Remove AS Bouge.

[HereCreeepers]

Remove the damn thing already. It is near impossible to fight as anything other than an AS Bouge. The impact that the Bouge can have on a match is incredibly small other than deplaning the other CV and occasionally farming some fire damage (which is 100% repairable on battleships) with its horribly inaccurate bombers. And while getting clear sky extremely often and being near unstoppable might sound fun, it really gets boring after the first few games, and it also is not rewarding in terms of XP. Sadly this seems to be the only viable way to play the Bouge in its current state, with the strike loadout being almost completely useless (Not saying that USN strike loadouts are bad) due to it not having the option to use manual drop on the dive bombers enough plane reserves and the stock loadout only having a measly two squadrons, which leaves it in a very bad situation when fighting other AS Bouges. I do not really know what a solid solution to this problem is given the current state of the CV meta, although I do have some potential ideas.

1. This option would be to simply outright remove the AS loadout from the entire ship. This would solve the problem, but it also would make the Bouge a rather underpowered CV compared to its counterparts, especially matches where it ends up against tier 6 carriers (which are unfair as a whole and should not be a thing, neither should tier 4 carriers vs tier 5 carriers).

2. The second option would be to remove the AS loadout while buffing the stock loadout at the same time. This in my opinion would be the better of the two options, as it is not a complete nerf to an already hard to balance ship, and ship class as a whole. With this change, the stock loadout would receive a dive bomber squadron, following the tradition of US stock loadouts (1/1/1) which is standard until tier 9. One problem with this is that it would still beat the Zuiho in terms of fighters most of the time if neither player has the Air Supremacy captain skill (The advantage still belongs to the Bouge if Air Supremacy is added). This however may not be as much of a problem because the Zuiho would still be able to use the classic IJN stratagy of locking up the US carriers fighters in order to buy enough time for the torpedo bombers to complete a successful strike.

 

I hope that these solutions are somewhat solid and not completely stupid.If you have any other possible solutions to the problem or opinions about it, do share them. Also please don't think I am trying to say that all USN CVs are overpowered, because I know very well they are not. I am just pointing out a rather obvious imbalance at 1 tier that ruins the game for everyone that is trying to get into playing CVs. Also I am not just an angry IJN CV player who is mad at not being able to seal club every USN CV in the game (which they kind of do apart from the Bouge and Langley), as I have hardly played the Zuiho. My arguments about the performance of the Bouge itself come from personal experience with the ship.

[smf117]

No.

[Umikami]

42 minutes ago, HereCreeepers said:

Remove the damn thing already.

Disagree; the issue is not that the Air Superiority build is OP or anything, it is that the Strike option on Bogue is utter garbage. Rather than remove one feature, why not just make the Strike option worth taking with regards to both credits and XP rewards?

[Doomlock]

This thread sounds awfully familiar....

[Ace_04]

So the Americans finally get a competent/competitive CV loadout at a tier, and someone wants it removed.  Go figure.

[TornadoADV]

Make it so strike flight groups of USN carriers isn't utter trash first.

[Czevak]

AS_BOGUE_IS_ASSCANCER

[WanderingGhost]

You underestimate the power of "Deplaning" an enemy CV. USN fighters are so obscenely OP that Bogue's counterpart, unless it's a tier 6 match or better yet 7 if it still sees those doesn't get AA help from a cruiser or BB with decent AA, that IJN CV gets 1 strike in maybe before the Bogue just camps it the rest of the match. Where as Bogue is really just free to unleash it's DB group against everything.

 

While 2,0,1 still likely needs to go, the real solution is still in Wargaming fixing CV's. USN DB's need to be made more accurate, similar to Saipan and Kaga's auto drops, gearing them as DD hunters and relying on fires to wear down BB's. Strafing needs a rework to a debuff, not an auto delete, manual drop flat out needs to go and the auto attacks properly reworked where needed, albeit that may be limited to low tiers and USN TB's in rework because high tier IJN definitely has no issues. AA needs to be fixed so that we don't have out tiered CV's basically unable to approach a higher tier ship, and worked that tier 4 and 5 are not just food for the CV's. IJN and USN fighters need to be made equal by giving IJN more DPS and less ammo, and USN more ammo and less DPS (when I say "more" I mean more than, they may need their overall ammo as it is lessened because how long they can stay in the fight is absurd) so that IJN has a higher chance per second to down the USN planes, but the USN planes have more planes, which means less drop off in chance/second to lose a plane as opposed to when IJN loses planes, and has the ammo to just wear them down. Or more likely, disengage after they run out to go catch up with the bombers. And general loadout changes due to these changes made in both trees that both nations AS loadout has say, 2 fighters, while mix/strike has 1.

