USS Ranger; What am I doing wrong? and wondering why people hate CVs so much.

[The_Strateg1st]

Greetings, I have a fully upgraded Ranger with a level 7 commander. I really enjoy playing this ship but I have a problem: I lose about 4 out of 5 battles or at least my team does, I generally survive but the enemy either completes the objective because my team ran away for what ever reason (usually because they are out numbered which I get) or all get killed despite my best efforts. grinding with it is also made difficult because when my team does win I was upteired or got killed by a sneaky DD and thus I didn't do well. Therefor, I rarely get more than 700 XP per battle.
My typical strategy goes as follows: scout with attack aircraft for the first 3-4 minutes so as to spot most of or all of the enemy fleet. Then attack targets of opportunity (CLs and DDs on a perpendicular course to my planes). Then once my aircraft have either expended all their ammo or been destroyed/heavily damaged I lunch dive bombers to bomb enemy BBs that are being engaged by my teams main force to soften up their AA for my torpedo bombers. I also attempt to find enemy DDs near friendly BBs Over all I try to support my teams main force to gain an advantage of numbers which usually what is required to win a game. However I'll switch to defending a capture point as needed or to assist allied ships.

Thoughts and suggestions as to how to improve this strategy or things I may be doing wrong would be very helpful. Also, I am wondering if any one else has had similar problems with the Ranger or any other CV (except the Langely because that CV is just terrible).

And why do people always think that it's the CV's fault that the team lost and why are people always complaining that CVs never try to help out or that all they do is run and hide? I guess the most common complaint I hear is some thing like this, "why the *beeb* is that CV not spotting/attacking the DDs?!?" in answer to that ships have 2 different detection ranges: one by air and one by sea and the one by sea is much larger than by air. to spot a T6 DD you usually have to be within 3 kms of it and it's impossible to spot a DD in smoke from air, further still because of how close you have to be to spot a DD you can't attack with rockets because you are to close and you have to be amazingly lucky to get a torpedo hit on a DD and you almost have to be reading his mind to predict were he's going to turn next when you are trying to bomb him.

[Donegali]

I've recently started with CV's, a case of if you can't beat em, join em.

There are far better CV players on here, who will hopefully add their advice, but from my miniscule amount of CV battles, the team expect you to be everywhere, someone wants you over at at A, someone else wants spotting over at C. Just do what you can, there's only one of you. I use rockets for DD's, bombs for cruisers and torp for BB's. Although I'm quite happy to use my rockets to destroy what AA mounts ad soften up both cruisers and BB's at tier 4. Also, harass the hell out of DD's from early game, you want them dead, or at least on the back foot and not wanting to push, as soon as possible.

As for players blaming the CV, it's a common thing, whether it's a CV or someone else, it's never their fault the team lost, you will get used to it. Also, a lot of players hate CV's and want them gone, so expect some saltiness. Even last night someone was in chat asking to report their CV for being asleep, despite the fact he was on the other cap doing plenty of damage, guess what, the whiner was one of the first to die, obviously the CV's fault.

If you're happy watching Youtube advice, Nozoupforyou has a video which offers some okish advice but seems to be more for higher tiers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OyYQQJKtS0

It's kind of old (in the world of CV's) but still has useful info.

[Lavian]

CVs have enough utility and visibility that they're easy to blame.

Get assassinated by a destroyer? Clearly it's not that you were out of position. The CV should have spotted the destroyer. At all times. Even though there's 4 destroyers on the enemy team so it's impossible to be spotting all of them for the CV.

Also, everyone can see it's the CV who missed those bombs. Nobody is turning around to see who has been missing their artillery salvos.

Not that there aren't some CVs that are slacking at times, there's certainly situations where they're farming damage rather than doing tasks like spotting that would better benefit the team at the given time, but it is really easy to see when they make mistakes versus the other units in the game.

