Understanding the coming IFHE changes: I have questions!

[legozer]

I'm not entirely clear on what to expect with the coming changes to IFHE in 9.2.

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how?

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

 

I have an elementary understanding of the penetration mechanics and the way IFHE currently works, but I'm a bit lost with regard to how the new IFHE is going to impact the gameplay for a lot of my ships. I currently use IFHE in Akizuki, Kitakaze and Harugumo, Khabarovsk, Shchors, Henri IV, and a few others. From what I understand, I can safely drop it on my IJN DDs, but will the changes affect my other ships, and how?

 

Thanks in advance.

[MidnightPhoenix07]

1 hour ago, legozer said:

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

Mostly complaints/issues about HE spam and fires, as far as I would guess. The official reason given by WG is that they wanted to make IFHE less mandatory and increase the differences between the roles of CLs and CAs, but as covered in my response below, IFHE is in no way less mandatory except for a few ships.

 

1 hour ago, legozer said:

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how?

Jutland and Daring benefit quite a bit since the main reason they take IFHE now is to pen destroyers. With the changes they will pen them without, and still won’t be able to pen cruiser bow/stern with, so they effectively get a big buff - effectively an extra four commander points plus an increased fire chance over what they’d have now. High tier German BBs with secondary builds will benefit too, since the reason they’d normally take IFHE now is so the smaller caliber secondaries pen 32mm, which they will automatically after the changes. Mid tier cruisers with guns below 155mm are the ones that will really suffer, since they will still need IFHE to pen mid tier battleships and high tier cruisers, but even with IFHE will not be able to pen high tier battleships and will have to rely on fires (which are already RNG dependent and will be reduced even further by the new IFHE). Atlanta and Flint are definitely being hit hard since with IFHE they will no longer be able to pen the 27mm plating of a lot of high tier cruisers after the change but will still need it to deal with mid tier cruisers and battleships.

 

1 hour ago, legozer said:

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

As of right now, yes they are getting 1/3 (well actually 3/10) pen. When one of the more common complaints about HE and IFHE spam was the fact that the IJN 100mm guns melted through 32mm plating and still had a high fire chance and rate of fire on top of that. After the changes, they will still pen 32mm and will only have slight reductions in fire chance compared to current IFHE.

 

1 hour ago, legozer said:

I have an elementary understanding of the penetration mechanics and the way IFHE currently works, but I'm a bit lost with regard to how the new IFHE is going to impact the gameplay for a lot of my ships. I currently use IFHE in Akizuki, Kitakaze and Harugumo, Khabarovsk, Shchors, Henri IV, and a few others. From what I understand, I can safely drop it on my IJN DDs, but will the changes affect my other ships, and how?

More or less with the exceptions I listed above (Jutland/Daring and German secondary BBs), if you take IFHE now you will still take IFHE after the changes. The IJN gunboats will need it to cross the 32mm threshold as will any high tier cruisers and mid tier cruisers will still need it to deal with mid tier battleships and high tier cruisers (except for Flint and Atlanta which won’t be able to pen high tier cruisers). Henri will still need it to break the 50mm threshold, although the main reason to use that build was competitive and Henri is less common in competitive after the engine boost changes. The Hindy IFHE build will still pen pretty much all of the same targets after that it will before (IJN decks, German and Russian noses) but will be slightly less effective since the fire chance is being lowered. The memeish IFHE Azuma/Yoshino and Drake/Goliath will still be strong but situational.

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, legozer said:

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how?

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

1. normalization, to make IFHE easier to understand
2. unclear, WIP, overall HE alpha dmg for light cruisers and IJN dds will be buffed. Fire % will take a nerf.
3. Wait and see.

[Tekina_]

50 minutes ago, legozer said:

I'm not entirely clear on what to expect with the coming changes to IFHE in 9.2.

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how?

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

 

1. There isn't any. It's a bad change across the board.

2. Benefits: T8+ CLs, 10cm armed british and IJN DDs, german secondaries(technically the 10cm IJN secondaries too).

Nerfed:T7 and below CLs, 12.7cm and below DDs other than the 100mm armed ones(maybe 13cm armed ones too?),  38cm armed BBs, Atlanta and Flint. Any 38mm armored ship like US BBs take a massive nerf as it no longer defeats CL HE. German and American CAs also lose their niche of having thicker bow than their peers.

