Tzarevitch

I generally agree. It is a better way to split the premiums, but Saipan was a post-war carrier. She never operated the low tier planes on T6. I would bet that Saipan on T8 is flying the same planes as Midway, but has much smaller attack waves and with a smaller overall squadron to counterbalance. Midway currently seems to use 12 plan squadrons of BTD Destroyer torpedo planes and 3 attack in each wave (each with 2 torpedoes). Saipan may for example only have six plane squadrons total and attack with 2 planes per (each with 2 torpedoes). It may also have a limitation like it does now where it can only use TBs or DBs that you select before the match or something like that. That isn't a big issue for T8 opposition although it may be for T6. The big concern for me with Saipan on T8 is it is a truly tiny carrier for T8. She would be quite vulnerable to sniping. I suspect sooner or later USS Wasp will show up as a premium T6. She is similar in size to Ranger and operated similar-era planes. The bigger issue for me is how are they going to differentiate Enterprise from Lexington since they both used mostly the same planes and were from the same era. Lexington actually sank early in the war and never got late war planes (although Lexington in the game is really her sister USS Saratoga, which did). It wouldn't surprise me if Enterprise's DBs are still using AP bombs or something like that to make her more obviously different from Lexington. They might also do something crazy like have Enterprise run bigger waves of lower-tier planes although to me that runs the risk of giving it too big of an alpha strike capability when they intentionally were trying to move away from that. Good AA ships would have nothing to fear, but low AA ships would get devastated. They could do the same for Kaga (much as she is now) but I would prefer they not for the reasons I stated.

I agree. I think it would help the game a lot. They could also just reduce the number of brackets or just use a basic winrate by tier calculator (stats they absolutely have). It doesn't need to be precise. It just needs to do better than now. I think doing that would alleviate a lot of the game balance issues and help mitigate the uptiering issue. Blizzard also does this with World of Warcraft matchmaking for instances. It puts some better players in with the poorer ones to try to even out the experience for everyone. The only issue I think it that it would cost them time and resources at this point and I don't think they have much incentive to do it unless the playerbase complains harder.

You are correct. I'll summarize for people who haven't seen it. I don't like arms race but the video was interesting. What he said was that arms race tends to get ruled by the ships with low detection, particularly the DDs. He said that what happens is people pick up the detection reducing buffs a lot to improve their stealth and control the engagement range and that tends to matter above everything else. With a couple of stealth reduction buffs, the stealthier DDs are nearly undetectable without radar and the radar ship needs to be able to avoid getting spotted itself to do its work. BBs, outside of Missouri, simply can't detect the DDs and they get spotted first and focused down. Most are also too slow to get to buffs so this exacerbates their problems and they fall behind the buff curve. He only recommended Missouri because it has low detection, radar and above-average speed to close into position. He said if you pick up a couple of stealth-increasing buffs you can reduce her detection to the point where she can nearly stealth radar and then she becomes nasty. She can basically pop up and surprise people like an enormous Baltimore and that makes her a threat even to DDs. His recommendation, as I recall if you don't have Missouri and want something bigger than a DD is Alaska (if it is out ) followed by Buffalo. This is because they also have low detections and can stealth radar with a buff or two and can then do the same thing as Missouri, but in miniature. He did not highly recommend any BB other than Missouri and in fact largely recommended against BBs for this mode for the reasons I stated earlier. He did recommend some of the other cruisers but I don't remember which off the top of my head.

