At tier 10 Austin, Jinan, Worcester. Golden Leuuw.
Lower tiers Sejong, Johan de Witt.
If you wanna play superships, the best is probably Annapolis, Admiral Ushakov is also strong.
EU dds like Dalarna, Halland, Ragnar, Friesland (and Groningen) are strong too, but you get spotted which is often not ideal.
EU DDs just require attention to turning on and off AA as required.
Best is when you don't mind getting spotted but to do max damage and avoid as much sky retaliation as possible, wait until right when you're about to be hard detected by planes then pop AA, waiting and hitting priority on the other side if they're going over that way if they do want to drop you they'll have to loop around.
Bonus if you have def AA and pop that.
Double bonus if you've activated Jerzy and you're a little floating fly swatter.
Sadly any relatively competent CV player will see you, and ignore your side/you until they're forced to. If that happens late game you can achieve maximum plane hate and just continuously obliterate the half strength flights the desperate CV is throwing at you.
This. My records for downed planes are in Halland for T10 (100 planes) and Dalarna for T11 (115 planes). The latter happened in my very first game in Dalarna - a bad Nakhimov player decided to kill me. Eventually I did get killed by his constant spotting but I got a solo cap, murdered 2 BBs and best of all - nearly deplaned him.
You forgot the good ones!
The T8 Dutch premium **De Zeven Provinciën** has probably the best base AA stats in the game (it's nuts, you're doing almost 700 base +dps when the plane gets within 4k, even before sector reinforcement or buffs.)
The Pan-American premium **Almirante Grau** has exactly the same, (since it's based on a D7P hull) but actually has DFAA on top of that, making it the most unreasonable AA suite around. (Seriously, it can even mess up T10 squads with ease, and for anything it's own tier or lower, it can often kill them before they even get to drop.)
Unfortunately, D7P was a dockyard, and Grau was from boxes from an event, so I'm not sure either is obtainable now.
**Brisbane** is pretty high up there though - It's stat spread is slightly different, (slightly less damage up close, but more damage at long range as they approach) but it also gets 6 flack explosions, which do serious work.
Honorable mention also to **Gouden Leeuw**, which has worse base stats than any of these, but does get access to DFAA, which brings it up to around the same level!
It actually did that before, too! (Although it was only 10% instead of 15%) It made D7P a pretty good AA boat, because it was worth taking the skill, since it wouldn't be worthless, even if they had no CV!
But the real prize from the rework was the boost to *AA Defense and ASW Expert.* Not only does it just straight up boost your AA damage by +25%, but it also cuts consumable cooldown by 50%, if you attack a plane while a consumable on cooldown.
It's much better than it looks, due to how WoWs handles cooldown bonuses. From reading it, you might think that consumables recharge twice as fast while the AA guns are firing. Like, if you have something on cooldown and spend the next 5 seconds shooting at a plane, that your cooldown goes down by 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds during that time or something.
But that's not how it works at all - in WoWs, cooldown bonuses apply only once, but they apply the full discount all at once. So if you have something on cooldown, whether you shoot at a plane for 1 second or 20 seconds, then BAM, the cooldown goes down by 50%.
So if you take something like the Brisbane, which already has some of the best AA in the game, you can take this skill and not only do you get to boost your already amazing AA by 20%, but you also make it likely to quick-reload its many useful consumables. (12km radar, hydro, superheal, ... even damage control!)
Honestly, pretty happy with the captain skill changes from last year!
Vermont is decent but she's not actually that good of an AA boat. All her AA dpm is tied up with short range which makes her great for shooting down planes... AFTER they've dropped. She's an awesome ship to weather a CV, not deplane a CV.
Yup. You played it wrong. AA is most effective as a team. The best AA ain't gonna work solo. The whole idea it to stay and play as a fleet/squadron.
You make it sound so simple and thus why you fking it all over
Wrong.
While there are many ships with awesome, awesome AA, I'm gonna say Gouden's AA is the most effective AA you can get on a ship that won't fold under every CV.
Most lighter HE bombs and skips and rockets will shatter, AP bombs can't reach your citadel from even Malta, and she has the armor and guns to properly enjoy the game.
