Guide: British Cruisers

[BloodRose13]

 

Let's see them post their overall WR's ;-) Not seen any floating around over a decent sample size!

I am out of upvotes sadly, but I owe you one!

 

 

 

Anyone can do well. You just have to play a certain way. Question is whether that "way" is fun to a lot of people. I'm betting no. 

 

And my main gripe remains the flat no-fun zone tiers 3-5 which is so demoralising. You don't get a "good" ship till Fiji and even then the ships can't do things others can... but then they can do things others can't. Again comes down to what is fun to each player. 

And some players are just naturally lucky and get better RNG. In the meantime others suffer from massive shell dispersion, and have to watch as 3 out of their 5 shots fall off either side of the Battleship they are shooting.

[Xevious_Red]

At really small samples can't really use WR. For example I have 80% WR in karlsruhe. Not because it's amazing, but because I only played 5 games and was lucky (as the karlsruhe certainly didn't add anything)

 

Just bought the leander so will see how that gets on

[Ryuuteimaru]

With the exception of the Caledon, all my WR are above the norm for equal ships. The sample sizes are really low though at low tiers, as in 1-20 games.

 

With the exception of the black swan/Weymouth all my average damages are lower however.

 

From what I can see your Win rates about the same but your damage output is significantly lower.

[Deckeru_Maiku]

 

In a word, no.

 

"To see how a relatively new player would experience the RN cruisers" would be impossible for you, with nearly 6000 battles with a better than average win rate. Please don't ask me to explain why. Did you have the part of your brain removed which stored the experience you have? Come on mate! Huge sample size too, really relevant.

 

Is this the kind of straw that you need to clutch to?

 

In fact, considering the ~1200 battles I played in Beta, I already passed the 7k mark...

Nonetheless I often enough play like a total potatoe. So if the ships were really that bad, I would consider my stats to be worse than usual.

 

In the end, I won't be bothered if the british cruisers would be buffed somehow. Guess that would probably give me even better stats with them, right?

 

What does bother me, is all the immediate whining going on. It seems to me like the complete BaBBies comunity part has switched classes and tried out a battle or three in the RN cruisers and now does what they already did best since beta ended. I've experienced the result of such whine orgies in other games. More than once games were unnecessarily simplyfied due to such an uproar of the masses, wrecking game mechanics, that were a bit too complicated for the masses.

 

But hey, I guess all will turn out well in the end. Like with CVs etc. etc.

[Chiledip]

 

In fact, considering the ~1200 battles I played in Beta, I already passed the 7k mark...

Nonetheless I often enough play like a total potatoe. So if the ships were really that bad, I would consider my stats to be worse than usual.

 

In the end, I won't be bothered if the british cruisers would be buffed somehow. Guess that would probably give me even better stats with them, right?

 

What does bother me, is all the immediate whining going on. It seems to me like the complete BaBBies comunity part has switched classes and tried out a battle or three in the RN cruisers and now does what they already did best since beta ended. I've experienced the result of such whine orgies in other games. More than once games were unnecessarily simplyfied due to such an uproar of the masses, wrecking game mechanics, that were a bit too complicated for the masses.

 

But hey, I guess all will turn out well in the end. Like with CVs etc. etc.

 

Just because someone voices an opinion that is contrary to your own, it does not necessarily mean that it is a whine. In general I think this thread has stayed on track and there has been a generally honest and polite discussion of people's views.  If flamu whining? Is Notser whining? Is Earl Grey whining? Bear in mind that these people are invested in the game as a career choice, it is important to them that this game succeeds. People are raising these objections because simply, it needs saying!

I am sorry but who wants the game to be dumbed down, if that is what you are implying? If these ships had been a 2nd line of Japanese Cruisers, that would be different. These niche ships are the 1 and only, long awaited, long overdue RN tech tree line! OK, you probably don't think that that is important, that's up to you. Myself and many others do find it a real problem.

I think that if you had actually read the thread and actually understood the points that people have made, I would not have had to explain that to you.

 

 

[DarthB0B0]

Had an interesting battle at tier 3 just now..

 

Only because I took my St Louis, so I switched to AP as two Caledons came around a corner. I thought oh fook, I am broadside but fired at the first one anyway... 12000 damage in one salvo had to write it in full as a K does not seem to do it justice. Just wow I would be pleased with that with a tier 6 BB salvo but with a tier 3 that's something.. And then my second salvo finished him.. The second ran but I chased and took him out too, 10 citadels in total. Ended up on 56K damage in a St Louis.. I guess they are fun, just not when you sail them.

