Watboy

Got a kraken w my first match in a Georgia (I'm not very good, don't have many krakens). I've had a lot of great games in GA, and only a few stinkers. Yoshino is the opposite, I have a lot of crappy games in her, and only a handful of great games. Yoshino you are more reliant on your teammates, and the new batch of 18" snipers (Thunderer, Ohio, GA) can citadel you just by looking at you.

The cynic in me thinks WG is deliberately releasing an OP HE spamming premium ship to suck up all the coal, and then push out the IFHE re-work. That way they can say isn't a premium ship nerf because its a global mechanic change.

Cruisers firing HE from smoke is OP, which is why we have Smolensk. BB's cannot have accurate guns at range for balance, which is why there is the Slava. You cannot allow OP combinations because they are reserved for Russian paper ships. I cannot wait for Russian CVs with radar equipped aircraft..

I must have seen Asashio in 10 sprints today. Twice, each team had an Asashio to even out the handicap. Why bring that ship into ranked?

Got the W.Virginia, which is the one T6 ship I really wanted.

I can't wait for MM giving you rounds with 6 CV's and 6 subs. Imagine all the fun waiting for games to time out when only subs and CV's remain.

I wonder how the new and improved MM handles playing different tier ships. Example, I take out the T8 I'm currently grinding and see a wall of T10s. Ship goes down, so I exit and start playing a T6 ship where I'm not bottom tier. When the T6 match is finished and I take the T8 out again, does MM think since I wasn't bottom tier in my T6 match, they can show me a wall of T10's again?

I will disagree on this one. I think BB's that encourage more maneuvering, active positioning, and aggressive play is good for the game, even if it comes with passive secondary damage. I think ships like Slava, Smolensk are bad for the game, as is putting high skill floor ships behind steel walls. For a game to be popular and accessible and successful, I think there are upper limits to how much skill based it should be. If skill and skill alone is what takes to win, then the game is not fun for below average and new players. Not everyone can be above average. If there is a problem with the competitiveness / skill gap / fun with the game, its with steel/coal ships (the original re-grind rewards if implemented), not secondaries. And of course, the biggest problem with passive skills is AA. Secondaries being too effective is the game's least concern. I liken it to the US T95 in WoT. It had a singular ability, near impervious frontal armor that was balanced by 10kmph top speed. Even in the best player's hand, its limitations may prevent you from having a good game. But in the right situation, which took knowledge of terrain and your limitations, it was meme worthy. Overtime however, the game introduced more lines, mobility became more important, the T95 was incredibly difficult to have a good game in. Finally, they buffed its speed dramatically to keep up with the new mobility meta. It's still a 1 trick pony, but at least that trick has kept up with the game.

So I understand your position. Great secondaries means main battery needs a hit. But secondary is awful play style because its automatic and skill-less, so that trade off is not worth it because secondary play style is not worth it. Thus the under performance of KG BB's is not due to balance, but due to being built around a bad play style, and the fix is not a buff, but to re-position the ship away from secondaries. I think you are basically saying secondary ships are balanced because secondaries are powerful but underperform because secondary play style is not effective. I think you under estimate how difficult it is to do appreciable amount of secondary damage and survive. And i think play styles that are encouraged with modules, skills, flags, should all be viable. Otherwise, remove them from the game.

GA's 6 guns is not to balance it for its secondaries, its to balance it for its gun size and accuracy. I'm not saying secondary ships don't need weakness elsewhere. I'm saying that back in the day KM ships guns were inaccurate and it was balanced. But it has become the victim of power creep, that MA is considered balanced today with guns that are not remotely as gawdawful, is my proof. I don't know what your point is, no one is saying that secondaries is not a good feature and that ships need to be weak elsewhere to balance. Are you saying KM BBs are balanced now? We all know WG has power creep. And they will do the whole "its fine" for extended periods of times, and then massive incoming buff comes in. They'll never admit something was too weak, even if it takes massive buff's to balance.

In my dreams i'll push a cap, draw all the fire. Red DD's come out trying to get torps off, but my radar cruisers came up with me and expose them for my secondaries. My teammates push with me or flank the enemy and we take the cap, bag 4 kills and i still have 40% of my health left. But in reality, all i get is back line camping BB's calling out for intelligence, and island humping cruisers yelling at me to fall back.

Bismark w hydro, I can still maneuver enough to have a chance at torpedo beats. But w FDG and GK, those massive barges, Hydro means I only take 1-2 hits instead of a full spread. Its just not as OP as some people make it out to be given your size, maneuverability and the stationary meta the game is at now.

Say that to Massachusetts and Georgia. KM's have the HE pen buff so I find IFHE is not needed, but manual secondaries makes a difference. For my MA and GA, I run IFHE but find that the secondaries are accurate enough that ManSec is not needed, and better to be able to have all guns blazing when things get hairy. But the MA and GA guns are vastly more dependable.

I finally got the Kreml, and was a fairly enjoyable line with the close in lasers and HE shattering platting. Soyuz was quite fun, and there were no stinkers in the line like the old Izumo, or the slow as molasses Colorado. Afterwards I decided to re-grind the German BB line for Research Points. It was the first BB line I played, and the GK was my first T10 ship. I had fond memories of that line, but hadn't played it in the last year or so. But regrind has been painful, FDG is not fun. Its an AP bomb magnet and seemingly always in the center of a daka-daka hurricane. If there's a CV in the game you are basically perma spotted. If I'm lucky, I'll get a few shell hits for over pens on broad side targets at 8km. To add insult to injury, I get sniped by all the new 18" battleship laser guns 18km away. I've had to respec away from full secondary to survival build, but that just takes out the special fun thing about her. WG - line needs some love. I'd be happy with guns that can hit the side of a barn from the inside.

I remember the old business model of selling hot dog buns in 6 packs and hot dogs in 8 packs. You would have to either eat a lot of hot dogs, or have wastage. It is a slimy business practice that WG seems to have adopted. The cumulative total research points regrinding a line is 500, 1000, 2500, 4000, 10000. Colbert is 57k, Ohio is 62k, combined its 119k. There's no easy way to hit the exact amount you need, and practically no one is going to abandon a line early. You are pretty much guaranteed to have scrap amounts of research points. There's no use of the scraps except for buying Free XP. I'm not that much of a fan of RB to begin with, but I would have much preferred a more honest system of certain number of regrinds for a ship (say 4 for Colbert, 5 for Ohio), then this deception that research points is some sort of fungible/divisible currency of value.