My Opinion on the Current Game from the Perspective of a Battleship

[Iron_Knickers]

A little bit of my history for me to put this post into context:

 

I last played World of Warships until the reset following Open Beta. Now I have recently returned, and I have grinded my way up to a Cleveland, a North Carolina, a Myogi, touched carriers a little and got the Langley, a little bit of IJN DD with whatever their T4 is...

 

I primarily play Battleship, I did in CBT, and I do today, and although I would like to make a post with my opinion on the overall state of the game, I think this would be met with a lot less agreement because of my lack of experience playing higher tier destroyers, cruisers, CV's, etc in this new version of the game that we are in. So, I will base my opinion primarily on my experiences playing battleships.

 

One major reason for this post was: A lot of people compare the game in its current state to CBT, and as sort of a prime example of an individual who popped from CBT in the past to the present, I can offer up some great contrasts. The only downside is that I declined to make this post until now, in which I have logged almost 500 games since I quit playing from CBT, which means that I may not realize all of the differences, but there are some main ones that I do remember.

 

So, now for my opinion on Battleships, as contrasted with battleships from CBT: (All from memory, so if there are mistakes, I am sorry :s)

 

Battleships are awesome! Many people seem to like game mechanics from CBT better, but as far as I can tell battleships got a lot better. By better, I don't mean that battleships are powerful or over powered now, I just mean that they had some issues in CBT that they rolled over, making battleships a lot more logical and fun to play.

 

I believe the #1 change that I have noticed with battleships is damage.

 

Back in CBT, if you hit any target, no matter the class of ship you are firing upon, if you did not score a citadel, you GENERALLY did not often do more than 5,000 points in damage. I remember striking clevelands in my Kongo at close ranges, getting 4 or 5 hits, and dealing about 2k damage, these were the days where a good shot with bad RNG would make me cry, waiting for my 30 second reload as the tiny guns and HE of smaller cruisers ripped my ship to shreds. 

 

Nowadays, if you hit a target with say 2-5 shells, you almost certainly do tons of damage! I regularly score about 10k per salvo with 3-4 hits against cruisers broadsiding in my North Carolina. I have scored up to 20-25k with my shells whilst not hitting a single citadel! It seems nowadays that the damage of these guns are a lot more realistic, especially when dealing with cruisers. 

 

This stuff I'm saying about number of shells hitting, and damage dealt, as well as different classes of ships being hit, are all vague generalizations. However, one thing that really sticks out in my mind when thinking of CBT is that nowadays I deal a LOT more damage, damage that I should be dealing with giant guns.

 

Back in CBT, Cruisers were my primary enemies besides battleships, they were fun to one-shot, however they also had annoyingly powerful guns, and HE was a threat if I ever got cornered alone with a few of them. My repair kit lasted a split second, and fixed my immediate fires, but I was often lit on fire immediately afterward. Gah the Atlanta! (Honestly, I wasn't as mad about HE as many raging BB's were on the forums back then, my solution was to simply stay away from them, and stop acting like some sort of supertank that can take on 3 cruisers at a time.) Through CBT I was nerfed a bit it seemed, as I was not able to one-shot cruisers like I did in beta weekend.

 

Nowadays, HE seems to be fixed! Cruisers are fixed! I remember getting utterly demolished by cruisers sometimes in CBT, and fires as well. Though I didn't hate HE and cruisers as much as many people did back then, (The solution to me was to not go up against like 3 cruisers alone). I remember that the repair party ability lasted a split second, and put out the fires I had, but than just about instantly afterwards I immediately was lit on fire again. Nowadays I actually have the capability to one-shot cruisers, (which only happens when cruisers are being fools, so I believe this is still balanced and okay), and my repair kit ability has enormous potential to repair all fire damages that I receive.

