Carrier suddenly popular?

[Phalhell]

Hi there,

 

So I really like playing destroyers, but I noticed something changed. Over the past 3 days everyone is dusting their carriers off and start hunting dd's? I have no idea what to do. For example. I played 3 matches today in dd's. Two of them the enemy carrier kept a fighter squadron above me and deploying smoke only is a magnet for his torpedo planes. I was lit up the whole game, doing nothing but avoiding cruiser fire and sometimes torpedobombers. Ofcourse it's an online game and I was not counting on our carrier to help me out. I was about to pull my favourit trick out of my sleve, hide behind the island and launch all your torps at a unexpecting battleship with the sims. Unfortunatly the enemy carrier found me again and well... It didn't end well, I was stationary and cruisers where on both side of the island. Outside my spottingrange, but still the carrier will lit me up for them. 

 

Then the other game I played my Fubuki, but didn't even had a chance to reach cap cause the enemy carrier cross dropped his torpedo's and all 3 bombers squads right on me. 

The most annoying thing is when they keep a fighter squadron spotting you, the AA can only shoot down like 1 plane per minute and an american squadron can keep you lit up for hours. 

 

Did something change? Why is it everyone is playing carriers again and hunting dd's? What do I do vs them? Sticking with the team isn't the role of a destroyer. 

My WR dropped massively over the last 3 days because of this. Strangely I'm left alone playing a bb. So why do all the carriers focus dd's suddenly? Did I missed something? 

 

Any tips? 

[Admiral_Noif]

I haven't noticed it, but there are some regular high end players who play mostly on carriers.

[thisheep]

Hunting the DD is crucial for a good CV. 

Without DD the team will be less able to cap and to see the other DD. 

 

I admit that in an IJN DD, you have to count on your allies to help you against planes but the other DD can easly destroy the spotting planes. 

 

There is not a very big CV population in T9-10, i can wait 10 min to find an opponent with my Hakuryu.

[BloodRose13]

BloodRose here - I have had the same problems as you have had Phalhell. Enemy CV's will put up fighters  and as soon as they find me they will lock on to me and keep me lit up. I am left with the choices of either running for my team and praying or opening up with my own (piteous) AA and hoping for the best.

As I run IJN DD's this is a particularly nasty problem, especially as I seem to be encountering a steady 2 enemy CV's per match.

[Cpt_Andre]

I'm a cruiser guy, but why should i play damage pinata for the new German battleships...

And because i supposed that 2/3 of every team will sail (German) battleships in the first weeks after release i start playing carrier

 

Oh these battleship tears

 

*glorious*

 

€dit: And yes, if i spot a DD i will spot a squadron overhead, no matter if fighters or bombers nor loaded or unloaded.

It's the path to success to spot and take out DDs early. And i dont care if i can kill it or not, i will spot the DD until he's dead.

[xXx_Blogis_xXx]

sure low tiers more cv players sine they hunt those tasty potato german bbs

[Capra76]

I guess that the current epidemic of KM BB is drawing a lot more CV into the game.

[Ishiro32]

There is a lot of BBs right now and trust me it's very fun to deal a lot of damage to those HP pinatas. Even though german BBs do not have bad AA, they still are there at the cost of crusier and DF coverage. It should normalize soon enough.

As for the DD hunting. It was always most effective tactic if you wanted to win games as CV, even in beta. Fact is that earlier it was not used by most players, because harrasing BBs is really fun and we are were in the damage focus mode. Since now BBs often are not really easy targets and move in packs... the only class left are the DDs. CVs hunt DDs because they are most often not in the pack and have no AAA so you can force good attack.
I am able to hit DDs without cross drop often enough to make it viable tactic.

If you want to be safer in DDs you should really be aware where is the nearest crusier and allied fighters. Also a lot of it is in mindgames, when you see for example TBs dropping, you have to start turning exactly at the time when the CV drop becomes locked. You have to feel it, but if you see obvious drop, wait a bit with the turning, when they are close enough then turn. CV will not be able to take turn into account and almost all DDs have good enough mobility to evade single drops. If you make it too late though you will be easy hit, too early here is better than too late.
Well made cross drops are pretty much impossible to evade, but if you are calm you shouldn't get hit by more than 1 torp, so it is around 1/2 to 1/3 of your hp depending on tier.
Fighter spot requires usually for you to run away to the friendly AAA to break line of vision. If you sail with a pack it shouldn't be huge issue, but at the end of the game you will be probably defenceless against something like that. Sadly this is most unfair part of CVs being counter to DD, really wish something could be done about how dull and unfair it is... but for the moment this is what we have.

Good luck

 

[MilkPowder]

Yeah im pretty sure its because of the massive influx of German BB's.

[GulvkluderGuld]

Yeah im pretty sure its because of the massive influx of German BB's.

 

This.

 

I certainly enjoyed my Ryujo a lot recently. Sinking DDs is just a byproduct, as it is required for winning.

[Krizmuz]

[edited]

[AgarwaenME]

[edited]

[pra3y]

 

[edited]

 

Hi there,

 

So I really like playing destroyers, but I noticed something changed. Over the past 3 days everyone is dusting their carriers off and start hunting dd's? I have no idea what to do. For example. I played 3 matches today in dd's. Two of them the enemy carrier kept a fighter squadron above me and deploying smoke only is a magnet for his torpedo planes. I was lit up the whole game, doing nothing but avoiding cruiser fire and sometimes torpedobombers. Ofcourse it's an online game and I was not counting on our carrier to help me out. I was about to pull my favourit trick out of my sleve, hide behind the island and launch all your torps at a unexpecting battleship with the sims. Unfortunatly the enemy carrier found me again and well... It didn't end well, I was stationary and cruisers where on both side of the island. Outside my spottingrange, but still the carrier will lit me up for them. 