T10 is very much an issue for her. She doesn't uptier well at all. She is one of the worst BBs at it. The 15" guns have great pen, when they actually pen. But they overpen soft areas on BBs constantly (let alone cruisers and DDs), and angled BBs and USN and KM CAs at T8-T10 can just bow tank her and bounce her shells. She can't really even switch to HE because those are pretty abysmal. The lower velocity 15" guns the UK BBs use are actually much better in most realistic situations. (The 15" guns on the KM BBs aren't that great either but they don't overpen like Roma's do. To the OP: Roma is probably the first ship where I believe she has too much pen for her shell size. She can't win overmatch races but her shells aren't good at getting full pens on soft targets like say the UK 15" guns do either. They just go clean through... a lot. I've had overpens BB upper belt hits on flat broadsides. And this isn't even factoring in her bad, bad dispersion and bad HE. I love the ship's look, and her speed, low detection and agility, but … those guns. They look great on paper, but in actual play …. T8 spends too much time being uptiered and Roma is not good at handling that at all. Alabama is the best all-arounder of the specified group … by far. It uptiers best of the group. Like people have said, it is basically a premium NC. It is a different class, but the differences in game play are far less than you will ever notice. As I recall she is a bit smaller, her AA is a bit worse, and her sigma is slightly worse, but in return the has a massive torpedo reduction, is a bit more agile and the smaller profile makes her a smaller target. The only issue I have with her (and it's a tiny one) is because she is so similar to NC she doesn't really have her own niche like say Mass does. I don't own Vanguard but I don't really see the benefit of her. From @LittleWhiteMouse's review and all the CC videos I saw her firing angles are absolutely horrid. Also she has both being a 15" gun BB on T8, and having a A(x2)B(x2)-X(x2)(Yx2) configuration makes it worse because you have to risk exposing your side to try to equalize the firepower and the T10 BBs (which you will see a lot) start salivating when they see you. At least her good AA will fare her well after the CV rework but I don't see the value in her. Also I own Hood and to me this is basically the same ship, one tier higher, and far less famous. I'm not a fan of 15" gun BBs being uptiered. I think they were already marginal but workable at T8, but by T10 they fall apart unless they have a gimmick like great HE, or the reload booster, massive numbers of guns, or all-forward batteries like the French do. I'm not sure why the OP left out Tirp, Gascogne and Mass. If those are included I would still take Alabama for better all-around utility followed by Mass, followed by Tirp, then Vanguard, Roma and Gacogne last. (I left out Hood b/c it's T7 and I assume the op made an error including her. If not, I'd put her just in front of Vanguard). None of the ships are terrible choices (although I am no fan of Gascogne as you can guess). You can win with all of them but there is a definite hierarchy of how much work you need to put in and how much luck you need for each.

Flamu just did one with a full AA-specced Gearing shredding Midway planes. He got 30-something. I think the bigger issue is that they may need to increase the penalty for CVs losing the entire squadron of a particular type.

I would wait. It's a personal thing, but I don't think there is a reason to rush into it with the rework due to go live relatively soon. I would guess you would still have the xp you spent, but I don't see the point in unlocking a ship that is going to disappear for a while fairly soon. You'll barely get to play it. You'll unlock it, play a few, and be right back to Shokaku in a completely new system.

I mostly agree with Notser and I follow him on Youtube, but this is the issue that I had with the video he put up. I have no doubt that some rebalancing will be needed even after the video goes live and it may turn out that he is correct ad good CV players have too easy a time dodging the flak but there is no way he can draw those conclusions right now. Those ships in the video he is using as an example are all bots and running with the worst possible AA setup and no modules. I've been trying the PTS myself quite a bit since friday but there simply aren't enough human players with AA specs running to draw meaningful conclusions. Some of the captain skills and modules do impact the placement and density of the flak clouds and these bots don't use them and they don't seem to adjust AA sectors either. I fully agree that AA ships with full AA specs should be very tough targets for even the best CV player (I mainly play US cruisers and I always run AA specs even now) but I don't think there is enough data to be drawing conclusions how easy or hard it is for good CV players to avoid flak in the new system right now. I have no idea how many games Notser has played on the PTS against human opponents since Friday but I can barely find any humans in AA ships to test against. The part I think the Notser is absolutely correct on is that DFAA needs a bit … more. I'm not sure that it necessarily needs more damage, but I think a good idea would be to have it increase the AA range while it is active so that it better provides coverage for the team and there is more strategic reason for using it on the part of the defending player. Right now AA is rather short ranged and as a result AA cruisers have lost some of the team benefit they had. They can protect themselves, but can't really protect allies. I also think it should impair aircraft targeting more. I honestly can't tell if DFAA does anything to impair aircraft targeting in the new system like it does currently. I've seen some crazy torpedo drops where the torps scattered while DFAA was running and I've seen some where the drops ran straight and true as if there was no DFAA. I have no idea what causes it. What I can say is that I've never seen DFAA affect my drops (other than through flak) while actually piloting planes.

^This. Standards are manageable but you really must never slow down or several scenarios will have you falling too far behind. Arizona with its higher number of guns is the better choice IMHO for exactly the reason you stated.

