Graf Zeppelin

[Madner Kami 405]

Oh dear, the automated AP-bomb drop is completely useless, because the auto-drop does not take the free-fall time into account, that (german?) AP-bombs have (not sure if Enterprise's AP-bombs have that kind of delay). You will always miss a moving target, unless you do a manual drop. Fighters are alright, but spend their ammo fairly fast in strafes. The ship is ridiculously pidgeon-holed, due to the inability to mix and match AP- and HE-bombers and the complete lack of torpedoes, I do need to point out though, that the HE bombs are fairly effective (500kg bombs), due to the low dispersion and drop pattern (a circle - which also helps with decreasing loitering times, as you can attack without setup). The secondaries are hilarious, though they are pretty much only firing to the starbord side, but that didn't keep my Zeppelin from slugging it out against two DDs that thought I was an easy prey. Not yet, Kameraden, not yet!

All in all, I would advise against purchasing it, as long as WG has not changed the loadout or given us the ability to mix and match our own loadouts, because it basically is a US carrier with a weaker AS-component and improved HE-bombing (it seems to set fires like nobody's business and having three dive bomber squads helps with applying damage). It looks good, though

[RollerCoaster47 758]

I feel no sympathy for anyone stupid enough to buy a tier eight premium carrier that doesn't even have torpedo bombers.

[Madner Kami 405]

I can't remember having asked for sympathy. I knew what I was getting into and I just wanted to give a quick write-up about the ship as is, since it got ridiculously silent around Graf Zeppelin after the completely unreasonable torpedo removal.

[Rodrigopine 184]

I don't play CVs at all but based on watching CCs live stream it the x3 TB was pretty OP. Every sortie was pretty much an instant kill on BBs and a lot of CAs with weaker AA. But in true WG fashion they overreacted and pretty much nerfed it to the ground.

[hall0 1,095]

video titel pretty much says all

[Madner Kami 405]

The causa Graf Zeppelin is rapidly developing to be Christmas Convoy Mk II.  The WG NA community-contributors get told that Graf Zeppelin is about to get recalled, as the changed ship has never been tested, a little while later, the ship gets released on NA and SEA as well, to the disbelief of everyone involved not being WG-HQ or WG-EU staff.

[Mnemon 38]

Welp, it just got removed. Maybe they'll make it worth something before they re-release it.

[Madner Kami 405]

Quote

Graf Zeppelin Update From Developers

Commanders,

There has been a lot of controversy in the community lately regarding the recently released premium ship Graf Zeppelin, and we would like to share an update on the situation, as well as our thoughts on how we believe we should proceed.

First of all, we realize the ship definitely did not meet the expectations of the community, it is clear that we didn't put enough effort into fine tuning and finding the right balance and play style for the Graf. We really wanted to release her for Gamescom and uphold tradition, but could only do that with dive bomber setups if we later wanted to add back torpedo squadrons that had been positively received (but also too powerful) in the first round of testing. This was a technical limitation, but also a choice we were fine with, as we thought we could balance the dive bomber setups to be competitive.

To make things worse, the final changes that were done for her didn't go through the usual procedure and community contributors did not have a chance to correct the previews that they had prepared, which meant that the thing they showed to their audiences was different than what was eventually released on our live servers. We admit that the decision to release this ship in the current condition was wrong. We should have spent more time working on it and we need to take responsibility for this mistake, as well as provide our apologies to the community.

A separate but very connected topic is the situation with iChase and his removal from Community contributor program. After reviewing our decision to remove iChase from our contributor program we agree with iChase, our decision was hasty. In hindsight, we should have reached out directly to him and talked about our concerns. iChase has been developing great WoWS content for years now and deserved as much. We would like to apologize to iChase for our haste. In our passion to protect our development team, we acted too quickly. We will learn from this and use this situation to help our Contributor program improve. We admit that the decision to release this ship in the current condition was wrong, and we should have spent more time working on it and we would like to take responsibility for this mistake and provide our apologies to the community.

However, we know that a simple "sorry" is by far not enough, in this case, so we will do the following:

First of all, the refund policy for this ship will be changed. No matter how many battles you played on it until it is fixed you can request to have your purchase refunded by following these links:

EU - https://eu.wargaming.net/support/tickets

NA - https://na.wargaming.net/support/tickets

ASIA - https://asia.wargaming.net/support/tickets

Steps - Click Link > Click Submit Ticket > Click WoWS > Billing Support > Type "Refund" > Click "Problem Not Solved" > Click "refund" in "Help Topics: Billing

Those players who would like to keep the ship and help us make it better we would like to invite to participate in further balance testing.