 

On the other hand caved in and got an Emerald.. Where is the hitting head on desk smiley?  Wow they are even more squishy than everyone says.

[woody_pysch]

As A brit I have to ask was this line designed by someone butthurt over brexit?

[DarthB0B0]

 

What does bother me, is all the immediate whining going on. It seems to me like the complete BaBBies comunity part has switched classes and tried out a battle or three in the RN cruisers and now does what they already did best since beta ended. I've experienced the result of such whine orgies in other games. More than once games were unnecessarily simplyfied due to such an uproar of the masses, wrecking game mechanics, that were a bit too complicated for the masses.

 

But hey, I guess all will turn out well in the end. Like with CVs etc. etc.

 

Actually you are just guessing here. For instance I play a mix of all classes, more Cruiser and DD than BB then CV. And I have plenty enough battles in the Atlanta and Cleve to recognise the style, essentially this line is Atlanta, squishier but with smoke (poor because you have to slow down before you pop it and can't). And finally no HE. 

 

Now the main point of the grievances is not that tiers 1 to 3 are Meh,, OK that we can live with, tiers 4 and 5 terrible so yes need to be fixed, tier 6 ok maybe and upwards can be good against unskilled opponents but drop off very quickly when someone knows how to fight them. Now I do not have the experience in them yes but I can and do play against them and honestly do not fear them if I am in a 1 on 1 and am not hopelessly out tiered. And I am not a great player good enough I guess but if I can counter them that what is their point when all is said and done?

 

Anyway, the issue is that the line was flawed to start with, they rushed a poorly thought out fix and decided to label the whole branch as good but only if you are a good player. Skilled Captains only need apply because it will not be fun if you are not. All that with a line that was eagerly awaited, of course people are going to be annoyed what would you expect? That the whole player base would applaud what is essentially a one trick pony, or if you prefer "niche" tree? The fact you see so few of them right after release of lets be honest an eagerly awaited tree speaks volumes.

 

Lastly I am also not saying that we don't need niche tree's although this was a step too far, my opinion is that fine you want a niche tree great. But and its a big but, don't label it niche as a result of problems that you can't adequately fix before the release deadline.

[Effrit_TR]

Had an interesting battle at tier 3 just now..

 

Only because I took my St Louis, so I switched to AP as two Caledons came around a corner. I thought oh fook, I am broadside but fired at the first one anyway... 12000 damage in one salvo had to write it in full as a K does not seem to do it justice. Just wow I would be pleased with that with a tier 6 BB salvo but with a tier 3 that's something.. And then my second salvo finished him.. The second ran but I chased and took him out too, 10 citadels in total. Ended up on 56K damage in a St Louis.. I guess they are fun, just not when you sail them.

 

On the other hand caved in and got an Emerald.. Where is the hitting head on desk smiley?  Wow they are even more squishy than everyone says.

 

Having just finished about 50 battles in the Emerald, I can tell you, that ship is really something "special".

I will look back on my battles in that ship with a glow around me. Not a glow of misty eyed nostalgia but with deep burning hatred, loathing and despair.

 

[Hades_warrior]

I played today with Caledon and it feel squishy.

 

Since when DDs can citadel hit? -.-

[CavScorpion_2014]

 

Having just finished about 50 battles in the Emerald, I can tell you, that ship is really something "special".

I will look back on my battles in that ship with a glow around me. Not a glow of misty eyed nostalgia but with deep burning hatred, loathing and despair.

 

 

​Makes me incredibly glad I skipped it, the Leander so far is interesting, very situational but interesting nonetheless.

[Capra76]

Since when DDs can citadel hit? -.-

 

Broadside on, with AP, from the right range - always, but with RNCL, they can do it with HE 

 

Seriously, I took my Phoenix out for a few games and managed to score a citadel hit with an HE shell, now the mechanics are that an HE can penetrate armour 1/6 of the shells diameter, so the 152mm can penetrate up to 25 mm armour and a 127/130 mm will still go through 21mm, with RN CL above the waterline the armour is reasonable, below it it's paper thin, 10mm for Caledon rising to 13 then 16 for the next 2 in the series, so the 76mm guns on Smith/Tachibana can citadel Caledon.

 

I could be wrong on the game mechanics, it's based on what's on the Wiki plus the armour viewer, but if I'm not can somebody explain to me how DD with comedy guns scoring citadel hits against higher tier cruisers with HE isn't so f***ing broken it's not true?

