Where are all the cruisers at?

[SirLloydHigginsBoomBoom]

I'm back to playing WoWs after about a year and around t5-6 playing BBs I see next to no cruisers of any kind. In queues the counter shows around 4 battleships for every cruiser. This is especially problematic since DD seems to be the second most popular choice and with 19 knots and the silhouette of an island I'm quite the target.

Is this an issue? I'm not balance-complaining, but I do find the absence of my counter's counter... *frustrating* . Does WG have anything planned to fix this? Is this only so at mid tiers?

My guess would be that Battleships is simply the one that would appeal to most people, myself included, but surely, cruisers could be popularised somehow?

https://imgur.com/a/yN3eU

here there are 7 battleships per cruiser

[ColonelPete]

No cruiser? You must be mistaken. They get played less, yes, not surprising with that amount of BBs in game.

[SirLloydHigginsBoomBoom]

23 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

No cruiser? You must be mistaken. They get played less, yes, not surprising with that amount of BBs in game.

I said 'next to no'. I've just been in a game where our side literally had 0 cruisers and the enemy had 5 DDs, that is admittedly what prompted this thread.

But I do see fewer cruisers than BBs, and there is the occasional game where they are  completely absent from one side.

[principat121]

and with BBs getting all the cruiser conumables...

 

there is no need to play a quishy ship if you also can pick ship with more armor and a heal

[Capra76]

1 minute ago, principat121 said:

and with BBs getting all the cruiser conumables...

 

there is no need to play a quishy ship if you also can pick ship with more armor and a heal

 

Yep, the rise of the HE spamming AA fortress stealth battleships has made them into better cruisers than the cruisers so the cruisers are left with what exactly?

[AkosJaccik]

6 minutes ago, Capra76 said:

 

Yep, the rise of the HE spamming AA fortress stealth battleships has made them into better cruisers than the cruisers so the cruisers are left with what exactly?

 

A bit smaller service cost! 

[Ubertron_X]

The problem with cruisers is their primary mode of mitigating damage.

 

DD's mitigate damage by being small targets and having good stealth. You can't damage what you can't see / hit.

BB's mitigate damage by armour and recovering HP. BB can take enormous punishment, if you can hit them at all (range <> reload <> stealth).

 

CA's try to mitigate damage by evading, which is not working, especially vs attacks comming from multiple directions (both from BB's or other CA's). You neither have the armour, nor the rudder shift nor the range nor the stealth to mitigate damage properly. Thus when it comes to mitigating damage CA's unfortunately are not Jack of all trades but indeed are master of none.

 

Result: CA's are prime targets and usually die early => people switch to BB or DD for better survivability.

[Capra76]

16 minutes ago, Ubertron_X said:

The problem with cruisers is their primary mode of mitigating damage.

 

True, but also their primary mode of dealing damage isn't all that effective either.

[Krikkio82]

Since WG turned BBs in better CAs people willing to play weak version is lacking.

[triumphgt6]

Far prefer cruisers - battleships are slow and clumsy. Yes, you do live dangerously, but it is much more fun!

[lup3s]

4 hours ago, SirLloydHigginsBoomBoom said:

I'm back to playing WoWs after about a year and around t5-6 playing BBs I see next to no cruisers of any kind. In queues the counter shows around 4 battleships for every cruiser. This is especially problematic since DD seems to be the second most popular choice and with 19 knots and the silhouette of an island I'm quite the target.

Is this an issue? I'm not balance-complaining, but I do find the absence of my counter's counter... *frustrating* . Does WG have anything planned to fix this? Is this only so at mid tiers?

My guess would be that Battleships is simply the one that would appeal to most people, myself included, but surely, cruisers could be popularised somehow?

https://imgur.com/a/yN3eU

here there are 7 battleships per cruiser

 

So why don't you play Cruisers? 

