Sonar is [edited]!

[BlackXeon]

<rant> Now that people are getting the higher tier CA's I'm encountering more sonar. This is stupid and making DD unplayable. Couple sonar with competent CV drivers keeping planes overhead. Our only real strong point is taken away, if you DD is detected your dead, period.

[AVR_Project]

A good DD captain knows what ships have sonar (some have an option of sonar or enhanced AA).

If you had been running several lines of ships, you would see and understand them.

If you have a lot of DD skills and find yourself in an Ishizuki IJN BB, being attacked by Destroyers, your experience would tell you what the next DD move is likely to be.  No doubt you would be very dangerous to destroyers.

Maybe you should be banned from operating a Battleship??   Naaa...  have fun and be deadly.

[BlackXeon]

Said Sonar but meant radar...

[Macabe]

Said Sonar but meant radar...

 

It only lasts for 20-25 seconds. Recognize when you're spotted via radar and retreat then go back after 25 seconds.

[tooboku]

I think they want DDs in the fleet now instead of spotting up front. You really shouldn't be capping without a CA/CL right behind you anyway and the enemy DD always has support. You would do well to stick with the fleet. You're only supposed to be useful to everyone else anyway. DDs are there for the other ships. If you want to reap the rewards for something yourself, you should be playing another class. DDs have the lowest kills/death ratio and the lowest average damage. Cap XP is the only reason to play DD nowadays.

[DeutschyDesu]

Change your play, same fun potential as before if not more now that there's more counters. You'll adapt to the radar in time, and you'll have to since USN CAs are about to get them

[tooboku]

Yeah... throw out half of the bag of tricks that you've learned as a DD. WG doesn't want you using them. No more firing from smoke and they're trying to control the torp walls by forcing the DDs to stick closer to the CAs. You can't always launch when there are CAs crowding your space and blocking your lanes so they can launch their own torpedoes that don't have the range to reach the target... but that only balances out if people sail in straight lines and stay zoomed in the entire battle.

 

Switch captain to AFT and hope for fires to do your main damage. Torpedoes are just a scare tactic now and while they only hit stupid people, the game is trying to make stupidity less of a thing. Still spam corners but do so sparingly as they're not meant to hit anything. Don't waste your torps on traps. They're just there to slow some ships down and separate fleets so everyone else can hit citadels. Stay out of the capping soup where DDs go to die early without XP until you've eliminated the threat. The majority of torpedo kills now are on DDs getting caught in their own smoke or sailing full speed around someone else's smoke. Smoke is the only reliable way to hide torpedoes and it does backfire so never sit in your own smoke. They don't want people firing their guns from smoke anymore either. Hopefully you didn't take a lot of damage throughout the game because you will get spotted if you launch to kill. Torpedo kills that matter come later in the game when there's fewer planes and ships to spot them and targets have already taken damage. 5 Shimakaze torps to the broadside will not sink a Montana even with flooding - they will still complain about this. WG will listen to them. They will not listen to you. Everyone knows DDs are OP. There is no argument no matter what stats prove otherwise. The way acquisition works now, your only chance to hit from farther away is fortune telling and hoping there are some noobs in the game that are still trying to snipe cits on your Yamato. You might get lucky and ambush a T8 but that's only after you've eliminated the spotters.

[FleetAdmiral_Assassin]

I have to admit I like some of the recent changes. I play DDs just as often as I play anything else, but let's face it - they needed a hit or two from the nerf hammer. Being able to fire while completely invisible is OP. Period. It should never have been allowed in the first place. And for those complaining that radar / sonar makes their DDs useless... have you seen the firing range of the right DD? You can still sit outside their viewing range and spam a wall of torpedoes all day long without being seen unless there's a plane nearby.

[tooboku]

Being able to fire while completely invisible is OP. Period.

