Destroyers - What role will they play in the coming months?

[ChainYoMast]

Now that the test server is online, perhaps we can have some people come back with candid thoughts on what the buffs and debuffs have done to the destroyer class.

 

I for one have not played on the test, but have started using the 7 km torps on my minekaze again, as well as mentally keeping myself at the buffer of 6.2 detectability. I have found the same issues that high tier players cite about torpedos; they are ineffective and easily dodge. 

 

Does anyone have any insight from the test server perhaps? I personally do not agree with these changes, nor do i agree with how easy it is to detect torpedos. These things have been said since CBT and I do not see a inclinationthat they will be remdied anytime soon. 

 

Shall we all resign ourselves to moving our captains of the minekaze to the isokaze, and rest of us enjoy the buffed up run and gun of the american dd's? 

 

What say all of you?

[Noshiro_]

tbh, the 7km torps on minekaze have been the best for most people due to their high speed of 68kts. So because of this it means they should be harder to dodge.

[dahdah325]

The upcoming Minekaze Emasculation is a typical WG reaction. Don't get me wrong, the Mine needed some toning down, but taking the 10km torps away in addition to the view range bump will be brutal. This is a ship that will see more and more t6/7 games as the server population fills out, and in its upcoming form, it will be severely hampered in those matches. Working with 800m of 'grace room' in t3/4/5 is doable with the limited number of planes and/or scouts you see at those tiers. In t6/7, the number of planes increases drastically, and any DD lit at around 6-7km from targets is gonna get smoked. 

 

A better fix would have been to nerf the VR, keep the 10km torps, and upgrade the MM rules so it no longer saw t3. Doing this would eliminate the seal-clubbing aspect, while still enabling the Mine to be truly viable in t6/7. DD's are already the most fragile and worst performing ship type; I was a bit surprised WG is going to whack them this hard just to quiet the forums. 

 

 

[Francois424]

As a BB player, I never tought DD's needed to be nerfed, except maybe RoF at lower tier, but even then Torps are their "main batteries".

Instead of nerfing DD to "help BB" or w/e, they should be finding a way of making BB's work better vs cruisers between tiers 3 thru 6, and maybe 7.

It's like saying to the doctor your right elbow hurts, and he checks your left leg instead... "whatever doc, but that ain't going to make me feel better."

 

As for roles, who knows, IJN still are hunters.  USNDD has been bad since 0.4.0 and I still don't see myself playing one anytime soon.

[Poidachi]

I'm fine with the new DDs. The new test server lets me play around with DDs and the way I play is usually effective enough to kill 2-3 people per match. Use cover, use islands, do ANYTHING, just get them torps on them. There are multiple ways to raise your chances of hitting torpedoes including firing a barrage slightly behind the white meter to account for turning. 

[triptrippen]

*****
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~PanikMekanic

The post above mine contains factual errors 0.9 =/= 2~3

[Misniso]

The upcoming Minekaze Emasculation is a typical WG reaction. Don't get me wrong, the Mine needed some toning down, but taking the 10km torps away in addition to the view range bump will be brutal. This is a ship that will see more and more t6/7 games as the server population fills out, and in its upcoming form, it will be severely hampered in those matches. Working with 800m of 'grace room' in t3/4/5 is doable with the limited number of planes and/or scouts you see at those tiers. In t6/7, the number of planes increases drastically, and any DD lit at around 6-7km from targets is gonna get smoked. 

 

A better fix would have been to nerf the VR, keep the 10km torps, and upgrade the MM rules so it no longer saw t3. Doing this would eliminate the seal-clubbing aspect, while still enabling the Mine to be truly viable in t6/7. DD's are already the most fragile and worst performing ship type; I was a bit surprised WG is going to whack them this hard just to quiet the forums. 

 

 

 

I've never been able to drop torpedoes and make a turn within that 800 meter buffer without being spotted.   I wonder if the trick is to drop outside of the torpedo's range if the enemy is facing you.

[ChainYoMast]

 

I've never been able to drop torpedoes and make a turn within that 800 meter buffer without being spotted.   I wonder if the trick is to drop outside of the torpedo's range if the enemy is facing you.

 

that is correct. you can fire torps before the maxium effective range, hoping they run into them. it also helps with the reload.

 

Anyway, I personally do not see much use of DD's in the coming months - as already stated - with the three warnings - and the amount of planes flying around due to curisers receiving them, the detectability, and thus the ability to dodge has just become too much.

