battleships Close Quarters Combat skill should it be reworked?

[pepe_trueno]

with WG doing a balance pass on some captain skills i have been wondering if battleships skill Close Quarters Combat should be reworked too.

 

the problems:

1) one needs to invest into secondary guns range  which is counter intuitive to a skill that only buff main guns, whats more not all BBs have good secondary guns so in many cases that investment feel like an absolute waste.

2) being a 4 point skill means we have to leave out manual secondary or concealment or fire prevention. 3 skills one realy need on a secondary build

3) considering all the requirements and conditions one has to go throw to make it work the bonus is not particularly good

 

posible solutions:

option A: A simple trade of range for reload and this one works with all armament so its compatible with secondary builds, main gun builds and even torpedo BBs

-10% to all armament reload

+10% to AA continuous damage

-15% to main guns and torpedos range

 

option B: transform secondary related buffs to main armament and AA  buffs

when within secondary range. skills and modules that increase secondary guns ROF instead apply to main guns ROF at 75% of its value

when within secondary range. skills and modules that increase secondary guns accuracy instead apply to main guns accuracy at 40% of its value

skills and modules that increase secondary guns ROF instead apply to AA continuous damage at 50% of its value

skills and modules that increase secondary guns range also apply to AA range

 

note: in case of Manual Secondary Battery Aiming the skill will work this way:

current:

−10% secondary battery reload time.
−10% secondary battery dispersion.

When firing at the designated target: dispersion will decrease to -50% over 45 sec.
Some focus is retained when pausing or shifting targets.

 

with close combat skill (when within secondary range):

−7.5% main battery reload time.
−5% main battery dispersion.

When firing at the designated target: main battery dispersion will decrease up to -20% over 45 sec.
Some focus is retained when pausing or shifting targets.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by pepe_trueno

[BOBTHEBALL]

When you invest into secondaries with a battleship you're making a trade-off. You're focusing all your skills into packing a huge punch at closer ranges. This is just a weird way to overcomplicate and ruin a system that already works very well with the secondary ships we have in-game at the moment. The only real complaint about secondaries is how cruiser don't have many skills which is kind of being changed in the next update but it's still not enough.

6 hours ago, pepe_trueno said:

 

1) one needs to invest into secondary guns range  which is counter intuitive to a skill that only buff main guns, whats more not all BBs have good secondary guns so in many cases that investment feel like an absolute waste.

2) being a 4 point skill means we have to leave out manual secondary or concealment or fire prevention. 3 skills one realy need on a secondary build

3) considering all the requirements and conditions one has to go throw to make it work the bonus is not particularly good

 

 

 

These "problems" aren't problems, they're just balancing factors with captain skills. If your Schlieffen could be great at long ranges along with being great at short range that's not a good thing. That's just an OP ship to put it straight. That's also why only some key ships work great with a secondary build, it's not good for every ship to run which is fine and how it should be.

[AkiraKurai]

16 hours ago, pepe_trueno said:

option A: A simple trade of range for reload and this one works with all armament so its compatible with secondary builds, main gun builds and even torpedo BBs

-10% to all armament reload

+10% to AA continuous damage

-15% to main guns and torpedos range

A 10% buff all all arms is rediculous, DDs get a 10% when spotted and have a fragile health pool so they stand to lose a lot when they're spotted. Even the lighthouse build staple on cruisers Top Grade Gunner gives 8% for things within the the detection range of a ship and said ship that's within the the detection range must be spotted to proc it. On top of that, you're giving it a 10% AA buff, none of these skills touch anything but main battery.

16 hours ago, pepe_trueno said:

option B: transform secondary related buffs to main armament and AA  buffs

too complicated in weegees eyes. Seems rather intersting but again, the reload of main bat bonus is too high, fully speced, you're seeing a reload of 22.5%, this is without AR. Not to mention you're double dipping into AR with this change, making a ship at 50% going against something within sec range to get a wopping 40% reload reduction.

Imagine a Bourg (8.3km sec with these changes) running you down with a 40% reduction on MB which has a base of 24.8 seconds. It's now firing every 14.88 seconds, now add MBRB 50% reduction, it's now firing every 7.4 seconds.

