The_Chiv

To be fair when talking about balancing of a new ship the only real reference the players can make is based on what is known and how it performs. SInce World of Warships has a plethora of ships to make comparisons to it gives a bit of context to seeing the pluses and minuses of a proposed design. Wg has stated they want this to be a gun ambusher. Under the current commander skill tree and the way the meta has devolved it does not take a genius to see that this ship has way to many negatives to have any sort of hype about its release. It is out gunned by pretty much every other dd in the game. It will be easier to hit and be punished when it does use it's guns, It has no real defensive attributes to break away and reposition which is a core aspect to ambush dd play. This thing reads more as an auxiliary camping ship that will use terrain and or smoke from UK cls and Smolensk to even have a small chance at being effective. If this ship is paired up in a div with a composition that can support it and if they play it right yeah this ship can do some dirty things, however you can say that about a lot of ships. The difference however is when they are no in a div how well will the perform. This ship just does not instill any sense of being good. You play this game long enough and you begin to see what matters the most in your game play. DDs with no smoke, bad turning, and no speed just screams BAD.

So the rework made Smolensk less cancerous. I mean any ship that can get 30 fires and push 400k+ is something that needs to be addressed. So .10.0 came and effectively turned the most easy to use t10 ship in the game to something that was less impactful. Many claimed it was a dead ship. Myself I meme'd the hell out of it being a dead ship because realistically no ship is dead just more difficult to play to be impactful. Now however it takes a different mindset and target priority to make this ship work well. Pre ,10.0 Smolensk tactics were pretty simple and very forgiving. Go to camp spot, make sure you have a spotter, wait till all ships are in range and then. Total skill required -3 to play Total skill required to be helpful to your team 1 Total skill needed to be awesome 2 .10.0 the ship is less of a threat. Range gimped, fire chance gimped, rate of fire gimped(but you get more HE DAMAGE...with no penetration.) Yet the ship was not dead, far from it. By changing the focus from Big ships to smaller ships the Smolensk is still an effective platform with the ability to punish every dd it sees. TLDR; Smolensk is not dead. Focus on dds and cruisers and you will be much more impactful.

So if you look at any of the community interaction sites(reddit, forums, other server forums, twitter, facebook, twitch) A vast majority hate this rework. That is not hyperbole either. Just looking at the EU poll its like 87% negative response. When you read the different post and threads you see everyone chiming in about such and such ship is now useless, such and such ship is not over powered, gameplay is unrewarding...etc. Now logically this would be a pretty good indication to WG that they done messed up and they are going to need to do something about this. However WG has a history of ignoring the player base complaints and offering unsupported excuses accompanied by meager changes. I would like to believe however that even WG will learn after repeatedly doing the same process over and over only to fail each time, will take a more proactive approach. As such I will divide this post into two parts. What should be done, and what WG will most likely do. This is my opinion, you can agree or disagree with it as much as you like but please support your argument with more then a gif, meme, or insult as there has been some active attempts to censor dissent on other platforms by high profile streamers it is best to not give WG any excuse. What they should do. Dead Eye. This is probably the single most toxic skill to game play in the rework. Cruisers won't push up to support dd's, BBs are no where close enough to support or tank damage, and the whole meta has turned in to a game of Hyper accurate BB HE spam. This skill has virtually no downside to taking it unlike many other skills that other classes such as cruisers have to suffer. Solution: I would say remove and or replace, but WG wont do that. Instead I suggest that it be given a trade off. You get this accuracy but suffer a 15% rof nerf. So for a ship like the Conqueror which can get down to 26.4 second reload it could now only get down to 30.3. Ships like the Vermont would go from 35.2 with mod to 40.4 with reload mod and 46 without mod and doubling down on accuracy. By making this skill a tradeoff skill the impact it has will not be completely mitigated but will make every shot mean more and thus force those who choose to play as a sniper to get some aiming and prediction skills if they wish to play like this effectively. Dazzle. Yet another skill that provide way too much benefit with no downside. This skill encourages the YOLO dd Mindset. A mindset that cost more games then even a cv does. DDs were already annoying to hit most of the time as a cruiser as the moment you shoot you instantly become a target for every bb that can aim at you. Combine this with every bb now taking Deadeye means that the value of cruisers actually adding in support fire against dds is virtually nonexistent. This has put the role of dd interdiction and hunting on cv and other dd. Even with radar this skill completely mitigates all Russian fire and about 33% of usn fire(though USN fire never that accurate to start with). Where it gets more insidious is that the skill can reproc over and over again by going in and out of vision thus it can in theory maintain this mitigation through the entirety of it being spotted. Daring is probably one of the best examples of a ship that can pull this off. Solution: I have a few ideas for this. 1. While the skill is proc'd the dd will remain visible for the entirety of the proc.(this is very flawed as CVs become even more of a problem). 2. Proc cooldown of 30 seconds. When the effect expires it can not retrigger for 30 seconds nor can it retrigger during its effect time. 3 ROF guns and torp nerf. Of all three 2 seems like a strong candidate as it will remove the exploitive nature of the skill while still making it functional. Proximity Fuse CV. 10% reduction of anti torpedo protection. This skill may not seem that bad when you look at it from say the UK,KM,or IJN. Where it becomes problematic however is the USN. Midway and the Cancervelt will get the greatest boost from this ability. In my testing with the midway before the rework I was averaging about 2.5k per torp. now about 3k per torp. 500 per torp may not be so bad when you are hitting max three at a time but when it is 6 or more like USN can do it begins to add up pretty quickly. Solution: Torpedo bomber recovery time +15% Heavy HE and Sap shells Cruisers. So this skill promotes all or nothing playstyles in the CA and super cruiser lines but is completely punishing to a majority of light cruiser lines. Solution: Change shell requirement for negative effect from 149mm to 154mm Expert AA marksmen cruiser. Cruiser AA has been a meme for far to damn long and the new system gave a meager increases if you take the skills thus making them still less then ideal and limiting play options for cruisers. Solution: Increase sector enhance from 25% to 40%. Additionally change base min of all cruiser instant damage when using sector enhance from 3.5% to 5% as Massive aa is no longer an option to spike this to 7% thus giving tools for ships like Worcester to actually have the ability to be an aa ship Elite xp from dismissing a captain for silver changed from 25% to 50%. What WG will most likely do Dead Eye. Most likely nothing, however probably a change from 10% to 7% like they did with AP cruiser. Dazzle. Change from 20% to 10% Proximity fuse. Nothing Heavy HE and Sap shells. Probably lower the trade off concealment reduction from 15% to 10% Expert AA marksmen cruiser. Probably nothing as wg has made it pretty clear they do not want cruiser to actually be effective against air units and have consistently gone out of their way in not buffing their aa and dodging every question ever asked of them about it in every live stream. Elite xp from dismissing captain for silver. THEY WILL DO NOTHING ABOUT THIS as this is the core money maker for this whole rework and to change that value would be seen as minimizing possible income.

