Ducky's BB captain skills guide/review

[Ducky_shot]

Ok, this is the last captain's skill breakdown for a while. I stay away from subs and CV's so will not attempt to pretend I know all the nuances with them.

This is only the second time I have gone over these Battleship skills, never got around to the second time on the forums. I think lots has changed since the skills originally came out. I will also admit that I haven't been a BB main for quite some time. 
 

Green: Good, pretty much universally useful
Orange: Situational or not so good
Red: Bad, if not useless on the majority of ships

1 point skills

Spoiler

	Gun Feeder	1	Accelerates shell-type switching of main battery guns.	−40% to the ship's minimum shell-type switching time.

I don't like this skill for BB's. You're still talking more than 15 seconds to reload typically; usually broadside targets of opportunity aren't going to be there in the 15 seconds plus the time it takes for your shells to get there. And if you find yourself with the wrong shell in a close quarters engagement with a cruiser or a battleship, that can usually be mitigated with a little bit more awareness and planning. 

	Demolition Expert	1	A better chance of causing fires on enemy ships or damage to submarines.	+1% chance of main and secondary HE shells causing a fire. +15% to the underwater explosion radius of main and secondary battery shells when attacking submarines.

Absolutely awful skill to be put in a pure BB skill tree. Except for secondary builds. And we all know what happened to secondary builds. But sure, its situationally useful for that, but don't get it for your Thunderer. Just please don't

	Consumables Specialist	1	Better availability of consumables.	−7.5% cooldown time of all Consumables except: Damage Control Party Repair Party

Consumables specialist gets upgraded to situational. Hydro's, radars, speed boosts are affected by it now. I wouldn't do it for speed boost or perhaps even radar, but perhaps handy with hydro.

	Emergency Repair Specialist	1	More efficient damage control and repair parties.	−3% cooldown time of Damage Control Party and Repair Party.

This is something that might seem to be a bit paltry of a skill, but its going to be utilized all the time, every game.

	Incoming Fire Alert	1	Provides a warning of long-range main battery fire.	Receive a warning of a salvo fired at your ship from a distance of more than 4.5 km.

I don't like this skill typically, I especially don't like it for battleships. With the armor or a BB, you should be able to position such that you don't need to know about every salvo shot at you. Plus you typically can't dodge them anyways in a sluggish BB even if it does detect one that has you caught out of position. But it does do what its supposed to, but it barely could be considered situational.

	Preventive Maintenance	1	Reduces the risk of main turrets, torpedo tubes, steering gear, and engine becoming incapacitated.	−30% to the risk of incapacitation of modules. +15% to the HP of secondary and AA guns.

This might be OK for secondary builds and brawling styles, but the BB skill tree is loaded with better options for points.

And here's my ranking of the skills:

2 point skills:

Spoiler

	Grease the Gears	2	Faster turret rotation.	+20% main battery turrets traverse speed.

Was pretty much the standard BB skill before the rework and its still great.

	Inertia Fuse for HE Shells	2	Increases the armor penetration of high explosive (HE) main and secondary shells, while decreasing their chance of setting the enemy ship on fire.	+25% armor penetration of HE shells. Base fire chance reduced by half.

I don't play a lot of BB and I definitely don't play much for HE centered BB's and I don't have a clue which BB's benefit from IFHE, but I know it isn't much. Pretty much a waste of 2 points for main batteries. Definitely could be situationally useful on secondaries.

	Brisk	2	Activated if the ship is undetected.	When activated: 10% increase in speed.

Its a conditional skill, I hate conditional skills. You'll be spotted most of the time after the first 2 minutes. And if you really need that speed to outrun something chasing to spot you while you try to recover and disengage, its not likely to turn out well for you anyways. Skill tree is rich with actually useful skills to even consider using this.

	Vigilance	2	Extends ship's torpedo acquisition range and improves torpedo protection.	+25% detection range of enemy torpedoes. +7% to the ship's torpedo protection.

I typically never use this skill on any ship. Probably have only intentionally taken it in comp play where there is a lot of static play and eating torps is nearly an inevitability. But definitely some players find this useful if they aren't as skilled at guessing dd positions, torp paths and dodging. It does reduce the torpedo damage as well, making it more useful than before

	Priority Target	2	The detection indicator displays the number of opponents that are currently aiming at your ship.	The detection indicator will show the number of enemies targeting you with main battery.

Completely situational. I wouldn't take it. BB's typically can tank a bunch and if you realize that you've bitten off more than you can chew, you'll figure it out pretty fast, PT isn't going to give you a huge advantage in a BB. But it does what its supposed to.

	AA Defense and ASW Expert	2	Increased anti-aircraft fire effectiveness. Bigger depth charges. Decreased consumable reload while AAA is active.	+15% damage from continuous AAA and flak. +10% to damage inflicted by depth charges. While AA defenses are operating: −40% ship consumables reload time.

AA is AA, it's not going to stop the CV from attacking you, it just increases the tax they have to pay that might hurt them in the long game. However, the  consumable reload makes it interesting. But its conditional. And for this skill to be useful you need CV's or subs to be in the match and you also need them to be close to you which isn't guaranteed. There are better skills that you'll use every game. I contemplated putting this one as bad, but it is situational.