3. Seems that way.

[MidnightPhoenix07]

30 minutes ago, Tekina_ said:

1. There isn't any. It's a bad change across the board.

2. Benefits: T8+ CLs, 10cm armed british and IJN DDs, german secondaries(technically the 10cm IJN secondaries too).

Nerfed:T7 and below CLs, 12.7cm and below DDs other than the 100mm armed ones(maybe 13cm armed ones too?),  38cm armed BBs, Atlanta and Flint. Any 38mm armored ship like US BBs take a massive nerf as it no longer defeats CL HE. German and American CAs also lose their niche of having thicker bow than their peers.

3. Seems that way.

The 38mm HE pen was changed in the most recent round of changes. All IFHE now adds 25% so t8+ only get up to 37mm with IFHE

[tfcas119]

29 minutes ago, legozer said:

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

because as it was before, light cruisers needed IFHE to do damage to T6-10 BBs and T8-10 cruisers, but it in turn made life not very good for most heavy cruisers that lack DPM. Now, they are trying to make it more a massive trade-off (pen same tier BBs for half your fire chance)

1 hour ago, legozer said:

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how?

Winners: DM/Salem (can now bounce most BB shells when angled)

Jutland/Daring (no longer need IFHE to damage DDs)

T8-10 light cruisers (no longer need IFHE to do damage to same tier cruisers)

Smolensk loses 30mm plating, loses fire chance (nerfs to Smolensk is a win to everyone)

German ships with 128mm secondaries (no longer need IFHE to pen 32mm plating, only affects Gnesieau, Kurfurst, WIP Odin, and WIP Aegir)

German 150mm guns (main guns for Konigsberg, Nurnberg, Makarov, Mainz, and secondary guns on all German BBs- will pen 38mm plating without IFHE, making it possible to pen middle sections of US BBs and low-mid tier RU BBs.

losers: T5-7 light cruisers (cannot damage T8 and 9 BBs even with IFHE, but still need IFHE to damage T8 and 9 cruisers. 15in guns above T7 (abundance of 27mm plating) BBs that cannot overmatch 30mm plating (30mm plating becomes more abundant) 

1 hour ago, legozer said:

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

almost, but not quite. full 1/3 pen would be 32.67mm, rounding to pen 33mm of armor. hehehehe, that would be bad if they did.

35 minutes ago, Tekina_ said:

ny 38mm armored ship like US BBs take a massive nerf as it no longer defeats CL HE. 

they changed that. Now IFHE on T8-10 gives 25% pen, meaning the most light cruisers can pen is 36.

[4HizensTotalLandscaping]

1 hour ago, legozer said:

I'm not entirely clear on what to expect with the coming changes to IFHE in 9.2.

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how?

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

 

I have an elementary understanding of the penetration mechanics and the way IFHE currently works, but I'm a bit lost with regard to how the new IFHE is going to impact the gameplay for a lot of my ships. I currently use IFHE in Akizuki, Kitakaze and Harugumo, Khabarovsk, Shchors, Henri IV, and a few others. From what I understand, I can safely drop it on my IJN DDs, but will the changes affect my other ships, and how?

 

Thanks in advance.

1. I'm not sure. Ship lines that require IFHE are a weird design, but the IFHE change doesn't really fix any of the issues. You could accomplish all the same things by nerfing dpm and/or fire chance on overpowered ships.

2. Daring, Jutland, Des Moines, Salem, and German BB secondaries all get directly buffed. Smolensk and Colbert get directly nerfed. Small gun BBs lose out on the armor changes.

3. They get 30 mm penetration.

 

I think in most cases, IFHE is still a good skill on ships where it was a good skill before the patch. But 114 mm UK DDs and 128 mm German secondaries don't need it any more, the IFHE change is a major nerf to IFHE on big gun ships like Henri and Yoshino, and maybe going for fires will be viable over IFHE on some ships that currently take it (it's hard to say).

[NutzinBoltz]

Is this patch this coming week or the following week.

