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

[Seraphice]

On 2/17/2023 at 7:53 PM, WarburtonLee said:

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...

As someone who likes to play gunboats quite a bit I don't find myself running into this exact issue very often, though you are right that gunboats would generally like more points. But this goes for more than just gunboats.
A gunboat doesn't need AFT on every gunboat. RPF is a skill that is nice to have for most gunboats, or even most ships in general, but almost never essential.

As for secondary BBs, this one is a bit more straightforward - if you want to spec into additional damage capabilities, you need to give up on survivability.

 

Fair seas!
 

[Karkong_the_Impaler]

43 minutes ago, Seraphice said:

As for secondary BBs, this one is a bit more straightforward - if you want to spec into additional damage capabilities, you need to give up on survivability.

But for everyone that's not a Montana or Shikishima there is no more way around concealment as it impacts both, aerial and submersible scum spotting distance - In addition to the normal spotting distance. So concealment is basically the most important thing and you can't really do well without it.

 

So, say, I play Colbert with a lighthouse skill, so I don't get the sweet AA fires the instant you're spotted bonus to at least remove the circling fighters after a minute or so - because it is AA distance is designed around the use of the commander skill.

 

As a first step, concealment bonus of the skill/mod should be halved and and one half baked in, so the skill isn't as effective and important as before. In a second step, rework the CV spotting mechanics.

[Seraphice]

On 2/21/2023 at 7:32 PM, Karkong_the_Impaler said:

But for everyone that's not a Montana or Shikishima there is no more way around concealment as it impacts both, aerial and submersible scum spotting distance - In addition to the normal spotting distance. So concealment is basically the most important thing and you can't really do well without it.

 

So, say, I play Colbert with a lighthouse skill, so I don't get the sweet AA fires the instant you're spotted bonus to at least remove the circling fighters after a minute or so - because it is AA distance is designed around the use of the commander skill.

 

As a first step, concealment bonus of the skill/mod should be halved and and one half baked in, so the skill isn't as effective and important as before. In a second step, rework the CV spotting mechanics.

There are plenty of battleships that can give up on concealment expert just fine, plenty of cruisers that can run lighthouse builds and gunboat destroyers can often make do without it as well depending on your playstyle or the specific ship.

 

For colbert, even the most effective build doesn't currently run concealment upgrade, so even on such a squishy ship, it is ok not to run all the concealment modifications. I have a hard time believing that the skill is mandatory.

 

Fair seas!

[WarburtonLee]

On 2/21/2023 at 2:02 PM, Seraphice said:

As someone who likes to play gunboats quite a bit I don't find myself running into this exact issue very often, though you are right that gunboats would generally like more points. But this goes for more than just gunboats.
A gunboat doesn't need AFT on every gunboat. RPF is a skill that is nice to have for most gunboats, or even most ships in general, but almost never essential.

As for secondary BBs, this one is a bit more straightforward - if you want to spec into additional damage capabilities, you need to give up on survivability.

 

Fair seas!
 

We agree on the gunboats, they do fine, but are point starved. 

I do not agree with secondary BBs though. If you remove secondary skills on Schlieffen, its just a bad BB. If you use all the points on the secondarys as you should, you get a decent BB. But why should the BB that trades main battery gun power, for secondary gun power, suffer decreased survivability? Its not like they become overpowered. If i play in a russian DD (always been my favorite DDs), the German secondary BBs are my favorite targets. They cant afford the survival skills, so they just burn and burn. 

[Karkong_the_Impaler]

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

There are plenty of battleships that can give up on concealment expert just fine, plenty of cruisers that can run lighthouse builds and gunboat destroyers can often make do without it as well depending on your playstyle or the specific ship.

 

For colbert, even the most effective build doesn't currently run concealment upgrade, so even on such a squishy ship, it is ok not to run all the concealment modifications. I have a hard time believing that the skill is mandatory.

 

Fair seas!

I don't use concealment anywhere I can get away with it - but submersible scum put even more emphasis on that skill, because getting spotted early - even, or rather especially as a gunboat DD, as your concealment is basically worse anyway - gets you on the rear foot.

[Andrewbassg]

5 hours ago, Seraphice said:

For colbert, even the most effective build doesn't currently run concealment upgrade, so even on such a squishy ship,

That's...not entirely correct, as a comparison and as an example. That's why outliers are never good examples . Mogami, Myoko,  Edin yadda yadda  are ALL squishy ships. but they need and rely on concealment, for multiple and different reasons.

