World of Warships

[Borgholio]

Today was probably the best game I ever had. 7 Citadels (half of them doubles), 4 ships destroyed, and and a final match that involved me and one other BB facing 3 enemy BB and 1 cruiser...and wiping the floor with them all.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, after trudging through the horrid T3 and T4 German cruisers, I'm back at the glorious Konigsberg. And man, I missed this ship.

[Nephtys]

Murmansk truly is the dumbest ship in the world.
Tier 5 cruiser... 153k damage dealt.
I swear, it seems like most ships just go downtill from tier 5 onwards. And I don't see the point at all of German CLs when this monster exists, Omahas are only a teeny bit worse, and the next step is the cleveland.

[Thanas]

The Murmanks is the most overpowered ship in the entire game. If you are not getting high damages on it you are doing something very wrong. People who suck in other ships and have a below 40% winrate get winrates of up to 60% in it.

[Jub]

The Murmanks is the most overpowered ship in the entire game. If you are not getting high damages on it you are doing something very wrong. People who suck in other ships and have a below 40% winrate get winrates of up to 60% in it.

It's basically the last of the good cruisers, the Cleveland is also pretty good but the low range kind of hurts it, especially in the ranked mode where teams are 7 v 7 and you can't just fade back into the pack and let people change targets away from you. In ranks up to 10 (where you can only play T5 and T6 ships) it seems like the ships, in order of carrying a game go, Battleships -> Destroyers -> Aircraft Carriers -> Cruisers. Cruisers suffer because you'll see carriers maybe 1 out of 6 games and thus their AA tends to be wasted, plus smart teams will try to focus down Destroyers -> Cruisers -> Battleships just to knock out guns faster, so if teams can see you they focus you.

From my understanding, things get even worse for cruisers in ranked after you hit rank 10 and the tiers move to being exclusively 7 and 8. Carriers start to take off as well, but AA is still weak enough that a good carrier can often just ignore a cruiser that is even slightly out of position.

[Thanas]

The Atago is a beast in rank. T8 cruiser if played right are deadly.

And what you view as "good cruiser" I view as massively overpowered. When I can take on a full-health Kongo in a Phoenix and kill him something is wrong.

[Jub]

The Atago is a beast in rank. T8 cruiser if played right are deadly.

And what you view as "good cruiser" I view as massively overpowered. When I can take on a full-health Kongo in a Phoenix and kill him something is wrong.

It could be a playstyle thing, but I find that cruisers have a much harsher skill to results curve than the other classes.

Take a Destroyer, with the two cap system you can have an impact by forming a wolf pack with another destroyer (it's even better if you can send a group of 3) and grabbing the enemy's cap. When they come in to chase you away you start popping smoke and launching torps while getting out of dodge. If you can delay the cap you can sometimes swing the score by 75-100 points, if you take it that can easily become a 200 point swing as you take pot shots and keep them from capping.

The Battleship is even more forgiving. Your only job is to group up with the bulk of your team and focus fire the best target that comes into your range. One decent volley can take half a cruisers health taking 50% or more of their guns out of the fight while they flee. You can say that cruisers shouldn't be leading the charge, but somebody needs to take your teams cap and smart DD's tend to harass the enemy cap leaving taking you cap to the cruisers which end up in front. The alternative is that your team waits for a fast BB to cap, but that can lead to situations where you start the game behind on points.

The other thing is when you look at global win rates cruisers aren't in a great place from T7 to T9. They helped the T9 and 10s (along with the Atago) by letting them repair health, and this worked wonders for the capstone ships, but the CAs in the game with their 203mm guns don't really have a role. They can't solo a Battleship without having RNG on their side, their slow turrets and reload speeds make them worse tier for tier at killing Destroyers than they were in the T4 to T6 range, and they're often too slow to catch a carrier. So they get stuck babysitting Battleships and hoping to get pot shots in while other classes get to be much more in charge of the game's flow.