[RAHJAILARI]

Weel, @SirLloydHigginsBoomBoom , @SeaWolf7I guess you have already been advised of the problem but anyways. Issue is the BB overpopulation, of course. Any BB can easily oneshot any Cruiser in its own tier and hold its own even against 2. Cruisers though they can hold their own against DD's, cannot do much to counter BB's in an open 1-to-1 fight. So this brings us to an MM, whereby there will be 5 BB's, 5 DD's and 2 Cruisers per team in many or most high tier matches. The poor saps still trying to Cruiser being stubborn, masochistic morons like myself.

 

Problem is that BB is the hard counter to a Cruiser and Cruisers have no "native" survival mechanism of their own against it (DD' have stealth&smoke, CV have their planes and unlimited range, BB have superior guns, armour&heal  Cruisers then? Ehh???). DD on the other hand is the hard counter to a BB (stealth and the ability to fire torps from stealth). You might say that a Cruiser has better stealth and agility than a BB, but on the other hand agility is no armor and will not save you from salvos from multiple BB's and the existence of so many DD's in the game also has the effect of completely negating any stealth advantage a Cruiser might otherwise possess. Cruisers also have no option to fight from stealth, like the DD so their chances of effectively fighting back are very limited and success quite situational.

 

As you already might guess, this state of affairs will put most players off Cruisers quite effectively. Not me, but I'm talking about the reasonable people here...

 

For this to change, both the maximum number of DD's and BB's per team should be capped (or else the Cruisers buffed so they would become more powerful but I can see a problem with that too, so let's not go there). At the moment, the way current meta actually works as intended only if Cruisers are the the most numerous ship class in each team and sadly, that is not the case most times.

[bug]

not to forget that from tier 5 and up you face higher tier BB than yourself in most games

[SeaWolf7]

5 hours ago, SirLloydHigginsBoomBoom said:

I said 'next to no'. I've just been in a game where our side literally had 0 cruisers and the enemy had 5 DDs, that is admittedly what prompted this thread.

But I do see fewer cruisers than BBs, and there is the occasional game where they are  completely absent from one side.

I have noticed this too..This has been occurring more of recent  IMO.

Perhaps Missions and campaigns have effected an already minority in the game to be even less present at the moment

 

[Capra76]

13 minutes ago, RAHJAILARI said:

5 BB's, 5 DD's and 2 Cruisers per team in many or most high tier matches.

 

 the existence of so many DD's in the game a

 

 both the maximum number of DD's and BB's per team should be capped

 

Do you actually know what the population of DD is at the various tiers?  Frequently it's below 20% and only at T10 is it anything but the least played class (cv excepted), this idea of "5 DD every game" is nonsense.

[RAHJAILARI]

15 minutes ago, Capra76 said:

Do you actually know what the population of DD is at the various tiers?  Frequently it's below 20% and only at T10 is it anything but the least played class (cv excepted), this idea of "5 DD every game" is nonsense.

Ehmm... You did notice the part about "high tier matches" did you my friend?

[Zen71_sniper]

3 minutes ago, Capra76 said:

 

Do you actually know what the population of DD is at the various tiers?  Frequently it's below 20% and only at T10 is it anything but the least played class (cv excepted), this idea of "5 DD every game" is nonsense.

TBH, there was a number of (mainly clueless) Aigle players that boosted number of DDs to 5 per game. Many times in last week or so. 

 

However, that is campaign driven - so I expect it to drop down to normal level of 2-3 per game

[Capra76]

8 minutes ago, RAHJAILARI said:

Ehmm... You did notice the part about high "tier matches" did you my friend?

 

w/e 17/3/2018:

 

Tier	BB	CA	DD	CV
7	49.31%	27.27%	19.16%	4.26%
8	57.30%	24.36%	15.84%	2.51%
9	45.35%	27.53%	25.61%	1.51%
10	31.92%	34.37%	31.93%	1.78%

 

You will see 5 DD games from time to time purely because with a 5 BB cap and so few CV the other 7 ships need to be found from CA/DD, but the idea that the DD population is a problem is a complete myth.