 

5 hours ago, Seraphice said:

... it is ok not to run all the concealment modifications. 

 

That's..... correct but also not.

 

5 hours ago, Seraphice said:

 I have a hard time believing that the skill is mandatory.

 

That's not. The skill in many and most cases is mandatory, simply because there is no downside to it ( other then losing four points and in some cases losing synergy with TGG) as opposed to the upgrade, where one loses the ability to mount rudder shift.Not taking into account recent changes,  like the removal of disp debuff from camos makes the pov and the argument quite easily dismissable.

The accuracy upgrade offers 7% better accuracy and the disp debuff was 4%!! And they are not even working the same way!!. -7% reduction to the disp cone and +4 disp at shots directed at the ships. The difference is close to what  Deadyee did, with added benefit of not showing up in charts. And that accuracy was directly handed over to babbies for free. Therefore better manoeuvrability is a must have.

On many already accurate cruisers I simply don't take the accuracy upgrade and instead I go with turret rotation (IJN's, T 7-8 Ru Cl's) without noticing that much of a dowgrade. .

That was a really lowball braindead move from Wedgie, one that shafted earlier fundamental balance decisions. For whatevs reasons.

 

Yo, I'm bitching, alright,  but I know why and what. And I'm also right.And ya'll deserve it.

 

[DFens_666]

8 hours ago, Seraphice said:

There are plenty of battleships that can give up on concealment expert just fine, plenty of cruisers that can run lighthouse builds and gunboat destroyers can often make do without it as well depending on your playstyle or the specific ship.

 

For colbert, even the most effective build doesn't currently run concealment upgrade, so even on such a squishy ship, it is ok not to run all the concealment modifications. I have a hard time believing that the skill is mandatory.

 

Fair seas!

 

If we were to differentiate between what is the best build and whats best for the playerbase, the majority of the players should run a different build than what unicums are running.

F.e. for BBs, the extra heal/DCP is rather useless for most players on most BBs. Even i dont think its necessary anymore on BBs with unlimited DCPs, as you just get 1 heal, which most of the time you wont use anyway. Especially non-unicums will never ever use that extra heal.

The only skill better than CE for BBs is FP. Atleast when we look at surviving. I guess a BB player that just yolos can also discard CE. The less skill a player has, the more defensive skills he should take to make up for his lack of skill.

Lighthouse build for Cruisers is not viable for 95% of the playerbase imo. And even the last 5% might aswell just go normal concealment build. I think its more of a tradeoff than something better. A concealment build cruiser can help kill DDs, while a lighthouse build tries to win by farming more damage.

 

[Seraphice]

17 hours ago, WarburtonLee said:

We agree on the gunboats, they do fine, but are point starved. 

I do not agree with secondary BBs though. If you remove secondary skills on Schlieffen, its just a bad BB. If you use all the points on the secondarys as you should, you get a decent BB. But why should the BB that trades main battery gun power, for secondary gun power, suffer decreased survivability? Its not like they become overpowered. If i play in a russian DD (always been my favorite DDs), the German secondary BBs are my favorite targets. They cant afford the survival skills, so they just burn and burn. 

Keep in mind that the ships are balanced with the current skill options in mind. If we suddenly increase their survivability and don't touch anything else, then yes - they will become too strong.

 

13 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

That's...not entirely correct, as a comparison and as an example. That's why outliers are never good examples . Mogami, Myoko,  Edin yadda yadda  are ALL squishy ships. but they need and rely on concealment, for multiple and different reasons.

Some do, others don't. My point is that the skill is not mandatory for all cruisers/ships, not to argue against its use or effectiveness.

 

13 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

That's not. The skill in many and most cases is mandatory, simply because there is no downside to it

it costs 4 points that you could be spending on other things to make your ship better. That is the downside. When you don't actually need this concealment you are effectively wasting 4 points. 4 points is a lot. You can spec into TGG, you can spec into SI, spec into Heavy HE, SE etc.

There are a lot of good alternative skills you could pick instead of concealment expert if you feel that you don't need it. It is not black and white as you make it out to be.

13 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

The accuracy upgrade offers 7% better accuracy and the disp debuff was 4%!! And they are not even working the same way!!. -7% reduction to the disp cone and +4 disp at shots directed at the ships. The difference is close to what  Deadyee did, with added benefit of not showing up in charts. And that accuracy was directly handed over to babbies for free. Therefore better manoeuvrability is a must have.

