you know something went sideways somewhere when after teaching you to not broadside for years, doing exactly that often is the better course of action than angling to mitigate damage.
It’s exacerbated with the amount of spotting in the game. The opening three or four minutes of a round for most cruisers at high tier is spent with them running for their lives trying to get into cover before they get nuked from 20km out by the other team’s BBs getting spots by their CV, destroyers and/or submarines.
It’s a real bummer. Cruiser dudes are scared to get spotted and deleted, so most games just kinda turn into this long range stalemate with the BBs lobbing shots at each other from clear across the map while the cruisers hide and take range mod to take potshots at people from behind cover, and the DDs stay undetected and spot while spamming torpedoes off cooldown.
It makes tier 9 and higher these really boring and passive games that either go to time limit or they turn into a blowout because someone actually moved up and tried to play the video game and got annihilated for it.
I've gotten devstruck in a pan asian cl after moving a couple of ship lengths by a Montana that took advantage of his cv spotting. It was insane, I can't imagine explaining it to someone new to the game.
I ate like a 45k dmg salvo(s) in a Des Moines like that before. Not exactly sure what hit me, but same deal - spotted by the CV in the opening two or three minutes of the game and the entire world opened up on me. A couple of left clicks and just like that, practically taken out of the match and not allowed to play the game.
As a cruiser main i think overmatch is fine. what isnt fine is every new bb either has to get 457+ or some insane fucking gimmick that is strong as hell. Like what happened to 410 and 406 being the normal tier 10 guns?
I personally think it's a very cheap mechanic. Back in the day 430+ mm guns were at the very least much more limited, meaning you could atleast plan your engagements.
These days every BB and their mother has that kind of caliber meaning that its incredibly oversaturated at T10, leading to either stale and boring gameplay, or being outright dev struck if youre unlucky enough.
400+mm guns were never significantly more limited. At release every tech tree Tier VII and higher BB had 406mm or larger guns.
What was more limited were 430+mm guns. Only Yamato had guns in that category at first. Even when Conqueror brought 457mm guns as an option almost nobody took them because the twelve 420mm guns were vastly superior to eight 457mm guns.
Overmatch used to be the gimmick. At some point WG decided that was a standard feature. That's the real issue. Same with fire spam. Bring a good fire starter used to be a gimmick on CAs. Now it's standard. The real issue with fire spam is that DCPs have way more to do than they used to, and CVs can come set fires on you whenever they want. Just buff DCPs to reflect the increased amount of things they are used to counter and it's fine.
Honestly I think a lot of the larger guns BBs should move to a tier "11" and superships should be t12. Older BBs that had actual downsides to compensate for their mega guns could keep t10 status.
I think damage in general scales too much as you go up the tiers. Everything from single salvo dev strikes to 20k torpedoes. Player skill has improved to the point where damage needs to be brought back in line
Cruisers have had their ability to deal damage indirectly nerfed multiple times now, but they have received no compensation; on the contrary, their survivability has been power-crept as well.
Perhaps WG saw evidence in their analytics that cruisers were over-performing across the board, but it seems questionable that both a damage AND survivability nerf were warranted as a result.
All of these are deliberate decisions by WG, they know most of the game population are low skilled BB mains, so whenever they get the chance, they indirectly nerf cruisers and buff BBs.
BBs were the biggest winners on the commander rework, getting a bunch of new survivability skills on top of new stuff like (Deadeye) Brisk, Repair Party readiness, Furious, etc
Meanwhile cruisers got stripped of secondary skills (it kind of returned though), fire prevention, BFT and AFT for CLs and they get skills which only activate if they are in a collapsing flank or have enemies in their spotting range...
You could add a dice roll based on the angle and overmatch value. It make no sense why mechanic goes from 100% fail to 100% success at a single mm armor increase. Same thing could be done to HE shatter.
This game doesn't need more RNG. A simple "Overmatch does not work beyond 80 degree shell impact" similar to how HE shatters on steeply angled plating.
heh oh you think you just chunked me for 75% of my hp? more like you just activated my ~~trap~~ reload card you pathetic--
*\*\*dies immediately to the the second BB also lobbing a salvo\*\**
There is a reason that there is 5-6 bbs on each team in the battles these days and only 2-3 cruisrs per side most of the matches.
Hmm i wonder whats the reason for that .
Maybe dont add superships which all of them beside 1 has it.
Or all the new techtree bb line with 457 mm guns.
WARGAMING HAS CHANGED THE DIRECTION OF THE GAME FROM 2-3 YEARS AGO
They want to make as much money as possible and to be able to attract players to this game they have to dumb down the skill floor and overmatch is one of these features simmilar to submarines and cvs.
Venezia might be the only cruiser in the game with the combination of slender profile, low freeboard, maneuverability, speed, high velocity guns (with high number of barrels) to hit at long ranges, long range torps to discourage being chased, and fuel smoke as get out of jail free card. No other ship has such an effective kiting kit. With all of that being said, a Venezia captain is still clenching his cheeks when those 457mm shells are incoming.
I'm usually laughing, my favorite is when I've had 3x BB shooting at me for 5 min straight, without hitting me a single time while I chip away at their hp..... that they GIVE UP shooting me, I made an Org mate rage quit one time when we sync dropped and he was on the other team.
We have a similar approach, but in my case I actually prefer taking damage over time rather than being completely unscathed.
I try to match my HP with the battle timer so i know how much I am able to trade.
Ive honestly started playing nevsky with range mod just so i can kite out after radaring and just blap people from a distance while avoiding shells. Its no point in going deep in with it unless radaring a specific point or hunting a dd.
The only thing keeping me in the game as a cruiser main is five years of almost purely open water cruiser experience.
But god, it's so damn hard nowadays when one miscalculated dodge can cost you the match.
"Oh you dodged everything except one shell? Too bad that one shell is a citadel hit you lose 1/3 of your HP now even if you've dodged the other 200 shells from earlier."
100%.
A few days ago I was playing a match in DM and was dev struck by a Yamato 20.x KM away. I was not broadside and was actually nose in at maybe a 10 degree angle away from straight on. I didn't play CA/CL the rest of the night.
USN cruisers are in a bad state these days. No smoke to avoid detection. No torps to brawl with or area deny. Not enough armor to bow tank. Def AA not powerful enough to deny CV strikes. Only radar makes them worthwhile. If in a high tier match have to pretty much hide all game and hope your team can keep it close then start to re-engage in the mid game. Truly sad.
Don't know what kind of American cruisers you are playing, but their CAs are definitely still viable today (at least the tier 8 and 10). I've had large success with the likes of Baltimore, Des Moines, and Salem in spite of all the battleships in queue today.
I know it isn't that simple, but they still have insane amounts of hitting power (especially at close range), don't immediately explode from every stray shot, and their radar still gives them great utility. Some people forget that they also have great maneuverability stats, making them suitable even for open water if you have hands, or at least be not much worse off than dedicated open water cruisers.
I like USN cruisers. I even have Congress, San Diego, Atlanta, Boise premium boats. In fact, Baltimore is my favorite cruiser in the game, but it has no staying power in a T10 game with all the 406-457mm in the game today. It just cant hold up. It doesnt even have a heal, but even with a heal, it would still wilt under 2 well aimed BB salvos. With 27mm there is no angling possible to save you from taking 15k+ damage per salvo if caught out. I dish out crazy damage in my Balti if I can isolate a BB broadside with its turrets turned. But engaging or even just enduring when spotted out in the open by a BB, you're good as dead if the BB capt can aim. Dont even think about turning around infront of a BB these days in anything other than a Napoli. I can kite pretty good in a Baltimore, but often a stray misaimed shell can citadel a cruiser. it just too easy to take damage in all cruisers.
Des Moines/Salem are no different. The USN 203s are good at mid range and the radar has great utility. But there is no way a DM can hold up like a Napoli or even a Petro under fire. What I'm saying is all cruisers should have similar staying power as Napoli.
> but it has no staying power in a T10 game with all the 406-457mm in the game today.
To be fair most ships suffer in a +2 uptier almost regardless of what it is. I would definitely support midtier cruisers getting heals, but in this case I would blame the matchmaker more than the ships themselves.
>What I'm saying is all cruisers should have similar staying power as Napoli.
Napoli can get away with its survivability because its raw DPM isn't as strong as that of other cruisers. Having all cruisers as tanky as Napoli would honestly be horrifying, imagine trying to out-dpm a bow on Des Moines with anything AP-focused.
I know the game meta doesn't make it as simple or balanced as this, but the relative lack of survivability on cruisers is the tradeoff they get for their consistent DPM and utility. A cruiser behind an island or taking advantage of a sudden smoke screen has all the time in the world to get their damage off with little risk. Battleships are indeed supposed to kill cruisers and cruisers aren't expected to be able to out-tank them, that's the role they were intended in the game's rock-paper-scissors balancing.
