First T8 premium CV. Which should be?

[sultanmurad]

My clan mate wants to buy a first  t8 premium CV. Which one to choose? why? Thx.

o7

 

1.Kaga

2.Graf

3.Saipan

4.Indomitable

 

[asalonen]

Now that Enterprise is gone it's either Kaga or Saipan, but for very different reasons.

 

Kaga is a lot of fun and very strong. You can spam low-tier planes at the enemy like nothing else, and you can farm amazing damage then top tier. The sheer number of torps you can dump into enemy battleships sometimes makes them salty... Kaga would be my first choice.

 

Saipan has very few planes but they are strong for T8. I've only tried it as rental, so very briefly, but the potential is obvious. Just take good care of the planes and don't eat flak -- and looking at the stats above this shouldn't be a problem.

 

Disclaimer: I haven't tried Graf Zeppelin or Indomitable. But with Parseval now in game I'm not sure if Graf Zeppelin is that interesting anymore. And I haven't heard anybody say good things about Indomitable, ever.

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

Kaga cuz noobs but none really. He should just play silver onez.

[_HomTanks_]

Although its planes can deal great amount of damage, Saipan is one of the most difficult CVs to play due to its low plane reserves and slow regeneration. 
 

Kaga is the most forgiving perhaps as you won’t ever get deplaned unless you keep suiciding your squadrons to tier 10 ships. It is kinda like ark royal.

 

GZ, is not bad. Its  best trick is the speed of its planes. AP bombs are good except they are inconsistent, torps are good but low damage.

 

I don’t have indomitable so I will refrain myself from commenting about it.

[invicta2012]

I have a Kaga and a Graf Zep - played the Kaga a lot in Asymmetric Battles. Good for an inexperienced player as you have lots of planes available. Graf has very fast planes, which is fun, but it doesn't have the hard-hitting weapons of the silver Tier VIII. Saipan looks past its peak, and Indomitable has the most beautiful planes in the game but isn't fun to play. 

[Allied_Winter]

@Excavatus What's Saipan's current state? Recommandable? Or less so?

 

Personally I'd go for Kaga, but I'm not really good at CV's so... take it with a ton of salt.

[Pururut]

No premium tier 8 aircraft carrier is currently worth the ~220 lira cost. Given liras free fall, that is unlikely to change soon.

 

I look for three things in a carrier; the planes durability, speed and practicality. Practicality is how convenient it is to drop the payload; for example I prefer Lexington to Shoukaku all day because Lexington can drop more torpedoes in a single run and have reliable dive bombers with HE bombs. With that in mind, lets look at the tier 8 premium carriers.

 

Graf Zeppelin is the worst out of four. Its torpedoes deal low damage and AP bombs are unreliable. Rocket planes used to have one of the best anti-dd convergence but with the last update that is taken away. Rocket planes poor speed and the overall low durability of all squadrons makes this CV a poor choice especially when uptiered.

 

Saipan suffered the most from changes to rocket plane convergence. It had Tiny Tims, huge but few rockets with immense damage potential. These rockets are also present on Lexington and could easily deal 10k+ damage to a battleship or a cruiser in a single run. With the elliptic convergence rocket planes need to attack a ships side and that makes rockets a lot more prone to hit the belt armor and shatter, greatly reducing their efficiency. Dive bombers and torpedo bombers are still good but the ship overall is very unforgiving due to lack of reserves and extensive restoration time and  thus is a source of stress.

 

Kaga is the only CV that is somewhat worthy of purchase. Planes are fragile but you get copious reserves. Rockets are run-of-the-mill but the selling point are those easily aimed HE dive bombers and torpedo planes with 4 drops per run. 
 

Indomitable is Ark Royal but worse. Ark Royals defining feature is its dive bombers. They practice quantity over quality , lots of quickly dropped small HE bombs most of which shatter against deck armor of equal tiered cruisers and battleships. They are extremely effective against destroyers however. Indomitable sacrifices torpedo planes, squad size and reserves of Ark Royal in exchange for insane speed with and without the boost. If its dive bombers didn't shatter against deck armor or if it kept torpedo planes, it would have been a worthy purchase along with Kaga.

 

Long story short; either get Kaga or keep playing Lexington. The remainder are either inferior or stress inducing.
 

 

 

 

[UnterSeeBot]

1st t8 premium CV? Kaga.

Saipan best avoided, since recent changes to CV gameplay have hit it quite hard.

