiser I was outplaying a New Mexico, Kaiser and Fubuki. Until a Weser came by, who in his FIRST attack run reduced my BB from 75% health to about 20%. For not a single plane loss. O yeah, said Weser had moved up close, as and was barely took damage from 2 DD's and a cruiser attacking him at some point during the game. But noooooo, all is fine.

I have StatsBloke already launching a second attack INSIDE the Flak cloud (so did NOT have to dodge Flak on the way to a second attack run). If he can do it, as a mediocre CV player at best, imagine what the good players can do.

Except that - at least for the current new US BB line, they actually were not (or at least not as badly as you are suggesting). All these ships are based on Tillman designs, which - among others had as a problem that they were (a) violating treaties, (b) were highly impractical, and (c) were too expensive.

Rather than spend time in Halloween Mode, I am now grinding lines on EU and NA to get all lines to T5 at least, and go from there. On EU I still had to grind the US BB's to T5. This was me vs all bots, but still nice. That said, I absulutely despise the South Carolina.