(200 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)
Loading...It’s time to talk ship. Bottom line, I have issues with the current state of Battleships. Primarily, there is no reason at all to play the USN BB line. There almost isn’t a reason to play IJN BBs either, save for the fact the Yamato is the best T10 BB in the game.
Using four separate NA stats, W/L, Damage, Survivability and XP, I set out to see where the strengths of each line was, and where the weaknesses were.
The USN gets blown away in everything. There is not a BB at any tier that leads in anything other than Iowa’s survivability at T9. In fact, not a single BB is above a 50% win ratio on the NA servers. That is a huge issue. The stats don’t line. The USN line is hurting, and that hurts me.
-Zoup
How far back do your stats go? Remember US and Japanese BB’s have been in
game since the start – most players who played them at tier 3-5 were still
learning how to play the game, they didn’t know armor angling and when to
use AP vs HE. The German BB’s are the most recently added and there’s going
to be a lot of expert players playing those low tier ships to grind
through, unless they free-xp’d them. Players who know what they’re doing
and are seal clubbing their way up the tiers. So stats are going to be
slightly skewed in favor of the newer ships.
yes ofc.. give radar to evryfking one .. then remove dds bc it’s pointless
even as it is with as many cancerous prem ships for retards to rush into
the cap with the radar activated
one of the things i’ve noticed playing German BB’s is that the chances of
Citadeling other BB’s is pretty much slim to none.
US battleships up through t7 are absolutely awful. Slow, short-ranged
inaccurate guns, poor maneuverability when compared to German and IJN
battleships. Then at t8, they get speed and still have questionable
maneuverability. However, their armor becomes soft, but the most egregious
thing Wargaming did was make the US battleships (North Carolina, Iowa,
Missouri, and Montana) the least accurate ships in the game. These t8+
battleships had the most advanced radar directed gun fire control in the
game and they end up with the absolute worse dispersion in the game.
Meanwhile, the IJN t8+ battleships get near cruiser level dispersion with
access to both lower dispersion and faster reloads using Mk 1 Mod 0
Eyeballs.
WG, in my opinion, is completely bias towards the US naval ships. Why?
Because the US navy utterly destroyed the Japanese during WW2 and have
fielded the most power and best naval assets ever seen. They cannot have
that in their game where cruisers use MG like main guns with laser accuracy
spamming out HE. Battleships, all of them, in this game are nothing more
than credit/XP farm cows for players.
No one fears battleships because they are easily burned down to the
waterline, easily defeated by submarine detection like DDs that can close
within 3.13 nautical miles without being seen and fire torpedoes. Tell me,
in what world did this actually happen? When can a ship get closer than 10
nautical miles without being spotted? WG states that DDs are the counter to
battleships. What fantasy world do they live in? The only counter to a
battleship is a battleship unless a carrier is in action. It’s getting to
the point that playing a battleship is a novelty and not needed because
cruisers and DDs in this game do more damage faster spamming HE, torpedoes,
and their ability to fire from magical stealth clouds or imaginary stealth
firing from range. WG did all this because no one questions their motives
or their credibility.
WoT suffered from this for the longest time until Armored Warfare came into
being. Then they ‘made changes’ to make the game fun again. WG developers
never learn and never will. NA players should just say, ‘screw you WG,
we’re not playing your game anymore until you do what is right and
necessary to make US battleships equally competitive to the rest of the
battleships in the game. Then…wait for it, Russian’s imaginary paper
battleships show up! You have a idea what they are going to be like based
on the Nikolai.
(long post)
Interesting video. However, I only partially agree with you Zoup.
1) Be careful when using those stats. First of all; you need to make sure
that you are looking only at the latest statistics (Warships Today lets you
sort by last week; though perhaps you did?) – over the time since the game
went live, several ships have had their attributes tampered with for
balance. Second; on NA server especially, I’d expect new players to start
off with USN (it’s their home team after all, right?), and many players,
myself included, started out with battleships (they’re just sooo much
cooler, right?). For that reason, I’d expect somewhat lower skill base
battleships in general and USN battleships in particular.
Also; rating by XP is unfortunately something you can forget about right
away. Not only does the quoted number include premium account bonus (so a
higher portion of casual/non-premium players will mean less xp quoted), but
each ship in the game has its own personal “base XP modifier” that has not
been disclosed (though changes to it has been disclosed if you look at old
patch notes). You won’t be comparing like with like.
2) As for German supremacy? Maybe. Possibly. I’m at the Bismarck right now,
and it’s certainly strong. My take is:
T3: Yes Nassau.
