what playing the Yamato taught me about the high tier BB meta

[anonym_gxxGX7KaxQVa]

being the only BB in tier 8-9-10 that can frontally penetrate other BB's really made me realise how much the bow tanking meta sucks at those tiers.

the fights that are the most fun are fight agaisnt other Yamato because i know i'm never safe, and it encourages both to stay mobile and not go on a frontal mexican standoff whenever any non-yamato (and non german i guess) BB face each other.

whenever i play my Iowa, i rarely push, and it's not because i don't want to, it's because i know i can't: i know in most situation, if i push i'm gonna be facing an ennemy BB's front at close range that i can't damage, and that just sits there infront of me preventing me to turn or be mobile and agressive so i have absolutely no choice but to backpaddle slowly while cruisers and DD burn me and my team call me a noob...

but with yamato, you can damage that BB front that's acting as a roadblock and preventing you to lead the team's push further.

 

BB at tier 8+ are waaaay too fragile from the side, even yamato (they all suffer from an unrealistic, massive above water citadel, except the german ones) and wayyy too invincible from the front...

this is what encourages BB to never push at high tier: because they turn so slow, you know once you are commited to a direction, you can't turn anymore cause if you show your side even once, even just for 1 turn every BB on ennemy team will focus you and wreck you.

 

i think the way to solve this is just to make every BB able to penetrate the front of each other at tier 8+ , but make the citadel size realistic like at lower tier to compensate. it's just better and more realistic that way. Bow tanking will still remain a perfectly viable tactic: you still present a smaller target, and citadels from front whould still be exceptionnal, it whould be more regular pens from front.

 

look at tier 5-6-7 BB gameplay, the place where it is the most fun and the best balanced Imo: nagato, colorado,fuso,kongo,new mex... ect... all those BB can penetrate each other's front, and they are less static, and more mobile, more active and more agressive as a result... (well, of course there will always be camping potatoes at all tiers, but you get my idea, it's more rare at lower tiers).

 

WG just announced recently they are planning to give Iowa and Montana a more realistic, underwater citadel, so clearly they arn't opposed to these kind of changes (althout if they make it lke the North Carolina's citadel, it won't be too high anymore but still too wide compared to irl... so it's only a start!) now if only they whould also fix the ridiculous citadel of Izumo and Yamato, and reduce Bow armor of all tier 8+BB....

 

[Syrchalis]

Not really - I mean, what you said isn't wrong, but the problem is more like this:

DDs don't counter BBs hard enough. It's really as simple as that.

 

Now you may wonder, DDs keep BBs from pushing, so how does this help? Well, there isn't any 10km+ torps anymore (save for gearing) so DDs can't just lay down a wall and deny a huge area. However, BBs being alive and so plentyful at every tier save for none, means that cruisers can't do their job and kill the DDs.

 

We either need DDs to really wreck BBs early in the game (at least a few of them) or CVs to do that. With 2-3 BBs per side out of the picture, the other classes can actually do something and the remaining BBs will benefit a lot too. Cruisers and DDs die at the start all the time, so why shouldn't BBs?

[MeTaLMooSe]

Being new to tier 9 (FDG) my observations would indicate that its not BB vs BB that promotes a standoff guarded approach.

It's the inability of the larger battleships to torpedo beat.

Bowtanking in towards a cap sniping, whilst awaiting the death of the enemy DD's seems the method I see.  If you have stealth then engaging/disengaging and going dark to relocate.

And realistically, what does a high tier BB do when the fish are shoaling? You cannot avoid them all and doing so will expose your broadside. So you camp in a strategic position and provide firepower for your team cruisers and destroyers to thin the opposing fleet.

Unless you are playing ranked or a competition I see no other valid strategies without going yolo and dying.

[Oely001]

The problem is that battle ranges in WoWs are unrealistically small, while penetration power of AP shells is quite realistic. To drop bow-on you must also reduce AP penetration curves, or it would become sheer slaughter. AFAIK some patches ago Wargaming tried to reduce bow armor of hightier BB (to eliminate autobounce = bow-on), but this was cancelled after public tests.

[Vanhal]

Not really - I mean, what you said isn't wrong, but the problem is more like this:

DDs don't counter BBs hard enough. It's really as simple as that.

