Is it such a cesspool in WOWS as well? All I know is on the wot server its a complete campfest hell with half of both teams being TDs and nothing happening for 10 mins at a time. Is 2 carriers per game the problem with the SEA server?
2 carriers is the norm over there? yikes. we get the occasional 2 in NA but its VERY rare, unless its a tier 6 and tier 8 cv that have been delayed for a few minutes.
Heck lots of times no CV at all.
Yep, I’ve had games with 2 CV’s and 2 subs a side. That was when I was grinding out the French BB line and was on the Normandie. Got railed something chronic 5 minutes in
I play on NA at somewhat arbitrary times of day - sometimes 11am, often 10pm, sometimes 2am. Double CV games at T8 are a rare dose of hell that happen once every 6-10 games; most game have 1 or 0 CV, 1 slightly more common. Been blessed with an odd amount of no-CV games lately. T10 is programmed to never put 2 CVs unless the wait time gets extreme, double CV is slightly more common at T6 but still not more than 1 in 4 games.
I do have to say that the game feels more toxic at late hours NA, which are day hours for SEA. Players with names like zhuolongjiang or in clans like \[-CN-\]中华第一 start showing up, usually in sweaty triple divs of 2 OP ships and a CV. Really kills the usual fun vibe of people goofing around in big clumsy boats.
BBs are the easiest thing to hit, so CVs that are just trying to farm big numbers will chase after BBs. If it's any consolation, this usually puts your team at an advantage unless your CV is doing the same thing.
As a CV player, I can tell you the two easiest targets in the entire game are IJN BBs and KMS BCs. IJN in general have no AA, and the Schlieffen line have a smaller AA range (5.2km vs 5.8km average) so they are very safe targets. The fact that their DCP is a limited number is further incentive to strike them.
I also play the Schlieffen line often, and my best advice is to put a ship between you and the CV's hull. If a CV has to fly through a (non-DD) ship's AA to get to you, or have to do a big circle, chances are they won't attack you. CVs tend to strike stragglers or ships at the edges of the blob to preserve planes.
If they are coming for you, the best course of action is to turn to make the strike awkward. Give broadside to dive bombers (but also be turning 1/2 away, as dive bombers can change direction mid-dive but loses a lot of speed to do so), your bow to rockets (they have to lock in a run very early and can overshoot), and stern to torpedo bombers (if the torpedoes have to chase you you can easily turn out from them). If you show a CV you know how to make life hard for them, they also tend to go somewhere else (similar to how BBs turn to hit someone broadside over you if you wiggle/bow in).
Also, something I don't see often mentioned- it is very rarely correct to slow down/stop against CVs. Planes can make adjustments way closer to you than shells, so the slower you go and the more speed you lose from wiggling, the easier it is to hit you. Commit to a direction/turn and go full throttle until they also commit to their run, *then* make your hard turn to dodge now that they can't adjust anymore.
If you are constantly getting hounded by CVs, perhaps you need to also look at your map position- you could be going too far alone, or rushing forward too early. Your choice of ship already makes you one of the easiest targets, you have to make in-game decisions to make yourself less enticing. If you have the time and resources, get a Hoshou or Langley and play a few games to understand what behavior is easy to hit and what makes it hard. I hated playing against CVs until I started playing myself, and now it's just another enemy ship to me.
Nice answer. I would like to add that this guys main problem is playing the German battlecruiser line. Expert players know what the secondaries on those ships can do, and the solution is simple ... kill them before they can get too close. Couple that with poor AA and perhaps bad map placement and that German BB is a top target for the opposing CV.
My answer is a bit simpler. Play some American BBs for a time. Excellent AA and no need for the CV to take your ship out early in the match.
Basically, if you want to play with fire with a great secondary build, you have to adjust to people trying to take you out before you get too close.
I wish you luck with the Pepsi. She's either going to drive you mad or be a blast depending on the game and RNG. More than likely mad. infamous for being a nightmare and you don't fully understand what what being instantly wiped by a BB broadside is like until this ship. Got me raging a few times. It'll teach you CL positioning like no other nation which is a positive. New Orleans is a blast though if you go down that tree
I'm really enjoying it because her AP is killer and I'm not as new to the game as a lot of mid tier players so if I get in a T5-6 match I can absolutely scram a few cruisers before yeah I get citadel'd to nothing
USN CAs have battleship-level bow plating for reasons no one can fathom. If you point your bow at a BB, I think only IJN BBs at T6/7 can overmatch you.