Not a lot of good in the 2 point skills, but here's how I rank them:

3 point skills:

Spoiler

	Super-Heavy AP Shells	3	Increase AP shell damage in exchange for vulnerability to fire and flood.	+7.5% AP shell damage −10% fire and flood damage received +25% fire and flood duration.

I absolutely hate tradeoff and conditional skills. It makes it very hard to understand how and when they are working and whether they are worth it. Here's how to figure out if its worth it to you: Take a sample of your BB games and add 5% to your AP damage and 30% to your fire and flood damage. Compare and decide whether it helps you or not. If you are good at staying alive and dealing damage through the game, take it. If you aren't, don't take it, it'll probably hurt you more.

	Long-Range Secondary Battery Shells	3	Longer range secondaries.	+20% secondary battery firing range.

Kind of required for secondary builds. But are you effective in a secondary build? Are you staying alive with your secondary build? Could you perhaps deal more damage and be more effective if you stayed alive longer with your main guns, than you are with your secondary build?

	Adrenaline Rush	3	Increases reload speed of all armament as the ship's health decreases.	For each 1% HP lost: −0.2% reload time of all armaments +0.2% AA continuous damage.

Great skill for all ships, imo.

	Basics of Survivability	3	Quicker firefighting, flooding control, and module repair teams.	−15% to time of module restoration, firefighting, and recovery from flooding.

If you are good with your DCP discipline, this will shave a decent amount of damage taken over the course of a match. Plus it gets your guns and engines going faster if you don't want to use your DCP for them.

	Improved Repair Party Readiness	3	Activated when the ship takes potential damage equal to 100% of its base HP.	For each potential damage multiple: −0.8% reload time of the Repair Party  consumable. After receiving 2M HP potential damage: +1 charge of Repair Party .

If you are good at tanking damage, this is a great skill to have. However, this skill requires you to be good at tanking damage. Not a great skill to take in lower tiers were damages are significantly less

	Focus Fire Training	3	Decreased aircraft and airstrike reload time. More AA explosions. When Sector Reinforcement is activated, stronger damage shift to the priority sector.	−10% aircraft preparation time. −15% reload time of Airstrike armament. In an active priority AA sector: +1.5% (to 5%) immediate damage. +25% continuous damage.[2] +1 flak burst per salvo.

You know my thoughts on AA skills, I would put this as situational for ships with aircraft that can use the faster reload.

And here's my rankings for 3 point skills:

4 point skills:

Spoiler

	Furious	4	Activated if the ship is on fire or flooding.	1st fire / flood   −10% Main battery reload time 2nd etc. (up to 5), each   −5% Main battery reload time.

Conditional skills, I hate them. It also makes you want to be taking damage? Will you die quicker making the amount of extra salvoes a moot point because you didn't exercise good DCP discipline or poor positioning?

	Manual Secondary Battery Aiming	4	Greatly increases the accuracy of secondary guns against a designated target (if any) over time. Guns that cannot bear on a designated target will fire with improved reload and accuracy.	−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.

It's a good skill for secondary focused BB's, not a great skill if it isn't.

	Close Quarters Combat	4	When an enemy ship is spotted within the range of the secondary batteries, a main battery bonus is activated.	When activated: −10% reload time of main battery.

I had it as situational before it got nerfed by removing a secondaries reload buff, Definitely even less situational. You have to fully spec into secondary range for this to be useful and then you have to consider what survivability skills you aren't taking in place of it.

	Emergency Repair Expert	4	Better damage control and repair.	Damage Control Party and Repair Party: +1 charge (each). +10% action time.

Definitely a great skill for ships with limited DCP, still a decent skill for anything else with an extra repair plus getting more out of each repair.

	Concealment Expert	4	Reduces detectability range.	−10% detectability range of the ship.

Concealment is the name of the game in warships. Staying undetected to devastate someone caught out of position or be able to go dark and live to fight again in the battle are both helpful.

	Fire Prevention Expert	4	Reduces the risk of catching fire. The maximum number of fires on a ship is reduced to three.	−10% to the risk of fire. −1 maximum number of fires burning at one time.

If you are a typical BB main, you complain about every dinky ship setting you on fire. This will help with that.

And my rankings for the 4 point skills, its hard to pick an order for them, so many good skills at 4 points:

 

I really like the battleship tree, lots of hard decisions to make on it and lots of skills that you want to take.

Edited May 16 by Ducky_shot

[Admiral_Karasu]

What makes for 'good DCP discipline'?

[Ducky_shot]

1 hour ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

What makes for 'good DCP discipline'?

Not insta DCPing one fire if you are under sustained fire.

If you are trying to get under cover, not using it before you get into cover.

If you are trying to go dark, not using it before your gun bloom detection is gone. If you have the time on the DCP to extend past that, you can, like with USN BB's.

Also having plans or means to escape sustained fire to be able to be able to make sure you don't bleed health faster than your heals. Basically, you want to be able to get through all your repairs in a match as a BB, making sure you don't take more damage than necessary by way of repair, DCP and just going dark or utilizing cover.

