US CV is impractical, any suggestions for improvement?

[RamirezKurita]

Ok, since you put in all these changes, you're a bit dishonest here by not mentioning Strafe that made fighters much more interesting to play AND much scarier. Before putting my planes in vicinity of friendly AA pretty much meant that they were safe, no fighter would dare come for them. Now, despite more powerful AA, unattended squadrons can be easily wiped out by a daring suicide attack of enemy fighters even in "protected space". It made managing my squadrons harder but it most definitely made the game more interesting and introduced a significant aspect of skill into air superiority battle - where previously it took some major blunder to get a result different from one decided by CVs and their set-ups on each side.

 

​While adding strafe did add an extra aspect of mechanical skill, it was to the detriment of strategic skill though; it allowed players to make stupid mistakes and get away with them if they had the APM and ping to do so, while previously players had to meticulously calculate outcomes and try to outwit their opponent rather than going in without a thought due to their mighty fists of ham. Fighting a game of air superiority used to be incredibly challenging, not due to the mechanical demands on the player, but because every decision mattered and could have crippling consequences. Overall, strafe made carrier gameplay notably harder to learn due to the mechanics that became necessary to even consider using carriers, but actually made it easier to master because the decisions are easier to make, which is oddly enough the opposite of the holy grail of game design - "easy to learn, hard to master".

[Syrchalis]

I left strafing out because I am still not sure wether it's a really great thing or not for the game. Generally I tend to agree that it's good, because fighters were awful before, but then again, why does strafing have the cockblock circle? Why does this mechanic have to have this dumb mechanic as well?

 

I'm just saying, WG simply "does things". I don't believe they really test them out properly or iterate in any way.

 

They only thing that was definitely good was converging spread on IJN torpedo bombers. It's barely noticeable but hey, it's something.

 

My main point wasn't "all changes to CVs ever were bad" - it was "WG could nerf CV damage and make the game great, or do much more complicated retarded stuff, make them annoying to play, increase cockblock circle for example" - see what they did and guess what they will do in the future. WG isn't a single person sadly. WG doesn't "learn". That's my whole point. WG doesn't iterate, they don't do something and stop doing it if it's bad.

[pra3y]

Ok this is kinda random but since we're talking about USN CVs have anyone been playing USN CV on the PT server? It might just be me but while playing the Langley just now i feel as though the TB's torp arm time have been increased and USN DBs have smaller manual drop ovals, almost IJN manual size. Is it a stealth change seeing that nothing of this sort was mentioned on  the PT announcement?

[dasCKD]

There are several things that can be done in my opinion.

1. Dive bombers are too powerful, and too unreliable: The USN dive bombers are extremely lethal weapons on the rare occasions that they actually manage to hit something. Even without the 500 kg bombs, the dive bombers are utterly lethal. I managed to do nearly 15 k damage to a Zuihou using a single Bogue dive bomber squad. The problem though is that they don't hit so the USN dive bombers basically are a lottery with high potential gain, high loss, and little skill involved. I think the first thing they need to do is to scale back the damage of the USN dive bombers and significantly improve the accuracy. RNG is a part of the game, that I understand. When I'm in a battleship though, I can fire every 30 seconds and if RNG is screwing me over too much then I can always get closer. You can't do that with the two to four minute rearming times of most CVs. They need to be made more reliable, even if they need to sacrifice their power for that gain.
2. The fire and flooding mechanic needs to stop being solely decided by RNG: CVs depend on DoT to do their damage more than any other class, so the fires and flooding needs to be made more reliable. Instead of using the dumb rng system, they should implement something similar to a saturation health bar on each segment of the ship and if enough 'fire points' or 'flooding points' are filled then the subject gets set on fire. This should be extended to other ships as well. I'm sure that most of us here agree that a cruiser who spends 50 HE shells on a battleship without a damage control consumable deserves more fire than a cruiser who hits a battleship with three HE shells and sets fires with all three.
3. CVs need to be able to zoom out more: It might seem like a strange point for a discussion about CV gameplay. but CVs need to be able to zoom out more. The USN fighters are extremely powerful and in a strafe they can annihilate almost every IJN plane squad of the same tier head-on. Right now though, the combination of the minimum activation distance circles and random jerky plane movements make it so that strafing well is extremely difficult unless you are extremely good or the enemy is extremely bad. The problem gets exacerbated in higher tiered games where the planes get even faster but the screen size remains the same, necessitating that CV captains need to occasionally begin the strafe before the enemy planes even comes into view. Being able to zoom out further to have better command over faster planes would be something that benefits all carrier players.

