Post-IFHE rework experience

[Aragathor]

More than a month passed since IFHE and armor were changed. We all had a chance to adapt to the changed mechanics.

I'd love to hear how you are handling it, have you changed how you play, have you stopped playing certain ships? Share it.

 

 

I myself have stopped playing Atlanta, there is no point in playing that ship anymore. The ship has been slammed with two global nerfs that took away all the strengths, first the AA, second the damage. Now the ship is the worst performing USN cruiser at tier 7. 

On the other hand I haven't noticed anything change for Perth, that ship still performs like before. Also, I have found that Yorck went from one of the worst cruisers at T7 (way back when it had pre-WW1 AP) to being one of the best.

 

So I'd love to hear from you about your post-IFHE rework experience.

[ollonborre]

Atlanta indeed got slammed hard and became really annoying to play. I changed my build on some ships, my Wooster no longer has IFHE and honestly does fine. 32 mm plating is not that common anymore sadly so a full flamethrower build seems to be the way to go.

 

The Belfast was one of the ships I was curious about. Tried it with IFHE and it was honestly kind of meh. The raw damage on certain ships stayed the same and on others it was shatter city (thanks to 31 and not 32 mm of pen) not to mention the fire chance. So I tried dropping IFHE for RPF, and it has been utterly hilarious. So that tradeoff worked I guess, get IFHE for more damage on cruisers and same tier BB's, get RPF to absolutely murder every DD you encounter and burn down everything else.

 

It is a mixed bag, some ships does fine and others became really annoying to play. Overall I guess it has worked to a degree but I still think it has been pushed into the live servers as part of testing and not being tested fully previously (I mean barely 2 weeks with resets to try out if the rework is fine? Come on).

 

EDIT: I nearly forgot, one of the things I agree on with the IFHE change is the reduced firechance as the tradeoff was nearly non existent previously. What I don't agree on is penetration on certain tiers, which means lower tier cruisers for example get completely shafted when up tiered. Because now you don't have the penetration to really hurt BB's and you can't get fires either really since the firechance is much lower. Damage or fires should be the tradeoff, not neither of them.

[Resolutlon]

well to be fair i am grinding Harugumo line, and i am kind of confused if i should get IFHE or RPF, 30mm base pen should be fine to pen cruisers and for bbs i can always farm superstructure, and added fire bonus, then again for certain carry situations i think IFHE would perform better.

[Danucu_Tigger]

I played Dimitri Donskoi quite a lot lately, trying to grind for Moskva, with a sub-optimal captain (no IFHE). I noticed a very high proportion of shatters and barely 825-1650hp salvos on tier 9-10 ships. Every now and then, when I got to bully tier7 ships, I achieved 3-4k salvos. Fire chance remained disappointing even without the IFHE penalty.

On the other hand, I noticed no change while playing Seattle with IFHE, compared to before the rework.

[KielYourself]

Overall, nothing changed for me. Most if not all builds are the same and even though atlanta got hit hard, I can still do the same results with her as before. 

 

The only change I notice is that german secondaries hit very hard now. 

[invicta2012]

Pleased to see the love for Yorck, I've always liked that ship, and since the AP buff it's been great. 

 

Am finding Tier VIII USN type CLs much less effective than they were, which is frustrating as they used to be great. I don't understand the logic for why Cleveland's guns hit harder than Helena's as they are the same guns and it brings the whole order of the US CL line into question - it's almost as if the original order, with Cleveland lower down, now makes more sense than the current one. Perhaps WG could trial a Tier VIII Brooklyn class? 

 

Atlanta still rules Narai, but it's hopeless against higher Tier ships, and USN DDs have also suffered for the same reasons - you are just hoping to set a fire, really. In DDs you can try and use AP but Atlanta is far too squishy to make the angles work. 

 

I don't know about Soviet cruisers and the impact on them, as I can't stand that line of ships.

[DirtyHeddy]

My Experience:

 

US CL have suffered a little, but with DE AND IFHE my Helena still works to my satisfaction with reasonable damage output and still lighting many fires, Cleveland is no longer one of my favorites.

