Huevos22's Advanced Tips and Tricks Guide

[huevos22]

 

Doing this mostly out of boredom. Plus I'm hoping it'll make people better.

Huevos22's advanced tips and tricks #1

"Broadside Baiting"

When Applicable-
Ship Class: Battleship or Cruiser
Scenario: 1v1 or small skirmish vs. another BB or CA/CL

This strategy requires very good knowledge of your opponent's autobounce angles, turret angles, and citadel hitboxes in order to use effectively. You also need to have good situational awareness. Improper execution of this technique will result in a quick demise.

Here's the Scenario. It's a tight game with just 3 ships remaining on each team. You're in your trusty Atago and just sailed around an island when suddenly you spot another ship - it's an Ibuki and he's on 3/4 health while you're down to half. You begin trading fire with your front turrets, neither of you wanting to show any bit of broadside. As the distance closes to 10 km it's clear that your initial hitpoint disadvantage will result in your destruction, so what do you do?

Keep trading until you are low enough for a few citadels to kill you. Wait for him to fire his two front guns. Now, you will have a ~15 second window of opportunity to pull off the maneuver. Pay attention to where Ibuki's REAR guns are pointing and begin to turn OPPOSITE to that direction. There's a specific reason for this, that we'll get to later. Start at full rudder shift, but gradually decrease until you are at about a 50 degree angle to the enemy Ibuki. At this point, the enemy Ibuki WILL GET GREEDY. He thinks your a broadsiding scrub that's panic-torping and he will turn to fire his rear guns to finish you off with a few easy citadels. As you see his guns line up on you, push your throttle to full reverse and turn hard in. Chances are you'll be at a good angle (~35 deg ) by the time his shells actually get to you and eat at most a few normal pens.

Wait a few moments for your opponent's over-turn to take effect, and since he is reloading, turn to expose you your rear guns and shoot him with your full broadside. He'll eat citadels while you go on to carry the rest of your scrub team to victory.

Explanation: Players nowadays are so eager to punish what they think are easy citadels that I often see them "over turning" to get their rear guns on target and not accounting for their own ship's rudder shift times. Basically what this means is that even after they fire their rear guns, the ship will keep turning in the direction it had already been turning, exposing the their citadel. Average players don't even think about this. Even good to great players will still do this because they think you'll be dead by the time the over-turn has caused them to expose their citadel. This baiting strategy takes full advantage of that.

This scenario is just one of many that this maneuver can be used for. The exact details and correct execution heavily depend on the situation, but mostly what ship you and your opponent are in.

Note 1:
USN and RN cruisers get an autobounce of 67.5 degrees. This trick is much less effective on them. Against USN and RN cruisers I advise staying at range (if in a cruiser of another nationality). This is more of a situational awareness thing.

Note 2: This method will not work if your opponent is either REALLY GOOD or REALLY BAD.

Terrible players, upon encountering this technique, will most often not even switch to AP despite you baiting your citadel. In this case, complete your turn (since he won't be citadelling you with HE) and kite away from him. Drop a few torps while you're at it, and watch him straight-line into them.

A unicum player will simply avoid over turning. They will tap the turn key so that their turn just barely allows them to fire over the shoulder. There's not much you can do here, but at least you didn't really lose anything by trying this method.

I know this technique is HIGHLY SITUATIONAL, but its potential to allow a player to completely turn around a 1v1 or small skirmish cannot be understated.

 

[Ghost_Raven75]

Great info, thanks for posting!!

[the_majestic_eagle]

Totally lit dude, I've got to try this out

[Aduial]

I could be wrong, but i don't think the USN CAs have the improved normalization now. It was changed a few patches ago.

[huevos22]

I could be wrong, but i don't think the USN CAs have the improved normalization now. It was changed a few patches ago.

 

The normalization may be gone, but they still get better auto-bounce angles, which isn't quite the same as normalization. Well at least the 203s do.

[Aduial]

 

The normalization may be gone, but they still get better auto-bounce angles, which isn't quite the same as normalization. Well at least the 203s do.

 

Oh, i thought normalization was what improved the auto-bounce angles. My bad.