CV's in Ranked - Post-Mortem Discussion

[MaxL_1023]

So I managed to rank out a couple days ago, playing the Kremlin (my only T10 on this server, I am a NA main) and few games in a rental Conqueror when I wanted to switch things up (and got sick of the camp meta which seemed to develop near the end of the season). It took me 143 games to rank out with a 60% win rate - I was hoping for better, but since this is my first time really playing a lot of ranked (even on NA I didn't really play it much) I figure some of that is just inexperience with the 7v7 metagame. 

 

I was wondering what everyone thinks about how the addition of reworked CVs affected gameplay. 

 

My initial observations:

 

1. DDs were crushed in games with a CV active. The CV took over most of the spotting role, the caps were suicide unless there were AA cruisers nearby and even then the DD would usually take at least one strike. 

 

2. The Hakuryu was completely broken. Abuse of AP Dive Bombers plus the slingshot drop technique let them routinely take large chunks out of cruisers (which were forced to camp islands due to the large number of battleships in queue and the map layout) and devastate Yamato, Kremlin and GK with routine citadel hits. 

 

3. Crossfire strategies were rendered unworkable unless the game had at least 4 Battleships, as the lone BB on the off-flank would just be chunked down by the CV and have no option to counterplay, especially since many CV games had no cruisers at all. 

 

4. In general, the CVs were too strong in a 7v7 format, as their intentional vulnerability to stacked AA bubbles is much less exploitable when fewer ships are in play. 

 

5. The CV often saved a star late game due to the rewards from plane kills alone, as the two carriers would throw planes at each other while the point timer ran out or the other ships tried to chase it down. Tier 10 CVs are almost immune to each other, as their deck armor shatters HE DBs and rockets, AP bombs only get full pens - only torpedo bombers could usually get a decent strike in, and even then only with heavy losses. 

 

 

My recommendation:

 

1. Remove CVs from 7v7 play, unless they are undertiered (Tier 8 CV in tier 9 Ranked for example). 

2. Fix the slingshot drop exploit

3. Somehow nerf the Hakuryu at least slighty, as it seems to be overperforming. 

 

Thoughts?

 

 

[Bear__Necessities]

Rather they took the option of rentals and consigned them to the bin forever. CV's were not a problem in any game I had when playing a surface ship. 

[MaxL_1023]

Just now, Bear_Necessities said:

Rather they took the option of rentals and consigned them to the bin forever. CV's were not a problem in any game I had when playing a surface ship. 

 

I never had a big issue with rental ships, as to be honest by the rank 10-5 bracket they were really not much worse than any other player. If you are yourself in a normal ship you are slightly more likely to have a rental on the opposing team anyways, so they would increase your win rate very slightly over a large enough game sample. 

 

They likely did increase the variance within team skill composition slightly (as you get the odd 40% player who only owns a Tirpitz or something then a bunch of low tiers trying out ranked) but they rarely made it past the 15-10 bracket. 

[veslingr]

10 minutes ago, MaxL_1023 said:

So I managed to rank out a couple days ago, playing the Kremlin (my only T10 on this server, I am a NA main) and few games in a rental Conqueror when I wanted to switch things up (and got sick of the camp meta which seemed to develop near the end of the season). It took me 143 games to rank out with a 60% win rate - I was hoping for better, but since this is my first time really playing a lot of ranked (even on NA I didn't really play it much) I figure some of that is just inexperience with the 7v7 metagame. 

 

I was wondering what everyone thinks about how the addition of reworked CVs affected gameplay. 

 

My initial observations:

 

1. DDs were crushed in games with a CV active. The CV took over most of the spotting role, the caps were suicide unless there were AA cruisers nearby and even then the DD would usually take at least one strike. 

 

2. The Hakuryu was completely broken. Abuse of AP Dive Bombers plus the slingshot drop technique let them routinely take large chunks out of cruisers (which were forced to camp islands due to the large number of battleships in queue and the map layout) and devastate Yamato, Kremlin and GK with routine citadel hits. 

 

3. Crossfire strategies were rendered unworkable unless the game had at least 4 Battleships, as the lone BB on the off-flank would just be chunked down by the CV and have no option to counterplay, especially since many CV games had no cruisers at all. 

 

4. In general, the CVs were too strong in a 7v7 format, as their intentional vulnerability to stacked AA bubbles is much less exploitable when fewer ships are in play. 