 

I agree that torps should be seen at somedistnace so that peopel have a chance to dodge, but I beleive right now it is overkill.

 

This is indeed WGing nerfing in it's finest.

[supershutze]

tbh, the 7km torps on minekaze have been the best for most people due to their high speed of 68kts. So because of this it means they should be harder to dodge.

 

10km torpedoes were harder to spot, meaning that even though they were slower, the target still had less time to react.

[Yasenpoi]

*****
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~PanikMekanic 

 

or maybe playing more has allowed him to get better at the game?

[Reiter]

 

10km torpedoes were harder to spot, meaning that even though they were slower, the target still had less time to react.

 

So what you are saying is

 

WG needs to dumb down the game because idiots must not do that but have to do this

Because when you sail in a straight line, the DD player can predict a point and launch.  Where as if you zig zag you prevent the DD player from launching effectively, the funny part where you go target still had less time to react instead of realizing that you can "force the DD player to react and delay his launch".  Imagine in the first picture you doing in that motion and a DD is trying to stalk you, hopefully you have a cruiser ally nearby, and by constantly changing direction the DD cannot get a good lead forcing him to expose himself because at some point you or the cruiser will past him or dodge the torpedoes he launched with no effect.

 

 

I rest my case, its the lazy players that need 100% view range, easy to destroy and disable ships with puny short range guns that have low hitpoints with no armor.  It cannot be the fault of the lazy player, its the fault of the DD who is in the fragile gas can whose engine will get disable, whose has low hitpoints, who must be incredibly close to the enemy to get even one torpedo to hit let alone the six they can launch....but the lazy player whines when they take 4 hits at short range when the DD gets close cause that is where the torpedo is most effective.  While we are at it, nerf cruiser dispersion to increase DD survivability...need some equality going on both ends of the nerf table.

 

 

Summary: Long range torps is how DD survive with low hit chance, getting in close gets them kills or be killed with higher odds, turning is how you avoid them because DD are constantly out of position and there are way to many planes in the air already.  Thanks bro, you got your wish....hope your favored class gets nerfed next round and dominated by the next one in line.

 

[supershutze]

 

Summary: Long range torps is how DD survive with low hit chance, getting in close gets them kills or be killed with higher odds, turning is how you avoid them because DD are constantly out of position and there are way to many planes in the air already.  Thanks bro, you got your wish....hope your favored class gets nerfed next round and dominated by the next one in line.

 

 

Destroyers ARE my favorite class.

 

My highest tier ship is a USN DD.

[LifePilgrim]

*****
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~PanikMekanic 

 

0.9 average kill is alright he's not a burden to his team. Perhaps you're being delusional on what people can do on average.

2-3 kills maybe the number of his perception as people tend to remember their good matches. It's pretty on or off for destroyer matches because they can't take much punishment and if you make little mistake you pay for it dearly.

[Naughtius_Maximus]

Minekaze could eat that, but that wasn't the point. The point was Minekaze was the only balanced DD in the game. The only DD with damage around other tier 5 ships.

 

The problem with IJN DDs currently in upper tiers is, it doesn't matter how stealthy YOU are, when your torps are as bright as christmas trees.

 

These torps, assuming they aren't prematurely spotted by some errant plane or a proper ship screen (DD screen) still allows the absolutely retarded victim to dodge. And yes, that victim was retarded for sailing at a constant velocity for 30+ seconds. And guess what? You'll usually get just 3 hits at best versus a BB (usually 1 or zero,) with pretty much zero chance versus cruisers.

 

So in order to give these downright retarded players a fighting chance to "dodge," WG basically castrates the IJN DDs versus any other ship class. They literally do nothing to cruisers/carriers/DDs/smart BBs, and at best get 0-3 (usually 0-1) on the really stupid ones WG is balancing BBs by. Every 2 and a half minutes. 15,000 damage on average per salvo, assuming it was "successful." Whoop dee doo.

 

Due to WG thinking these braindead BB players are the "average," they make the class quite OP at the higher tiers. I wonder why BBs statistically have the best carry potential at the higher tiers and are still getting buffs?

 

At the moment your role in an IJN DD will best be summed up as, get wrecked as fast as possible, go back to port, and then jump into a BB. Then you can at least be useful for ONE game, as opposed to none.

 

USN DDs got nothing significant out of this patch, unless they are keeping any gun handling, fire chance, or smoke buffs hidden.