Edited May 16 by Ducky_shot

[BOBTHEBALL]

3 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

3 point skills:

  Reveal hidden contents

	Super-Heavy AP Shells	3	Increase AP shell damage in exchange for vulnerability to fire and flood.	+7.5% AP shell damage −10% fire and flood damage received +25% fire and flood duration.

I absolutely hate tradeoff and conditional skills. It makes it very hard to understand how and when they are working and whether they are worth it. Here's how to figure out if its worth it to you: Take a sample of your BB games and add 5% to your AP damage and 30% to your fire and flood damage. Compare and decide whether it helps you or not. If you are good at staying alive and dealing damage through the game, take it. If you aren't, don't take it, it'll probably hurt you more.

	Long-Range Secondary Battery Shells	3	Longer range secondaries.	+20% secondary battery firing range.

Kind of required for secondary builds. But are you effective in a secondary build? Are you staying alive with your secondary build? Could you perhaps deal more damage and be more effective if you stayed alive longer with your main guns, than you are with your secondary build?

	Adrenaline Rush	3	Increases reload speed of all armament as the ship's health decreases.	For each 1% HP lost: −0.2% reload time of all armaments +0.2% AA continuous damage.

Great skill for all ships, imo.

	Basics of Survivability	3	Quicker firefighting, flooding control, and module repair teams.	−15% to time of module restoration, firefighting, and recovery from flooding.

If you are good with your DCP discipline, this will shave a decent amount of damage taken over the course of a match. Plus it gets your guns and engines going faster if you don't want to use your DCP for them.

	Improved Repair Party Readiness	3	Activated when the ship takes potential damage equal to 100% of its base HP.	For each potential damage multiple: −0.8% reload time of the Repair Party  consumable. After receiving 2M HP potential damage: +1 charge of Repair Party .

If you are good at tanking damage, this is a great skill to have. However, this skill requires you to be good at tanking damage. Not a great skill to take in lower tiers were damages are significantly less

	Focus Fire Training	3	Decreased aircraft and airstrike reload time. More AA explosions. When Sector Reinforcement is activated, stronger damage shift to the priority sector.	−10% aircraft preparation time. −15% reload time of Airstrike armament. In an active priority AA sector: +1.5% (to 5%) immediate damage. +25% continuous damage.[2] +1 flak burst per salvo.

You know my thoughts on AA skills, I would put this as situational for ships with aircraft that can use the faster reload.

And here's my rankings for 3 point skills:

In the most respectful way possible, this ain't it Chief. BOS is the most overrated and biggest waste of 3p ever. You have another 3p skill that not only reduces the cooldown of your heal but also gives you another one?? Like 2 million potential damage isn't that big of a task for most BBs. That skill is amazing and quite frankly people seem to underrate it highly. 

3 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

2 point skills:

  Reveal hidden contents

	Grease the Gears	2	Faster turret rotation.	+20% main battery turrets traverse speed.

Was pretty much the standard BB skill before the rework and its still great.

	Inertia Fuse for HE Shells	2	Increases the armor penetration of high explosive (HE) main and secondary shells, while decreasing their chance of setting the enemy ship on fire.	+25% armor penetration of HE shells. Base fire chance reduced by half.

I don't play a lot of BB and I definitely don't play much for HE centered BB's and I don't have a clue which BB's benefit from IFHE, but I know it isn't much. Pretty much a waste of 2 points for main batteries. Definitely could be situationally useful on secondaries.

	Brisk	2	Activated if the ship is undetected.	When activated: 10% increase in speed.

Its a conditional skill, I hate conditional skills. You'll be spotted most of the time after the first 2 minutes. And if you really need that speed to outrun something chasing to spot you while you try to recover and disengage, its not likely to turn out well for you anyways. Skill tree is rich with actually useful skills to even consider using this.

	Vigilance	2	Extends ship's torpedo acquisition range and improves torpedo protection.	+25% detection range of enemy torpedoes. +7% to the ship's torpedo protection.

I typically never use this skill on any ship. Probably have only intentionally taken it in comp play where there is a lot of static play and eating torps is nearly an inevitability. But definitely some players find this useful if they aren't as skilled at guessing dd positions, torp paths and dodging. It does reduce the torpedo damage as well, making it more useful than before

	Priority Target	2	The detection indicator displays the number of opponents that are currently aiming at your ship.	The detection indicator will show the number of enemies targeting you with main battery.

Completely situational. I wouldn't take it. BB's typically can tank a bunch and if you realize that you've bitten off more than you can chew, you'll figure it out pretty fast, PT isn't going to give you a huge advantage in a BB. But it does what its supposed to.

	AA Defense and ASW Expert	2	Increased anti-aircraft fire effectiveness. Bigger depth charges. Decreased consumable reload while AAA is active.	+15% damage from continuous AAA and flak. +10% to damage inflicted by depth charges. While AA defenses are operating: −40% ship consumables reload time.

AA is AA, it's not going to stop the CV from attacking you, it just increases the tax they have to pay that might hurt them in the long game. However, the  consumable reload makes it interesting. But its conditional. And for this skill to be useful you need CV's or subs to be in the match and you also need them to be close to you which isn't guaranteed. There are better skills that you'll use every game. I contemplated putting this one as bad, but it is situational.

