Secondary batteries even when maxed are a joke, completely useless

[Fritzblitzer]

 

My Arkansas Beta has EVERYTHING that boosts it's secondary batteries. From the flags, to the 3 million-credit faster loading times and extended firing range. My captain has all the skills that improve secondaries. 

This means that with my 21(!) secondary guns, I have the following bonuses:

2nd batt mod 2: +20% range and inc. accuracy to secondaries

2nd batt mod 3: -20% loading time to secondaries

Mike Yankee Six flag: +5% to firing range, improved accuracy, -5% loading time

Captain skills: Basic firing training (-10% reload time), Advanced firing training (+20% firing range)

This gives me a firing range of 5.3 km or more and a rof of 11.5, according to the in-game data. Maybe it's even higher. With 21 of the 127 mm guns. 

 

So why is it, after nearly 200 battles in this ship, my secondaries have yet to kill a single ship or even inflict any significant damage? 99% of the shots fired still don't hit and those that do, bounce. Where is this "improved accuracy" you talk of, twice? DD's couldn't care less when my secondaries are firing.  If you boost secondaries as a tactic and spend millions of credits on it at least make it somewhat usable. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it is completely useless. And it should't be. It wouldn't make the game unbalanced if at least a HIGHLY SPECIALISED SHIP like this would score say 20% hits? Just stop those DD's laughing at secondaries at least.

 

BAD DESIGN, WG. IMPROVE SECONDARIES NOW. OR FIX THE EQUIPMENT THAT "IMPROVES SECONDARIES" SO THAT THEY ACTUALLY WORK.

 

[ajappat]

Agreed. At the moment secondary range is kind of irrelevant, since they actually start hitting stuff at 1,5km or closer. I too decided to try secondary build on Nagato just for the lols, but I don't think I've ever got over 6k dmg. It's more usefull to upgrade AA even if it saves you from one torpedo every 10th game.

 

Edit: Another secondary problem, is that some guns only shoot AP and 90% of time even if it hits, it fails to do dmg.

[anonym_MfZ6T7iwWpUC]

During the Battle of the River Plate, the Graf Spee's secondary armament (150mm) didnt score a single hit on any of the three RN Cruisers in the entire battle.

 

The only time you will score hits in WoWs with secondary's are if the target is really close. I see no point in extending the range of secondary's to be honest.

[MrFingers]

And some of the modules have a offsetting quality as well (don't know it is for the secondaries as well, but for the primaries, it is)... Like: "have an increased accuracy, but a slower rotation time", "have an increased DPM, but a slower reload", maybe you've installed two conflicting modules, which net you nothing, because the one cancels the other out.

 

My AKB (without any secondary mods) is quite capable of laying down the hurt on DD's and light cruisers coming within 2km. Not enough to finish them (although that happened a twice or thrice), but enough to cripple them, and "soften them up a bit".

[Arakus]

Why should the secondary be improved?

Battleships are strong enough and they are not in the game to fight everything or beeing superior.

 

A BB has big guns which can make huge damage over long ranges, but they are not made to fight against DD.

In this game the DD is the natural enemy of a BB, its the job of CA to fifgt DD, even some DD are good in this job.

[Hedgehog1963]

Please sail within 7km of HMS Warspite while I am sailing her and let me know how it was for you.

[Thunderchild94]

Lol, of course low tier BB secondary guns are useless, that´s the point.

 

Get near a North Carolina or Amagi/Izumo and tell me how well it goes...

[Surmaaja]

I dunno, I've been hitting 8k damage with my Nagato secondaries when brawling. It's plenty of damage considering they take no effort to use. I have the secondary range buff for the captain.

Mostly I want to buff my secondaries on Nagato because the hail of fire is just so silly

[Fritzblitzer]

Why should the secondary be improved?

Battleships are strong enough and they are not in the game to fight everything or beeing superior.

 

A BB has big guns which can make huge damage over long ranges, but they are not made to fight against DD.

In this game the DD is the natural enemy of a BB, its the job of CA to fifgt DD, even some DD are good in this job.

 

Maybe they shouldn't, but the equipment that improves them seemingly does nothing. Extended range isn't working because they just miss everything further away than 2 km. Improved accuracy does nothing. 

[ColonelPete]

Ships rarely get closer than 5.3 km to you.

And my guess is that accuracy at maximum range is really bad. If the enemy gets closer than 3 km, you should notice a difference.

 

Unfortunately, if the 127mm shoot only AP, then that might be the real problem.

[Kamikazesushi]

 

Maybe they shouldn't, but the equipment that improves them seemingly does nothing. Extended range isn't working because they just miss everything further away than 2 km. Improved accuracy does nothing. 

 

Faster reload of nothing is ? Increased range of nothing is ? Mount all enhancements on nagato or higher tier japanese bbs and you will see...

[Avers]

When I did test on the Fuso which used all the subgun upgrades and captain skills but no flags, it took between 3-4min for the subguns to sink a cleveland with 1-2fires started.

That was done at about 6km range and between 10-20% chance to hit with the subguns depending on how much the RNG gods favor you

 

So yes the subguns are not really viable but considering the decline the CV players, id rather take the subguns over AA and stick close to cruisers when there is a CV.

[Vanhal]

 

Get near a North Carolina or Amagi/Izumo and tell me how well it goes...

 

If said NC or Amagi or Izumo, not to mention their team are even semi-competent, that won't happen more than once in a dozen battles.

 

The secondaries are very crappy on higher tiers and completely useless on lower.

[ajappat]

 

Faster reload of nothing is ? Increased range of nothing is ? Mount all enhancements on nagato or higher tier japanese bbs and you will see...

