GZ test II or Graf Zeppeling testing elsewhere

[SteDorff]

I had 2 games where 1 a GZ II was suiciding straight into the enemy lines and got killed - a loss another game a Graf Zeppelin teamkiller and on the other side a Lexington guess who died early and who lost the game? Right 

 

I understand these ships have to be tested at sometime but can they test basics like moving forward and die asap in coop or test server something? Having to put up with teamkillers afk ers the usual solo yolo and suiciding racers border crawlers and you name it is enough already.

 

 

[mtm78]

That GZ is trying to reach the smoke ahead of him. If you watch Farazelleth's streams you might see him doing the same. Don't think I would call him a bad player though   But he does it in divisions so he has smoke at the right times. Running full secondary build with GZ in a smoke division seemed to be reasonably fun ( for GZ owners, fun might be a low bar to reach for ). 

 

Can't see the minimap or team rosters, but yeah that's what I think he was trying to do. 

 

And no, we can't tell em to do it in a different environment, you need live server testing. That is why you also see ST testing ships on live server. 

 

[Azalgor]

Funny thing is, they are tsting its useless AP bombs...no HP buff to planes, no different loads, just what we had, that got it in the hole in the first place...

[SteDorff]

Kidding right? He is within firing range of Kiev Tirpitz Iowa Schors and all we cannot see yet.

[mtm78]

1 minute ago, SteDorff said:

Kidding right? He is within firing range of Kiev Tirpitz Iowa Schors and all we cannot see yet.

 

Your screenshots don't have minimap so hard to be sure ;) If he suicide rushed in a test ship he might be doing it on purpose to claim the test isn't good and they need to buff it a bit more   

 

Still doesn't mean you will get them to test them on a different server ;)

[mtm78]

4 minutes ago, Azalgor said:

Funny thing is, they are tsting its useless AP bombs...no HP buff to planes, no different loads, just what we had, that got it in the hole in the first place...

 

Fighters are now tier 7 so you benefit from the captain skill, this is a buff right? Not a CV player really so maybe benefit is smaller as I think it is. 

[Azalgor]

Who do you think it benefits having tier 7 planes in tier 10 games? Might as well give it tier 4 planes, and reduce the hangar capacity by half, so that in 5 min you go brawling with its ok secondary build...

[SteDorff]

[mtm78]

Yup he was trying to get close to the cap and wanted to get smoked up there, that's what I think at least.

 

Also, please press '+' more times your minimap is to small ( and doesn't show ship names thus making it easier to stay aware of your surroundings )  

 

9 minutes ago, Azalgor said:

Who do you think it benefits having tier 7 planes in tier 10 games? Might as well give it tier 4 planes, and reduce the hangar capacity by half, so that in 5 min you go brawling with its ok secondary build...

 

Because the skill increased your hp when fighting higher tier planes I think? Not sure if that helps a lot as Fara was mostly saying you can't stay in enemy AAA at all. Skilled CV might be more about strafing anyway so they can compensate for having less HP? 

[Aotearas]

Haven't seen a GZ II, but the GZ Is just outright murder BBs. Just got oneshotted in my Scharnhorst. A friendly Nagato in the same game also took 55k damage and barely survived the drop. Looks very much like if you can't shoot down enough aircraft before they drop, you're dead.

[Unintentional_submarine]

Ran into one (well one on my team too). He came at me from the flank, damn near 90 degrees on. 11 AP bombs hits later (instant AP bombs) and I was down 56k HP. What was my counterplay? I would rather have faced 3 TB squadrons. Those I would have been able to maneuver agianst at least. These bombers approached from the worst possible angle and still hit that many bombs. I thought I was reasonably safe, I was 90 degrees on, I had fighters overhead and I even had some cruisers not too far away and an Udaloi in a DF position.

 

The entire AP bomb mechanic is just... urgh. Either they really really suck, or they hit those very few select ships and utterly wreck them with little to no counterplay.

[ghostbuster_]

1 hour ago, Aotearas said:

Haven't seen a GZ II, but the GZ Is just outright murder BBs. Just got oneshotted in my Scharnhorst. A friendly Nagato in the same game also took 55k damage and barely survived the drop. Looks very much like if you can't shoot down enough aircraft before they drop, you're dead.

Today i saw a GZ II bombing a tirpitz. It was 40k damage with 2 squads. I was like 

[Aotearas]

Oh good ... I thought I was just terribly unlucky (as was the Nagato on our team) and didn't want to go kneejerking from biased experience, but it seems like the current GZ Test I AP bombs are just as ridiculous as it felt at the time.

 

I mean, I like anything that makes a good dent in BBs, but having essentially zero counterplay or damage migitation options aside from simply killing the attacking DBs before they drop? That's a weeny bit over the top.

 

4 hours ago, Azalgor said:

Who do you think it benefits having tier 7 planes in tier 10 games? Might as well give it tier 4 planes, and reduce the hangar capacity by half, so that in 5 min you go brawling with its ok secondary build...

