AbyssAngkor

The fuel meter idea does not work. Good CVs already know how to position correctly to minimize flight time. The only thing it punishes are potatoes that hit S at the start of the match and camp on the map border while his team is 20km ahead of him. All you are doing is adding a wider skill gap between CV unicums and potatoes, leading to more lopsided matches. If your goal was to nerf CVs, there's a better method... The core issues surrounding CVs and their counterplay lies in: CVs can create crossfire anywhere on the map. CVs can spot ships with very little effort and upset the game balance of ships that rely on stealth (DDs and cruisers) CVs squadrons take off with full power. Planes will always arrive at full strength over the target. Any planes that return are healed to full health instantly (imagine if a BB is healed every time it does damage). There is no essentially no risk to CV game play if the player can manage plane losses. To fix them, we need: AAA that is instantly effective when a surface ship switches priority AAA sector. No more of this "ramp up" mechanic that is just a poor excuse for CVs to have a free first strike. Defensive AA Fire should do what it says: defensive fire. Make it so DFAA breaks up incoming squadrons and increase the time it takes to narrow the aiming reticle. CV can have shared vision with the team, but aircraft should not. WG is currently looking into this issue and is going to limit aerial spotting. (Yay!) Strike squadrons that require time to "form up." For example, planes launch 1 at a time from a CV every 3 seconds until the squadron reaches maximum size. Large squadrons like Kaga's torpedo bombers or FDR's bombers can take 36-42s to reach maximum size. The CV is forced to choose between attacking quickly with smaller squadrons and risk failing a strike, or waiting for a large squadron to guarantee damage. (Soviet CVs can have their squadron size reduced and damage buffed to compensate for a slower take-off.) Instead of a set number of plane reserves, replace it with a "gauge" (like an HP bar). The gauge can continuously regenerate at a fixed rate but planes can only take off when the gauge has reached a certain threshold. Any returning planes will add their remaining HP to the gauge and shorten the time to reach the take-off threshold. This means that damaged planes are meaningful and reduce the CV's capacity to launch following strikes, while rewarding the CV for not just yolo-ing planes at a target until it dies.

Zao doesn't need more HP. It's a stealth cruiser that's good at taking ambush shots then quickly retreating back into concealment. I'm more in favor of buffing the torpedo arcs and turning circle. For some reason she gets worse torpedo launch angles than all of the previous cruisers of the IJN line, effectively making them unusable. All this torpedo power just sitting there, being deadweight... As a side note, both Ibuki and Zao have the worst main deck armor of the line. Why is the T5 Furutaka covered in 40mm armor but the T9 Ibuki only got 27mm? I understand it's a leftover feature from OWSF but come on, that's been removed for years. It's well past time to buff them.

So that's why we want to see her buffed, so that she CAN have her own identity and be a viable pick. Right now Zao isn't even worth picking up since we have ships that does the same thing, but better. (Yoshino and Venezia) You can argue that for any ship in the game. Player skill trumps ship specs. Zao contributes nothing to the team other than HE spam from behind allies. If the BB holding the flank dies, or the spotting DD dies, the Zao becomes useless. Pray you don't get a cyclone match because your one advantage goes out the window. Subs and CVs exist. They're talking about the gun angles on the rear turrets that forces Zao to turn broadside to a full salvo, which is compounded by the fact that she gets OM by 431+mm shells, straight into that exposed citadel. Which is the buff that most unicum players ask for.

Harekaze yields more consistent results if you spec into her guns and concealment. Harekaze is not a torp boat in the purest sense and should be played aggressively as the vanguard of your fleet. She can comfortably outspot most T8 DDs and outgun things she can't outspot. Her basic tactic is forcing favorable engagements with enemy DDs and securing map control, then locking down a flank with HE spam and torpedos. Her B-hull with 3x2 100mm guns has the best DPM and should be used in 99% of builds. Smoke offers greater versatility as it is your primary method for disengaging fights and sheltering against aircraft. Be extra careful not to sit too long in smoke as they are torpedo magnets.

The GK's superstructure is the only place you can effectively deal damage with 152mm guns. Once that part becomes damage saturated, it will no longer take damage and your shell damage is calculated to half its value. Hitting AA modules and secondaries also absorbs a part of the shell damage. That damage will not appear in your final damage score.

Zao player here, 272 games, 63.6% wr, over 2000 pr in the Zao. I can live with the Zao having lower health. I can live with the Zao being overmatched by 457s. I can even live with the "bad" firing angles. But these are not the things that make Zao a bad ship. What the Zao really needs is a team role, something to bring to the table that gives it utility and uniqueness. Zao falls behind all other heavy cruisers in terms of every parameter except concealment. Being able to hide and run away shifts unwanted attention to your already overtaxed teammates, and certainly doesn't make interesting gameplay. You can have 1 HP and still be combat effective, as long as you stay unspotted. Adding HP to Zao's health pool certainly makes it stay alive longer but doesn't fix the issue of its lack of utility. DM can bring radar and high rate of fire, Hindenburg has range and firepower, Goliath is a zombie ship with stupidly powerful HE, Petro is essentially a battleship disguised as a cruiser (with radar). What does the Zao do? If Zao is ever going to be a competitive ship, it needs a special role not taken by other cruisers. For example, Zao's torpedo angles are too prohibitive to use. If the launch angles could be improved, Zao would be a terrifying ship to face as it sets a couple of fires from long range, go dark, and close in for a torpedo strike before the enemy can react. To accomplish this, Zao's turning radius and turn rate would also need to be buffed. It would not change Zao's effectiveness as a fire spammer, but it would definitely give Zao a more defined unique style of gameplay as a zoning/crowd control ship.