 

Now you may wonder, DDs keep BBs from pushing, so how does this help? Well, there isn't any 10km+ torps anymore (save for gearing) so DDs can't just lay down a wall and deny a huge area. However, BBs being alive and so plentyful at every tier save for none, means that cruisers can't do their job and kill the DDs.

 

We either need DDs to really wreck BBs early in the game (at least a few of them) or CVs to do that. With 2-3 BBs per side out of the picture, the other classes can actually do something and the remaining BBs will benefit a lot too. Cruisers and DDs die at the start all the time, so why shouldn't BBs?

 

DD can't kill BB early unless you will make their torps insta deathrays with 1000 knots speed, 30 km range and 30 sec initial loading time. Beside, do remember that if you want to counter BB on long range with torps, no one will ever dare to close range, as torp accuracy greatly increase with decreasing of the range.

 

Not to mention we already had long range torps, all they did was herding any non-DD ship into the map corner by constant area denial. We also alrady had OP CV like you suggest. Both things were much worse for gameplay that anything now.

 

look at tier 5-6-7 BB gameplay, the place where it is the most fun and the best balanced Imo: nagato, colorado,fuso,kongo,new mex... ect... all those BB can penetrate each other's front, and they are less static, and more mobile, more active and more agressive as a result... (well, of course there will always be camping potatoes at all tiers, but you get my idea, it's more rare at lower tiers).

 

 

That's true, but on those tiers:

1. BB have decent agility, not unmaneuverable bricks like Yamato.

2. Deadly focus is rarer, BB can sometimes back off from a fight

[daki]

Being new to tier 9 (FDG) my observations would indicate that its not BB vs BB that promotes a standoff guarded approach.

It's the inability of the larger battleships to torpedo beat.

 

Sounds like a standard excuse for camping...

Why do I get the feeling that BB players somehow expect to be able to dodge all torps most of the time?

Please advise which other class can do it atm?

Which other class can easily absorb 4,5 or even much more torpedo hits and continue fighting?

Not even to mention the amount of shells it can tank (compared to other classes)...

Lastly, why do BBs camp even if there is only one DD on the enemy team?

 

Sorry to say, but I am yet to hear one strong reason mechanics wise why BBs are unable to play more aggressively.

Especially when I see from time to time those rare captains who play BBs aggressively and are being quite successful at it.

So not two or three... just one reason please. Trying to claim that somehow DDs are OP (especially nowadays) is quite a laughable argument.

 

[mariouus]

By default game is 20.minutes long. That means you should obviously always push, but what many people think is pushing, is actually overextending. If you are dead in first 5.minutes in BB with nothing do show, then it was not pushing, it was a failure. Not all caps are suitable for BB to drive straight in, some are, but not all. While BB are powerful and durable they, just like cruisers, need support to survive while pushing. Unlike destroyers who need support to win, but not that much to survive (in a same way the BB does). So in order for a BB to survive pushing scenarios at least minimal cooperation from the team is need.If a DD wants a BB to push with him, then a DD player should be willing to do teamwork. 80% of the destroyer players are not ready for team-play. What usually happens when i follow a DDs in cap, is that the minute the enemy is spotted they run, leaving me to my faith.Or even better, they pop-smoke somewhere far away from me, so i cant use it, because their spotted indicator flickered. I would not mind if they but out smoke near me and then run. But what DD players usually use BBs, who are pushing with them, is just something who would distract enemy long enought so they can get their capturepoints and then can be discarded. If that happens, then the BB is in deep crap, firstly he his an easy target for enemy DDs, secondly if enemy BBs are near he cant really turn around, so only option is backing out, what is also problematic. 

 

So the reason why people camp (or is accused of camping) are usually: 1. Person complaining about someone camping, do not really know what camping is and is an idiot (Once in Amagi, after 4.kills, 120K of damage and close quarters medal, I was called a coward by a DD after I had been driven out of the cap circle where he had ditched me). 2. Some are just a pointless wankers, and really are camping. 3. People do not have fond memories about pushing to cap and be left to die, while DDs run on a first sign of trouble and only use their smoke to help them self.And cruisers are doing only god knows what.

 

While when ships cooperate, specially in randoms, it usually will result in good outcome. Couple of weeks ago me in my Fuso and two friendly DDs  hold a flank against 1DD, 3 tier VII cruisers, 2 tier VII and 1 tier VIII - we killed all except on tier VII BB. Last week me in Amagi and friendly DD (I think it was a Kiev) killed off half the enemy team.