[Reyteitoku]

5 hours ago, HereCreeepers said:

Remove the damn thing already. It is near impossible to fight as anything other than an AS Bouge. The impact that the Bouge can have on a match is incredibly small other than deplaning the other CV and occasionally farming some fire damage (which is 100% repairable on battleships) with its horribly inaccurate bombers. And while getting clear sky extremely often and being near unstoppable might sound fun, it really gets boring after the first few games, and it also is not rewarding in terms of XP. Sadly this seems to be the only viable way to play the Bouge in its current state, with the strike loadout being almost completely useless (Not saying that USN strike loadouts are bad) due to it not having the option to use manual drop on the dive bombers enough plane reserves and the stock loadout only having a measly two squadrons, which leaves it in a very bad situation when fighting other AS Bouges. I do not really know what a solid solution to this problem is given the current state of the CV meta, although I do have some potential ideas.

1. This option would be to simply outright remove the AS loadout from the entire ship. This would solve the problem, but it also would make the Bouge a rather underpowered CV compared to its counterparts, especially matches where it ends up against tier 6 carriers (which are unfair as a whole and should not be a thing, neither should tier 4 carriers vs tier 5 carriers).

2. The second option would be to remove the AS loadout while buffing the stock loadout at the same time. This in my opinion would be the better of the two options, as it is not a complete nerf to an already hard to balance ship, and ship class as a whole. With this change, the stock loadout would receive a dive bomber squadron, following the tradition of US stock loadouts (1/1/1) which is standard until tier 9. One problem with this is that it would still beat the Zuiho in terms of fighters most of the time if neither player has the Air Supremacy captain skill (The advantage still belongs to the Bouge if Air Supremacy is added). This however may not be as much of a problem because the Zuiho would still be able to use the classic IJN stratagy of locking up the US carriers fighters in order to buy enough time for the torpedo bombers to complete a successful strike.

 

I hope that these solutions are somewhat solid and not completely stupid.If you have any other possible solutions to the problem or opinions about it, do share them. Also please don't think I am trying to say that all USN CVs are overpowered, because I know very well they are not. I am just pointing out a rather obvious imbalance at 1 tier that ruins the game for everyone that is trying to get into playing CVs. Also I am not just an angry IJN CV player who is mad at not being able to seal club every USN CV in the game (which they kind of do apart from the Bouge and Langley), as I have hardly played the Zuiho. My arguments about the performance of the Bouge itself come from personal experience with the ship.

How to outplay as bogue: free exp to ryujo... 

 

Srsly as bogue is garbage and makes the gameplay less enjoyable for everyone

[bassmasta76]

I am nowhere close to being a good CV player, but AS Bogue is pretty easy to play.  Sure, you likely wont do much damage to surface ships, but owning the skies for my team is satisfying...  that and accumulating Clear Sky achievements.

 

Not just with Bogue, but in general, I wish they would count damage done to planes in the damage total.  Sure, its not much, but it would be nice.

 

B

[ArcFlash81]

Worst thing about this loadout is always being mid to bottom of the team XP.  Occasionally I'll get top XP if it was a really good game and my team kind of sucked, but not often.  Those dive bombers just can't do enough.  If I hit a bb and start 2 fires, he insta repairs it because he knows I can't bring anything to bear on him for quite awhile to hurt him more.  I've had games with 5 or 6 fires and gotten less then 1k damage for it.  I had a game with 3 bomb hits and got  a total of 1300 damage for some wacky reason.  If you are missing a plane or two out of that DB squad, they become almost impossible to hit anything with.  Have flown bow on or stern on over t5 bbs and not been able to hit them.  It's frustrating.  Was the last ship on our team against a destroyer, he had no idea where I was, so I got 3 strikes in and missed with everything with all 3 strikes.  Couldn't stop him from capping, couldn't reset him, nothing, and we lost.

 

The other bad thing is people get pissed off that either you are not doing anything, they don't understand you're out cleaning up the enemy planes and can't really cause damage.  Or the enemy CV just gets pissed off and calls you sky cancer, which has happened with both Zuiho and Bogues with 1/1/0 and 0/1/2 loadouts.  Hell, I think I've been reported before for basically doing my job.  Had killed all his fighters and just basically stayed in range of his carrier and lopped his strikes off as he sent them out.  What the hell else would I be doing, my db squadron doesn't take much effort to manage, especially when I owned the sky already.