 

Yes they shoot faster and further without hitting anything. It's pointless upgrade.

[ammattimies]

OP and Vanhal are correct, whole secondary battery concept is absolutely useless since their accuracy was nerfed to the ground below the ground. Before the nerf, they were just fine in all experiences I had. Should start with +25% accuracy buff to all secondaries in all ships, and then measure if they would start doing more than the current less than ~1% of all damage done. Current status of secondaries damage-wise is worthless, its only functions are that they let you know that someone's getting too close when you hear them firing, and sometimes a bad player might think your main battery is reloading since he saw shells coming at him.

 

They were just fine at test phase when they actually dealt damage to targets in range, but as usual, WG decided "balance" things with -80% accuracy nerf. That -80% is just a value according to how I feel the effect of that change, but practically they went from meaningful to useless.

 

EDIT: Personally, I'd prefer to have to option to aim and fire the secondaries myself (like in some other naval battle games), but I think WG wants to keep this automatic instead to keep gameplay more simple.

[Xevious_Red]

There's only 2 ships that I've ever had the secondaries do much: Nagato and warspite. The Nagato because at tier 7 you do sometimes get people within 7km of you (usually late game), and the warspite because the extremely tight turning circle means it can operate in island chains without too much issue. Which makes it rather funny for flushing DD that flock to torp the "noob BB"

 

Everything else they're a bit mediocre. Still will upgrade them when I get the izumo/yamato simply because of the 10km firework display if destroyers turn up

[Fritzblitzer]

 

Faster reload of nothing is ? Increased range of nothing is ? Mount all enhancements on nagato or higher tier japanese bbs and you will see...

 

But why aren't they doing anything noticeable for my 21 guns? They don't say "only use on tier 10 BB's" do they? They should make secondaries noticeably better on every ship that uses them, not just one.

[Fritzblitzer]

OP and Vanhal are correct, whole secondary battery concept is absolutely useless since their accuracy was nerfed to the ground below the ground. Before the nerf, they were just fine in all experiences I had. Should start with +25% accuracy buff to all secondaries in all ships, and then measure if they would start doing more than the current less than ~1% of all damage done. Current status of secondaries damage-wise is worthless, its only functions are that they let you know that someone's getting too close when you hear them firing, and sometimes a bad player might think your main battery is reloading since he saw shells coming at him.

 

They were just fine at test phase when they actually dealt damage to targets in range, but as usual, WG decided "balance" things with -80% accuracy nerf. That -80% is just a value according to how I feel the effect of that change, but practically they went from meaningful to useless.

 

EDIT: Personally, I'd prefer to have to option to aim and fire the secondaries myself (like it other some other naval battle games), but I think WG wants to keep this automatic instead to keep gameplay more simple.

 

 

This is how I remember secondaries in the alpha test too. Then they pretty much disappeared as a game mechanic.

[Xevious_Red]

 

But why aren't they doing anything noticeable for my 21 guns? They don't say "only use on tier 10 BB's" do they? They should make secondaries noticeably better on every ship that uses them, not just one.

 

have a check of the firing arcs. One of the reasons the nagato is often  said to have good secondaries is because almost all of them point forward (so they all fire at one target). IIRC those 21 guns are spread all over your ship with very limited arcs, so instead of firing 21 guns at an enemy you're actually firing between 3-6 of them.

 

Add in that at tier 4 everyone uses HE, there's a good chance a significant number are destroyed before they ever get to fire (and it would be nice if there was a GUI to show what was working or not, same as main guns)

[G1nn]

Thanks for testing this out for me, I was almost tempted to do as the OP, now I will not waste the skill points

 

[Samurai__]

Please sail within 7km of HMS Warspite while I am sailing her and let me know how it was for you.

 

 

 

Or my Torpitz 

[praetor_jax]

They should try giving them an accuracy buff at short ranges (3-3,5km) so the comedic fireworks-showoff while the enemy almost boards your ship stops

 

[Fritzblitzer]

 

have a check of the firing arcs. One of the reasons the nagato is often  said to have good secondaries is because almost all of them point forward (so they all fire at one target). IIRC those 21 guns are spread all over your ship with very limited arcs, so instead of firing 21 guns at an enemy you're actually firing between 3-6 of them.

 

Add in that at tier 4 everyone uses HE, there's a good chance a significant number are destroyed before they ever get to fire (and it would be nice if there was a GUI to show what was working or not, same as main guns)

 

I can see the shots firing, I have 10 guns on a broadside that fires. It's just that they miss, and when they do hit, they bounce. At least 10 guns are firing.

[Mister_Greek]

Like BB's are not strong enough already,people want even better secondaries to be able to roflstomp freely and unskillfully....

 

And then they wonder why we are called "BB mafia"...

 

 

 

[ammattimies]

They should try giving them an accuracy buff at short ranges (3-3,5km) so the comedic fireworks-showoff while the enemy almost boards your ship stops

 

Lol that is well said and totally true too   This would be a great idea for a mod maker, to change secondary battery graphips to shoot rainbows, fireworks, paper streamers and balloons with party sound effects maybe. 

 

 

Like BB's are not strong enough already,people want even better secondaries to be able to roflstomp freely and unskillfully....

 

And then they wonder why we are called "BB mafia"...

 

 

I don't think BB's are too good, I just think the other classes might not be good enough. As we see in the secondary nerf, now the whole functionality just looks stupid and does nothing. And it's not fun to play if you look stupid and do nothing, that's how you end up if you just try fixing balance with nerfs only.

 

I think secondaries should be fixed, and other classes improved as well.