[HoLeeKow]

Don’t let this negative vibe stop you.
Cv haters will keep crying to WG until even a dd can fully wipe out a squadron.
Things are pretty well balanced now but the majority of the haters keep complaining because of the simple reason: it works! WG keeps making things better for ships. They won’t stop as long as WG give them what they want. It’s just that simple.
WG does a lot of good things to make the fun for everyone but in this case they should just stand ground and say ; this is a good balance and we keep it this way , but they don’t. I also do feel that this does have to do with the influence of famous ST and community contributors since most of them aren’t CV players , maybe just a few when you count the numbers.

[StormhawkV]

Originally posted by HoLeeKow:

Don’t let this negative vibe stop you.
Cv haters will keep crying to WG until even a dd can fully wipe out a squadron.
Things are pretty well balanced now but the majority of the haters keep complaining because of the simple reason: it works!

LOL

Are you serious?
How is a class that nullifies concealment, can strike anywhere on the map at will and doesn't even have to risk the ship doing so balanced?

To the OP:
There are a couple of things you need to know in order to become a skilled skycancer CV player. First you have to learn to make the flak clouds spawn where you want them to be so you can dodge them all. They are spawned based on the course and speed of your squadron so they can be easily juked by good players while bad players lose all their planes trying to strike a DD. This was done to reduce the skillgap which plagued the former iteration of carriers. As you can see from this feature alone it was a great success.

Second you have to know which ships have dangerous amounts of continuous AA damage and which of the auras is responsible for it. This has nothing to do with skill, it's the same as knowing which ships are equipped with torps and which aren't so you can rush them.

Third you need to 'shorten' your squads when going after those ships. That simply means two of your three waves of a squadron dump their ordnance into the ocean to prevent losing them. Then you attack with a single wave. You will most likely lose these planes but because of the way continuous AA works, the first strike always makes it through.

The fourth thing you have to be able to do is execute a 'slingshot' with your divebombers. The slingshot exploits the immunity window directly after a strike by using the boost. This will make your divebombers execute a 'leap' that will basically teleport them on top of your target where you strike again immediately. The length of the leap varies between CVs and those who can abuse this mechanic reliably can even strike the strongest AA cruisers with minimal losses, while bad CV players get absolutely shredded. Remember to combine this with shortening your squads.

Another great example how WG managed to reduce the skillgap so it's barely noticeable by now. Never question their deeds, as the glorious guardians of the sekrit archives wield the power of the spreadsheet, so they can do no wrong.

So how do you aquire the skills needed to wreck all surface ships? The best way is watching Youtube vids and streamers playing CVs. That's how I learned it, too. On a side note: When a team loses it's indeed the 'fault' of their carrier in a large amount of cases. While CVs don't fight each other directly any more since the rework, there's a damage race going on between them the moment the battle starts and the more one of the CVs falls behind, the more problems his team will have to make up for it as the other ships lack the power of a CV.

[Ryuu]

Like one person said: if both sides complain equally — then it's likely balanced.

OP you don't mention fighters at all it seems. You should often deploy fighters, especially above the areas where a DD is going to stay for a while for capture.

[Lavian]

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Like one person said: if both sides complain equally — then it's likely balanced.

Eh, I don't think this can really be the case when the game is essentially based around mirror matches. You could have a set of ships that do literally nothing, and they'd still have a 50% win rate since if one side had one, the other side would also have one. Everyone would complain about them being useless, but they're not balanced, since they're garbage compared to other ships. They just don't unbalance the matches since the matches are mirror matches.

Similarly you could have totally overpowered ships that absolutely dominate the field, but as long as it's a mirror match, the match is balanced, but the ship is not.

In any case, I don't really have strong feelings either way about CVs. They're a tough question. It's not as if they do excessive amounts of damage, but they're much safer ships that any other ship type in the game. It feels like they're super low risk, for reward that's pretty much up there with the rest of the pack. That said, making them too low damage would make them feel pretty much pointless beyond being spotters.