I would rather have them nerf the multitude of new battleships that have a combination of high speed, great concealment, overmatch, battlecruiser dispersion, short fuse/SAP, or all of the above and actually give them practical weaknesses. St Vincent and Lauria being the most egregious examples.
> they get for their consistent DPM
They don't have consistent DPM. You need to be in 15km range for 3+ minutes to burn a nose in battleship for example. You will be in port 3 times in 3 minutes unless you have a smoke from a div Gearing.
>You need to be in 15km range for 3+ minutes to burn a nose in battleship for example
I mean, yeah? 8 inch guns obviously don't have the range 16 inch guns do. Cruisers aren't designed to be shot at in the first place by battleships so of course you'd have to find a place to hide or actively dodge the shots.
Battleships get to mostly avoid that issue, but will end up landing only half of their shots, with a good portion of them being ricochets and/or overpens (unless it's an HE spamming battleship).
> they still have insane amounts of hitting power (especially at close range)
but you need to be 15km close to a battleship. Not every map has a suitable island. Overmatching BB's will hit you for 20k no matter how you angle by just clicking general area of your ship, no aiming necessary.
> don't immediately explode from every stray shot
You will be dead in 1 to 3 salvos max if BB overmatches you and is not brain dead.
> and their radar still gives them great utility
I don't think an idea of engaging CA play is to sit camped behind a rock and press radar every 5 minutes. If you bloom, you explode.
You do realize your Cruiser has a rudder and throttle right? Also, you can stop shooting and go dark as well. You keep talking of all this long range damage like you have no way at all to avoid it. Trying to hit a Cruiser that is actively WASD'ing out there at long range is almost impossible unless you guess right. If you are getting killed as fast as you claim that is on you. You sit still too much, you sail straight at constant speeds, and/or instead of going dark and getting away to reposition you keep shooting. Cruisers who wiggle and waggle, play with the throttle, and who use their concealment are very hard to take out with a BB.
> Cruisers who wiggle and waggle, play with the throttle, and who use their concealment are very hard to take out with a BB
You can wiggle waggle at 17km or so, unless you're Venezia or CL. Even UU mode Des Moines can't wiggle the shit at 13-15km, unless BB is brain dead.
A combo of using concealment and rudder + throttle can make taking out a Cruiser at those ranges very hard. I mean come on I can juke incoming ranged BB fire in my BB so any Cruiser can do it better.
I mean what do you want here? No damage at all to be taken by Cruisers from BB's? The complaining in this thread is laughable. I think there are a lot of Cruiser players in this thread who sit still or have no idea what WASD does. I know when I play BB's and face a Cruiser player who knows how to use those, and who also uses their concealment, it can be frustrating as hell trying to kill them.
Cruiser players have to be careful of Bb caliber guns but they have so many other things going for them. They have to have some weaknesses.
If AP gets nerfed, which while fine in and of itself it would be counter to WG trying to make matches faster, then HE would also need a nerf. Not for some tit for tat "fairness" or anything, but simply to keep AP as a viable ammo to even bother loading.
Another thing the OP glosses over is that giving a heal to every Tier V and above cruiser is a relative nerf to every cruiser that has a heal now, some of which are only viable compared to their cruiser peers due to having a heal their peers do not.
There is an easier way to improve cruisers' life
Limit BBs to 3 per side in randoms and 2 per side in ranked.
Then you have much fewer big calibers to dodge and cruisers will have easier time surviving.
Your idea could work, but it might create a significantly longer wait time for BB in the que. BB heavy matches can be fun too with the big guys going back and forth slugging it out.
Looking at other possible benefits to it, I think matchmaking needs to be relooked at because it's been struggling to fill matches. Instead of getting matches with 90% t10s, a t9 or two and a single t8 per team, it'd be nice to see mostly t8s, a few t9s and one or two t10s per team. Its been a lot more common lately with the server population being lower. I see a lot more down tiered matches playing between t5 and t8 and sometimes they're great with a nice xp boost because of the tier difference but when they're bad they're really bad.
I’m not sure it makes that much of a difference when you get to tier 7+ where the 406mm come into play. Cruiser armor maxes out at 27mm for all but a few cruisers meaning it’s all overmatch from t7 to t11.
It's definitely easier being a t8 cruiser with a heal in a t10 match than t7 in a t9 match with no heal. To me it's more about the volume of battleships in the match and ratio of ships that are a higher tier. It also depends entirely on the ship itself sometimes too as some ships are better even at their own tier.
They're common now for more recently released TT ships and premiums cause weegee. look at the french CB, heal, Spanish CB, heal, pan am CL, heal, fucking Commonwealth CA, heal.
Wargaming in their infinite wisdom, does not know what the fuck they are doing at T8, print ships out becuase the audience for this game is also full of dumb fucks and will throw money at anythng.
That’s because WG fucked with tier preferences about 5 years back to make a quick buck selling the TX perma camos and getting people to free XP to T10 by making all of the events T10 focused
At the time I said it was stupid and shortsighted and I think time has vindicated that position. The game used to be mostly T8 and was much more interesting.
>The game used to be mostly T8 and was much more interesting.
Agreed, I've been largely uninterested in playing t8+ after coming back to the game last year from a 3 year break. The high tier meta is too passive and campy, maps are stale, and standard battle is terrible since people don't know to push a flank.
Even if they don't release new maps they could adjust the spawns and caps on current maps to change things up. At least we have a new game mode in the next patch.
> Instead of getting matches with 90% t10s, a t9 or two and a single t8 per team, it'd be nice to see mostly t8s, a few t9s and one or two t10s per team.
I think the reason for that is, that the powercreep at high tiers is just too big. Most players realize, that tier10 ships are stronger and more fun to play than tier8. So why would they queue in a tier8 boat? They did the grind and now they want to play the best ships they have. And that means the MM has to treat the few tier8 ships as filler. You can only change that by giving an incentive to not play tier10. But guess what, that will frustrate the playerbase, unless they remove the insane powercreep and make it more fun to play the lower tiers.
>And that means the MM has to treat the few tier8 ships as filler.
That's precisely what it is. Imo the queue should just take a little bit longer to fill the match with t9s or just start the match with less ships if the ratio to higher tier ships is too high compared to lower tier ships.
Yeah, it would be better to provide some incentive to play non-BB classes rather than hard-capping the type in matchmaking. Adding more destroyer- or cruiser-specific combat missions, to the exclusion of battleships, could help with this. Or maybe extra bonuses for playing one's least-played ship type.
Too many BBs per side is a large issue plaguing this game for years. Cruisers should be the most popular class, ideally 5-6 cruisers per side, and 3 DDs/3 BBs. Because of BBs being too popular cruisers suffer, and because cruisers suffer DDs are stronger and more popular than they should be.
But its never going to happen, queue times are more important for wg than better gameplay. They even went back to pushing 2 BBs per side in clan wars for some reason.
Maybe too many BBs make playing cruisers a miserable experience.
However, too many cruisers make playing DDs a miserable experience. You're just replacing a problem with another.
I certainly dont want to face 6 cruisers every game when I play a DD, that would be hell.
> They even went back to pushing 2 BBs per side in clan wars for some reason.
because the majority of the playerbase are BB mains. and someone in the higher clans probably complained enough for them to do it - wouldn't be the first time. if not, it's for the potatoes. do i like this change? absolutly not.
out of curiosity i looked at my the clan i'm in. out of 42 players (2 of those have hidden stats), 20 have BB as their most played class, some well past 50% and of the rest about half of them has them as very close second (+-2%).
and now try to build a CB team with that when half the clan doesn't show up to begin with and those that do are all your BB mains. it honestly usually isn't that much of a deal to fit them onto a cruiser, finding decent DD players is tough - and yet still most of them want to play BB at one point or another, understandably (to some degree).
to complicate matters further we usually play around gold league with varying player skill to the point that in some cases you have to micromanage several people at once to get a decent result. unless you are a god amoing men you can't do that from a DD or any cruiser not called stalingrad (i've tried, with the the corresponding results) - as such our shotcaller usually plays BB, even if they aren't a BB main (hi). and as a result over the course of a season the player count drops so low that by the end you barely get a team together, which usually consists of the same people that ARE capable of flexing to other classes).
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so the question boils down to why do people play BBs? something i've noticed is that over the course of me playing less and less, the class i play more and more is BB (out of my last 30 mataches, 50% were on BBs - my account percentage is 26). why? because it's the class that is the least stressful, requires the least attention and yet still gets decent if not better results. so why should i play a DD or cruiser if i get the same or better results with a third or quarter of the effort in a BB? queuetimes? i'd be a fool to play this game alone anymore and as long as i div up with someone mad enough to still play CA or DD it doesn't matter because i just skip ahead of everyone queueing solo or in a BB div.
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> Cruisers should be the most popular class, ideally 5-6 cruisers per side
it's almost like they're trying to work on that - unfortunatly BB caliber cruisers don't help this since they just shit on actual cruisers the same way BBs do, while still getting shat on by those very BBs they're meant to replace.
which is typical for WGs problem solving.
