The big E - impression after 10 games

[iHaveNoIntelligence]

Icon	Name	Tier ▼	Type	Nation	Battles	WR	Dmg	XP	K/D	Sh☠	Pl☠	Srv	MBH	TH	WTR
	Enterprise	8	CV	USA	10	70.00%	128,460	2,412	8.0	1.6	32.0	80%	0%	0%	1,654

 

*stats so far

Yes, I'm one of those who spent 60 bucks.... :s

 

I think the best word that describes this ship is the word "unimpressive". She is not as powerful as Kaga or Saipan. She is somewhat situational and requires much patience to pull your potential fully.

She has tier 7 planes with access to tier 9 upgrades which helps your attackers. With that upgrades, survivability of your attackers should be on a par with your tier 8 counterparts. Fighters are uneffected by this but you can mount in the 2nd module slot the AGM 2 which boosts your fighters performance by a large margin. Thus if you set up your ship properly, quality-wise your planes shouldn't lack anything much except for the speed.

She has large hangar capacity of 96 but they are distributed asymmetrically. Most of them are distributed to Fighters and you will have 31/15/16 (FT-TB-DB with Air Superiority) in reserve to fill your damaged squadrons. This means unlike Kaga who can just spam and throw your planes away, you have to be careful with your attackers since e.g. you can't even completely fill your TBs twice but only one and half. On the other hand, your generous FT reserve is very forgiving if you loose air combat against your opponent.

Therefore main play style of this ship would be using your fighters actively with strafing and engagement denial to maximize fighter damage to your enemy and gain air superiority. Your attackers are slow and are easily caught by fighter's ambush or chase. Thus gaining air superiority is the alpha and omega of this ship. Don't haste yourself to damage your opponent be patient and wait for best chance. Your DBs AP bombs are powerful to compensate those lost times for waiting. Speaking about AP bombs, AP bombs are quite the oposite of HE bomb. HE Bomb's accuracy is highly dependant on RNG but once you hit, you have more or less consistent and reliable damage output. AP is the opposite. Hitting enemy is almost guaranteed due to tight aim but even if you hit it does not necessarily guarantee you certain damage. To get consistent results on AP bombs you want to select your targets carefully. KM BBs, USN BBs upto NC, IJN BBs upto Izumo eats large chunk of damage. Surprisingly RN CLs get less overpen but more normal pen. Torpedo Bombers aren't very bad as expected. Yes compared to those classic TBs ore Kaga's TBs it is not impressive but it is not trash. It is more forgiving if you make some drop mistake and less effected by DF(It really doesn't spread much more than unpaniked spread). Larger DDs are somewhat easier to hit but killing is hard. And finally blind drop into smoke is surprisingly good with this pattern due to large inter-torpedo distance. If you use them correctly, you can get somewhat similar efficiency as regular USN TB.

 

I have 3 (...well 2 really) complaints so far:

1) Please reduce fighters reserve by 1 squadron and put them on DBs please. It is really painful that you can't refill your 2 DB squadrons twice fully. I don't have complain against TB though.

2) Some more polishing to AP bomb mechanics so that it doesn't become DEATH_TO_KM_BBs weapon only but I want it to show consistent damage through out all BBs (not necessarily high damage but consistent damage). However I think WG would polish AP boms even further since E is the testbed for this.

3) CAN I HAVE CITADEL RIBBONS TOO??? :)

 

Summary:

Is it worth? Hm... maybe

Is it fun? Yes

Is it easy to play? Definitely No, very challenging ship

Is it powerful? Well it is competitive up to certain degree but I would say Shoukaku is more versatile and competitive.

[Spooooooooooooooooooooon]

Well written, thank you

[Tachnechdorus]

Not a CV player at the moment but I do have both US and Japanese CV's up to tier (7) fully upgraded, Including all the Premium CV's . Since it's difficult to play the ( Enterprise ) and requires a lot of patience maybe I'll just pass up on her until they repair the Carrier mess that war game promised to accomplish sometime this year ?  Thanks for your Opinion on the Enterprise sounds like a Bust ! ! !

[pyantoryng]

Welp...anything's gotta be better than being stuck with the Lex...

I'd say don't leave home with all upgrades that improve durability...the first Enterprise I fought against in my stock load Lex took his fighters slightly near my team's AA and at least 2 planes disappear in a very quick order, while I could keep my lone fighter squad (with fighter module but no dogfighting expert) on patrol for an extended time because downing full squads of those T7 planes took little ammo, especially when in tandem with friendly AA...didn't help with the opposition trying to snipe me with TBs skirting around map edge...

[HBZK100]

22 minutes ago, pyantoryng said:

Welp...anything's gotta be better than being stuck with the Lex...