So rewards those without skill...Well you have to give it to wargaming. They are at least consistent in being bad at balance.

I am a cruiser player, and I love hunting dds. So yeah F dazzle. I wasn't comparing new to rts. Sector enhance didn't exist in rts nor did instant damage. Before the commander rework I was playing all my t10 ships got some nice base lines recorded. So when I play with the commander rework I can see the effects. On some ships new aa is ok, for anyone who was running full aa build ships like the Worcester it is a nerf. So please stop assuming what I have and have not done. You know what they say about assuming.

it should have added to sector enhancement. As to why it cost 3 points, considering the only way you can add more flak to a ship is by taking a slot 6 mod that kind of gives it value. Mind you that mod gives you 2 and a few other aa buffs but still.

With the exception of the cv point I disagree with everything else you said. Dazzle like dead eye is damn near an auto pick. Yes for ships that don't have smoke it is awesome but ships with a plethora of short smokes can exploit the hell out of it. Before I would get maybe 1.2 mil potential in my dds. Now with dazzle Im pulling like 2.2 million. Thats more then my average in a super cruiser and a little less then what I get in bbs. It is very very very powerful and will need addressing. HEAVY ap at 7% is fine and was only brought up as a reference to what the balance for deadeye would probably look like. HEAVY HE/SAP on the other hand is utter garbage. Ok 8% ROF plus more base damage seems great on paper. TIll you play it and realize wow you are getting nuked in the first 3 minutes of the game because you can not go back into concealment to repair. This means you tend to never make it late game when the ship counts are reduced and thus you are able to use your DPM effectively. Managing concealment and lasting till the later part of the match is one of the biggest struggles for most cruiser players pre rework, so to throw away any notion of it for yolo damage farming just seems a bad idea all together. You lost a ton of aa abilities and cvs gained a bit more defense. You argument of Deadeye being fine is only looking at the skill not the overall effect. The meta shift it causes is problematic. As for dd support sorry deadeye killed that because NO light cruiser or heavy cruiser wants to be the first to die so they are playing at their extreme ranges. The upside to this is has reduced radar cruisers rushing caps looking for easy first kills. Dazzle is op. For many DD players it is a perm 20% dispersion mitigation. So Des Moines instead of having 154m against a dd is now at 184m. This means less hits less damage less effective response. Even if the dd is spotted and goes into smoke only to get radared they get the ability reproced with the timer reset. Not gonna lie It has been kind of funny playing a daring these days and watching people scream in chat about it. Oh boy I was waiting for a cv to get on this. Ok so the rework gave 5% more continuous and a skill to add +1 flak and like 10% more damage from flak. The rework also removed 25% priority sector enhancement as well as took away the ability to get 7% instant damage and now every ship can only get 3.5% instant damage. Now would you like to know what this did for the Worcester? It made it even less of a threat. Even before the rework Worcester(ship that by design was an aa cruiser) was struggling against KM and UK cvs. Guess what it still struggles against them but now even IJN and USN seem even more impactful against them. So yes I took the skills I played them and I found them to be yet again lacking. Even with the ability to put out 9 flak burst it didn't seem to phase the planes. Probably because they all got a buff in defensive skills.

