Hey fellow Dakkaites, I didn't really see any WoWS threads, ok I saw one. So I figured I'd see about starting one.
How many of us play?
What nations do you prefer? Which classes? Favorite ship?
What would you like to see?
Is there a DakkaDakka clan?
How many of you are in clans?
How good or bad are you at the game? We wont judge too harshly.
To kick it off;
I mainly play the Kriegsmarine, with a spattering of ships from every other nation. I've reached Tier 10 in the KMS Battleship and Cruiser lines though admittedly I dont sail them as much as I probably should. I've got every KMS ship from T6 up barring the Z-52, Graf Zeplin and the unreleased Premium Destroyers. I actually like all classes other than CVs in the game, but tend mostly towards Battleships, with the most games played in them and most of those being in the Scharnhorst.
I'd like to see the Italian Navy fully in the game, and luckily they are well on their way.
I'm not in a clan.
I'd say I'm fairly ok at the game, but nothing spectacular.
I know AlmightyWalrus plays, but whenever I see him and say hi I have a trash game
Started playing DD's back when it was just the IJN and USN lines, but lately have been playing USN BB's/CV's, French and RN cruisers.
In a clan based upon my tf2 comp team called McV on the SeA, just me and a few mates, not really looking to expand unless people on my tf2 team sign up.
I mostly just want the Arc Royal at the moment.
I'm pretty okay at the game (unless I say hi to Almighty Walrus ) but getting better.
Better stat websites (obviously have to switch to whichever regional server you're on).
I watch Flamuu and Flambass from time to time and Jingles for entertainment. I like to think I've gotten better watching them. Sometimes the game just doesnt go my way. Like last night, everytime I team up with my friend we have the worst games.
Arc Royal would be pretty cool, I'd have to give it a pass, but a ship with that history would be awesome.
Torpedos have been made worse, CVs have been made worse, loads of new maps, French have been added, Soviets are no longer godly, there are missions and campaigns which there were not before, IJN DDs split into two different branches of the tech tree (guns or torps presumably), there are now hydrophones, loads of new badges/flags/consumables, a crate drop system that allows for extra stuff daily.
Think that's the major changes since I played before but bear in mind NZ is on the Asia server so no idea how that compares to any other (except I know we had fewer maps before).
Still can, I sank three BB in one match with my Tier IV IJN DD, they were all Tier VI but that was six torps hitting just behind the main turret! (always amuses me when people don't zigzag or go through the middle of island clusters in a Battleship). I am not sure on exactly what has been done to them but it seems that they run slower, the range has been cut, take longer to reload and spread...worse (wider?). Hopefully someone who has been playing continuously can tell us.
Torpedo's suffer from the same problems they always have done. bad players straight in straight lines so eat all of them, good players changes things up occasionally, then of course there's the "battleship gap" that just forms in your torp spread because of RNG.
Other major things are the Pan Asia DD's with deep water torpedo's (don't damage DD's and have low detection range).
AP dive bombers on the US CV at tier 8+ and the Graf Zepplin.
Bragging aside, some ships that rely on torpedoes (looking at you Shimakaze!) are horrifyingly inconsistent to play. Some games you have 200k+ "loleveryone'seatingtorpedoes" and some games you do 20k and get a cap. I guess it's the same problem I have with the French and UK BBs; they're horrifyingly reliable on good RNG to get good damage (except the Conqueror, but feth that unholy heretical piece of excrement with a flaming chainsaw). Being entirely reliant on torpedoes is just too hit and miss to be fun. That's probably why the Akizuki is my favourite IJN DD; it doesn't play like an IJN DD:
My most played ship's the Warspite though, so I naturally hate the Royal Navy BB line with a passion: they had a perfect play-style to emulate in the Warspite and instead they went pants-on-head and made the unholy abomination that is the Conqueror. Should've given the Conq 2.1 sigma, left the 457mm guns as the only option (ideally it'd have been 460mm so it could overmatch 32mm but that's the Yamato and the Musashi's schtick) and given it Warspite-like handling and the Warspite repair instead of the zombie heal it has now. In short, they could've made a perfectly fine ship by just taking the Warspite's characteristics and morphed them into a T10 ship. Weaknesses would've been an iffy armour scheme, semi-bad AA and the relative lack of guns, which would've been fine by me.
At least the French BBs actually have citadels, I got a 100-0 volley (without a detonation) off on a Normandie yesterday with the Warspite.
Low-tier UK cruisers are pretty bad, but it gets better at T5 when you get smoke and at T6 when you get a good turret layout. If Belfast didn't exist at T7 the Fiji would be the best T7 cruiser. The Minotaur is a beast at T10 as well.
Two important things for winning: always try to kill Destroyers and always be aware of the minimap. Destroyers win games more than any other (non-CV) class, both through capping and spotting. Being aware of your minimap helps you figure out when you need to GTFO from a position. You can press + to I cease the minimap's size and control opacity by holding down ctrl and pressing the cogs above the mjnimap when in-game.
Yeah, all the early cruisers, have rather unpotimized layouts. Though only I make alot of points and money annoying battleships and so. Rapid fire, small hits, the BB nearby means I ain't always forst on Thete list.
I'm used to having only 60% of guns online at once.
Thanks, I'm working back up, I got a ton of left over credits but I need to rebuild my skills before getting later ships.
I'm a rusty noob right now lol
However the US T3 cruser has not changed much. That was not a fun ship to face...
US cruisers seem more forgiving abit than UK tree. playing german too, there more like machine guns on HE.
plus the have HE, the UK class vs ships like destroyers there not always optimal, and light cruisers. you seem to have to hunt up, more than down to be effective.
UK cruisers seem lighter in armour than US tree, unless i was spoiled by the pocket battleship[ st louis thats darn nasty in a gun duel. There pretty fast, but you abit more of a glass cannon. the turn, speed and pick up on UK crusier was good, they can soon get out of dodge fast and ran circles round a BB, even if full ahead gunnery is not exactly acurate, its faster than heavy BB turrets can keep track of easily.
the fact you only have AP, certainly makes it intresting... hunting destroyers and lighter cruiser, your natural role is quite abit harder.
Royal Navy CLs are actually among the best DD killers in the game; you have good concealment so you can sneak close to caps while your friendly DDs move in to cap/contest, and once you get smoke you can just sit in your cloud with hydro to avoid torpedoes while blapping enemy DDs.
This is further made possible by the fact that UKCLs have short-fuse AP shells and better autobounce angles than other nations.
Short-fuse AP means the shells detonate sooner than normal shells after hitting something that arms them; this means that your shells tend to explode inside DDs rather than overpenetrating, giving your AP shells full penetration damage vs. DDs. This is huge!
Better autobounce angles (75 degrees as opposed to 60 degrees IIRC) means that the enemy has to be more steeply angled towards you for your shells to automatically bounce off of the armour (dealing 0 damage) so where the AP of a Japanese cruiser, for example, would just bounce off of an angled ship yours will still do damage.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Royal Navy CLs are actually among the best DD killers in the game; you have good concealment so you can sneak close to caps while your friendly DDs move in to cap/contest, and once you get smoke you can just sit in your cloud with hydro to avoid torpedoes while blapping enemy DDs.
This is further made possible by the fact that UKCLs have short-fuse AP shells and better autobounce angles than other nations.
Short-fuse AP means the shells detonate sooner than normal shells after hitting something that arms them; this means that your shells tend to explode inside DDs rather than overpenetrating, giving your AP shells full penetration damage vs. DDs. This is huge!
Better autobounce angles (75 degrees as opposed to 60 degrees IIRC) means that the enemy has to be more steeply angled towards you for your shells to automatically bounce off of the armour (dealing 0 damage) so where the AP of a Japanese cruiser, for example, would just bounce off of an angled ship yours will still do damage.
oh.. no wonder the enemy destroyer kept there distance and slinked off that game then. i concentrated on cruisers, as i thought my AP might stand better odds against heavier ships.
Il go after them next time!
Don't get me wrong, your AP is potent as hell against pretty much everything, it's just that you're essentially the natural predator of DDs along with radar cruisers (at higher tiers).
To illustrate, the Minotaur, the T10 UKCL, can reach 8.9km concealment with the right setup. The stealthiest T10 DD is the Yueyang, at around 5.7km. If you hang ~3 km behind an allied DD any incoming enemy DD will spot your allied DD and you at the same time, at which point you delete them with your 3 second (!!) reload while hiding in your smoke cloud.
I wouldn't recommend pushing hyper-agressively until you get your own smoke generator at T5 though, at T4 and T3 you're a floating powder keg without any defenses to help you live. Even after that you remain the squishiest cruiser on your tier. You absolutely have to be careful as hell when playing RN CLs or you'll get instantly deleted.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Don't get me wrong, your AP is potent as hell against pretty much everything, it's just that you're essentially the natural predator of DDs along with radar cruisers (at higher tiers).
To illustrate, the Minotaur, the T10 UKCL, can reach 8.9km concealment with the right setup. The stealthiest T10 DD is the Yueyang, at around 5.7km. If you hang ~3 km behind an allied DD any incoming enemy DD will spot your allied DD and you at the same time, at which point you delete them with your 3 second (!!) reload while hiding in your smoke cloud.
I wouldn't recommend pushing hyper-agressively until you get your own smoke generator at T5 though, at T4 and T3 you're a floating powder keg without any defenses to help you live. Even after that you remain the squishiest cruiser on your tier. You absolutely have to be careful as hell when playing RN CLs or you'll get instantly deleted.
Yeah I noticed that. My "armour" at T2 is 6mm
Every ship at that level is averaging a 5-6 inch main battery!
Might as well not count it as armour!
Quite she Suprise from someone previously used to phoenix, and St Louis etx.
Learning RN cruisers I admit is frustrating and almost want to give up, yet we'll I kinda wanted to unlock them as from the UK!
The fact I managed to dent, a heavily armoured T3 battleship, and larger cruisers. Yes the RN guns certainly hit above there weight. The only thing is... Tactics.
USN, there He is powerful and you can simply toast, and v cook enemy warships. Going to a AP only platform is certainly a 180.
Honestly hardest part Bern remembering how to lead shots.
The guns, are rather finicky at times when trying to calculate the firing solutions.
Knowing what part of the enemy ship to aim for is crucial for RN CLs as well. It's not enough that you hit the enemy ship, you have to actively aim to hit parts that you can damage consistently, especially against BBs. Take into account that what I'm about to say depends on how far away you are from your target; your shells might not be able to punch through thicker armour if you're too far away.
TL;DR; Aim for the superstructure and bow/stern armour of BBs, avoid the armour belts.
Spoiler:
This was going to be a few quick tips but turned into a monster post, read at your own peril.
St. Louis:
The front and stern armour are all 9mm and thus easy to penetrate, while the (non-bridge) superstructure is 6mm. 9 and 6mm is, as you said yourself, best described as "armour". In this case, counterintuitive as it is, you probably want to aim for the main belt, because 9mm is going to see your shot punch clean through, even with the short-fuse AP of the Royal Navy, leading to an Overpenetration (10% damage) instead of a Penetration (33% of damage). The main belt is 102mm thick, which you can punch through with your shells assuming you're not at too extreme an angle. If the shots start bouncing you simply have to start aiming for the tinfoil parts and hope that your shots penetrate in an angle to give you full Penetrations, overpens are better than no damage after all. If you're too far away you might also have to aim for the weaker armour, as your 6" guns might not punch through the 102mm belt at maximum ranges.
You also want to aim right at the waterline so that your shots penetrate through the armour belt into the citadel, where the powder magazines and boiler rooms are housed. Citadel penetrations deal 100% of your shell's potential damage, so a Citadel is worth 3 "ordinary" penetrations or 10 Overpenetrations. The Repair Party consumable also can't heal more than 10% of Citadel damage taken, as opposed to 50% of penetration damage, so landing Citadels on ships not only deals maximum damage per shell, but also means they can't come back as effectively later in the match if they manage to sneak away.