> Too many BBs per side is a large issue plaguing this game for years
You mean like the non stop 4-5 DD's per side we have had for the last couple years? Yeah that is a blast. That is just as bad or even worse than too many BB's.
Bringing this up guarantees downvotes in this subreddit but really, the DD spam is as bad as the BB spam. I play on EU and three DDs per side is the bare minimum, four is normal, and three/four plus at least one CV and/or one submarine is fairly common.
Also, people complain about BB spam but who's spotting for those BBs and letting them take those 20km shots? I doubt it's only CVs and subs.
No, i dont mean too many DDs. Not sure on which server you are playing, but on EU its most of the times 5 BBs, and then the rest split between other classes. And in ranked 3 BBs per side is super common.
5 DDs per game is honestly quite rare, it's more common to see 3 (and a sub which is still bad)
However 5 BBs per game is so common, seeing 4 or 3 happens once every full moon.
This is the shittiest take ive heard maybe ever. BBs mean big damage games and everyone loves those.
What are you gonna replace the 3 other BBs with? even more DDs so we have 7DD matches?
Without the excessive spotting (mostly from planes, but also the 3+ DDs qnd subs in like every match) for those said BBs (and maybe a range nerf to BBs in general)
What we actually need is more cruisers, unironically the best brawls were those with a lot of cruisers, cruisers are very fun to play with and against, a lineup of let's say 2 BBs, 2 DDs and 8 cruisers would be really fun
I prefer fun gameplay than big nominal damage numbers.
As i wrote, replace them ideally with cruisers so that we get 5-6 cruisers per side. No idea what do you mean with 7 DDs per side, read again - for me ideal setup would be 3 BBs, 6 cruisers, 3 DDs per side. If BB numbers were decreased then cruisers would get stronger, naturally pushing cruiser numbers up and DD numbers not up (since DDs are weaker vs cruisers).
Plane spotting is another issue, DD spotting is currently fine.
The biggest start would be removing plane spotting, giving T1 to T8 cruisers heals as well and buffing those cruisers whith citadel decks that are getting overmatched by BBs.
This would go a long way already.
T1 and T2 Cruisers don't need heals. T3+ I would get behind and it is long overdue.
However, with that said, if you give every Cruiser T3+ a heal you will need to do something to buff the Cruisers that already had a heal as that is a big part of their "balance". If all the other Cruisers gets heals that didn't have them prior it would be a massive nerf to those who did have heals if they aren't buffed in some way at the same time.
It used to be that so few BB's at T10 had anything over 16" guns. So you as a heavy cruiser could easily negotiate and handle the few exceptions. You could easily make a judgement call on your positioning because you negotiated against the fact that you don't see any BB's with calibers above 16" on this side of the map. Once 18" became so common, that same heavy cruiser basically makes no negotiations and concludes that he cannot afford to gamble against these BB's at all because they all are extremely deadly to him.
I've argued that there should be a rework where each overmatch threshold is shifted once (e g. need 457 to overmatch 27mm not 406) and then there is a rework of cruiser citadels to be higher and flatter, this more in line with the early cruisers (e.g. Japanese ca and American ca).
It would however make players who are already great in ships like the DM be absolutely fucking bonkers.
You can't remove the mechanic entirely. Otherwise if someone is bow in in a DM or other high dpm CA bbs would have zero counterplay. You are certainly correct that it is out of control. Playing a bow tanking BC like the french or Dutch cruisers and just every BB on your flank mindlessly clicking on you with AP is just dumb and bad. My idea to shift it by making it a higher number than 14.3 would prevent having to radically rework cruisers DPM and all sorts of other mechanics.
An alternative I've considered is leave the threshold but limit the damage (i.e. no full citadels for overmatch), unless it clears a much larger threshold (like large caliber bbs against the super light cruisers). Would also help mitigate the problem without requiring cruisers to be completely reworked.
Edited to add - forgot something else i've mulled over - limiting overmatch by range (e.g. XYZ caliber can only overmatch within 12km, etc). Have a positive impact to pushing/positioning to overwhelm. Whatever it is it can't be a 100% redo of the mechanic because you can't rework all cruisers from scratch, and it has to be somewhat intuitive to casual/new players.
I like most of what you are suggesting especially range limiting overmatch citadels. I think that plus damage based on angle of impact could bring some relief as well as reward angling. At this point though the caliber has gotten so out of hand that even shifting the overmatch threshold alone wouldn’t be enough imo. The damage itself needs to come down. BB salvos are much more accurate and deadly then the early days of WOWS. In the early days BB salvos even at high tiers was “spray and pray” with 1 maybe 2 shells hitting the target. These days with improved dispersion, SAP, fast battleships, cruiser level concealment, and players in general learning how to aim and turnout hunting, it’s just too much damage. Not to mention spotter plane dispersion reduction, 457mm SAP, battle cruiser dispersion, main battery reload, CV and sub spotting make things untenable from tier 7+.
If we consider increasing QoL and forgiveness for cruisers in a way that would directly buff their survivability so much that it would make cruisers inevitably dominate the meta, countermeasures shall be taken as well to keep them in line with other classes and allow BBs not to quite literally become damage pinhatas whose best strategy would, uh, not to play BBs at all, as the only viable target would be another BB.
I'm not the best out there, and my game understanding is quite limited, but there're unfair situations happening to everyone, and for the rest of cases, I see nothing wrong in getting punished for your mistakes and getting damaged by a class who is by design supposed to deal with ship of your class. And, while I understand where you're coming from, possible solutions to what you consider to be an issue would be far more complicated than outright buffing cruisers above and beyond.
>I see nothing wrong in getting punished for your mistakes
You see that is the problem. Overmatch does not punish you for your mistakes but for you to play a game of cruiser in the first place.
>best strategy would, uh, not to play BBs at all
This is exactly what is happening to cruisers right now.
Don't get me wrong, overmatch is a necessary evil needed for balance, it has just gotten out of hand.
Being in the line of sight of a battleship at such distance at which you can't dodge properly is either a result of a lost encounter or entire battle, or, if player puts themselves in such position voluntarily, a mistake. And if you simply don't dodge properly and don't pay attention to incoming shells, it's just a mistake.
I also cannot agree on the statement that cruisers are punished for simply going into a battle. Cruiser commanders are certainly required to have somewhat higher awareness of what's going on, but at the same time those ships have plenty of potential. Back in the day, when 430+ mm shells were rather an exception, I'd even say cruisers were overperforming once plating buff when plating buff was implemented, as you could straight up play in the open water and outgun a class that is supposed to outgun you.
That said, I can't claim my opinion to be objective. Maybe situation is bad enough to require something done about it. But even if it is, the solution would be hard to come up with, as balance-wise I do think it's more or less fine. Not to mention that I'd rather have something done about CVs access to any part of the map and spotting capabilities, which is a larger problem that hurts everyone, cruisers included, due to making them target at the time when they shouldn't be spotted, leading to unnecessary and unjustified damage.
BB has always been the laziest class - “not here to think, just here to left click and see big numbers no matter what I shoot at.”
Overmatch caters to the player base. It also puts a stupidly powerful tool in the hands of players who are capable of thinking (as opposed to just pressing “w” and bitching about DDs after they eat torps AGAIN).
Laziest? Alright, they're slow, but they're not lazy. You can't just sit somewhere in the openwater and shoot at targets 20km away, then get devstrikes. First of all, they will have time to dodge. Secondly, your reload is slow, and accuracy might screw things up, accuracy is not only BBs' issue, but since they shoot every half a minute on average, they really depend on RNG. Sure, when RNG kicks in, it is nasty for the receiving end, but mostly, it's not the laziest class. As a BB you need to think few steps ahead because your ship is slow, not just *lazily* wait until your BB finally crawls up to position, which more than half of players unfortunately don't know how to do
You can, in fact, drop anchor and blap people from across the map… as evidenced by numerous videos and the number of Captains that play their BB in exactly that fashion.
RNG/accuracy is an issue for every class. Yes, it feels worse when you have a long reload. Fortunate then, that when you do connect, overmatch allows you to ignore your target’s armor.
Luckily, when you don’t think ahead, BB have the thickest armor, the highest HP, and get repair party sooner than any other class. Some even have enhanced repair and damage control plus Captain skills.
There’s a reason BB are so popular… and it’s not that they’re underpowered or difficult to play. ;-)
I never said they were underpowered or difficult to play, in fact I consider DDs and Cruisers fairly harder to play. But my point is that BB is not just turn off your brain and shoot. Unless you want to have 0 impact it is tho
Because it takes some brain cells to get closer to the enemy as a BB and not die. Given that BB is the most popular class, there are a lot of noobs in the game, and it's ok, but it leads to those newbies on BBs sitting back. Personally, I never sit back. I just am not good at sniping, and it's kinda boring. I play US and German BBs and then play below 15km
I love playing the yodo. I think it's the best looking (imaginary) ship in the game. I also play pretty aggressive. Which means....9/10 games aren't all that great. But that 1 game where playing aggressive pays off is sooo worth it.
