World of Warships

[Covenant]

That sounds pretty miserable. I was trying to stay entirely on the US line for all my vessels (expecting to see some splits that would benefit such an action) but knowing that my BB's are gonna be trash, my DD's basically obsolete at the level I already have them, and essentially topped out on cruiser usefulness now that I have the Cleaver in pocket?

Pretty depressing! One would think the top tier ships would see the MOST variety, to keep it interesting once you get there.

[Vendetta]

So what are, in reality, the ships with the greatest longevity? Aside from collecting XP on an Elite T5 for fun that is. Presumably the carriers, battleships and cruisers are all good, but it seems like BB's suffer a bit from economy. Do the T10 cruisers end up being good?

Cruisers have a hard time right now, because in higher tier games you can just be ended by a capable battleship, frequently with a single salvo if he gets a citpen. Sure you'll live, but you'll lose 3/4 of your hitpoints in one go and won't be able to do much for the rest of the game.

Cruisers really need to get the Repair Party consumable earlier, possibly tier 6 or 7 to be able to get back into the game. Possibly also a HP buff.

[Thanas]

Cruisers have a hard time right now, because in higher tier games you can just be ended by a capable battleship, frequently with a single salvo if he gets a citpen. Sure you'll live, but you'll lose 3/4 of your hitpoints in one go and won't be able to do much for the rest of the game.

Cruisers really need to get the Repair Party consumable earlier, possibly tier 6 or 7 to be able to get back into the game. Possibly also a HP buff.

Cruisers are fucked by one thing right now: Tirpitz. That thing just eats cruisers for breakfast. Once the Tirpitz volume goes down they will have a much better time IMO. That being said, the only way the cruisers should get a repair ability and Health buff if the fire chance is drastically decreased. Otherwise there will be no point in playing a BB.

I mean, I already know a cruiser is going to set me on fire with at least 1 out of three salvos. If you give them an HP buff before Tier VIII, they will be even more imbalanced than some cruisers (Omaha, Cleveland) already are.

That sounds pretty miserable. I was trying to stay entirely on the US line for all my vessels (expecting to see some splits that would benefit such an action) but knowing that my BB's are gonna be trash, my DD's basically obsolete at the level I already have them, and essentially topped out on cruiser usefulness now that I have the Cleaver in pocket?

Pretty depressing! One would think the top tier ships would see the MOST variety, to keep it interesting once you get there.

Wargaming makes top tier less fun to play by design so that people don't play them that much. Only BBs and CVs are more fun to play at higher levels than before - and even there are limits. The Montana for example is less fun to play than the Iowa.

Here are my preliminary rankings of BBS: (Fun in bold, italics those I haven't gotten yet)

USA:
South Carolina - trash
Wyoming - trash
New York - mediocre
New Mexico - a good allrounder, though suffers from lack of turret protection
Colorado - worst trash in the US line
North Carolina: FUN. King of AA and torpedo avoidance IMO
Iowa: EVEN MORE FUN. AA is excellent, speed is great, armor scheme is godly.
Montana - trash. You always have to face front, so what good is the extra firepower? You essentially sacrifice 5 knots for ~ 1/5th more hitpoints. Meanwhile you are asked to counter the Yamato, which just shits on you from any angle. And the repair costs mean any game where you get less than two kills worth of damage will be a loss of money if you get sunk.

Japan:
Kawachi - trash
Myogi - mediocre
Kongo - Fun
Fuso - I thought she was the best BB in the game until...
Nagato - everything the Colorado should be - excellent brawler, sniper and decent armor. My win rate in ranked play with her was 72%.
Amagi - great speed, but apparently not good armor
Izumo - the Colorado of Japan. Trash.
Yamato - Monster.

Haven't played the last three Japanese BBs yet, so can't comment on them, so I put up the consensus I've gotten from other players...but so far, my advice is if you want to play fun BBs that actually do something on the battlefield...play the Japanese line. Especially the Fuso and Nagato rule all of their US counterparts if you know how to angle and drive them.

[Covenant]

If the top of the tier is less fun than the lower ones (to discourage over-play) then why gimp the economy so badly? It seems like they're making a few strange choices here. I can either keep playing a ship I enjoy, without advancing, or advance and play ships I don't enjoy.