This is where the St. Louis surprised me too, because it's not as simple as it might look on the surface. Turning off the main armour belt in the viewer lets us see what the citadel looks like inside:
As you can see from this image, there's a further 76mm of armour plates in an angled shape usually called a "turtleback" (because of its shape) inside the 102mm belt (I didn't know the St. Louis had a turtleback, but it explains why it's so dang tanky even against Battleships of the same tier). The angle further means that the effective armour of the turtleback is more than 100mm additional armour. Trying to hit the citadel of the St. Louis with an RN Cruiser thus means first punching through the 102mm main belt, and THEN the 100+mm of internal armour. What will happen is most likely that your shell will penetrate the main armour and then bounce on the internal armour, causing the shell to explode inside the ship but outside the Citadel. This is still good, because it gives you a Penetration, but trying to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis in a Cruiser of roughly the same tier means having to literally push through Battleship-levels of armour plating. It's possible, but only through fluke shots. Battleships can do it, of course, but 6" guns just aren't strong enough at these Tiers to do it.
Just as a point of comparison, here's the Caledon's Citadel armour layout.
That's 76mm, as opposed to 102mm on the St. Louis. The major difference, however, is that that's all there is; there's no internal armour present in the Caledon, meaning anythign that punches through the yellow parts on that image is going to deal full damage. Even if a Caledon is at a very sharp angle towards an enemy Battleship (thus effectively making the armour thicker because the shell has to penetrate more of it) the shell might just punch through anyway and deal full damage. T3 BBs do around 8000 damage with one AP Citadel hit, so one Citadel hit on a Caledon from such a round is almost 50% of the ship's max HP, whereas the same shell hitting a heavily angled St. Louis would either bounce at the thicker outer belt or, if it penetrates, not get through the internal belt and thus do "only" 2650-ish damage rather than 8000.
Even though you probably cannot hope to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis, you still want Penetrations rather than Overpenetrations, so you want to aim for the upper 13mm belt primarily and the 102mm belt secondarily, trying to avoid the bow and stern with tinfoil armour.
Nassau:
Moving on to Battleships, I'm using the Nassau as an example because it's the most heavily armoured T3 BB that isn't the König Albert (which is a Kaiser-class battleship that's been lowered a tier because it lacks some anti-air and thus has better armour than its competition).
As you can see, the main armour belt is 210-270mm thick, labelled "LOLNO" because it's going to result in your shells shattering, doing 0 damage before falling impotently into the ocean. This is armour meant to resist 12" guns, your 6" peashooters aren't going to have a fart's chance in a hurricane to do anything there. Above the main belt is the 160mm upper belt armour. A Battleship giving you enough broadside could possibly be vulnerable here, although it doesn't take much of an angle or range for it to be enough to bounce your shots again (I tested the Caledon against the Nassau at 2km range in a training room just now and the 160mm belt just shattered everything anyway, RIP :(). The best place to aim for would be the 16mm bow and stern armour, which is thick enough to arm your short-fuse AP shells and give you full Penetration damage, even on a Battleship. Getting 3k damage might not seem that impressive, but the BBs only have around 30k HP, so if you're doing 3k per volley by punching their noses you're taking off 10% of their HP per salvo. They're not going to like that! The superstructure is 10mm armour and the deck armour is 25mm armour, so if you can hit there that works too, but the turrets are in the way and if you hit them your shell will just flop like a dead fish and shatter.
The Nassau also has a secondary "turtleback" armour covering its Citadel, but since you're never getting through the main belt in the first place this doesn't matter. It does if you're playing another Battleship though; German Battleships are very, VERY hard to land Citadel hits on because of their internal armour, but in return they tend to take more "normal" Penetrations instead.
The third example I'm going to use is the T8 German Battleship Tirpitz, because its armour layout is a good illustration of where to aim on later-tier Battleships.
Tirpitz:
As you can see, the main belt is a nope. The upper belt is likewise not an option; not even Minotaur at T10 can punch through 160mm armour. If you were a BB this is where you'd aim to hit a German Battleship; you're not going to get through the turtleback to the citadel anyway, so you want enough armour to arm the fuses on your AP but not enough that it'll shatter or bounce. Against a ship like this, a UKCL has to aim for the 19mm superstructure, where you can get full Penetrations. If you cannot hit the superstructure for some reason, the 32mm upper bow armour also works, as does hitting the 32mm deck armour (but beware the turrets, they're heavily armoured). Even the Caledon, a T3 Cruiser, can penetrate these parts of the T8 Tirpitz with ease (I tested it, it works!).
In short, in British CLs you want to aim for the main belt of Cruisers whenever you've got a decent angle to try to get to their Citadels. If shells start bouncing or shattering, you need to aim for the bow or stern or any other place with weaker armour. Against Battleships just default to shooting the bow, stern and superstructure for maximum impact.
Finally, British Cruisers are blessed in that the first ships are the worst in the line. The Weymouth, Caledon, and Danae are rather painful ships to play, but Emerald and Leander are alright and once you hit Fiji on it's just a string of strong ships. The Edinburgh is a bit unfortunate in that it's essentially the Fiji but one tier higher with slight improvements, but it's not a bad ship. Neptune has a 5 second reload timer with 12 guns and the Minotaur, bless its soul, has 10 guns with a 3 second (!!) reload timer. The last two also have main armament that doubles as anti-air, making these ships essentially no-fly zones for enemy planes. Do note that the Minotaur, at T10, has 101mm of Citadel armour. Remember how the St. Louis had 102mm main armour at T3? Yeah, the British CLs aren't for people who don't know how to not get shot.
The Belfast is a contender for the most obscenely overpowered ship in the game and an example of what happens when you make a Royal Navy Cruiser that DOES have HE AND Radar; thankfully it isn't sold anymore.
This... turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Whoops.
I play regulary but I can not claim to be the best player around, but I do decently enough I like to think, although the French ships have been a nigthmare for me to grind my way trough
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Knowing what part of the enemy ship to aim for is crucial for RN CLs as well. It's not enough that you hit the enemy ship, you have to actively aim to hit parts that you can damage consistently, especially against BBs. Take into account that what I'm about to say depends on how far away you are from your target; your shells might not be able to punch through thicker armour if you're too far away.
TL;DR; Aim for the superstructure and bow/stern armour of BBs, avoid the armour belts.
Spoiler:
This was going to be a few quick tips but turned into a monster post, read at your own peril.
St. Louis:
The front and stern armour are all 9mm and thus easy to penetrate, while the (non-bridge) superstructure is 6mm. 9 and 6mm is, as you said yourself, best described as "armour". In this case, counterintuitive as it is, you probably want to aim for the main belt, because 9mm is going to see your shot punch clean through, even with the short-fuse AP of the Royal Navy, leading to an Overpenetration (10% damage) instead of a Penetration (33% of damage). The main belt is 102mm thick, which you can punch through with your shells assuming you're not at too extreme an angle. If the shots start bouncing you simply have to start aiming for the tinfoil parts and hope that your shots penetrate in an angle to give you full Penetrations, overpens are better than no damage after all. If you're too far away you might also have to aim for the weaker armour, as your 6" guns might not punch through the 102mm belt at maximum ranges.
You also want to aim right at the waterline so that your shots penetrate through the armour belt into the citadel, where the powder magazines and boiler rooms are housed. Citadel penetrations deal 100% of your shell's potential damage, so a Citadel is worth 3 "ordinary" penetrations or 10 Overpenetrations. The Repair Party consumable also can't heal more than 10% of Citadel damage taken, as opposed to 50% of penetration damage, so landing Citadels on ships not only deals maximum damage per shell, but also means they can't come back as effectively later in the match if they manage to sneak away.
This is where the St. Louis surprised me too, because it's not as simple as it might look on the surface. Turning off the main armour belt in the viewer lets us see what the citadel looks like inside:
As you can see from this image, there's a further 76mm of armour plates in an angled shape usually called a "turtleback" (because of its shape) inside the 102mm belt (I didn't know the St. Louis had a turtleback, but it explains why it's so dang tanky even against Battleships of the same tier). The angle further means that the effective armour of the turtleback is more than 100mm additional armour. Trying to hit the citadel of the St. Louis with an RN Cruiser thus means first punching through the 102mm main belt, and THEN the 100+mm of internal armour. What will happen is most likely that your shell will penetrate the main armour and then bounce on the internal armour, causing the shell to explode inside the ship but outside the Citadel. This is still good, because it gives you a Penetration, but trying to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis in a Cruiser of roughly the same tier means having to literally push through Battleship-levels of armour plating. It's possible, but only through fluke shots. Battleships can do it, of course, but 6" guns just aren't strong enough at these Tiers to do it.
Just as a point of comparison, here's the Caledon's Citadel armour layout.
That's 76mm, as opposed to 102mm on the St. Louis. The major difference, however, is that that's all there is; there's no internal armour present in the Caledon, meaning anythign that punches through the yellow parts on that image is going to deal full damage. Even if a Caledon is at a very sharp angle towards an enemy Battleship (thus effectively making the armour thicker because the shell has to penetrate more of it) the shell might just punch through anyway and deal full damage. T3 BBs do around 8000 damage with one AP Citadel hit, so one Citadel hit on a Caledon from such a round is almost 50% of the ship's max HP, whereas the same shell hitting a heavily angled St. Louis would either bounce at the thicker outer belt or, if it penetrates, not get through the internal belt and thus do "only" 2650-ish damage rather than 8000.
Even though you probably cannot hope to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis, you still want Penetrations rather than Overpenetrations, so you want to aim for the upper 13mm belt primarily and the 102mm belt secondarily, trying to avoid the bow and stern with tinfoil armour.
Nassau:
Moving on to Battleships, I'm using the Nassau as an example because it's the most heavily armoured T3 BB that isn't the König Albert (which is a Kaiser-class battleship that's been lowered a tier because it lacks some anti-air and thus has better armour than its competition).
As you can see, the main armour belt is 210-270mm thick, labelled "LOLNO" because it's going to result in your shells shattering, doing 0 damage before falling impotently into the ocean. This is armour meant to resist 12" guns, your 6" peashooters aren't going to have a fart's chance in a hurricane to do anything there. Above the main belt is the 160mm upper belt armour. A Battleship giving you enough broadside could possibly be vulnerable here, although it doesn't take much of an angle or range for it to be enough to bounce your shots again (I tested the Caledon against the Nassau at 2km range in a training room just now and the 160mm belt just shattered everything anyway, RIP :(). The best place to aim for would be the 16mm bow and stern armour, which is thick enough to arm your short-fuse AP shells and give you full Penetration damage, even on a Battleship. Getting 3k damage might not seem that impressive, but the BBs only have around 30k HP, so if you're doing 3k per volley by punching their noses you're taking off 10% of their HP per salvo. They're not going to like that! The superstructure is 10mm armour and the deck armour is 25mm armour, so if you can hit there that works too, but the turrets are in the way and if you hit them your shell will just flop like a dead fish and shatter.
The Nassau also has a secondary "turtleback" armour covering its Citadel, but since you're never getting through the main belt in the first place this doesn't matter. It does if you're playing another Battleship though; German Battleships are very, VERY hard to land Citadel hits on because of their internal armour, but in return they tend to take more "normal" Penetrations instead.
The third example I'm going to use is the T8 German Battleship Tirpitz, because its armour layout is a good illustration of where to aim on later-tier Battleships.
Tirpitz:
As you can see, the main belt is a nope. The upper belt is likewise not an option; not even Minotaur at T10 can punch through 160mm armour. If you were a BB this is where you'd aim to hit a German Battleship; you're not going to get through the turtleback to the citadel anyway, so you want enough armour to arm the fuses on your AP but not enough that it'll shatter or bounce. Against a ship like this, a UKCL has to aim for the 19mm superstructure, where you can get full Penetrations. If you cannot hit the superstructure for some reason, the 32mm upper bow armour also works, as does hitting the 32mm deck armour (but beware the turrets, they're heavily armoured). Even the Caledon, a T3 Cruiser, can penetrate these parts of the T8 Tirpitz with ease (I tested it, it works!).
In short, in British CLs you want to aim for the main belt of Cruisers whenever you've got a decent angle to try to get to their Citadels. If shells start bouncing or shattering, you need to aim for the bow or stern or any other place with weaker armour. Against Battleships just default to shooting the bow, stern and superstructure for maximum impact.