[VC381]

Because cruisers are difficult to play and don't hold your hand and perscribe the playstyle to you. That means people prefer to whine on the forums about how cruisers are obsolete instead of actually learning to play them. It's OK though, DDs don't really hard-counter BBs these days. What it does mean for you as a BB player is that you need to find those few cruisers on your team, push with them and back them up if you expect them to do their bit for you.

[RAHJAILARI]

On 3/25/2018 at 9:59 PM, Zen71_sniper said:

TBH, there was a number of (mainly clueless) Aigle players that boosted number of DDs to 5 per game. Many times in last week or so. 

 

However, that is campaign driven - so I expect it to drop down to normal level of 2-3 per game

True dat, noticed it too prolly due to the Aigle marathon. But that projected future reduction only affects middle tiers tho . I expect tier 8-10 will still remain the same basic 5-2-5 (sorry to repeat myself gentlemen, but that's the tiers I always end up with my current Mogami practice).

 

On 3/25/2018 at 10:13 PM, Capra76 said:

You will see 5 DD games from time to time purely because with a 5 BB cap and so few CV the other 7 ships need to be found from CA/DD, but the idea that the DD population is a problem is a complete myth.

I can accept that explanation - Thanks, though that will leaves the urgent the question of why on earth they always have to be the games I'm in?

[Capra76]

Just now, RAHJAILARI said:

I can accept that explanation - Thanks, though that will leaves the urgent the question of why on earth they always have to be the games I'm in?

Confirmation bias, keep track of your own stats and you'll likely find out that the reality is different.

[RAHJAILARI]

Tut tut @Capra76 I do not see myself as particularly suffering in terms of stats and have no issue playing Cruisers either (just that I rarely see others in the matches I end up in). Not really, you see this state of affairs is clearly due to not enough people being willing to play Cruiser (still talking about high tiers here), which leads to the need to fill-in with DD's.

 

Feel free to check my stats yourself, if you like. I am indeed just an average weekend player, but improving all the time and recently doing quite well also with Cruisers. I have no qualms about playing them. However I can see that they are not the most numerous class played in these tiers 8-10 and I do feel that the game itself works the best in situations, where that is the case (which is why I occasionally like to play middle tiers, as they tend to be more balanced more often).

 

What I am essentially trying to say here, is that Cruisers by their basic design and characteristics are herd-animals and will only be easily playable to most, when they have the numbers behind them. A lone Cruiser cannot be expected to accomplish much and with the number of their hard counters (BB) so high, very few players will find playing them an attractive proposition in the long term, when choosing a ship to play with. So they will likely choose either a BB (due to its sheer power) or a DD (stealth) with Cruisers being the kinda odd fellows falling through the cracks there.

[Brett50]

What's that about a 5 BB cap?

[RAHJAILARI]

Yeeah, it can always get worse, can it?

[NothingButTheRain]

21 hours ago, Brett50 said:

What's that about a 5 BB cap?

I've had a game with 7 BBs on each team maybe a week ago?

This is an exception though, but it can happen during late night to early morning hours.

Changing the BB cap isn't fixing the problem. If there is a problem, it's because people for whatever reason don't want to play cruiser (anymore).

 

I 'm still kinda a new player. Just busy in tier 8 most of the time and this took me 7 months of mostly every day gaming.

I tried out all classes, basically, and DD and CA/CL is more difficult for a new player due to not having enough concealment and not being in a position to train enough captains to at least 10pts.

This really hurt my DD play up to a point I simply let DD go. I stopped playing the IJN cruisers at tier 7 and even though Hipper was my first tier 8, it's maybe my least played tier 8 due to it being so...mediocre.

 

Now don't ask me why and how but according to some stats sites I'm actually pretty good with cruisers, but I still end up playing BB more (even though Colorado is really...ugh. Those guns are almost a total downgrade to NM).

 

BBs don't really care about concealment, but try playing a tier 5 cruiser with 6pt captain for several lines and you'll see what I mean. It almost made me quit the game altogether because fun and engaging were someplace deep at the bottom of the ocean 

 

If you get through that initial bit and start getting good captains, it'll become much more fun! But this concealment skill is simply too important to neglect and new players have to make due without it.