Which other class can easily absorb 4,5 or even much more torpedo hits and continue fighting?

 

No battleship can easily absorb 4,5 or even much more torpedoes. Taking 4 torpedos from equal tier DD would mean you are pretty close to death, if not entirely dead.

 

Sorry to say, but I am yet to hear one strong reason mechanics wise why BBs are unable to play more aggressively.

 

Especially when I see from time to time those rare captains who play BBs aggressively and are being quite successful at it.

 

Lack of aggressive gameplay is not only BB players territory, there are just as many cowardly DD and Cruiser players as there are cowardly BB players.

 

[Molybdane]

I think BB meta is hung up on bow-on tanking anyway but that's easy for me to say. I have an Iowa with a 12,2 km concealment and a 34,7 km speed. If I see something I don't like about the enemy team moving to the flank I am heading for, I just turn about and pick another flank where I can advance without dieing in 30 seconds.

 

Still, BB's do require teamwork to do any type of pushing, inparticular, they need scouting and the smokescreen dd's can provide. Besides that, fighter cover and/or scouting is nice. If a cruiser with low concealment can follow, that would be very helpful too.

 

 

But that's todays meta for you. As other have pointed out, players have been abandoned by other players while pushing so often, it's what they have come to expect.

[Corvi]

The only thing Yamato has thought me is that you are inferior to every other ship except BBs. Cruisers trash you easily, DD's trash you just as easily, CV just need to sneeze at you and you are dead. Nothing you can do about it. Only thing you can effectively fight are other BB, and at that its quite good.

[cro_pwr]

 Taking 4 torpedos from equal tier DD would mean you are pretty close to death, if not entirely dead.

 

 

Nope.

Not even.

Just took 4 Shima torps in Yamato. Took 51k damage (took them on my torpedo belt). Yamato has 100k damage, so 4 torps dealt 50% of hp to me. And I repaired at least 20k after taking them, that means 4 torps took whooping 30% of my hp all in all.

Yamato has 56% damage reduction from torpedoes, Shimas torps deal 23k at most. Thats ~10-11 k damage per torpedo.

 

Amagi has ~50% damage reduction from torpedoes, highest damage from Kagero is ~21k. Once again, ~10k damage per torpedo. Amagi has 66k hp, so after you pop your heal you still have at least 35k+ hp to work with...

 

But taking 4 torps means you made a big mistake (I did in last game), and you still have at least half of your HP to play around with on high tiers. Eating one torp equals 2 penetrating shells from high tier BB, but still, everyone is crying about torpedoes, while taking 50k damage in one salvo from enemy BB is quite fine.

 

Even if you eat one on the bow / stern where you have low torpedo protection, thats only one, you can't eat 10 torps when bow on, and thats still not even close to enough damage to seriously cripple you...

[mariouus]

 

Nope.

Not even.

Just took 4 Shima torps in Yamato. Took 51k damage (took them on my torpedo belt). Yamato has 100k damage, so 4 torps dealt 50% of hp to me. And I repaired at least 20k after taking them, that means 4 torps took whooping 30% of my hp all in all.

Yamato has 56% damage reduction from torpedoes, Shimas torps deal 23k at most. Thats ~10-11 k damage per torpedo.

 

Amagi has ~50% damage reduction from torpedoes, highest damage from Kagero is ~21k. Once again, ~10k damage per torpedo. Amagi has 66k hp, so after you pop your heal you still have at least 35k+ hp to work with...

 

But taking 4 torps means you made a big mistake (I did in last game), and you still have at least half of your HP to play around with on high tiers. Eating one torp equals 2 penetrating shells from high tier BB, but still, everyone is crying about torpedoes, while taking 50k damage in one salvo from enemy BB is quite fine.

 

Even if you eat one on the bow / stern where you have low torpedo protection, thats only one, you can't eat 10 torps when bow on, and thats still not even close to enough damage to seriously cripple you...

 

Amagi with its 45% and Yamato with its 55% reduction level are good in torpedo protection (Amagi has one of the longest torpedobelt). Yamato at the same time has about 40% of her hull length not protected by the torpedobulge. Iowa has what about 27% of reduction, again about 40-45% of its hull does not have a bulge, German Tirpitz and Bismarck also has rather boor torpedo protection, not even talking about North Carolina with its 19%

 

So after taking 4 Kageros torpedos in the bulge how much HP would be left

 

Amagi - about 22000 hp left

Tirpitz - about 5000 hp left

North Carolina - (about - 2000hp) very dead

Bismarck - about 4000hp left, if one hits outside the bulge, it would be dead.