Those are some of my thoughts anyways. I'm sure everyone else has more to add.

[Syrchalis]

The fire and flooding mechanic needs to stop being solely decided by RNG: CVs depend on DoT to do their damage more than any other class, so the fires and flooding needs to be made more reliable. Instead of using the dumb rng system, they should implement something similar to a saturation health bar on each segment of the ship and if enough 'fire points' or 'flooding points' are filled then the subject gets set on fire. This should be extended to other ships as well. I'm sure that most of us here agree that a cruiser who spends 50 HE shells on a battleship without a damage control consumable deserves more fire than a cruiser who hits a battleship with three HE shells and sets fires with all three.

 

They nerfed fire chance on bombs and gutted flooding chance on air dropped torpedos a while ago.

 

Another smart decision by WG.

 

Now you maybe see why I'm so pessimistic with this.

[dillydoe]

So are we discussing how to balance CVs or whether WG will actually do something about it? 

We can already see the Royal Navy on the horizon, so at some point british CVs will come into play. How long we have to wait for this remains to be seen, but when it happens, WG will have to think about CV balance.

 

But how should the USN and IJN CVs be balanced now?

Most people seems to agree that the IJN line is better than the USN. But if we look at the Japanese planes they aren't that much better than their USN counterpart. In fact one could argue that they are weaker. This suggests that the reason IJN CVs come out on top most of the time, is not because of the strenght of their planes, but instead i think there is a more fundamental problem and that problem is the loadouts.

 

While nerfing the Japanese planes in any way (like reducing their HP, for example) would certainly balance the two CV lines, i feel like this change would be like a band aid as it doesn't address the main issue.

Instead, something should be done with the loadouts (like custom loadouts, for example). With this, it would not only be possible to balance the CVs, but it would also change the core of CV gameplay, making it more diverse and fun.

 

While waiting for the RN CVs, we can only hope WG decides to balance the already existing CV lines

 

​Hoping to spread awareness about this issue and eventually get a ticket to them with the best solution. The reason for the awareness is that the US CVs throughout the tech tree (except Langley and Saipan(Not in tech tree anyway....)) are either the worst ship in terms of win rate for every tier or in the bottom 3. Particularly for the last 2 weeks, which highlights these nerfs... Whilst IJN CVs are either at the top or top 4 for their tier in terms of win rate... Now it doesn't sound like much nerfing the fighters HP, but if they are nerfed to the HP of the previous tier, it should make the IJN fighters completely situational. To make this nerf really would not be difficult at all! I think the IJN fighters should be nerfed to the point where US fighters are able to take on both IJN squadrons and still have like 4 planes left... I'm sorry, but the gap is pretty extreme and a complete overhaul of cv mechanics is required. By basically making the IJN fighters almost unusable, the US CV can dominate the skies and do whatever it wants, I mean it has the least squadrons anyway so it should do! I mean currently US CV is lowest in every tier, and IJN is best ship in some tiers and top 4 at least... Basically saying that the US CV sucks. IJN CVs laugh in the face of US CVs as they pick off your team one by one. I think the drastic change in making their fighters next to useless is the solution... Need more ideas with explanations!

 

gonna put this here:

Each Taiho fighter has 1,820 HP with 73 damage per second.

Each Essex fighter has 1,830 HP with 70 damage per second.

 

I'm pretty tired and probably am not making that much sense right now, so take this post with a pinch of salt, I'll make better sense tomorrow and less off topic if this is kinda off topic... Keep the ideas up hoping to create a ticket with screenshots showing how UP the US CV is, with a solution to the this problem... I'll look through post in greater detail tomorrow.... Gonna send a ticket in like whenever you guys want me to?

[dasCKD]

 

​. To make this nerf really would not be difficult at all! I think the IJN fighters should be nerfed to the point where US fighters are able to take on both IJN squadrons and still have like 4 planes left... I'm sorry, but the gap is pretty extreme and a complete overhaul of cv mechanics is required. By basically making the IJN fighters almost unusable, the US CV can dominate the skies and do whatever it wants, I mean it has the least squadrons anyway so it should do! I mean currently US CV is lowest in every tier, and IJN is best ship in some tiers and top 4 at least... Basically saying that the US CV sucks. 