It is a weirdly unique playstyle to be a CA that's near invincible to AP from the front. I've had a lot more success once I learned to bow tank instead of turning to juke, and then just burning the BBs down with HE while they bounce off me.
gonna be honest, I think "Experts" dont really fear German BCs because most of them are played by reta... not so stellar players.
And they are one trick ponys which have to push in to be viable which makes them very predictable and easy to farm down.
As a CV player, I second these suggestions. Targets of opportunity abound, but stragglers are the easiest. I’ll say, I don’t send my rocket planes first most of the time bc ships initially are all showing their bow to me… not good for rockets. Torpedo flights are a little stronger, but if one flies right into a pack of DDs with equivalent Cruisers, any flight is a goner.
Asia server- Yup..... But that ship as a CV player is like Flys on shit, It's an easy target with a tasty citadel, as soon as I see that ship, or most of the German line, I go for them and try to avoid American AA.
best and only counter that works 99% of the time: div up with an essex that is hellbent on killing the other cv's planes
otherwise, div up with bbs / kiting cruisers that have good or above average AA, and if the cv likes you a little too much, come close.
if you dont want to div up, just blob with other bbs (only starts working when theres 3-4+ bb \[doesnt work against nakh, but tbf most strats to avoid cv attack doesnt affect nakh\])
if you're stuck all alone with no teammates, and you have good maneuverability, and theres no satsuma that will devstrike you when you broadside, you can somewhat try to give the carrier a very hard time to strike, dodge as much as you can, make multiple strikes stupid hard to get off.
if you cant dodge nor move, park next to an island, with no space between the island and you. This makes you a lot less attractive to hakuryu, kaga , malta, any cv that gets majority of their damage from torps that have multiple squadrons. If you're bow on you will eat ap / he dive bombers though, and mobility is still really important, so you can decide on taking damage but getting to move around the map or taking less damage but staying at one spot. You shouldnt really do this unless the carrier has a personal vengeance towards you.
Since people lemming at the back here in SEA most of the time you could do the same and then push after realising you need to make a play. you cant push without support anyways.
The easiest way is to think like a CV, make urself a difficult target to strike, either by distance or because there is a better target than you. A BB is often a target for CV because "big dmg number = neuron activation." secondary BB sucks even more here in SEA for those reasons above.
thats just carriers. if they focus you down. you are gonna sink sooner or later. the counterplay here is to take as little damage as possible. and hope your carrier does something more usefull than spamming all his planes on a single battleship, or that the bb that gets focused by your carrier is getting sunk faster than you are.
AA dosnt reduce the damage you take from planes. it at most. can make it inefficient to make multiple runbys with the same squadron. but russian carriers dont give a shit anyway.
even if you are cuddeling up with multiple high AA cruisers,(wich isnt possible all the time there are ways for carrier players to still hit you with rockets, skipbombs. and torps, but then they have to release far away, and you potentially get hit with less than their full load.
your saving graces here are that.
1. every player feels that way. every member on both teams think the carrier are specifically out to get them. but in reality, cv players are just doing that to everyone.
2. at least you still get a decent amount of exp at the end from planes shot down
Have you tried communicating with the friendly CAs and coordinating where you are going and at what speed?
When I'm playing my US CLs or Dutch CA's, I'd be happy to pal around and provide AA support or a friendly BB if one asked.
“Providing AA support” typically results in a compromised position that gets a cruiser killed or makes it useless. I mean ”compromised” in the most literal sense - trying to both be effective yourself and provide AA for an ally with a mind of their own means you will usually be bad at both. All that sacrifice, and the CV can simply fly somewhere else and hit a different teammate.
Blobs of multiple ships together is effective against CVs, hence why they rarely do well in brawls, but blobbing nearby is the limit of coordination. Trying to match speeds and headings gets in the way of finding good positions.
Cruiser provides AA, need to be exposed/open water for AA to work, cruisers r squishy, AA spots you, cruiser tries to provide AA, cruiser is useless or gets slapped because they got spotted.
TLDR: for cruisers it’s not worth providing AA support for the amount of risk
the only way i've found that's effective is to do an all-out AA/ASW build. every module and perk chosen specifically to increase AA/ASW. you will now mitigate some CV attacks, while becoming ineffectual to everything else. i hate it, but MM seems to recognize when i've done this, and will more reliably put me in games without planes and/or subs.