Finally, British Cruisers are blessed in that the first ships are the worst in the line. The Weymouth, Caledon, and Danae are rather painful ships to play, but Emerald and Leander are alright and once you hit Fiji on it's just a string of strong ships. The Edinburgh is a bit unfortunate in that it's essentially the Fiji but one tier higher with slight improvements, but it's not a bad ship. Neptune has a 5 second reload timer with 12 guns and the Minotaur, bless its soul, has 10 guns with a 3 second (!!) reload timer. The last two also have main armament that doubles as anti-air, making these ships essentially no-fly zones for enemy planes. Do note that the Minotaur, at T10, has 101mm of Citadel armour. Remember how the St. Louis had 102mm main armour at T3? Yeah, the British CLs aren't for people who don't know how to not get shot.
The Belfast is a contender for the most obscenely overpowered ship in the game and an example of what happens when you make a Royal Navy Cruiser that DOES have HE AND Radar; thankfully it isn't sold anymore.
This... turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Whoops.
Excellent post, thanks for that very well thought out informative explanation. You have to do every other nation and ship class now...
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Knowing what part of the enemy ship to aim for is crucial for RN CLs as well. It's not enough that you hit the enemy ship, you have to actively aim to hit parts that you can damage consistently, especially against BBs. Take into account that what I'm about to say depends on how far away you are from your target; your shells might not be able to punch through thicker armour if you're too far away.
TL;DR; Aim for the superstructure and bow/stern armour of BBs, avoid the armour belts.
Spoiler:
This was going to be a few quick tips but turned into a monster post, read at your own peril.
St. Louis:
The front and stern armour are all 9mm and thus easy to penetrate, while the (non-bridge) superstructure is 6mm. 9 and 6mm is, as you said yourself, best described as "armour". In this case, counterintuitive as it is, you probably want to aim for the main belt, because 9mm is going to see your shot punch clean through, even with the short-fuse AP of the Royal Navy, leading to an Overpenetration (10% damage) instead of a Penetration (33% of damage). The main belt is 102mm thick, which you can punch through with your shells assuming you're not at too extreme an angle. If the shots start bouncing you simply have to start aiming for the tinfoil parts and hope that your shots penetrate in an angle to give you full Penetrations, overpens are better than no damage after all. If you're too far away you might also have to aim for the weaker armour, as your 6" guns might not punch through the 102mm belt at maximum ranges.
You also want to aim right at the waterline so that your shots penetrate through the armour belt into the citadel, where the powder magazines and boiler rooms are housed. Citadel penetrations deal 100% of your shell's potential damage, so a Citadel is worth 3 "ordinary" penetrations or 10 Overpenetrations. The Repair Party consumable also can't heal more than 10% of Citadel damage taken, as opposed to 50% of penetration damage, so landing Citadels on ships not only deals maximum damage per shell, but also means they can't come back as effectively later in the match if they manage to sneak away.
This is where the St. Louis surprised me too, because it's not as simple as it might look on the surface. Turning off the main armour belt in the viewer lets us see what the citadel looks like inside:
As you can see from this image, there's a further 76mm of armour plates in an angled shape usually called a "turtleback" (because of its shape) inside the 102mm belt (I didn't know the St. Louis had a turtleback, but it explains why it's so dang tanky even against Battleships of the same tier). The angle further means that the effective armour of the turtleback is more than 100mm additional armour. Trying to hit the citadel of the St. Louis with an RN Cruiser thus means first punching through the 102mm main belt, and THEN the 100+mm of internal armour. What will happen is most likely that your shell will penetrate the main armour and then bounce on the internal armour, causing the shell to explode inside the ship but outside the Citadel. This is still good, because it gives you a Penetration, but trying to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis in a Cruiser of roughly the same tier means having to literally push through Battleship-levels of armour plating. It's possible, but only through fluke shots. Battleships can do it, of course, but 6" guns just aren't strong enough at these Tiers to do it.
Just as a point of comparison, here's the Caledon's Citadel armour layout.
That's 76mm, as opposed to 102mm on the St. Louis. The major difference, however, is that that's all there is; there's no internal armour present in the Caledon, meaning anythign that punches through the yellow parts on that image is going to deal full damage. Even if a Caledon is at a very sharp angle towards an enemy Battleship (thus effectively making the armour thicker because the shell has to penetrate more of it) the shell might just punch through anyway and deal full damage. T3 BBs do around 8000 damage with one AP Citadel hit, so one Citadel hit on a Caledon from such a round is almost 50% of the ship's max HP, whereas the same shell hitting a heavily angled St. Louis would either bounce at the thicker outer belt or, if it penetrates, not get through the internal belt and thus do "only" 2650-ish damage rather than 8000.
Even though you probably cannot hope to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis, you still want Penetrations rather than Overpenetrations, so you want to aim for the upper 13mm belt primarily and the 102mm belt secondarily, trying to avoid the bow and stern with tinfoil armour.
Nassau:
Moving on to Battleships, I'm using the Nassau as an example because it's the most heavily armoured T3 BB that isn't the König Albert (which is a Kaiser-class battleship that's been lowered a tier because it lacks some anti-air and thus has better armour than its competition).
As you can see, the main armour belt is 210-270mm thick, labelled "LOLNO" because it's going to result in your shells shattering, doing 0 damage before falling impotently into the ocean. This is armour meant to resist 12" guns, your 6" peashooters aren't going to have a fart's chance in a hurricane to do anything there. Above the main belt is the 160mm upper belt armour. A Battleship giving you enough broadside could possibly be vulnerable here, although it doesn't take much of an angle or range for it to be enough to bounce your shots again (I tested the Caledon against the Nassau at 2km range in a training room just now and the 160mm belt just shattered everything anyway, RIP :(). The best place to aim for would be the 16mm bow and stern armour, which is thick enough to arm your short-fuse AP shells and give you full Penetration damage, even on a Battleship. Getting 3k damage might not seem that impressive, but the BBs only have around 30k HP, so if you're doing 3k per volley by punching their noses you're taking off 10% of their HP per salvo. They're not going to like that! The superstructure is 10mm armour and the deck armour is 25mm armour, so if you can hit there that works too, but the turrets are in the way and if you hit them your shell will just flop like a dead fish and shatter.
The Nassau also has a secondary "turtleback" armour covering its Citadel, but since you're never getting through the main belt in the first place this doesn't matter. It does if you're playing another Battleship though; German Battleships are very, VERY hard to land Citadel hits on because of their internal armour, but in return they tend to take more "normal" Penetrations instead.
The third example I'm going to use is the T8 German Battleship Tirpitz, because its armour layout is a good illustration of where to aim on later-tier Battleships.
Tirpitz:
As you can see, the main belt is a nope. The upper belt is likewise not an option; not even Minotaur at T10 can punch through 160mm armour. If you were a BB this is where you'd aim to hit a German Battleship; you're not going to get through the turtleback to the citadel anyway, so you want enough armour to arm the fuses on your AP but not enough that it'll shatter or bounce. Against a ship like this, a UKCL has to aim for the 19mm superstructure, where you can get full Penetrations. If you cannot hit the superstructure for some reason, the 32mm upper bow armour also works, as does hitting the 32mm deck armour (but beware the turrets, they're heavily armoured). Even the Caledon, a T3 Cruiser, can penetrate these parts of the T8 Tirpitz with ease (I tested it, it works!).
In short, in British CLs you want to aim for the main belt of Cruisers whenever you've got a decent angle to try to get to their Citadels. If shells start bouncing or shattering, you need to aim for the bow or stern or any other place with weaker armour. Against Battleships just default to shooting the bow, stern and superstructure for maximum impact.
Finally, British Cruisers are blessed in that the first ships are the worst in the line. The Weymouth, Caledon, and Danae are rather painful ships to play, but Emerald and Leander are alright and once you hit Fiji on it's just a string of strong ships. The Edinburgh is a bit unfortunate in that it's essentially the Fiji but one tier higher with slight improvements, but it's not a bad ship. Neptune has a 5 second reload timer with 12 guns and the Minotaur, bless its soul, has 10 guns with a 3 second (!!) reload timer. The last two also have main armament that doubles as anti-air, making these ships essentially no-fly zones for enemy planes. Do note that the Minotaur, at T10, has 101mm of Citadel armour. Remember how the St. Louis had 102mm main armour at T3? Yeah, the British CLs aren't for people who don't know how to not get shot.
The Belfast is a contender for the most obscenely overpowered ship in the game and an example of what happens when you make a Royal Navy Cruiser that DOES have HE AND Radar; thankfully it isn't sold anymore.
This... turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Whoops.
Excellent post, thanks for that very well thought out informative explanation. You have to do every other nation and ship class now...
Wow, that's a amazing detail.
And I never relised that, I din, t think that tool was in game when I first played. Not the internal views.
Now I know why the St Louis is so tanky. Its treated and sailed like a light battleship but, it's armoured like one too, and has a internal belt on top of thick flanks armour. Great investigation!
Fire used to be my go to for heavier armoured designs. There main weakness. You can land damage at least.
Yeah, the UK, cruisers are defenitely more like Japan's from that study,.. You gotta be always moving, always looking and always watching for risks. Your armour is definitely not somthing you wanna rely on, it may deflect a near splash but nothing else.
Thanks, that's certainly a intresting master class. You obviously have played alot more than me!
I'm glad it was of use, I'll try to make some more useful illustrations later today. Regarding the St. Louis I didn't realise the turtleback was there until I did the screenshots, so I'm also learning from this experience.
Alright, here we go:
Dr. Angling, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Bounce AP
Spoiler:
I mentioned angling quite a bit in the previous post, but it really is important enough that it deserves its own post. In fact, it's probably the single most important skill in the entire game, so I really should've started with explaining angling before moving on to Citadels and armour schemes, but better late than never.
Note that the below applies strictly to how to mitigate damage from AP shells; HE shells cannot bounce, so they're the counter to angling ships, but they do less damage than AP hits.
To start off, if you know anything about naval doctrine you know about the idea of "crossing the T", where a ship manouvers in such a way as to bring all of its guns to bear on an enemy while letting the enemy reply only with a limited number of guns. I'll let Wikipedia illustrate for me:
The top ship is "crossing the T" of the lower ship (note how they make the letter "T" together, hence the name); the top ship can fire its entire broadside of guns at the lower ship, while the lower ship can only reply with 50% of its main battery. There's a few other advantages as well; the main problem for naval gunnery was over- or undershooting the target. By turning broadside-on like the above ship, there's a narrower target lengthwise presented to the bottom ship, making it harder for the bottom ship to land a hit. The top ship also has its main armour belt towards the enemy, meaning that even a hit can hit the belt and simply bounce off without doing anything noteworthy. Further, even if the top ship DOES get penetrated, the shell might simply go clean through the ship before exploding, leading to significantly reduced damage.
The bottom ship, meanwhlle, has its relatively unarmoured bow armour towards the enemy, meaning that any hits are likely to punch clean through the armour and continue lengthwise through the entire ship (so-called "raking fire", the nightmare of navies for centuries) before exploding. This is a Bad Thing. Further, by presenting a longer target to the enemy, the bottom ship is presenting a better target, because even if the top ship over- or undershoots there's simply a bigger margin of error in distance, which was the hard thing to get correct.
ALL OF THIS IS WORTHLESS IN WORLD OF WARSHIPS!
If you try crossing the T in World of Warships you're giving your enemy a perfect target and will, if the enemy is even marginally competent, recieve a one-way ticket back to your port via the charming bottom of the sea. In World of Warships the main dispersion problem isn't judging distance to the target, but rather horizontal dispersion of your shells. Giving broadside thus minimizes the effects of enemy dispersion by presenting a target where it doesn't matter if the shells go off a bit to the side of where you aimed.
The main reason, however, that you absolutely CANNOT give broadside to the enemy (in ANY ship, not just British CLs (DDs excepted, more on that below)) is because it minimizes the amount of armour your enemy has to punch through. This is because the angle at which the shell hits matters, clearly showing the fact that World of Warships evolved out of World of Tanks, where angling of armour is the mechanic around which the entire game revolves. I'll let Wikipedia illustrate again with this photo of a cut-open T54 tank:
As you can see, the armour is 100mm thick. However, if a shell hits the sloping armour from the front, the angle of impact means it effectively has to penetrate 200mm of armour instead. The same is true in World of Warships. While the St. Louis, as discussed last post, only has 102mm belt armour, this is more than enough to bounce any Battleship shell in the game if you can present yourself at such an angle that the shell hits your armour belt at a very steep angle. I've had Yamato AP shells (so 460mm shells weighing almost 1.5 TONNES) bounce off of the armour of destroyers because it hit at such a ridiculous angle. Even if the shell manages to penetrate your armour, if you like the St. Louis have an internal belt as well this'll result in a Penetration instead of a Citadel hit, greatly increasing your survivability.