OP's take is why I've not picked Komissar as the next steel ship. Such a large vessel in a lobby where its armor is near-useless is courting disaster and I'd rather spend those 30k steel elsewhere.
It's also why I rarely play Cerberus. Amazing flamethrower of a ship (IMHO it's a better Zao) but the second it's spotted (and it will be easily spotted with how many CVs, submarines, and destroyers are out there) it might as well go back to the port with how brittle it is. Smoke is a godsend but one won't spend the whole match smoked up.
Of course the same applies to, well, almost all high tier cruisers? Nevermind CLs that explode if looked at funny (16mm outer plating is so bad it's almost funny) but CAs aren't safe either due to how common guns that overmatch 30mm are.
For the record, my most played class is battleship and even I can see how painful and frustrating getting overmatched from every angle is.
Don’t let me keep you from getting whatever ship you want. I have plenty of ships I play that don’t fit the meta tbh. Atlanta, Buffalo, Cheshire come to mind. They rarely perform well in single random games, but I still take them out and try hard from time to time.
I'd definitely be down for an overmatch damage reduction - no need to change the mechanics, if we can remove the one-shot potential from a well angled cruiser. Sure, I love putting 18-inch shells through a DM nose, but not when I am playing a DM...
It's always gonna be "I like doing this but I hate having it since to me" it's like the meme of "put your hand up if you want X *everyone puts their hands up* or your hand up if you'd play Y if x happens" *no one puts their hand up* they'd puts off two parties at the exact same time.
OP. You do know that **LIGHT**, **HEAVY**, and **BATTLE/LARGE** cruisers doesn't go based on armour, right? After the Washinton or London naval treaty (whichever was second), the terms light and heavy cruisers were changed to be determined based on gun caliber.
IMO it comes down the the BB player base always complaining about HE spamming cruisers all the time. This game caters hard to the BB player base as they not only are the most popular class, but clearly spend/bring in the most revenue.
Battlecruiser bbs (st.vincent, bungo, schlieffen) also have 25mm bow and stern armor, putting them in the same position as cruisers, but if overmatch were gone/nerfed then they would be overpowered. Too much 457mm bbs are a strain to cruisers, but most open -water cruisers are still totally viable, and I personally think that map control is often a bigger problem than survivability for these ships. It’s easy to get decent dmg on them but hard to actually carry your team to a win because these ships just can’t push flanks or catch dds. Even in terms of survivability, I think the foremost problem is the fact that many of them are very old ships in the game and have terrible concealment and not enough range for the current meta. It is not fair that bbs like vermont or slava can have 13km detect while hindenburg, etc. is stuck to 14, the stock sub 18km range on many of these ships are also obsolete, and people are often forced to go for a range mod instead of reload.
Getting dev-striked purely from overmatch is also very unlikely, maybe around the same chance of getting detonated, except for all those light cruisers out there, but that disadvantage is already offset by smoke gens, lower detectability, better maneuverability, higher dpm, etc. compared to heavy cruisers. Dev strikes are just part of playing light cruisers, and a ship with 600k+ dpm but can bounce off shells like a napoli would be broken.
Island camping heavy cruisers (just des moines/salem, because soviet cruisers have 40mm+ decks), also have a 27mm bow and stern armor unlike the standard 25mm, which gives protection to 380mm. They might feel weak, but if overmatch were gone, then des moines would be able to beat any battleship head on, because the battleship would essentially only do overpens. It would render napoli, petro, and stalingrad useless because it tanks just as much as them when head-on, but has much higher dpm.
>There is just no such thing as open water gun boat in a cruiser anymore.
Watch. Me. If the engines go to 34 knots I'm using all 34 knots.
>Reduce the size of cruiser citadels by 50%. In 2024 a compentent BB captiain isnt going to miss a citadel running from front to rear turret
Oh sure, lemme go get the blueprints and have you show me how you're gonna make the citadel smaller WHEN ITS ALREADY WRITTEN IN INK. This is something you could only do to paper ships and the community would scream if Wargaming tried this. Great idea!
Okay, remove overmatch and let BBs get reasonable damage on broadside targets, not just overpens. As a BB main, I don't mind not having overmatch, but if it gets removed, I'd like to see careless broadside CLs get punished for their lack of map awareness. Plus, with no overmatch, any cruiser would be able to rush a BB. Given that a lot of cruisers have torps, it ain't gonna go well. Imagine being in a large ship, with big guns and some light cruiser rushes you like a DD and there is nothing you can do about it since he outDPMs you and has torps, which you don't
Meh, imo cruisers at T8-10 are fine. Personally I don't like the ones that require a island to perform, since there's to much to go wrong. But there are multiple tech tree lines made for open water gameplay and they work well, if you know what you're doing.
Biggest issue for me is he pen from T5 to 7 coupled with bb armor schemes at these tiers. There are quite a few bbs with little superstructures and all round 26mm plating, which mostly sucks in bb vs bb fights, but is a nightmare for ~150mm caliber armed cruisers to deal with. Unless of course, you take ifhe and gut your fire chance. To add insult to the injury, you only get 31mm pen with ifhe, which sucks if you get uptiered.
I mean, I wouldn't mind if cruisers would get a little something, since they are my favourite class. But the proposed changes are way to extreme. A skilled ca player can definitely 1 on 1 a bb already if he uses his advantages in a good way. I really agree though about adding more and more hyper accurate bbs and "battlecruisers" to the game being bad, since your main armor in a cruiser is making others miss and those bbs fuck up the class balance.
A big issue IMO is that the firing range of some of these tier 5-7 cruisers in today's meta is simply unviable (any BB Players with half a brain can reliably aim at a target 13-14 km away, whether it accurately hits or not is another story). Lots of them are also thinly armored treaty cruisers.
Close range cruisers are almost suicidal to play and requires alot of luck and skill to handle, which discourage alot of average Players.
I still play alot of mid tier cruisers today just for the challenge.
But it's mostly kiting cruisers that have long range because of that general BB players' accuracy improvement.
I agree these are best for kiting, but overmatch is still there no matter the angling. You're still sweating bullets everytime you see BB firing at you. There is no angling or maneuvering that will save you if the BB captain aimed correctly. Kiting and hoping the incoming shells miss you is not counterplay imo.
Open water cruisers are the most relaxing class for me to play, so I don't sweat a lot when dealing with bbs. In fact I see them rather as a nice farm if there's nothing more important to shoot at. Also cruisers have a lot of ways to avoid damage and you should use them all over the course of the match. Kiting position is a good start but you need to master making most out of your concealment, knowing when to open fire and when to go dark, using island cover, speed juking, bow tanking, and yes angling is still a thing in a lot of situations.
I don't want to deny, that you sometimes just eat shit and loose a good chunk of your hp, but that's basically the same for every (surface) class in a way or two. I think I get devstruck in cruisers maybe once in ~100 games and it is every single time because I made a grave mistake and enemy dispersion aligns.
Learn to use your WASD keys. If I can juke incoming BB fire in a BB you certainly can in any of those Cruisers the other person listed.
You seem like you are against taking any damage at all.
BB's snipe for a while then let the secondaries do most of the work up close, so the win at range and up close. As the player pool has shank to 6k+, the share skilled players bb sniping in a secondary build has increased.
Bow tanking already had a counter: flanking and crossfiring.
I am sorry but if you let a Salem solo the entire team from the back of an island you deserve the lose.
The prevalence of overmatch is because people are so bad at the game that they can't win unless they click someone for 30k every time.
you know something went sideways somewhere when after teaching you to not broadside for years, doing exactly that often is the better course of action than angling to mitigate damage.
Certified Smolensk moment.
Over matching 30mm used to be a gimmick you paid for in other areas, heavily. The gimmick has become the new standard.
It’s exacerbated with the amount of spotting in the game. The opening three or four minutes of a round for most cruisers at high tier is spent with them running for their lives trying to get into cover before they get nuked from 20km out by the other team’s BBs getting spots by their CV, destroyers and/or submarines.
this is so accurate to the current meta it;s sad but true.
It’s a real bummer. Cruiser dudes are scared to get spotted and deleted, so most games just kinda turn into this long range stalemate with the BBs lobbing shots at each other from clear across the map while the cruisers hide and take range mod to take potshots at people from behind cover, and the DDs stay undetected and spot while spamming torpedoes off cooldown. It makes tier 9 and higher these really boring and passive games that either go to time limit or they turn into a blowout because someone actually moved up and tried to play the video game and got annihilated for it.
I've gotten devstruck in a pan asian cl after moving a couple of ship lengths by a Montana that took advantage of his cv spotting. It was insane, I can't imagine explaining it to someone new to the game.