Iowa- about 17000hp left, just for comparison.

 

Torpedo protection depends entirely on the ship and tier. In tier X torpedo damage in somewhat proportionally smaller, But Shima has what (?) 15. tubes, with well over 300000hp of potential broadside damage.

[peoplescavalry]

Have put my NC into mothballs after getting bored to bow on death and as a penance have resurrected my Wyoming to try and recapture some fun. Also my stats for that ship are dire, for the first 1000 games I just bummed around to no great effect.

[Darth_Glorious]

Bow on or go home.

[KuroNyra]

With my Yamato yesterday, I bow on against a group of 5 player.

I manage to dodge 7 (!) wave of torpedo with the help of lucky place, and constant change in my direction and speed (also the rudder shift module helps a lot)

Yet, it still felt like my health was melting more than it should have.

Just like, going bow on against a Tirpitz, a Bismarck an Iowa and a Minotaur, and seing your liufe dropping at 50% in a matter of second like that? When I'm toward them? Angled and technicly on the best position?

 

Somethings is sometimes really fishy.

[Darth_Glorious]

With my Yamato yesterday, I bow on against a group of 5 player.

I manage to dodge 7 (!) wave of torpedo with the help of lucky place, and constant change in my direction and speed (also the rudder shift module helps a lot)

Yet, it still felt like my health was melting more than it should have.

Just like, going bow on against a Tirpitz, a Bismarck an Iowa and a Minotaur, and seing your liufe dropping at 50% in a matter of second like that? When I'm toward them? Angled and technicly on the best position?

 

Somethings is sometimes really fishy.

 

HE spam + superstructure hits are great against bow on Yamato. You live longer but not eternally

[cro_pwr]

 

Amagi with its 45% and Yamato with its 55% reduction level are good in torpedo protection (Amagi has one of the longest torpedobelt). Yamato at the same time has about 40% of her hull length not protected by the torpedobulge. Iowa has what about 27% of reduction, again about 40-45% of its hull does not have a bulge, German Tirpitz and Bismarck also has rather boor torpedo protection, not even talking about North Carolina with its 19%

 

So after taking 4 Kageros torpedos in the bulge how much HP would be left

 

Amagi - about 22000 hp left

Tirpitz - about 5000 hp left

North Carolina - (about - 2000hp) very dead

Bismarck - about 4000hp left, if one hits outside the bulge, it would be dead.

Iowa- about 17000hp left, just for comparison.

 

Torpedo protection depends entirely on the ship and tier. In tier X torpedo damage in somewhat proportionally smaller, But Shima has what (?) 15. tubes, with well over 300000hp of potential broadside damage.

 

Once again, if you eat 4 torps, you did something very wrong.

And yes, shima has 15 torps, but if you eat more then 2 torps, you should get punished.

OTOH if you are taking them on bow (without torpedo protection) damage saturation will kick in, and you will eat less damage.

 

and in the end, thats the whole point of CV/DD, to counter stationary bow on "I cannot be damaged" BBs, or the ones that don't pay enough attention, and are sailing in a straight line for 10 minutes...

[cro_pwr]

 

Just like, going bow on against a Tirpitz, a Bismarck an Iowa and a Minotaur, and seing your liufe dropping at 50% in a matter of second like that?

 

If you were bow on to all of them, there is no way in hell they could drop half of your life in matter of seconds...

the only SMALL posibility would be that someone got some lucky pens / citadels on you, but then its simply bad luck, OR you wasn't angled enough to some of them, and ate a lot of damage (lets say Minotaur that can melt you if he gets nice hits on your superstructure / broadside)

[Darth_Glorious]

Minotaur can get 1-2k hit/salvo on superstructure of bow on yamato, so if you stay long enough, you will die.

[Syrchalis]

 

DD can't kill BB early unless you will make their torps insta deathrays with 1000 knots speed, 30 km range and 30 sec initial loading time. Beside, do remember that if you want to counter BB on long range with torps, no one will ever dare to close range, as torp accuracy greatly increase with decreasing of the range.