The game is already balanced with this upgrade existing in mind. It is not as if this changed over the last years. For deadeye, it was an additional 10%.
As for the +4%, it works essentially the same way in the opposite direction as the reductions, so how is it that "they are not even working the same way" ?
 

13 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

Therefore better manoeuvrability is a must have. 

Also not really true. Plenty of ships do fine with bad maneuverability.

 

13 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

Yo, I'm bitching, alright,  but I know why and what. And I'm also right.And ya'll deserve it.

Have to disagree here - the skills are hardly useless, and neither is concealment expert mandatory.

 

Fair seas captain!
~Sera

[Andrewbassg]

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

Keep in mind that the ships are balanced with the current skill options in mind. If we suddenly increase their survivability and don't touch anything else, then yes - they will become too strong.

Ermm....ships were balanced under  wholly different conditions. And actually it is possible that certain skills could be giving more/less/none depending on/by gun caliber. Coz they are already doing it.

 

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

Some do, others don't. My point is that the skill is not mandatory for all cruisers/ships, not to argue against its use or effectiveness.

 

Fair point. But we were talking about squishy ships.

 

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

it costs 4 points that you could be spending on other things to make your ship better. That is the downside. When you don't actually need this concealment you are effectively wasting 4 points. 4 points is a lot. You can spec into TGG, you can spec into SI, spec into Heavy HE, SE etc.

 There are a lot of good alternative skills you could pick instead of concealment expert if you feel that you don't need it. It is not black and white as you make it out to be.

 Yes and I pointed that out. However, skills don't exist just by themselves, there is a context, which had been fundamentally altered by the removal of the disp debuff from camos. Before I didn't specced into CE, but now I do. And I do consider it mandatory on squishy ships.

 

And the context being  cruisers have been continuously shafted by all sort of changes, while other classes have been given all sorts of... 

 

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

The game is already balanced with this upgrade existing in mind. It is not as if this changed over the last years. For deadeye, it was an additional 10%

 

But...

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

As for the +4%

that wasn't.

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

...it works essentially the same way in the opposite direction as the reductions, so how is it that "they are not even working the same way" ?

 

No, because one is conditional and the other is absolute. Also, it is additive.

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

Also not really true. Plenty of ships do fine with bad maneuverability.

 

Tanky ships, not squishy ones. Also the definition of what is fine is not a constant and is pov dependent

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

Have to disagree here - the skills are hardly useless, and neither is concealment expert mandatory.

 

Again, compared to other classes......but yes we definitively gonna.

[Seraphice]

25 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Ermm....ships were balanced under  wholly different conditions. And actually it is possible that certain skills could be giving more/less/none depending on/by gun caliber. Coz they are already doing it.

And if new systematic changes are introduced, ships are balanced accordingly. If they now underperform, they are buffed, and if they overperform they are nerfed.

 

26 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Fair point. But we were talking about squishy ships.

I already pointed it out but - colbert, smolensk

 

As for the changes to camouflage - if we saw that as a result of this, suddenly cruisers were performing much worse, we would have changed things, but they are not. Cruisers are not suddenly much weaker because of the removal of the added dispersion from camouflages.

29 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Again, compared to other classes......but yes we definitively gonna.

Compared to other classes cruisers dont have weaker commander skills.

 

Fair seas captain!
~Sera

 

 

[Kruzenstern]

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

Compared to other classes cruisers dont have weaker commander skills.

You really seem to be living in la-la-land. While some of the things you point out are debateable, this one clearly is not. In fact while on BB and DD Commanders I always find myself short on points, on cruisers I often don't know what else to take beyond 15 points.

For example:

Tier4:

Top grade gunner and Outnumbered are conditional skills. Conditional is bad in my book. Top grade gunner makes it worse by requiring an enemy in your detection range which is usually not good for cruisers unless islandhugging which is not exactly a great mechanic.

AA/ASW expert is just worthless.

RPF is very situational, very often it is completely unneccessary.

CE contrary to you world is indeed mandatory, even more so on cruisers.

IFHE is mandatory on some and completely useless on other cruisers.

Tier3:

Heavy Shells increases detctability, which you really don't want in a cruiser unless farming potential damage. For a questionable dpm increase. For AP only cruisers it is useless.

Enhanced Torps: Okayish I guess, unless you don't have torps or only short range ones.

Adrenaline rush: Pretty much mandatory because the alternatives are scarce.

Heavy AP: 5% more damage for 3 captain points would be a bad trade on any other ship type.

Superintendent: Mandatory on some, useless on others.