 

I think that creating any significant difference between the fighters of the different nations are likely the worst thing anyone could do for gameplay balance. First of all, I don't think we should be encouraging anyone to use AS loadouts. Currently, a USN strafe can already annihilate an entire IJN air fleet from the front. The fighter dominance also means nothing in terms of practical effectiveness. A Hiryu VS an AS Ranger doesn't use her fighters to try to defeat the Ranger but instead uses them to pin them into place whilst the bomber squads fly pass. Raising the effectiveness of the fighters means nothing unless it was raised to the point where the fighters are completely useless against their USN counterparts at which point the IJN carriers will end up with another virtually useless set of planes they are forced into every battle with.

 

The fact that a Hosho is outperforming the Langley is no one's fault but the captains of the Langley. The Langley is unquestionably the superior carrier with torpedo squads that can easily catch even a destroyer out. The Hosho has the same effective damage as the Langley's torpedoes due to the maneuverability and size of lower tier ships. I personally have these statistics:

 

Zuihou: (54%) 36 k average damage

Bogue: (65%) 49 k average damage

 

It should be noted that I run the Bogue exclusively with strike settings. Despite the fact that almost every carrier I meet will have more fighters than me, I still manage to pull my team to victory with a healthy consistency. AS loadouts are only really effective on the Ryujou and the Hakuryu because of the control gap. Fighters are a naturally defensive weapon, so they need to be able to cover a large area. Raising the effectiveness of USN fighters beyond what they are currently will only put the situation back to before the strafe where the IJN carriers just played around the USN carrier. A USN carrier can't win air superiority at any tier apart from tiers 4, 5, and 7 all for different reasons. USN carriers are fundamentally bad AS weapons

[dasCKD]

Abridged.

 

That was a bit long, I'll say that more quickly. AS is a weapon to be used against enemy strike aircraft, not enemy fighters. USN carriers simply can't do area control like IJN carriers can.

[Stahlfons]

Maybe, one single little change could solve the problem:

 

Let fighters decide on their own, whether they want start a fight or not. At the moment the problem for us-fighter-based loadouts is, that the Japanese fighters can "suicide bind" all the fighters, and still deliver the strike with the bombers, even if they lose all the fighters with that. 

 

If you instead still could engage the bombers with US-fighters, even with some Japanese fighters following you, you could really defend (and switch to the fighters after the strike). 

[meyos90]

 

​ I think the IJN fighters should be nerfed to the point where US fighters are able to take on both IJN squadrons and still have like 4 planes left... I'm sorry, but the gap is pretty extreme and a complete overhaul of cv mechanics is required. By basically making the IJN fighters almost unusable, the US CV can dominate the skies and do whatever it wants, I mean it has the least squadrons anyway so it should do!

So a US squadron (5 fighters) should be able to take on two IJN squadrons (8 fighters) and still have 4 fighters left (lose 1)?

I think that's a terrible idea! The side with the most fighters should win. This means in a 1 squad vs 1 squad the US planes would win since they have 1 more plane. If the IJN attacks with 2 squads they should win since they have more planes.

 

gonna put this here:

Each Taiho fighter has 1,820 HP with 73 damage per second.

Each Essex fighter has 1,830 HP with 70 damage per second.

Exactly! It's so obvious the IJN fighters aren't really that much better than the USN fighters. So i would think it should be equally obvious the reason IJN CVs dominate almost every tier, is NOT because of the strenght of their fighters.

 

Like i said before, nerfing the IJN fighters would balance CVs in a bad way (see my previous post), instead i think CV gameplay needs to change at it's core.

That's why i think introducing custom loadouts is the right way to go, even if the planes in this loadout would be nerfed, i still consider it better than nerfing the planes in the already existing loadouts. Custom loadouts would not only balance CVs, but it would also open up the possibility for new strategies, and generally more varied and fun gameplay.

[VC381]

Maybe, one single little change could solve the problem:

 

Let fighters decide on their own, whether they want start a fight or not. At the moment the problem for us-fighter-based loadouts is, that the Japanese fighters can "suicide bind" all the fighters, and still deliver the strike with the bombers, even if they lose all the fighters with that. 