T4: Closer. I wasn’t a huge fan of Kaiser, but the issue is that WG
purposely made T3 and T4 mediocre-to-bad when they made the game because
they were worried that everyone would just go straight for the battleships
by default and no other lines would be played. That lesson was somehow
forgotten in the Nassau and partially in Kaiser. They didn’t need to give
them such a good reload imho.
But…. who cares. It’s low tier, right?
T5: Love the König. Super ship. Power is from good reload, good sigma and
best armor until T10. Perhaps a slight reload nerf in accordance with T4
and T3. Then again, Kongo is a very good battleship too. Close call. NY
falls a bit behind because of its speed. Texas is better, but again with
speed issues.
T6: Bayern-class was the best battleship of WWI according to the RN
officers who tested Baden, but in the game I think it was a letdown after
König. NM and Fuso are considerably better. Arizona is the best one. I
would actually say Bayern needs a gun buff (seriously, a 15″ gun that can’t
pen a stationary, broadside NC from 11km?!?)
T7: I hated the Gneis. You are a basically a glorified Myogi for much of
the game. Then again, Colorado sucks too and has had a much deserved rep
for suckage since the start. 21kts is crippling at T7. Nagato takes that
one, albeit it’s not a favorite either. Bad tier for battleships. (hmm…
bad tier for a lot of things tbh.)
So… middle tiers are back-and-forth. USN are competitive.
T8: Is the best tier for battleships imho. NC is my favorite ship in the
game, and even Bismarck is not going to change that. The issue here is that
they apparently wanted to break the stale, bow-in meta and they wanted to
use the German BBs for that. So, they needed something to make players
actually want to move in and brawl; and gave them hydro. Those ships
shouldn’t have hydro imo. Take that away and they’ll be fine…. but is
that back to the less brawly meta they want to avoid? Perhaps.
T9: Only tried FdG in PT, but I liked that more than Iowa and Izumo – which
isn’t saying a whole lot since I found both to be a letdown after T8. In
fact, even FdG is a bit of a “sidegrade” compared to Bismarck.
T10: Monty has always been a bit behind. It’s more a matter of Monty
needing a buff than the other two needing nerfs.
Notice how they are trying to make the “iconic” ships strong? It’s just
simple business sense; you want ppl to get involved to get said ships, and
you don’t want experienced players saying “don’t bother” – they might get
dissappointed and leave the game before they get properly invested. For
IJN, it would be Yama, so she’s strong. For KM it’s Bismarck, so she’s
strong for her tier. For USN it should be Iowa, but it doesn’t really stand
out of the pack. I think they’d do well to give Iowa some better
survivability.
I think that is something wrong with this stats, i m a average player from
EU server and my stats with the American BBs is i think all right example
New York 78%win
New Mexico 75%
Wyoming 65%
Colorado 50%
Iowa 56%
North Carolina 65%
South Carolina 40%
and remember that at tier 3 i was a noob and Colorado was not my style but
great ship, and the ship’s stats from tier 3to tier 7 is before the German
BBs and tier 8-9 after but i think I’m going all right, sure i watch all
videos from YouTubers EU,NA, and trying to learn the game, sorry for my
English, keep up the good work
US is bottom at the moment but won’t be when wg implement royal navy i
guarantee they will be worse wg doesn’t care they showed it with rn
cruisers and i feel sick thinking what they will do to royal navy bbs. but
i guarantee US will be stronger .
Best BB in game hands down is Moskva, no argument allowed.
you have to remember Germany and Great Britain had the best ships. So war
games have it pretty good when they show that. It’s going to hurt Americans
I know but thier ships were poor. The US navy is miles behind. I hope they
don’t “balance” I like the realism.
The Reason German Battleships are better……
all the cool kids play German battleships!
the german BB stats are because when they were released, a LOT of
experienced players played them, way more than inexperienced played them
compared to US or IJN BBs.
Zoup I agree. I am at the NC and I’m am keeping her she is a great ship.
But the moment you go broadside to ANYTHING you get melted.Your HP melts.
Same with Iowa and Monty (from what I have seen) The only good The US has
is the DDs And only some of those are strong( benson Fletcher….) Thank
you for the middle finger WG to from all the USN tech tree players…
As a veteran for the U.S. BB line. This is just shocking. I’m devastated
that the U.S. BBs can’t compete.
USN-AA and firepower
German-Secondaries and citadel (speed?)
