Unpopular opinion?: IJN battleships shouldn't have just 10s damage control anymore.
Basically title. The IJN battleships remain as the only BB line that have inferior 10s DCP, and without having any improved heal. Russian BBs also have 10s, but they have the special fast-reloading DCP, and thick armour against HE to compensate. All other nations either have 15/20s DCP, improved heal, or both (with some single exceptions like Slava). I guess this comes from a time where IJN BBs were truly meant to take on the role of snipers, but as effective long range HE spam has become more abundant from the likes of UK BBs, supercruisers, rocket planes and so on, the backline sniping role isn't as relevant anymore, and so I can't really see any reason for this inferior DCP to remain. Either buff the duration from 10 to 15s, or the cooldown from 80 to 60s. Thoughts?
And before anyone asks, no I'm not the kind that overextends and gets burned down in in the first minutes.
Posted Sep 6, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC · edited
Buffing the IJN DCP is imo not necessary. The entire branch is pretty well balanced for the most part, so buffing it wouldnt really be needed.
There is even the argument to be made that having a shorter duration is actually a plus for a long range orientated battleship. Since if the consumable comes offline sooner, then that means that the recharge time start earlier as well. And considering that an IJN battleship usually takes one single big HE volley that sets a fire, having a longer duration is often not required. (Since if you sit at long range, the continues HE spam from smaller, faster firing guns is often not in play)
I honestly think that powercreep has prevented them from being the ships WG has said they are. WG says they have "great damage per salvo" and "high firing accuracy". Which I think still is the case with Kongo and Fuso TFT. Nagato and Amagi really don't have high firing accuracy, even without comparing to their counterparts. I recently played through Colorado and found that ship much better at dealing main battery damage from long range than Nagato.
Absolutely this, I can't stand it when people tell me that these ships are accurate, they're wildly inconsistent. They might look good on paper when you take a look at their basic stats but the IJN dispersion formula is just awful - when I switched to playing Colorado and realised what great vertical dispersion and consistent accuracy was, I couldn't go back.
The IJN formula is better than the USN, having lower dispersion already at 8.6km range, all other factors being equal. The issue is that, according to old datamining, the vertical dispersion ratio is much higher on the IJN; USN BBs has at 0.2 (20% of horizontal dispersion), while IJN had at 0.8 (80% of horizontal dispersion). That's what is causing the inconsistency to scoring citadels at broadside targets.
For horizontal dispersion, the IJN is better, and is the line that least struggles vs angled targets. Pushing, bowtanking and kiting vs IJN BBs is less effective than vs other BB lines simply because the shells are far less likely to splash water on the target's sides.
My opinion is that all the IJN BB line should have is the same standard vertical dispersion ratio that other BB lines have. The high vertical dispersion makes them perform poorly vs broadside targets, compared to other BB lines, detracting from their sniper-like national flavor.
If anything is to change, it should be a slight buff to this, plus removing those stupid overhanging 19mm parts on Yamato
Interesting! I wonder why this info regarding vertical dispersion ratio hasn't been explored further.
It is the vertical dispersion, 2.0 sigma did not save it.
Same here, I seem to be able to get more citadels with Massachusetts in one day than I can with Amagi in a whole week. And that's even before I actually get closer with Massa. There's just something really strange about Amagi's horrendous vertical dispersion. Even pre-buff Izumo, which also had 1.8 sigma & same dispersion formula, felt significantly more consistent.
Effectively the best way to deal with this is to unslot the aiming mod on the Amagi, it sounds insane but due to it's 'high accuracy' it really just means, more consistently bad rolls.
If you imagine dispersion is a circle, and sigma is the likelyhood in which the shell will land in the centre - you'll realise that IJN ships have low dispersion and high sigma, meaning it's a small circle and shots will inhabit the centre of that cone more frequently. - at least that's the theory
now imagine that the circle is really, an hourglass shape or a figure 8, and the further away you get, the more circular it looks. This is the IJN dispersion formula, where high sigma results in hits either above and below the target.
removing the aim mod increases the dispersion, which effectively makes this hourglass shape more circular, suddenly the shape in which sigma can occupy becomes more accessible. Remember that all that really matters here is the sigma, this is what really creates the 'accuracy' you need in these ships
Now in comparison Fusou is accurate for a completely different reason, it's got low sigma and good dispersion, which means that effectively instead of more consistently bad rolls, the ship more consistently ignores it's own dispersion formula and you get more rolls due to the high barrel count - so it tends to feel more accurate especially combined with the tighter overall circle. Amagi is a Fusou except you don't get those additional rolls because shells consistently group together instead of being independent rolls, so you have to create accuracy in a different way.
Izumo, Yamato, Musashi and Shiki all follow different dispersion formulas which is why they feel much more accurate. I can personally state that shiki's accuracy is very pleasing.
Having played through the whole IJN BB line I have always wondered how people keep complaining that nagato and amagi are not accurate and consistant. Amagi isnt the most accurate BB in the game, but what it does have is quantity. I found it very enjoyable to play. If you aim well, you will land good hits more often than not. Nagato is completely decent in T7. Yes it’s been powercrept a bit but it is still accurate enough to do consistent damage even at range. No I dont think any buffs for IJN BBs are warranted.
Amagi is one of my favorite ships in the game, but often I play it and just go "fuck this ship" when it decides not to hit anything. When I mean buff I just mean reduce the vertical dispersion to 2020 levels, Amagi is a year 1 ship and it feels like it. (Same with Nagato)
Flamu recently played it on stream and was talking about how much he likes the Amagi, and then 2 games later he said that he was done with it. I think that sums it up.
It's just not consistent, and I think it's not the only odd one out in the line for what WG says the IJN BBs should be. "high firing accuracy" is just not true.
Amagi is a strange one for me. I'm a pretty good BB player, and I have better hitrate with Bismarck before the USN style accuracy buff than I have with Amagi. The vertical dispersion of Amagi is just something I can't wrap my head around, it's so bafflingly bad too often, it's probably the one ship that I have the most zero hit salvoes with. Just yesterday I missed a full salvo on a DD at 6km range. I know IJN BBs don't gain much from getting closer, but still...
I absolutely agree with having a short DCP as an advantage, it makes sense especially if you're running fire prevention builds where you're relying on fast DCP cooldown, often you'll use DCP in a situation where you're safe anyway, so it can be pretty redundant to have such a long uptime.
I fully understand this, but is it really worth the tradeoff? For example the USN 20s DCP means a +100% DCP duration, while IJN's shorter duration means only a 10-12.5% reduction in cooldown time (depending on how you count, I'm not that good with math). Either way I'd prefer to take the longer lasting DCP.
IJN DCP is harder to use well as it leaves a larger exposure window, but I find it more comfortable than virtually any other DCP other than Warspite and USN ones. It punishes you the least for damaconning that single firewhile retreating out of the range of the HE spammers.