 

If you instead still could engage the bombers with US-fighters, even with some Japanese fighters following you, you could really defend (and switch to the fighters after the strike). 

 

This isn't a bad idea. You would lose fighters but kill some bombers in the process. It would also mean you can disengage when out of ammo instead of losing planes for free...

[NoirLotus]

Yeah but in this case, that's IJN fighters that become completely useless as they won't be able to protect their bombers ...

[VC381]

They could get a DPS bonus to account for the fact the enemy fighters aren't fighting back. It then just becomes a race to kill the enemy fighters before they get to your bombers. Also it would make it more of a skill contest because it opens up the possibility of strafing disengaging fighters, plus the decision on the other player's side whether to go for fighters or bombers.

[Stahlfons]

Yeah but in this case, that's IJN fighters that become completely useless as they won't be able to protect their bombers ...

 

Also true. But then, finally, the Japanese CV's would face the challenge, that US strike loadouts always do: you have to manage to avoid the fighters or live with only having success with half of your attacks , because there is no protection.

[dasCKD]

 

Also true. But then, finally, the Japanese CV's would face the challenge, that US strike loadouts always do: you have to manage to avoid the fighters or live with only having success with half of your attacks , because there is no protection.

 

If the fighters are useless, then give the IJN carriers their full strike setups. That won't result in them completely curbstomping the USN carriers or anything.

[RamirezKurita]

Maybe, one single little change could solve the problem:

 

Let fighters decide on their own, whether they want start a fight or not. At the moment the problem for us-fighter-based loadouts is, that the Japanese fighters can "suicide bind" all the fighters, and still deliver the strike with the bombers, even if they lose all the fighters with that. 

 

If you instead still could engage the bombers with US-fighters, even with some Japanese fighters following you, you could really defend (and switch to the fighters after the strike). 

 

​However that comes at the cost of all their fighters, which is balanced at the lower-middle tiers but becomes a non-issue later on at T7+ due to the appearance of the full fleet carriers at that point, which instead causes a whole host of different balance issues as planes become borderline infinite.

 

Alternatively, you could increase squadron sizes for higher tier carriers, with USN carriers getting slightly more per squadron than the IJN carriers (such as the USN squadrons becoming 7 at the Ranger and 8 at the Essex, while the IJN only reach 5 at the Taihou, or something similar). This would help with many issues as it would introduce a more significant cost to that pinning as you will be sacrificing more planes to do it at higher tiers, it would buff the USN carriers as they get stronger air groups (reinforcing the idea that the USN carriers are specialised powerhouses with little flexibility but great brute strength, while the IJN carriers are the generalised support carriers with their greater flexibility and balanced loadouts), let the USN carriers use their typically larger reserves which really aren't used in 99% of games, as well as helping the upper tiers deal with the increased amounts of AA as there would be more aircraft in the sky so a carrier lose large amounts of planes but still be able to deal damage (and a botched attack would result in more planes being destroyed, making attacks against AA heavy opponents potentially even more risky), while not interfering with current carrier utility or gameplay fundamentals.

[RogDodgeUK]

moved to Ships / Aircraft Carrier

[Thunderslap91]

I mean i only have test the US Cv is the PT server, from ranger to midway (almost 5 games per ships) and only in strike loadout and its alot more easy to deal damage then the IJN cv, i mean ur planes and so strong and hit like a truck after lexiton, those 10.8k bomb damage its just stupid, while the ijn got a crappy 4.6k, but getting to the point, Its more easy to land hits with a US cv, ijn planes tend to got vaporise buy the AA while the US planes got HP to drop and get out. I don't see the point in buffing even more the US cv's. they got alot stronger planes, more damage per plane in every damage plane (its stupid that US still got more damaon on TB then IJN while there are DB specialist), the only buff they should get should be a lower resupply time, 1 minute its a bit to much.