 

5. The CV often saved a star late game due to the rewards from plane kills alone, as the two carriers would throw planes at each other while the point timer ran out or the other ships tried to chase it down. Tier 10 CVs are almost immune to each other, as their deck armor shatters HE DBs and rockets, AP bombs only get full pens - only torpedo bombers could usually get a decent strike in, and even then only with heavy losses. 

 

 

My recommendation:

 

1. Remove CVs from 7v7 play, unless they are undertiered (Tier 8 CV in tier 9 Ranked for example). 

2. Fix the slingshot drop exploit

3. Somehow nerf the Hakuryu at least slighty, as it seems to be overperforming. 

 

Thoughts?

 

 

Haku was in 2% of battles. CV were totally in 5% of battles. 

 

Midway and RN ones have disasters stats all over and did not influence battles at all. 

 

Haku is 6th in Wr (not so important) and 6th in total dmg dealth. 

 

Funny charts is dominated with BBs where Kremlin domination is obvious. 

 

So 2% of games, middle of charts....no CV did not influence battles in whole. 

 

On other hand BBs did dominate all stats. Over 36% battles were in BBs, five top dmg dealer are BBs....

 

Observation of low number of cruisers is wrong. They were second most played class with almost 30%.

 

 

[veslingr]

So if anything stats shows that Kremlin with 4.7% games played and position ind dmg and we were more OP and dominant than Hakuryu. OP also ranked out in Kremlin....

[MaxL_1023]

1 minute ago, veslingr said:

Haku dwas in 2% of battles. CV were totally in 5% of battles. 

 

Midway and RN ones have disasters stats all over and did not influence battles at all. 

 

Haku is 6th in Wr (not so important) and 6th in total dmg dealth. 

 

Funny charts is dominated with BBs where Kremlin domination is obvious. 

 

So 2% of games, middle of charts....no CV did not influence battles in whole. 

 

On other hand BBs did dominate all stats. Over 36% battles were in BBs, five top dmg dealer are BBs....

Just because CVs were rare doesn't mean they didn't influence the games they were present for. 

 

I do agree that the BB numbers were quite high - maybe a queue limit to 2 per side would have worked out. 

 

Kremlin domination was because it is new - I only researched mine after the season started and I grinded it much faster than an average player could. 

[MaxL_1023]

Just now, veslingr said:

So if anything starts shows that Kremlin with 4.7% games played and position ind dmg and we were more OP and dominant than Hakuryu. OP also ranked out in Kremlin....

 

The Kremlin isn't OP - its just the skill distribution was offset heavily towards better players. It is very strong when played well but in the hands of a below-average player will routinely get nuked, as it is the worst tier 10 BB outside of ~15km and when broadside at 10km, situations quite common for poor to average BB players. 

 

 

[veslingr]

6 minutes ago, MaxL_1023 said:

Just because CVs were rare doesn't mean they didn't influence the games they were present for. 

 

I do agree that the BB numbers were quite high - maybe a queue limit to 2 per side would have worked out. 

 

Kremlin domination was because it is new - I only researched mine after the season started and I grinded it much faster than an average player could. 

Haku 2% of games Kreml 4.7 % of games. Kreml was 150% more played than haku and beeing 3th in wr and 3th in dmg shows that in general public it is stronger and more influential ship than Haku.

 

About skill we do not know. We can guess. But potato also can freexp. 

 

Let's talk about yamato and GC? 

 

[MaxL_1023]

The Yamato was fine - it was popular for sure, but didn't really perform differently then any other tech-tree BB. 

 

Kremlin is currently like the Bourgogne - only elite players tend to have it, as it is very new and therefore gated by either free-exp or fast tree progression. It does do very well at close range in skilled hands, so the performance isn't that out of line. The damage numbers are not as inflated as the win rate, suggesting either a higher-impact playstyle or just better tactics among the players using it. 

 

I suspect the GK had high-wins but low damage due to disproportionately countering destroyers with secondaries and hydro - kind of the reverse of the Conqueror, which does a lot of repairable fire damage from long range. 

 

The Hak is an obvious outlier in terms of the CVs though - it is about as popular as the Midway and Aud but significantly outperformed both in both damage and WR. 

[veslingr]

If we remove all stats. Ship that you see 2 games in 100 games is not gamebraker, and 2 others CV did nothing. 

 

Clear conclusion, supported by stats CV as class did not broke Ranked. They did not dominated ranked. If you ranked out in 200 games you saw them 10 times where 6 times were bad Aud and Midway and 4 times dangerous Haku who's efficiency probably was lovered because potato heard it is flavor of the month. 