Japanese: Range
In my opinion once you get to tier 7, you start to feel undergunned until
you reach tier 10
On paper, the Konig shouldn’t win against the Kongo… and I think I would
rather have my Kongo. That said, I like my Konig anyway. Brawling fun! But
my Kongo will just out run , out maneuver, and out-range the Konig all day
long. The stats don’t tell the whole story…
Give US BB radar and make them great again.
I can’t fathom how the US late-tier battleships have a reputation for
squishiness and bad armor; in reality, they were the best armored
battleships in the world (except for the Yamato-class, which wins out by
virtue of having so much mass in its armor), with the best armor
configuration (proven by South Dakota, which, unlike every other battleship
that took battleship fire in WW2, actually defeated the shells without any
significant damage). The US battleship design (among battleships completed
in WW2) was to concentrate all armor in the turrets and citadels, while
keeping the rest of the ship largely lightly armored. As a result, they
were really fucking hard to sink or even disable.
So, not only does Wargaming ignore all of this with the US battleships,
they also strip away one of the other key strengths of US
battleships–accuracy, especially while firing while maneuvering. US radar
fire control was phenomenal. But in the game, the player aims manually…so
the natural ways to represent it in the game would be to make shell
dispersion much better (or at least have it automatically disperse at
favorable angles), or to increase the shell velocity. Neither seems to have
been done.
Speed, the Iowas most famous aspect, is not nearly as relevant in WoWS,
because escorting carriers is basically not done, and the difference of a
few knots in speed when your side armor is crap isn’t really relevant.
Being able to truly keep up with fast carriers in maneuvers is irrelevant
in WoWS.
AA is…well, US AA in WoWS is hideously underpowered if it wants to be
even remotely accurate to history. Proximity fuses, plus the best AA guns
in the world (and lots more of them than just about anyone), plus the best
radar and fire control in the world, meant that US AA completely outclassed
everyone else out there by 1943 (and especially 1944 onwards). But in WoWS,
Japanese AA is qualitatively equal (relatively speaking), despite this
being completely inaccurate to real life to an egregious degree.
Radar? Given how bizarrely radar is represented in the game (and how very
tall islands are basically all over the fucking place in virtually every
map, despite naval battles taking place at sea), it’s no surprise that this
advantage is also negated.
I think that the Japanese survivability is helped by the fact that german
bbs and players tend to charge in and get tons of damage before dying.
There is no more CVs cuz all the BBs cried about being torpedo’d…
But yeah I hopped over to ze Reich as my US…well suck lol.
Of course the USN is in last and the Germans are in first. Both the USN and
KMS specialize in close-up fights relying on their angled armor. But the
KMS is impossible to Citadel, has absolutely disgusting secondaries, has
faster reloading and firing guns, and has flatter gun arcs. They all have a
massive no-sailing zone around them, and in a metagame where nobody wants
to play CVs anymore, the USN’s sole reliance of being no-fly zone ships
don’t matter, like you said. Hell, German long-range AA is pretty stupid
right now anyways.
But the answer is NOT RADAR. As a few comments have said, that’d turn them
into both no-fly AND no-sail zones, especially for the Destroyers that were
designed to counter them. What I think needs to happen is that we make
Carriers viable again. As it stands, CV play is damn-near impossible
because of the ungodly amounts of AA that’s littered absolutely EVERYWHERE
these days. Battleships kill Cruisers. Without Carriers running around,
Cruisers lose their importance, and people would rather use the long-range
powerhouses that take an eternity to kill rather than getting Citadel-Nuked
from across the map. So which lines do you think people would find most
appealing;
A: The line with long range and a lot of guns (Japan)
B: The line with disgustingly good armor, fast main weapons, and
secondaries with more firepower than most Cruisers (Germany)
Or C: The line that can defend itself from a threat that’s not even
relevant anymore because of all the damn AA (America)
Well whichever one you chose, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t C. The AA from BBs
that are near each other is generally enough to make a CV captain want to
shoot themselves, so the USN has no real reason to be played besides
novelty. Revitalizing CV play would entice more people to not only play
cruisers again, but also bringing the USN back into relevance in both the
CA/L and BB lines. With more planes running about, suddenly top-tier AA
doesn’t seem like a bad investment.
What I suggest is *nerfing the AA of all Battleships besides the USN*. They
defend themselves too well. But leaving AA open on Battleships would not
only give the USN a reason to exist, but it’d restore all Cruisers back to
their point of relevance, which would likely lower the Destroyer
population. And having fewer counters and more juicy targets each round
would ensure a better game for the BBs themselves, while the Carriers can
comfortably approach and attack any BB that isn’t American, letting us CV
players have a more enjoyable time as well.