Why does the Emerald Suck?

[Namolis]

The biggest problem is your hopeless armament. Bad gun angles is an annoyance, but you have smokes that let you set yourself up and be as broadside as you want. You are squishy as all hell, but, again, your smokes will help you mitigate that and you have a heal to give you the illusion of a few extra hit points. Smokes are torpedo magnets, but you have hydro so you are reasonably safe even from that. Your torpedoes discourage a smoke rush.

 

But: after you've spent some time finding a good camping spot, carefully moved up there, avoided being blown out of the water, lit up your fire to cover the area with smoke (paying close attention to your speed to avoid the RN smoke bug), made sure targets are within your short range, made sure a friendly is spotting for you... you start firing, and nothing happens. Your pitiful shells plonk harmlessly off even broadside cruisers frustratingly close to you and I've seen the guns straddle stationary destroyers at 5km range.

 

In fact, if you had told me that a ship with torpedoes, heal, smoke and hydro could be so bad, I would not have believed you.

 

At T5, many players expect to be making a profit and will not forward the bill for premium smoke, which doesn't help when the ship is built around having smokes as a crutch.

 

Leander only gets 2 more guns on paper (well one, actually, but at least one gun on Emerald is always unusable), but it has shells that actually do something.

[darkwingfighter]

I'm not sure I've heard anyone say anything nice about this ship.

 

It has.... nice name.

[Ferry_25]

You forgot the option "because it's a RN cruiser" OP. All those boats suck.

[Cosseria]

I'm not sure I've heard anyone say anything nice about this ship.

 

She looks perfectly nice, squared yet graceful, as any true British ship. It pains me to see how bad she plays, I would have surely kept her for her look if she could provide any kind of gameplay entertainment.

[Trainspite]

Basically my vision for Emerald consists of this:

- She can get a C-hull, representing HMS Enterprise in 1943 form. Maybe the double turret on the front would help with accuracy. An accuracy buff is a possibility. Maybe that special accuracy module, Aiming Systems Mod 0. 

 

 

- The guns have a supercharged initial velocity, but use the non-supercharged shells. An easy fix to make up for some of the guns hitting power would be to give the supercharged shells to Emerald, and not just slap her with the velcoity. The 6crh supercharged shells have a velocity of 936mps, and weigh 50.8kg, compared to a 4crh shells 45.3kg. This should make the shell arcs flatter, faster, and the shell itself should do more damage. 

 

- Screw the special AP only, it just doesn't work for the 6"/45 Mk.12 on the older RN cruisers. Ditch the special AP, reinstate the reliable damage source of HE.

 

- Fix the citadel model. The deck armour and side armour should be left as is, but the fore and aft magazines should be excluded on the citadel region. This won't make her much less a citadel magnet, but it makes her more similar to Omaha & Kuma in terms of survivability. 

 

- Torpedoes are given a nudge in the right direction. An early version of the Mk.IX would do, 9.6km at 57 knots, though WG seem to use different values all over the place for the Mk.IX and British torpedoes. Yes, 8 of these per side, but she needs something special. 

 

- Smoke and the increased mobility in tandem can be kept if need be, I have a feeling the Emmy may need it for facing tier 7s. Though it isn't necessary for competing against tier 5s.

 

- If the smoke screen is kept, and HP repair removed then it could be possible to shift the smoke into different slot to allow use of the catapult. 

 

In the long term Emerald may well just be replaced in the tech tree by Arethusa, and made a tier 5 premium.

If a premium, then I expect the following could happen.

 

- All of the above. 

- 2 Hulls for a premium, one representing Enterprise, one representing Emerald. Other premiums have 2 torpedo options etc. but 2 hull options with fairly minor details between them would be quite unique. Maybe decrease the RoF for Enterprise a bit or so, in turn for better accuracy. 

 

Any thoughts? This would be part of my RN Cruiser rebalance thread which is coming soon™, but I'll make an early entry here.

 

[Namolis]

- The guns have a supercharged initial velocity, but use the non-supercharged shells. An easy fix to make up for some of the guns hitting power would be to give the supercharged shells to Emerald, and not just slap her with the velcoity. The 6crh supercharged shells have a velocity of 936mps, and weigh 50.8kg, compared to a 4crh shells 45.3kg. This should make the shell arcs flatter, faster, and the shell itself should do more damage.

 

This alone would probably go a long way towards mitigating her problems. Being super squishy is a "feature" of the RN line, something you are expected to play around using your smokes and heals. But you need guns that work, so that when you do find a suitable target you can actually hurt that target. Right now her guns appear as if they have all the disadvantages of HE (lack of alpha potential) combined with all of the disadvantages of AP (no fires and the target can angle). Better pen and better damage works wonders for Leander, which although she in practice has 33% more guns, is also a tier higher.

[CLyDeThaMonKeY]

I double citted a Emerald in my Isokaze today 

 

[Trainspite]

I double citted a Emerald in my Isokaze today 

 

If it helps I have beaten Emeralds, Danaes and a fail divisioned Caledon with the tier 5 Mutsuki, firing HE from her 2 guns. Beat them in a gun fight because I bounced their AP, and every other hit for me was a citadel....