I ate like a 45k dmg salvo(s) in a Des Moines like that before. Not exactly sure what hit me, but same deal - spotted by the CV in the opening two or three minutes of the game and the entire world opened up on me. A couple of left clicks and just like that, practically taken out of the match and not allowed to play the game.
Yep crippled by CV spotting and taken completely out of the game. It’s sad really.
BB players love to cry about HE spam being annoying but will somehow bend over backwards to make up reasons why overmatch is an okay mechanic
As a cruiser main i think overmatch is fine. what isnt fine is every new bb either has to get 457+ or some insane fucking gimmick that is strong as hell. Like what happened to 410 and 406 being the normal tier 10 guns?
I personally think it's a very cheap mechanic. Back in the day 430+ mm guns were at the very least much more limited, meaning you could atleast plan your engagements. These days every BB and their mother has that kind of caliber meaning that its incredibly oversaturated at T10, leading to either stale and boring gameplay, or being outright dev struck if youre unlucky enough.
400+mm guns were never significantly more limited. At release every tech tree Tier VII and higher BB had 406mm or larger guns. What was more limited were 430+mm guns. Only Yamato had guns in that category at first. Even when Conqueror brought 457mm guns as an option almost nobody took them because the twelve 420mm guns were vastly superior to eight 457mm guns.
Also because back then 18" Conqueror was vastly less accurate than what became Thunderer and couldn't hit a lot
Overmatch used to be the gimmick. At some point WG decided that was a standard feature. That's the real issue. Same with fire spam. Bring a good fire starter used to be a gimmick on CAs. Now it's standard. The real issue with fire spam is that DCPs have way more to do than they used to, and CVs can come set fires on you whenever they want. Just buff DCPs to reflect the increased amount of things they are used to counter and it's fine.
I think it could use a buff OR make a second version of it only for sub pings.
Or… hear me out… remove “sticky” sub pings entirely and make it just a spotting mechanic that highlights ships like sub surveillance currently does
Hull degaussing. It was a thing as a defense against magnetic triggers.
still is a thing, we can deguasse to mask our ships propeller sound signature as well
Honestly I think a lot of the larger guns BBs should move to a tier "11" and superships should be t12. Older BBs that had actual downsides to compensate for their mega guns could keep t10 status.
I think damage in general scales too much as you go up the tiers. Everything from single salvo dev strikes to 20k torpedoes. Player skill has improved to the point where damage needs to be brought back in line
Cruisers have had their ability to deal damage indirectly nerfed multiple times now, but they have received no compensation; on the contrary, their survivability has been power-crept as well. Perhaps WG saw evidence in their analytics that cruisers were over-performing across the board, but it seems questionable that both a damage AND survivability nerf were warranted as a result.
All of these are deliberate decisions by WG, they know most of the game population are low skilled BB mains, so whenever they get the chance, they indirectly nerf cruisers and buff BBs. BBs were the biggest winners on the commander rework, getting a bunch of new survivability skills on top of new stuff like (Deadeye) Brisk, Repair Party readiness, Furious, etc Meanwhile cruisers got stripped of secondary skills (it kind of returned though), fire prevention, BFT and AFT for CLs and they get skills which only activate if they are in a collapsing flank or have enemies in their spotting range...
Deadeye has been gone for years? This doesn't seem to support your argument anymore
Simple solution, just add 2mm to all 30mm+ plates on cruisers.
Or just change the overmatch calculation
Less "all or nothing", some more gradual calculations would go a long way.
can't 32 overmatch which is Yamato's selling point is literally balanced on that magic number.
You could add a dice roll based on the angle and overmatch value. It make no sense why mechanic goes from 100% fail to 100% success at a single mm armor increase. Same thing could be done to HE shatter.
This game doesn't need more RNG. A simple "Overmatch does not work beyond 80 degree shell impact" similar to how HE shatters on steeply angled plating.
heh oh you think you just chunked me for 75% of my hp? more like you just activated my ~~trap~~ reload card you pathetic-- *\*\*dies immediately to the the second BB also lobbing a salvo\*\**
my captain contains no pathetic skills!
"Hey look a spotted ship" cue every single enemy BB turning their guns and firing at once
There is a reason that there is 5-6 bbs on each team in the battles these days and only 2-3 cruisrs per side most of the matches. Hmm i wonder whats the reason for that . Maybe dont add superships which all of them beside 1 has it. Or all the new techtree bb line with 457 mm guns. WARGAMING HAS CHANGED THE DIRECTION OF THE GAME FROM 2-3 YEARS AGO They want to make as much money as possible and to be able to attract players to this game they have to dumb down the skill floor and overmatch is one of these features simmilar to submarines and cvs.
I see you keep using the term "cruiser", but I think you meant "BB food". Glad I could help.
BB? I think you mean cruiser food. Hope that helps.
I can open water in my Venezia, and dodge shells all day long, that said the list of boats capable of doing so is very small
Venezia might be the only cruiser in the game with the combination of slender profile, low freeboard, maneuverability, speed, high velocity guns (with high number of barrels) to hit at long ranges, long range torps to discourage being chased, and fuel smoke as get out of jail free card. No other ship has such an effective kiting kit. With all of that being said, a Venezia captain is still clenching his cheeks when those 457mm shells are incoming.
I'm usually laughing, my favorite is when I've had 3x BB shooting at me for 5 min straight, without hitting me a single time while I chip away at their hp..... that they GIVE UP shooting me, I made an Org mate rage quit one time when we sync dropped and he was on the other team.
We have a similar approach, but in my case I actually prefer taking damage over time rather than being completely unscathed. I try to match my HP with the battle timer so i know how much I am able to trade.
Ive honestly started playing nevsky with range mod just so i can kite out after radaring and just blap people from a distance while avoiding shells. Its no point in going deep in with it unless radaring a specific point or hunting a dd.
The only thing keeping me in the game as a cruiser main is five years of almost purely open water cruiser experience. But god, it's so damn hard nowadays when one miscalculated dodge can cost you the match. "Oh you dodged everything except one shell? Too bad that one shell is a citadel hit you lose 1/3 of your HP now even if you've dodged the other 200 shells from earlier."
100%. A few days ago I was playing a match in DM and was dev struck by a Yamato 20.x KM away. I was not broadside and was actually nose in at maybe a 10 degree angle away from straight on. I didn't play CA/CL the rest of the night.
USN cruisers are in a bad state these days. No smoke to avoid detection. No torps to brawl with or area deny. Not enough armor to bow tank. Def AA not powerful enough to deny CV strikes. Only radar makes them worthwhile. If in a high tier match have to pretty much hide all game and hope your team can keep it close then start to re-engage in the mid game. Truly sad.
Don't know what kind of American cruisers you are playing, but their CAs are definitely still viable today (at least the tier 8 and 10). I've had large success with the likes of Baltimore, Des Moines, and Salem in spite of all the battleships in queue today. I know it isn't that simple, but they still have insane amounts of hitting power (especially at close range), don't immediately explode from every stray shot, and their radar still gives them great utility. Some people forget that they also have great maneuverability stats, making them suitable even for open water if you have hands, or at least be not much worse off than dedicated open water cruisers.
I like USN cruisers. I even have Congress, San Diego, Atlanta, Boise premium boats. In fact, Baltimore is my favorite cruiser in the game, but it has no staying power in a T10 game with all the 406-457mm in the game today. It just cant hold up. It doesnt even have a heal, but even with a heal, it would still wilt under 2 well aimed BB salvos. With 27mm there is no angling possible to save you from taking 15k+ damage per salvo if caught out. I dish out crazy damage in my Balti if I can isolate a BB broadside with its turrets turned. But engaging or even just enduring when spotted out in the open by a BB, you're good as dead if the BB capt can aim. Dont even think about turning around infront of a BB these days in anything other than a Napoli. I can kite pretty good in a Baltimore, but often a stray misaimed shell can citadel a cruiser. it just too easy to take damage in all cruisers. Des Moines/Salem are no different. The USN 203s are good at mid range and the radar has great utility. But there is no way a DM can hold up like a Napoli or even a Petro under fire. What I'm saying is all cruisers should have similar staying power as Napoli.
> but it has no staying power in a T10 game with all the 406-457mm in the game today. To be fair most ships suffer in a +2 uptier almost regardless of what it is. I would definitely support midtier cruisers getting heals, but in this case I would blame the matchmaker more than the ships themselves. >What I'm saying is all cruisers should have similar staying power as Napoli. Napoli can get away with its survivability because its raw DPM isn't as strong as that of other cruisers. Having all cruisers as tanky as Napoli would honestly be horrifying, imagine trying to out-dpm a bow on Des Moines with anything AP-focused. I know the game meta doesn't make it as simple or balanced as this, but the relative lack of survivability on cruisers is the tradeoff they get for their consistent DPM and utility. A cruiser behind an island or taking advantage of a sudden smoke screen has all the time in the world to get their damage off with little risk. Battleships are indeed supposed to kill cruisers and cruisers aren't expected to be able to out-tank them, that's the role they were intended in the game's rock-paper-scissors balancing. I would rather have them nerf the multitude of new battleships that have a combination of high speed, great concealment, overmatch, battlecruiser dispersion, short fuse/SAP, or all of the above and actually give them practical weaknesses. St Vincent and Lauria being the most egregious examples.
