Could lower damage and faster reload for (IJN) torpedos solve the "sniping-BB-issue"?

[Whatever08152]

 

...how will I start this. I play mostly Battleships and while I am absolutely fine with the balance on lower tiers I am super annoyed of high tier IJN DDs ...especially shimakazes - so I was thinking a while how the fun for everyone could be improved (YES - THE FUN. I dont want DDs to be nerfed!).

 

As a BB right now I see a few "problems " with the current (IJN) DD mechanics:

- As a BB one of my roles is to tank enemy damage and push. This gets more and more difficult because the amount of damage torpedos do ...and I dont even speak about the inflicted damage of a DD after the game because I CAN evade most of them but the thing is that I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO EVADE. If I push towards a BB and see a torpedo salvo coming my way I turn to evade the torpedos and maybe 1-3 will hit me but I get very vulnerable to the enganged battleships as a consequence - so the most damage I get is not from the DD most of the time - its from the ships that will shoot into my exposed broadside. So the DD will heavily influence my gameplay and does most of the "tactical work" but doesnt get the reward in terms of inflicted damage imo. On the other hand I get almost onehotted if I dont evade at all.

- The result of this is that many BBS wont fullfill their role at all and try to "snipe" from long range. This isnt fun for ANYONE imo.

- On the other hand high tier IJN DDs (and to a lesser degree US DDs I guess) have a long reload time and are very vulnerable if someone dodges their torpedos ...this is basically a "all-or-nothing" situation for them as well and I dont know if this is really that satisfying for them.

 

So ..I was thinking if that could be "solved" if the torpedo damage AND THE RELOAD TIME would be cut to half (or any other ratio ...just lower xD). The DD would be able to do the same damage because they fire twice as fast but with only half the damage (and they would probably even do more damage over all because they will hit more often) but a battleship wouldnt be forced to evade to incoming torpedos if they have a higher threat in front of them. This would also result in more battleships just eating a few torpedos without turning to evade because they know that citadels from the battleships in front would do more damage. Then again more BBS would fullfill their role to push and in the end it may be more fun for everyone.

 

What are your thoughts on this? Could this help the current "stalling-game" or not? Am I missing something crucial here? And please dont get me wrong ... I am not demanding anything or asking to nerf or buff - I was pointing out something I was thinking about and I am asking for your oppinions.

 

 

[Brett50]

with the amount of damage flooding does and the time of cooldown on the damage control party (and already the torp walls I see from high tier IJN DD's) this seems like a bad idea, BB's would just end up constantly flooding as well as on fire from stem to stern.

[Whatever08152]

with the amount of damage flooding does and the time of cooldown on the damage control party (and already the torp walls I see from high tier IJN DD's) this seems like a bad idea, BB's would just end up constantly flooding as well as on fire from stem to stern.

 

True, didnt even think of the flooding ... but to spin this thought further. Wouldnt then an equally lowered cooldown on the repair party also solve the "overpowered HE burning damage-issue" as well or would the benefit for BBS be to great?

[Zathras_Grimm]

I have heard a lot of complaints from BB and CA captains at high tier levels regarding DDs but you are one of the few (even before being questioned) to come up with possible solutions.

 

I am a Tier V, IJN DD captain, who plays up to level VII enemy ships. I have never wished to go higher because of the incredibly slow reload times.

 

My thought is your suggestion is a great one. The only element that I would add is a reduction in the 20km range and a tweak to the flood damage (this would need honest input from BB/CA captains in order to be fair to all). I do worry about the number of aircraft that are present at higher Tiers (when CV are present) so unsure if the torpedo range should go under 15km; but again would be interested at what other think.

 

I would certainly consider finally grinding up the Tiers (as long as similar changes are made at Tier VI-IX IJN DDs). Nice constructive thoughts Whatever08152 

[Verdius]

My thought is your suggestion is a great one. The only element that I would add is a reduction in the 20km range and a tweak to the flood damage (this would need honest input from BB/CA captains in order to be fair to all). I do worry about the number of aircraft that are present at higher Tiers (when CV are present) so unsure if the torpedo range should go under 15km; but again would be interested at what other think.

 

This would literally make IJN DD into US DD with worse guns.

 

[Kirasa]

Sniping BBs is not a problem because of DD.

 

It's mainly BB players afraid of repcosts and being to lazy for the situational awareness needed in a close range fight.

[praetor_jax]

Sniping BBs is not a problem because of DD.

 

It's mainly BB players afraid of repcosts and being to lazy for the situational awareness needed in a close range fight.

So i try to be as close as possible to the enemy in my BB without suiciding and it sure is a lot of fun.