 

USN DDs do not rely on stealth nearly as much, so the new AA ability is not that useful. Also, defensive AA with a DDs firepower is more for disrupting squadrons, not quickly annihilating them, something you'd want for stealth (again, not that USN DDs need it.)

 

WG seems to want USN DDs as defensive screens for the fleet, but against what? They disrupt planes just fine now, but there's literally no point screening for DDs or torpedoes with those christmas trees for torps the IJN have. A cruiser can screen just as well (and better, with plane) while providing more firepower and bulk. Until ship launched torps are a threat to cruisers you are still obsolete.

 

Now if you were screening your fleet for the current Minekaze's torps, NOW you have a useful role. Minekaze is an actual threat compared to every single other DD in the game, why? Because it was the only balanced DD.

[Quora]

The upcoming Minekaze Emasculation is a typical WG reaction. Don't get me wrong, the Mine needed some toning down, but taking the 10km torps away in addition to the view range bump will be brutal. This is a ship that will see more and more t6/7 games as the server population fills out, and in its upcoming form, it will be severely hampered in those matches. Working with 800m of 'grace room' in t3/4/5 is doable with the limited number of planes and/or scouts you see at those tiers. In t6/7, the number of planes increases drastically, and any DD lit at around 6-7km from targets is gonna get smoked. 

 

A better fix would have been to nerf the VR, keep the 10km torps, and upgrade the MM rules so it no longer saw t3. Doing this would eliminate the seal-clubbing aspect, while still enabling the Mine to be truly viable in t6/7. DD's are already the most fragile and worst performing ship type; I was a bit surprised WG is going to whack them this hard just to quiet the forums. 

 

 

 

Why is it going to be a brutal nerf for that ship?  Nobody with any skill plays the minekaze at this point.  It's completely broken it's so damn overpowered.  Legit players who have any shred of decency refuse to touch the damn thing as it's nothing but a cheat.  As it stands now, only stat padders play that ship consistently and they deserve to have their damn toy taken away from them as they are just one step above the cheaters and the modders.   Screw them.

 

That damn thing has become way too invisible in the OBT version of the game, even to USN DD's who are rightfully supposed to be hunting it down like the scumbag dog that it is.   I've been trailing them before and at only 3km they just keep popping in and out of visibility to me making it hard to put rounds on them.  Short of dropping smoke, there's no excuse for not being able to see a ship at that distance.  10km torps with a visibility range just barely over HALF that?  That's ridiculous.  Truly and honestly ridiculous.   This thing needs to be stomped majorly and they need to give a bit of a buff to the Mutsuki which follows it.     People talk about how overpowered the Cleveland is and going to the Peniscola, or the Kuma up to the Fruitaka, but none of those compare to the massive cliff you jump off when going from a minekaze to a Mutsuki.

 

It really does blow me away that when they completely broke the game in 4.0 by going to the OBT release, all destroyers got majorly nerfed with the exception of the Minekaze which seemed to have improved with that patch somehow.   Why it has taken them 2 months to actually address this is beyond me.   How much stat gathering do they actually need in this game to come up with the conclusion that somewhere there's a square peg in a round hole?

[CasualCat2001]

 

 I've been trailing them before and at only 3km they just keep popping in and out of visibility to me 

 

Bug, lie, or extreme hyperbole

 

No destroyer has 3km concealment without smoke...period.

[Naughtius_Maximus]

You said it yourself. All DDs got majorly nerfed, really for no reason.

 

Minekaze has remained average damage to the rest of tier 5 throughout, largely because proper stealth torps should not involve smoke.

 

You should be arguing so all DDs get buffed to that level where they can actually be a threat. Not what we have now for every other DD where you either die early, suicide charge to at best get one kill before dying, or spend the entire game impotently firing 6 times at best before dying.

[ButtonsPushed]

I have really been struggling with the Fubuki using the 15km torpedoes, and dealing with the lack of mobility of the ship in general. I will probably go back to the faster 10km torps. Never been into just spamming torps and always ran the Minekazi with the 7km torps. 

[schwanksta]

I've always used the 7km torps since I prefer the speed (they often compensate for my shortcomings in aiming.)  I just don't think I could effectively hit targets beyond that range unless they are in a huge blob, going down a channel, or are willing to maintain course and speed for a crazy amount of time.  I usually get spotted on over half of my torpedo runs in the minekazi, and sometimes can't even make runs if there are screening destroyers or too much air cover.  DD play is intense and enjoyable, but I often feel I can't make a significant contribution to my team outside of early ambushes and sinking wounded ships after the game has already been practically won.  Consider that I'm at Tier V in both lines now, and most of the feedback I hear about the upper tiers is that it only gets worse.  Add to that situation the probability of future nerfs, and  It hard to get motivated to progress in these ships.