This would follow the steps below:

1. Starting from now we will remove the ship from sales.

2. All owners of GZ will be invited to provide feedback about her and to communicate with the dev team alongside with community contributors, super testers and WG employees in a special Facebook group created specifically for this purpose. This could take a while, as we believe there will be different options to try out, while it will also be the first time we try something like this. We hope that together we can get it right and make Graf Zeppelin great again.

3. After the balancing process is over and the finalized version of the ship goes live there will be an exclusivity period of 3 months. This means that GZ will not go on sale during this time and will only be available for these original owners.

4. We will also create a custom permanent camouflage for GZ, which will only be available for players who bought the original ship. Players will also be invited to take part in the creative process to figure out what this camouflage will look like.

We are sincerely sorry for this situation and for causing frustration where there should have been only satisfaction from getting a great new ship and a boatload of fun.

We're now manning all action stations to fix it and to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Signed,

Daniil Volkov, Development Director World of Warships

Alexander Nikolaev, Regional Publishing Director, World of Warships, NA

Artur Plociennik, Executive Publishing Producer, World of Warships

I'm a bit miffed that it is a Facebook-Group, because Fuck Facebook, but otherwise, good response and action. I just wish it wouldn't take a shitstorm every time, to get a measured response like that.

[Jaegaer 180]

This is a trend that gets more and more disturbing.

Extensive Supertest period gets entirely ignored and the ship(s) get changed just before release.

And while that wasn't a total desaster with some ships (german DDs), in case of the GZ they failed in the most spectacular way ("nein second delay")...

[Madner Kami 405]

2 hours ago, Jaegaer said:

This is a trend that gets more and more disturbing.

Extensive Supertest period gets entirely ignored and the ship(s) get changed just before release.

And while that wasn't a total desaster with some ships (german DDs), in case of the GZ they failed in the most spectacular way ("nein second delay")...

I'd argue, that german DDs were a disaster until the stealth-fire changes removed the absurdly stupid detectability-bloat that german DDs had for no reason. Post those changes, they are mostly passable, but still in need of a bit of help.

Also, kudos for the Yuro-reference there.

[RollerCoaster47 758]

WG is retarded, money hungry, and really doesn't care about their player base all that much, unless it's seriously affecting their income, this isn't news. It's been this way for many, many years.

[sahtila 95]

Anyone noticed funny coincident: Most of Admiral Yamato campaign missions opened this week has using high tier CV as requirement. And Graf Zeppelin just happened to be hastily released same week

[Jarkorsis 92]

1 hour ago, sahtila said:

Anyone noticed funny coincident: Most of Admiral Yamato campaign missions opened this week has using high tier CV as requirement. And Graf Zeppelin just happened to be hastily released same week

Most of the missions are for T9-T10 CVs. The Graf is T8.

[Madner Kami 405]

The Test Graf Zeppelins are still garbage. Ship-AA is way too strong and way too long ranged and with dive bombers needing to get close all the time, they will still get slaughtered and do a big heaping pile of nothing whatsoever, due to having to drag through all AA-circles including the innermost one with most AA. What many fail to realize is, that torpedo bombers are not just that much better because of the torps being way more reliable at damaging enemy ships if used right, but that torpedo-bomber survivability is just so much higher, precisely because they do not have to get that close.

Imo, unless WG adresses this obvious problem, they can change the GZ however they want, it won't fix the problem. Nerf AA!

[Sgt. Pepper 55]

4 hours ago, Madner Kami said:

The Test Graf Zeppelins are still garbage. Ship-AA is way too strong and way too long ranged and with dive bombers needing to get close all the time, they will still get slaughtered and do a big heaping pile of nothing whatsoever, due to having to drag through all AA-circles including the innermost one with most AA. What many fail to realize is, that torpedo bombers are not just that much better because of the torps being way more reliable at damaging enemy ships if used right, but that torpedo-bomber survivability is just so much higher, precisely because they do not have to get that close.

Imo, unless WG adresses this obvious problem, they can change the GZ however they want, it won't fix the problem. Nerf AA!