 

 

This alone would probably go a long way towards mitigating her problems. Being super squishy is a "feature" of the RN line, something you are expected to play around using your smokes and heals. But you need guns that work, so that when you do find a suitable target you can actually hurt that target. Right now her guns appear as if they have all the disadvantages of HE (lack of alpha potential) combined with all of the disadvantages of AP (no fires and the target can angle). Better pen and better damage works wonders for Leander, which although she in practice has 33% more guns, is also a tier higher.

 

If her arcs are not already better than Omaha's the 6crh shells should make them better. The difference between Leander & Emerald may just be the guns, but I have advocated sacrificing continuity in the line to make them playable. Even if major in this case, or fairly minor, in the case of low tier German DDs having a ridiculous detection range when firing. 

[eliastion]

I must say I never noticed Leander to be that much of an improvement over Emerald in the first place. I gave up on British line for now - maybe I'll pick it back up sometiime but for now my Leander is gathering dust.

What's strange is that my actual performance in these ships wasn't bad. Emerald gave me 75% winrate over 20 battles. In Leander I managed 64% winrate with decent damage and 1,2 frags per battle over 14 battles. So one would expect me to have great time in them - be it luck over relatively small number of battles or me being made for these ships, I certainly had results. But the experience just never was that great. I remember playing them being extremely draining - and I don't exactly play the game to get stressed and tired. 

 

However, my experience makes me think that Emerald doesn't really suffer that much due to being much worse than Leander. I believe they are, in fact, pretty comparable tier-by-tier. It's more of the (old) Furutaka effect: you hit the point where you really need to adjust to playstyle your previous ships just didn't support or at least didn't require. Danae still plays more-or-less like other cruisers of similar tier. Emerald requires some new skills - ones specific for high-tier cruisers, ones specific for DDs... and perhaps some known only to UK cruisers. How to use smoke. How to not get torped in your (tiny!) smoke cloud. How to use solid cover, friendly DD smoke and other friendly ships that could draw enemy attention to themselves because you just can't handle being shot at. That's a very nasty thing to learn, especially for people who lack experience with DDs and didn't play at least some higher tier cruisers. Me, after all that beating I took in Mogami, I didn't find these two ships unplayable nor did I find them extremely different from each other. They just seem pretty un-enjoyable, especially with all these BBs everywhere - you need to be extremely focused all the time because making a mistake means hp just evaporating magically. Although it's worth a note that your heal isn't just an ornament - as long as you DON'T make mistakes, the heal will actually keep you in the game, preventing you from being forced out of normal play by accumulation of minor damage that ceases to be so minor halfway through the battle (as I often experience playing gunboat DDs). So, the heal is great. But I remember maybe one game where I made a mistake, lost 3/4 of my hp, somehow survived, healed up what I could and lived to contribute to the battle afterwards. Usually a serious mistake just means a trip to port. Even DDs are usually more forgiving due to better stealth and lack of citadels.

[Kuningas_Arthur]

I'm just super happy I got the Leander for free in the Santa's Christmas Convoy missions, I already had the Emerald but it saved me the last 20k xp grind from it  So far I'm liking the Leander a lot more.

[Agantas]

I was cursing the gun placement when playing Emerald. That kind of gun placement in combination with huge and squishy British citadel makes things difficult. Your frontal firepower is outright puny and you have to show side to shoot all guns. Shell performance isn't really that bad if you actually get a spot where you can shoot in peace. Emerald bow-tanking worked decently for me for its intended purpose: driving to location close enough, where you smoke up, then turn your ship to shoot while unseen in smoke. Typically, you'd get spotted since the good effective shooting range is shorter than your surface detection range.

[Spuggy]

The Emerald doesn't suck. The Emerald is a very good ship.

 

 

What is wrong with you people?

[Nechrom]

It was a tough grind. For me it was purely because of the underwhelming damage output. The time in the safety of your smoke is limited and not being able to put out any decent damage during that time severely limits the performance of the ship.

The AP rounds rely on a steady stream of shots to rack up any kind of damage and continually firing when outside of smoke is extremely dangerous for a ship which gets overmatched by everything and citadelled by any cruiser HE shells.

Also the heal is pretty weak all things considered and won't save you from instant deletion, which is the standard fate of the Emerald.

[Procrastes]

I'm not sure I've heard anyone say anything nice about this ship.

 

I'll give it a try: "It's good to see an enemy Emerald closing in, when you're in a battleship."

[Senlac]

The Emerald the only ship I've XP skipped.

 

It's slow, with long shell flight times and everybody aims at you.

 

It didn't help that it took me some time to realise that you have to completely stop before setting off your smoke, so there was some learn to play issues with me too.

 

The Leander is an excellent ship though, the difference between the two is like night and day.

[creamgravy]

Give her 10km torpedoes like Furutaka, screw buffing anything else.

 

[ColonelPete]

Gun performance of Tier II to V RN CL is bad.

Rest is ok.

Too many rounds do no damage.