 

[MaxL_1023]

7 minutes ago, veslingr said:

If we remove all stats. Ship that you see 2 games in 100 games is not gamebraker, and 2 others CV did nothing. 

 

Clear conclusion, supported by stats CV as class did not broke Ranked. They did not dominated ranked. If you ranked out in 200 games you saw them 10 times where 6 times were bad Aud and Midway and 4 times dangerous Haku who's efficiency probably was lovered because potato heard it is flavor of the month. 

 

 

Are any of these stats split by rank bracket? I spent most of my games at Rank 5-2 (obviously) and I saw a CV more than 6% of the time for sure. Cruisers being less common than BBs is honestly a big problem in 7v7, as it means that their quality of life (so to speak) is pretty poor trying to dodge BB salvos from multiple different angles. 

 

I admit I also played pretty late at night most of the time (as I live in NA) so I might have seen a distorted picture. 

[veslingr]

9 minutes ago, MaxL_1023 said:

 

Are any of these stats split by rank bracket? I spent most of my games at Rank 5-2 (obviously) and I saw a CV more than 6% of the time for sure. Cruisers being less common than BBs is honestly a big problem in 7v7, as it means that their quality of life (so to speak) is pretty poor trying to dodge BB salvos from multiple different angles. 

 

I admit I also played pretty late at night most of the time (as I live in NA) so I might have seen a distorted picture. 

Sadly not. It is whole seasons stats. 

 

And one more important stat that is missing is ship that saved star the most....many claim it is CV. Average dmg combined with low number of games  does not support that. I would bet Kreml saved more stars than Haku due to 1.5 more games (more chance to save star) plus slightly higher dmg primary Ap

 

On other hand GC had 15% more dmg than haku, 100% more games and he also had more saved stars due to large margins in plus dmg (admited alot of fires) and more games. It is my guess. 

 

I just do not see reason to remove CV. Low number of games and mediocre stats in general. 

[MaxL_1023]

1 minute ago, veslingr said:

Sadly not. It is whole seasons stats. 

 

And one more important stat that is missing is ship that saved star the most....may claim it is CV. Average dmg combined with low number of games  does not support that. I would bet Kreml saved more stars than Haku due to 1.5 more games (more chance to save star) plus slightly higher dmg primary Ap

 

On other hand GC had 15% more dmg than haku, 100% more games and he also had more saved stars due to large margins in plus dmg (admited slot of fires) and more games. 

 

The only way to check out star saving would be to somehow see their average exp, which does not seem to have been tracked. The Kremlin might have saved more stars-per-game due to having better players (like the Stalingrad or Bourgogne) but I doubt it would hold up if you remove the playerbase bias. 

[veslingr]

Just now, MaxL_1023 said:

 

The only way to check out star saving would be to somehow see their average exp, which does not seem to have been tracked. The Kremlin might have saved more stars-per-game due to having better players (like the Stalingrad or Bourgogne) but I doubt it would hold up if you remove the playerbase bias. 

WG probably has that stats. Also I think prem camo(?!) Is calculated in exp gains..prem acxount(?!)...we know this site is not counting base exp which would be most accurate but takes some modifications into account).

[Verblonde]

1 hour ago, MaxL_1023 said:

Thoughts?

I only played to R10, and that took me single figures games - don't remember how many exactly.

 

The presence of CVs didn't change anything for me as such, although (as a DD main) it did limit the ship options I would choose rather significantly - to only those with good AA (and a suitable captain to boost it further). That though is pretty much the same as randoms for me.

 

I agree with the sentiment that it was the rentals that had a greater impact on the gameplay (not all of them were negative, but a lot were even worse than I am, and that takes some doing). I'm not philosophically opposed to the idea of rentals, but I would like WG to ensure that they are split equally (by class) across both teams.

 

That said, the reason I played so little wasn't CVs, or rentals, but rather that when you get into the zone with no irreversible ranks, the whole exercise gets so frustrating that I feel very little inclination to waste time on it that I could be doing something more fun with...

[Cyclops_]

Only got to Rank 9 (5 bloody times) took Shima Haru, Mino & Daring, best win rate was Mino and Daring, CV's if CV in the joining list I just hit the return to port button, think I only had about 2 games with CV's in them.

[gslick]

2 hours ago, veslingr said:

Haku was in 2% of battles. CV were totally in 5% of battles. 

 

Do you not understand what those popularity numbers mean, are you bad at math,  or are deliberately misleading others on how often CVs were in battle.