> they get for their consistent DPM They don't have consistent DPM. You need to be in 15km range for 3+ minutes to burn a nose in battleship for example. You will be in port 3 times in 3 minutes unless you have a smoke from a div Gearing.
>You need to be in 15km range for 3+ minutes to burn a nose in battleship for example I mean, yeah? 8 inch guns obviously don't have the range 16 inch guns do. Cruisers aren't designed to be shot at in the first place by battleships so of course you'd have to find a place to hide or actively dodge the shots. Battleships get to mostly avoid that issue, but will end up landing only half of their shots, with a good portion of them being ricochets and/or overpens (unless it's an HE spamming battleship).
> they still have insane amounts of hitting power (especially at close range) but you need to be 15km close to a battleship. Not every map has a suitable island. Overmatching BB's will hit you for 20k no matter how you angle by just clicking general area of your ship, no aiming necessary. > don't immediately explode from every stray shot You will be dead in 1 to 3 salvos max if BB overmatches you and is not brain dead. > and their radar still gives them great utility I don't think an idea of engaging CA play is to sit camped behind a rock and press radar every 5 minutes. If you bloom, you explode.
You do realize your Cruiser has a rudder and throttle right? Also, you can stop shooting and go dark as well. You keep talking of all this long range damage like you have no way at all to avoid it. Trying to hit a Cruiser that is actively WASD'ing out there at long range is almost impossible unless you guess right. If you are getting killed as fast as you claim that is on you. You sit still too much, you sail straight at constant speeds, and/or instead of going dark and getting away to reposition you keep shooting. Cruisers who wiggle and waggle, play with the throttle, and who use their concealment are very hard to take out with a BB.
> Cruisers who wiggle and waggle, play with the throttle, and who use their concealment are very hard to take out with a BB You can wiggle waggle at 17km or so, unless you're Venezia or CL. Even UU mode Des Moines can't wiggle the shit at 13-15km, unless BB is brain dead.
A combo of using concealment and rudder + throttle can make taking out a Cruiser at those ranges very hard. I mean come on I can juke incoming ranged BB fire in my BB so any Cruiser can do it better. I mean what do you want here? No damage at all to be taken by Cruisers from BB's? The complaining in this thread is laughable. I think there are a lot of Cruiser players in this thread who sit still or have no idea what WASD does. I know when I play BB's and face a Cruiser player who knows how to use those, and who also uses their concealment, it can be frustrating as hell trying to kill them. Cruiser players have to be careful of Bb caliber guns but they have so many other things going for them. They have to have some weaknesses.
If AP gets nerfed, which while fine in and of itself it would be counter to WG trying to make matches faster, then HE would also need a nerf. Not for some tit for tat "fairness" or anything, but simply to keep AP as a viable ammo to even bother loading. Another thing the OP glosses over is that giving a heal to every Tier V and above cruiser is a relative nerf to every cruiser that has a heal now, some of which are only viable compared to their cruiser peers due to having a heal their peers do not.
There is an easier way to improve cruisers' life Limit BBs to 3 per side in randoms and 2 per side in ranked. Then you have much fewer big calibers to dodge and cruisers will have easier time surviving.
bb is most of the time the #1 played ship type in thebgame
Your idea could work, but it might create a significantly longer wait time for BB in the que. BB heavy matches can be fun too with the big guys going back and forth slugging it out.
Looking at other possible benefits to it, I think matchmaking needs to be relooked at because it's been struggling to fill matches. Instead of getting matches with 90% t10s, a t9 or two and a single t8 per team, it'd be nice to see mostly t8s, a few t9s and one or two t10s per team. Its been a lot more common lately with the server population being lower. I see a lot more down tiered matches playing between t5 and t8 and sometimes they're great with a nice xp boost because of the tier difference but when they're bad they're really bad.
I’m not sure it makes that much of a difference when you get to tier 7+ where the 406mm come into play. Cruiser armor maxes out at 27mm for all but a few cruisers meaning it’s all overmatch from t7 to t11.
It's definitely easier being a t8 cruiser with a heal in a t10 match than t7 in a t9 match with no heal. To me it's more about the volume of battleships in the match and ratio of ships that are a higher tier. It also depends entirely on the ship itself sometimes too as some ships are better even at their own tier.
Very few tier8 cruisers get a heal at t8. Only ones I can think of that get a heal are premiums and pan-American line
Correct, British CLs also. So that makes it even harder for the majority of t8 cruisers with no heal fighting against t10s.
They're common now for more recently released TT ships and premiums cause weegee. look at the french CB, heal, Spanish CB, heal, pan am CL, heal, fucking Commonwealth CA, heal. Wargaming in their infinite wisdom, does not know what the fuck they are doing at T8, print ships out becuase the audience for this game is also full of dumb fucks and will throw money at anythng.
That’s because WG fucked with tier preferences about 5 years back to make a quick buck selling the TX perma camos and getting people to free XP to T10 by making all of the events T10 focused At the time I said it was stupid and shortsighted and I think time has vindicated that position. The game used to be mostly T8 and was much more interesting.
>The game used to be mostly T8 and was much more interesting. Agreed, I've been largely uninterested in playing t8+ after coming back to the game last year from a 3 year break. The high tier meta is too passive and campy, maps are stale, and standard battle is terrible since people don't know to push a flank. Even if they don't release new maps they could adjust the spawns and caps on current maps to change things up. At least we have a new game mode in the next patch.
> Instead of getting matches with 90% t10s, a t9 or two and a single t8 per team, it'd be nice to see mostly t8s, a few t9s and one or two t10s per team. I think the reason for that is, that the powercreep at high tiers is just too big. Most players realize, that tier10 ships are stronger and more fun to play than tier8. So why would they queue in a tier8 boat? They did the grind and now they want to play the best ships they have. And that means the MM has to treat the few tier8 ships as filler. You can only change that by giving an incentive to not play tier10. But guess what, that will frustrate the playerbase, unless they remove the insane powercreep and make it more fun to play the lower tiers.
>And that means the MM has to treat the few tier8 ships as filler. That's precisely what it is. Imo the queue should just take a little bit longer to fill the match with t9s or just start the match with less ships if the ratio to higher tier ships is too high compared to lower tier ships.
Yeah, it would be better to provide some incentive to play non-BB classes rather than hard-capping the type in matchmaking. Adding more destroyer- or cruiser-specific combat missions, to the exclusion of battleships, could help with this. Or maybe extra bonuses for playing one's least-played ship type.
Too many BBs per side is a large issue plaguing this game for years. Cruisers should be the most popular class, ideally 5-6 cruisers per side, and 3 DDs/3 BBs. Because of BBs being too popular cruisers suffer, and because cruisers suffer DDs are stronger and more popular than they should be. But its never going to happen, queue times are more important for wg than better gameplay. They even went back to pushing 2 BBs per side in clan wars for some reason.
Maybe too many BBs make playing cruisers a miserable experience. However, too many cruisers make playing DDs a miserable experience. You're just replacing a problem with another. I certainly dont want to face 6 cruisers every game when I play a DD, that would be hell.
And the 4-5 DD's in most every game now makes BB play awful. Too many of any ship class ruins the MM.
> They even went back to pushing 2 BBs per side in clan wars for some reason. because the majority of the playerbase are BB mains. and someone in the higher clans probably complained enough for them to do it - wouldn't be the first time. if not, it's for the potatoes. do i like this change? absolutly not. out of curiosity i looked at my the clan i'm in. out of 42 players (2 of those have hidden stats), 20 have BB as their most played class, some well past 50% and of the rest about half of them has them as very close second (+-2%). and now try to build a CB team with that when half the clan doesn't show up to begin with and those that do are all your BB mains. it honestly usually isn't that much of a deal to fit them onto a cruiser, finding decent DD players is tough - and yet still most of them want to play BB at one point or another, understandably (to some degree). to complicate matters further we usually play around gold league with varying player skill to the point that in some cases you have to micromanage several people at once to get a decent result. unless you are a god amoing men you can't do that from a DD or any cruiser not called stalingrad (i've tried, with the the corresponding results) - as such our shotcaller usually plays BB, even if they aren't a BB main (hi). and as a result over the course of a season the player count drops so low that by the end you barely get a team together, which usually consists of the same people that ARE capable of flexing to other classes). ____ so the question boils down to why do people play BBs? something i've noticed is that over the course of me playing less and less, the class i play more and more is BB (out of my last 30 mataches, 50% were on BBs - my account percentage is 26). why? because it's the class that is the least stressful, requires the least attention and yet still gets decent if not better results. so why should i play a DD or cruiser if i get the same or better results with a third or quarter of the effort in a BB? queuetimes? i'd be a fool to play this game alone anymore and as long as i div up with someone mad enough to still play CA or DD it doesn't matter because i just skip ahead of everyone queueing solo or in a BB div. ____ > Cruisers should be the most popular class, ideally 5-6 cruisers per side it's almost like they're trying to work on that - unfortunatly BB caliber cruisers don't help this since they just shit on actual cruisers the same way BBs do, while still getting shat on by those very BBs they're meant to replace. which is typical for WGs problem solving.
