Lolz.. I just realized how completely useless cap skills are for cruisers

[zheng_he14]

24 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

Fair points, but I think the lines you're referring to (PA and IJN cruisers) don't need these skills. They have very effective torpedo loads without buffs, especially the PA ones which have those DWTs and TRB, and most players will take skills like IFHE and Heavy HE instead to make their DD calibre main battery effective.  A US CL with no torpedoes and 6 inch guns, though, isn't well served by the options available... 

 

I'd quite like to see torpedo options limited, replaced with a Basics of Survivability 3pt skill for cruisers, an AFT type skill for small cruisers, and the Heavy HE/SAP skill rules flipped so that it *increases* detection on ships with small calibre guns and becomes more of a buff for traditional 6 inch HE cruisers. 

The IJN lights definitely benefit from swift fish given their torps detectability and base speed but hilighting one class like this or USN CLs vis-a-vis another is a waste of time

 

Happy with the Cruiser skills as they are they buff utility and damage, essentially what cruisers are about, the Italian/PA ones that don't have much utility end up having to be buff'ed for damage but that's the nature of the line! The squishiest ones get smoke and/or heals to offset their lack of survivability, they're cruisers and meant to be played with care not surrogate battleships. If a particular ship/line has an issue the characteristics of that ship/line should be adjusted (e.g. heal for Harbin) there shouldn't be captain skills that change a Neptune into a Riga (extreme example to illustrate point)! rather the skills and equipment should allow a player to adjust the ship to their playstyle but still fit within the underlying characteristics of the ship/line in question

[tocqueville8]

1 hour ago, invicta2012 said:

Fair points, but I think the lines you're referring to (PA and IJN cruisers) don't need these skills. They have very effective torpedo loads without buffs, especially the PA ones which have those DWTs and TRB, and most players will take skills like IFHE and Heavy HE instead to make their DD calibre main battery effective.  A US CL with no torpedoes and 6 inch guns, though, isn't well served by the options available... 

 

I'd quite like to see torpedo options limited, replaced with a Basics of Survivability 3pt skill for cruisers, an AFT type skill for small cruisers, and the Heavy HE/SAP skill rules flipped so that it *increases* detection on ships with small calibre guns and becomes more of a buff for traditional 6 inch HE cruisers. 

Torpedo skills in general are questionable in PvP, even on DDs imho, but in Brawls/Operations they bring good value.

 

The point of Heavy HE/SAP, I think, is to give a straight buff to super-light cruisers, which were nerfed by the loss of AFT, while also enabling lighthouse builds (together with TGG) on CAs/CBs with good ballistics, meaning a larger caliber, probably. As such, it's a skill I take on a lot of ships.

And honestly, which CL with DD-caliber guns needs a range buff that it can't get from the module in slot #6? Flint and...?

 

Sure, large cruisers were shafted with the loss of FP+BoS, but I think a nerf to the category was in order given how popular they were, especially in Ranked.

[invicta2012]

3 hours ago, zheng_he14 said:

Happy with the Cruiser skills as they are they buff utility and damage, essentially what cruisers are about, the Italian/PA ones that don't have much utility end up having to be buff'ed for damage but that's the nature of the line! The squishiest ones get smoke and/or heals to offset their lack of survivability, they're cruisers and meant to be played with care not surrogate battleships.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, really, and certainly not what would happen as a result of some captain skill changes. And  - in a modern and inclusive fashion - I think cruisers should be a widely defined group. After all, We have Battleships which are surrogate CVs (Kearsarge), CVs which have more surface gun power than a Destroyer (Graf Zep) , Destroyers which have aircraft attacks (Tromp) , Battleships which have bigger secondaries than cruiser main batteries (Atlantico), which are faster than many cruisers and have 1,000,000 secondaries (Schleiffen), so why limit cruisers to such strict criteria? 

 

2 hours ago, tocqueville8 said:

And honestly, which CL with DD-caliber guns needs a range buff that it can't get from the module in slot #6? Flint and...?

Anything below Tier IX, really, as they won't have a Slot 6. WG's attitude to Flint (a ship of fairly marginal power, these days) is quite funny, really. They must have been HE spammed to death by one at some point and are still taking it badly. 

 

2 hours ago, tocqueville8 said:

Sure, large cruisers were shafted with the loss of FP+BoS, but I think a nerf to the category was in order given how popular they were, especially in Ranked

Probably an over-reaction. BB type BoS would only reduce fire duration by 9 seconds on a super cruiser with a 60 second burn time, it doesn't make them invulnerable. 

[Andrewbassg]

3 hours ago, tocqueville8 said:

Flint and...?

And Nuevo/Boise. But the problem isn't necessarily the range, but the continuous shaftiing of cruisers.

[WarburtonLee]

8 hours ago, Seraphice said:

Not exactly sure what you mean here.
ships with the smallest guns actually have some nice advantages, like not having the concealment penalty on Heavy HE. Wouldn't say that other skills are now useless on them either.

Plenty of fine skills for cruisers imo. You mind telling me what exactly is bad about it?