 

Not to mention we already had long range torps, all they did was herding any non-DD ship into the map corner by constant area denial. We also alrady had OP CV like you suggest. Both things were much worse for gameplay that anything now.

 

 

 

That's true, but on those tiers:

1. BB have decent agility, not unmaneuverable bricks like Yamato.

2. Deadly focus is rarer, BB can sometimes back off from a fight

 

Sounds to me like a bad excuse for retaining the BB meta. Vanhal, you are in every BB-related thread saying BBs aren't OP, but if there is four classes and one is played 40%, it's not just "BBs are famous". Just face that the class as a whole is overpowered and partially because BBs live too long.

 

BB meta is far worse than long range DD spam or CVs being strong. CVs being strong made people teamwork. It was the best time by far. BB meta is just every BB scrub yoloing around, feeling like some god, because his fat [edited]boat is OP and they chat and act like that too. They make cruisers hide behind islands. Did you ever play a cruiser beyond T7 Vanhal? Did you ever bother with one? Because you hide or die, since you will get AP volleys from 5 different angles and at least two of them will citadel you.

 

So hiding as you must as a cruiser you cannot hunt DDs, great for DDs right? Nope, the BBs will camp at 20km because the DDs are alive and well and they are scared chickens with their 100k HP and 55% torpedo protection - means DDs cannot even fight what they are supposed to.

 

In other words: We don't need long range torps back or CVs OP again, but we need a massive nerf on BBs effectiveness over 15km, a massive nerf against how hard they counter cruisers and they need to die earlier or we need a cap at 3 BBs per side. Otherwise the games will stay super campy, because everyone has to hide from the super accurate 15k per AP shell BB monsters that are in the game right now.

[Ast3lan]

Not really - I mean, what you said isn't wrong, but the problem is more like this:

DDs don't counter BBs hard enough. It's really as simple as that.

 

Now you may wonder, DDs keep BBs from pushing, so how does this help? Well, there isn't any 10km+ torps anymore (save for gearing) so DDs can't just lay down a wall and deny a huge area. However, BBs being alive and so plentyful at every tier save for none, means that cruisers can't do their job and kill the DDs.

 

We either need DDs to really wreck BBs early in the game (at least a few of them) or CVs to do that. With 2-3 BBs per side out of the picture, the other classes can actually do something and the remaining BBs will benefit a lot too. Cruisers and DDs die at the start all the time, so why shouldn't BBs?

 

How about giving CVs a bit of a buff again? The problem with your solution is that more DDs mean people will push even less. When you get more than 3 dds per side people already moan and refuse to move.. let alone giving them another buff. 

[PzAbteilung]

watch my  dead/live rate at yamato, i barely survive 1 of every 5 battles.

I push and do my job. Have near a 50% of surviving battles is being useless camper for your team.

[tenacious_torps]

we need a cap at 3 BBs per side

 

Preferred solution, but WG will always argue that it's problematic because of too long waiting times. (Which seem to be fine for CVs apparently, but let's for the moment pretend we buy it anyway) In that case we need to cap something else. Let's give each team a maximum amount of BB HP, of course in correlation to match tier. If there are too many BBs who need to be fitted into matches, their HP is reduced proportionally - maintaining their relative power ratios - to fit into that maximum. Let's say we calculate the maximum allowed HP per team as equivalent to four BBs (which is generous enough, I'd think). If we got six instead, well, they're going to be at two thirds health to start with. Since only BBs can damage other BBs in the opening stages this should reduce the time needed to weed out the over-population and allow for some more dynamic gameplay quite efficiently. 

[steviln]

CVs being strong made people teamwork. It was the best time by far.

 

It seems that it is mostly the CBT mafia that have that opinion. Newer player seems to rarely have that opinion. Seems to me that if a player did not participate in any form of beta testing, they are much less inclined to want stronger CVs and less BBs. 

[steviln]

How about giving CVs a bit of a buff again?

 

No, the CV rather need more nerfs, as there is still to many CVs in game. 

[VC381]

The broadside survivability in game is not unrealistic, only artificially short battle ranges. No BB armor was designed to resist enemy BB shells at 10km, most of these ships were designed to fight at ranges that are not even possible in game. Iowa etc. have citadels out of the water because IRL this meant more useful volume was protected and the expected danger was more from above or at least quite steep falling shells, not nearly horizontal penetrations...