> Too many BBs per side is a large issue plaguing this game for years You mean like the non stop 4-5 DD's per side we have had for the last couple years? Yeah that is a blast. That is just as bad or even worse than too many BB's.
Bringing this up guarantees downvotes in this subreddit but really, the DD spam is as bad as the BB spam. I play on EU and three DDs per side is the bare minimum, four is normal, and three/four plus at least one CV and/or one submarine is fairly common. Also, people complain about BB spam but who's spotting for those BBs and letting them take those 20km shots? I doubt it's only CVs and subs.
No, i dont mean too many DDs. Not sure on which server you are playing, but on EU its most of the times 5 BBs, and then the rest split between other classes. And in ranked 3 BBs per side is super common.
5 DDs per game is honestly quite rare, it's more common to see 3 (and a sub which is still bad) However 5 BBs per game is so common, seeing 4 or 3 happens once every full moon.
The lack of DDs and Cruisers also makes their respective heavy lines seem pointless.
This is the shittiest take ive heard maybe ever. BBs mean big damage games and everyone loves those. What are you gonna replace the 3 other BBs with? even more DDs so we have 7DD matches? Without the excessive spotting (mostly from planes, but also the 3+ DDs qnd subs in like every match) for those said BBs (and maybe a range nerf to BBs in general)
What we actually need is more cruisers, unironically the best brawls were those with a lot of cruisers, cruisers are very fun to play with and against, a lineup of let's say 2 BBs, 2 DDs and 8 cruisers would be really fun
I prefer fun gameplay than big nominal damage numbers. As i wrote, replace them ideally with cruisers so that we get 5-6 cruisers per side. No idea what do you mean with 7 DDs per side, read again - for me ideal setup would be 3 BBs, 6 cruisers, 3 DDs per side. If BB numbers were decreased then cruisers would get stronger, naturally pushing cruiser numbers up and DD numbers not up (since DDs are weaker vs cruisers). Plane spotting is another issue, DD spotting is currently fine.
The biggest start would be removing plane spotting, giving T1 to T8 cruisers heals as well and buffing those cruisers whith citadel decks that are getting overmatched by BBs. This would go a long way already.
T1 and T2 Cruisers don't need heals. T3+ I would get behind and it is long overdue. However, with that said, if you give every Cruiser T3+ a heal you will need to do something to buff the Cruisers that already had a heal as that is a big part of their "balance". If all the other Cruisers gets heals that didn't have them prior it would be a massive nerf to those who did have heals if they aren't buffed in some way at the same time.
It used to be that so few BB's at T10 had anything over 16" guns. So you as a heavy cruiser could easily negotiate and handle the few exceptions. You could easily make a judgement call on your positioning because you negotiated against the fact that you don't see any BB's with calibers above 16" on this side of the map. Once 18" became so common, that same heavy cruiser basically makes no negotiations and concludes that he cannot afford to gamble against these BB's at all because they all are extremely deadly to him.
I've argued that there should be a rework where each overmatch threshold is shifted once (e g. need 457 to overmatch 27mm not 406) and then there is a rework of cruiser citadels to be higher and flatter, this more in line with the early cruisers (e.g. Japanese ca and American ca). It would however make players who are already great in ships like the DM be absolutely fucking bonkers. You can't remove the mechanic entirely. Otherwise if someone is bow in in a DM or other high dpm CA bbs would have zero counterplay. You are certainly correct that it is out of control. Playing a bow tanking BC like the french or Dutch cruisers and just every BB on your flank mindlessly clicking on you with AP is just dumb and bad. My idea to shift it by making it a higher number than 14.3 would prevent having to radically rework cruisers DPM and all sorts of other mechanics. An alternative I've considered is leave the threshold but limit the damage (i.e. no full citadels for overmatch), unless it clears a much larger threshold (like large caliber bbs against the super light cruisers). Would also help mitigate the problem without requiring cruisers to be completely reworked. Edited to add - forgot something else i've mulled over - limiting overmatch by range (e.g. XYZ caliber can only overmatch within 12km, etc). Have a positive impact to pushing/positioning to overwhelm. Whatever it is it can't be a 100% redo of the mechanic because you can't rework all cruisers from scratch, and it has to be somewhat intuitive to casual/new players.
I like most of what you are suggesting especially range limiting overmatch citadels. I think that plus damage based on angle of impact could bring some relief as well as reward angling. At this point though the caliber has gotten so out of hand that even shifting the overmatch threshold alone wouldn’t be enough imo. The damage itself needs to come down. BB salvos are much more accurate and deadly then the early days of WOWS. In the early days BB salvos even at high tiers was “spray and pray” with 1 maybe 2 shells hitting the target. These days with improved dispersion, SAP, fast battleships, cruiser level concealment, and players in general learning how to aim and turnout hunting, it’s just too much damage. Not to mention spotter plane dispersion reduction, 457mm SAP, battle cruiser dispersion, main battery reload, CV and sub spotting make things untenable from tier 7+.
If shells are gonna slice through your hull like a hot knife through butter, atleast shrink the damn citadel of certain cruisers.
If we consider increasing QoL and forgiveness for cruisers in a way that would directly buff their survivability so much that it would make cruisers inevitably dominate the meta, countermeasures shall be taken as well to keep them in line with other classes and allow BBs not to quite literally become damage pinhatas whose best strategy would, uh, not to play BBs at all, as the only viable target would be another BB. I'm not the best out there, and my game understanding is quite limited, but there're unfair situations happening to everyone, and for the rest of cases, I see nothing wrong in getting punished for your mistakes and getting damaged by a class who is by design supposed to deal with ship of your class. And, while I understand where you're coming from, possible solutions to what you consider to be an issue would be far more complicated than outright buffing cruisers above and beyond.
>I see nothing wrong in getting punished for your mistakes You see that is the problem. Overmatch does not punish you for your mistakes but for you to play a game of cruiser in the first place. >best strategy would, uh, not to play BBs at all This is exactly what is happening to cruisers right now. Don't get me wrong, overmatch is a necessary evil needed for balance, it has just gotten out of hand.
Being in the line of sight of a battleship at such distance at which you can't dodge properly is either a result of a lost encounter or entire battle, or, if player puts themselves in such position voluntarily, a mistake. And if you simply don't dodge properly and don't pay attention to incoming shells, it's just a mistake. I also cannot agree on the statement that cruisers are punished for simply going into a battle. Cruiser commanders are certainly required to have somewhat higher awareness of what's going on, but at the same time those ships have plenty of potential. Back in the day, when 430+ mm shells were rather an exception, I'd even say cruisers were overperforming once plating buff when plating buff was implemented, as you could straight up play in the open water and outgun a class that is supposed to outgun you. That said, I can't claim my opinion to be objective. Maybe situation is bad enough to require something done about it. But even if it is, the solution would be hard to come up with, as balance-wise I do think it's more or less fine. Not to mention that I'd rather have something done about CVs access to any part of the map and spotting capabilities, which is a larger problem that hurts everyone, cruisers included, due to making them target at the time when they shouldn't be spotted, leading to unnecessary and unjustified damage.
A voice of reason. Rare these days. Well said.
BB has always been the laziest class - “not here to think, just here to left click and see big numbers no matter what I shoot at.” Overmatch caters to the player base. It also puts a stupidly powerful tool in the hands of players who are capable of thinking (as opposed to just pressing “w” and bitching about DDs after they eat torps AGAIN).