 

The Popularity percentage is that out of all ships in all battles considered, how often did that ship appear.  For example,  over 10 battles there will be a total of 140 ship battle slots.

If the Kremlin appears in 6 of those then its Popularity for those 10 battles is = 6/140 = 4.3%.  Regardless if there is a maximum of 1 Kremlin per battle or all 6 appeared in the same battle.

 

CVs were 5% of the ships played (not the battles).  Now for those 10 battles, or 140 ship slots, a CV will take 5% of those slots or 140*.05=7 CVs played on average over the battles.

Now since each side gets a CV we must divide by 2 or the CV will appear in 3.5 Battles of the 10 battles or a

 

CV appear in  35% of the ranked battles, not the 5% you try to make others believe.

 

 

[gslick]

2 hours ago, MaxL_1023 said:

 

Are any of these stats split by rank bracket? I spent most of my games at Rank 5-2 (obviously) and I saw a CV more than 6% of the time for sure. Cruisers being less common than BBs is honestly a big problem in 7v7, as it means that their quality of life (so to speak) is pretty poor trying to dodge BB salvos from multiple different angles. 

 

I admit I also played pretty late at night most of the time (as I live in NA) so I might have seen a distorted picture. 

See my response to another poster.  By my calculations CVs appeared in 35 % of all ranked battles.  The differences between ranks is unknown.  

[veslingr]

11 minutes ago, gslick said:

Do you not understand what those popularity numbers mean, are you bad at math,  or are deliberately misleading others on how often CVs were in battle.

 

The Popularity percentage is that out of all ships in all battles considered, how often did that ship appear.  For example,  over 10 battles there will be a total of 140 ship battle slots.

If the Kremlin appears in 6 of those then its Popularity for those 10 battles is = 6/140 = 4.3%.  Regardless if there is a maximum of 1 Kremlin per battle or all 6 appeared in the same battle.

 

CVs were 5% of the ships played (not the battles).  Now for those 10 battles, or 140 ship slots, a CV will take 5% of those slots or 140*.05=7 CVs played on average over the battles.

Now since each side gets a CV we must divide by 2 or the CV will appear in 3.5 Battles of the 10 battles or a

 

CV appear in  35% of the ranked battles, not the 5% you try to make others believe.

 

 

Funny guy

[thisismalacoda]

Vor 2 Stunden, veslingr sagte:

Haku was in 2% of battles. CV were totally in 5% of battles. 

 

Midway and RN ones have disasters stats all over and did not influence battles at all. 

 

Haku is 6th in Wr (not so important) and 6th in total dmg dealth. 

 

Funny charts is dominated with BBs where Kremlin domination is obvious. 

 

So 2% of games, middle of charts....no CV did not influence battles in whole. 

 

On other hand BBs did dominate all stats. Over 36% battles were in BBs, five top dmg dealer are BBs....

 

Observation of low number of cruisers is wrong. They were second most played class with almost 30%.

 

That complete and utter math fail...

 

Ranked was 7vs7, not 1vs1.

[veslingr]

7 minutes ago, thisismalacoda said:

That complete and utter math fail...

 

Ranked was 7vs7, not 1vs1.

How world you know?:)

[gslick]

13 minutes ago, veslingr said:

How world you know?:)

Because he played in ranked and YOU did NOT!!  I conclude you are a CV troll and deserve ignore.

[veslingr]

Just now, gslick said:

Because he played in ranked and YOU did NOT?  I conclude you are a CV troll and deserve ignore.

Don't conclude. It is not your stronger side. 

[MaxL_1023]

My god, I leave for a few hours and the thread jumps the shark. 

 

The popularity data makes sense - add every ship together and you get 100%, representing all ships who played in ranked. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DasTongle]

One Re- Roll to the other Re-Roll... 

CVS are so bad... 

No CVs are so good....

 

Polar Opposites. *laughs*

I for my part did not see anything remotely to what was described in the OP.

DDs where only obliterated when they moved into objectives to fast and or without Support... I know I know you saw it diffrently from your position arround 15km Away in the Kremlin. But it doesn't change the fact that CVs Promoted at least some response in gameplay and teamplay. And before anyone quotes stats on me, no Hakuryu aint Overperforming you just have a juicy pool of BB Players that are very much like i need to go on max range alone to farm damage.... and then get farmed in return. 

And OP no offense a Kremlin Player calling for a Haku nerf.. very suspicious that ship is hard to counter as it is. haku just does that.