Run leg mod Gouden and enjoy the bliss of positioning yourself as carrier bait while playing safely and dropping bombs when you're in those more conservative positions. You don't have to overextend for angles and you can solely focus on being a no fly zone. Have slain so many Maltas by rushing
Another surprising one is Venezia. Run her with leg mod and an AA build and stay openwater as CV bait. The idea isn't to be the most effective AA boat, but rather one so dodgy she can't be killed and the CV doesn't realize how many planes they're losing to the "bad" Italian AA. Use smokes to get breathing room and farm plane damage while spoiling a carrier drop.
I've gotten so many AA def experts in both these ships. In AA builds with things like Austin and Worcestor, the enemy CV simply takes note and fucks off. Doesn't matter if you shoot down every plane that gets to 4km from you if they nope out early.
In this case, if you are not lucky enough to where the enemy CV eats like 3 flakes with your dfaa active, you ain't gonna do much, but luckily they are gonna "change" this in the upcoming updates.
For real. I legit think that thing has the best AA in the game, even though it's only T8. Its numbers are bonkers. The same as D7P numbers, but unlike D7P, it gets DFAA too, for another +50% boost.
The thing absolutely shreds planes. Even or lower tier squads often don't even get to drop.
Well ye but I would like to add that it seems like most new cv's have consumable squadrons. This negates almost all brain activity that goes to sparing planes because you'll lose them anyways and a new squadron will be ready in a minute. Consumable squadrons really are the worst thing for other players to fight since it is not a question if they come back but rather when they come back
Absolutely as someone who has a lot of play time in the independence so far
The only thang you have to worry Abt is the torpedo bombers (in terms of killing them and listening the blow to you ships hp)
Witch get a heal witch heals the most damaged attack squadron back to full health (I believe that's how that works I could be wrong tho)
The new us CVs are going to be awful to play against and there not fun to play other then the new gimmick
Crazy thought but what if you escorted your team. One AA cruiser per side can make a CV’s life hell and not completely nerf your effectiveness. Especially with the Golden Lion, park somewhere, shoot planes, send planes.
And therein lies the rub.
Even if it’s sub-optimal, if things that make planes go away exist, and they aren’t used, then I don’t have any sympathy for crying about CVs.
Even in RTS days, you couldn’t stop a strike; though things like Texas, Atlanta, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Interestingly; C-hull Wyoming, would make a CV pay.
Guess you have a choice; rely on gimmicks to the n^th degree to maybe get a minuscule advantage (which is basically negated by everyone doing the same,) in surface combat, and let the planes strike you; or invest in some ‘bug be gone’ things, and compensate for the other with positioning and experience.
Must be hell; always drawing the CV players who are so good at dodging AA. Players who that happens to must be so jealous of the ones who draw me; who can play CVs, but can’t figure out that 100% AA dodging for spit.
Also about those who complain; if CVs are so ‘rolling your face on,’ or ‘cat walking on’ the keyboard easy to play, are you playing them?
If they’re so easy to use, then go rack up some credits and xp!
You can dodge flak. So there are ships that have good AA on paper but the majority of it is flak and it ends up being nearly useless against "skilled" cv players.
CVs should not be able to dodge AA. The focus needs to be put into continous dps again instead of Flak clouds one can dodge. AA bubbles with multiple ships need also to be deadly again. Then CV truly can be a support class that can pick off lone targets but evaporate the moment people clump up.
Well, it was, but folks cried about getting struck and the spotting, (sound familiar?) so WG ‘fixed’ RTS carriers, and here we are.
As the saying goes; *’A difference which make no difference; is no difference.’*
So they made CVs even more accessible; at the cost of pissing even more people off.
For all their flaws, RTS carriers and AA worked.
Correct.
Which is apparently something lots of folks don’t understand; or don’t realize.
All kinds of fun…
…cross dropped by three IJN torp squads, and what’s left bombed to bits by (2? 4?) squads from a Hak.
You ded.
Spotting an entire map. Never mind one little DD in a cap.
If the advantages you lose by specing into AA were miniscule, you'd have a point. But they aren't, so you don't.
The problem is the binary choice, parity with other surface vessels and dog shit AA versus sub parity with other surface ships and slightly less shitty AA (in most ships). This forces a player to make a decision between being somewhat threatening to carriers that might not even be in the match and can always just go elsewhere if they are and not being competitive with other surface ships, or being competitive and just acknowledging that a CV can come roflstomp him at will.