I didn't test much (only 5 games per ship) but for what i see they are still viable, just need to drop the easy win like they alway have and start to play smart, use ur allys AA and bait like the IJN do and u are fine

[dillydoe]

I mean i only have test the US Cv is the PT server, from ranger to midway (almost 5 games per ships) and only in strike loadout and its alot more easy to deal damage then the IJN cv, i mean ur planes and so strong and hit like a truck after lexiton, those 10.8k bomb damage its just stupid, while the ijn got a crappy 4.6k, but getting to the point, Its more easy to land hits with a US cv, ijn planes tend to got vaporise buy the AA while the US planes got HP to drop and get out. I don't see the point in buffing even more the US cv's. they got alot stronger planes, more damage per plane in every damage plane (its stupid that US still got more damaon on TB then IJN while there are DB specialist), the only buff they should get should be a lower resupply time, 1 minute its a bit to much.

I didn't test much (only 5 games per ship) but for what i see they are still viable, just need to drop the easy win like they alway have and start to play smart, use ur allys AA and bait like the IJN do and u are fine

 

​Statistics bro, statistics. The US CVs are bottom of the barrel for every tier. IJN are top 3 for every tier, few exceptions. Search for yourself on warships.today/vehicles/eu FOR THE PAST 2 WEEKS!   !Important! (The midway was once legendary :'( .... which would affect all time results...)

 

And in practice, a well played taiho captain can easily out do an Essex captain(saw with my own eyes, Flambass (Very good player) kicked my [edited]and his taiho wr is 76%, his Essex wr is 57%, basically means that people who play CVs will find that US CVs suck! And there is a massive bias of: IJN CV >>> US CV. Simply because they can: ​ Strike Freely, kill your planes and sink whatever they want. In an uncomplicated version, this is exactly what they do! And this is why (example) Shokaku is top (because it does this!) and Lexington is bottom. Nerf the fighter HP. I've got an example of IJN fighters being very strong with one of my replays. I've also got another replay of me kicking a taiho's (edited)!

 

I'll supply more.

 

And yes I do run fighter set up, my wr with lex is 53.81 and with ranger is 52.47. I play lex with fighter set up and ranger with strike.

 

Here:

http://wowreplays.com/Replay/10593-Christpher_Dilworth-Open-Ocean

 

And me kicking a taiho's (edited) here to prove that I'm not (edited) and know what I'm talking about:

http://wowreplays.com/Replays/10602-Christopher_Dilworth-Shatter

 

Oh and the taiho's stats in shatter match shows that his shokaku and hiryu are both 55.56%. My strike ranger is 52.47%(69k average dmg). Yet I do more damage than him in my fighter set up Lexington (57k average dmg) than he does in either of his shokaku or hiryu (30k and 55k respectively). And he has a better wr than me in both of those than both of my tier 8 and 7 CVs. (My Essex I tried strike and wasn't working out, had 44% wr then changed to fighter set up and now is at  49%, best damage game was 284k damage with Essex and I lost!)

 

So I have used player statistics from the web, my replays with a comparison of a worse player than me and yet he's winning more. And you're still not going to be convinced that US CV tech tree is the worst tech tree to go down? I was suffering the grind for Midway, and now its nerfed lol. ​Every US CV throughout the tech tree loses the most (or at bottom 3) What more convincing do you need?

 

[dillydoe]

 

So a US squadron (5 fighters) should be able to take on two IJN squadrons (8 fighters) and still have 4 fighters left (lose 1)?

I think that's a terrible idea! The side with the most fighters should win. This means in a 1 squad vs 1 squad the US planes would win since they have 1 more plane. If the IJN attacks with 2 squads they should win since they have more planes.

 

 

 

 

Exactly! It's so obvious the IJN fighters aren't really that much better than the USN fighters. So i would think it should be equally obvious the reason IJN CVs dominate almost every tier, is NOT because of the strenght of their fighters.

 

Like i said before, nerfing the IJN fighters would balance CVs in a bad way (see my previous post), instead i think CV gameplay needs to change at it's core.

That's why i think introducing custom loadouts is the right way to go, even if the planes in this loadout would be nerfed, i still consider it better than nerfing the planes in the already existing loadouts. Custom loadouts would not only balance CVs, but it would also open up the possibility for new strategies, and generally more varied and fun gameplay.

 

 

Ok two things. (replying to both of what u said)

1. If a single US fighter squadron is double teamed by 2 ijn fighters. The US fighter squadron should have 4/7 of their fighters whilst both of the IJN fighters should be obliterated.

Why?