This is important for British CLs too; presenting a flat broadside means you've got, at most (in the Minotaur), 101mm of armour; that's not enough to stop 4" guns from penetrating your Citadel (and the Akizuki and the Harekaze, the two ships with 4" main guns, WILL murder you quickly if you let them hit repeated Citadel hits). Properly angling against an enemy target is thus the single most important thing you can do to survive.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE ON DESTROYERS AND ANGLING If you're in a Destroyer and you're having to angle against an enemy Battleship that's about to remind you of the pecking order, you currently want to be broadside-on towards the Battleship. This might sound counter-intuitive to the above, but Destroyers do not have Citadels and thus cannot take more serious hits than full Penetrations. Thus, you want to be broadside-on so that the Battleship AP rounds penetrate straight through you and do 10% damage instead of punching in through your stern or bow and sticking inside your ship and doing 33%. Battleship penetrations on DDs absolutely gak all over the DD, because 33% of a shell designed to kill other BBs is, essentially, the DD equivalent of a Citadel hit. Wargaming is currently reworking the system so that BB AP can't ever get anything other than Overpenetrations against DDs, but until further notice try to be broadside-on if you're gonna get shot by Battleships in a DD.
POSITIONING AND ANGLING The above facts have a very important implication: if you find yourself in a position where you have to angle against two different targets at the same time, you're going to have a bad time.
Imagine you are green in this image, and that the two red ships are enemy Battleships. No matter how you angle you're in trouble; if you focus on presenting the top ship with a steep angle the ship at the bottom left is going to have enough of a broadside to blast you for a lot of damage, and vice versa. Trying to angle moderately against both targets at the same time CAN work, but it locks you down completely and you still risk simply not having enough of an angle to make a difference, at which point you're getting shot by BOTH the BBs for a lot of damage. This is exactly the sort of cross-fire you want to force the enemy into, especially if you're driving a Battleship. Blobbing all the Battleships in your team in one place is thus a terrible idea, because it means that the enemy team has a much easier time of angling against the Battleships, mitigating the damage dealt. Even with all this, however, sometimes you'll still just die, even in a Battleship. A fluke shot penetrating through your deck armour into your Citadel can happen even when you're doing everything correctly, especially for Cruisers who by nature are squishier than Battleships, but by angling you can minimize the risks of being insta-blapped.
If the conclusion you draw from the above is "heh, I'll just go to one side of the map and shoot at the enemy from there, that way I can't be flanked as easily!" then congratulations, you're part of the awful crowd of people who would be better served uninstalling the game and playing something else. Sitting back and sniping is an excellent way of losing the game because you have 0 influence on taking capture points. This doesn't mean you should push blindly while shouting "BANZAI!" but no matter the ship you need to help your other teammates. Especially Battleships are vulnerable to this; you see a lot of Battleship players just sitting back and trying to snipe enemy ships, when a properly angled Battleship that is moving up to support its team can take a truly prodigious amount of damage before dying. IIRC my record potential damage in one game, i.e. the total amount of damage that all shots aimed at me would have dealt had they all been Citadel hits, is close to 5 million damage, in a ship with less than 100k HP. That's a lot of damage that isn't killing my allies. How hard you push obviously differs depending on the ship, i.e. German BBs outfight anyone else at close-range brawls whereas Japanese BBs hang a bit further back and use their accuracy and big guns to compensate for their weakness to being flanked, but you have to be in a position where you can:
A) Support the allied ships trying to take capture points, up to and including being one of these ships yourself (DDs main task is taking caps and scouting, but that doesn't mean others cannot push in close to caps to help them do so).
B) Be able to angle against enemy ships so you don't get mauled to bits by Citadels or spammed to death by a rain of HE from multiple ships
C) Disengage if you encounter a superior enemy force
Whenever someone says that playing a Battleship in WoWs is "easy mode", ignore them. Yes, it's technically true, but playing a Battleship well isn't actually that easy. Anyone can be part of the spawn-camping mafia, but being useful to your team as a BB means knowing when to push and when to run away to live another day, and you have to know it well ahead of time, because you cannot disengage as easily as DDs or CL/CAs.
OVERMATCHING, OR; "ANGLING? WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKING ANGLING This is where I complicate things further. The above angling situation is complicated further by the mechanic of overmatching. In short, this means that if a shell hits a piece of armour and the diameter of the shell divided by 14.3 is more than (NOT equal to, MORE THAN) the armour it hits, it will automatically penetrate the armour, simulating a shell that's simply too strong for that armour to do anythng about. Angling against such shots does nothing; Overmatch happens before the additional effective armour angling provides is taken into account.
I'll use two examples to illustrate, the T6 British Battleship Warspite and the T10 Japanese Battleship Yamato, because the playstyle of these two rely extensively on this mechanic.
To start off, Warspite has a main battery of 8 381mm (15") guns. These are big for the tier (the only others with a similar caliber are the Bayern, at 380mm, the Mutsu at 410mm, and the Warspite's sister-ship Queen Elizabeth at 381mm. Of these only the Warspite and Queen Elizabeth have accurate guns; Bayern and Mutsu have other strenghts like better amour and speed that is compensated by having drunk gunners. The reason that 380mm or bigger is a big deal at Tier 6 is that all Battleships lower than Tier 8 have a maximum bow armour of 25mm (the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at T7 have a 60mm lower bow belt, but most of the bow is 25mm). 380mm divided by 14.3 is roughly 26.5, which is obviously bigger than 25mm. This means that, no matter how other Battleships try to angle against these ships the nose and stern is always going to be vulnerable; any hit in these areas will automatically inflict at least full Penetration damage; it's perfectly possible to hit the Citadel of enemy Battleships by punching straight through their nose from the front and having the shell continue penetrating into the Citadel through the less-protected bow bulkhead, as illustrated in the below screenshot of the Fuso, the Japanese T6 BB.
As you can see, the forward citadel bulkhead behind the 25mm bow armour is only 241mm thick. If a Fuso is pointing its nose straight at a ship with 15" or bigger guns, the guns will thus penetrate through the nose as if it wasn't there and then hit the 241mm armour plate head-on, without the benefits of angling. Against such a ship, the Fuso has to angle so that any shells that penetrate the front armour comes up against an angled forward citadel bulkhead or risk eating a massive amount of damage. Against ships with a smaller caliber main battery, such as the New Mexico or Iron Duke (356mm or 14" guns), the Fuso can simply point its nose at them and let the natural angle formed by the bow of the ship bounce the shells. Any attempts to instead shoot at the superstructure from the front risks hitting the main turrets and bouncing there.
As an aside, I'd never noticed the fact that the Fuso's main armour belt is weaker under the two front turrets, that's a useful weakness to know about. Any penetration there is likely to go straight into the barbettes under the A and B turrets, which counts as Citadel.
The concept of overmatching also affects Cruisers, of course. Here's the interior of the British T6 Cruiser Leander.
The front armour, which isn't visible in this screenshot, is 13mm thick, which means it is overmatched by anything with a main weapon caliber bigger than 13*14.3mm, i.e. 185mm. This (barely) keeps it safe from the same-tier Molotov, with its 180mm guns, but any heavy cruiser with 8" (203mm) guns, i.e. the Japanese T5 Furutaka or T6 Aoba or any of the numerous Heavy Cruisers at T7 can punch clean through the nose, not to mention literally any Battleship in the game. The shells will then continue and encounter either the 76mm citadel bulkhead, which isn't much at all, or the 16mm non-citadel bulkhead. The good news is that 16*14.3 is 228.3, which means you have to have a 229mm or bigger gun to overmatch that part. The bad news is that it's still paper armour, and the Citadel deck behind that bit is only 35mm thick. This means that any shell that overmatches the front of the Leander has to beat at worst a 76mm armour plate to get into the Citadel. Ideally you don't want to get shot at at all in a Leander, but if you absolutely have to it's easy to see why angling even against enemy Cruisers (hell, there are DESTROYERS that can easily Citadel you if you aren't careful) is of great importance.
Worth noting is the green areas on the screenshot, the Barbettes under the turrets. This is where the powder and shells are hoisted up from the central magazines in the Citadel to the guns; a hit here is Bad News. As such, this area also counts as Citadel in the game meaning anything that penetrates that 25mm barbette armour and explodes inside is going to do loads of damage.
In conclusion then, in general Cruisers have to be incredibly paranoid about how they angle towards enemy Battleships, as even the sturdiest Cruisers can get penetraded through the bow armour straight into the Citadel by BB AP. Even Battleships have to remain aware of their bow armour and what sort of firepower they're going up against. In short, you usually don't want to point your nose straight at the enemy, but rather at a steep angle just to the side of your opponent to angle your front armour aginst things that do not overmatch it, and to angle your internal citadel bulkhead against things that do overmatch it.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'm glad it was of use, I'll try to make some more useful illustrations later today. Regarding the St. Louis I didn't realise the turtleback was there until I did the screenshots, so I'm also learning from this experience.
aye, its surprisingly informative for a game. you now relise why ships like Bismark and other BB could be so inhuman with there internal Armour decks, flank Armour and more. its very good visual explaing how it all worked.
My Grampa was on KGV and said they had a lower belt i there, lower down below the core. a foot or so of Armour steel encasing the citadel zones and main belt. entire ship shook raising dust when you fired the main guns broadsides.
downsides.. being below the belts. that would be your tomb and saviour.
Updated my last post with a discussion on angling and overmatch mechanics.
I'll also throw in a bonus discussion on the KGV since you mentioned it. The 260mm lower belt is indeed in game (they're pretty good about having correct armour schemes in game, it's just that the game mechanics don't always make them make as much sense in game as they did IRL. The Warspite's meat locker is counted as Citadel, for example, which is a bit... special. It USED to be the torpedo storage, which makes sense as Citadel, but the Warspite represented in-game is the WWII refit which hadn't carried any torpedoes for a good 20 years, where the torpedo storage was converted to additional freezer space for bigger food capacity).
Spoiler:
The main belt of the King George V class extends below the waterline and is very strong, at 381mm. As you can see, however, below the main belt, well below the waterline, is the actual Citadel armour belt, at 260mm. This is to protect from shells that fall short and hit the water but with enough force to continue and hit the ship under the waterline. This can actually happen in-game and was changed last patch so that ships with submerged Citadels (mainly the ridiculously OP Conqueror at T10) could actually have their Citadels hit somewhat reliably if they mess up. The KGV still has excellent Citadel protection for its Tier. The entire Citadel is actually below water (see below), so even if something gets penetrating hits through the main belt it won't actually hit the Citadel. Plunging fire, lucky shots at weird angles while the KGV is turning or being the Musashi is pretty much the only three ways of getting Citadel hits on the KGV.
The red line is roughly the waterline, the green line is where the Citadel's top is. The KGV class was monstrously well-protected IRL, in-game it suffers from the fact that it's vulnerable to being spammed by HE-slinging Cruisers since the entire deck is 32mm, which isn't strong enough to resist HE spam even without all the fires that's going to start.
Even if you don't forget, there's still always more to be learned. As mentioned I didn't know about the turtleback on the St. Louis or the weaker front belt on the Fuso which coincidentally coincides with where the barbettes for A and B turrets are placed. I really should be paying more attention to the armour schemes of various ships, I just haven't been bothered.
Understandable considering the sheer number of ships in game now.
For the talk of the 152mm guns on the British Cruisers and their armor pennetration, wont they be able to pen some of the thicker armor at ranges under 10km because of their high initial shell velocity? Much like how the Duca d'Aosta's 152mm guns will pen the turrets of the Bismark and Tirpitz at closer ranges due to its velocity of 1000 m/s
I tested the Minotaur against the Tirpitz's upper belt yesterday and I consistently bounced at 500m, I don't think you'll get more point-blank than that. The Duca has ridiculously high muzzle velocity (and thus pen) so it might do it, but I don't think the RN 6" guns can do that. You don't have to though, superstructure is more than enough.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: True and I've seen those Minotaur's eat through BBs by hitting the super structure.