 

[MBT808]

On 10/30/2023 at 12:13 PM, AkiraKurai said:

you're giving it a 10% AA buff

To be fair, AA is useless in the current game state outside a small amount of ships. 10% on BBs is essentially pointless. You could bake this into all ships and it would make no difference to the current CV-surface ship interaction(except for certain ships once again). AA dps would have to buffed to probably 30%(or more) and lose the stupid accuracy modifier to be appreciable.

Unfortunately, WG has given up on balancing CVs despite significant evidence that AA is under performing on surface ships to a heavy degree. Case and point, an “AA” ship that’s supposed to be effective against CVs as a main selling point:

@Sailor_Moon California AA is supposed to be very strong, but yet she doesn’t deter CVs.

Edited October 31, 2023 by MBT808

[Sailor_Moon]

2 hours ago, MBT808 said:

To be fair, AA is useless in the current game state outside a small amount of ships. 10% on BBs is essentially pointless. You could bake this into all ships and it would make no difference to the current CV-surface ship interaction(except for certain ships once again). AA dps would have to buffed to probably 30%(or more) and lose the stupid accuracy modifier to be appreciable.

Unfortunately, WG have given up on balancing CVs despite significant evidence that AA is underperforming on surface ships to a heavy degree. Case and point, an “AA” ship that’s supposed to be effective against CVs as a main calling point:

@Sailor_Moon California AA is supposed to be very strong, but yet she doesn’t deter CVs.

Yes, that is unfortunately correct. AA is in such a state, that not even Ahskance, a well-known advocate for CVs and making claims that AA power is perfectly fine as is (as seen here in this forum post of old):

has justified building into AA for her, despite that being her primary selling point (ala Texas).

And even if California's AA power could somehow be argued that it was NOT the primary selling point, then California has paid dearly in terms of her other stats for a "strength" she can't even reliably build into. Battleship AA skills are simply NOT worth taking, because they're not only highly situational, but at best, you shoot down maybe 1-2 more planes per pass. That is not really enough of a benefit to justify wasting 5 precious captain skill points.

At least West Virginia '44 CAN build reliably into her strength (secondary power). Heck, Wee Vee '44 can actually duplicate Cali's AA shtick, because she has not only decent AA power to begin with, but she ALSO has DFAA consumables. Something which California strangely lacks.

And while this is completely off-topic in regards to AA in general, I do feel this needs to be said so....

Ultimately, California is without an identity or role. She has the armor profile, underwater citadel and concealment to brawl/engage in mid-range combat, but she doesn't have the reload time, turret traverse or secondaries to justify doing so. She cannot reliably build into her AA, so she's not actually an "AA ship" by any stretch of the imagination. She can't even do what Wargaming claims she can do, and that is act as a heavyweight sniper. And the reason she can't do that is because she doesn't have access to dispersion mods and/or doesn't have battlecruiser dispersion to reliably land her salvoes. She cannot claim to be a long-range HE spammer either, simply because her reload time is trash for her tier. And her slowness across the board as well as lack of overmatch capability don't help her in any way, form or fashion.

At best, she is either a poorly designed mid-range combatant with too many hindrances for that playstyle OR she is a poorly designed long-range sniper without the accuracy to actually land her "heavyweight" salvoes (unlike Tier IX Minnesota, which CAN actually fulfill the role, due to having access to dispersion mod). Either way, she simply needs to be addressed. (Something WoWs RU has clearly figured out ;P)

[AkiraKurai]

3 hours ago, MBT808 said:

To be fair, AA is useless in the current game state outside a small amount of ships.

That wasn't even the main reason why I said it would have been a horrible change, it's the fact that it buffs ALL arms.

3 hours ago, MBT808 said:

California AA is supposed to be very strong, but yet she doesn’t deter CVs.

What you get for following weegees' promotions, they don't even play their own game, what makes you think they'll know about AA, something that I bet half the playerbase even knows how AA interacts.