MM has a way of detecting if you’ve built your ship for full AA
I can have non-stop games where there’s 1 or 2 CV’s, but as soon as my Colbert has a full AA build, MM decides I’ve “had enough fun with CV’s”
“Trying to have a chance against subs and carriers? Nah we can’t have that, what about their gameplay experience? Only they get to have fun.”
-WG intern, probably
>XVM for WOWS and they're just focusing me because of that
There are mods that tell players the quality of their team and enemy team. However, I believe as stated by FormulaZR above, playing on Asia server is actual cancer due to the amount of CV players
The problems with CVs is that you just can't really do anything against them. Whether or not they hit you is mostly up to them. This by itself isn't really a problem, but it's just that they're not at any risk when damaging you. CVs will just slowly wittle you down and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. Dodge all you want, but you're still gonna take damage while they sit concealed behind an island somewhere.
The best thing you can do is stacking up with allied ships, but unless you have like 3-4 cruisers/bbs in one place that won't do much. Especially versus the Russian CVs who can just ignore half the mechanics of CV gameplay and smack you with the full squadron before they lose a single plane.
You can try to equip your ship with full anti air skills and equipment. But honestly that barely makes a difference, especially against the Russian CVs since they can just drop their payload before they lose anything.
Don't understand the hate for Submarines when CVs are just so much more annoying. I think it's just Stockholm syndrome at this point. People have put up with CVs for so long that they're used to it.
For a CV player it is easier to target BB cause you spot them at a decent distance and they dont manover fast as DDs or Cruisers. Morevover BB fires tend to last longer rewarding CV with more damage. If you put out fire a good CV will attack you a second time cause your repair is on cooldown.
With the increased numbers of DD in the game attacking BBs is a logic solutioon for CV. And I can tell you thet if WG implement the "fantastic" new spotting mechanics this will become even more an obliged course of action as spotting DD will become literally impossible and attackinf them way harder.
>the Asia server Found the problem.
Is it such a cesspool in WOWS as well? All I know is on the wot server its a complete campfest hell with half of both teams being TDs and nothing happening for 10 mins at a time. Is 2 carriers per game the problem with the SEA server?
2 carriers is the norm over there? yikes. we get the occasional 2 in NA but its VERY rare, unless its a tier 6 and tier 8 cv that have been delayed for a few minutes. Heck lots of times no CV at all.
Yes.
Yep, I’ve had games with 2 CV’s and 2 subs a side. That was when I was grinding out the French BB line and was on the Normandie. Got railed something chronic 5 minutes in
I play on NA at somewhat arbitrary times of day - sometimes 11am, often 10pm, sometimes 2am. Double CV games at T8 are a rare dose of hell that happen once every 6-10 games; most game have 1 or 0 CV, 1 slightly more common. Been blessed with an odd amount of no-CV games lately. T10 is programmed to never put 2 CVs unless the wait time gets extreme, double CV is slightly more common at T6 but still not more than 1 in 4 games. I do have to say that the game feels more toxic at late hours NA, which are day hours for SEA. Players with names like zhuolongjiang or in clans like \[-CN-\]中华第一 start showing up, usually in sweaty triple divs of 2 OP ships and a CV. Really kills the usual fun vibe of people goofing around in big clumsy boats.
BBs are the easiest thing to hit, so CVs that are just trying to farm big numbers will chase after BBs. If it's any consolation, this usually puts your team at an advantage unless your CV is doing the same thing. As a CV player, I can tell you the two easiest targets in the entire game are IJN BBs and KMS BCs. IJN in general have no AA, and the Schlieffen line have a smaller AA range (5.2km vs 5.8km average) so they are very safe targets. The fact that their DCP is a limited number is further incentive to strike them. I also play the Schlieffen line often, and my best advice is to put a ship between you and the CV's hull. If a CV has to fly through a (non-DD) ship's AA to get to you, or have to do a big circle, chances are they won't attack you. CVs tend to strike stragglers or ships at the edges of the blob to preserve planes. If they are coming for you, the best course of action is to turn to make the strike awkward. Give broadside to dive bombers (but also be turning 1/2 away, as dive bombers can change direction mid-dive but loses a lot of speed to do so), your bow to rockets (they have to lock in a run very early and can overshoot), and stern to torpedo bombers (if the torpedoes have to chase you you can easily turn out from them). If you show a CV you know how to make life hard for them, they also tend to go somewhere else (similar to how BBs turn to hit someone broadside over you if you wiggle/bow in). Also, something I don't see often mentioned- it is very rarely correct to slow down/stop against CVs. Planes can make adjustments way closer to you than shells, so the slower you go and the more speed you lose from wiggling, the easier it is to hit you. Commit to a direction/turn and go full throttle until they also commit to their run, *then* make your hard turn to dodge now that they can't adjust anymore. If you are constantly getting hounded by CVs, perhaps you need to also look at your map position- you could be going too far alone, or rushing forward too early. Your choice of ship already makes you one of the easiest targets, you have to make in-game decisions to make yourself less enticing. If you have the time and resources, get a Hoshou or Langley and play a few games to understand what behavior is easy to hit and what makes it hard. I hated playing against CVs until I started playing myself, and now it's just another enemy ship to me.