But without advancing, what is there really to achieve? I suppose ship collection is not entirely to the point of the game, but it seems odd that things about T9 or T10 are just exhibition play. I suppose that's the way a lot of games go in either case. It just seems very odd. I get credits and XP and such but without spending real money I can't even transfer that XP to getting other ships. Makes it feel really odd... but I guess that's just the nature of the beast. I win more than I lose by about 10% or so, but I don't feel like I'm getting better as much as I feel like I keep having to re-learn things as I get a new ship...

...but if you're not advancing, then what good are the credits and XP?

Just gave myself "what is the point of it all" existential malaise.

[Thanas]

If the top of the tier is less fun than the lower ones (to discourage over-play) then why gimp the economy so badly? It seems like they're making a few strange choices here. I can either keep playing a ship I enjoy, without advancing, or advance and play ships I don't enjoy.

Wargaming wants you to buy premium and flags to be able to make a profit at higher ships. With that you can still advance. Without it it gets really hard.

Just gave myself "what is the point of it all" existential malaise.

I don't know, I still feel proud about having gotten my Montana even though I don't play her.

[Skywalker_T-65]

The main reason I play- and why I'm really looking forward to the German BBs -is for the fun of seeing these ships and driving them. It's not so much about the progression for me, though there is still the sense of achievement to be had.

That's just me though.

[Covenant]

It's an achievement to be sure. But it seems like the fun of playing is caught up in a lot of other factors. Personally I would also really like if there were better indicators (colors on the hull waterline) or bigger nation flags to help me visually distinguish the different ships from each other.

I think it would be nice if the XP/Credit thing didn't work exactly the way it does. I think it'd be nice to bring in those show-off ships (montana, etc) for fun even if they are hideously expensive and nowhere even remotely profitable. I like the idea of making money in "competition" ships so that I can blow it on a flashy Montana game or something. Having one of those flashy players each game would be a fun way to focus attention on a strategic goal ("Get the Yamato!") that is not nominally there. But because of the way tiers work I rarely see anything too fancy in my competition ships, which is fine, but it also makes my credit income basically pointless, since the only things that really require it are the top-tier ships which nobody seems to like much anyway.

Like, the only reason to play past a nominally profitable tier (T7 Cleveland or whatnot) seems to be to get to a T8, T9, or T10 ship, since there's no economic benefits to playing lower tiers... at least none that I see. It's not like you get more bonus gold XP (which would be a good reason to play it, to let me advance up other tech trees as a result of spending credits to deploy Montana). But because the T10 ships are rarely "as fun" to play it seems like you get stuck with a situation where the "fun and unprofitable" ships are the T8 and T9 vessels. But if there's a fun T7 option then... why bother?

Is T7 the true heart of the game? Where you can make financial profits (which would be necessary to play T8 or T9 anyway) but where you also can pick from ships that are actually fun? Do you "win" the game at T7, with everything else just being extraneous pay-for DLC, essentially?

[Thanas]

Tier V-VIII are the heart of the game IMO for Cruisers and BBs.

Like, the only reason to play past a nominally profitable tier (T7 Cleveland or whatnot) seems to be to get to a T8, T9, or T10 ship, since there's no economic benefits to playing lower tiers... at least none that I see. It's not like you get more bonus gold XP (which would be a good reason to play it, to let me advance up other tech trees as a result of spending credits to deploy Montana). But because the T10 ships are rarely "as fun" to play it seems like you get stuck with a situation where the "fun and unprofitable" ships are the T8 and T9 vessels. But if there's a fun T7 option then... why bother?

The Yamato is a lot of fun allegedly. I can believe that as she is the queen of all BBs. The Iowa is a lot of fun. Just hard to make a grindable profit in. I mean, usually I break even or get 50k profits, but that is no way to grind for a Tier X. I guess once I get the Yamato I will play premium ships only to get a cash reserve for when the next BB line arrives.

[Covenant]

Isn't this a very strange paradigm though? This looks like the kind of setup which would encourage matchmaking which puts T6-T9 all together in the same clump to kinda simulate actual fleets, but that does not appear to be the case.

[Thanas]

Isn't this a very strange paradigm though? This looks like the kind of setup which would encourage matchmaking which puts T6-T9 all together in the same clump to kinda simulate actual fleets, but that does not appear to be the case.

Well, they decided to put Tier VI and VII in ranked play. Which, despite everybody acting like assholes, is a good development.

I think your idea of 1 Tier X as the fleet flagship and the lower Tiers surrounding it is great.