Maybe the meta is different on the EU server, I'm presuming that you play there, or we have very different playstyles and views of what makes a ship good.

[Thanas]

I disagree with that. Cruisers are the easiest to play and designed that way. CV and DDs are the hardest to play. BB is somewhere in the middle.

You can see that cruisers are easy to play in the way winrates plummet when you need to learn how to angle properly and can't just show broadside under 16km. This is for US CAs when you get to the Pensacola. Cleveland is way too hard to citadel, which is why they will bump it up to T8 in spring, which is a much better place for it.

[Jub]

I disagree with that. Cruisers are the easiest to play and designed that way. CV and DDs are the hardest to play. BB is somewhere in the middle.

You can see that cruisers are easy to play in the way winrates plummet when you need to learn how to angle properly and can't just show broadside under 16km. This is for US CAs when you get to the Pensacola. Cleveland is way too hard to citadel, which is why they will bump it up to T8 in spring, which is a much better place for it.

I feel like cruisers are a trap class in that way. They feel easy to play, they can manage most roles kind of well, they're fast but often not fast enough to get way out ahead of your team. You even get confident because at levels 2-5 they're hands down the best ships in the game. Then you hit level 6 (IJN) or 7 (USN) and they start to get bigger, slower, and heavier all while battleships, carriers, and destroyers get faster and more nimble. That extra armor even means that those 16" AP shells that used to pass right through are arming and hit for full damage when they didn't before.

The switch from faster firing 6" to slower firing 8" guns also tends to result in a major DPS drop. The extra damage from the 8" AP rounds really only applies to other cruisers and carriers. Against battleships, destroyers, and some cruisers simply hosing them down with a larger volume of 6" HE rounds will light more fires and thus cause more damage. If they fixed this CAs would probably catch up a lot in terms of balance with CLs, but cruisers as a whole would need a buff.

There's also the fact that the IJN and KM simply outclass the US cruisers in terms of raw stats with the IJN generally being considered the strongest. The argument that the USN gets the best AA is kind of moot when the other nations still get the AA cool down and that's really all that matters in terms of wrecking a carriers drop. IMO cruisers need the most work out of any class in the game now that battleship AP is back to working correctly.

[Jub]

Ghetto Edit: CLs also benefit from the range and ROF buffs from the commander skills Basic Firing Training and Advanced Firing Training. This means that 155mm guns get an even larger DPS increase over 203mm guns.

[Borgholio]

Due to the 3x experience weekend, I ended up starting and playing several different ship classes. While I still love my battleships, I have to say I find cruisers to be more exciting. Higher rates of fire means I'm not sitting for 30 seconds waiting for a reload, higher speed and maneuverability, and ability to take out enemy destroyers easier than in a BB. They really are fun to play.

[Vendetta]

Ghetto Edit: CLs also benefit from the range and ROF buffs from the commander skills Basic Firing Training and Advanced Firing Training. This means that 155mm guns get an even larger DPS increase over 203mm guns.

They've changed that now. Those skills now only affect secondary batteries and AA, they no longer affect main battery guns irrespective of caliber.

[Jub]

Ghetto Edit: CLs also benefit from the range and ROF buffs from the commander skills Basic Firing Training and Advanced Firing Training. This means that 155mm guns get an even larger DPS increase over 203mm guns.

They've changed that now. Those skills now only affect secondary batteries and AA, they no longer affect main battery guns irrespective of caliber.

I could have sworn they still did, but I haven't checked the stats on my ships recently.

[Jub]

I just confirmed that Basic Firing Training does affect the reload time of 155mm and smaller main batteries. With a zero skill commander, the Cleveland's guns fire 7.5 rounds per minute and with a commander with the skill it is 8.3 rounds per minute. I'm two points away from being able to test the advanced firing training, but I'd rather take Demolition Expert for that ship anyway.