...Unless you meant CV players and CV-haters complaining equally. That said, I don't really think the discourse has been equal lately.

[StormhawkV]

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Like one person said: if both sides complain equally — then it's likely balanced.

That's just wrong. The CV players that complain are the ones who can't perform because they're on the 'wrong' side of the skillgap. The surface ship players that don't complain either have a 50% higher PR and 50% more average damage when they play CVs, or are so bad that they die within the first 5 minutes no matter if there's a CV in the match or not.

Originally posted by Ryuu:

OP you don't mention fighters at all it seems. You should often deploy fighters, especially above the areas where a DD is going to stay for a while for capture.

That's another mechanic that doesn't work as intended. The fighter consumable is meant to defend ships from attacking planes. Instead it's used as a spotting tool because WG is obviously unable to change how it works.

[HoLeeKow]

To the LOL

Yes I’m serious , it can’t be compared since cv can’t do much else with the ship then stay out of sight.
It’s not different then before the rework in that case. Yes you can strike everywhere but only one place at a time , not before across the map.
I do understand your point of concealment , I really do but it’s only a part of the map. I’ve played dd battles where I didn’t see a single plane attacking me.

To your point about fighters, you are right about they are used wrong for what they intentionally made for but I have a but again, it’s a choice to keep an enemy ship spotted but that takes away the possibility to protect friendly ships from enemy planes.

I’m really serious about the balance at this moment. CV is not a normal ship and that’s how it’s going to stay or it will be a useless piece of steel floating in every game.

I’m not saying that you are wrong but I just see 2 sides of the story.

[StormhawkV]

It's a lot different to the time before the rework. CVs are now extremely tanky especially when properly angled. The armored flightdeck can bounce BB AP and shatters most HE calibers. Their AA values are completely out of this world. Flooding damage got nerfed hard and they are basically immune to fires now. It's not uncommon to win a one vs. one against a cruiser or BB when the surface ship is too far away to hit the vertical armor or lacks the penetration to punch through it.

If there's no problem and everything is fine, why does WG test massive CV nerfs internally and on the PTS?

[HoLeeKow]

I agree with Some of your points yes , though the flooding works both ways, our torps also don’t do much damage anymore. AA is strong but when played smart with torps and rockets you can do big damage.
With a cruiser of BB you can hit the sides from the ship and still cause good damage. It would be not balanced also if you sink a cv in 2 salvos. Positioning with only auto pilot isn’t all that good since it takes time to set course , back to planes , set new course a second later to avoid incoming etc.

I’m not saying it’s perfectly balanced but I think we not far off.
As to your last remark , why WG massive nerfs mostly come from massive cv haters that didn’t like cv already in the old style and in the new. They won’t stop complaining until we are useless and the only thing we good for is enemy plane kills for points. To point out again, it’s not 100% but when we will get there ......?

[eMercody]

When I got the faster aiming skill I did manage a kraken (yes that means I have gotten a kraken on every American CV I touched so far.)

Here is my current thought process for ranger

I start with rockets obviously, to squeeze every ounce of speed I wait until the squadron finishes taking off before using engine boost considering they start slow and it would be wasteful. I don’t spot the entire enemy team, just one flank. Spotting everyone is abit redundant when your team can fill in the blanks and can lead to losing that initial squadron without any damage done.

My movement has room for improvement but generally I go with the bulk of the ships to get planes up quickly but out of harm’s way, capping sometimes. Who would search right away for a carrier at their own spawn?

For damage I stick with bombs, though the rotation shenanigans that you could do by coming from behind is impossible now. It’s worth noting RNG loves to screw you over, to the point I’m convinced the bombs are avoiding their targets by going to the smallest of spaces in the dispersion oval. They also can slingshot if I think the AA is rough. Rockets are a secondary as hitting a bunch of them is kinda like a successful bomb run and rng is abit more friendly. I only use torps if I know I can hit them or I have nothing else to throw at them, they aren’t exactly the sturdiest of planes.