Even with the Duca's velocity I think the belt would be too thick. Turret armor not so much as long as you arent hitting them in the front.
Hit the turret faces your gonna be in "lol no" teritory. There's no way your going through the main facing however if you can maybe land roof hits, or even hit some of the lesser secondary guns. You can still find things to disable.
Also if you can strip the AA on later ships, a Carrier captain can be effective with that they have left and maybe land a killing blow via torpedo bombers or dive bombers if there weak ernough.
Im speaking from experience with the Duca's guns penning the sides and flanks of the turrets. I dont shoot at the fronts of them, like I said, the shells wont go through the front.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Im speaking from experience with the Duca's guns penning the sides and flanks of the turrets. I dont shoot at the fronts of them, like I said, the shells wont go through the front.
Aye, and we'll, a battleship with a downed turret Is on, 66% efficiency.
Though I'm rarely able to target individual turrets, I'm just glad I'm hitting ships for now
You have to be stupid close to really be able to target them. But yeah, just hitting things is a good focus. I feel like I got to used to particular gun ballistics because it generally takes a little time to get the ranging down.
What reticle setting do you use? Fixed timing or the one that adjusts as you zoom?
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: You have to be stupid close to really be able to target them. But yeah, just hitting things is a good focus. I feel like I got to used to particular gun ballistics because it generally takes a little time to get the ranging down.
What reticle setting do you use? Fixed timing or the one that adjusts as you zoom?
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: You have to be stupid close to really be able to target them. But yeah, just hitting things is a good focus. I feel like I got to used to particular gun ballistics because it generally takes a little time to get the ranging down.
What reticle setting do you use? Fixed timing or the one that adjusts as you zoom?
That's good, surviving is usually what will keep you able to hit more often. Change course, alter speed. It likely wont help prefectly, but for lead times, against alot of ships I found at close - med range with the Brits you want a 4-6 second lead time and for at distance 10-12 seconds
After spending five or six games yelling at my walls in frustration over my teammate's positioning, I thought I'd make a post and open some discussion about proper positioning in (primarily) battleships. Note that, unlike previous posts that contain discussions on objective game mechanics, the following is more my musings and thoughts on proper positioning in a battleship and how strategy in the game works in general, so I might be missing a bunch of stuff that I haven't thought of.
Spoiler:
I'll use the following screenshot to start off the discussion. I just played this game and what should have been a fairly comfortable win for us ended up becoming a rather tight game after such highlights as our Gascogne losing a 1v1 brawl against a Des Moines at 5km range when at full HP and our Großer Kurfürst eating about seventyfour bajilion torpedoes from a DD that we'd constantly spotted for five minutes.
In this screenshot I'm playing the Japanese T10 Battleship Yamato. This is roughly 8 minutes into the game and I'm alredy at 25k HP because I've been sitting around A to support my DDs and keep the enemy Des Moines away. The below screenshot illustrates why the island I'm hugging gives me a decent position:
The red dot is where I've sat for most of the game, angling towards the island in the northwest part of B. The enemy Kurfürst at C hasn't been able to shoot at me at all because the large island in B's lower right corner has blocked his shots and the Yamato and Alabama have had my angled sides to shoot at (nose-tanking an enemy Yamato is, of course, dangerous, but I didn't have much choice, and I could punish him back just as hard as he could punish me). The Des Moines north of A hasn't been able to push in and help the enemy Gearing kill our DDs at A; he'd be able to radar A even from behind the islands if he was careful, but that'd still leave his Gearing in a 2v1 against a Fletcher and a Yugumo, as well as my 460mm guns.
What you might notice from the screenshot, however, is how... questionable... my team's position is. Ibuki and Udaloi are the remnants of what we had over at C, running from the enemy, so they can't really be blamed too much. North Carolina likewise doesn't have too awkward of a position, being angled towards the enemy battleships while providing the Ibuki and Udaloi with some 406mm Freedom Shells. The Fletcher and Yugumo really should have been pushing into B sooner. They're not doing much just sitting around in A, and we know that they can't get radared by the Des Moines because we've just seen him up north.
What really, REALLY made this game hard to win, however, was the genius trio pushing up the 1 line.
In general though, in BBs I like to try to set up positions nearer the center of the map where I can cover more area and be a threat to more enemy ships. Pushing out to one edge of the map means you're utterly predictable, can't adapt to sudden changes in enemy positions and aren't contributing much to the team. This obviously doesn't mean to charge in like a complete madman, but pushing up closer in a BB means that the emeny Cruisers can't harass your DDs nearly as much, meaning you get caps and thus get a better chance of winning. The problem is, of course, that you're more exposed to enemy return fire, which doesn't matter if your team actually pushes up with you. With your entire team pushed up closer to capture points you can apply pressure to the caps and use your team's full firepower to punish enemy attempts at pushing you. If, however, you get geniuses like the 3 BBs above you risk being focussed down by a superior enemy force. In short, the good positions are good assuming your team isn't completely clueless.
My positioning usually isnt always great, I try to see what is happening with the team, but almost always end up in too aggressive of a position, a symptom I blame fully on being way too accustomed to German BBs needing to get in.
Alternatively I end up on the flank that has one other ship and trying to do a holding action to prevent the inevitable push, occasionally that flank is abandoned by the enemy too and it allows me to get my ship (usually one of the Twins) behind them.
I have limited games though in T10 because of things you pointed out, the BB positioning. Often I find that rather than being too aggressive they sit in the back, everyone of them trying to be a Yamato and snipe.
I may not be the best at positioning, but damn people at least get in the fight.
Admitly I was in my old freind thr St Louis. Now I know why the cruiser shells did very little when I was broadside on. Plus my... Way way too many guns lol.
30k damage. Not perfect but hey. First kills.
Played a much more cautious game and hugged islands alot and quite abit more static tactically.
I tend to be a bit on the overagressive side as well in BBs, since I also first levelled up and learned the game in German BBs. Still, you win some games where people push agressively, the amount of games you win when everyone camps is ridiculously small.
Regarding HE and fire damage, do keep in mind that 100% of all damage you take from fires can be healed back with the Repair Party consumable. If you can get solid AP shots in it means the enemy can't heal back as much HP if they get away, and only 10% of Citadel damage is healable.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I tend to be a bit on the overagressive side as well in BBs, since I also first levelled up and learned the game in German BBs. Still, you win some games where people push agressively, the amount of games you win when everyone camps is ridiculously small.
Regarding HE and fire damage, do keep in mind that 100% of all damage you take from fires can be healed back with the Repair Party consumable. If you can get solid AP shots in it means the enemy can't heal back as much HP if they get away, and only 10% of Citadel damage is healable.
True. But later on that game last target was a BB, a BB and cruser. fully broadside. I turned on a little bud icon that told me what my shells had done and AP was just flashing up as bounces or useless.
Cruiser, ap did some good damage but the BB, 6 inch AP ain't exactly reliable vs main belt!
I tend to be over aggressive, used to armoured and high HP US cruiser type ships.
British CL Certainly finding island hugging and more destroyers tactics required.
HE certainly is a viable choice against BBs, but if they gave you flat broadside and you hit the superstructure or the bow or stern armour you'd almost certainly get penetrations even with 6" AP. If you were only getting bounces or shatters then switching ammo was obviously the correct choice for the time, but with proper aim Cruiser AP will chew through even BBs.
EDIT: On second thought, the St. Louis' HE and AP are pretty close to each other in performance, so while the AP might do a little more damage the HE shells don't suffer from angling and can set fires. I'd say you made the correct choice in shooting HE at BBs. Guess the St. Louis's AP is for other Cruisers.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: HE certainly is a viable choice against BBs, but if they gave you flat broadside and you hit the superstructure or the bow or stern armour you'd almost certainly get penetrations even with 6" AP. If you were only getting bounces or shatters then switching ammo was obviously the correct choice for the time, but with proper aim Cruiser AP will chew through even BBs.
EDIT: On second thought, the St. Louis' HE and AP are pretty close to each other in performance, so while the AP might do a little more damage the HE shells don't suffer from angling and can set fires. I'd say you made the correct choice in shooting HE at BBs. Guess the St. Louis's AP is for other Cruisers.
That little shell tool is handy. Normaly you would not know how you hitting in so much detail. With it on, you can see exactly how your shells are performing.
At range I was I think it was I was mid range between flat penetrating and arcing penetrating, yes I did abit of superstructure damage but when I hit more belt areas and so.
So when I hit thicker armour it was hitting at angle, thus stronger. Not sharp enough one way or other to penetrate.
Sometimes the battle forces you to think.
I'm not quite at the level of aiming for exact areas, the fact I was hitting ships was better than nothing!
Automatically Appended Next Post: And against most T1-3 ships. Ap is not always needed. Most people Don, t have armour to takw He hits, yet alone AP.
St louis is a rare exception alongside BB for heavy armour.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I just saw "Kamikaze" and shuddered inside. That ship should not be.
I wish I had it.
Is that the one with about twenty torpedo tubes?
It's been quite a while since I last played. Internet problems make it difficult for me to patch the game (the stupid patcher insists on restarting EVERY SINGLE TIME it loses the connection - which is something that's been happening to me a lot lately), let alone play. But I have had some fun playing the game.
From the pictures, battleships running up the flank without destroyers, or even cruisers, to provide a screen (aircraft scouting will serve in a pinch) deserve exactly what happens to them.
When playing on a destroyer, I would occasionally manage to successfully run up one of the map flanks. It's not a bad idea in a destroyer - particularly a Japanese one - because it gives you the opportunity to provide some backfield spotting for your allies, and possibly get in some good torpedo shots on opponents who mistakenly think they're safe. Unfortunately, what invariably happened is that some other "friendly" ship - usually a cruiser or battleship - would see me going up the side of the map, and decide to join me. The enemy would spot them, come over to engage with them, and promptly spot me as well.
You're thinking of the Kitakami, which was removed from the game for being utterly silly. The Kamikaze is a pre-nerf Minekaze, and the Minekaze was nerfed for a reason. There's a reason why the Kamikaze, Kamikaze-R, and Fujin (same ship, different skins) aren't sold anymore.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: You're thinking of the Kitakami, which was removed from the game for being utterly silly. The Kamikaze is a pre-nerf Minekaze, and the Minekaze was nerfed for a reason. There's a reason why the Kamikaze, Kamikaze-R, and Fujin (same ship, different skins) aren't sold anymore.
I only need the Kamikaze from next years christmas crates and then i'll have the set
I've just gotten into WoWS. I love carriers (I play a lot of strategy/RTS stuff so carriers have the perfect level of complication for me) but playing against higher tier carriers (currently tier 4/5), particularly when tier 6+ have alt fire is making it really hard for me to win/enjoy the games I play.
~.~
I'll be honest, I think carriers as they currently are never should have gotten past beta. They're wildly unbalanced and so influential on the battle that the difference in CV player skill skews the odds of victory tremendously in favour of the better CV player. Further, the fact that you can get deleted from full HP in one run without any counter play available just because you spawned in an isolated position (and thus cannot physically get to your team before the bombers get to you) is hallmark bad game design. At least give me the means to attempt to fight back.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'll be honest, I think carriers as they currently are never should have gotten past beta. They're wildly unbalanced and so influential on the battle that the difference in CV player skill skews the odds of victory tremendously in favour of the better CV player. Further, the fact that you can get deleted from full HP in one run without any counter play available just because you spawned in an isolated position (and thus cannot physically get to your team before the bombers get to you) is hallmark bad game design. At least give me the means to attempt to fight back.
Depends on tiers and ships too. Some early carriers have less planes and later ships with duel mount AA and ability likw radars and more advanced AA suites can hold Thete own quite effectively.