I also think a lot of other playmodes need to get there. Like convoy escort (one side has to defend a slow group of freighters), invasion cover (same thing only with beaches and islands) or Full fleet action (30 or so players on each side).

[Vendetta]

If the top of the tier is less fun than the lower ones (to discourage over-play) then why gimp the economy so badly? It seems like they're making a few strange choices here. I can either keep playing a ship I enjoy, without advancing, or advance and play ships I don't enjoy.

Top tier ships are almost certainly not intentionally less fun than others. I mean plenty of top tier vehicles in WoT were loads of fun to drive.

However, despite the game being officially out of open beta, WoWs still needs a lot of work. That should have been obvious when it launched with a Standard Battle mode that ended up in draws a ridiculous amount of the time which had to be redesigned completely (with redesigns still ongoing for the other battle modes, encounter is going to get a shakeup as well with multiple "zones" within the cap circle giving more cap points the closer to the centre of it you are).

So I suspect that the top tier vehicles are going to get several rounds of rebalancing before they're actually right.

[Thanas]

This video does a good job showing why high tier Cruisers aren't that great.

I mean, the guy is in the ship with the highest AA DPS in the whole game, does nothing wrong and then gets deleted by the Midway at will. But players have demanded better AA and Wargaming has done shit so no chance that will ever happen. It did show how vulnerable BBs are to fires and long-range cruiser guns.

Still I would prefer playing a BB on the top tiers IMO.

[darthkommandant]

Decided to level up my American Ships for a change. Got the South Carolina. Good god is she slow. The guns arnt that good either.

[Borgholio]

Decided to level up my American Ships for a change. Got the South Carolina. Good god is she slow. The guns arnt that good either.

Well that's expected for the very first US Dreadnought. Wait until you get to the New Mexico.

[Nephtys]

Could be worse. They're adding Mikasa fairly soon, for the game's first pre-dreadnaught. Enjoy two turrets with four guns total, and a billion secondaries that only fire to 3km!

The South Carolina is also, sadly, substantially more accurate and longer ranged than the Kawachi.

[Vendetta]

At least the Mikasa is tier 2 and will sometimes have games where St. Louis' don't rain shit on it for days.

[Borgholio]

Could be worse. They're adding Mikasa fairly soon, for the game's first pre-dreadnaught. Enjoy two turrets with four guns total, and a billion secondaries that only fire to 3km!

Sounds like the St Louis-class cruiser. That thing only has a range of 8 or 9km but within that range it's a death machine.

[Vendetta]

Trouble is, the Mikasa won't have control of its 6" guns because they're implemented as secondaries, even though pre-Dreadnoughts were intended to use all their guns as "main" combat weapons (which was actually bad, the smoke and splash of the fast firing 6" guns interfered with accurately guiding the 12" guns onto the target, hence why HMS Dreadnought was designed to prioritise the larger guns only), so all she'll have is four 12" guns instead of four 12" and seven 6" per side.

And the traverse of her turrets is going to be really limited by her superstructure, meaning she needs to show most of her broadside to actually get all four guns on one target, so in tier 3 matches she'll be horribly monstered by other BBs if they can get to her before a St. Louis does with its infinite amount of guns.

[Borgholio]

Yeah the pre-dreadnought design had it's limitations. I think it'd make more sense to either have a separate branch of pre-dreads that are mainly matched with each other, or have them set as the tier 1s and 2s and boost the other ships up to higher tiers.

[Thanas]

Or we could simply acknowledge that Mikasa is another cash cow for wargaming designed to sucker people into thinking it is good when in fact a St Louis will laugh at it every day.

[Thanas]

BTW just got the Amagi and she is one awesome sexy ship.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Amagi is one of the ships I'm looking forward to the most, to be honest.

[Thanas]

Amagi is one of the ships I'm looking forward to the most, to be honest.

She is just so elegant and deadly.

BTW, just got the Marblehead from the reddit contest. Premium Ship, basically the American Murmansk. She is awesome.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I've seen a couple of those around. Don't have one myself though- not even a stock Omaha actually, just Murmansk.

Currently, I'm trying for that 'four kills lets you test one of the new ships' thing they're doing right now. Never realized how frustrating getting 4+ kills could be. I really want the Königsberg though.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I can't believe it took the Furutaka to pull off the 4 kills but...

Ain't she a beauty?