Given how vulnerable the Yammy citadel is, it's not surprising she has trouble pushing. You can tank some hits sitting bow in against 1 or 2 ships. If you see any more than 2 then it's wise to hightail it out early. Stay at range and take shots at every opportunity. Yammy contributes to the team not as a tank or a pusher, but as artillery support. Yammy wins games by taking big chunks of HP off enemy radars and BBs to give your team a window to push an objective. Remember that you are not the vanguard and should keep to the rear. The big guns will do the rest. Always have an ally in front or next to you to drive off HE spammers and spot torps for you. The longer Yammy stays alive, the more damage she can do.

The reason Thunderer is OP isn't because of setting fires or the raw range, but the accuracy the shells maintain over long range. It still has the 2.0 sigma and tight UK dispersion curve. Conqueror only has 1.8 sigma, resulting in poor hit rate compared to Thunderer. The 457mm AP overmatches most cruiser armor and can easily dev strike non-supercruisers at any angle.

I think Thunderer does the exact things that make CVs so toxic to play against, minus the spotting. Strikes from long range, deals damage regardless of angle, hides behind teammates in relative safety, just to name a few. CVs are, in general, broken against surface ships. You need multiple AA ships to really stop a strike and the CV will still get a guaranteed hit regardless of losses. Skip bombers are especially bad since they partially ignore AA zones. So yes, if OP wasn't in a Thunderer, I would cut him some slack.

The pot calling the kettle black. What about the BBs you set ablaze from 20km regardless of angle? What about the cruisers you overmatched into oblivion with your 457mm AP? Do they have any counterplay against you? I'm no CV supporter but I also don't think Thunderer players deserve any sympathy.

A good DD is one that can carry well into the late game. Druid fits that bill very much with her massive 28.8k health and 3 heals. The AP dpm is downright scary with very flat ballistics (similar to Kleber). Downside is that she is very slow for a DD (no speed boost) and can't reposition quickly when caught out of position. Novice players will struggle to put up huge numbers with Druid without any HE or fires to deal guaranteed damage. Vampire 2 is very good in the early game at contesting caps. But she depends too much on her consumables to deal damage. Open water gunboating is out of the question and she doesn't handle well against radar or aircraft. She can't recover lost health either so her effectiveness dwindles with time. Paolo is a 1 trick pony. Hilarious when it works, but cannot really deal damage outside of those yolo torp runs.

Captain rework was a way to add microtransactions by increasing the level cap and removing the accumulated elite captain xp, forcing players to use more gold to retrain captains and make premium ships more appealing. Removing flags for ingame achievements was just a cog in WG's aggressive monetization of ingame mechanics, making it even harder to grind exp. At this rate, i expect gold ammo to appear in the game within 3 patches.

The implication was that CV requires less understanding of game mechanics to perform well, as many, many people have pointed out. OP is clearly a newbie at the game so a CV would be the easiest way to approach the problem. You people are so sensitive to any criticism on CVs that the instant one is mentioned, you jump to conclusions.

845 battles played. You barely understand the fundamentals of this game and you want to rank out like veterans with 10k+ games of experience? Better grab a CV then.

If you're expecting an Atago with planes, you'll be disappointed. Tone has less health, firepower (1 less turret, 2 less torps per side), and vastly worse armor protection than Atago, while sharing the same terrible AAA and slow reload. Tone is covered in 27mm platings that get overmatched by 406mm guns you commonly face at T8, but gets up to 5 heal charges (with SI) to compensate for its fragility. So while Tone can't angle against a BB like Atago can, it can handle chip damage over a drawn out match. The planes are a gimmick tool that gives Tone some utility to spot or deal damage from afar. They're faster than Ise's planes with a longer boost time (w key). The trade-off is Tone's bombers take 3 minutes to recharge instead of 2 minutes. Tone uses the same 4x2 drop pattern as the Ise, with a massive fan shaped spread. Best to use these planes on broadside, slow moving targets. The cruiser captain skill enhanced torpedo explosives works for both the ship launched torps AND the air dropped torps. Tone is the only ship in the game currently that benefits from both aspects. Tone looks like a good cruiser on paper but its fundamental problem is that it needs long, drawn out matches to really shine. Given the average 10-13 minute match lengths it isn't possible for Tone to really bring in big numbers. She can't trade shots with enemy cruisers (even things like Nurnberg will out dpm Tone) and especially can't tank BB shells greater than 381mm. This means that most of the time she'll be retreating from engagements and giving up map control while slowly whittling down her enemies. She can't dictate fights and does poorly against fast moving surface ships. Carriers also love harassing Tone because she can't even launch fighters to defend herself. The TLDR is that Tone plays like a 203mm Mogami with torpedo bombers. Poor dpm, low health, and paper armor in exchange for great concealment and the ability to launch limited airstrikes. Her biggest strength is the ability to spot targets in a no-CV game.