Not a lot of good in the 2 point skills, but here's how I rank them:

Again brisk is amazing for repositioning. And majority of BBs can take it and use it extremely well. It's a great skill along with the AA skill because if you ignore the parts about buffing AA. You can see it gives a huge -40% to consumable reload time. If you're being slapped around by the CV then your heal, DFAA, dcp come on cooldown faster. 

Most of what you said was great and this is a helpful thing no doubt but I'd heavily reconsider some of the ratings.

[Ducky_shot]

2 hours ago, BOBTHEBALL said:

You can see it gives a huge -40% to consumable reload time.

And you get into matches with CV's how often? 2/3 of games probably in NA. So immediately it is useless in ~1/3 of your battles. Then you actually have to be in a spot where the CV is going to focus you, I would say that would roughly be half of those CV matches where you see significant air activity. Let's push that to a 2/1 ratio even. Now we are down to 44% of your battles where it really even comes into play. How many of those battles are you getting focused that heavily? Let's be generous and say its half of those remaining battles. So now we are down to 22% of your battles that that skill will be effective. So now you have to figure out how much usefulness you are getting out of the consumable reload. Let's go with 30 seconds of AA activity per flight. That means per flight you are getting 12 seconds shaved off your consumable reload. That's a pretty significant number. Let's say you get focused with 6 flights of planes. That's a full 1:12 off of your consumable reload. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. At 2 points, that's pretty good! But that's not happening every single battle. We've brought it back (generously, I might add) to 22% of a players battles where you are getting that kind of effectiveness out of it. 1/3 of a player's battles you'll gain a couple seconds if you get close enough to fighters, airstrikes, depth charge planes, etc. The other battles in the middle you'd be lucky to shave off 20-30 seconds total and it'd be debatable whether those 30 seconds would be actually useful or not. But like I said, I know there are more CV's on ASIA than there are on NA. I don't think I've seen it recommended by high skill BB players hardly ever.

 

2 hours ago, BOBTHEBALL said:

In the most respectful way possible, this ain't it Chief. BOS is the most overrated and biggest waste of 3p ever. You have another 3p skill that not only reduces the cooldown of your heal but also gives you another one?? Like 2 million potential damage isn't that big of a task for most BBs. That skill is amazing and quite frankly people seem to underrate it highly. 

Ok, let's look at some numbers on BOS. I'm going to use an average T8 BB for numbers. North Cal. Using module and flags you have 41 second fires causing 8078 damage and 27 second floods causing 8976 damage. Adding the skill takes those damage numbers down to 6867 and 7630, a difference of 1211 and 1346 per fire and flood respectively. I don't play enough BB to have any solid confirmation biases engrained in me, but lets say throughout most game you take at least 4 full fires and 1 full flood. (2 planned single fires and one unlucky double fire after you DCP) You've saved yourself 6190 damage, roughly 50% of a repair party or roughly 9.4% of your ships HP. An extra repair is more valuable absolutely, IF a player plays well enough to be able to use it. It's hard to compare appropriately with other skills that do other things, but let's compare it with another 3 point survivability skill for a different tree: SE in cruisers. Using an average cruiser there, Baltimore, SE gives ~8.5% in HP. So in looking at what the average value of BOS is probably going to be, it's a better skill comparably than SE is for cruisers. And its also giving you a bit faster repair on your guns, torps and other modules (which are damaged quite rarely admittedly) to boot (which I would not use to figure out whether something is useful or not. Is it the best survivability skill? Not a chance, not for the points, the extra repair at 4 points is way better as its going to provide 17000 in total HP for 33% more points, but that's only if a player gets through all 5 repairs efficiently. And arguably, its easier to be efficient with those heals without BOS removing fire damage. Emergency repair expert is super powerful.

 

2 hours ago, BOBTHEBALL said:

Again brisk is amazing for repositioning. And majority of BBs can take it and use it extremely well. It's a great skill along with the AA skill because if you ignore the parts about buffing AA. You can see it gives a huge -40% to consumable reload time. If you're being slapped around by the CV then your heal, DFAA, dcp come on cooldown faster. 

Yeah, Brisk can be useful, but only on BB's that you are actually using to try to get to the flank as quickly as possible and are stealthy enough to do it (battlecruiser lines) and then possibly have to reposition in from being way out on the flank. And if we use your argument about how useful the AA skill is because of how focused players are in planes, that kind of discounts your argument about how useful Brisk would be...

