Grizley

This isn't true, and it's easy to see this with a quick trip to Warships and looking at the ship stats. 1 week win rate for the T8 CV is Shokaku 56.85, Enterprise 55.12, Lex 43.61. Just so we're clear 56.85 > 55.12. The Enterprise is averaging 11k higher damage, and it's exactly for the reason that I gave. The AP bombs wreck KM BBs. You can autodrop the AP bombs on Germans and do 40k. The torps are not good for deletion, you have the bombs for that, but they can get a hit or two on BBs and CA. You're not hitting a DD with them unless they're terminally bad. You're both wrong and misunderstanding saying that I would rather have the 15k on a DD. 40k is using both bombers, so obviously I'm talking about a strike, not auto dropping one bomber on a DD and expecting 15k. That said, it's not especially rare for a DD to take 15k from a CV. It's all down to RNG, sometimes there is nothing but splashes, sometimes you lose nearly all of your health and get 3 fires. Also, bombers aren't the weapon of choice against DDs, because of that RNG factor. Cross dropped torpedos are. It doesn't work especially well against USN DD with their rudder shift, but it works very well on IJN, KM and especially Russian DDs.

The Enterprise damage stat is hugely and largely uselessly buffed by the AP bombs. Most games have one or KM BBs on each team. Autodrop will nail them for 40k damage. Personally I would far rather my CV does 15k to an enemy DD than 40k to a BB, but that's thinking in terms of winning the game not padding damage numbers. Looking at the stats it looks like the primary victim of the Enterprise is Lexington. Shokakus win rate has not gone down after the Enterprise, but the Lexington has. Hardly surprising, since the Enterprise has exactly the same benefit of having fighters that a Shokaku has against a strike Lex. AS Lex can severely reduce the impact an Enterprise can have, but an AS Lex doesn't do much in the way of strike either. On the US server there are roughly twice as many Lex games as Shokaku. So the Enterprise should end up with a better win than loss record, even being worse than the Shokaku based on having most of its games against a Lex.

The thing is, the Hellcat wasn't just a fighter. It was a fighter bomber. It was far superior as far as bomb load to anything the IJN had, even dedicated fighters. They gave up range when carrying a full bomb load, but both in terms of the range WoWs happens at and for repeated strikes at less than maximum range that doesn't really matter. WG has so far ignored that, but USN CVs, especially those with historical loadouts would be much improved by recognizing this. It would have to be done carefully, or you'd end up with things being a little too historical and for game balance the USN always crushing the IJN is just as bad as the current situation. Maybe giving the fighters 500lb HE bombs, it's only about 20% of the total bomb load but then you could load the dive bombers up with AP bombs and go to town.

It seems like it's an AS CV with under tiered fighters that wins through attrition. Poor strike power, good for hitting BBs, not much good for anything else and that's not the ideal target type to specialize in.

If they announced 1000lb AP bombs and straight line torp drops... Good time to buy WG stock.

I think it's more like, people wanted a USN CV that was the clear equal of the Shokaku. It doesn't seem like Enterprise is that. In some situations or with a better player it's certainly possible, and it's got a better shot than either AS or Strike Lex. People probably would be happy if the torps weren't quite so jacked. Same drop pattern as the Kaga? Same as the Saipan? Same as the IJN? Probably all ok. Yes, the normal USN torp pattern and size with 2 squads would be too much. But those torps are... I won't say useless, but extremely difficult to get much milage out of.

Agreed, my take on the AP bombs so far is something like... Much much better vs KM BBs. Better vs IJN BBs. Even or slightly worse vs USN. Newp vs DDs. Significantly worse vs CA. Obviously I haven't tried them yet, but it seems that's roughly where it falls. Which is fair, overall it's probably better going into a blind game. Nearly every game has 5-6 BB for you to pick on. The downside you can't get rid of is the terrible torpedos. I get that the fear was the old Midway crossdrops coming back, but I'd rather have seen either 4 plane normal USN drops, or one squad that's maybe oversized. Something like 8 aircraft with a row of 5 followed by a row of 3, or a 4x2 setup. Just anything but that worthless pattern Enterprise has now.

With a specialized strike package at least. Great vs KM BBs, below average vs other BBs/CAs useless vs DDs. Assuming the AP bombs. I can't see why you wouldn't use the AP bombs though, since without them the bombers are... not so great. You give up the torps either way, so you might as well get real bombs to be able to hit BBs.

Or keep it exactly as is, except the torp squads are 4 aircraft and launch the normal USN drop pattern. Mainly it's the terrible torp drop pattern that seems like an issue. It makes it rough to use torps vs things that your AP bombs just overpen.

Pretty sure you won't 1 for 1 though. Shokaku has T8 fighters, not T7. You'll need to get more/better strafes off to win that fight.

AS Lex is probably an ok matchup. Sure, you don't do much, but his 2 bombers aren't doing much either. Aside from pestering DDs. And yes, the USN/IJN CV balance isn't the fault of the Enterprise. However, look at the Saipan. Despite the traditional problems with making a USN CV that's any good the Saipan is a solid match for the Hiryu. It tends to slightly better for potato CVs (me) to about the same or slightly worse for very good CV players (not me).

Better than vs the USN then at least. 5-10k drops vs a BB that cost half your aircraft seem... how to put it. Unwise.

It's not a terrible idea. I suspect you lose that time again trying to make use of the wonky W torpedo shape. For most angles it boils down to scoring the same number of hits if they're afk/potatoing but leaving a huge gap to turn into and take 0-1 hits when a normal spread would hit 2-3.

Agreed, vs a strike Lex you should roll him. So will a Shokaku, and at least as handily as the Enterprise. It's more the Shokaku/Enterprise matchup that I don't think will work out. At all. You will have to outplay to win the air war, he can strike DDs and CAs far more effectively and in exchange if you load up the AP bombs you can LOLNOPE the KM BBs. The AP bombs don't seem all that special against USN BBs, no idea about how they will do vs IJN but I suspect it will be more like the USN than KM.

Yes, to a point. But that doesn't change the fact that in this game if you're in a USN CV you need to be much better than your opponent if you're up against an IJN CV. Straight up the fighters from Lex will win easily against the Enterprise, Shokaku will win in a click fight but it won't be a smash. So you're relying on strafe. Maybe the idea is manual drop bombs aren't required, so you spend more time with your fighters.