 

They benefit from the Dogfight Expert perk against vanilla CVs (whose fighters are tier VIII (upgraded), so a straight up 10% dps buff since the actual fighter performance characterstics weren't lowered along with the tier).

[ghostbuster_]

I wonder if they get overpens when they bomb CAs or DDs 

[Altsak]

We had both GZ I and GZ II battling out who's the king of the sea. GZ I (strike, by the looks of it) had WR of 51% and GZ II (AS, eyeballing it) had WR of 54%. Our strike had no chance especially when I derped around more than usual in my Neptune.

[Xevious_Red]

2 hours ago, mtm78 said:

 

Because the skill increased your hp when fighting higher tier planes I think? Not sure if that helps a lot as Fara was mostly saying you can't stay in enemy AAA at all. Skilled CV might be more about strafing anyway so they can compensate for having less HP? 

It means you do an extra 10% per tier. Means you'll do 10% more damage to lexington/shok fighters if you click on them.

Doesnt stop you dying to AAA, wont save you from strafes and only works if you take the dog fight captain skill.

 

Its a buff, but a really small one

[Aotearas]

1 hour ago, ghostbuster_ said:

I wonder if they get overpens when they bomb CAs or DDs 

 

Pretty sure they do. Saw a Z-23 getting dropped by GZ I and it only took a bit over 1k damage, so I assume that would be one bombhit resulting in an overpenetration and the rest missed.

Though I have to wonder, with a drop circle like what those DB have right now, a good drop and a bit luck with bomb dispersion RNG and a DD might end up losing a huge amount of HP.

[Tungstonid]

3 hours ago, Aotearas said:

Haven't seen a GZ II, but the GZ Is just outright murder BBs. Just got oneshotted in my Scharnhorst. A friendly Nagato in the same game also took 55k damage and barely survived the drop. Looks very much like if you can't shoot down enough aircraft before they drop, you're dead.

 

And it gets better. According to a GZ I tester I had in my team today, you can't panic German AP DBs with Def AA.

So basically all you can do is

A) try to maneuvre and hope to avoid at least some bombs which is not easy because of the quite slim drop area

B) hope for your and allies' AA to shoot down at least some planes before they can drop.

 

I don't know how to feel about it... Sure, having bombers with lower stats than average might be a way to balance it, but as Unintentional_Submarine said: They are either close to useless or wreck the target that it is no fun anymore.

I also don't really understand why every new ship line has to have a gimmick. Balabncing exisiting stats, ok. Trying out new types of ammunition... depends, but ok. But everything else? At some point it just gets messy.

[Smeggo]

Have tested both now in some battles.

 

GZ II is easier, but GZ I can hit harder if skill is involved.

Had a match with 2k damage, and one with 100k, although having about the same hits - after all it's still typical DB-RNG.

 

But it's still boring playing so. Hoping the other setups will be more interesting. 

[Unintentional_submarine]

Flamu streamed a battle in GZ II (I think).

And from watching that I doubt they can balance it with AP bombs. The inconsistency was through the roof, and those circular drops just made it pointless to even try to maneuver. The only thing that mattered were maneuvers after lock in. That means the bigger the ship, the less it can actively do to affect the incoming strike. And since the usual mantra is 'don't begin to evade once the torps hit the water' it rings very hollow when these BDs enter the picture as that is essentially the only time there is.

 

'To blap or not to blap' seems to be the motto of GZ II.

Oh and the UI was worse than ever. Holy hell... stuttering and lags every time something got updated, like launching a catapult fighter or locking a drop.

 

Why does GZ have to be such a narrow striker that it needs to be massively powerful in those strikes? And then in order for the target to have a chance it then needs to be a massive lottery of RNG. Give me some TBs I can fight, things I can position myself against (haha, now you need to go around me to come from the other side) or I can actively maneuver against. This is just not fun to be the target of, and from Flamu's commentary he wasn't a fan of playing it either.

[El2aZeR]

19 minutes ago, Unintentional_submarine said:

Why does GZ have to be such a narrow striker that it needs to be massively powerful in those strikes?

 

Because WG wants to retain her gimmick of being DB only apparently.

[Unintentional_submarine]

And three TB squadrons were too much right... I would much rather face them than the RNG bombers of Doom (doom for me or him)

[Aotearas]

How about divebombed contact fuze torpedoes?

[mtm78]

35 minutes ago, Unintentional_submarine said:

Oh and the UI was worse than ever. Holy hell... stuttering and lags every time something got updated, like launching a catapult fighter or locking a drop.

 

I heard something about it taking 10 seconds before the game actually responded to a move order.... 

 

Not sure about the balancing, not a CV player, DB only sounds to me as pretty dull though. But I remember WG wanted those 'new speciul torpedoes' on the ship as alternate loadout so I wouldn't pick up the torches yet. 

[cometcruiser]

One sailed straight at me today. I sent it to the bottom with two Vollys from HMS Nelson.

 

I assumed the Graf player wanted to end his game quick and suicided.