The_Chiv

I love this game. I have been playing since Alpha on multiple servers and have stuck with it since the beginning. Over the past few years however i have found myself struggling to have a desire to play. Not because the game is boring, but because with each new attempt to balance or new ship line introduced I have found the effort by the developers to be lacking and not ever coming close to addressing some of the core problems in this game. Then there are decisions that boggle my mind such as Deadeye. What makes this worse is the defense that the Developers give for such decisions. (Many players enjoy that style of play). What followed was the 2nd most frustrating time in wows history, first being the cv rework. I still have hope for this game, however I have come to realize no sane person who actually plays this game for any amount of time would ever think the changes and additions that the Devs have put forth are reasonable. This lead me to the grand realization that they do not play their game any more, and if they do it is only in a test environment. This is unacceptable. So I challenge the devs of WG. You have KOTS infrastructure, you have accounts, Come and fight us. No im not talking some kill the pirate or corgi sorta nonsense. I mean real in game competitive fights that will be streamed. I may be alone in this but I want a piece of these devs. So my challenge is this. Set up an event for summer and winter or spring and fall where devs face off against the community. I really do not care about the format or what not, but it should be streamed. Now some of you are going to say "Whats the point." Well to be honest it is 3 fold. With all the angst and anger that we can find in all the forums the community needs a cathartic release, and watching the developers who they hold responsible for the issues in the game be stomped like the weekend playing scrubs we all think they are will make us feel better. Will give devs a real sense of what the players really go through in a game so they can apply this real experience to future balancing decisions. This event would probably be the most viewed WOWS event ever. Seriously with how annoyed people have been with the direction of this game over the past 3 years you know they are going to tune in to watch the devs get rolled. I fully expect to get no response from the developers on this. They tend to ignore the community as whole and they would rather save face by not competing then to try and fail. Still I would love to see this.

^^^^ yep

Poor interns.

I came from NF. Where the devs knew they knew they didnt know enough about meta and gameplay to effectively balance. Thus they had their own super testing team that would help influence the procedure. Here however we have super testers whose sole purpose is generating stats. WG devs ignore their input. Now if they disagree with this then they can come on down to pound town and set us simple peasants straight. I mean they could win. I doubt it but hell anything is possible.

Probably. Like I said, Devs ignore the community and are rather apathetic. It wasn't always this way though.

Oh Im sure many of us would gladly jump at the opportunity discuss face to face via a five knuckle translator the intricacies of balance with a dev, however as we are gamers lets us keep the violence digital. As for would this work. Well Im from the States. Our military branches has a healthy history of trash talking each other but for the most part work together. They also have interbranch competitions in sports and other activities. Seeing as the US military is like 2.5 million and it works with them, then sure should work here. We do not want to hear them talk. We want to see them defend themselves in the game. To put it bluntly we want them to prove they have a clue about the game they balance. Sehales/Crysantos/Conway can dress up as cheerleaders and be commentators as some CC's and former CC's. Personally I would take Ichase and Flamu as one is extremely technical and tactical while the other is colorful and rather brutal in commentary. Ah then we can say they our so out of touch they had to cheat to win thus vindicating the communities vitriol. I do not think their egos are so petty that they would cheat so they could be vindicated. If they did the backlash would be massive.

Noice.. As for the Alaska/ Buffalo. this is true 305's on alaska tend to be really annoying against everything except a dd cause you know dispersion. Though to be honest I find the Agir tends to be more punishing then an Alaska, and even more people see it as less then a threat then an alaska.

So lately I have been getting bored. I have no desire to play Italian BBS and find the GERMAN Heavy dd line a joke not worth playing. So rather then take a break I thought you know maybe lets play some of the worst ships and see if we can make them work. So if you would be so kind and share your thoughts on some of the worst cruisers from the tech tree for t8,9,10.

this is a recent loss The Seattle and I had a "who is the better rock camper duel", I WON. The Jutland I was able to completely shut down 2 times with radar the second time leading to its death. All the bbs were mostly terrain farmed. Buffalo is not a carry ship. It is a support cruiser. Able to supplement any effort made by your team. It does require some intuitive thinking and some above average skill to make it effective. Now you mention the Brindisi. I HATED THAT SHIP WITH A PASSION. Its gun angles and arcs make terrain camping less reliable as trying to find the right spot tends to leave you very exposed. Also the lack of fires became very problematic when it came to anti bb fights. Where I had fun in the Brindisi is its ability to just nuke dds and cruisers with sap, however doing so tended to expose the ship and shortly after firing I was almost always forced into smoke as the priority target would read 3 or more. You are right however cv's along with the proliferation of 406mm+ bbs has made playing ships like the buffalo a real nightmare. Even with deadeye being removed the overmatch + cv spotting will still be a considerable grievance for any in the ship. It is also one of the reasons I think Overmatch is outdated as a balancing mechanic and needs either adjustment or removal. TLDR; Buffalo is a fine ship and cruel a one. It is not for the faint of heart and forces players to master terrain camping in order to be effective as well as knowing how to utilize super heavy AP and when to push. If it was a high school class it would be college level Advance placement class for 12 year old children who are in their senior year of high school. It is hard to master and could use some QOL adjustments.