[Vendetta]

Does it actually affect it in game not just the stat screen.

It's not supposed to any more, but I guess they might not have fixed it properly. Wargaming gonna Wargaming and all.

[Jub]

Does it actually affect it in game not just the stat screen.

It's not supposed to any more, but I guess they might not have fixed it properly. Wargaming gonna Wargaming and all.

As nears as I can tell they tested a nerf to these skills on a test server but never implemented the changes on any live servers. They even removed the text that implied these skills only work with secondaries/AA mounts.

[Thanas]

That is correct.

I still think that cruisers are fine as they are, even at higher tiers. I think what is wrecking the game at higher tiers are the high repair costs. They should really adjust those and make playing cruisers more economically viable so that people will actually play them like screening vessels instead of stealthy mini-BBs.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I haven't gotten past T6 yet myself (nearly to Nagato though) so I can't speak from experience on the high-tier play...

But all the evidence I've seen indicates it's worse than Tanks ever was. At least there, if you don't play like a total idiot, you can at least break even at T9. T10 it hits where it's very difficult to do so, but still technically feasible. With Warships, all I've seen is that no matter how good you play, if you take enough damage it's going to be a loss with credits. Even with prems to grind for money.

[Thanas]

If I play my Yamato or Montana I will - even with premium - only break even if I have a good game. Fail and get sunk? Have fun paying a 260-400k repair bill.

[Nephtys]

The Pensacola is disgusting. It's awful stock.

What gets it isn't the fact that you're in a torpedoless Phoenix hull at tier 7 that also lost all of it's rudder responsiveness or accelleration. Or that it's guns are battleship traverse speed and slower firing. Or that you're somewhat less maneuverable than the Cleveland.

It's the godawful range that's beaten by some Tier 3/4s combined with a sighting range that's actually worse than some battleships? How can you possibly do well in a ship that doesn't really have more firepower, yet is outranged by every foe it comes across and is more fragile to boot?

[Vendetta]

Pensacola does get better with upgrades though.

I have everything but the top gun upgrade, and it can horribly mince either other destroyers or cruisers. (It's actually the hull upgrade that adds the extra two guns as well).

Not as good as Myoko though, which has the same number of guns, but fires them faster, turns them faster, gets more AP damage from them and has torpedoes and has an extra 3km stealth zone.

[Jub]

Pensacola does get better with upgrades though.

I have everything but the top gun upgrade, and it can horribly mince either other destroyers or cruisers. (It's actually the hull upgrade that adds the extra two guns as well).

Not as good as Myoko though, which has the same number of guns, but fires them faster, turns them faster, gets more AP damage from them and has torpedoes and has an extra 3km stealth zone.

That difference between the Pepiscola and the Myoko is what WG likes to call 'game balance'.

[Vendetta]

No, "balance" is when a Nagato blats you from 14km away and knocks 85% of your health off with a single salvo.

[Thanas]

No, "balance" is when a Nagato blats you from 14km away and knocks 85% of your health off with a single salvo.

If you are going broadside at 14km you deserve to get blasted.

Seriously, you are complaining about the only way a BB can reliably inflict damage on cruisers. What do you want, BBs asking kindly if they can damage you?

[Thanas]

Meanwhile, what I have been up to the past few weeks:

The Amagi is my favourite BB to play. It is hard to master, but once you always look out for threats, constantly change speed and course as well as always angle your armour, it beats every other BB (except for Yamato) with its crazy combination of accuracy, top speed and its very, very narrow hull. I can't count the number of times I have been called a speed hacker by US BB drivers who - with their bad dispersion - miss me when I put my stern towards them and run while constantly switching course to fire at them. My best matches so far have been all in an Amagi and I am seriously contemplating to only play her full time from now on.


My best match in an Amagi.


Did more damage in this match, but got less kills.


My third-best match in an Amagi.

After playing a lot of other ships to get the credits, I could finally do this:


She is a beauty.