If we where to actually review California's AA compared to all other T7 BBs, you'll see that she is in fact, not even that different from other BBs at T7. I would even vouch that Hood and a ship that no one really bats an eye to, Florida (this thing is litterally straight up just a better California), (which have AA that's comparable to T8's, being around the middle of the pact, not to mention they get DFAA), would be better than California.

1 hour ago, Sailor_Moon said:

Battleship AA skills are simply NOT worth taking, because they're not only highly situational, but at best, you shoot down maybe 1-2 more planes per pass.

They are not worth taking becasue there are so many better skills you can take at 2 and 3. Cruisers need to invest 2 and 4, not to mention the cruiser 4pt skill is the BBs 2pt skill and arguably the most essential one for a AA build.

The 3pt line for BBs has 2 staple skills AR and BoS (3 if you're a sec spec BB, 2 if you want to ditch BoS) both of which give great value for just 3 points
The equivalent 2pt skill on CAs is extremly situational with CE being the usual goto skill for 10% bonus to hydro/radar duration or EitS if you have a spotter, else DE if you actually can't benefit from either CE and/or EitS (laughable 1% fire chance upgrade).
FtT is there if you want to cosplay a torpedo cruiser but let's be honest, why aren't you playing a DD at that point.

The 2pt line for BBs is also staple heavy with it usually being a rotation of 2 of the 3 skills GtG, brisk, or Vigil, I personally don't see much value in Vigil but GtG gets a 20% turret rotation speed and brisk is a 7% speed boost, meanwhile DDs get a laughable 8% speed increase with the caveat that you also gimp your main battery reload all for 4pt.
Cruiser equivalent on 4pt has comaprable weight with the 2pt since it's where all the staple skills are located at such as TGG CE RF and outnumbered in the circumstance of a backline farming cruiser and IFHE for niche cruisers in comp.

 

It should also be noted that BBs do have an unusual amount of AA compared to Heavy Cruisers, which you would think wouldn't be the case in this kind of arcady game where it's assumed that Cruisers in general should have more AA than a BB. You can see this if you compare DM AA to an Incomp

| ship | long DPS | mid DPS |
|  ---  | --------- | --------- |
| DM  | 105          | 416.5      |
| Inc  | 115.5        | 619.5       |

One could argue DM gets a mid range AA of 4k vs Incomps 3.5k but still, it's rather laughable. Don't get me started on the VMF BBs, they're even more laughable with the two basically having better than Stalin AA and Stalin AA I would argue is up there on the rediculous AA if speced for it.

Edited October 31, 2023 by AkiraKurai

[MBT808]

35 minutes ago, AkiraKurai said:

What you get for following weegees' promotions, they don't even play their own game, what makes you think they'll know about AA, something that I bet half the playerbase even knows how AA interacts.

Keep it civil please, if you can’t, then don’t post.

It’s important to read what WG claims when selling ships. If you sell something that is supposed to do something well but can’t, that’s false advertising. I hold WG accountable for such things and so should everyone else. California in terms of AA is more or less false advertising, which many people fall victim to. I don’t own a California as a result of this, among other faults that sailor moon mentioned.

[Sailor_Moon]

7 hours ago, AkiraKurai said:

If we where to actually review California's AA compared to all other T7 BBs, you'll see that she is in fact, not even that different from other BBs at T7. I would even vouch that Hood and a ship that no one really bats an eye to, Florida (this thing is litterally straight up just a better California), (which have AA that's comparable to T8's, being around the middle of the pact, not to mention they get DFAA), would be better than California.

Well this is what I've been saying. Even Wee Vee '44 can duplicate California's AA shtick BETTER than California herself, because Wee Vee '44 has DFAA, and California does not. Florida can as well, and can probably fulfill the "sniper" role Wargaming keeps claiming for California, due to the fact that Florida has battlecruiser dispersion. 

As for the AA skills, the only one that MIGHT be worth a darn is the 2pt AA skill. And that's not even for the AA buff, it's for the consumables cooldown proc on AA activation. and even then....planes are not in every match. So it's not always useful. Buuuut it's not a COMPLETE waste of points, purely for the proc on AA activation ability.