 

Back in CBT, Destroyers were an annoyance, their torpedoes were barely a threat, they often went out and died to cruisers easily, once they were spotted it was only a matter of seconds before an allied cruiser blew them out of the sea. That is, if they even got that far. Destroyers would often have their own little duels, killing themselves before even getting close enough to touch me, a Battleship. Of course, if they did get close to me, I could deal with them just fine, I would take great damage sometimes yes, but this wouldn't happen often enough for me to consider them a serious threat.

 

Nowadays, Destroyers are infamous for being the bane of battleships in my opinion. Though the threat of cruisers has greatly decreased, the threat of destroyers has increased, and this is exactly what this game needs. Battleships can't act like supertanks that go in on their own to joust the enemy team, we need to be the heavy hitters, we rely on a fleet of ships, and a fleet of ships rely on us. Stick with the team and there is no threat from destroyers. Stray from the team, and I will find myself sunk easily by enemy DD's. Enemy DD's are also harder to hit for cruisers nowadays, and they are much stronger against cruisers guns, so they aren't simply wrecked like they were by cruisers in CBT. 

 

Everything I have said so far has been that the game has improved tremendously in balance, in my opinion, the opinion of a battleship driver. However, there is one major thing that this game needs to have changed that I can sum up in my final spiel:

 

Back in CBT, CV's were everywhere.

 

Nowadays, CV's are nowhere.

 

That's right, a battleship player complaining about lack of CVs! The world must be ending! I think I may be going a little bit astray, now I am talking more about the state of the overall game, and not the state of the game from a battleships perspective. 

 

Without CV's, USN Ships are much less useful, staying in groups is much less useful, BB's have less of a counter, AA is useless, scouting is at a minimal, there is less communication, etc etc etc.

 

I think Wargaming's #1 Priority should be to make CV's relevant in SOME way again. I don't think it is fair that I should be running a CONCEALMENT build on my USN Battleship, in a game where the commander skills reek of AA buffs.

 

Overall though, besides there being a lack of CV's in almost every game, the game has DEFINITIVELY improved in my opinion.

 

 

[BlazerSparta]

Consider using bold or underline instead of colours. My eyes hurt.

[yUPPatriots]

lol nice use of colors

[RogueFlameHaze]

Well worded, I agree.

[Generalmp44]

Really nice job. Just like a few points though.

 

• The Cruisers HE did at one point during the test have a much more alpha damage then the AP round and The fire chance got boosted to which would cause fires pretty much in every section in pretty much one volley and do almost 5-7k damage before it got balance out. And DE was Pyromaniac (Or something close) which add 5% instead of now of just 3%. Which really help the old flamethrower.
• Not going to lie, I do miss the old DD duels. I would win most of them, that rush feeling running up to another IJN destroyer and torping him to oblivion, while watching as his torpedoes miss me... It was a great feeling. But that was during the time where pretty much all IJN DD turrets turn rotation was +40's besides the Shimakaze and Fubuki, your torpedoes were pretty much your only defense and offensive weapons and you had to make them count.

 

The CV part. You are missing alot of what happen back in the CBT though.

 

CBT: During the start of the CBT it was only the USN Carriers and during that time MM was really all over the place for CV and normal was unfair for the enemy time or a CV player. MM would either place 1 CV the other team or yours and they would have free rain of the place or get F'ed of they had AS layout because there was no other CV to fight against but at least the had a TB and not a DB to do damage. The other unfairness would be 1 CV vs 2 CV either both higher or one high and equal tier, which would just lead them to murder the single carrier. Also another massive issue during it was the fighters from a 2 or even 1 tier higher would wreck your fighter. Even if it was a 2vs1 you would lose all your fighters and they might only lose 3-4.

 

One thing I do miss are the old layout for the USN of TB and the 4 layout picks they normal had versus the 3 now. Which was Stock layout, AS, Balance, Strike.

 

 But I didn't play to much carriers before the game went into OBT so I can't give 100% on how they feel from then 

[Misniso]

Nice job!  +1!