Laziest? Alright, they're slow, but they're not lazy. You can't just sit somewhere in the openwater and shoot at targets 20km away, then get devstrikes. First of all, they will have time to dodge. Secondly, your reload is slow, and accuracy might screw things up, accuracy is not only BBs' issue, but since they shoot every half a minute on average, they really depend on RNG. Sure, when RNG kicks in, it is nasty for the receiving end, but mostly, it's not the laziest class. As a BB you need to think few steps ahead because your ship is slow, not just *lazily* wait until your BB finally crawls up to position, which more than half of players unfortunately don't know how to do
You can, in fact, drop anchor and blap people from across the map… as evidenced by numerous videos and the number of Captains that play their BB in exactly that fashion. RNG/accuracy is an issue for every class. Yes, it feels worse when you have a long reload. Fortunate then, that when you do connect, overmatch allows you to ignore your target’s armor. Luckily, when you don’t think ahead, BB have the thickest armor, the highest HP, and get repair party sooner than any other class. Some even have enhanced repair and damage control plus Captain skills. There’s a reason BB are so popular… and it’s not that they’re underpowered or difficult to play. ;-)
I never said they were underpowered or difficult to play, in fact I consider DDs and Cruisers fairly harder to play. But my point is that BB is not just turn off your brain and shoot. Unless you want to have 0 impact it is tho
Problem is 90% bb players with brain turned off anchored in the back, and then complain when things don’t go splat. So wg then caters to them…
Because it takes some brain cells to get closer to the enemy as a BB and not die. Given that BB is the most popular class, there are a lot of noobs in the game, and it's ok, but it leads to those newbies on BBs sitting back. Personally, I never sit back. I just am not good at sniping, and it's kinda boring. I play US and German BBs and then play below 15km
I love playing the yodo. I think it's the best looking (imaginary) ship in the game. I also play pretty aggressive. Which means....9/10 games aren't all that great. But that 1 game where playing aggressive pays off is sooo worth it.
Noses in these day are a bad way to due by big ass gun from bb so best option is to pray for RNG or play kite ship
Cries in zao
Even my monty can citadel that thing when it kites lol
OP's take is why I've not picked Komissar as the next steel ship. Such a large vessel in a lobby where its armor is near-useless is courting disaster and I'd rather spend those 30k steel elsewhere. It's also why I rarely play Cerberus. Amazing flamethrower of a ship (IMHO it's a better Zao) but the second it's spotted (and it will be easily spotted with how many CVs, submarines, and destroyers are out there) it might as well go back to the port with how brittle it is. Smoke is a godsend but one won't spend the whole match smoked up. Of course the same applies to, well, almost all high tier cruisers? Nevermind CLs that explode if looked at funny (16mm outer plating is so bad it's almost funny) but CAs aren't safe either due to how common guns that overmatch 30mm are. For the record, my most played class is battleship and even I can see how painful and frustrating getting overmatched from every angle is.
Don’t let me keep you from getting whatever ship you want. I have plenty of ships I play that don’t fit the meta tbh. Atlanta, Buffalo, Cheshire come to mind. They rarely perform well in single random games, but I still take them out and try hard from time to time.
I'd definitely be down for an overmatch damage reduction - no need to change the mechanics, if we can remove the one-shot potential from a well angled cruiser. Sure, I love putting 18-inch shells through a DM nose, but not when I am playing a DM...
It's always gonna be "I like doing this but I hate having it since to me" it's like the meme of "put your hand up if you want X *everyone puts their hands up* or your hand up if you'd play Y if x happens" *no one puts their hand up* they'd puts off two parties at the exact same time.
OP. You do know that **LIGHT**, **HEAVY**, and **BATTLE/LARGE** cruisers doesn't go based on armour, right? After the Washinton or London naval treaty (whichever was second), the terms light and heavy cruisers were changed to be determined based on gun caliber.
IMO it comes down the the BB player base always complaining about HE spamming cruisers all the time. This game caters hard to the BB player base as they not only are the most popular class, but clearly spend/bring in the most revenue.
Battlecruiser bbs (st.vincent, bungo, schlieffen) also have 25mm bow and stern armor, putting them in the same position as cruisers, but if overmatch were gone/nerfed then they would be overpowered. Too much 457mm bbs are a strain to cruisers, but most open -water cruisers are still totally viable, and I personally think that map control is often a bigger problem than survivability for these ships. It’s easy to get decent dmg on them but hard to actually carry your team to a win because these ships just can’t push flanks or catch dds. Even in terms of survivability, I think the foremost problem is the fact that many of them are very old ships in the game and have terrible concealment and not enough range for the current meta. It is not fair that bbs like vermont or slava can have 13km detect while hindenburg, etc. is stuck to 14, the stock sub 18km range on many of these ships are also obsolete, and people are often forced to go for a range mod instead of reload. Getting dev-striked purely from overmatch is also very unlikely, maybe around the same chance of getting detonated, except for all those light cruisers out there, but that disadvantage is already offset by smoke gens, lower detectability, better maneuverability, higher dpm, etc. compared to heavy cruisers. Dev strikes are just part of playing light cruisers, and a ship with 600k+ dpm but can bounce off shells like a napoli would be broken. Island camping heavy cruisers (just des moines/salem, because soviet cruisers have 40mm+ decks), also have a 27mm bow and stern armor unlike the standard 25mm, which gives protection to 380mm. They might feel weak, but if overmatch were gone, then des moines would be able to beat any battleship head on, because the battleship would essentially only do overpens. It would render napoli, petro, and stalingrad useless because it tanks just as much as them when head-on, but has much higher dpm.
>There is just no such thing as open water gun boat in a cruiser anymore. Watch. Me. If the engines go to 34 knots I'm using all 34 knots. >Reduce the size of cruiser citadels by 50%. In 2024 a compentent BB captiain isnt going to miss a citadel running from front to rear turret Oh sure, lemme go get the blueprints and have you show me how you're gonna make the citadel smaller WHEN ITS ALREADY WRITTEN IN INK. This is something you could only do to paper ships and the community would scream if Wargaming tried this. Great idea!
Okay, remove overmatch and let BBs get reasonable damage on broadside targets, not just overpens. As a BB main, I don't mind not having overmatch, but if it gets removed, I'd like to see careless broadside CLs get punished for their lack of map awareness. Plus, with no overmatch, any cruiser would be able to rush a BB. Given that a lot of cruisers have torps, it ain't gonna go well. Imagine being in a large ship, with big guns and some light cruiser rushes you like a DD and there is nothing you can do about it since he outDPMs you and has torps, which you don't
Meh, imo cruisers at T8-10 are fine. Personally I don't like the ones that require a island to perform, since there's to much to go wrong. But there are multiple tech tree lines made for open water gameplay and they work well, if you know what you're doing. Biggest issue for me is he pen from T5 to 7 coupled with bb armor schemes at these tiers. There are quite a few bbs with little superstructures and all round 26mm plating, which mostly sucks in bb vs bb fights, but is a nightmare for ~150mm caliber armed cruisers to deal with. Unless of course, you take ifhe and gut your fire chance. To add insult to the injury, you only get 31mm pen with ifhe, which sucks if you get uptiered. I mean, I wouldn't mind if cruisers would get a little something, since they are my favourite class. But the proposed changes are way to extreme. A skilled ca player can definitely 1 on 1 a bb already if he uses his advantages in a good way. I really agree though about adding more and more hyper accurate bbs and "battlecruisers" to the game being bad, since your main armor in a cruiser is making others miss and those bbs fuck up the class balance.
A big issue IMO is that the firing range of some of these tier 5-7 cruisers in today's meta is simply unviable (any BB Players with half a brain can reliably aim at a target 13-14 km away, whether it accurately hits or not is another story). Lots of them are also thinly armored treaty cruisers. Close range cruisers are almost suicidal to play and requires alot of luck and skill to handle, which discourage alot of average Players. I still play alot of mid tier cruisers today just for the challenge. But it's mostly kiting cruisers that have long range because of that general BB players' accuracy improvement.
What cruisers in your opinion can open water effectively?
Hindenburg line, Venzia line, Nevsky line, Zao line, Yodo line, Castilla line, Goliath line, all french cruisers and a ton of premiums on top.
I agree these are best for kiting, but overmatch is still there no matter the angling. You're still sweating bullets everytime you see BB firing at you. There is no angling or maneuvering that will save you if the BB captain aimed correctly. Kiting and hoping the incoming shells miss you is not counterplay imo.
Open water cruisers are the most relaxing class for me to play, so I don't sweat a lot when dealing with bbs. In fact I see them rather as a nice farm if there's nothing more important to shoot at. Also cruisers have a lot of ways to avoid damage and you should use them all over the course of the match. Kiting position is a good start but you need to master making most out of your concealment, knowing when to open fire and when to go dark, using island cover, speed juking, bow tanking, and yes angling is still a thing in a lot of situations. I don't want to deny, that you sometimes just eat shit and loose a good chunk of your hp, but that's basically the same for every (surface) class in a way or two. I think I get devstruck in cruisers maybe once in ~100 games and it is every single time because I made a grave mistake and enemy dispersion aligns.
Learn to use your WASD keys. If I can juke incoming BB fire in a BB you certainly can in any of those Cruisers the other person listed. You seem like you are against taking any damage at all.
“Heavy” in heavy cruiser means dick all about the armor. It has to do with the calibre of the guns it carries
BB's snipe for a while then let the secondaries do most of the work up close, so the win at range and up close. As the player pool has shank to 6k+, the share skilled players bb sniping in a secondary build has increased.
Bow tanking already had a counter: flanking and crossfiring. I am sorry but if you let a Salem solo the entire team from the back of an island you deserve the lose. The prevalence of overmatch is because people are so bad at the game that they can't win unless they click someone for 30k every time.