8 in one salvo is fun Though I I would kill to see a 10 in one, however that would require some God emperor levels of RNG. When I first played buffalo it was after they introduced the RB. I found it challenging then but eventually figured it out. Now even in a deadeye meta during the weekend I have found it to be a solid performer. Its ability to punish ships in the cyclone and to go up an over terrain while being able to redploy to another location with some effort made it very ideal to supporting capping, pushes, and counter attacks. I would say probably the one issue I would love to see changed on the ship is a range increase to 16km and probably a bit more responsive turning

So a bunch of you said that Buffalo was a bad ship. Luckily I was needing RB points for the Colbert and I thought hey lets go through a refresher and find out. So first let me post this. This is during the weekend, you know that time when people seem to rage hard because the average skill level of the population drops because a majority of the less skilled players are on. During this run I had some pretty decent games breaking 130k damage which is like 270% above the average. Now anyone can have a breakout game and really 130k is not that amazing for many other t9 ships like say Alaska, Agir, or any BB. Playing the Buffalo most of the time was rather painful. First half the match is spent being completely defensive trying to post up on some terrain and waiting and hoping the enemy cv doesn't see a stationary cruiser and think "Sweet easy boosted Base XP". This of course is all while you are getting yelled at by your dds for not pushing up and directly supporting them. This is something that while I would love to do as it is something I enjoy doing in other ships, doing so in a Buffalo is a great way to die fast. Something about 406mm or greater overmatching the hell out of the ship and most of the bbs at 8,9,10 have just that. Seriously WG if DDs can get some ANTI AP love then surely you can make overmatching less oppressive to cruisers, or better yet remove it from being a things against cruisers. I digress. In later games I was able to keep most of my health and avoid most incoming fire due to engine mod and terrain as well as take advantage of cyclones dropping to push on enemies with radar allowing the rest of my team to concentrate firepower and retake caps. Honestly I had to think a ton about every position and look at the flow of battle constantly in order to figure out where the best play I could be was. Now this didn't always happen. In fact most of the time it didn't happen and I would get the living hell knocked out of me. As you can see my captain is still retraining so I was less stealthy, my guns turned like a BB, and trying to hold an angle while maneuvering became challenging. Eventually however I was able to have a game that was super impactful and made me realize that buffalo is not a bad ship, just one with an annoyingly high skill ceiling. Being able to get a kraken in a ship is not a measure of how good a ship can be. What I have found that yes it is a difficult ship to play, however when you play it like it should be played(Ichase has a great video for this) then it can be just punishing. So is it a bad ship? No, but it is a ship that requires more effort then most but that effort can make or break a game.

those are not line ships.

WG devs do not play their game with their players. They are disconnected and thus are incapable of balancing their game.

Ok so lets get the reality check going here since some people seem to think WG has to jump through hops to do a damn thing. READ YOUR TOS. No seriously read it. Wg at any time can make any changes to any of their products and content. The fact they do not is because they really do not want to have to deal with a ton of entitled kids crying about unfair and demanding a refund some 4 years later. Also for the record. Wg has made changes to premiums in the past. German cruisers like the Prinze Eugen got 1/4 HE pen, IJN cruisers like the Atago got an accuracy buff as all IJN cruisers did. When WG makes a change to premium it is mostly due to mechanics changed or because a line, which the ship belongs to got changed in some way. This however does not mean they can not do whatever they want. I would welcome some changes to old ships including premiums. Since the CV rework many premiums have become painful to play. If the balancing helps lessen the effects of power creep and CV rework should we not all want this? To be fair it would be a win win all around. WG gets more sales cause older ships are now relevant again, and players will feel less horrible about the cash investment.