If OP has no premium CVs, at all, of any tier, I'd recommend tier 6 Ark Royal, for ease of gameplay.

Best value? Erich Loewenhardt at tier 6 is an excellent premium, very affordable, plainly overpowered.

[Purnylla]

Interesting topic. I like to play CVs but haven't bought any of the premiums. I'm considering to buy the Ark Royal, which may be fun to use in operations as well. I've read about the descriptions of the other premium CVs, but none of them really sound very interesting to me. 

[El2aZeR]

If you have the money for it whale for Enterprise in Xmas containers.

Otherwise none of them are really worth getting as they're just straight up inferior to the tech tree ones.

[CptBarney]

None, i suggest playing over 100 battles + on the CV's he and you have so that you have a better sample size to draw from.

if for whatever reason you want a tier 8 prem cv, go for kaga.

[jss78]

19 minutes ago, Purnylla said:

Interesting topic. I like to play CVs but haven't bought any of the premiums. I'm considering to buy the Ark Royal, which may be fun to use in operations as well. I've read about the descriptions of the other premium CVs, but none of them really sound very interesting to me. 

I have both Ark Royal and Loewenhardt which I do use in operations. Ark Royal is "good" but I find her frustrating to play because the planes are so slow. Loewenhardt is my recent favourite in operations. I have her set up with 7.6 km secondaries. The ship itself moves at 37+ knots with Sierra Mike signal. Also the planes are fast. It's pretty hilarious overall, if you like operations in general.

 

I can't speak with confidence about their performance in PvP games, I haven't really played those with CV's since immediately after the rework landed.

[Purnylla]

6 minutes ago, jss78 said:

I have both Ark Royal and Loewenhardt which I do use in operations. Ark Royal is "good" but I find her frustrating to play because the planes are so slow. Loewenhardt is my recent favourite in operations. I have her set up with 7.6 km secondaries. The ship itself moves at 37+ knots with Sierra Mike signal. Also the planes are fast. It's pretty hilarious overall, if you like operations in general.

 

I can't speak with confidence about their performance in PvP games, I haven't really played those with CV's since immediately after the rework landed.

Thing is I'm having troubles aiming well with those AP rockets with the Weser. Also not a huge fan of the bomber planes with their aiming circle way below the planes. Assuming the Loewenhardt is similarish to the Weser, I don't think it's the right carrier for me. 

 

I'm quite fond of the British techtree CVs, especially their bomber planes, so Ark Royal seems like a better choice.

 

As for T8, still no clue. Indomitable would've been an option if it wouldn't be limited to only 2 plane types...

 

[ImperialAdmiral]

Kaga definitely.

[Verblonde]

1 hour ago, Purnylla said:

I'm considering to buy the Ark Royal, which may be fun to use in operations as well.

I don't really play CVs in PvP, but mine gets a lot of use in Ops; for the latter, Ark Royal is excellent - being able to drop three torps at once can be extremely helpful, for a start.

 

13 minutes ago, Purnylla said:

Assuming the Loewenhardt is similarish to the Weser, I don't think it's the right carrier for me.

I find her to be pretty decent in Ops, although my damage totals tend to be higher in Ark Royal; the bombers did take a little getting used to - for me anyway - but are worth the effort (ditto the German AP ones too); they do a lot of damage and have an excellent fire chance, combined with quite a user-friendly circular drop pattern. The torps are laughably bad, but you do get the stock rocket planes from the T8 silver CV; those are really useful in Ops with lots of cruisers.

 

BTW I should mention that I haven't tried either in Avoid Newport, for obvious reasons...

[Panocek]

Kaga would be easiest to play, as it takes consistent and repeated failing to actually deplane her. Rockets are highly mediocre, making her somewhat lacking against destroyers, but TB/DB work just fine against larger ships.

 

Saipan and GZ got hit somewhat hard by rocket dispersion change, former have next to no reserves and long replacement times, thus any mistake will be felt dearly. GZ is... secondary memeboat?

 

Indomitable...

[DinkyDi]

CV that existed and fought in real battle

[invicta2012]

2 hours ago, Verblonde said:

BTW I should mention that I haven't tried either in Avoid Newport, for obvious reasons...

The German ones are splendid in Newport. Their cruiser killing ways are very useful there.  Weser is also very strong in Killer Whale, Loewenhardt better at Aegis.  Ark Royal is also very good, I find my damage per Op to have gone up quite substantially since the last patch.