Reason:

Because the IJN still have 3 torpedo bombers running around one shotting your battleships. Your dive bombers cannot do that, nor can those 4 fighters actually do much to now help that battleship, he's probably flooding and pretty much dead(used damage control ability and then everyone shoots at a low health target, thus setting fires)... Your dive bombers can hurt (set x3 fire or 1, and one fire happens 1 in 4 times about...), the torpedoes are kinda hit or miss... But its largely rng dependent with US CV. Also torps cause floods! BBs will use their damage repair party immediately! whilst with a single fire..... Yeah right lol. Which is another point, torp bombers are more threatening than dive bombers which is why the fighters that should be left over are from the US side.

 

2. I agree! Custom loadouts would be sick! But to implement that would take a lot of coding and I would rather see subs implemented into the game :3 instead they're currently bringing in the British ships, Russian BBs I'm guessing and probably BBs. So it appears that they've got their hands full and it appears that nerfing is the easiest and dirtiest fixes they can currently do? (I've done php, java and implemented SQL in both those programming languages, dirty fixes is a programming slang word lol). I mean currently they can't even get more camos....

 

Read last post replying to someone else for Replays I have sent in and why I'm AS Essex set up......... (its mainly due to the AA cooldown tier 8, 9 and 10 CVs received... I think its a good change, but I cannot CV snipe anymore lol)

[dasCKD]

1. If a single US fighter squadron is double teamed by 2 ijn fighters. The US fighter squadron should have 4/7 of their fighters whilst both of the IJN fighters should be obliterated.

Why?

Reason:

Because the IJN still have 3 torpedo bombers running around one shotting your battleships. Your dive bombers cannot do that, nor can those 4 fighters actually do much to now help that battleship, he's probably flooding and pretty much dead(used damage control ability and then everyone shoots at a low health target, thus setting fires)... Your dive bombers can hurt (set x3 fire or 1, and one fire happens 1 in 4 times about...), the torpedoes are kinda hit or miss... But its largely rng dependent with US CV. Also torps cause floods! BBs will use their damage repair party immediately! whilst with a single fire..... Yeah right lol. Which is another point, torp bombers are more threatening than dive bombers which is why the fighters that should be left over are from the US side.

 

All you're doing is giving the IJN carriers useless fighters, meaning now that around 66% of their deck is filled with annoyingly useless planes. All you'll do is ignore the fundamental carrier problem and it'll result in average players quitting the game. Powerful players like Reyte or Aeroon couldn't care less about direct fighter fights because they always strafe anyways so you'll either change nothing and drive USN carrier win rates even lower than before as only the best IJN carrier players remain in the game or you'll have to nerf the already weak IJN strafe below useless. The win rates of carriers right now aren't dictated by the relative strength of the fighters, they're dictated by the strength of the strike aircraft and the USN strike aircraft are rather unreliable which leads to the overall poor performance. What you're suggesting is making it so that 7 fighters will win against 10 fighters of the exact same tier, which is quite frankly a terrible idea.

 

The Lexington is more powerful than the Shokaku, the unwillingness of most players to use manual drops will not change this fact. The problem with the USN carriers is that they're always more powerful than the IJN counterparts, but they're far less consistent. Good players want their skills to matter as much as possible, so they pick the class where their skills dictates the victory or defeat. This is why Shokaku is the carrier of choice in team battles and why she has a significantly higher number of more talented players. USN carriers aren't weak, they're impractical. Right now, I think the best thing that can be done to the carriers is to lower the USN dive bomber damage on all tiers apart from the lowest tiers then significantly buff their accuracy so they can actually hit ships. Whilst the carriers will lose their power, they'll gain consistency which might attract better players to the USN carriers and raise their win rate again. Changing the relative effectiveness of the fighters is just a useless fix that will only serve to globally lower carrier damage and appeal across the board.

[pra3y]

 

​Statistics bro, statistics. The US CVs are bottom of the barrel for every tier. IJN are top 3 for every tier, few exceptions. Search for yourself on warships.today/vehicles/eu FOR THE PAST 2 WEEKS!   !Important! (The midway was once legendary :'( .... which would affect all time results...)