You realize that nerfing AA would be a buff to all CVs right? A CV buff as a class is not needed either, considering they have the highest winrate in the whole game as a class...

Side note: The Graf Zeppelin still kinda does need buffs, it's far too weak compared to the Shoukaku (by far the best CV in tier, but that's another story).

[Madner Kami 405]

3 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:

You realize that nerfing AA would be a buff to all CVs right? A CV buff as a class is not needed either, considering they have the highest winrate in the whole game as a class...

Their winrate is a more down to their ability for supplying intelligence about fleet movements and deterence for DDs sneaking about and that is something that even the worse CV-players tend to get right, simply by virtue of having air groups moving around.

Current CVs were balanced during a time, where there was the possibility that you could not meet a CV on the opposing team. WG upped the AA drastically towards the end of the beta, to adress this issue and then lateron implemented mirror-matchmaking for CVs, without ever adressing their initial AA boost or initial carrier stats. Japanese kind of get away due to a combination of a more torpedo-focused loadout and the sheer number of planes in the air as well as in reserve, while everyone with low numbers in the air, dive-bombers or low reserves gets butt-fucked. Just as a hint for how bad it really is: There exist ships out there, that are not even getting spotted while annihilating entire CAGs without the use of DFAA. There are battleships out there, that can do the same without any support from their team (though they are spotted while doing so, at least). If you really think that is ok, then I am at a loss of words.

[Sgt. Pepper 55]

5 hours ago, Madner Kami said:

-snip-

Well then, what would nerfing AA do? Buff a carrier's ability to scout better (you last longer in AA bubbles), strike better (you again last longer in AA bubbles so less planes go down before and after the strike) and sight denial becomes more CV focused (as AA matters less) which indirectly buffs better players. These are all things that do not need buffed, as you're basically buffing everything about CVs, not just one aspect. The fact of the matter is that the Graf Zeppelin is a weak ship and while nerfing AA will buff her, it buffs all CVs as a side effect, which plainly isnt needed. On a side note, please tone down the "I don't know what to say to you" as well, I'm trying to be polite and I don't think my arguments are unreasonable.

[Madner Kami 405]

You can fix plane survivability in the long range bubbles by upping their hitpoints, you can not fix dive bombers without boosting their HP up to levels where they are not just hard, but almost impossible to kill either by fighters or long and mid-range AA. I agree that finding the equilibrium is difficult, but the state of things is, that only massed assaults are really a threat and guess what you can not do, if you have three dive bomber squads or, in the case of the US carriers, 1 or 2 (strike loadouts on US carriers are an entirely different can of worms).

On a slightly related note: the Graf Zeppelin incident highlighted another issue about dive bombers. Since everyone else's dive bombers drop their bombs relatively quick it might have slipped the radar so far, but why would WarGaming implement a different drop mechanic solely for Graf Zepplin? Could it be, that bombs always stay attached to bombers until they hit the floor, as they so clearly did on the Zepplin's StuKas? That would be another thing that needs adressing dearly, because loosing bombs after they dropped would be an issue for all dive bombers.

[Sgt. Pepper 55]

6 hours ago, Madner Kami said:

-snip for most recent reply-

The short answer, plane survivability as a whole does not need to go up. Long answer, buffing plane HP is almost identical to nerfing AA. Planes live longer in AA to scout better, etc, but this time, CVs are impacted and strafing becomes even more important (as you need that DPS burst to kill healthier planes). My reply changes little to that, it's not needed. Also, the whole point of striking is through massed assaults. Sending your planes in 1 by 1 is a sure fire way to get them ctrl+clicked and killed. Literally that is the point. If you could trickle planes in 1 by 1 with your proposed HP buff, mass air attacks would be even more effective, as not only would the ctrl+clicked plane live, so would the other assaulting planes. Or at minimum, mass air attacks would still become even stronger.

On a well related note (since this is a thread about the Graf Zeppelin): I'm willing to bet considerable money that WG implemented the super interesting ultra skill index MLG 6 second delay for "a unique carrier experience" because people like unique things on premiums like Saipan's weird 3-4 plane squads and Enterprise's (and now GZ's) AP bombers. I've read some recent changes to the GZ's AP bombs and heard feedback from people and they say the new iteration of them sucks because they're so hit or miss (like old WoT arty with huge alpha strike or no dmg).

