Reactions & Advice to several Reworked Captain Skills

[FloridaPanther25]

I would appreciate your reactions and advice regarding:

• Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?
• Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?
• Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty
• Outnumbered - useful?
• Top Grade gunner - useful?

Any other must-have skills for cruisers?

Thanks!

[Wolfswetpaws]

2 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

I would appreciate your reactions and advice regarding:

• Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?
• Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?
• Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty
• Outnumbered - useful?
• Top Grade gunner - useful?

Any other must-have skills for cruisers?

Thanks!

Sort of depends upon the number of skill points a Commander has available.
I give priority to the ship's effectiveness and/or survival and some skills are only taken with "spare" skill points that are left-over after I've gained the skills I *really* want.
Also, I try some diversity of builds within the same class of ship, just to add flavor to Captain's and to experiment with different capabilities or have the capabilities ready when playing a particular scenario operation.

Some screen shots for comparison.  What I choose may not suit another person's selection criteria or play style.  To each, their own.
 

Spoiler

 

 

[Karstodes]

13 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?

It means that it cut the raw numbers of your HE, before flags and other commander skills. It is worth taking on some ships (US CL, some Russian CL, arguably the 100mm Japanese DD and maybe some German BB with many 105mm) but it is a trade off between more pen vs more fire.

 

13 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?

Depends of your gun value. On a ship like the Harugumo, with it's base 5% fire chance, it's 20% more fire created. If you take IFHE, it's almost 50% more fire than the base version. On a ship like Thunderer, you will not see the difference.

 

13 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty

Mandatory on small caliber cruiser (Smolensk, Atlanta, Flint...) since they get the buff without the malus. Good on some ships able to play with no concealment like Venezia and Henri.

 

13 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Outnumbered - useful?

No

 

13 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Top Grade gunner - useful?

on some ship. In the current meta going full secondary is dumb (not that it was not dumb before). An option is on the US Bralwer bb (Georgia, Mass, Ohio) is to take the range increase skill at 3 pts into this one: you get a 10% reload on your main battery when a ship is spotted withing 11km roughly. On German I would go instead with the new Manual Control of Secondary.

[Wolfswetpaws]

Before the skills re-bork, I had a Mikoyan set-up as a Secondary-battery build.  It was silly and fun, at least for me.
As you can imagine, that was severely affected by the skills re-bork.

[KilljoyCutter]

12 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

I would appreciate your reactions and advice regarding:

• Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?
• Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?
• Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty
• Outnumbered - useful?
• Top Grade gunner - useful?

Any other must-have skills for cruisers?

Thanks!

Many of the new skills, cruiser skills included, carry a poison-pill nerf built in that makes them worth no more than half the captain points they're listed at.  IFHE, HHE, etc are fringe skills for meme builds or specific ships.  

Outnumbered is a massive waste of 4 captain points, that is only activated by stupid play or bad luck.  

TGG is more useful in PVE modes.  In PVP,  it's marginal, especially for 4 points, due to other parts of the Skill Rebork cranking the "full reverse, hide, hump an island" meta up to 11.   

In general, the cruiser tab of the Skill Rebork robs the small-gun cruisers and supercruisers of vital skills, and denies all cruisers access to the options to build for anything other than different ways of doing more damage, turning the entire type into a collection of glass cannons... at the same time the PVP battle space has become more hostile to anything other than long-range-sniping or full stealth DDs.  

[Estimated_Prophet]

16 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Some screen shots for comparison.  What I choose may not suit another person's selection criteria or play style.  To each, their own.

As far as I personally am concerned, your choices display that you are obviously a wet pawed wolf of culture.

[Karstodes]

5 minutes ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

As far as I personally am concerned, your choices display that you are obviously a wet pawed wolf of culture.

A wolf flexing his waifu like it should be.

[Wolfswetpaws]

38 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Some screen shots for comparison.  What I choose may not suit another person's selection criteria or play style.  To each, their own.
 

 

20 minutes ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

As far as I personally am concerned, your choices display that you are obviously a wet pawed wolf of culture.

 

13 minutes ago, Karstodes said:

A wolf flexing his waifu like it should be.

Thank you, both of you, for your complimentary kindness and good humor.
You're wonderful as allies and very interesting as potential opponents.  

[ArIskandir]

57 minutes ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

IInertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?

It is worth consideration for guns under 152 mm. It really helps to improve the direct damage you can deliver, it is really useful for some ships, totally useless for other. Consider this skill  per case.

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

• Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?

Mostly useless unless you have very high RoF and already low fire chance so the relative 1% increase is meaningful, otherwise the increase is just too small and your points would be better spent elsewhere

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

• Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty

Again is goes for a per case evaluation. IMO losing concealment is never a good idea, but then there's the "lighthouse" meme build. Boils down to you favoring that playstyle or not.

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

• Outnumbered - useful?

Good luck activating this skill. Useless

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

• Top Grade gunner - useful?

Great skill if you play PvE

[tfcas119]

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?

Ex: 12% base fire chance without IFHE becomes 6% with. Can be boosted to 8% for ships with <160mm guns or 10% for those with >160mm guns. Only worth it on T8-10 light cruisers (152-180mm guns) that mostly use HE and have good DPM for their tier, exceptions being Mainz (38mm base pen) and Nevesky (low DPM, great AP) Also can be used with good effect on German BBs with 105mm guns (i.e. most of them) to allow them to pen 32mm plating.