 

And in practice, a well played taiho captain can easily out do an Essex captain(saw with my own eyes, Flambass (Very good player) kicked my [edited]and his taiho wr is 76%, his Essex wr is 57%, basically means that people who play CVs will find that US CVs suck! And there is a massive bias of: IJN CV >>> US CV. Simply because they can: ​ Strike Freely, kill your planes and sink whatever they want. In an uncomplicated version, this is exactly what they do! And this is why (example) Shokaku is top (because it does this!) and Lexington is bottom. Nerf the fighter HP. I've got an example of IJN fighters being very strong with one of my replays. I've also got another replay of me kicking a taiho's (edited)!

 

I'll supply more.

 

And yes I do run fighter set up, my wr with lex is 53.81 and with ranger is 52.47. I play lex with fighter set up and ranger with strike.

 

Here:

http://wowreplays.com/Replay/10593-Christpher_Dilworth-Open-Ocean

 

And me kicking a taiho's (edited) here to prove that I'm not (edited) and know what I'm talking about:

http://wowreplays.com/Replays/10602-Christopher_Dilworth-Shatter

 

Oh and the taiho's stats in shatter match shows that his shokaku and hiryu are both 55.56%. My strike ranger is 52.47%(69k average dmg). Yet I do more damage than him in my fighter set up Lexington (57k average dmg) than he does in either of his shokaku or hiryu (30k and 55k respectively). And he has a better wr than me in both of those than both of my tier 8 and 7 CVs. (My Essex I tried strike and wasn't working out, had 44% wr then changed to fighter set up and now is at  49%, best damage game was 284k damage with Essex and I lost!)

 

So I have used player statistics from the web, my replays with a comparison of a worse player than me and yet he's winning more. And you're still not going to be convinced that US CV tech tree is the worst tech tree to go down? I was suffering the grind for Midway, and now its nerfed lol. ​Every US CV throughout the tech tree loses the most (or at bottom 3) What more convincing do you need?

 

 

Statistically sure IJN CVs perform better, but it doesn't mean USN CVs are bad. Poor load out choice aside you get fighters that can 1 v 2 IJN's, TBs that can 1 hit kill most ships with luck and good drops and also pretty good DBs that seem to be getting buffed in 5.8. USN CVs and IJN CVs have different playstyle with IJN being more forgiving towards players (also better loadouts) which is why more ppl play them. Than when it comes to USN CVs ( below tier 9/10) most ppl go for AS, with some go strike although not all who pick it can really use it well. That leaves a minority playing balance.With majority playing AS and having only 1/2 DB squadrons of course USN CVs will perform worse than IJN since CVs usually deal the most damage through TBs which is why statistics is BS in this case. 

 

PS: I play with a balance/stock loadout for my USN CVs, which is the 1/1/1. My play style is more attrition base. I try to cover my team mates with my fighters as much as possible. If I'm too far away I'll instead go towards the returning path of the enemy strike planes and strafe/reduce their number so that the enemy has less planes for future strikes. With the TB and DB I'm able to do fairly decent damage to enemy ships. It works fairly well for me and during this latest PT I tried out the same method on the Ranger, Lexi and Essex. Apart from potatoing here and there it also work against 2/2/2 IJN setups. 2/0/2 USN setups are more tricky though.

 

 

Enemy Inde was also running 1/1/1 with an unupgraded hull but upgraded planes. 42 planes shot down, mostly from 1 fighter squadron. Who needs AS load out to get clear sky anyway

 

[Thunderslap91]

 

All you're doing is giving the IJN carriers useless fighters, meaning now that around 66% of their deck is filled with annoyingly useless planes. All you'll do is ignore the fundamental carrier problem and it'll result in average players quitting the game. Powerful players like Reyte or Aeroon couldn't care less about direct fighter fights because they always strafe anyways so you'll either change nothing and drive USN carrier win rates even lower than before as only the best IJN carrier players remain in the game or you'll have to nerf the already weak IJN strafe below useless. The win rates of carriers right now aren't dictated by the relative strength of the fighters, they're dictated by the strength of the strike aircraft and the USN strike aircraft are rather unreliable which leads to the overall poor performance. What you're suggesting is making it so that 7 fighters will win against 10 fighters of the exact same tier, which is quite frankly a terrible idea.

