Post USN CV Revamp: The New Tier X CV Queen - Midway

[HazeGrayUnderway]

Of the Tier V+ USN CVs that got the revamp recently, only Tier V Bogue and Tier X Midway actually improved in performance.  Tier V Bogue used to get absolutely trashed by Zuiho, now the competition is close between the two.  Midway at Tier X not only has closed the gap with the longtime, traditional Queen of High Tier CVs, Hakuryu, but has surpassed it.  I thought at first this to be an NA server only thing, but it repeats itself with the other servers, most especially EU server and its larger numbers.

If you flip the "When" filter to "All" you can see the historical superiority Hakuryu had over Midway.  At launch in Aug 2015, Midway was extremely powerful but that didn't last since around Oct / Nov 2015, there were a lot of CV nerfs and USN CVs were most adversely affected.  So from Oct / Nov 2015 until Nov 2017, the stats have plenty of history showing Hakuryu's superior performance compared to Midway.  With the revamp, Midway has been drastically turned around.

 

So I'm very surprised to see this big a turnaround.  Again, it was nowhere close between these 2 CVs before the Revamp.  It was at a point where I had a dim view of seeing a Midway on my team and a Hakuryu on the other.

[Lert]

I'm sure this is all an unintended, accidental consequence of another WG US CV nerf gone bad. I mean, it has to be, right? Because WG hates US CVs and doesn't actually understand their own game?

[HazeGrayUnderway]

5 minutes ago, Lert said:

I'm sure this is all an unintended, accidental consequence of another WG US CV nerf gone bad. I mean, it has to be, right? Because WG hates US CVs and doesn't actually understand their own game?

Hasn't improved for Tiers VI-IX   They're still garbage.  Ranger is gonna Ranger, Lexi is gonna be Lexi.  Essex still getting trounced by Taiho.

[KaptainKaybe]

2 hours ago, Lert said:

I'm sure this is all an unintended, accidental consequence of another WG US CV nerf gone bad. I mean, it has to be, right? Because WG hates US CVs and doesn't actually understand their own game?

I'm trying to ascertain whether this is sarcasm or not ... but given Wargaming's history of continuously nerfing USN CVs (other than Saipan) into the dirt, I'm thinking it might not be ;)

Seriously, though, it is a pisser that after all this time, and after all these angry complaints, that Wargaming's 'buff' made the USN CVs marginally better than before, but still nowhere near being competitive. Except for Midway.  Midway is a monster now. But Ranger and Lexington should have both had a 2/1/1 loadout option, and Essex fighters should absolutely have been tier 9 instead of tier 8. In fact, last I checked, Essex's stats since the 'buff' are worse than they were prior. And the main reason why these loadouts are still not competitive is that WG really wanted there to be a focus on the USN AP dive bombers as being powerful strike weapons ... except that the USN AP dive bombers have this really tiny range of effectiveness (contrary to the GZ AP DBs) meaning they only really hurt battleships below tier 8, only hurt German battleships at tier 8, and do little damage to higher tier battleships. They are also completely useless against DDs, and only capable of badly hurting maybe 3 tier X cruisers (DM, Moskva, Henri IV).

Basically, they went from the piss poor HE RNG to the piss poor matchmaking RNG. Honestly, it's a super simple fix: lower the alpha of the bombs a bit and GREATLY increase the minimum to maximum penetration ranges so that these bombs have a solid chance of citadeling nearly all battleships and cruisers, it comes across, with only DDs being troublesome. The bomb version of deep water torpedoes, in other words. They say they want to make USN CVs powerful for striking ... then they need to fix the damn armament so that it's significantly more reliable than it is now. Reliability of damage has always been the plague of the USN CV line. This just made it worse.

[StoneRhino]

Hey, remember how not that long ago everyone was crying about how nerfed she was going to be with t8 TBs? Fun times.

[stlmilitia]

Someone tell WOWs to put the US CV's back the way the were please!

[Gavroche_]

The AP bombs are so dumb, I wish you needed to actually aim them in order to delete German BBs.