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?

If your cruiser build has 2 points left and you don't know where to put them, or you have the Rong Brothers Pan Asian special captains with an improved version, then yes. Otherwise not really. Also please don't spec this on RM or RN CLs.

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty

For cruisers that rely on open water and HE/SAP, yes. Otherwise, eh. Synergizes with TGG though. Also mandatory on Atlanta class, Krispy Kreme, Colbert and Smolensk

 

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Outnumbered - useful?

It's damn near impossible to pop this skill unless its in operations, as its far harder than you might think to get more enemies in your firing range than allies

1 hour ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

Top Grade gunner - useful?

in Ops and co-op, god tier. In PvP, its not bad, but the worse your concealment, the more likely you'll pop it. Hence why it synergizes with Heavy HE. Probably best uses will be on Henri, Hindy, Venezia, and Supercruisers

[ditka_Fatdog]

I do use heavy ap on several cruisers like dm, stali, Alaska. There’s no penalty for cruisers but it is a high cost.

tgg I save for only a few terribly concealed and relatively low rof cruisers where the buff is worth it to me, again like stali, moskva, and krohnstadt. Otherwise for me the cost is too high

heavy he is a big penalty so the only place I can justify it for me is Azuma and Yoshino based on long range spam but I’m not sure I’ll keep it. I considered hindy for this skill but it’s he alpha is too low to make it worthwhile imo

[Bandi73]

2 hours ago, KilljoyCutter said:

Outnumbered is a massive waste of 4 captain points, that is only activated by stupid play or bad luck.  

 

1 hour ago, tfcas119 said:

It's damn near impossible to pop this skill unless its in operations, as its far harder than you might think to get more enemies in your firing range than allies

This. I managed to activate it only once so far. In Newport.  It does what it says, buut.....I would never recommend and in fact I would strongly advise against it. It is impossible to "play into" the skill, to rely on it. Even in ops, let alone in Pvp.There if the conditions are met, you are literally inches away from being dead.

2 hours ago, KilljoyCutter said:

TGG is more useful in PVE modes.  In PVP,  it's marginal, especially for 4 points, due to other parts of the Skill Rebork cranking the "full reverse, hide, hump an island" meta up to 11.   

 

2 hours ago, tfcas119 said:

in Ops and co-op, god tier. In PvP, its not bad, but the worse your concealment, the more likely you'll pop it. Hence why it synergizes with Heavy HE. Probably best uses will be on Henri, Hindy, Venezia, and Supercruisers

Yep. It is very useful in ops. In Pvp.....a mixed bag, very situational and as it was already said, depends heavily on playstyle and ship.

2 hours ago, KilljoyCutter said:

Many of the new skills, cruiser skills included, carry a poison-pill nerf built in that makes them worth no more than half the captain points they're listed at.  IFHE, HHE, etc are fringe skills for meme builds or specific ships.  

In general, the cruiser tab of the Skill Rebork robs the small-gun cruisers and supercruisers of vital skills, and denies all cruisers access to the options to build for anything other than different ways of doing more damage, turning the entire type into a collection of glass cannons... at the same time the PVP battle space has become more hostile to anything other than long-range-sniping or full stealth DDs.  

Again, this. What WG had done is like to force on someone a person who's gender is ....not to which is attracted to. There is a specific word for it....but not all of us are adults here so....It starts with an r.

And some skills go very well for PvE, but not for PvP creating a sort of false "diversity" meaning that WeeGee's stated reasons are complete b.s.from the players peerspective.

 

 

[Crucis]

4 hours ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

I would appreciate your reactions and advice regarding:

• Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? Is this really worth taking?
• Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?
• Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty
• Outnumbered - useful?
• Top Grade gunner - useful?

Any other must-have skills for cruisers?

Thanks!

This isn't exactly the sort of answer you may have been looking for, but currently, I'm fond of selecting the 2 and 4 point AA skills, because they feel like they'll have more bang for the buck than other skills.  I won't call these two AA skills "must have".  It's more like a case of "best of a bunch of weak choices".

(Also, others have given good replies to the 5 skills you mention above.)

 

 

[ToxicSymphony]

Top grade gunner also synergizes perfectly with radar. If there is a boat within your radar range, you now shoot at it more rapidly for the duration of that radar. Pretty much every radar carrying cruiser in the game satisfies this condition. Just for that it's already worth heavily considering on many boats. 

[IfYouSeeKhaos]

6 hours ago, FloridaPanther25 said:

I would appreciate your reactions and advice regarding:

• Inertia Fuse for HE - "Chance of causing a fire by HE without modifiers applied reduced by half" - what modifiers? (Pyro skill inquired about next for 1. Also the 2 fire chance signals. As opposed to adding all other buffs 1st & then cutting the value in half it cuts just your base fire chance in half & then adds the other buffs. Now that you know that... it's up to you to decide which ships it may or may not be worth taking it on. Is this really worth taking?
• Pyrotechnician - only 1% - is this really worth consideration?
• Heavy HE - same,  seems like heavy penalty
• Outnumbered - useful? (Only scenario [against humans] where this is useful is going to a weak flank to have more speed to kite away while having better accuracy to help reset the cap).
• Top Grade gunner - useful? (Must have on radar ships...all others up to your playstyle).

Any other must-have skills for cruisers?

Thanks!