[invicta2012]

(on the subject of CVs, I don't know what they did to Furious in the last patch but the poor girl has been nerfed into the ground). 

[Comrad_StaIin]

don't get any of them the Tech Tree CVs are just better in every way.

 

the only really worthy Premium CV is Enterprise, Kaga kinda comes close with those spammable torp bombers but it suffers when up tiered

[The_Chiv]

KAGA

[Verblonde]

4 hours ago, invicta2012 said:

(on the subject of CVs, I don't know what they did to Furious in the last patch but the poor girl has been nerfed into the ground). 

Interesting that you say that: I took Furious out in the current Op earlier, and didn't do nearly as well as with the various others - I thought it was just me being rubbish...

[Excavatus]

10 hours ago, El2aZeR said:

If you have the money for it whale for Enterprise in Xmas containers.

Otherwise none of them are really worth getting as they're just straight up inferior to the tech tree ones.

 

11 hours ago, Allied_Winter said:

@Excavatus What's Saipan's current state? Recommandable? Or less so?

 

Personally I'd go for Kaga, but I'm not really good at CV's so... take it with a ton of salt.

@El2aZeR is basically right. I wouldn't buy any of them right now. 

 

Graf: She was okish, rocket reticule hit her hard. 

Saipan: She is probably the one took the hardest hit from rocket reticule change. She is almost dead now. 

Kaga: she is still ok, has no competitive value, nice for farming damage, does not have great carry potential

Indom: ha.. hahah..AHAHAHAHAH!!! No.. Just no.. 

 

To be frank, saipan was great until they killed her TiTs. Graf was different.. her torps and AP bombs are still fun to use, but right now she is very weak against DDs, and DDs should be the priority target for the CVs. 

If your friend wants to play a tier 8 CV, his best choice is right now is Shokek.. Lexy is the runner up... then nothing else. 

 

Whaling christmas containers for Enty is actually the best choice.. sadly.. 

[Sunleader]

12 hours ago, sultanmurad said:

My clan mate wants to buy a first  t8 premium CV. Which one to choose? why? Thx.

o7

 

1.Kaga

2.Graf

3.Saipan

4.Indomitable

 

 

None.

No Offense Intended. And not gonna go that "bah CV Players Evil" stuff.

 

But right now. None of the Premium CVs is worth Paying a Single Euro for.

 

1.

Kaga

Kaga is a Nice CV. And in General I like Playing her. But she cant really Carry Games by Taking out the Enemies Destroyers. And Carrying is a CVs Primary Job.

Carrying a Game by killing Cruisers or doing Relevant Damage is much harder. And honestly said. There is better CVs for that.

 

2.

Graf Zeppelin

Graf is a Fun CV to Play with a Secondary Build. Because your Secondaries have an Accuracy that is just Insane. Its 4-5 Times better than the Accuracy on German or US Battleships.

But in terms of Planes. Graf suffers.

In the past you had Strong Rocket Planes with alot of Punch even against Battleships but also against DDs. And your Rocket Planes got a Short Attack Distance and a Vertical Spread which was very good for Hunting DDs and Cruisers.

But after the Patch. Grafs Rockets became utterly unusable. The Horizontal Spread is Horrible and killing DDs with them has become incredible RNG reliant.

Its Dive Bombers have always been very Wonky and were usually just used as stopgap measure in between.

Which means that now the Grafs only really usable Squadron is the Torpedo Bombers which is not Bad. But also not Special. Its pretty Mediocre. Leaving GZ pretty much useless by now.

 

3.

Saipan

Another Victim of the Rocket Spread Update. The Tiny Tims were very Powerful against DDs and Cruisers. But after the Update they are basicly useless.

Your Torps were never good. Leaving only your Dive Bombers.

But with the low Reserves your Dive Bombers tend to be Depleted fast cause they tend to spend alot of time in Close Range AA Fire.

Leaving Saipan Crippled currently.

 

4.

Indomitable....

Yeah lets not talk about that. This one was Dead on Arrival. Dont even know if the Update Crippled it. Because it was always weak anyways....

 

 

 

 

Currently.

If your looking for a T8 CV.

Shokaku is the Top Pick for anyone who doesnt have Enterprise.

 

So instead of getting a Premium CV.

Grind up or Free Exp to Shokaku.

Its worth far more than anything you can get for Real Money right now.

[Purnylla]

I haven't been closely following the details for the upcoming commander skill rework, but in the new skill system, can the German carriers still be specced for secondaries?