But let me tell you this: it gets me killed almost all the time as soon as there is at least one destroyer between me and the enemy fleet as no cruiser even bothers going for them they all just spam HE at other cruisers or battleships.

Or they get themselves killed asap by doing what every bad BB captain loves to do: going in a straight line.

 

Bad players are a problem in every ship class - you just notice really bad BB captains more often as they tend to survive longer than everybody else.

[Zathras_Grimm]

 

This would literally make IJN DD into US DD with worse guns.

 

 

I thought US DDs had to fire when in view. Or is it in fact the US DDs that have acquired the stealth that the IJN DDs have always had?

 

Edit: praetor_jax, your statement seems to indicate it is other players gameplay rather than the torpedoes? (i.e. they are sniping, allowing the DDs to torp unhindered).

[Whatever08152]

Sniping BBs is not a problem because of DD.

 

It's mainly BB players afraid of repcosts and being to lazy for the situational awareness needed in a close range fight.

 

I see you in a lot of similar threads and this is always your (biased) "argument".

 

"BB-Kevin is bad and doesnt want to play better" ...does this sum up your oppinion?

 

You dont even want to be constructive, or do you?

 

[Verdius]

 

I thought US DDs had to fire when in view. Or is it in fact the US DDs that have acquired the stealth that the IJN DDs have always had?

 

Gearing has detection range of 7,6 (same as Shima) can fire its torps 16,5km (longer range than the second set of Shima torps) and can even fire its guns without being spotted.

In fact from Mahan onward all USN DDs can stealth torp.

 

The main difference between Japanese torps and USN torps is range and damage. If both are nerfed then IJN DD have nothing left.

[XTHD]

But let me tell you this: it gets me killed almost all the time as soon as there is at least one destroyer between me and the enemy fleet as no cruiser even bothers going for them they all just spam HE at other cruisers or battleships.

Or they get themselves killed asap by doing what every bad BB captain loves to do: going in a straight line.

 

Cruisers can't just "go for DDs" if enemy battleships are close, because they will just get deleted. Cruisers don't actually counter DDs at all, except those rare situations when a DD gets himself stuck 5km away from a cruiser with no smoke.

[praetor_jax]

 

I thought US DDs had to fire when in view. Or is it in fact the US DDs that have acquired the stealth that the IJN DDs have always had?

 

Edit: praetor_jax, your statement seems to indicate it is other players gameplay rather than the torpedoes? (i.e. they are sniping, allowing the DDs to torp unhindered).

 

Well at least they (torpedoes) are not my problem, my problem is that i end up on the wrong end of the battlefield

But my highest tier is 7, so i rarely see high tier destroyers.

 

 

Cruisers can't just "go for DDs" if enemy battleships are close, because they will just get deleted. Cruisers don't actually counter DDs at all, except those rare situations when a DD gets himself stuck 5km away from a cruiser with no smoke.

I know its not that simple - i am not asking them to go ahead, miles off because thats suicide - but how about they take advantage of me being up there with them, tanking all enemy fire and move between me and the friggin destroyer so nobody gets hit by unexpected torps? "Going for a DD" does not mean to try and run him over while showing a flat side to enemy BBs, but sadly thats more than most palyers can come up with.

 

Current meta is that cruisers and BBs stay at their respective maxrange and show broadsides. Oh and they try to hide behind each other.

 

[IamTroublemaker]

Sniping BBs is not a problem because of DD.

 

It's mainly BB players afraid of repcosts and being to lazy for the situational awareness needed in a close range fight.

 

Tell me, how can a BB push vs 2 Shimas and a few BBs and CAs infront of him? How will situational awareness help vs 2 walls of torps?

 

It seems like only sniper and suicide BBs exist for you, even though there are many others inbetween those 20km. 

 

You are the "CA mafia" version of those who you call or are called "BB mafia".

 

 

[XTHD]

I know its not that simple - i am not asking them to go ahead, miles off because thats suicide - but how about they take advantage of me being up there with them, tanking all enemy fire and move between me and the friggin destroyer so nobody gets hit by unexpected torps? "Going for a DD" does not mean to try and run him over while showing a flat side to enemy BBs, but sadly thats more than most palyers can come up with.

 

Current meta is that cruisers and BBs stay at their respective maxrange and show broadsides. Oh and they try to hide behind each other.

 

Thing is, a decent BB will always take a shot at an exposed cruiser, even if he has another BB right in his face. Because BBs can armor tank each other for a long time, while a dead enemy cruiser brings a considerable advantage, especially if it is hunting a teammate. Being in range of an enemy BB is never safe for a cruiser, even if that BB appears distracted.