I'd say don't leave home with all upgrades that improve durability...the first Enterprise I fought against in my stock load Lex took his fighters slightly near my team's AA and at least 2 planes disappear in a very quick order, while I could keep my lone fighter squad (with fighter module but no dogfighting expert) on patrol for an extended time because downing full squads of those T7 planes took little ammo, especially when in tandem with friendly AA...didn't help with the opposition trying to snipe me with TBs skirting around map edge...

Good thing CVs have defensive AA now. carrier sniping got so old back then.

[iHaveNoIntelligence]

2 hours ago, HBZK100 said:

Good thing CVs have defensive AA now. carrier sniping got so old back then.

 

I remember first thing that you do as a carrier when game starts, is to gather all you aircrafts and nuke the crap out of enemy CV

[WhatIsTheOdds]

I am maybe more scared of this ship than a Hakuryu. I've seen it auto drop, just click on a higher tier BB and the BB disappeared from full hp, and not just once. I guess for premium ships deleting a BB without any effort counts as "unimpressive" these days. I'm thinking of selling my Bismark now that this ship exists.

[HBZK100]

21 minutes ago, Treediagram said:

 

I remember first thing that you do as a carrier when game starts, is to gather all you aircrafts and nuke the crap out of enemy CV

Yeah that was a nightmare and a disaster.

[legoboy0401]

37 minutes ago, HBZK100 said:

Yeah that was a nightmare and a disaster.

Tier VII- CV gameplay is still like that.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

1 hour ago, Treediagram said:

 

I remember first thing that you do as a carrier when game starts, is to gather all you aircrafts and nuke the crap out of enemy CV

In those days without Strafing, the Strike CV easily did that.  0/3/3 Hiryu literally ran over 2/0/2 Ranger and there was nothing Ranger could do to stop it.  Only thing remotely close to that these days is Kaga sniping a Strike Ranger (*shudder*)

[iHaveNoIntelligence]

1 hour ago, legoboy0401 said:

Tier VII- CV gameplay is still like that.

 

You sure you are playing on NA? When I play tier 7 CV it barely happens

[Tzarevitch]

Remember, the AP bomb isn't unique to Enterprise.  She only has the smaller AP bomb. It isn't surprising that she doesn't do huge AP damage to the high tier IJN and USN BBs. She is T8 with T7 planes. They were talking about the 1600lb AP bomb going into testing for the higher tier American CVs. I suspect that one will be able to penetrate the decks of the higher tier IJN and USN BBs much better. 

[legoboy0401]

6 hours ago, Treediagram said:

 

You sure you are playing on NA? When I play tier 7 CV it barely happens

Tier VIIs don't do it often, but they'll still do it every now and then. But Tier IV, V, and VI CVs do it PRACTICALLY. EVERY. SINGLE. BATTLE!

[Eisennagel]

 

70% win rate sounds pretty impressive to me.

[iHaveNoIntelligence]

54 minutes ago, Eisennagel said:

 

70% win rate sounds pretty impressive to me.

 

welp I think it will soften out a bit down to 65+% in the end

[Eisennagel]

24 minutes ago, Treediagram said:

 

welp I think it will soften out a bit down to 65+% in the end

 

 

Could be the nasty egalitarian MM finally setting its sights on you.

[iHaveNoIntelligence]

14 minutes ago, Eisennagel said:

 

 

Could be the nasty egalitarian MM finally setting its sights on you.

 

Or I could division to counter that

[Camo68]

OP for someone who seems from the text pretty down on the ship, your results using it appear quite contradictory.  High WR/DMG/XP

 

I'd hate to see a ship you think is good!

[HBZK100]

18 hours ago, legoboy0401 said:

Tier VII- CV gameplay is still like that.

Huh still? I'm close to getting my Hiryu so I wonder if it's gona happen to me.

[WolfofWarship]

On 01/07/2017 at 5:05 PM, Treediagram said:

Icon	Name	Tier ▼	Type	Nation	Battles	WR	Dmg	XP	K/D	Sh☠	Pl☠	Srv	MBH	TH	WTR
	Enterprise	8	CV	USA	10	70.00%	128,460	2,412	8.0	1.6	32.0	80%	0%	0%	1,654

Summary:

Is it worth? Hm... maybe

Is it fun? Yes

Is it easy to play? Definitely No, very challenging ship

Is it powerful? Well it is competitive up to certain degree but I would say Shoukaku is more versatile and competitive.

A great write up, thanks for sharing your impressions of one of our great ships. We're always happy to hear about the things we do well and the things we need to work on for future play so reviews like this really help us! Thanks! :D