German CL seem to have no difference

I do not use russian CL at this moment, so I can't tell about differences

 

[ForlornSailor]

1 hour ago, Danucu_Tigger said:

I played Dimitri Donskoi quite a lot lately,[...] with a sub-optimal captain (no IFHE)

Wouldnt pick IFHE on Donskoi any longer. And if you plan to move the cpt to Moskva then for sure not.

 

54 minutes ago, Miki12345 said:

The only change I notice is that german secondaries hit very hard now. 

 

Yup those dumb Kurfürst players are actually annoying now...

 

@topic: I dont think Ive played any light cruiser since IFHE rework? So thats what changed for me.

[creamgravy]

Huge nerf for tier 7.

 

Spoiler

My IFHE KGV only has a 22.5% fire chance now!

 

Wasn't around for the free respec ...again, so I've got a whole new bunch of useless captains. 

 

[Miscommunication_dept]

Took IFHE off all my Light cruiser captains but still enjoy them.

Its only when trying to farm British or french BBs that IFHE is stronger. 
It’s worse to have IFHE than not against Soviet and German battleships.

 

Tier 7 received a big nerf with this change though.

[Panocek]

Barely playing cruisers anymore to begin with. And on those that used to run with IFHE, only Mogami/155 retained it for unique-ish 38mm pen, rest is running firestarting build.

[Stormhawk_V]

The plating changes to cruisers below T10 and midtier BBs massively nerfed all gunboat DDs especially those with 120mm guns. Coupled with the reduced IFHE pen it now gives a similar benefit to using the skill on a T10 DD prior to the rework which was never worth it. First I switched to DE+PM but didn't like not being able to see the direct effects of my skills so I took RPF. Basically I'm now unable to stop a lowtier cruiser from pushing nose first into me.

 

I really dislike the changes because not only does it limit your options to farm damage even further after flooding got nerfed into the ground, it also makes it harder to profit from a game economy that doesn't reward capping or spotting. You're now even more focused on the anti DD role and are left with no good targets when the CV kills them or they suicide into a radar cruiser or there are simply not enough DDs in the game.

 

It definately adds to making the game more and more unfun for DDs and I have the feeling WG has just started.

[Miscommunication_dept]

You used IFHE On your destroyers before the rework?

[Stormhawk_V]

1 hour ago, gopher31 said:

You used IFHE On your destroyers before the rework?

Yes, on dedicated midtier captains and the one for Cossack/Lightning. Only exception was Leningrad I think. It used to be extremely effective because of all the 25mm plating up to T9.

 

Edit:

The captain of my Kidd also used IFHE for a short time after WG trashed AA builds but improved T8 MM.

[Aragathor]

1 hour ago, gopher31 said:

You used IFHE On your destroyers before the rework?

It was good on ships like Blyska and Haida. Now it's not.

 

8 hours ago, Panocek said:

Barely playing cruisers anymore to begin with. And on those that used to run with IFHE, only Mogami/155 retained it for unique-ish 38mm pen, rest is running firestarting build.

Mogami became a hidden winner besides Yorck. Now the armor is really nice.

[N00Boo7]

Cossack/Lighting never need it IFHE to work, only Jutland and Daring (both 113mm guns versus 120 mm Cossack/Lighting)

 

[VeryHonarbrah]

No changes at higher tiers, but I mid tier t6-7 cls do tend to struggle to do any dmg to bbs, especially when up tiered. Mostly focusing on the schores, Abruzzi, Dallas. 

[Panocek]

18 minutes ago, N00Boo7 said:

Cossack/Lighting never need it IFHE to work, only Jutland and Daring (both 113mm guns versus 120 mm Cossack/Lighting)

 

IFHE captain from Daring was very balans on Cossack when interacting with cruisers or lowtier BBs

[Stormhawk_V]

3 minutes ago, N00Boo7 said:

Cossack/Lighting never need it IFHE to work, only Jutland and Daring (both 113mm guns versus 120 mm Cossack/Lighting)

There's of course a difference between a useful skill and one that is absolutely needed to make the ship work but IFHE was very powerful on all 120mm gunboats. Imo there was no other second 4 pointer that came even remotely close and IFHE not being viable any more limits these ships a lot. Doesn't mean they're bad now as many are still very good DD hunters out of the box and now I even run RPF on most of them but with the rework their HE will never pen more than DD plating and superstructure which does make a difference for a DD that relies on its guns. Ultimately the IFHE rework is also a DD nerf regarding damage potential.