 

Fair seas captain!
~Sera

What i can tell you though, is that there are some problems with captain skills in general, atleast imo. Some ships, like gunboats, really want alot more skills than they can get. Like for example, on my Khaba i would love getting RPF. CE would also be nice, but not as needed. On the other hand, Torpedoboats such as Shima, Asashio etc do just fine with a 10 pointer. They dont absolutely need SE, AR and such.  Gunboats need them all. Same with Cruisers in general, you get a 10 pointer and you are basically ok. Not saying rest of the skills is useless, but you can do fine without.  Gunboats cant. And BBs: Secondary focused BBs also cant get enough points. Why do a ship, that have their main advantage in secondaries over main battery, have to suffer worse survivability? I dont get it?

 

I have a quick solution to gunboats or dds in general, remove the range skill and buff their range to what the skill provided. Cruisers or BBs dont have to spend 4 points on getting a playable gun range...

[Viridem]

It depends on the ship.

When I planned for an eventual 21-points captain for Furutaka (which will probably never happen), I didn't really know what to pick. Some aspects are too weak to buff, the ship has little utility, and the strong aspects don't need a buff (plus it's tier 5, who needs 21 points at this tier!?!)...

 

The latest CL line however... You can pick AA skills with the AA upgrade in slot 6, you can pick both torpedo upgrades and the three torpedo skills. You can of course build for guns with the usual cookie cutter cruiser build, with or without IFHE, you can pick heavy HE with a lighthouse build or keep your concealment decent with both CE and the concealment upgrade (at the cost of rudder shift). Outnumbered is a good pick if you have the playstyle for it, some people run Survivability Expert too (which I find questionable at high tier, but still not a bad pick).

 

There are many ways to build your captain with significant consequences on the ship's performances and your playstyle.

 

I remember making a lighthouse build for Mogami last time we had free captain retraining. It was a challenge to work with 13.45km concealment, but with Top Grade Gunner and AR kicking in at low HP, I could reach 350k HE dpm... I didn't revert back to my usual build because lighthouse was ineffective -it was- but because it was too stressful.

 

Commander skills for cruisers are far from useless...

[Andrewbassg]

11 minutes ago, Viridem said:

The latest CL line however...

The latest line being the IJN? Well anything IJN has trash AA, so......

 

Still, the problems are multiple. For example I would advise against using the concealment module slot, because takes away the rudder slot which become very important since the removal of disp debuff from camo's. Just for comparison, the accuracy module gives 7% better accuracy and the disp debuff on camo''s gave 4%. And babbies received that for free.

 

Playing cruisers become much more dangerous, as a direct result. The days when the proverbial inaccuracy of KM babbies  was a thing, are long gone.

[Viridem]

8 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Well anything IJN has trash AA, so...

What are you talking about? The new line, starting tier 7, has one of the best AA for cruisers.

It's one of the salient aspects of the ships...

[Andrewbassg]

10 hours ago, WingedHussar_Adler said:

i know....i hope you will give some advice

Depends. I don't play Cv's subs or dd;s  But.

 

 

2300 BXP.

 

 

Just to make clear that I didnt cherry picked the screen And l'm not really playing randoms :) Besides there is nothing better in zs bait da monke game than trash stats

[Andrewbassg]

23 minutes ago, Viridem said:

What are you talking about? The new line, starting tier 7, has one of the best AA for cruisers.

 It's one of the salient aspects of the ships...

Really? i got the Omono, but I didn;t liked her so I didn't pursue them further

[DFens_666]

Is there really an argument if Cruiser skills are the most useless? I mean, having cramped several different types of ships, from Super CLs and CLs to CAs and BCs into one tree already dictates that. By having skills which either only work on certain ships or only benefit others without having a negative impact, this gets even worse.

You could have 40pt captains on DDs and BBs and it would always benefit you without any downsides attached. For Cruisers tho, this isnt the case at all.

 

Heavy HE/SAP: Super CL skill. Otherwise imo useless, except for like 5% of the playerbase who can and wants to run lighthouse build (personally not a fan, since it makes it harder to support your DDs).

IFHE: imo almost useless these days. Its too much of a nerf imo because too many BBs have armor which cant be penned with IFHE either. Id only use it on T6+8 maybe. And even there you can also get away with it just fine.

Outnumbered: this must just be the most useless skill ever. I guess its an intented BC skill, because of the dispersion buff and the staying power they have. But then again, their survivability got nerfed by removing anti-fire skills. For every other Cruiser: If you miss shells, its not dispersion, its because wrong aim. Having better dispersion doesnt fix this.

Heavy AP: also not a fan. It doesnt mean, that you would have 105k damage instead of  100k damage. Ships have a maximum HP. The only benefit it would have is, if a target dies 1 salvo faster than without. GL even proving that. On BCs i guess it can make sense.

[VedranSeaWolf359]

Cruisers skill tree need rework at lest Manual secondary Battery should be added into skill tree because now on paper Come CA have good secondaries but in RL is useless.