[cheereereerios 44]

PSA the GZ Test I/II will now completely fuck you up in a BB (esp German).

I'm sure all the buyers who entered the special testing group are giving great feedback now. "Still a little underpowered, can we buff the secondaries to 15km? Jet fighters please?"

[Sgt. Pepper 55]

On 9/16/2017 at 0:28 PM, cheereereerios said:

PSA the GZ Test I/II will now completely fuck you up in a BB (esp German).

I'm sure all the buyers who entered the special testing group are giving great feedback now. "Still a little underpowered, can we buff the secondaries to 15km? Jet fighters please?"

Well, the flipside of this is that they're completely ineffective at attacking a majority of Cruisers and all DDs. The GZ 1 is better than GZ 2, but GZ 1 still has a 2-3 second delay. It's not OP, but is broken. I watched a GK get one-shotted by a full squadron of those suckers with manual drop. All 100,000 HP. Whereas attacking DDs is basically pointless and took 1/4th of the DD's HP max? It's simply too effective versus some BBs and too ineffective versus all DDs.

[Jaegaer 180]

On ‎15‎.‎09‎.‎2017 at 7:57 PM, Sgt. Pepper said:

The short answer,

...is that current AA mechanics suck and need to be completely overhauled (even WG said so).

The whole mechanic of AA DpS vs Plane Hitpoints temepered by a random hit rate origined from Alpha test when planes were more akin to artillery shells in WoT (aka fire and forget, it only matters how many arrive to strike).

But in the current iteration of the rules it makes no sense that all of the AA guns of a ship can only target one squad and can only harm one plane in this squad per second.

[Sgt. Pepper 55]

44 minutes ago, Jaegaer said:

...is that current AA mechanics suck and need to be completely overhauled (even WG said so).

The whole mechanic of AA DpS vs Plane Hitpoints temepered by a random hit rate origined from Alpha test when planes were more akin to artillery shells in WoT (aka fire and forget, it only matters how many arrive to strike).

But in the current iteration of the rules it makes no sense that all of the AA guns of a ship can only target one squad and can only harm one plane in this squad per second.

That's for certain as well, however, it requires a complete overhaul, not minor tweaks to plane HP or AA DPS. My answer still remains that, with current mechanics, plane survivability does not need to increase.

[Madner Kami 405]

34 minutes ago, Sgt. Pepper said:

That's for certain as well, however, it requires a complete overhaul, not minor tweaks to plane HP or AA DPS. My answer still remains that, with current mechanics, plane survivability does not need to increase.

I'm glad to see, that we are not actually disagreeing, because phrased like that, I concur.

[Madner Kami 405]

The newest iteration of the Zeppelin is a much more comfortable ship to play and all it took was... giving it torpedo bombers, who would have thought... I'd go so far to say, that if they had released Zepplin in this state, they wouldn't have provoked any uproar whatsoever. Sure, the better players would've complained because she's kinda meh in comparison to Shokaku and not recommend buying it, but at least the ship is workable now.

The air control is still as weak as it used to be, because you are still in there with 2x4 fighter groups, with kind of low DPM, ammo and health. Scouting is limited as it used to be and while you can tangle with a Lexington in a non-AS loadout easily, Shokakus in any configuration are still an entirely different beast to tame. The three deep water torp squads retain the old cross pattern and right now, only DDs are safe from it, though I could swear I've seen armed torpedoes go below the bow and aft of cruisers and even carriers. Argueably, DDs were safe from that kind of drop with regular torps as well, it was only the saturation of having 3x5 torps in the water, that really was a problem. Personally, I would gladly trade one torp squad against another fighter squad or two dive bombers with either HE or AP bombs. The alpha potential on battleships is a sight to behold though, especially if one is dumb enough to camp solo behind an island, stationary. Getting 3x5 long range drops (to minimize plane loss) on a Conqueror that activates his heal after the first squad attacked, is delightfull and left me cackling for a couple of minutes.

TL;DR: As it stands, it's playable in randoms. I would gladly welcome other loadout options though and the plane survivability still needs adressing. Playing both this torp-bomber version and the old released dive-bomber version really highlights how terrible dive-bombers are, not just because of the whole limitation of AP-bomb usability and general RNG-nature of bombs, but also their vastely inferior surivability (and effectiveness, due to loosing more planes on approach).