Edited May 17 by Ducky_shot

[Unlooky]

15 minutes ago, Ducky_shot said:

Ok, let's look at some numbers on BOS. I'm going to use an average T8 BB for numbers. North Cal. Using module and flags you have 41 second fires causing 8078 damage and 27 second floods causing 8976 damage. Adding the skill takes those damage numbers down to 6867 and 7630, a difference of 1211 and 1346 per fire and flood respectively. I don't play enough BB to have any solid confirmation biases engrained in me, but lets say throughout most game you take at least 4 full fires and 1 full flood. (2 planned single fires and one unlucky double fire after you DCP) You've saved yourself 6190 damage, roughly 50% of a repair party or roughly 9.4% of your ships HP. An extra repair is more valuable absolutely, IF a player plays well enough to be able to use it. It's hard to compare appropriately with other skills that do other things, but let's compare it with another 3 point survivability skill for a different tree: SE in cruisers. Using an average cruiser there, Baltimore, SE gives ~8.5% in HP. So in looking at what the average value of BOS is probably going to be, it's a better skill comparably than SE is for cruisers. And its also giving you a bit faster repair on your guns, torps and other modules (which are damaged quite rarely admittedly) to boot (which I would not use to figure out whether something is useful or not. Is it the best survivability skill? Not a chance, not for the points, the extra repair at 4 points is way better as its going to provide 17000 in total HP for 33% more points, but that's only if a player gets through all 5 repairs efficiently. And arguably, its easier to be efficient with those heals without BOS removing fire damage. Emergency repair expert is super powerful.

 

By your own admission, another heal is more valuable than BoS. Repair party readiness is far more useful then, no? In all my BB builds I take repair party readiness now over BoS. By the time you would have gotten decent value out of BoS you almost certainly would get more value out of IRPR. BoS, imo, is just inferior considering you can run two other buffs for DoT timers (Slot 4 and flag) but can only get another heal with skills. Running all 3 DoT debuffs is definitely within the point of diminishing returns. 

[Wolfswetpaws]

I think a lot of BB builds are intended to be used in high-tier battleships or are tailored for specific ships and involve spending a lot of Captain's Skills points.

Personally, I'm curious about Captain's Skill builds with a budget of 10 skill points or less.

After 14 to 17 skill points, much of what is left on the skills list seems like "luxury" or "can live without" skills.  Or is that just me?  🙂 

[Ducky_shot]

1 hour ago, Unlooky said:

By your own admission, another heal is more valuable than BoS. Repair party readiness is far more useful then, no? In all my BB builds I take repair party readiness now over BoS. By the time you would have gotten decent value out of BoS you almost certainly would get more value out of IRPR. BoS, imo, is just inferior considering you can run two other buffs for DoT timers (Slot 4 and flag) but can only get another heal with skills. Running all 3 DoT debuffs is definitely within the point of diminishing returns. 

Absolutely, but when do you get that extra heal from RPR? 2M potential damage. You don't get it from the start of the match. So now start looking at your potential damage over your last 10-20 games in BB's and look and see how many games you got to 2M potential damage. That will tell you how useful it will be in that regard. Going back to my old mantra: I hate conditional skills.

So now you have to look at the more useable part of that skill, the 0.8% increase every time you receive potential damage equal to your ship. If you get to 1M in a BB that has 100k HP, your repair party cooldown is decreased by 8%. If you get to 2M (and that's a fairly big 'if') then you get that repair and and it reloads 16% faster.

So at lower tiers, forget the repair party, its useless in that regard. If you are going to use it, use it only at high tiers

This is a useful skill at high tiers in extremely tanky, open water, central position BB's. We're talking pretty much only Russian and American BB's. Other BB lines aren't tanky enough for it to be useful. You'll be dead more often than not before getting to that amount of potential damage.

[BOBTHEBALL]

1 hour ago, Ducky_shot said:

Absolutely, but when do you get that extra heal from RPR? 2M potential damage. You don't get it from the start of the match. So now start looking at your potential damage over your last 10-20 games in BB's and look and see how many games you got to 2M potential damage. That will tell you how useful it will be in that regard. Going back to my old mantra: I hate conditional skills.

In tier 10 BBs 2 million potential damage isn't that hard to come by...

[BOBTHEBALL]

2 hours ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Personally, I'm curious about Captain's Skill builds with a budget of 10 skill points or less.

Expert loader, grease the gears, adrenaline rush and either fire prevention or concealment expert.

[Admiral_Karasu]

So... we would need to look at these builds more in terms of tier brackets? Is there a some kind of a coherent logic behind how the point selection should change from tier to tier?

[Wolfswetpaws]

6 hours ago, BOBTHEBALL said:

9 hours ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Personally, I'm curious about Captain's Skill builds with a budget of 10 skill points or less.

Expert loader, grease the gears, adrenaline rush and either fire prevention or concealment expert.

Thanks.

[yss_turtleship]

Thanks for doing this @Ducky_shot!  When I began my journey in World of Warships, your posts on captain skills in the old forums were incredibly helpful in guiding me on what to focus on. I'm not sure if we managed to save a copy of them and bring them here, but I'll check later.

[torino2dc]

In the spirit of the forum -- trying to reach greater understanding through debate -- I'd like to push back a bit on some of the evaluations.

16 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	Gun Feeder	1	Accelerates shell-type switching of main battery guns.	−40% to the ship's minimum shell-type switching time.

I don't like this skill for BB's. You're still talking more than 15 seconds to reload typically; usually broadside targets of opportunity aren't going to be there in the 15 seconds plus the time it takes for your shells to get there. And if you find yourself with the wrong shell in a close quarters engagement with a cruiser or a battleship, that can usually be mitigated with a little bit more awareness and planning. 