I just had a T6-T8 game on North with my Warspite. I spawn on the top right with a Nürnberg and a Cleveland. The enemy Enterprise flies in 2 minutes into the game, flies through the DefAA of the Cleveland and lops off 50% of my HP. 2 minutes later he takes the other 50%. There is nothing I can do to have a good game in such a situation. Nothing. Against higher tier BBs I can at least attempt to outplay them, and it's possible to win by virtue of being a better player. No such possibility exists against CVs. They break the game on a fundamental level. They're balanced for competetive games where both sides have hypercompetent CV players and everyone uses voice coms, but in random they're just hopeless design. There's a reason why they aren't allowed in Clan Battles.
I just had a T6-T8 game on North with my Warspite. I spawn on the top right with a Nürnberg and a Cleveland. The enemy Enterprise flies in 2 minutes into the game, flies through the DefAA of the Cleveland and lops off 50% of my HP. 2 minutes later he takes the other 50%. There is nothing I can do to have a good game in such a situation. Nothing. Against higher tier BBs I can at least attempt to outplay them, and it's possible to win by virtue of being a better player. No such possibility exists against CVs. They break the game on a fundamental level. They're balanced for competetive games where both sides have hypercompetent CV players and everyone uses voice coms, but in random they're just hopeless design. There's a reason why they aren't allowed in Clan Battles.
Git Gud
On the one hand, I dislike hoping my CV is competent, on the other hand I enjoy demolishing all the potato CV players who at higher tiers should know how to play the class.
Put me in the "Feth CVs" category. Not because they weren't fun for me to play (they really really weren't) but because like Walrus points out they break the game. Even if you do absolutely everything right, a CV can come by and delete you. And dont get me started on CV players that aren't good at the class.
I consistently pinged the map and told a CV player to move in a game when the flank collapsed but he sat there, ate an air strike and would have died to a DD if I hadn't decided it better to keep him alive for the sake of winning, which we did (Scharnhorst is best).
I've not played many games, at T5, and none above that.
Mostly 2-4 I've been sitting at.
I guess I Don t see many carriers, thr lowest level carrier is... Highly variable. I've seen them sink bog targets or stuck lost planes, decks on fire and trying to fight with seeing Ryan battery's and get torn apart by light cruisers circling like vultures.
Guess I'm the thread minow right now lol, best ship I have is a Omaha!
jhe90 wrote: I've not played many games, at T5, and none above that.
Mostly 2-4 I've been sitting at.
I guess I Don t see many carriers, thr lowest level carrier is... Highly variable. I've seen them sink bog targets or stuck lost planes, decks on fire and trying to fight with seeing Ryan battery's and get torn apart by light cruisers circling like vultures.
At that tier (which is where most of my ships are at), they're mostly good for scouting. I've run the Japanese Tier 4 carrier, and it doesn't have many planes. IIRC, it gets one flight of fighters (with a full set of replacements) and two flights of torpedo bombers (again, with a set of replacement planes). You're not going to be mass swarming ships with that air complement. The first part of the match is mostly spent scouting out the map so that my teammates have a general idea of what the enemy is up to. My torpedo bombers will dodge enemy fighters, and I'll redirect my fighters to go after enemy bombers if I think I can catch them. Once things get going, I'll send the torpedo bombers after lone enemy battleships (destroyers and cruisers are difficult to catch with torpedoes, and even battleships rarely get caught by more than one; and multiple ships in a small area increases the losses from anti-aircraft fire). And if the enemy battleship captains are paying attention, then they'll successfully avoid all of the torpedoes. It's not really that hard (hint - bow toward torpedo bombers, flank toward dive bombers).
So at the lower tiers, carriers are largely a nuisance thing - unless they alert their teammates to the position of your destroyer, of course.
To make matters even worse for low tier carriers, at the lower tiers the developers disabled the most potent tool for bombers.
Ordinarily, when you direct your bombers to attack a ship, the bombers automatically line up for the optimal angle, and then make their attack from that direction (even if the ship changes directions in the meantime). So if an enemy ship captain recognizes that your fighters are about to make a torpedo drop, he'll turn toward your torpedo bombers. Your bombers are already committed to the drop at that point, and won't adjust their angle of attack. But the game allows you to perform a "manual drop". This means that you can essentially force your planes to make their drop from wherever they currently happen to be located no matter the angle of the target. So you could set up an automatic drop that targeted an enemy battleship from the flank, and then position a second flight to manually drop from behind the battleship seconds later. When properly executed, the battleship is unable to dodge both sets of torpedoes (turning to dodge one will set the ship up to get hit by the other group). However, the developers, in their infinite wisdom (/sarc) have decided that this tool should not be available to Tier 4 or 5 carrier captains. As a result, you can't experiment with your most useful ability until you pretty much need it to survive. Even worse, if you're in a Tier 5 carrier and end up in a match with an enemy Tier 6, then he's got a potent tool that you don't have access to.
BaronIveagh wrote: On the flip side, above T8 carriers are pretty much useless and are a wasted spot on a team. I long for a CV re-balance.
That's just not true though; carriers are consistently the ships with the biggest impact on win rates from T6 all the way to T10. The scouting potential alone gives a T10 carrier such a huge impact, any damage is just gravy, and both the Hakuryu and the redesigned Midway can absolutely brutalise enemies with cross drops. There's a reason why carriers are the only ships where the best players consistently manage 80% solo win rates.
BaronIveagh wrote: On the flip side, above T8 carriers are pretty much useless and are a wasted spot on a team. I long for a CV re-balance.
That's just not true though; carriers are consistently the ships with the biggest impact on win rates from T6 all the way to T10. The scouting potential alone gives a T10 carrier such a huge impact, any damage is just gravy, and both the Hakuryu and the redesigned Midway can absolutely brutalise enemies with cross drops. There's a reason why carriers are the only ships where the best players consistently manage 80% solo win rates.
Aye had a game in my Essex where I only managed about 25kdmg, but essentially got all of the enemy teams DD's killed, outplayed their Essex and forced people to show broadside, came second overall with about 1500exp.
T3 British cruiser unlocked nearly. Those close detonation AP shells are slowly starting to grow on me.
I still miss HE but they are not quite as bad as I thought.
They take a a little more skill to use admitly, but slowly they starting to do more damage.
Landed a few citadel hits on a light cruser, they certainly are not ad bad as they first appear.
jhe90 wrote: T3 British cruiser unlocked nearly. Those close detonation AP shells are slowly starting to grow on me.
I still miss HE but they are not quite as bad as I thought.
They take a a little more skill to use admitly, but slowly they starting to do more damage.
Landed a few citadel hits on a light cruser, they certainly are not ad bad as they first appear.
TBH the early British CLs are kinda poor. Even the Emerald at T5 is passable at best, because while you get smoke you also get the joy of being uptiered against T7 most of the time. It's really only from the T6 Leander that the line starts to find its proper playstyle.
BaronIveagh wrote: On the flip side, above T8 carriers are pretty much useless and are a wasted spot on a team. I long for a CV re-balance.
That's just not true though; carriers are consistently the ships with the biggest impact on win rates from T6 all the way to T10. The scouting potential alone gives a T10 carrier such a huge impact, any damage is just gravy, and both the Hakuryu and the redesigned Midway can absolutely brutalise enemies with cross drops. There's a reason why carriers are the only ships where the best players consistently manage 80% solo win rates.
I've heard that. In the last six months though I've seen a single Midway, he was in a clan squadron, and I brutalized him with my actually solo Yamato with a one salvo kill since we were on a map where both ships were visible from the match start.
There seems to be quite a difference in the frequency of CVs on different servers though, with the NA server having much fewer CVs overall. I run into carriers regularly (as in perhaps 20-30% of my games have CVs) on EU, whereas from what I've seen carriers are almost extinct in NA.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: There seems to be quite a difference in the frequency of CVs on different servers though, with the NA server having much fewer CVs overall. I run into carriers regularly (as in perhaps 20-30% of my games have CVs) on EU, whereas from what I've seen carriers are almost extinct in NA.
It's hard to get a match outside bot bashing due to how MM works with carriers on NA.
also, NA always seems to have a hardon for suicide runs on the carriers and cruisers almost automatically surround the BBs making planes pretty flimsy.
jhe90 wrote: T3 British cruiser unlocked nearly. Those close detonation AP shells are slowly starting to grow on me.
I still miss HE but they are not quite as bad as I thought.
They take a a little more skill to use admitly, but slowly they starting to do more damage.
Landed a few citadel hits on a light cruser, they certainly are not ad bad as they first appear.
TBH the early British CLs are kinda poor. Even the Emerald at T5 is passable at best, because while you get smoke you also get the joy of being uptiered against T7 most of the time. It's really only from the T6 Leander that the line starts to find its proper playstyle.
The T3 British is like a tin boat vs the St louis but thr torpedo systems proved a intresting Suprise for a BB even if my run did kinda result in taking several 12 inch shells and being a tiny bit dead lol.
Worth a shot, I was doing gak all to it, we had the game wrapped up.
Go big or go home!
So when it comes down to it, all UK cruisers are made out of tin. A tier 2 DD's HE shells can get citadel hits on a tier 3 UK cruiser. The main thing to learn is how to position yourself where you won't be a good target and then later on you'll get repair party at like tier 4 or 5, then smoke generators.
Heck, even the tier 10 UK cruiser isn't anywhere invulnerable and as an example I've taken many a Minotaur from 100% to 0% from 19km away with one Iowa Salvo. But that being said a crafty Minotaur can melt away most ships with it's AP if it's played decently.
I don't like playing against CVs much either, they're why I tend to run my KM BBs as porcupines. I load them up with BFT, AFT, Manual Secondaries, and Manual AA in order to help increase survival. I know it's contrarian as most of the better youtubers wouldn't dream of doing an AA build on a KM BB, but I find it really helps!
I know a few nights ago my Kurfurst shot down 34 Hakuryu planes while our Hakuryu managed to shoot down 21 of the opposing CV's planes so that felt nice.
I'm nowhere near the best, but I tend to play pretty dang average or slightly above average at least.
Finally got around to unlocking the Izumo, while its certainly not a great ship by any means, I think people are underselling it as a result of its CBT and OBT performance.
Probably helps that one of my first few games in it I pointed at a Neptune in the opening stages of the battle, then watched as I got way more citadels than I had any right to, and deleted him for a First Blood and Devastating Strike.
The one saving grace of the Izumo is the fact that it has Japanese 410mm guns. Everything else about it is a nightmare IMO. You've got the worst concealment in the game (literally, no one's worse) and the entire ship is covered in 32mm armour which means that every HE-slinging Cruiser is going to absolutely murder you, even if they don't get fires.
At least the Yamato was worth it. God I love that ship.
So, I should play it like a big, slow and unstealthy Cruiser then?
I would just use the Musashi to train a Captain and grind XP on, but that would be yet more money i'd need to pour into the game and I already need to tone down on that.
It plays like the Yamato or the Musashi except it can't overmatch 32mm bow armour. The problem is that the entire playstyle is based on being able to overmatch 32mm bow armour. You sit in one place, angle so you don't get flank-murdered and then you shoot stuff. It's not a mobile BB unlike the Amagi.
halonachos wrote: So when it comes down to it, all UK cruisers are made out of tin. A tier 2 DD's HE shells can get citadel hits on a tier 3 UK cruiser. The main thing to learn is how to position yourself where you won't be a good target and then later on you'll get repair party at like tier 4 or 5, then smoke generators.
Heck, even the tier 10 UK cruiser isn't anywhere invulnerable and as an example I've taken many a Minotaur from 100% to 0% from 19km away with one Iowa Salvo. But that being said a crafty Minotaur can melt away most ships with it's AP if it's played decently.
I don't like playing against CVs much either, they're why I tend to run my KM BBs as porcupines. I load them up with BFT, AFT, Manual Secondaries, and Manual AA in order to help increase survival. I know it's contrarian as most of the better youtubers wouldn't dream of doing an AA build on a KM BB, but I find it really helps!
I know a few nights ago my Kurfurst shot down 34 Hakuryu planes while our Hakuryu managed to shoot down 21 of the opposing CV's planes so that felt nice.
I'm nowhere near the best, but I tend to play pretty dang average or slightly above average at least.
In right momment, those 4 second reload, 6 inch AP shells are going to shred someone upper deck AA and so off with ease. and at that fire rate alot of small impacts are going to add up quickly.