[Ubertron_X]

The problem with cruiser skills is that while being far from being useless they still do not provide enough options. A skill that increases main gun range or secondary performance will usually enable different playstyles. A skill that adds +5% main gun damage or +5% torpedo speed does usually not impact playstyle at all.

[lup3s]

"completely useless" 

 

- concealment build

- lighthouse build

- torpedo build ?

 

Definitely nothing to choose from, all cruiser skill suck !

[NewHorizons_1]

On 2/18/2023 at 8:53 AM, DFens_666 said:

Is there really an argument if Cruiser skills are the most useless? I mean, having cramped several different types of ships, from Super CLs and CLs to CAs and BCs into one tree already dictates that. By having skills which either only work on certain ships or only benefit others without having a negative impact, this gets even worse.

You could have 40pt captains on DDs and BBs and it would always benefit you without any downsides attached. For Cruisers tho, this isnt the case at all

I remember a while ago having a discussion (with @Yedwy IIRC) about commander skills and we kinda came to the conclusion that super-light CLs like Atlanta would be better off with DD skills whilst the super-cruisers like Alaska would be better off with BB skills.

[159Hunter]

On 2/17/2023 at 9:10 PM, Andrewbassg said:

Just to make clear that I didnt cherry picked the screen And l'm not really playing randoms :) Besides there is nothing better in zs bait da monke game than trash stats

Of course you cheryy picked that screen. Otherwise your avg dmg on Mogami would be at 100k. 

Which it isn't...

[lup3s]

On 2/17/2023 at 8:33 PM, Andrewbassg said:

The latest line being the IJN? Well anything IJN has trash AA, so......

 

Maybe learn a few things before complaining.

 

Despite AA not being very strong in general, the new IJN CLs have reasonable AA power when compared to other ships.

 

Also, IJN gunboats say "hi".

[Ymustihaveaname]

On 2/17/2023 at 12:26 PM, Andrewbassg said:

Yes, but Superintendent, for example, is kinda mandatory on certain ships (with heal) and also lines.

Thats my main issue not just with CL skills is any that are really you have to pick them, it's even worse with DD skills on 80% (ie all none open water French guns boat types)  the first 10 points are to CE or you are doing something very questionable?

 

Some ships feel like 21 is a lot to spend, other feel like you run out very quickly....

[Andrewbassg]

5 hours ago, lup3s said:

Maybe learn a few things before complaining.

 

We all could and should be open to learn.

 

5 hours ago, lup3s said:

Despite AA not being very strong in general.....

Strong and useful are very different words, also meanings.

 

5 hours ago, lup3s said:

....the new IJN CLs have reasonable AA power when compared to other ships

Yeah, I heard. Like I said tried them once (the T7) and I didn't liked so...tho I;m not excluding that my taste changes in the future.

 

5 hours ago, lup3s said:

Also, IJN gunboats say "hi".

 I don't play dd's. With all the flyin monkes around( (and also exponentially multiplying)....no thanks. I hate 'em already, no need to pile da sh#t.

 

Yo.... Wedgie.... did you heard the last part?

 

 

[Andrewbassg]

22 minutes ago, Ymustihaveaname said:

Thats my main issue not just with CL skills is any that are really you have to pick them, it's even worse with DD skills on 80% (ie all none open water French guns boat types)  the first 10 points are to CE or you are doing something very questionable?

Well, I also play operations and there ROF is more important than CE.

 

Btw I keep hearing/reading about 10 pointers and that's false. At least 11 pointer, coz U need also traverse and gun feeder (except ofc Rn Cl's)

[lup3s]

22 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

At least 11 pointer, coz U need also traverse and gun feeder (except ofc Rn Cl's)

 

I think neither are a must-have but rather a nice-to-have.

Better off with Last Stand imo.

[ColonelPete]

37 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Well, I also play operations and there ROF is more important than CE.

 

Btw I keep hearing/reading about 10 pointers and that's false. At least 11 pointer, coz U need also traverse and gun feeder (except ofc Rn Cl's)

As false as someone needing 11 pointers that thinks cap skills are useless for cruisers?

[Andrewbassg]

29 minutes ago, lup3s said:

I think neither are a must-have but rather a nice-to-have

Ultimately all cruiser skills are just that, enhancements.Still there is a  wide consensus that cruisers are treated as a step child,like  the unwanted (but needed, for target "reasons") "bastard".

The reasons are varied, for example cruiser hulls accommodate everything from dd guns to bb guns and also torps. Nevertheless, cruisers are continually punished and that coupled with Weegee's proverbial incompetence/carelessness/laziness....doesn't make playing them a joyful experience.

 

These are the same people who thought that Deadyee was such a brilliant idea.

[Andrewbassg]

4 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

As false as someone needing 11 pointers that thinks cap skills are useless for cruisers?

Pete, that contradiction exists only in your head. Compared to subs and Cv's.... yes they are. Also taking your reasoning to the extreme CXP bonuses shouldn't exist.

[ColonelPete]

11 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Pete, that contradiction exists only in your head. Compared to subs and Cv's.... yes they are. Also taking your reasoning to the extreme CXP bonuses shouldn't exist.

Not seeing the contradiction makes me worry about yours.