 

Then the other game I played my Fubuki, but didn't even had a chance to reach cap cause the enemy carrier cross dropped his torpedo's and all 3 bombers squads right on me. 

The most annoying thing is when they keep a fighter squadron spotting you, the AA can only shoot down like 1 plane per minute and an american squadron can keep you lit up for hours. 

 

Did something change? Why is it everyone is playing carriers again and hunting dd's? What do I do vs them? Sticking with the team isn't the role of a destroyer. 

My WR dropped massively over the last 3 days because of this. Strangely I'm left alone playing a bb. So why do all the carriers focus dd's suddenly? Did I missed something? 

 

Any tips? 

 

The problem is AA gets too overwhelming on BBs at higher tiers especially when MM place lower tier CVs against higher tier ships like Hiryu against a NC or Amagi, whose AA are more for their same tier CV. I think some things you can do in your DD is:

a) Turn and go back towards your team if you see the enemy planes coming towards your position. The longer you survive in a match as a DD the better you can help your team. Just because you can't cap at the start doesn't mean you can't cap later.

b) If you smoke up against enemy planes, make sure you make a larger patch of smokescreen, don't just smoke and stop. The larger/longer the smokescreen is the harder it is for the enemy CV to guess your position in smoke.

c) If you play USN DDs and you find it really a hassle with planes get the hulls with better AA and defensive fire

[Spellfire40]

sure low tiers more cv players sine they hunt those tasty potato german bbs

 

​Good luck if ist not a Potato ,-)

[WarburtonLee]

 

​Good luck if ist not a Potato ,-)

 

More like that CV was the potato. Even i, wich dont play CVs much, would have manualdropped you to pieces there I am astonished to sometimes see even high tier CVs use auto-drop.

[Spellfire40]

Spellfire40, on 25 August 2016 - 05:08 AM, said:

 

​Good luck if ist not a Potato ,-)

 

More like that CV was the potato. Even i, wich dont play CVs much, would have manualdropped you to pieces there I am astonished to sometimes see even high tier CVs use auto-drop.

Well he was T5 vs a T4 BB but T4 has enogh AA that he cant reajust his drop or risking losing planes. If you react to the planes and not just the torps when they hit the water you can avoid large Parts of CV damage.

 

Of course there a lots of CV who suffer from the Tirpitz Syndrom: thinking any german BB is free exp and are suprised when someone actually knows what both BBs and CV can and cannot do.

[Ubertron_X]

Win the 'DD battle', win the game. As simple as that in most cases.

 

So any decent CV will at least try to go for the enemy DDs.

 

The one thing that really anoys me is that DDs cant stealth torp CVs anymore because SA was handed out to everybody for free. So even if you managed to sneak in between the enemy lines and avoid each and every plane the CV will eventually 'wake up' as soon as it is spotted,

[Xevious_Red]

 

The one thing that really anoys me is that DDs cant stealth torp CVs anymore because SA was handed out to everybody for free. So even if you managed to sneak in between the enemy lines and avoid each and every plane the CV will eventually 'wake up' as soon as it is spotted,

I would have thought almost all CV would have taken SA anyway since it very useful for carriers for the very reason you said

[puxflacet]

it seemed to me that german bbs arent the ideal target though...still rather seeking the japanese

[Leo_Apollo11]

Hi all,

 

I am back after my summer vacation (4 weeks of absence of playing in total) and I played 14 games yesterday.

 

I played my Tier VIII's exclusively and in almost all games (Tier VI / VII / VIII / IX / X) there were CVs!

 

In one game with my "North Carolina" I must have shot down 30+ enemy planes...

 

 

Leo "Apollo11"

[xXx_Blogis_xXx]

 

​Good luck if ist not a Potato ,-)

 

the sadly part u didnt faced me on that tier will grab my king hosho ), and u did not bad btw )

[brutus007]

Ger BB's come in game

Everyone and their mother are playing BB's

Cruisers got owned

Cruiser players says "****it I will show you!" and starts to play DD's

.

.

.

As there are no cruisers and tons of DD's and BB's people starts to play more and more carriers....

.

.

.

??? (probably more cruisers will start to appear)

 

What else can you expect in rock-paper-scissors game?

[damo74]

This game needs more CVs being played. The introduction of a new line of BBs which everyone is grinding has shaken up the meta. You have 90% grinding the BBs and the other 10% have dusted off their low-tier DDs and CVs to farm them.

 

Games are far more interesting with CVs, and WG needs to make carrier gameplay more compelling and rewarding urgently.

[SBS]

I can tell you that the large amount of german BB has something to do with it.

 

Especially because german BB has terrible torpedo protection. There is nothing like dropping 8 torps on a BB and see all of them do neraly full damage.

Such a pleasant thing after constantly having seen your torps doing reduced damage over anything else you have hit. So actually seing proper damage numbers apear again in wonderfull.

[CLyDeThaMonKeY]

Lets wait with all of the complaints until the rush of new BB players in German ships, and returning veterans because of the new ships...

Since the new shipline got released the meta of the game has changed, but in a couple of weeks everything is gonna return to normal with more cruisers