I’m abit conservative with my fighters and engine consumables waiting until I’m confident that they will shoot something down way more than as a deterrent. Saving the engine until the end has proved quite terrifying.

Lastly I have careful target prioritization. Going after those of low hp or recently used damage control or isolated/ bad AA. Be careful of losing planes at the start, you don’t spawn at capacity so going all out can lead to a quick deplaning. Don’t be afraid of being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. In the game I got the kraken there was a DD fight in mid and I sent rockets to assist, the British DD beat out german DD but was on very low health, saw me coming and popped smoke. Oh, but he was miles ahead of his team being on our side of the circle with atrocious AA and like 200 health left. I loitered the entire smoke duration only a Fusou came to his aid. Being the last DD put their team at a crushing disadvantage, they won by points because our izmail went CV hunting.

Sorry about the messy post

[StormhawkV]

Originally posted by HoLeeKow:

I agree with Some of your points yes , though the flooding works both ways, our torps also don’t do much damage anymore.

Except as a CV you can just set a new flooding at will. A DD can't do that because it has massive torp reload and has to launch them from far away.

Originally posted by HoLeeKow:

With a cruiser of BB you can hit the sides from the ship and still cause good damage. It would be not balanced also if you sink a cv in 2 salvos.

And I'm not asking for this but their tanking capabilities are excessive by now. Fires are in the game so you can still do some damage to ships you can't penetrate and it makes zero sense to give CVs fire immunity especially because they have next to no superstructure.

Originally posted by HoLeeKow:

As to your last remark , why WG massive nerfs mostly come from massive cv haters that didn’t like cv already in the old style and in the new.

No one except those who played CVs liked any carrier iteration in WoWs. They were always brokenly OP. The reason why it became a problem is their increase in numbers. With the old CVs you had to play 5-10 games to meet one and only one out of 50 could execute a perfect crossdrop and send your DD right back to port. Now CVs are a threat regardless of the skill level of their players. WG achieved this by implementing extremely easy to use offensive tools and not allowing any kind of effective counterplay and it's making the players complain rightfully.

[HoLeeKow]

About the torps is true , but a cv needs to hit 2 or 3 torps to do same damage ( IJN ) as the dd does with one. x5 for the USN , they suk big time ;)

I also was a fan or old style , I wasn’t and still am not above average but I had fun every game , even when all my planes got strafed to heaven

They just had to make it console playable and make it more easy to play to attract more likers then haters but I think it is total opposite now , yes more people play cv but even more people come to hate it

I will see where things go , as long as I’m having fun I will keep playing them.

[The_Strateg1st]

I would have liked to try the old system, it looked pretty interesting.
And no CVs can't start flooding at will espically USN ones because of there poor overall torpedo stats, further still torpedo bombers have less torpedoes than DDs (except maybe at the higher ranks I haven't gone and looked up torpedo counts for tier X DDs and CVs) and it often takes longer to get to the target with planes than it does for DDs to reload. AND depending on the tier of your carrier you can only drop 2-3 torpedoes at a time then you have to line up the target again which can take 20-30 seconds to do it right and have a good chance of hitting the target with most of your torpedoes (unless you have sight stablizer skill) or 10 seconds to do a sloppy job of it to avoid losing to many planes. Thus as far as torpedo power DDs are vastly superior to CVs. Which is as it should be because that's the point of DDs.

Also thanks for all the tips and advice, I shall try implementing them in game

[StormhawkV]

Tier 6 CVs aren't really OP. They can still ruin someone's game with their oppressive spotting but their damage output is ok. The real problem are tier 8 and 10 CVs. And yes, even the USN ones can farm flooding damage at will, especially Midway because it drops so many torps, but it's their divebombers why they are considered the strongest CV tree. The reason why even midtier is so unfun is constant double CV MM.