 

1 minute ago, Panocek said:

IFHE captain from Daring was very balans on Cossack when interacting with cruisers or lowtier BBs

I almost felt sorry for all those Colorados. Almost. They couldn't run, they couldn't hide and the lack of superstructure didn't help either.

[Miscommunication_dept]

I'm surprised so many used IFHE pre-rework. I can certainly see why it would be helpful but for DDs  there are many other very useful skills.

 

I found more use for DDs in tier 3 skills: BFT , Survivability expert and demolition expert/ superintendent.

 

I wanted to have RPF on my Oland but with survivability expert, torpedo reload and BFT, I have no points left.

[Stormhawk_V]

13 hours ago, gopher31 said:

I'm surprised so many used IFHE pre-rework. I can certainly see why it would be helpful but for DDs  there are many other very useful skills.

 

I found more use for DDs in tier 3 skills: BFT , Survivability expert and demolition expert/ superintendent.

 

I wanted to have RPF on my Oland but with survivability expert, torpedo reload and BFT, I have no points left.

I'd drop BFT for RPF. It's a must have on torpedo boats. DE is buffing RNG which may or may not help with fires and at T10 you get very little for your three points thanks to the build-in fire resistance. For the midtiers it's perfectly fine though. Superintendant is only useful in long games where you actually get to use the additional charges but it's very strong in these situations. BFT is most useful on ships with longer reload as you won't always get the full 10% out of it unless you hold down mouse 1 which I try to avoid.

 

Before we got the pan EU DDs all ships with 120mm guns were pure gunboats. Their torps were either short ranged, had a long reload, or both. Using IFHE did not only allow you to farm direct damage in addition to fires, it made you the bane of cruisers and you didn't have to deal with the saturation mechanic when shooting these ships. Also their AP was for some reason a lot worse than USN DD AP even though their barrels were longer so they kinda needed good HE. The pan EU DDs have longer barrels so I can understand that their AP is better but I don't understand why the difference has to be that large.

[Uglesett]

On 5/3/2020 at 11:16 AM, ForlornSailor said:

Wouldnt pick IFHE on Donskoi any longer. And if you plan to move the cpt to Moskva then for sure not.

My average damage in her sure went up by a lot when I did get the necessary skill points for it, though .

 

And with the split coming up, the captain is better off going to the Nevsky anyway. I figure I'll train a new skipper for the CA line that'll also work on the Moskva.

[Miscommunication_dept]

With the Donskoi I now find myself using a lot more AP. That’s definitely worth doing.

 

my theory is this with light cruiser IFHE.

 

If I’m not shooting At 32mm plating, IFHE is making me LESS effective.
 

If I’m shooting at a Kremlin or especially a GK at range, I am not hitting 32mm plating often at all.

 

If its a Yamato or Montana I have the whole bow and stern but not a lot else.

 

If I’m targeting a Republique or Conqueror then yes I’m hitting 32mm all the time and I’m unlikely to saturate the casemate.

 

So Having IFHE

 

Is worse against:

German and soviet battleships

All cruisers

All Destroyers

 

Is better against:

French and British battleships

 

It could be better against USN and Japanese battleships but at ranges where most HE spam occurs you will be aiming for centre mass and hitting superstructure at the 37mm+ armoured deck.

I say IFHE is a hinderance even here.

 

I do use IFHE on my Japanese gunboats though. Due to low base fire chance you can more than make up for lack of fire chance with DE and flags. Also, due to the closer ranges of combat, you can target individual sections of a ship more easily.

 

[Aetius85]

Stopped playing Atlanta, now is a useless ship thanks to this rework

[BruceRKF]

In my opinion, for high tier CLs you actually now have a decent choice between no and yes to IFHE. I only use it if I can also slot DE, so will  take De first and then IFHE at the end. They work fine without. However, CLs below tier 8 got seriously shafted by the rework whenever uptiered. They are either hopeless against BBs (with IFHE, cannot set any fires) or hopeless against cruisers (cannot pen 27/30 mm without IFHE). Your choice of poison.