Tanking isn't worth it

[The_Stigs_wet_cousin]

I occasionally play BBs but noticed, tanking (which is one of the main roles of a BB) just doesn't pay. You tank millions of pot dmg but get bugger all for it.

[AnotherDuck]

2 minutes ago, ArsenicIndigo said:

I occasionally play BBs but noticed, tanking (which is one of the main roles of a BB) just doesn't pay. You tank millions of pot dmg but get bugger all for it.

The only thing that matters is damage, counting percentage, not raw numbers. Sure, you get rewards for other things, but everything other than damage is pocket change.

[ColonelPete]

10 minutes ago, ArsenicIndigo said:

I occasionally play BBs but noticed, tanking (which is one of the main roles of a BB) just doesn't pay. You tank millions of pot dmg but get bugger all for it.

Useless tanking does not pay.

Good tanking creates opportunities. Use them. That pays the bills.

 

No tanking --> no opportunities --> low income

[Azalgor]

28 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

Useless tanking does not pay.

Shooting down spotter plane pays better than any amount of potential damage, so why even bother making opportunitiest? Once the team sees you beying focused they run TF away resulting in nothing but a suicide. 

45 minutes ago, ArsenicIndigo said:

You tank millions of pot dmg but get bugger all for it.

If you didnt notice thats why BB mostly camp somewhere where the sunlights dont reach. Tanking is suicide.

43 minutes ago, AnotherDuck said:

The only thing that matters is damage, counting percentage

This. Forget caps, forget defending, just click shoot.

[ColonelPete]

21 minutes ago, Azalgor said:

Shooting down spotter plane pays better than any amount of potential damage, so why even bother making opportunitiest?

Because you can do more damage that way.

Shooting from 18km gets you only so far. The closer you get, the more damage you can do on more valuable targets. It just pays better.

[Jethro_Grey]

It keeps team mates alive, creates opportunities and wins games. I‘d say, it’s very much worth it. 

[Itwastuesday]

It would pay if most teams of randoms weren't such total cowards. They will never follow you under any circumstance so your tanking does nothing but get you killed.

 

If you get a good division, then it's a different world.

[GarrusBrutus]

Spotting also doenst yield much xp yet it is a huge factor in deciding games. Same goes for tanking: No you dont get a lot of xp for potential damage tanked but when you tanked 2,5 million than all that damage isnt done to your cruisers and/or DDs. Higher chance for them to survive means a higher chance that your team wins.

1 hour ago, Azalgor said:

If you didnt notice thats why BB mostly camp somewhere where the sunlights dont reach. Tanking is suicide.

When you mistake tanking for suiciding you're simply doing it all wrong. Tanking isnt going ballsdeep and let the enemy use you as a punching bag. Tanking means deflecting the enemy fire away from the most vulnerable targets in your team either via armor or via manoeuvrability (f. e. kleber/khaba). Most BBs see taking damage as a negative thing that will lead to their immediate deaths: Fact remains that they have the best tools to stay afloat from all classes. Its a question of looking at the minimap to know how and where to position yourself. It is so easy to judge a BB players skilllevel by his first minute movement: Too fast forward or too far behind probably means he is a potato. For them tanking means "suicide" because they will never get to use all of heals.

[ColonelPete]

29 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

It would pay if most teams of randoms weren't such total cowards. They will never follow you under any circumstance so your tanking does nothing but get you killed.

 

If you get a good division, then it's a different world.

That is why we talk about tanking and not suiciding. Gettting sunk in 5 minutes does not allow much tanking.

[AnotherDuck]

One way tanking does help a lot is when you power through a push. If the enemy holds a location, or if a cap is under contest, then pushing into it can drive the enemy away from the area. I've done that multiple times in Yamato and Missouri, which are probably the two BBs I've played the most recently.