Survivability Expert: I would say decent skill which might be close to mandatory on very light cruisers. The relative HP gain is less than the same skill for DDs though. (like +4500 on a 40K HP cruiser is less percentage than +3500HP on a 15K HP DD)

Won't go into the lower tiers.

 

Compare that to BB skills:

Tier4:

Furious: Ok, very questionable usefulness for 4 points.

Manual Secs: Mandatory for sec builds, useful even for non sec builds. I would want it on every BB

Close quarters combat: Mandatory for sec builds, somewhat useful even for non sec builds. Would take it if I had 4 extra points

Emergency repair expert: not really sure on this one since I don't use tank builds. Prolly useful if you do.

CE: Imho also Mandatory on BBs, but could be skipped if you like to be detected first.

Fire precention expert: Almost mandatory, yet I often find myself with not enough points.

Tier3:

Super-Heavy AP: 7.5% is more than the cruisers get. The penalties are manageable. Still not a go-to skill for me, but better than what cruisers get.

Lonmg range secs: Mandatory for sec builds, useful even for non sec builds. I would want it on almost every BB

Adrenaline rush: As useful as on cruisers, but I rarely take it as I need the points elsewhere.

BoS: Almost mandatory, yet I often find myself with not enough points.

Improved repair party readiness: tooltip says -0.8% cooldown on repair party which seems like nothing, does it mean -80%? If so a good tanking skill.

Focus fire training: Worthless

 

So on cruisers we have two valuable tier4 skills and one on tier3.

On BBs we have 4 tier4 skills which are mandatory on some builds and still valuable on others. 3 valuable skills on tier3 and even one of the worse skills is arguably better than the one for cruisers. Also IFHE, which is almost mandatory on some sec builds, is much cheaper than on cruisers.

On DDs it is not quite as pronounced, but still noticeable.

 

Oh and while I am at it, now what we have secondary cruisers, we still don't have any range or accuracy skills for them....

 

 

[Andrewbassg]

2 hours ago, Seraphice said:

smolensk

So.... that's a good point, however one ship doesn't justify shafting a whole type/class. As for metrics.....not taking into consideration other factors ( other than... "performance") is and was proven disastrous, already.

 

2 hours ago, Seraphice said:

As for the changes to camouflage....

That's not my experience. The thing is cruisers are not necessarily... "weaker", however they are much less survivable, ergo less fun.

Because that actually works like this -4+(-4). So its actually -8 on the receiving end. So we are actually very close to Deadyee. And if go for real,  Deadyee was -10 to which the camo's were -(+4)=-6 we are actually far worse then with Deadyee.

Edit actually the math is a bit.... "fuzzy' but the conclusions are correct.

 

That being said, I'm inclined to not continue, because we met in battles, but make no mistake, we are in disagreement on pretty much everything. And no offence, but citing internal data ( to which I have no access, nor is independently verifiable) is argument from authority 101.

[DFens_666]

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

Compared to other classes cruisers dont have weaker commander skills.

 

I think they do.

Lets look at the usefulness of BB/DD/Cruiser skills:

 

BB skills

All but 4 skills make basically every BB better. There is no downside attached to it. You could take all those skills on 99% of the BBs.

 

DD skills

 

3 skills which are not useful on all DDs. Torp skills are useful on like >90% of them. You could also skill them on gunboats, as long as you have usable torps (aka no shortrange yolo stuff like some russian midtier DDs).

 

Cruiser skills

 

Atleast 8 skills provide no benefit whatsover on many Cruisers. Extra firechance and SI atleast give a benefit for many, but they are useless for some (AP only) or provide almost no benefit (1 extra Hydro/DefAA).

TGG and Outnumbered are situational skills, which can, but dont necessarily provide any benefit at all. Not to mention the benefit for outnumbered is really questionable to begin with, as Cruisers already have decent dispersion, except BCs. Only "useful" place for that skill (and even then id rather not take it).

 

I guess some skills are debatable, like RPF.

 

 

[Andrewbassg]

2 hours ago, Seraphice said:

As for the changes to camouflage

Soo......Im not really a math guy and.....there have been  some mistakes made

 

Before Deadyee:  -7+4=-3

With Deadyee and FOUR points spent: -17+4=-13

After the changes for FREE : -7  straight.

And that just from the delivering side of things.

 

While cruisers haven't been compensated with anything, in terms of survivability and being the class most prone to be one shotted. Dd's don't have citadels but cruisers do.

 

[Karkong_the_Impaler]

I see your whining about cruiser skills and I raise you a Tiger '59