[amaROenuZ]

Just a heads up, red text is against forum rules. Moderator only colour.

[Iron_Knickers]

Really nice job. Just like a few points though.

 

• The Cruisers HE did at one point during the test have a much more alpha damage then the AP round and The fire chance got boosted to which would cause fires pretty much in every section in pretty much one volley and do almost 5-7k damage before it got balance out. And DE was Pyromaniac (Or something close) which add 5% instead of now of just 3%. Which really help the old flamethrower.
• Not going to lie, I do miss the old DD duels. I would win most of them, that rush feeling running up to another IJN destroyer and torping him to oblivion, while watching as his torpedoes miss me... It was a great feeling. But that was during the time where pretty much all IJN DD turrets turn rotation was +40's besides the Shimakaze and Fubuki, your torpedoes were pretty much your only defense and offensive weapons and you had to make them count.

 

The CV part. You are missing alot of what happen back in the CBT though.

 

CBT: During the start of the CBT it was only the USN Carriers and during that time MM was really all over the place for CV and normal was unfair for the enemy time or a CV player. MM would either place 1 CV the other team or yours and they would have free rain of the place or get F'ed of they had AS layout because there was no other CV to fight against but at least the had a TB and not a DB to do damage. The other unfairness would be 1 CV vs 2 CV either both higher or one high and equal tier, which would just lead them to murder the single carrier. Also another massive issue during it was the fighters from a 2 or even 1 tier higher would wreck your fighter. Even if it was a 2vs1 you would lose all your fighters and they might only lose 3-4.

 

One thing I do miss are the old layout for the USN of TB and the 4 layout picks they normal had versus the 3 now. Which was Stock layout, AS, Balance, Strike.

 

 But I didn't play to much carriers before the game went into OBT so I can't give 100% on how they feel from then 

 

Of all the classes in the game, Carriers are the ones of which I have profound ignorance of. However, yes, I remember carrier imbalance between teams, higher tiers vs lower tiers, more vs less, etc. I agree, and overall WG needs to make carrier mechanics its #1 mechanics change focus. 

 

 

[Iron_Knickers]

Just a heads up, red text is against forum rules. Moderator only colour.

 

Oh thanks I knew that one of the colors was against the rules, but I wasn't sure which one haha, ill change my post.

[YamatoA150]

Personally, the most notable change I found offensive to Battleships was the loss of realistic turn radius and overall maneuverability (near the end of CBT; plenty of QQ'ing from Destroyers and some QQ'ing from CVs).  All because Destroyers didn't want to risk closing in order to drop a killer load on a battleship, and wanted the chances of being able to hit them from stealth without battleships being able to retaliate AT ALL.  Now that they have their torpedo speed boost and some players are skilled and daring enough to risk retaliation in exchange for sinking a ship with a massed volley, there's no reason not to give back maneuverability to battleships.

 

Carriers can return as well; if only to warrant a restoration of AA capabilities (especially for the USN line) and to help spot destroyers aside from anti-destroyer cruisers.

[Iron_Knickers]

Personally, the most notable change I found offensive to Battleships was the loss of realistic turn radius and overall maneuverability (near the end of CBT; plenty of QQ'ing from Destroyers and some QQ'ing from CVs).  All because Destroyers didn't want to risk closing in order to drop a killer load on a battleship, and wanted the chances of being able to hit them from stealth without battleships being able to retaliate AT ALL.  Now that they have their torpedo speed boost and some players are skilled and daring enough to risk retaliation in exchange for sinking a ship with a massed volley, there's no reason not to give back maneuverability to battleships.

 

Carriers can return as well; if only to warrant a restoration of AA capabilities (especially for the USN line) and to help spot destroyers aside from anti-destroyer cruisers.

 

Oh yes, I should have noted that as well. Maneuverability got DRAMATICALLY better for every ship, and this is why people are complaining about not hitting shots on cruisers, shell travel time became relevant because you can dodge a lot better now.