Pretty sure I already did a meme memorial for it like 4 days ago that had all the BB boys throw a hissy fit.

First I know Smolensk has been broken since before it was live. Yes I know it is the bane of many bbs. Yes I know! So with the above mentioned I would like to lament the passing of this ship. I use to love the smolensk. It was always good for mission where I needed ribbons or fires or I just needed to grind some easy credits. It would fulfilled my darkest desires to watch the world burn. Now it is meh. Fire breathing Russian dragon has become a flame broiler in a Burger king. I shall miss you. Before After

So if you look at this pic you will see a 19 pt captain about to be dismissed. In order for me to get full value I have to spend 15k dubs. But I can spend silver and get only 25%. FYI 15k dubs is $54 usd, that is more expensive then the Graff Zeppelin. This breaks down to 110 elite xp per dub, which is better then the value you get for fxp, but you can buy ships with fxp. So yet again WG makes the community suffer over a scheme to make more money. GREEDY Fs

wow when 90% have a negative view of this rework that is kind of telling. Cv rework had more positive rating then this and that was a cluster F

Those 2 points do matter a great deal actually many functional 19pt builds are now broken unless you have 21. This was completely intentional to force more cash spending. Their is a darker and more sad aspect to all of this though. For a long time...like since before the German BB line was introduced, people have asked for individual class specific trees. WG always said no they wanted to keep it simple and universal. Now they are finally changing it and listening to the players feed back. What they gave us however is so damn punishing and a complete CF. So when WG gives into the community they screw them over and punish them. Kind of makes you think twice about giving your opinion or suggestion. TLDR; We asked for it. They used it as a means to exploit greater sums of money, and now we miss the old system. So CV rework all over again.

Their is making money, and then there is what they do. When the game first started events with a ship attached were 100% you can get it f2p but you had to put in the effort. Then came the Cossack, which for 1 buck was a good deal. Now we have events you can not complete unless you spend money, FXP and premium t9 ships for sale, two reworks whose sole purpose was to create a market for big cash infusions. Wg is focusing solely on the short gains while completely sacrificing the long term gains. I use to spend money in this game Then the cv rework and the Puerto Rico happened. Every year they crank up the greed factor and it has now gotten to the point of pure disgust.

yep the wg loophole

gremyashchy

I will never see 30+ fire ribbons a game again...

Yes I get the concept, however this is not what I expected when I read "Get elite xp when you dismiss a captain." Should have read more like. "Get elite xp when you dismiss a captain for a premium cost. This nickle and dime BS wg is doing is a really great way to push away its base.

Oh I am never gonna defend the Smolensk. Get off your high horse buddy. All I said was it is less fun to play thus I wont be playing it that much in a meme memorial. I mean I could get more support on this forum for advocating tighter dive bomb dispersions then anything involving Smolensk.

Range matter when ducking incoming super accurate bb shells.

another victim I mean friend I played with

DD hunting is still a thing, you all just need to actually do it for once or at the very least spot the them.

You could have done that at 20km+ with HE.

I just read this and Damn you maybe right. Though I think Austin will be steel as it is replacing somers which is steel. There is no way in HELL WG is gonna give a sap loaded light cruiser away for coal. I mean after smolensk and thunderer I think maybe they learned their lesson? Maybe?

Ahhh you must have been one of the kids who fueled my twisted glee when you raged in chat. Thanks for that. 1. You do realize this whole post was a meme right? 2. WG balancing.....HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Since when? 3. Yeah I read that too. I would much rather see flint with more range tbh. 11k for a t7 even with smoke is just bad.

I love super cruisers, except you Azuma and puerto rico. No one likes you azuma and FFS Puerto rico you are cruiser why did they make you an under armored under gun Iowa. I digress Super cruisers were just a fun experience. Before the rework. When I saw the rework however my fun quickly turned to terror. LONGER BURNS AND MORE FIRES WTF So today I have been doing the obligatory, how bad has WG F'd my favorite class parade. So far I have done Smolensk which is less fun and less effective then before, The Agir, and The Alaska. While the fires were annoying the extra ap damage was Pretty funny. at one point I was lobbing shells ever 13 seconds thanks to AR and Top grade Gunner. this is my 16pt build Not sure if I will take outnumbered, seems too situational and feels like a waste of 4 pts. SE and CE seems a better pick for the last 5 points.