The new Cruisers are essentially just US versions of the British Cruisers aren't they? And BBs weren't nerfed against the Brits.
If AP are only ever overpens on DDs, then they would never be overpens on CLs, increasing the odds of a cit. More cits, more exploded CLs.
Or did you mean that was just for DDs? (which is also a bad idea, since some BBs have small enough guns they should never overpen a DD [Sharn springs to mind], since the same shot on the same armor thickness would never result in an overpen on a cruiser. More bizarrely it means that cruisers with the same or larger caliber guns still won't overpen the DD, and throws consistency within shot mechanics out the window)
BaronIveagh wrote: So Graf Spee has just become the most powerful DD killer in game then?
Since cruiser gun mechanics + battleship caliber weapons.
Nah, you're not accurate enough and you've only got 6 guns. Minotaur and Des Moines will still be king. Even at mid tiers you get ships like Molotov or the ever-OP Belfast.
Funny thing is it doesn't nerf the Conqueror at all though. You'll still get 13k+ salvoes on DDs with British HE.
Nah, you're not accurate enough and you've only got 6 guns. Minotaur and Des Moines will still be king. Even at mid tiers you get ships like Molotov or the ever-OP Belfast..
You're shooting them too far away if you're complaining about Graffs accuracy. However, I tend to use anything German at knife fight distances, so....
It doesn't do anything about Bismarck and Tirp either, since secondaries.
It does look like there would actually be a reason to take expert loader with that change. I mean, I still wouldn't take it, but there'd be kind of a point I guess.
Nah, you're not accurate enough and you've only got 6 guns. Minotaur and Des Moines will still be king. Even at mid tiers you get ships like Molotov or the ever-OP Belfast..
You're shooting them too far away if you're complaining about Graffs accuracy.
It has top-end Battleship dispersion and 6 guns. It's not accurate enough to get multiple full penetrations on DDs reliably. It doesn't have the rate of fire to be a strong DD killer, and it doesn't have the overwhelming burst damage that a Battleship can currently luck itself into. 280mm guns are technically Battleship guns, but only because the Scharnhorst carries them. They're noticeably weaker than even the Dunkerque's 340mm guns, let alone the 380mm guns of the Warspite or Bayern. A full penetration from a Graf Spee isn't nearly as devestating as a full penetration from a New Mexico or a Fuso for a DD.
I wasn't comparing Spee's accuracy to BBs by the way, but rather to other Cruisers. Even so, if she's just as accurate as other Cruisers 6 guns with a 20 second reload doesn't make her good at killing DDs reliably. She's an excellent Cruiser killer because Cruisers are larger targets and have Citadels.
Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly possible to slap DDs silly with the Graf Spee, but it's hardly "the most powerful DD killer in the game". Belfast's just one tier higher and absolutely demolishes DDs in a way the Spee could never hope to match. Tier 6 has Molotov with Donskoi's T9 railguns and Cleveland with a rain of HE that'll scour DDs away much better than the Spee.
It has top-end Battleship dispersion and 6 guns. It's not accurate enough to get multiple full penetrations on DDs reliably. It doesn't have the rate of fire to be a strong DD killer, and it doesn't have the overwhelming burst damage that a Battleship can currently luck itself into. 280mm guns are technically Battleship guns, but only because the Scharnhorst carries them. They're noticeably weaker than even the Dunkerque's 340mm guns, let alone the 380mm guns of the Warspite or Bayern. A full penetration from a Graf Spee isn't nearly as devestating as a full penetration from a New Mexico or a Fuso for a DD.
I wasn't comparing Spee's accuracy to BBs by the way, but rather to other Cruisers. Even so, if she's just as accurate as other Cruisers 6 guns with a 20 second reload doesn't make her good at killing DDs reliably. She's an excellent Cruiser killer because Cruisers are larger targets and have Citadels.
Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly possible to slap DDs silly with the Graf Spee, but it's hardly "the most powerful DD killer in the game". Belfast's just one tier higher and absolutely demolishes DDs in a way the Spee could never hope to match. Tier 6 has Molotov with Donskoi's T9 railguns and Cleveland with a rain of HE that'll scour DDs away much better than the Spee.
I'll grant, I'm not sure what we're doing differently, but I tend to erase the DD in one shot. Granted, I do switch ammos, so I'm tending to hit it with explosive, but...
And we agree that she's a very good cruiser killer. I annihilate Belfasts with her, thanks to the repair consumable, adrenaline rush, and the surprising number of fires I can generate.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So I'm 2-12 in my games today, having had games like 170k in 9 minutes with 2M potential damage in the Minotaur and still losing.
How do you stay sane when the Chaos Gods invade and are on the enemy team?
Its at that time when I just take a short break, or just play a different game.
Might finally get to play a Cruiser in Ranked, T6 was Cleveland or go home and T8 was radar or Kutuzov, and I didn't own any of those (well, radar Edinburgh but come on). Zao should be good for DD sniping and being a good ship in general. I'd like to play Minotaur, but I suspect there's gonna be a lot of radar and not a lot of CVs (which in turn means more hydro), so that's not gonna happen.
I think its pretty strange that they are going 8-10-7 for the way its laid out.
I also think its pretty odd to make that jump and cut a potentially large number of players out, even if their previous statistics show that most people that play in Ranked have T10s open to them. I think one reason that it was mostly people that did have T10s is that they were generally more comfortable with the game play, but that could easily be different now. Loads of players are probably comfortable by now that still aren't T10. Some people work multiple lines and could not have a 10 because they are grinding everything.
We'll have to see how it goes, but hopefully they will go back to T7-8 for the next one. Because personally, I'm just not that comfortable in my T10s. A combo of being overly aggressive from time to time combined with teams that like to sit back and do nothing.
Plus Im not really sure in the Meta how the Hindenburg and Grosserkurfurst stack up.
Hinden's really good, it's a swiss-army-knife. It's not the best firestarter (that'd be Zao) or the best DPM (Minotaur) but it's good at most things; great HE, excellent AP, tanky in general and just a menace at all ranges.
Alright. Provided I get to Rank 10 (I've done rank maybe twice and think I got to Rank 11) I think i'll use the Hinden. I'd try the GK, but she's such a large target and I always get OPs or No Damage Crits with her.
I recon at the very least there will be more than a few Conquerors in the meta. That heal, and the fires cant be underestimated in the lower ship count of Ranked.
I'm not sure Conq will be that good in Ranked, it bleeds HP like crazy when you can focus it. It's good when there's other ships to draw attention away from it, but it doesn't actually tank very well under sustained fire.
Yeah, but if you already have an account it just gives you the Humble Bundle flag.
Anyone else notice anything odd between WR on identical ships? I have Kamikaze and Kamikaze R which are identicla stat wise, and use the same officer between them. I have almost the same number of battles and alternate playing them so both are played at the same times.
Yet my WR is 45% on R and 56% on Regular, and both are nearly at the 100 battle mark, though Regular is into the 90s and R is in the high 80s.
Stat wise, it should be the other way around, as according to WTR I actually perform better in the R than in the Regular.
In my experience RNGesus hates me and my unfortunate crews in World Of Warships. In my latest game my poor North Carolina was ravaged most foul by a horde of Bismarks
BaronIveagh wrote: Yeah, but if you already have an account it just gives you the Humble Bundle flag.
Anyone else notice anything odd between WR on identical ships? I have Kamikaze and Kamikaze R which are identicla stat wise, and use the same officer between them. I have almost the same number of battles and alternate playing them so both are played at the same times.
Yet my WR is 45% on R and 56% on Regular, and both are nearly at the 100 battle mark, though Regular is into the 90s and R is in the high 80s.
Stat wise, it should be the other way around, as according to WTR I actually perform better in the R than in the Regular.
Does one of the ships have a boost that keeps it out of battles with ships two tiers higher?
Trondheim wrote: In my experience RNGesus hates me and my unfortunate crews in World Of Warships. In my latest game my poor North Carolina was ravaged most foul by a horde of Bismarks
More fun when you end up against a cruiser or BB 2 tiers higher, with fully rotating turrets and so and your in a older layout m with there greater range, and firepower.
Thr gap between the woeld war one designs and world war two in second set of tiers can be quite the leap.
Reminded once more that I am really not fond of the lower tiers, another friend started the game and we were doing T2. Just idk what it is about it but I never have fun that low. Sometimes I can in T3-4, but thats mostly because I goof off in the Katori and Yubari.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Reminded once more that I am really not fond of the lower tiers, another friend started the game and we were doing T2. Just idk what it is about it but I never have fun that low. Sometimes I can in T3-4, but thats mostly because I goof off in the Katori and Yubari.
because all the big, famous , and inspiring ones are in top tiers.
and you have higher health pools, big guns and so.
at low levels, your not got the iconic ships or the feeling of uncleashing a full iowa broadside.
Honestly, my biggest gripe with the low-tier ships is that the gun layouts are all over the place. Casemate guns aren't fun, and neither are the HMS Dreadnought-style "let's glue a turret here!" BBs.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Honestly, my biggest gripe with the low-tier ships is that the gun layouts are all over the place. Casemate guns aren't fun, and neither are the HMS Dreadnought-style "let's glue a turret here!" BBs.
Oh... That French BB with 6+ turrets.
That's kinda insane.om sailing by its got about 12 guns. It's like a floating gun battery!
Yeah, casement guns do kinda disappointing you when you have 10 guns and only 6-7 you can use.
But... But...
Theres also thr ability to flip extremely quickly mid Manorbier to bring more guns to bear outside your turret turn speeds.
So it's kinda a mixed bag I guess. Using them takes a diffrent set of skills.
Trondheim wrote: In my experience RNGesus hates me and my unfortunate crews in World Of Warships. In my latest game my poor North Carolina was ravaged most foul by a horde of Bismarks
More fun when you end up against a cruiser or BB 2 tiers higher, with fully rotating turrets and so and your in a older layout m with there greater range, and firepower.
Thr gap between the woeld war one designs and world war two in second set of tiers can be quite the leap.
Like when cruisers armaments grow to 8 inch etc.
After having gotten my hands on a T8 US cruiser I now once again trust in RNGesus!
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Reminded once more that I am really not fond of the lower tiers, another friend started the game and we were doing T2. Just idk what it is about it but I never have fun that low. Sometimes I can in T3-4, but thats mostly because I goof off in the Katori and Yubari.
because all the big, famous , and inspiring ones are in top tiers.
and you have higher health pools, big guns and so. at low levels, your not got the iconic ships or the feeling of uncleashing a full iowa broadside.
Well you still get ships like the Emden at lower tiers which are or were rather fairly famous, its just not fun to play them.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:Honestly, my biggest gripe with the low-tier ships is that the gun layouts are all over the place. Casemate guns aren't fun, and neither are the HMS Dreadnought-style "let's glue a turret here!" BBs.
Yeah, that certainly plays into it. You learn the game wrong (in a sense), DDs charging full out to drop torps, BBs and Cruisers broadsiding 90% of the time in order to get all their scattered guns on target. Then you get to T5, where load outs are more or less normalized and how they are for the rest of the game or only slightly off, and DDs need to play more stealthy. You've gotta learn two different games.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Reminded once more that I am really not fond of the lower tiers, another friend started the game and we were doing T2. Just idk what it is about it but I never have fun that low. Sometimes I can in T3-4, but thats mostly because I goof off in the Katori and Yubari.
because all the big, famous , and inspiring ones are in top tiers.
and you have higher health pools, big guns and so.
at low levels, your not got the iconic ships or the feeling of uncleashing a full iowa broadside.
Well you still get ships like the Emden at lower tiers which are or were rather fairly famous, its just not fun to play them.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:Honestly, my biggest gripe with the low-tier ships is that the gun layouts are all over the place. Casemate guns aren't fun, and neither are the HMS Dreadnought-style "let's glue a turret here!" BBs.
Yeah, that certainly plays into it. You learn the game wrong (in a sense), DDs charging full out to drop torps, BBs and Cruisers broadsiding 90% of the time in order to get all their scattered guns on target. Then you get to T5, where load outs are more or less normalized and how they are for the rest of the game or only slightly off, and DDs need to play more stealthy. You've gotta learn two different games.