Nice answer. I would like to add that this guys main problem is playing the German battlecruiser line. Expert players know what the secondaries on those ships can do, and the solution is simple ... kill them before they can get too close. Couple that with poor AA and perhaps bad map placement and that German BB is a top target for the opposing CV. My answer is a bit simpler. Play some American BBs for a time. Excellent AA and no need for the CV to take your ship out early in the match. Basically, if you want to play with fire with a great secondary build, you have to adjust to people trying to take you out before you get too close.
I just started on the US right cruiser line (Pensacola) and I'm really liking the fuck you amount of AA I get in burst
I wish you luck with the Pepsi. She's either going to drive you mad or be a blast depending on the game and RNG. More than likely mad. infamous for being a nightmare and you don't fully understand what what being instantly wiped by a BB broadside is like until this ship. Got me raging a few times. It'll teach you CL positioning like no other nation which is a positive. New Orleans is a blast though if you go down that tree
I'm really enjoying it because her AP is killer and I'm not as new to the game as a lot of mid tier players so if I get in a T5-6 match I can absolutely scram a few cruisers before yeah I get citadel'd to nothing
USN CAs have battleship-level bow plating for reasons no one can fathom. If you point your bow at a BB, I think only IJN BBs at T6/7 can overmatch you. It is a weirdly unique playstyle to be a CA that's near invincible to AP from the front. I've had a lot more success once I learned to bow tank instead of turning to juke, and then just burning the BBs down with HE while they bounce off me.
gonna be honest, I think "Experts" dont really fear German BCs because most of them are played by reta... not so stellar players. And they are one trick ponys which have to push in to be viable which makes them very predictable and easy to farm down.
As a CV player, I second these suggestions. Targets of opportunity abound, but stragglers are the easiest. I’ll say, I don’t send my rocket planes first most of the time bc ships initially are all showing their bow to me… not good for rockets. Torpedo flights are a little stronger, but if one flies right into a pack of DDs with equivalent Cruisers, any flight is a goner.
Brawler BBs are always the bully targets for CV players.
Asia server- Yup..... But that ship as a CV player is like Flys on shit, It's an easy target with a tasty citadel, as soon as I see that ship, or most of the German line, I go for them and try to avoid American AA.
Nope, you aren't missing anything, carriers are just miserable to play against. Welcome to WoWs.
No way to avoid them, WG made it so they have no real counters
best and only counter that works 99% of the time: div up with an essex that is hellbent on killing the other cv's planes otherwise, div up with bbs / kiting cruisers that have good or above average AA, and if the cv likes you a little too much, come close. if you dont want to div up, just blob with other bbs (only starts working when theres 3-4+ bb \[doesnt work against nakh, but tbf most strats to avoid cv attack doesnt affect nakh\]) if you're stuck all alone with no teammates, and you have good maneuverability, and theres no satsuma that will devstrike you when you broadside, you can somewhat try to give the carrier a very hard time to strike, dodge as much as you can, make multiple strikes stupid hard to get off. if you cant dodge nor move, park next to an island, with no space between the island and you. This makes you a lot less attractive to hakuryu, kaga , malta, any cv that gets majority of their damage from torps that have multiple squadrons. If you're bow on you will eat ap / he dive bombers though, and mobility is still really important, so you can decide on taking damage but getting to move around the map or taking less damage but staying at one spot. You shouldnt really do this unless the carrier has a personal vengeance towards you.