[Velled]

   Im not seeing much use at high tier pub play for DD's... They perform like cruisers without the ability to take any punishment, 1 shell from a same tier cruiser will break most of the modules on the boat and frequently does an ammo rack. With the seemingly unlimited amount of aircraft at high tier they dont even really have stealth. I dont see them ( at high tier ) as viable at all unless you have a 5 skill captain and even then your better off driving a cruiser or BB. At high tier really all they are is a threat for larger ships to stay away from islands which is a good idea even if the DD class didnt exist.

 

High tier DD's require your opponent to be oblivious to get in any torp damage.... the USN at least have functional guns but if your going to shoot main battery for your DPS then why plink at a ship for 5 minutes ....go with a cruiser or BB.

 

 Tier 4/5 seems to be the sweet spot for DD viability, at this tier they can contribute as well as any class and make good XP/credits. Past tier 6 ...not so much.

[ButtonsPushed]

I think the IJN line of DD's is almost irrelevant now, especially at higher tiers to the point that I will probably not be forging on ahead to T9.  

 

This game will be CV's and BB's only in the future, cruisers will continue to be nerfed because their threat to BB's. 

 

I may try the US DD line to see how the other half lives, or dies.

[ClockworkSpectre]

Unfortunately WG is probably just paying attention to whiners that don't have enough in game experience not to derp into a torp spread.  If anything DDs probably need a buff at mid-high tiers and the only nerf I could see as justifiable is to reload speed of torps at low tiers.  Sad thing is this was completely predictable before the game went OBT, that people would whine and cry and not bother to learn the game and WG would overreact and nerf away.  Most expereinced players will tell you that DDs are almost a non-threat, and they will only torp you if you make a mistake or don't pay attention. 

[flyingvomit]

Unfortunately WG is probably just paying attention to whiners that don't have enough in game experience not to derp into a torp spread.  If anything DDs probably need a buff at mid-high tiers and the only nerf I could see as justifiable is to reload speed of torps at low tiers.  Sad thing is this was completely predictable before the game went OBT, that people would whine and cry and not bother to learn the game and WG would overreact and nerf away.  Most expereinced players will tell you that DDs are almost a non-threat, and they will only torp you if you make a mistake or don't pay attention. 

 

We all been asking WG since the early stage of CBT to lower torp detection range for high Tier DD's T6 and on. Sadly they only swong the nerf bat more and more. I think we should all stop asking for DD love since all we get in return is a beating.

[Cobraclutch]

   Im not seeing much use at high tier pub play for DD's... They perform like cruisers without the ability to take any punishment, 1 shell from a same tier cruiser will break most of the modules on the boat and frequently does an ammo rack. With the seemingly unlimited amount of aircraft at high tier they dont even really have stealth. I dont see them ( at high tier ) as viable at all unless you have a 5 skill captain and even then your better off driving a cruiser or BB. At high tier really all they are is a threat for larger ships to stay away from islands which is a good idea even if the DD class didnt exist.

 

High tier DD's require your opponent to be oblivious to get in any torp damage.... the USN at least have functional guns but if your going to shoot main battery for your DPS then why plink at a ship for 5 minutes ....go with a cruiser or BB.

 

 Tier 4/5 seems to be the sweet spot for DD viability, at this tier they can contribute as well as any class and make good XP/credits. Past tier 6 ...not so much.

 

A lot of cruiser servery underestimate the damage output of a well place 127mm AP shell.

 

On multiple occasions now I have flanked Atago/Myoko/Ibuki at ranges of <7km and I have melted them from full health / 2/3rds health remaining with 5 or 6 well place AP salvos.

 

Not uncommon for me to flank a IJN or USN CA while he's distracted and while my torps are on cool down and get 8-10 citadel penetrations . Just takes a little skill and close range. 

 

Very effective especially at higher tiers, I was very surprised and it has opened up another tool for me to make myself more relevant in higher tier gameplay.

[ButtonsPushed]

Luckily i have diversified my line of ships so if the DD because too frustrating, I have US and IJN cruiser to T8 and just now learning the ropes of BB driving. I don't fear the DD's but I do fear the manual drop torpedo bombers, no nerf bat was swung in that direction at all.