Aye... I think hardest part is when the two combine. I've played odd T5 and well. When your getting a T6 with full turret layouts vs my casement and having to expose my flanks.
I think thats where my enjoyment of the Yubari and Katori comes from, while they are by no means great or even good ships, they have the familiar lay out of higher tier ships.
So the Prinz Eugen after having gained Repair Party is an awesome ship. I've been using it in ranked as I slowly progress (only getting like 2-4 games in a day) and I'm loving it.
Nice, thats a pretty good win rate. Im not looking forward to getting to the T10 part of the Battles for the brain dead aspect. It's just, T10 manages to not be very fun.
Ground my way to rank 10 with my enterprise, only struggled against one other CV player, but that was due to my errors rather than him doing anything, used the money to purchase my Montana, and have yet to leave the rank 10 bracket, it certainly feels as though rank 10 hell is going to be worse than any other season. Might have to gring out the exp and money for the minotaur in a hurry and go on some star saving exercises by knowing how to play a RN cruiser.
Unlocked the Yamato, but the first game out in it I couldn't score standard pens at all, had like 5, but got like 20 Overpens. Still had like 80k damage, but no kills.
Finally unlocked the Gneisenau earlier this week after grinding for silver to buy her while she was on sale. Absolutely love the ship. I'm 1 skill point away from getting the manual fire control for secondary armaments. It's so bizarre having a ship that has torpedoes, it really feels like it makes up for having only 6 guns.
Nice job. The Gneis and her Sister are two of my favorite ships to play. Armored well enough to survive fights, pack a punch with their main batteries and secondaries and the torps are a great addition. Combine that with their speed and you can play aggressive enough to get in.
creeping-deth87 wrote: God damn I am loving this ship. Probably not that impressive to some of the veterans on here, but for me this was a really good game.
Lots of battleships and the Red team scattered and hid behind islands rather than screen their team mates. That and It's a Kamikaze, I'm invisible almost to absolute detection range. So I get right up on them and let go.
creeping-deth87 wrote: God damn I am loving this ship. Probably not that impressive to some of the veterans on here, but for me this was a really good game.
The Genny isn't bad, but, you're right.
That wasnt even my highest damage Scharnhorst battle, highest was 190k.
Over 100k in a T7 is a decent game I'd say. The "Battleship Elite" ribbon at T10 requires an average damage of 108k in 100 BB games, so 134k in a Gneis is nothing to scoff at. I never much liked Gneis, the six guns with potato dispersion was a bit tough to swallow.
Wargaming's posted the third video in its "How it Works" series, they're giving a good run-through of how various game mechanics work. I'd recommend watching them even if you're experienced.
EDIT: While we're at it, anyone else hyped for 12km torpedoes on the Zao?
Also my Hindenburg is getting a small nerf that I dont think will affect it too much. Up to an 11 Second Reload from a 10.
Only loosely related, but man, as cool as the Z-52 is, I cant do crap with it. HE just shatters 90% of the time, I get fires like 15% of the time and my AP shatters or ricochets off of flat surfaces it should be able to pen.
Unless I do a training battle, and then it does what ever it wants.
It also ties in much better with the overall Soviet DD identity as sustained fighters rather than knife-range brawlers. Khabarovsk (God I hate that ship) enjoys the use of its heal; giving the Grozovoi a heal too ties the two together rather nicely flavour-wise in my opinion.
Yeah, Im not overly fond of the Khab either. You're right in this tying them together better, and the Grozo should be interesting to see in this incarnation, as unlike the Khab I dont think it gives up Smoke for the heal.
Speaking of DDs, with the changes to how BB AP will affect them, do you think the KM DDs will still suffer from greater AP damage?
I unlocked the Bismarck last week and absolutely hated her. Suffered enough to get the upgraded hull and still despised the ship. The 15" guns just really do not cut it against the competition she faces. I was struggling to do more than 30K even with a secondary build, had such a hard time getting into range to use them and most of the time when I did I still got my ass handed to me. Sold her to get the Amagi and have been much, MUCH happier with that. Tier 8 seriously blows, I feel like it's 5 out of 6 games I get uptiered against 10s. Super obnoxious.
creeping-deth87 wrote: I unlocked the Bismarck last week and absolutely hated her. Suffered enough to get the upgraded hull and still despised the ship. The 15" guns just really do not cut it against the competition she faces. I was struggling to do more than 30K even with a secondary build, had such a hard time getting into range to use them and most of the time when I did I still got my ass handed to me. Sold her to get the Amagi and have been much, MUCH happier with that. Tier 8 seriously blows, I feel like it's 5 out of 6 games I get uptiered against 10s. Super obnoxious.
My advice with Bis is not to go after other BBs, but to pressure cruisers and other smaller ships. Use cover, and wait for them to come to you.
Amagi is probably the best T8 BB in the game (that or NCal). I like my Tirpitz, but yeah 380mm guns are pretty weak for T8. You just have to be patient and wait for an opening where you can bully your way in and use your tankiness to kill people, whereas the ships with bigger guns can just consistently deal damage more easily.
Unless they are the Roma's 380mm guns which would be pretty good if they didnt always overpen. Or the Alsace's 380mm guns (only speaking pre-nerf I dont know post nerf), they were pretty good, I mean they needed to be nerfed.
I'm glad they made these changes to ranked, they have completely frozen my mate who has no tier 10's out of playing because he dared to hit rank 10 last season.
Submarines announced for this year's Halloween event. It will serve as an initial test for their addition to the game in a normal Tech Tree at some point down the line.
Just got into World of Warships and I am enjoying the early game, but I am finding it waaaaaaay grindy compared to other games, and the rewards just aren't there....
Going down the german BB line, Got the Nassau, and she's pretty rubbish with the accuracy, but once I get her down.....she can really hammer down
Doctadeth wrote: Just got into World of Warships and I am enjoying the early game, but I am finding it waaaaaaay grindy compared to other games, and the rewards just aren't there....
Going down the german BB line, Got the Nassau, and she's pretty rubbish with the accuracy, but once I get her down.....she can really hammer down
Perhaps because I've played other Wargaming titles, I find the grind quite pleasant, once you get your account rolling you end up with a lot of things to help out with the grind in regards to camo and signal flags.
Doctadeth wrote: Just got into World of Warships and I am enjoying the early game, but I am finding it waaaaaaay grindy compared to other games, and the rewards just aren't there....
Going down the german BB line, Got the Nassau, and she's pretty rubbish with the accuracy, but once I get her down.....she can really hammer down
That's pretty much the German BB line. Rubbish accuracy, but if you can get close enough to mitigate that...
I mean, that's a GZ balance problem, not a CV problem. Any issues with CV's could have been solved along the way, like putting an actual CV tutorial in the game, or reducing ship spotting, or reducing the alpha.
Plus instead of being alpha'd and then waiting a minute before getting alpha'd again, the rework "as it looks" is going to bring none stop DOT which will be even more fun.
It being a DoT at least gives you a chance to fight back. I would have been just as helpless (through no fault of my own) against a Shokaku as I was against that Graf Zeppelin.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: It being a DoT at least gives you a chance to fight back. I would have been just as helpless (through no fault of my own) against a Shokaku as I was against that Graf Zeppelin.
Does it though? You get dropped, damage con, then get dropped again, but this time it ticks for full and you get dropped again to shave off some more health, still constantly spotted, still no real chance of fighting back unless you're AA specced and now there's the potential for no friendly fighter support to prevent you getting dropped (I understand it's a rarity) because WG aren't even sure action planes needs fighters.
Not without a massive rework of damage and consumables across the board it doesn't. 4 fires will still kill a Yamato long before you see a single other ship. Throw in a leak and you're screwed before you can clear the spawn.
Throw in that hte new system will make fires and leaks EVEN MORE COMMON and even a prem repair party with every single speed buff available will not protect your ass.
Iowa is a colossal piece of crap. The guns don't do what I want them to and because you've got an all-or-nothing design you bleed damage from everywhere. Jesus I hate this ship, can't wait for the grind to be over. The worst part is I know it's not a bad ship, it's just that I can't get it to work.
And, of course, because I posted this post this is what happens in my next game:
Nicely done, both of you! I'm on the Izumo at the moment and I have to say I'm amazed this ship has the terrible reputation that it does, I've played over 20 games in her and I've thoroughly enjoyed Izumo so far. Can't wait to see what Yamato is like.
I'm also currently working my way down the USN BB and CA line. I just unlocked Colorado but don't have the silver to buy her yet. New Mexico was a LOT of fun though. Picked up the Pensacola recently as well, haven't played many games in it yet but I've enjoyed it too thus far.
No, Nelson has 406mm guns, not 203mm. They're still going to punch the everliving gak out of the deck armour of an Izumo, but the Izumo overmatches pretty much everything on the Nelson so that should be a one-sided fight. Especially considering it's a T7 vs. a T9...
Does it still have the "Kutuzov" text on the stern?
Also, people actually believe the new carriers are UNDERPOWERED?? Like, what? Sure, if you're low-tier and fly into concentrations of AA your planes die before you can strike. That's a feature, not a bug. Meanwhile, Hakuryu is bonkers. Had a game the other day where I broke 100k damage 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the game and picked up liquidator by just repeatedly hitting a flank-spawned Yamato.
We'll have to see what happens after the fire and flood reworks, but right now CVs need a nerf if anything.
Also, people actually believe the new carriers are UNDERPOWERED?? Like, what? Sure, if you're low-tier and fly into concentrations of AA your planes die before you can strike. That's a feature, not a bug. Meanwhile, Hakuryu is bonkers. Had a game the other day where I broke 100k damage 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the game and picked up liquidator by just repeatedly hitting a flank-spawned Yamato.
We'll have to see what happens after the fire and flood reworks, but right now CVs need a nerf if anything.
LOL Try them without using any of the exploits that are running rampant (Hakuryu). They actually need a buff, but with AA broken and the F key exploit, it's impossible to balance anything.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: As I said, Lexington is perfectly fine, and I don't need any exploits to demolish people in Hakuryu.
EDIT: Can't speak for lower tier carriers as I haven't tried them, but T8 is strong and T10 is absurd.
Kaga and Saipan are pitiful now, and I got so disgusted with my Lexington that I sold both CV lines all the way back. Figure I'll use the XP to snag Alaska and not sure what I'll do with the other million.
Still sitting on Kaga and Saipan. Not sure if it's worth it to trade them in while I can or not.
Well, Haku seems to have been reined in to a much more reasonable level at least. The immunity of planes as soon as you hit F seems to have been removed as well, which is good.
EDIT: On second thought, I think Haku might have been hit too hard. The change to plane survivability means you bleed planes like crazy, and the aim nerf just further exacerbates this. They should've just fixed the F nonsense, seen how things settled out and then nerfed further if they had to.
Well I got the Yamato 2 days ago and I must say... what a ship @.@
After just 2 matches in it I very nearly broke my record for highest dmg in a single game ever (160K, highest ever was 162). The bow on this thing is ridiculous. I literally feel invincible when I'm prow-on, and the sound of her main battery going off is so bassy and wonderful. Thus far, she's certainly living up to her reputation for me. I definitely get focused down in it though, and I can't help but notice there are always a couple of friendlies trailing my wake wherever I go.
Yamato is the quintessential battleship. Sluggish, weak if flanked, and will sock you so hard in the schnoz that your descendants will feel it. I wish BB gameplay was more like Yamato in general.
Also, a few weeks after the carrier rework, they feel damn anemic now. It's not that they're all bad, but when your main strength is spotting it gets boring real quick. It's kinda like Shimakaze.
Also, a few weeks after the carrier rework, they feel damn anemic now. It's not that they're all bad, but when your main strength is spotting it gets boring real quick. It's kinda like Shimakaze.
Please do not insult the Shima like that. I can actually do damage with Shima. The CVs are worthless.
Not worthless, but like Shima it requires the enemy team to play badly to work, and neither of them work consistently in the current meta.
Just unlocked Midway and there really is no reason why a Des Moines should be able to kill a full HP wave before I can launch a single rocket at it.
I get the feeling that CVs still are far too binary. It's really hard to have an OK game in them; they're either completely broken games or I do sub-50k at Tier 10. At the same time, the perma-spotting of DDs breaks the game in yet another way.
) but getting better.