 

I would argue against this. It does take skill to do this. Some ships more than others for sure but overall without the chance for fire the actual HE hits don't do enough damage to ruin the day of a BB captain - CAs it hurts a bit but remember that as soon as you have a line of site on that DD, it is pretty much screwed. You can take out 80% of its health in one shot if you think about it and there's a higher chance for detonation on DDs too. Just take a Fubuki for example and give it some AFT. She's firing 12km max range and the shells take 10 seconds to reach so there is still some level of gunnery involved. With all the upgrades, you need only need to be 9.6km away to detect it when it does fire and that's not considering all the planes and and radars. Plus, back to the first point - the Fubuki is really relying on the chance for fire to do any damage that matters to larger ships. There are also counters for that like Preventative Maintenance which I still consider fair. I hit a Yamato with 33 HE rounds from my Shimakaze yesterday and not a single spark despite most of them hitting the superstructure because it went full stop to avoid my torpedoes. Call me a bad Shimakaze captain if you want, I'll take it, but the fact stands that there are effective counters for torp walls, stealth fire, and even getting hit square by a torpedo on the broadside. There is the fluke detonation even if it doesn't count as a detonation but overall a single torpedo doesn't have the same potential as single large caliber AP round. This brings the other point about the distance not being constant. Even if the DD has a higher top speed than a CA, when the DD is stealth firing it really needs to launch torpedoes to do damage that actually hurts. All the CA has to do is sail straight at the DD and it can catch up pretty well while it's facing the best direction to avoid torpedoes from that DD. Meanwhile that DD is going crazy hoping that an island or the edge of the map doesn't block its straight line to get away... because it doesn't take much to sink a DD. If you still want to call DDs OP, fine, but explain the balance in a straight up duel where the DD can hit the CA fifty times before the CA needs to be worried while the DD is gone in three good salvos or less. The torpedoes won't hit because you're gonna polish it of before it can close enough to guarantee a clean hit while you are hopefully smart enough to anticipate torpedoes and are angling yourself to properly deal with them. The DD doesn't have any other defense than its ability to conceal itself. Take that away and you have a German CA with crappy guns that takes citadel damage from every angle.

[PhonkEL]

Being able to fire while completely invisible is OP. Period.

Being able to one-shot enemy ships is OP.

Being able to perma-fire enemy BBs is OP.

Being able to torp/bomb enemy ships without a chance of retaliation is OP.

 

Do you want me to keep going?

 

Back to OP, I had a few radars on me today, and while it's annoying, I don't think it breaks DDs. What I don't understand is why they added it in the first place, considering DD stats aren't exactly through the roof. I guess they want to make cruisers more attractive, but it doesn't solve being citadeled for sneezing in the wrong direction.

 

[Suspect_Unlimited]

DD's have been in trouble for awhile now.

 

They changed the captain's skills/tiers, which hurt the DD's.  Then they added Radar and extended Hydroacoustic Search. 

As someone who drives DD's pretty much exclusively, and plays fairly aggressively, this has had a significant impact on my playing.

[GearaDoga]

DD's have been in trouble for awhile now.

 

They changed the captain's skills/tiers, which hurt the DD's.  Then they added Radar and extended Hydroacoustic Search. 

 

As someone who drives DD's pretty much exclusively, and plays fairly aggressively, this has had a significant impact on my playing.

 

Don't forget how they made torpedoes easier to spot...  then made them easier...  and easier.  And easier.  Easier, easier, easier, easier...........

 

It won't be long now before your DD just sprouts a giant neon sign and starts launching flares to ensure that everyone knows you've launched torpedoes the very INSTANT they hit the water...

[tooboku]

 everyone knows you've launched torpedoes the very INSTANT they hit the water...

 

the way air spotting mechanics work... this already is the case.

[TenguBlade]

https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/9/9f/Heavy_taunts05.wav?t=20110202160653

 

DD captains now get some sort of remote counter and they get pissed off.  Oh the irony...

[PhonkEL]

So... twice in less than a day that I got screwed by radar. Just now in hotspot we were trying to set up an ambush in the islands, all three destroyers got wiped even with smoke up. First half of the game all destroyers are gone in both teams (starting with 4 on each side). What remains? Cruisers.

 

Way to balance a game WG