 

One example was when an enemy BB sat behind an island, locking a cap, with defenders behind. I noticed my team was anxious to break the stalemate, so I took my Yamato and slowly poked around the corner. Took a lot of damage, but nothing can tank a Yamato at 2 km. With that BB gone, the rest of the enemy team couldn't stand my team attacking, dispersed, and died. I survived, barely, thanks to a UK CL smoking me up so I could go dark and heal.

 

With Missouri, that's basically my MO. Wait until I get a decent opportunity, then load HE, go straight into the cap, fire up the radar, and then watch the enemy DDs die. Unlike most radar ships, Missouri can tank enough to survive that push long enough for the cap to be secured.

[Itwastuesday]

17 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

That is why we talk about tanking and not suiciding. Gettting sunk in 5 minutes does not allow much tanking.

Erm. So because of the notorious cowardice of random teams, we're talking about doing the what now? 

[ColonelPete]

5 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

Erm. So because of the notorious cowardice of random teams, we're talking about doing the what now? 

Tanking means taking damage and survive longer, not taking damage and get sunk in 5 minutes.

When your teams is 5 km behind your and you are the sole target for 5 enemies and get sunk, you are doing it wrong.

[Itwastuesday]

1 minute ago, ColonelPete said:

Tanking means taking damage and survive longer, not taking damage and get sunk in 5 minutes.

When your teams is 5 km behind your and you are the sole target for 5 enemies and get sunk, you are doing it wrong.

 

What is this damage that you're supposed to take, then, when you're all behind islands or driving away, and for what purpose do you take it? Doesn't seem like there's a good reason to get in range of HE spam just so everybody can sit behind islands more. 

 

Though perhaps battleship sniping duels are tanking?

[I_come_bearing_gifts]

3 minutes ago, AnotherDuck said:

With Missouri, that's basically my MO. Wait until I get a decent opportunity, then load HE, go straight into the cap, fire up the radar, and then watch the enemy DDs die. Unlike most radar ships, Missouri can tank enough to survive that push long enough for the cap to be secured.

Yesterday, I took the Kremlin into cap with Z46 and Chap supporting from the start, and got battered down to 9k. The Z46 bought it and was the only ship to die on our team. The battle ended after a full health Amalfie showed me its broadside. 7min 17secs was the total battle time and I earned 989 base xp. 

 

The highest base xp on the other side was 760. If BBs don't want to hemorrhage credits they may want to get involved from the start with all these steamroller battles.

[AnotherDuck]

1 hour ago, CallmeMessi said:

... with all these steamroller battles.

Honestly, my experience is that most battles might be decisive, but they're not steamrollers. And a fair few are close enough for small decisions to change the tide.

[Dark_Knight08]

I think there is more too it. The balance of the game is off. BBs from tier 8 and up not worth it anymore cause you are either chased by a DD you cant see and who can fire the strongest weapon in game without getting spotted, be H.E spammed from a cruiser hiding behind an island so you cant see it, hit it, get to it or get away from it and many overpowered ships that will very easily sink something like a Kurfurst as example. This means BBs cant really go forward and tank and thereby use the healtpool they have cause you die very very fast if you do so. So the balance of the game prevents tanking and using a BB for what its made for. Also i think that too many think of doing personal damage more than thinking as a team, so there is a lot of damage farming and hiding behind islands and running to the edges of map, more than an actual battle pushing forward to win. It is very very rare i end up on a team in a random battle who actually wants to push and try to dominate the battle. The game mechanics does not support active gameplay and does not get people to work as a team...so again tanking is a fast way to die until maybe one day WG will wake up and rebalance the game.

[Bratoev]

11 hours ago, ArsenicIndigo said:

I occasionally play BBs but noticed, tanking (which is one of the main roles of a BB) just doesn't pay. You tank millions of pot dmg but get bugger all for it.

Its not a main role, tho they can take damage more then any other class. Any ship which doges a salvo is tanking. BB are there to deliver massive alpha and force the reds to bail or die. 

 

[BrettMRC]

Getting in there and tanking means your taking fire that the rest of the team isn't - assuming you are not in Team Potatoe then that should enable swift progress for the team as a whole.