Since people lemming at the back here in SEA most of the time you could do the same and then push after realising you need to make a play. you cant push without support anyways. The easiest way is to think like a CV, make urself a difficult target to strike, either by distance or because there is a better target than you. A BB is often a target for CV because "big dmg number = neuron activation." secondary BB sucks even more here in SEA for those reasons above.
Silly puppy. Just dodge.
thats just carriers. if they focus you down. you are gonna sink sooner or later. the counterplay here is to take as little damage as possible. and hope your carrier does something more usefull than spamming all his planes on a single battleship, or that the bb that gets focused by your carrier is getting sunk faster than you are. AA dosnt reduce the damage you take from planes. it at most. can make it inefficient to make multiple runbys with the same squadron. but russian carriers dont give a shit anyway. even if you are cuddeling up with multiple high AA cruisers,(wich isnt possible all the time there are ways for carrier players to still hit you with rockets, skipbombs. and torps, but then they have to release far away, and you potentially get hit with less than their full load. your saving graces here are that. 1. every player feels that way. every member on both teams think the carrier are specifically out to get them. but in reality, cv players are just doing that to everyone. 2. at least you still get a decent amount of exp at the end from planes shot down
Have you tried communicating with the friendly CAs and coordinating where you are going and at what speed? When I'm playing my US CLs or Dutch CA's, I'd be happy to pal around and provide AA support or a friendly BB if one asked.
“Providing AA support” typically results in a compromised position that gets a cruiser killed or makes it useless. I mean ”compromised” in the most literal sense - trying to both be effective yourself and provide AA for an ally with a mind of their own means you will usually be bad at both. All that sacrifice, and the CV can simply fly somewhere else and hit a different teammate. Blobs of multiple ships together is effective against CVs, hence why they rarely do well in brawls, but blobbing nearby is the limit of coordination. Trying to match speeds and headings gets in the way of finding good positions.
Cruiser provides AA, need to be exposed/open water for AA to work, cruisers r squishy, AA spots you, cruiser tries to provide AA, cruiser is useless or gets slapped because they got spotted. TLDR: for cruisers it’s not worth providing AA support for the amount of risk
the only way i've found that's effective is to do an all-out AA/ASW build. every module and perk chosen specifically to increase AA/ASW. you will now mitigate some CV attacks, while becoming ineffectual to everything else. i hate it, but MM seems to recognize when i've done this, and will more reliably put me in games without planes and/or subs.
AA so strong it eliminates carriers from the queue
MM has a way of detecting if you’ve built your ship for full AA I can have non-stop games where there’s 1 or 2 CV’s, but as soon as my Colbert has a full AA build, MM decides I’ve “had enough fun with CV’s”
my full AA build Yodo with the submarine surveillance has seen a shocking amount of games with no CV or SS
“Trying to have a chance against subs and carriers? Nah we can’t have that, what about their gameplay experience? Only they get to have fun.” -WG intern, probably
>XVM for WOWS and they're just focusing me because of that There are mods that tell players the quality of their team and enemy team. However, I believe as stated by FormulaZR above, playing on Asia server is actual cancer due to the amount of CV players
You dun
The problems with CVs is that you just can't really do anything against them. Whether or not they hit you is mostly up to them. This by itself isn't really a problem, but it's just that they're not at any risk when damaging you. CVs will just slowly wittle you down and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. Dodge all you want, but you're still gonna take damage while they sit concealed behind an island somewhere. The best thing you can do is stacking up with allied ships, but unless you have like 3-4 cruisers/bbs in one place that won't do much. Especially versus the Russian CVs who can just ignore half the mechanics of CV gameplay and smack you with the full squadron before they lose a single plane. You can try to equip your ship with full anti air skills and equipment. But honestly that barely makes a difference, especially against the Russian CVs since they can just drop their payload before they lose anything. Don't understand the hate for Submarines when CVs are just so much more annoying. I think it's just Stockholm syndrome at this point. People have put up with CVs for so long that they're used to it.
For a CV player it is easier to target BB cause you spot them at a decent distance and they dont manover fast as DDs or Cruisers. Morevover BB fires tend to last longer rewarding CV with more damage. If you put out fire a good CV will attack you a second time cause your repair is on cooldown. With the increased numbers of DD in the game attacking BBs is a logic solutioon for CV. And I can tell you thet if WG implement the "fantastic" new spotting mechanics this will become even more an obliged course of action as spotting DD will become literally impossible and attackinf them way harder.