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And some ships don't even get to fight back.

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 Def AA 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.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
And some ships don't even get to fight back.

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 Def AA 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).

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.

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.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 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.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 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.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 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.

Ah, that makes sense. I still need to get used to the play style of the Musashi. Learned too many KM BB habits.

 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.

I unlocked the T9 French Battleship Alsace today, and first impressions of her are that, I like her, I like her alot.

I used to play WoWS, but I stopped when the IJN DD's (my primary ree) where systematically nerfed into extinction because of brain dead BB players.

The nerf didnt change them that much, and now they are nerfing BBs, so that AP Pens will only ever be Over Pens vs DDs.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
The nerf didnt change them that much, and now they are nerfing BBs, so that AP Pens will only ever be Over Pens vs DDs.

Expect this to be reversed when the US light cruiser line launches and it, well, constantly explodes on the first hit.

Why would BBs vs US CLs matter towards BB AP being nerfed vs DDs?

The new Cruisers are essentially just US versions of the British Cruisers aren't they? And BBs weren't nerfed against the Brits.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Why would BBs vs US CLs matter towards BB AP being nerfed vs DDs?

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:


Or did you mean that was just for DDs?

This is it. Battleship AP won't be able to score penetrations on DDs, they'll still work as normal on everything else.

They are just changing the effects of BB Main gun AP vs DDs, but not against anything else as far as I have read.

So Graf Spee has just become the most powerful DD killer in game then?

Since cruiser gun mechanics + battleship caliber weapons.