[Ubertron_X]

11 hours ago, ColonelPete said:

Useless tanking does not pay.

Good tanking creates opportunities. Use them. That pays the bills.

 

No tanking --> no opportunities --> low income

You mean, like, getting chased by more than half of the enemy team for 10+ minutes while you drag them to some obscure part of the map only to realize that on your numerically stronger flank one enemy DD (or clan division) singlehandedly managed to outplay almost your entire team, you are behind in kills as well as caps and the battle is lost without you being able to do much apart from taking an extended beating from superior forces for an elongated period of time?

 

And yes this a of course somewhat exaggerated but no this is entirely not a rare occurance.

[olmedreca]

Tanking is a normal side effect of applying forward pressure with your BB whenever practicable, which is a fairly important part of playing your BB well. It is less about "I am forward to soak all this damage" and more about "I am forward so enemies need to pull back or eat more damage from me, and I can do it because I have large healthpool + repairs".

[BruceRKF]

I also believe that tanking is not rewarded enough. Say, you get out of a battle with only 70k damage, but have 3.5 million potential. You have been invaluable for your team by soaking up the damage and enabled your team to dish out damage safely. In the score list you get somewhere around 8th place. Noboy will ever know that you have been important for the team. Yes, there is useless tanking (e.g. yoloing), but still it should be rewarded a bit more.

It's the same for spotting for DDs. You can screen for your team all game long, barely do any damage if you get unlucky with your torps and then also land in the middle or bottom of the score sheet, while those that took advantge from your spotting top the board.

[Azalgor]

9 hours ago, GarrusBrutus said:

Tanking means deflecting the enemy fire away from the most vulnerable targets

LoL. Today BB just get set on fire on cooldowns and burn to death, while those suposedly vulnerable targetrs get blapped by focus fire. Armor is long meaningless due to changes in mechanics.

 

 

[Taliesn]

26 minutes ago, BruceRKF said:

I also believe that tanking is not rewarded enough. Say, you get out of a battle with only 70k damage, but have 3.5 million potential. You have been invaluable for your team by soaking up the damage and enabled your team to dish out damage safely. In the score list you get somewhere around 8th place. Noboy will ever know that you have been important for the team. Yes, there is useless tanking (e.g. yoloing), but still it should be rewarded a bit more.

It's the same for spotting for DDs. You can screen for your team all game long, barely do any damage if you get unlucky with your torps and then also land in the middle or bottom of the score sheet, while those that took advantge from your spotting top the board.

 

This. How XP/credits are calculated could do with a little (moderate) tweak. Being the target of real and potential 3m damage through the match should be better rewarded. That's 3m that could have gone towards a couple of cruisers and sunk them easily. Ditto for cruisers and DDs

[ColonelPete]

9 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

 

What is this damage that you're supposed to take, then, when you're all behind islands or driving away, and for what purpose do you take it? Doesn't seem like there's a good reason to get in range of HE spam just so everybody can sit behind islands more. 

 

Though perhaps battleship sniping duels are tanking?

You still have to be in range.

1 hour ago, Ubertron_X said:

You mean, like, getting chased by more than half of the enemy team for 10+ minutes while you drag them to some obscure part of the map only to realize that on your numerically stronger flank one enemy DD (or clan division) singlehandedly managed to outplay almost your entire team, you are behind in kills as well as caps and the battle is lost without you being able to do much apart from taking an extended beating from superior forces for an elongated period of time?

 

And yes this a of course somewhat exaggerated but no this is entirely not a rare occurance.

That is not exactly what I mean as it does not create opportunities for you. It sounds more like survival than purposeful tanking.

14 minutes ago, Azalgor said:

Armor is long meaningless due to changes in mechanics.

Right....

You never heard about Overmatching rules, riccochet or HE penetration thresholds?

[Itwastuesday]

Eh, I still don't see it. For me, the big reason to get in there is so I can better kill off the cruisers personally, it's not like somebody else is going to do it.