Gun Feeder is extremely helpful for BBs that have two strong ammo types that are optimized for different tasks and need to switch often (Italian BBs, British BBs/BCs, French BBs, also viable on Japanese BCs, American BBs). Even for veteran players it is not reasonable to expect them to see 30s into the future to have the right ammo at hand. 15 seconds is much more manageable in terms of anticipation. Not all shots are split-second-and-then-gone type windows, in a lot of cases the most important factor is that getting to the correct ammo as fast as possible, and it may not be feasible or advisable to achieve this by clearing the barrels.

If Emergency Repair Specialist gets a green rating on the strength of "This is something that might seem to be a bit paltry of a skill, but its going to be utilized all the time, every game" then Gun Feeder should be dark green because it is used just as frequently and can have even more of a game-deciding impact.    

 

16 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	Preventive Maintenance	1	Reduces the risk of main turrets, torpedo tubes, steering gear, and engine becoming incapacitated.	−30% to the risk of incapacitation of modules. +15% to the HP of secondary and AA guns.

This might be OK for secondary builds and brawling styles, but the BB skill tree is loaded with better options for points.

There is a synergy with the 1 slot that should be addressed. For BBs with weak turrets (French, British) you can use this skill to make them significantly tankier. For BBs that use one of the special modules (longer DCP or longer Spotter), this part-way cover for the lack of Main Battery Mod 1. Similarly, a player going for an AA-build BB (more on that below), this synergizes well with Auxiliary Armaments Mod 1 while giving some health to main guns too.  

 

17 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	Brisk	2	Activated if the ship is undetected.	When activated: 10% increase in speed.

Its a conditional skill, I hate conditional skills. You'll be spotted most of the time after the first 2 minutes. And if you really need that speed to outrun something chasing to spot you while you try to recover and disengage, its not likely to turn out well for you anyways. Skill tree is rich with actually useful skills to even consider using this.

Speed is one of the most valuable commodities in the game. 10% for 2pts is a bargain (DDs have to pay 4pts for 8%). For any BB with <13km detect and/or with an engine boost, the 10% extra speed can be highly valuable in several situations:

• Initial deployment: any moderately stealthy BB going for the flanks will get there much more efficiently. As comp players will know, the first ship into a position gets to dictate the terms of the engagement, which can easily snowball to winning the entire side of the map. 
• Mid-game rotations: once you have crushed a flank, it is often inadvisable to push through the enemy side of the map -- too many unknowns and too little team support. That means rotating through friendly waters, which are unlikely to have enemy vision. 
• End-game pushes: Once the board is almost empty, it can be a mad scramble to get the ship into position to e.g. block a cap or support a teammate. Given how empty the map is at this stage, this will also likely occur without the enemy having vision.

Full concealment build BBs should think long and hard about why they shouldn't take brisk, that's how good it is.

 

17 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	Super-Heavy AP Shells	3	Increase AP shell damage in exchange for vulnerability to fire and flood.	+7.5% AP shell damage −10% fire and flood damage received +25% fire and flood duration.

I absolutely hate tradeoff and conditional skills. It makes it very hard to understand how and when they are working and whether they are worth it. Here's how to figure out if its worth it to you: Take a sample of your BB games and add 5% to your AP damage and 30% to your fire and flood damage. Compare and decide whether it helps you or not. If you are good at staying alive and dealing damage through the game, take it. If you aren't, don't take it, it'll probably hurt you more.

17 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	Furious	4	Activated if the ship is on fire or flooding.	1st fire / flood   −10% Main battery reload time 2nd etc. (up to 5), each   −5% Main battery reload time.

Conditional skills, I hate them. It also makes you want to be taking damage? Will you die quicker making the amount of extra salvoes a moot point because you didn't exercise good DCP discipline or poor positioning?

Let's talk about Furious first: The developer's intention was to lessen beginner BB's frustration at taking fires by making them work for the player. The offshoot for veteran players looking to maximize damage output is that any BB with good heals (American Montana/Vermont line, British BBs/BCs), can theoretically sustain a fire at all times while benefitting from this buff. Is 4pts for (generally) a 10% reload buff good value? Probably not for most builds, but it opens up some interesting combinations, such as....

.... Super-Heavy AP. These two were re-worked together and need to be understood not just alone, but as a pair. They were designed to encourage a more aggressive play-style where a BB player looks to intentionally catch fires in order to crank out AP damage faster (hence the longer but less damaging fires -- you want to stay on fire as long as possible). In practice it is probably only sustainable for super-healing BBs in the hands of knowledgeable players, but they are far from the only skills that are only viable on a handful of ships...

 

17 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	AA Defense and ASW Expert	2	Increased anti-aircraft fire effectiveness. Bigger depth charges. Decreased consumable reload while AAA is active.	+15% damage from continuous AAA and flak. +10% to damage inflicted by depth charges. While AA defenses are operating: −40% ship consumables reload time.

AA is AA, it's not going to stop the CV from attacking you, it just increases the tax they have to pay that might hurt them in the long game. However, the  consumable reload makes it interesting. But its conditional. And for this skill to be useful you need CV's or subs to be in the match and you also need them to be close to you which isn't guaranteed. There are better skills that you'll use every game. I contemplated putting this one as bad, but it is situational.

