Molotov Burns?

The Tier VI Premium Russian cruiser, the Molotov, hit the SEA server yesterday and I wasted no time buying it. Having had great fun with all of the Tier 5 - 8 Russian cruisers I was pretty confident I'd like the Molotov too and, if nothing else, it'd make a great ship to train Captains with.

At just under thirty Australian dollars it was right on the edge of what I'd call good value. The only more expensive Premium I own is the Atlanta and it's fair to say I've got my value from that ship. Whether or not the same can be said of the Molotov, only time will tell.

Outwardly, it resembles the Tier VI Budyonny and indeed shares a lot of its characteristics. The major difference however, is in the artillery. The Molotov has the same artillery specifications as the Tier IX Russian cruiser, the Dmitri Donskoi. That means flatter arcs because of higher velocity shells, less lead time and higher damage scores. At Tier VI, it also often means you will penetrate even well angled cruisers, right to their citadel. Does that make it overpowered?

It's not as easy as yes or no. If you get the nice draw and find yourself as the top tier cruiser and up against Tier IV's & V's then yes, it's probably going to be something of a seal clubbing exercise if you play it even half right. I was scoring citadel hits on Furutacas and Omahas front on, after all. You can only feel sorry for those poor bastards doing everything right but being punished regardless. That said, when you find yourself in Tier VII & VIII battles, things get significantly tougher. Your enemies are alarmingly accurate, just as fast as you and as the ship is known to be a fragile heavy hitter, it usually gets primaried shortly after being spotted. As such, you really need to be second or third in line and play it defensively, at least initially. However, it can trade punches well above its weight class as you'll see in the video below. I had been forced south by a New Orleans and a Pensacola pushing hard and a Cleveland lobbing shells from afar but after taking some damage, managed to quickly dispatch the Pensacola and aided in seeing off the New Orleans shortly after. The Cleveland also fell to my guns and whilst I couldn't find his citadel [no surprise] the damage numbers with armour piercing shells were often over 4K.

I'm using it with my Tier VIII Chapayev captain at the moment as it seems the best fit. With Demolition Expert it has a 16% chance of fire and, due to it's outstanding ranged accuracy, makes it a blight to Battleship captains everywhere. It doesn't get the benefit of concealed firing that the Chapayev does, but it's not so sluggish in turns that it's an easy target either. Keep jinking, vary your speeds and you'll live much longer.

The real question though, is it worth it? I guess? I'm not 100% sold on it yet, it's still early days and I seem to keep getting drawn into high tier games where the struggle is real. Given more time and some more favourable draws and yes, I can see myself pouring many hours into it. If you can spare the thirty bucks there are worse ways to spend it. You know, like on a Texas. =]

Concealment Specialist

I've recently had both a US and Japanese Captain join the ranks of the 15 point skill level and, as one uses the Atlanta and the other a Kagero, concealment specialist was my Tier 5 skill of choice. With the Atlanta it has proven to be tremendously helpful, reducing my sea borne detection from 10.7 km's down to 9.4 km's but, more importantly, airborne detection down to under 6 km's. Considering my anti aircraft weapons open up at 7.2 km's, that's really bad news for Carrier Captains. Against surface ships it's outstanding too, allowing me to ambush cruisers and even destroyers far more effectively, and making me a hard target for Battleships, which must surely be the arch nemesis of Atlanta captains everywhere.

With the Kagero the difference has been more subtle, reducing my detection range from 6 km's to 5.4 km's, but it's a welcome buffer at Tier 9 where enemy guns are alarmingly accurate and staying concealed is much the same as staying alive. After having some fun rounds in the Kagero I thought it was high time I put this captain to use in the Kamikaze R, the IJN Premium Destroyer. It's already a tremendously fun boat to use but with a 5.4 km detection range and 7 km torpedoes, it's at risk of being a little overpowered at Tier 5. Club in hand, I went looking for baby harp seals.

My first round kicked off in typical fashion as I sped off to cap a distant flag and, suprising absolutely no one, getting absolutely no back up of any sort. To add insult to injury, a Myogi captain had seen fit to Division with a Tier 1 Cruiser, putting our team on the back foot right from the get go. Undaunted I pushed on, briefly spotting an Isokaze on an intercept bearing. Still undetected I quickly put a tight spread where I anticipated him to be and the next time he appeared to me was moments before he sailed into one of my torpedoes and gave me the First Strike. With the flag capped I moved up unopposed to the enemy spawn area where I found a Myogi idle in the water, not AFK, but idle nonetheless. His angle to me wasn't ideal but three of my torpedoes struck, all caused flooding and it was clear he was going to sink without any more attention from me. Before my flooding could finish him off however, a friendly Carrier dealt the death blow, depriving me of my second kill.

I pushed on however, hunting down the enemy Carrier and quickly dispatching it before turning my attention to a Kongo who, despite his best efforts to evade and engage me, was soon put out of the battle too. With three kills secured and only three enemy ships left in play I made my way for the Arkansas Beta and his Kuma escort. The Kuma could be a handful so I again made use of my low detection profile and was fortunate enough to predict his movements scoring two more torpedo hits and leaving the Arkansas un-escorted. With just the Arkansas standing in the way of a Kraken award I threw caution to the wind and charged him down. Tickets were bleeding fast and, despite knowing how dangerous the Arkasas are in close, I made certain of my torpedo strike, sinking the Battleship moments after his own guns had sunk my Destroyer.

With that the round ended & the Battle Performance sheet made for some pretty reading. Over 160,000 in damage, 16 Torpedo Strikes, 14 Floodings and a bag full of signal flags. That was a pretty good day!

3 vs 1? I like those odds.

This week to change things up with Team Battles in the World of Warships my fellow team mates and I developed something of a troll team called Fukushima Sunset, because let's face it, the horizon always glows over Fukushima. The goal was to really just try some stupid shit and see how far it would get us. Early going mostly #YOLO tactics were employed with great effect, earning us about a 5 to 1 Win/Loss ratio and quickly boosting us into Charlie League. Last night we even put in a team of seven Atlantas for maximum trollage only to be summarily out trolled as you can see from the image below. We managed to kill just one Myoko and, to be fair, had it been any other map I'd have given us a decent chance, but Ocean is just the death knell for an Atlanta.

Moving on to this evening and we were short a player but had the good fortune to find a few handy mercenaries to fill the void. We had three good wins under our belt when an opportunity came up for my Atlanta to get into some short ranged knife fighting. The results, as seen below, were hilarious.

If you maintain the Atlanta is a bad ship I'm quite certain you're just doing it wrong. Situational sure, but your job as its Captain is to put it in the right situation to exploit its obvious strengths. I really try to not make every post about Atlanta awesomeness, but it's just so awesomeness. Even cycpwnus agrees.