 

Incidentally those 3 games brought home to me exactly why I hate the Caledon and I suspect if I played it the rest of the line.  

 

In the first I screwed up a bit, set a couple of fires on a BB but got involved with a Danae at very close range, killed him with 3 x citadel hits but died to his torps and ended with about 25k  damage caused.

 

 In the next 2 games I survived to the end and finished with well over 40k damage in both cases, so generally the damage in this ship is a function of the time you survive, die early and do badly, live long and prosper (as a wise man once said).  With the Caledon it felt completely different, it's quite possible to spend 20 minutes shooting constantly and end with single figures damage, you can get some good results but that doesn't outweigh the fact that most of the time you are screaming "this ship is absolute f***ing s*** "

[Hades_warrior]

 

I could be wrong on the game mechanics, it's based on what's on the Wiki plus the armour viewer, but if I'm not can somebody explain to me how DD with comedy guns scoring citadel hits against higher tier cruisers with HE isn't so f***ing broken it's not true?

 

Incidentally those 3 games brought home to me exactly why I hate the Caledon and I suspect if I played it the rest of the line.  

 

I believe its broken, yea. I refuse to believe that ship (or better say boat) with joke guns can do citadels.

Image if that happens with DD against BB -.-

 

I have left 3k more of EXP until Danae. Do you think Danae is better?

 

[Redgecohones]

I believe its broken, yea. I refuse to believe that ship (or better say boat) with joke guns can do citadels.

Image if that happens with DD against BB -.-

 

I have left 3k more of EXP until Danae. Do you think Danae is better?

 

 

I'm afraid, if you are having as much trouble  as it sounds like you are with extracting a decent performance from the Caledon, that the Danae (due in large part to the more 'open' maps and tier 5's in the matchmaking you'll more frequently encounter) will most likely be much worse for you. The ships have been labelled as 'high skill' (fig leaf though that is - but that's a different topic) - what this basically boils down to is that unless you pick your position very well, have maneuvreing to avoid accurate fire down as second nature, and the correct learned or underlying coordination to ensure you garner maximum yield from every salvo you fire, you will often find yourself compromised and wiped from the face of the planet with no possible reprieve.

 

*Edit* I speak as one of those 'potatoes', btw, I'm way to aggressive and my aim (mostly) sucks since I'm old and don't play the game enough, I do at least have some facility with map awareness and tactics to console (or perhaps more accurately frustrate) myself.

 

You will still find yourself wiped from the face of the planet when dispersion RNG rules it of course, but if you try hard enough you will extract 'ok' results from the Danae.

[Capra76]

I have left 3k more of EXP until Danae. Do you think Danae is better?

 

Not played it, I ground through the Caledon in 15 games and hated it, the consensus seems to be that Danae/Emerald are even worse in which case I'm having nothing more to do with the line unless/until it's fixed and the port slot now has an Ognevoi in it.

 

One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post, it's 5 days since the release of the line and the games featured between 2-4 RNCL, compare that with the KMBB that were so numerous they were able to break MM and force 11 BB per side games for weeks afterwards and it's clear that the line is a total disaster that almost nobody wants to play.

[Redgecohones]

As A brit I have to ask was this line designed by someone butthurt over brexit?

 

No, in a nutshell, this line is the victim of the 'passive/smoke play' meta which has developed in the game. Because people hate that, they 'gimped' the line for more casual players in order to avoid pissing off the people irritated by that meta even more (and perhaps because it would have further highlighted the issue).

 

One might have wished they had attempted to address the underlying problem rather than bar a highly anticipated line from use by most of their casual player base but, c'est la vie.

[Capra76]

 

No, in a nutshell, this line is the victim of the 'passive/smoke play' meta which has developed in the game. Because people hate that, they 'gimped' the line....................

 

Not sure about that, I think it's really a victim of BBabies crying about fire being OP and WG caving in to them as usual.  They're quite happy with the passive/smoke play so long as they can't do any harm to their BB overlords, hence the fact that the ships still have smoke but no HE.

 

It really does feel like a line designed to give BB players exactly what they want, harmless little bugs for them to jump up and down on without any risk of taking damage in return.

[Redgecohones]

I'm pretty sure their logic is far colder than that, though the fact that a large percentage of their audience drives BB (and both promulgates and is affected by the passive meta) will have been a factor , certainly.