17 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

	Focus Fire Training	3	Decreased aircraft and airstrike reload time. More AA explosions. When Sector Reinforcement is activated, stronger damage shift to the priority sector.	−10% aircraft preparation time. −15% reload time of Airstrike armament. In an active priority AA sector: +1.5% (to 5%) immediate damage. +25% continuous damage.[2] +1 flak burst per salvo.

You know my thoughts on AA skills, I would put this as situational for ships with aircraft that can use the faster reload.

I think it is a bit misleading to say, in essence, that 'If I can't stop a CV attack entirely, then it's not worth the points.' The most dangerous strike from a CV is rarely the first one, which usually can be anticipated and dodged to some extent. It is the second and third strikes, once the CV has your BB committed to a turn, that really hurt. Focus Fire Training in particular is very powerful, as the Priority Sector is a percentage of plane HP (therefore independent of AA power/survival) and Continuous damage also cannot be dodged. Considering that many BBs these days get DefAA thrown in as an extra goodie to lure CV-weary players, I think 5pts is actually very good value for making your BB an extremely unpleasant and resilient target. 

The fact that the anti-sub skills are layered are thrown in together means that only CV and Sub-less games are a "waste" of 5 skill points. My estimate would be that maybe ~25% of my matches feature neither of the predatory classes. In terms of value-for-points, these two are actually very strong for what they cost: e.g. you could run a build like the one below on a Kansas and give up very little in exchange for being nigh-untouchable by a T8 carrier and a giant pain for a T10 carrier. Maybe it won't farm purple numbers, but that's not the goal of everyone -- a lot of players just want to feel like they have a clear purpose on the battlefield. Intentionally baiting CV/Sub aggro is one such specialty. 

Spoiler

----

Hopefully these alternative perspectives are useful. Keep up the good work. o7

[Project45_Opytny]

8 minutes ago, torino2dc said:

Gun Feeder is extremely helpful for BBs that have two strong ammo types that are optimized for different tasks and need to switch often (Italian BBs, British BBs/BCs, French BBs, also viable on Japanese BCs, American BBs).

Or in another way, recommended for almost all battleships. Exceptions may include ones with only AP, Illinois, German and Japanese (depending on how one thinks about the usefulness of German and typical Japanese battleship HE that have abnormally high drag coefficient).

Consensus in CN community is also that BoS is now a very poor choice especially after the great IRPR buff. Its relevance is maintained mostly by the remaining habits from the previous years.

IFHE on battleships is almost exclusively related with secondaries brawlers thanks to the IFHE rework. In short: must have on T8+ German brawlers, if decided to build into brawler, with majority of secondaries being 105mm DP (Zieten, Prinz Rupprecht, Schilieffen, Bismarck, FdG, Brandenburg, Pommern) as well as Iwami, situational for Odin, Preussen, GK and Hannover ("counter USN BB, Marseilles and Petropavlovsk build"). Not on anything else.

AA Defence and ASW expert, in my opinion, has more thing to say in helping consumable rotation whenever enemy aircraft attacks you, that when an enemy CV/aviation hybrid/ higher-tier Dutch ship attacks you, the opponent will also help you to reload consumables faster, to almost Massachusetts level if they are pig-headed enough.

[Wowzery]

Priority target is one I actually like.  Makes me aware of how many, and from where the incoming fire is coming from.  Of course I see this many times before I feel the focus fire so I can start adjusting angles.  It can also tell me if someone is actually looking to engage me, or someone else.

[Admiral_Karasu]

One thing  I've been toying with is how you get the maximum benefit overall from your points, up to the maximum of 21.  No matter what you do, you can only choose a maximum of three 4 point skills, and selecting all the three means you have very little to choose when it comes to 2 and 3 point skills. On the other hand, you could forego all the 4 point skills (arguably maybe a bad idea) which would allow you to select all the 3 point skills instead.

[torino2dc]

26 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

One thing  I've been toying with is how you get the maximum benefit overall from your points, up to the maximum of 21.  No matter what you do, you can only choose a maximum of three 4 point skills, and selecting all the three means you have very little to choose when it comes to 2 and 3 point skills. On the other hand, you could forego all the 4 point skills (arguably maybe a bad idea) which would allow you to select all the 3 point skills instead.

You have to decide what role you want the ship to fulfill. There are enough points to specialize in any one thing, but you have to know what that thing is.

[Admiral_Karasu]

31 minutes ago, torino2dc said:

You have to decide what role you want the ship to fulfill. There are enough points to specialize in any one thing, but you have to know what that thing is.

Is it feasible to specialize as a generalist?

[Unlooky]

15 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

Absolutely, but when do you get that extra heal from RPR? 2M potential damage. You don't get it from the start of the match. So now start looking at your potential damage over your last 10-20 games in BB's and look and see how many games you got to 2M potential damage. That will tell you how useful it will be in that regard. Going back to my old mantra: I hate conditional skills.

If you've used all five heals, its more than likely you are at or approaching 2 million potential in a BB. Conditional skills can be extremely strong depending on the terms of activation. Dismissing all of them because they aren't active 24/7 is kinda crazy to me. In this case, tanking damage is something literally every BB does, so you just get rewarded for playing the  game normally with a 5th heal. 