[Navalpride33]

2 hours ago, legozer said:

1. What is the logic behind the change? What prompted this very significant change?

2. Which ships benefit? Which ships take a nerfing, and why/how? 

3. Will the IJN 100mm DDs really get 1/3 pen? 

1. The logic is under NDA/embargo status... I am assuming its due to the 6 month plan of new game mods... With the current IFHE changes, Domination mode at high tiers really is a pain/challenge. 
2. It looks like to me, after so much tasting in PTS... High caliber guns at tier 10 (BB/heavy cruisers) benefit the must from the changes...
   • The least benefited ships after the changes... I have to say are the light cruisers hands down... Their ability to survive and do DMG in their time in battle, will be severely nerfed. There is no such thing as angling even against Heavy cruiser guns.
3. No comment, DDs in PTS were a non factor in high tier battles...

Overall, based on my POV... If you like passive high tier game play, IFHE changes will make the passive play extremely worse. If you like that game play, its good news...

High caliber guns, Good news WOWS eliminated the need to aim to get good hits...

Everyone else.... GL and suck it up...

 

[BrushWolf]

22 minutes ago, TwoLate51 said:

Is this patch this coming week or the following week.

We have another week for the current event so two weeks at the earliest.

[FrodoFraggin]

There really isn’t logic to this.  Try this exercise - 1) peruse the forum to a date prior to the IFHE announcement 2) Find all the threads that complain about something 3) Of the complaint threads, count how many have IFHE in the title. 

[centarina]

its a buff to BB with less fire.     they have been nerfing fire  as well as   pushing DD out of the game for a while now to protect their revenue stream.     this is continuation of that.  

[loco_max]

4 minutes ago, centarina said:

its a buff to BB with less fire.     they have been nerfing fire  as well as   pushing DD out of the game for a while now to protect their revenue stream.     this is continuation of that.  

yes, you are correct...and the shills that justify this nerf should not confuse a fact with 'alternative reality'...

[Tekina_]

52 minutes ago, centarina said:

its a buff to BB with less fire.     they have been nerfing fire  as well as   pushing DD out of the game for a while now to protect their revenue stream.     this is continuation of that.  

Fires haven't been a real issue in a very long time. The threatening part of HE spam is the raw damage, not the fires.

[grorg]

 I have a question 

 I play anything Italian as most of this forum knows and the moment aosta and abruzzi came out o grabbed them.

 Now these bros have HE and AP and since the are often uptiered and they are Italian cruisers, AP is great but pen issues, I have relied on that HE to do damage. Not saying SAP wouldnt be great but you know no changing premiums. 

    This ifhe change seems to me like a huge nerf to these ducas. This isn't a "change to premiums" but wow.

    Can anyone give me feedback on this?

[NutzinBoltz]

3 hours ago, BrushWolf said:

We have another week for the current event so two weeks at the earliest.

Thanks

[Frederick_The_Great]

5 hours ago, TwoLate51 said:

Is this patch this coming week or the following week.

for NA, the pattern is the Wed on the following week of the last directive going live.  So the final directive goes live on this coming Mon.  The Wed on the week after is when the patch should be released.  Delays, events,  or holidays could through that off.  Usually you have 7 days to finish the final directive.

[Rothgar_57]

American Secondary BBs will likely not take IFHE.  Not sure if this is a big nerf or not.    I take IFHE on MASSA to pen cruisers.  I do get some good damage on cruisers from IFHE.   Thoughts?

[mwnciboo]

On 3/1/2020 at 5:05 PM, Rothgar_57 said:

American Secondary BBs will likely not take IFHE.  Not sure if this is a big nerf or not.    I take IFHE on MASSA to pen cruisers.  I do get some good damage on cruisers from IFHE.   Thoughts?

I am interested in this as well....MASSA is the only secondary spec i use with IFHE - The problem is so much of it's fire hits the Belt because of the firing at the center of the the ship - So I'm still 50/50. I would hate to waste 4 pts on this skill if it is providing little benefit. Fire chance is what, 5% on a Massa Secondaries - So i feel IFHE helps boost the raw damage - but it is nothing more than perception / gut feeling.