[Celandri]

well i caved in and just jumped past all the crap of low tiers and went to tier 6.

i do enjoy this tier still to many bouncing shells on the german BB's but atleast you can have fun killing the french and the japanese ships with the weak armor.

but.. i do not like shooting at dd in a angle. they bounce more shells than a god.

[SgtToad]

It is not the fault of poor players that this line is getting such hate ("poor players just won't adapt" etc etc) - there are many players, myself included, with good WR on cruisers, lots of games, here since CBT, who have good WR in these British cruisers, who still think they are fundamentally broken - shell arcs need fixing, extreme fragility needs fixing, and most crucially of all, the fact that in many situations, against ships of ALL classes (yes, DDs and CVs, FFS!), the enemy is impervious to your main battery. That is fundamentally broken. WG need to fix this fast.

 

Like many others who have ploughed quite big money into this game, they won't be seeing another dime from me unless they do.

[Redgecohones]

It was interesting to hear Flamu talking about the initial version of Brit CL's, he considered them 'strong' but not 'OP' and certainly not 'broken' when they had HE.

 

The thing about passive HE in smoke play is that it is 'no skill' but allows a player to feel he is still contributing. These ships would have still have been FAR  more effective in skilled hands getting in close to torp/exploit broadside AP etc wherever possible (though the passive meta makes that far more difficult than it ought to be if the game was playing 'right' I would argue) but since the game often stalls out into plinking away at range that frustrating he/fire play has a far larger impact on peoples perceptions and 'fun' than it's actual mechanical effect -  and a far higher useage than should (for truly effective play) actually be the case.

 

People even if only at a subconscious level recognise that fact, and whilst the meta forces that playstyle nobody is particularly happy on either side of the coin.

 

This imho is the problem that needs if at all possible to be addressed, without it, this line would never have been where it is at the moment.

[Redgecohones]

Anyways, sorry, this is perhaps getting too far off topic...

[Imryn]

I can understand that - like I understand what Admiral_H_Nelson wrote. But Admiral_H_Nelson at least tries and plays a lot of cruisers. So hes opinion is ok, cause it comes from experience. If he does decent on other cruisers, have a lot of games in them, and dislikes them for having different playstyle, as well as acknoledging the fact that those ships perform (if not overperform) in right hands - that's all fine with me. 

I also agree, that lower tiers should be easy mode. If they're not - this should be changed. Lower tiers are for new players/casual players. In this design higher tiers feel easier for various reasons then lower ones, which is not very smart. I would give HE to the lower tiers and take it back at tier VI. That would be my recommendation, but I have to yet play them, so it's a bit in vacum, based only on other opinions.

 

 

Your opinion is no more relevant than anyone else's; in fact because you are such a good player and therefore your experience when playing these ships is so different to an average players it can easily be argued that your opinion is actually less relevant to an average player.

For me, the "different" playstyle is the whole point. I am British and very proud of my navy, and to have a bunch of Russian assholes reduce my navy to a one trick pony that has to hide to survive, has crap guns, no armour, and not even access to the same ammunition as every one else has infuriated me. I know its just a game, and I shouldn't take it personally, but I do.

And then to have them hide behind "historical accuracy" as an excuse has ramped my fury up to incandescent levels. This from a company that has manufactured the entire Russian ship lines out of pure fantasy because in reality their entire navy consisted of a bunch of rusting hulks rotting away in harbour. In the entire history of the Russian navy their only significant action was to be on the wrong side of the worst, most one sided, massacre that any navy has received in the modern era.

And that massacre was handed to them by a fleet that was to a great extent built in British shipyards or using licenced British designs and manned by an Officer corps trained by the British navy.

 

[Capra76]

I believe its broken, yea. I refuse to believe that ship (or better say boat) with joke guns can do citadels.

Image if that happens with DD against BB -.-

 

So, for a laugh, I tried to replicate the HE citadel penetration against Caldon with Smith in the training room and couldn't but I can confirm that 76.2mm AP will citadel it quite easily.

 

I'm not quite sure how I got a 152mm HE citadel on one of the T3-T5 ships because the below water line paper armour seems to be immune to HE shells and there's nothing above that which ought to be penetrated by HE, perhaps there's a bug in the armour model on one of the ships that raises the un-armoured section above the waterline, if there is then 127/130mm will have the same effect.

[Redgecohones]

Imryn, you need to take a breathe and back off a little, I'm pretty sure these '-Russian- assholes' had their reasons for the choices they made, I don't by any stretch AGREE with their choices, but as a fellow Brit I DO NOT believe that petty nationalism was the driving force here.