 

15 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

So at lower tiers, forget the repair party, its useless in that regard. If you are going to use it, use it only at high tiers

Pretty much. I only run it as my last skill for a 21 point build, which might as well be exclusively tier 10

 

15 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

This is a useful skill at high tiers in extremely tanky, open water, central position BB's. We're talking pretty much only Russian and American BB's. Other BB lines aren't tanky enough for it to be useful. You'll be dead more often than not before getting to that amount of potential damage.

I'd say it's useful in any BB that doesn't have horrible survivability, so excluding Bungo and Republique for that reason, and Schlieffen because it's 21 points doesn't leave room for debate, I would definitely take it over BoS. Again, running the flag and the module is more than sufficient to attain the best of both worlds, or even just the flag on it's own is enough to get fires down by a very nice margins.  As long as you aren't getting penned by CA HE, I find most battleships survivability to be more than sufficient to rack up 2 million potential. 

I mean, if I'm able to average 2 million potential in Lauria (ignore the shitter stats) which has a regular heal and a roughly average protection overall, you can probably do it in any T10 BB. 

 

 

Edited May 17 by Unlooky

[Ducky_shot]

20 minutes ago, Unlooky said:

If you've used all five heals, its more than likely you are at or approaching 2 million potential in a BB. Conditional skills can be extremely strong depending on the terms of activation. Dismissing all of them because they aren't active 24/7 is kinda crazy to me. In this case, tanking damage is something literally every BB does, so you just get rewarded for playing the  game normally with a 5th heal. 

If you can look at your own data to justify it, perfect! But how many of those games did you actually hit 2M? 1.9M could mean that you had 1 game below, 2 games around the average and 1 game above that actually hit 2M. An average under 2M means you aren't getting there over half the time. I'd like to see a larger sample size without the average, just the raw numbers, but that's me.

[Ducky_shot]

11 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

So... we would need to look at these builds more in terms of tier brackets? Is there a some kind of a coherent logic behind how the point selection should change from tier to tier?

Depends on the skill. Some skills scale based on the tier, others do not.

ie:

A skill that gives you an extra repair at 2M is way harder to get to at T3 than it is at T10.

compared to SE, which gives extra hp based on whatever tier the ship is. (450 for cruisers per tier)

[Admiral_Karasu]

1 minute ago, Ducky_shot said:

Depends on the skill. Some skills scale based on the tier, others do not.

ie:

A skill that gives you an extra repair at 2M is way harder to get to at T3 than it is at T10.

compared to SE, which gives extra hp based on whatever tier the ship is. (450 for cruisers per tier)

Some of the 'philosophical' aspects of the system are hard to decide on, overall. Like do you buff the strengths (especially for a particular ships) or do you mitigate the weaknesses of the ship.

I have a hunch the system is not really very good at the mitigation end of the scale.

[Unlooky]

13 minutes ago, Ducky_shot said:

If you can look at your own data to justify it, perfect! But how many of those games did you actually hit 2M? 1.9M could mean that you had 1 game below, 2 games around the average and 1 game above that actually hit 2M. An average under 2M means you aren't getting there over half the time. I'd like to see a larger sample size without the average, just the raw numbers, but that's me.

I'd argue that in the game where I was under 2 million, it wouldn't have made a difference since I didn't need the extra heal that game. Here's the overall stats.

Clearly I'm not activating it every game with 1.5 million average, but if I need the 6th heal, which might not be every game, then it's fairly reasonable to conclude that I'm reaching 2 million when it matters the most. My lower potential games are generally steamrolls where I W key a flank and their entire team falls apart. I find IRPR to be crucial to winning extremely close late game scenarios where that 17k makes all the difference between a win and a loss. 

[Ducky_shot]

4 hours ago, torino2dc said:

The fact that the anti-sub skills are layered are thrown in together means that only CV and Sub-less games are a "waste" of 5 skill points. My estimate would be that maybe ~25% of my matches feature neither of the predatory classes. In terms of value-for-points, these two are actually very strong for what they cost: e.g. you could run a build like the one below on a Kansas and give up very little in exchange for being nigh-untouchable by a T8 carrier and a giant pain for a T10 carrier. Maybe it won't farm purple numbers, but that's not the goal of everyone -- a lot of players just want to feel like they have a clear purpose on the battlefield. Intentionally baiting CV/Sub aggro is one such specialty. 

I'm of the opinion that the skills will not affect the death of the majority of sub players much. Most of them seem extremely eager to go back to port. So I tend to look at those skills without the ASW aspect.

 

3 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Some of the 'philosophical' aspects of the system are hard to decide on, overall. Like do you buff the strengths (especially for a particular ships) or do you mitigate the weaknesses of the ship.

I have a hunch the system is not really very good at the mitigation end of the scale.

I'm a player that believes staying alive is the best way to affect the outcome of the match, so I prize skills that will prolong my life. But that's why you might find me speccing a lot of gun skills in DD's rather than torp skills. If I can get rid of the enemy DD's in front of me, that will prolong my life the most, I no longer have a huge spotting threat. The ships behind them, don't know that I haven't specced into torp skills, all they know is that they now have no cover from me.