There's a new build up on the test server. AA is much stronger now. I haven't seen anyone test a Gearing on it yet, but Worcester seemed to be doing fine. I hadn't seen if the torpedo arming bug was fixed but then again I never encountered the bug in the first place. lol

Same as it was before. If the ship is light on AA hug something with better AA. Only difference is you can't get instagibbed now. They have to do repeated runs on you. *oops - responded to a very old post. Please disregard. :) *

I must admit I also really like the rework. This go-around made the T4s more interesting and they beefed up the AA significantly. The one remaining thing I would like is for them to make the Defensive Fire AA module more useful and interesting. Either let it buff the AA range when it is active or have it do something to disrupt targeting like it used to. I agree with your feeling that the return of the CVs will reduce bow camping. Also I suspect that "reducing multitasking" is just a line they are feeding us. That never made any sense. I think they don't want CV players to be able to control the ship and the plane at the same time because it adds a vulnerability to the CVs. As for the removed carriers, the issue isn't balancing them at every tier. Rather it's that they can't really differentiate CVs on adjacent tiers under the new CV system. For example, they can't make Langley different enough from Bogue one tier higher to warrant keeping her. The removed carriers will reappear as parallel lines on the same tiers as the remaining ones but with different capabilities sometime in the future. Wargaming likely won't throw away the assets.

^This. They are likely going to have to toggle it up and down a bit to find the happy medium.

lol. I DO mind giving up radar and that's why I personally am not a huge fan of Hindy. It was one of the chubbiest of the cruisers before the supercruisers arrived and it is still on the chubbier side. I like most of Hindy's traits, but It can't come close to detecting things before they detect it and that is a deal-breaker for me at T10. It is simply too easy for players to spot Hindy, especially in randoms, and at T10 that gets you focused by BBs. Hindy is tough as hell … for a CA. It can take incredible damage at close ranges where the turtleback saves it, but at mid and long ranges 16"+ BB shells take it apart like any other cruiser and they go right over the turtleback. The fact that Hindy's detection is so poor plays right into that (and it isn't especially agile or fast). Those are really Hindy's only flaws, but those flaws are why I don't care for it much. The "average" player, however, doesn't really manage speed or detection well anyway, but the durability and easy gunnery helps them a lot. That is why I suggest Hindy.

The AA is solid. It can defend itself decently and that is all you really need. Honestly everything about it except its detection and speed is solid. It isn't my favorite T10 to play by a longshot but for the average player it is the best choice. The things it doesn't do well are the same things that the average player won't use well anyway.

There are two important factors in your question - 1. AA after the rework, and 2.) for the average player. Unfortunately we don't know how the rework will shake out right now because they are due to buff AA and it isn't clear how captain skills and modules will alter AA performance in the live game. Given what we know about the old AA setup, I would recommend Hindy simply because she is probably the easiest T10 cruiser to manage for the average player an it has competent AA. It is good all-around and one of the most straightforward to play. We don't know how the rework will impact Hindy's AA, but I doubt it will change much relative to where it is now because her AA is fairly balanced through the three zones (short, medium, long). It is above average-to-good now and I suspect it will remain so afterwards. I have all the T10 tech-tree cruisers save Moskva. Hindy isn't my personal favorite cruiser because I don't like cruisers with bad detection, but I recommend it to friends as the most manageable T10 cruiser and its solid AA is a bonus. I always run DM with an AA spec and I will continue to do so after the rework. It renders me largely immune to CVs. They rarely will even come near me and I like that peace of mind, but I fully recognize that DM is a difficult ship for the average player. The same is true with Mino and Worcester. Zao is a comfortable T10 cruiser for the average player, but its AA scares no one and I doubt it will get much better after the rework. I'm not sure about Henri after the rework. Its AA very focused in the heavier guns (long and medium) and under the rework those guns don't do auto damage. Under the old AA model modules and skills directly and significantly boosted her AA damage across the board. The new versions don't do that. Until the final version is out and testing is done we won't know how easily it can be done, but damage from medium and long-ranged AA is mitigateable to a degree by good piloting. This means that the effective damage from the heavier AA guns is dependent on player skills to some degree so live-game mileage out of them will vary a lot. Some of the old AA skills and modules that improved heavy and medium AA damage now make more flak puffs now and we don't know what effect that really has. Also, planes now have damage tracks so taking them out depends on racking up damage which does not appear to happen in the long and medium auras if the planes avoid the flak clouds. Henri isn't the easiest cruiser for the average player to start with and I suspect that the rework will have unexpected effects on her AA, moreso than most other cruisers. I would avoid her at least in the beginning. I can't speak on Moskva at all. I'm still climbing the Soviet tree.