 

Another issue lately is I will lose a ton of fighters locking up stock bogues or Zuiho fighters, 1 on 1, 2 on 1, or 2 on 2.  I went into detail on this in the "fighters" thread though and won't here.

 

Not sure removing it is the right answer, but I'd love to be able to have a 1/1/1 loadout and actually help the team out and be able to defend.

[pyantoryng]

Would Zuiho rather have the 37-plane Independence tiered at 5 as its contemporary?

...wait, wasn't Zuiho (and IJN carrier tree) the very reason that Bogue came to exist in the first place?

[crzyhawk]

I love AS Bogues on my team.

[HereCreeepers]

18 hours ago, Umikami said:

Disagree; the issue is not that the Air Superiority build is OP or anything, it is that the Strike option on Bogue is utter garbage. Rather than remove one feature, why not just make the Strike option worth taking with regards to both credits and XP rewards?

I would agree with buffing the strike loadout, but I don't really know how you can do that without removing the AS loadout. The thing wrong with the strike loadout is that the Bouge just doesnt have enough reserves to effectively be used. Unlike other US carriers where strike is viable (Lexington especially), it just doesn't have the massive amount of reserve planes, being able to only replace its air group once. One way to make it a little bit better would be to add manual drop back but I highly doubt that will happen.

[HereCreeepers]

16 hours ago, Ace_04 said:

So the Americans finally get a competent/competitive CV loadout at a tier, and someone wants it removed.  Go figure.

As someone who enjoys USN CVs and is much more interested in playing them than IJN CVs at the moment, I don't really know where this argument is coming from.

[pyantoryng]

7 hours ago, HereCreeepers said:

As someone who enjoys USN CVs and is much more interested in playing them than IJN CVs at the moment, I don't really know where this argument is coming from.

Reach the fleet carrier tier (hell, just the Independence will do) and you'll know where the argument comes from...it doesn't exist at tier 4 and 5.

[crzyhawk]

12 minutes ago, pyantoryng said:

Reach the fleet carrier tier (hell, just the Independence will do) and you'll know where the argument comes from...it doesn't exist at tier 4 and 5.

This.  I hate seeing Rangers or Lossingtons on my team.

[DMFDMinister]

The reason why the Bogue and Langley are so infuriating to play against is that strafing is disabled. Japanese Zeros stand absolutely no chance against American fighters because it's impossible to kill them. As a result, it's impossible to deplane an american carrier in Tier4/5 by simply shooting them down. You have to attempt to draw your opponent into surface-AA, which is very difficult since so many ships between tier 3/4 do not even possess such faculties

While the zero was aeronautically superior to the F3F & F4U, meaning it was faster and more maneuverable, it had virtually no armor to speak of. On the flip side, the American fighters could take a very severe beating and had heavy armaments, but were slow and clunky. They could never out-turn a zero. 

What we have today in WoWs is a situation where the Japanese aircraft's strengths don't appear to be factored in. Couple that with the inability to manual drop or strafe and you have a very unbalanced game between hosho and langley in tier 4 from a fighter perspective. 

I have been captain of the entire American line through Lexington and it's an enjoyable experience (langley and bogue when I was new and before the nerf). I picked Hosho up about a day after WG nerfed the T4/5 carriers and was surprised and dismayed to find that selective drop/strafe was gone when I played my first battle. Have only played 6 battles in it because it's so infuriating. If WG wants to kill manual drop to protect the noobs, fine, but bring strafing back into the game so Jap T4/5 carriers at least have tiny chance against American fighters. There is literally nothing Hosho can do against Langley other than maybe a surprise beginning of the game strike to sink it, but even then, I think langley can take more than 4 torps. 

gah.

[HereCreeepers]

13 hours ago, pyantoryng said:

Reach the fleet carrier tier (hell, just the Independence will do) and you'll know where the argument comes from...it doesn't exist at tier 4 and 5.

Should have rephrased that. I know USN CVs are outperformed by their IJN counterparts at higher tiers, but I do not understand why the guy was saying that I want it nerfed, implying that I am an IJN CV player who wants to be able to curbstomp every USN CV in the game.

[Depth386]

On 9/26/2017 at 7:41 AM, crzyhawk said:

This.  I hate seeing Rangers or Lossingtons on my team.

lol... I am a Rager when I see Ranger in my BB / Cruiser / DD too.