[havaduck]

 

I know its not that simple - i am not asking them to go ahead, miles off because thats suicide - but how about they take advantage of me being up there with them, tanking all enemy fire and move between me and the friggin destroyer so nobody gets hit by unexpected torps? "Going for a DD" does not mean to try and run him over while showing a flat side to enemy BBs, but sadly thats more than most palyers can come up with.

 

 

Quick question: The CA is in front of you 2 km. A enemy BB is ahead right (15 km) and a enemy Shima (spotting the CA) is ... simply anywhere but in the exact same direction as that mentioned BB: To who dies that CA first?

If he angles to the BB and tries to avoid fire, he will still probably get hit by the BB and on top moves predictable thus getting deleted by shima lol-blanket (remember only 2 torps are usually enough and 15 of them cover a large amount of ground water!). If he puts his bow at the Shimas suspected position in oder to have any chance whatsoever to avoid the torps: the BB will delete him even faster.

 

If there is a opportune target for a enemy BB you cant "tank" fire for the CA because enemy BBs KNOW how ridiciously easy it is to simply delete a cruiser. It also nets way more reward than damaging your BB.

Same goes for the Shima: He can cash in, delete a threat and still maybe hit you in the BB with some stray torpedoes. Next reload he get a clear shot at that BB.

 

€: @ XTHD: well we probably had the same thought. ^^

[Nechrom]

While this might make the situation better for BBs (didn't know there was an issue there) it doesn't help DDs because it forces them to hang close to the enemy for extended periods of time to do damage. While higher tier DDs definitely need higher torpedo reload speed than now, they don't need twice the speed and they don't need it at the cost of per hit damage. DDs still need to be hit-and-run/ambush ships, not being forced to spam torpedoes for an extended time to have a chance at doing any damage.

I'll promise you that most BB players wouldn't really care that the torpedoes do less damage if they instead had twice the number of torpedoes coming their way. Players in general (BB players especially) are deathly afraid of taking any damage even when they can repair it easily. So they will still try and dodge torpedoes just as much and with twice the number of torpedoes... well you get the picture.

 

The solution is I'm afraid just dealing with it. Like DDs have to deal with not being able to move into CA view range unless they want to get vaporized.

If a BB wants to charge into DD territory without any support from friendly DDs or CAs, then he better be ready for the torpedoes and doing his best to be hard to predict. 

[Takeda92]

You forget that most high tier BBs, Yamato at their peak, have very powerful torpedo protection. Yamato can negate 65% of torpedo damage. 

 

Also look at ships like Fletcher, it has 10 torps, deal 19k damage each and reloads much faster than Kagerou's 9 torps with 20k damage and slow reload.

 

The problem seems to more like the recent high tier DD population (mainly Shimakaze) that happened after the patch. The problem doesn't seem to be the ship itself. I mean imagine 5-6 Yamato's in one team, that would be brutal too right?

[shulzidar]

Beware of what you wish, OP... I'm a DD centric player that uses IJNs... And I'm also bothered by the ammount of downtime between launches at High Tiers but...

 

...If you just follow the blind "lets keep DPS intact" approach while reducing loading time of torpedos, you will be creating a monster you don't want to fight...

 

...Which is the "Long Range Torpedo Spammer".

 

As a slow maneuving ship... YOU WOULD NEVER want to be on a scenario with an enemy that can happily spam long range attacks undetected... If you think that a Shima volley is bothering you... I don't think that DOUBLE THE VOLLEYS per unit of time will make things better, even if each torpedo does half the damage... A couple of Shimas will literally create a torpedo "constant stream wall" from 20k that will cripple/kill anything that tries to cross it, but this time without having to bother to aim correctly or wait for the right moment to launch.

 

The moral of the story is, again, that BB players think they should be able to do everything alone... While they expect other classes to have to relay on teamplay...

 

...The main problem you have as BB at High Tiers is that WG didn't finish CA Tier progression past T6, while they kept on increasing the range of BB guns which is the main factor that controls "engagement distance" between squads. Now the "gray zone" a DD can use to get close is higher because CA that try to "cross the gap" are sank without even been able to fire back, making, paradoxically, friendly DDs as the only reliable alternative for protecting BBs...

 

...When you see "class features" transference over the progression of players, like the above, is the clear synthom that a piece of the puzzle is not working as intended. If you pay close attention to how most CA lines stats are frozen at around T6-7 with slight changes in overall performance, it's not hard to realize that any high Tier gameplay alteration has to forcibly deal 1st with the lackluster CA progression on T8+.

[XTHD]

While higher tier DDs definitely need higher torpedo reload speed than now ...