If you are looking to increase PR you need to keep up with the anti cruiser play and most likely spend a bit more effort hurting dds. PR tends to focus heavily on Damage % and well Damage on dd has the highest return. The reason many think the petro is great is once you have mastered your understanding of positioning and have a basic ability to read a mini map and follow the flow of battle the petro can easily get into crossfire positions and cause use issues. Like most cruisers the greater aggression you show in the early game the less likely you are to live. Keep your cool and look for opportunities.

Secondaries are not dead, they are just not as effective as they use to be. No seriously I can not tell you how many suicidal dds, and hard charging cruiser I have killed with secondaries. Little tip folks. JUST CAUSE YOU HAVE TORPS DOESNT MEAN YOU HAVE TO USE THEM. Secondary nerf was most likely a planned thing in order to force people to try out dead eye and get vast data in a short amount of time.

I had a game in the New Orleans where I got the first 5 kills of the game. Like literally we were up 5 ships. and then in the next 3 minutes we ended up losing 5 of our ships. At the end we killed 7 total ships. The moral of the story is you can do amazing things but if you have 11 other people who are terrible it will effectively mitigate all your contribution.

Murmansk is a russian Omaha with better torps. If you try to play it like any other dd you fail. Play it like a Colbert you do amazing.

I listen to a wide variety of music depending on the class of ship I am playing. For HE spam ships like gunboat dds, Smolensk, Worchester For Regular and super cruisers For all bb play For regular dd play For cv play

yep, you apologized to me while pushing up in a bb, was no need for it, now the the Colorado on your flank that pushed me into a citadel that is another story. Trying to play the terrain game tends to be challenge and really the only way to play a USN cruiser. Either way we won and you had a great match.

Of all the fantasy elements this game uses you wish to complain about smoke. Never mind the fact waterline pens dont cause flooding or the fact fires and floods can be put out in less then a second. Nevermind the fact that dds have concealment that is more akin a Romulan cloaking device or the fact they can reload a full rack of torpedo's in under 2 minutes and lets not forget the fact that BB ap does virtually nothing to them. Nevermind radar and hydro being able to go through terrain. Nevermind the fact that a single ship can provide accurate fire support coordination for an entire fleet using nothing but a pair of binocs and a radio, you want to complain about smoke? Of all the silly unrealistic elements you could have complained about you picked the least immersion breaking one.

If these became real ships in this game you can pretty much kiss all cruiser play goodbye, unless wg drops BS handholding every bb gets. OVERMATCH NEEDS TO DIE or only apply to other BB's

Today I got this gem of wisdom from a Pommerian He was on the enemy team and I was using terrain because the overmatch for a New Orleans is 380mm or greater. I put maybe 40k into him with HE and AP only to have the GA finish him off and thank me in chat and give me a compliment. Remember folks people are bad at this game. Rather then trying to improve or god forbid learn to read the mini map and the flow of battle, they will complain and blame everyone except for themselves for being bad. If your enemy sends you something like ^^^^ consider it validation you are doing the right thing. When a teammate gives you grief over something you have done or didn't do I want you to answer these 2 questions. 1. Were you playing a cv? 2. Were you playing a dd? If you answered yes to any of those then there is a fair chance that it may be valid criticism as a majority of cv and dd players are not "Team Players". For the most part DD's think the concept of team play ends with capping, where as for CV it is killing battleships. Both seem incapable of understanding that the sooner you spot and engage the enemy dds the sooner you can turn them and allow the rest of your team to push up to advantageous positions to exploit the enemies lack of constant forward vision and pummel them to death. With that said however there is never a valid reason to call some one names or berate them. If you tend to get the same complaints over and over again however from multiple people I hate to tell you this it is probably not them but you. Take sometime rewatch some replays where people said you messed up or could have done better. Learn from it, see where you could be better, and try new things. It is far better then repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results. In fact most people no matter their preferred class can do with a bit of replay analysis People get frustrated and angry. They lash out. Wg tries to cover all but at some point you have to ask yourself is it really all a bunch of toxic edge lords or maybe just maybe you might be playing poorly.

I have seen this issue in NA and even in CB. One clan that had like 4 total clans under its banner would actively do this in their discord. If the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th founding faced off against any of a higher founding they were to throw allowing their clan mates to advance. The issue was even recorded in the coms of offending clan and presented to both WG and the community. The clan still exist and not a single one of them got banned. What makes this even more disturbing is said clan also participates in KOTS and the same members who orchestrated these riggings were in it. So mod that changes a texture and lets you see all ships you can get in game will get you banned. Rigging competitive play and clan battles gets you nothing.

I loved it. She reminds me of the HMS surprise from Master and Commander. She took a licking repaired and came back to win. To me the Albemarle is what balanced looks like.