 

The Lexington is more powerful than the Shokaku, the unwillingness of most players to use manual drops will not change this fact. The problem with the USN carriers is that they're always more powerful than the IJN counterparts, but they're far less consistent. Good players want their skills to matter as much as possible, so they pick the class where their skills dictates the victory or defeat. This is why Shokaku is the carrier of choice in team battles and why she has a significantly higher number of more talented players. USN carriers aren't weak, they're impractical. Right now, I think the best thing that can be done to the carriers is to lower the USN dive bomber damage on all tiers apart from the lowest tiers then significantly buff their accuracy so they can actually hit ships. Whilst the carriers will lose their power, they'll gain consistency which might attract better players to the USN carriers and raise their win rate again. Changing the relative effectiveness of the fighters is just a useless fix that will only serve to globally lower carrier damage and appeal across the board.

Thx that was what i want pll to see, US DB are just stupid right now compare to IJN, the only problem its the manual circle its to big because of squad wing have mo many planes, if the lower the damage and buff the accurasy pll will stop complane, but the problem was pll that play US CV always have that godly 2TB and delete every ship in the game and when they balance it most of the "easy win" got flush away and players did't ajust there game, and start complaining again. Lets be real here, IJN DB are realy bad, if u can hit 4k with 1 DB its a damm miracle or even if there get there, while the US will hit for like 10k/12k a not bad drop, this disparati of damage its just to much, pll complay about US are weak but those who need a damage buff its the IJN DB or TB, the US only need accurasy buff and lower there DB damage

[meyos90]

My answers will be in blue. 

But before that, i would like to remind you that i agree the 2 CV lines are currently unbalanced and that nerfing IJN fighters would actually achieve some kind of balance. I just don't agree this is the right way to do it since the problem isn't really how strong the IJN fighters are right now (in fact, one could argue that they are already weaker than the USN fighters. And no, one replay doesn't prove anything.), so why would you do something that doesn't address the real problem?

 

 

 

Ok two things. (replying to both of what u said)

1. If a single US fighter squadron is double teamed by 2 ijn fighters. The US fighter squadron should have 4/7 of their fighters whilst both of the IJN fighters should be obliterated.

Why?

Reason:

Because the IJN still have 3 torpedo bombers running around one shotting your battleships. Your dive bombers cannot do that, nor can those 4 fighters actually do much to now help that battleship, he's probably flooding and pretty much dead(used damage control ability and then everyone shoots at a low health target, thus setting fires)... Your dive bombers can hurt (set x3 fire or 1, and one fire happens 1 in 4 times about...), the torpedoes are kinda hit or miss... But its largely rng dependent with US CV. Also torps cause floods! BBs will use their damage repair party immediately! whilst with a single fire..... Yeah right lol. Which is another point, torp bombers are more threatening than dive bombers which is why the fighters that should be left over are from the US side.

 

So the reason you want to nerf the IJN fighters is because the IJN strike loadout has too many torpedo bombers? Really?

 

2. I agree! Custom loadouts would be sick! But to implement that would take a lot of coding and I would rather see subs implemented into the game :3 instead they're currently bringing in the British ships, Russian BBs I'm guessing and probably BBs. So it appears that they've got their hands full and it appears that nerfing is the easiest and dirtiest fixes they can currently do? (I've done php, java and implemented SQL in both those programming languages, dirty fixes is a programming slang word lol). I mean currently they can't even get more camos....

 

Okay, let's assume CV balance is a really low priority to WG so they will never introduce custom loadouts or anything like it.

Perhaps then we have to just nerf the HP of planes, but why would we nerf the IJN fighter planes when they are not actually stronger than the USN fighters right now? Why not nerf the torpedo bombers, if they are such a big problem?

 

 

 

[meyos90]

Actually, why are we talking about a nerf to IJN CVs? I think that with the current AA there is absolutely no need to nerf CVs.

 

Instead we should buff the USN CVs. I am still very much against making ones sides fighters much stronger than the other ones, however. So i think we need to find an other way to balance CVs.

 

One way we could do this is increasing the speed of USN fighters. This would not make them win more encounters with IJN fighters, but it would allow them to choose when to engage, and it would also make it harder for one IJN squad to pin down the USN squad somewhere while the other IJN squad strafes. And, of course,  It would make it easier to take down the IJN strike planes.

Just make sure they aren't that much faster than IJN fighters. Just a little bit more is enough. (And yes i'm aware they are already slightly faster on many tiers, but in practice the difference is just too small.)

 

An (in my opinion) even better solution, would be to lower the servicing time for all USN CV planes.