 

They do? I was under the impression that most high tier players who don't main DDs agreed on torpedo concentration being a little on the high side too god damn much atm. Any more and we may remake WoWS into an infantry FPS, because who needs ships when you can just walk on all the torps in the sea.

 

Players in general (BB players especially) are deathly afraid of taking any damage even when they can repair it easily.

 

You can only repair half of the direct torpedo damage. Taking 4 torps in anything other than Yamato leaves you with about 25-30% max HP for the rest of the game.

[Syrchalis]

A cruiser alone versus a DD alone counters the DD, because the DD has insane trouble hitting the CA with torpedos - plus the CA can take one or two - while the DD doesn't do any better dodging the CA's torpedos and is hopelessly outmatched in gun power.

 

However, BBs prevent CAs from going into a range where they can effectively fight DDs.

 

The element that completes CAs is CVs. If a CV spots a DD, even for a limited time, a CA can effectively kill it from a rather long range, due to accurate guns. Unfortunately this is hard to pull off and even then the CA has to worry about BBs a lot.

 

The best way to get rid of DDs is other DDs. What cruisers need would be for example lower shell travel times at higher tiers, so their effective range against DDs goes up for enough to fight them without being an easy target for BBs. Or their detection range would need to go down considerably, but that would bring new problems.

 

As for DDs - IJN ones are in a weird spot for balancing. Too low CD and they will not give breathing room to BBs ever. Too long CD and their torpedos will become one-hit death machines.

[praetor_jax]

 

The Shimakaze seems to be a recurring theme here - i dont meet this ship that often, so i would not know.

 

Of course BBs take shots at cruisersr exposing their sides, everybody expects BBs to watch out for torpedoes, incoming planes and proper angling to enemy big guns - do people not have the same expectations at cruisers?

Dont look at me, i dont play cruisers because i suffer from heavy tunnel vision when piloting a cruiser

[XTHD]

A cruiser alone versus a DD alone counters the DD, because the DD has insane trouble hitting the CA with torpedos - plus the CA can take one or two - while the DD doesn't do any better dodging the CA's torpedos and is hopelessly outmatched in gun power.

 

[...]

 

As for DDs - IJN ones are in a weird spot for balancing. Too low CD and they will not give breathing room to BBs ever. Too long CD and their torpedos will become one-hit death machines.

 

Well, good thing this game has a duel mode then, otherwise poor cruisers would be stuck in those horrible 12v12 games where everything focuses them as soon as they try to push.

 

About DD balancing, personally I just think they should cut the torp range. If maximum torp range was 10km, it would solve a whole lot of problems, force DDs to take some risks and allow safe zones to exist, like on lower tiers.

[Syrchalis]

Part of the problem is that US DDs at T9 become better torpedo boats than IJN DDs. While I don't think US DDs in general are really good, Fletcher and Gearing are really strong and they wouldn't die from a nerf to their torpedo range. However Shimakaze shouldn't go below 12-15km, because it would just be a worse Gearing then.

 

And please don't take single sentences I say out of context to make some comment about them.

 

All I said was that CAs counter DDs in theory - and then proceeded to say that in reality it doens't look that way, exactly because it's 12vs12 and not 1vs1.

[Verdius]

About DD balancing, personally I just think they should cut the torp range. If maximum torp range was 10km, it would solve a whole lot of problems, force DDs to take some risks and allow safe zones to exist, like on lower tiers.

 

Max torp range of 10 km would negate nearly all IJN DD's advantages, as they will have a large chance to be spotted, not just by cruisers but also opposing DDs who will eat them for breakfast because of their rather underwhelming guns (and low speed at tier 8 and 9). Their only defense mechanism is stealth.

Another big problem is that it would promote camping at the edge of the map in higher tier battles for BBs as there is little punishment for doing so (doubly so without carriers), which does not promote tactical, dynamic or fun gameplay.

[Myrmix]

In my opinion and experience (I only have seen T9-matches in my Nagato and prefer to somewhat brawl with a BB) the best  way to force BB's to move is to strengthen CVs to the point, where we see 1-2 CVs in every match again.

Most high-tier games end up without carriers and with no hardcounter, the BBs are quite safe from threats, as long as they keep DDs on distance.

It's just not a complete game if you only have 3 out of the 4 classes and carriers get reduced to some kind of "accessory" like artillery in WoT.

If WG can reward CVs for shooting down planes better and maybe also increase the reward for damage done (not the damage itself), maybe more people would play this class.

A carrier adds so much more to a game. Even good BB-players are forced to move if torpbombers approaching and change their course, instead of just ripping engaging cruisers and BBs on distance appart.

So if you want to have moving BBs, you need to support the gameplay of their biggest threat. The actual patch did some good, but it seems that more is necessary to get more players flying planes.