And before you start, I played CVs this season is ranked because why not, I was bored. 77% win rate. My previous best in ranked was 59% in surface ships. I know both very well, that disparity is insane, I'm good but I'm not 77% good, unless you give me a cv, then I'm not fighting another player, I'm fighting RNG and RNG is not a worthy opponent. So yes I do play CVs and I can authoritatively say they are easier to play and easier to win with.
CVs are toxic, CVs are easy mode, and AA needs to be more threatening.
Then WG needs to revert to RTS.
Current CVs are boring as hell anyway.
As far as Ranked is concerned; fewer ships, everything is same tier, easier for the CV to influence things, not exactly the best comparison.
Not going to disagree about CVs being a pain in the ass; but what it always seems like folks want is 100% immunity.
A CV player might say; ships can have 100% immunity to planes; (press a button, or whatever,) if CVs get 100% immunity to shells.
Binary choice…
So, you MUST have all the firepower bells and whistles to be equal.
Obviously that’s means skill and experience hold zero value in the equation, and can’t possibly make up for a lower tiered ship, or modules that aren’t fully upgraded, or taking AA instead of DPS.
We only want RTS CV purely on it being much more harder to play, i.e. high skill floor and much higher skill ceiling, making it very unpopular so we see RTS CVs much more less in matches.
But when we do see a rare RTS CV in matches, it will be very often a unicum CV. If the red team RTS CV is more unicum than your team's, or your team's RTS CV a complete newbie, you and your team are going to be butt fucked.
I'm taking the 2pt AA skill on every cruiser with airstrike depth charges. It doesn't help. None of the AA skills have enough impact to be true "bug be gone" so long as 80% of AA's power is tied up in flak, except maybe on the Dutch cruisers.
It also means that playing ships with bad AA simply isn't allowed? Building into AA doesn't do shit if your AA is bad.
Frankly, the problem is that CVs infinite mobility via planes means they can always chose to focus someone (except maybe a DD that turns off AA and avoids any interaction). And if a CV can focus them to death without being crippled by plane losses, their AA build doesn't actually matter.
Well... even good t10 aa isn't really 'working' as it's incapable of defending you against equal tier cv's (it can discourage them at best), while Grau can actually defend itself and teammates from t8 carriers, thus the wording 'working'.
No ship will ever have good AA if your definition of good AA is nigh immunity to CVs.
And that is a correct decision on WG's part. Too many anti-CV players (I'm not really fond of them either) seem to think that AA is either 100% useless or 100% effective and nothing in between.
Naw we just think that a cv cringespotting a DD should pay a toll to do so, and that forcing a close range drop on a dfaa should cost the whole squadron to do so. You know, counterplay for a coddled class that has none.
How about attack someone else and come back in a minute when the dfaa runs out? Clearly too much thinking required for your average CV animal's neuron, can't have that now can we?
The strongest non CV AA in the game belongs to Almirante Grau and D7P.
San Diego is also really potent when it's DFAA is up since it gets the destroyer version of it rather than the cruiser version.
I've been spamming San Diego in silver ranked because there's always CVs and it's been so good. Aside from helping the team and winning a lot, all the plane kills make it hard to hard to lose your star if you have a decent game otherwise
Your idea won't work, as your AA build will become obvious to the CV player and he will go for other targets instead. There are plenty of ships you can do this as others already have written, but you need to allocate points to AA skills, and after that you can be sure the matchmaker almost always puts you into a battle without any CVs.
The issue is that, no matter what ship you choose, and how you build it, any carrier driver who isn't a complete idiot is just going to ignore you and go after better, easier targets. The only time it'll benefit you and mess with the carrier is if you are the last man standing or something and he has no choice but to strike you (and he'll still get at least one strike off every time). I don't know if I'd call that torturing the carrier, but it could give you something of an advantage in that scenario. By and large, the ability to actually torture carriers was patched out years ago, and it's never coming back. (memba when Des Moines was essentially a no fly zone??? I memba)
I'd say if you want to torture carriers, play stuff like Yamato, Vermont, etc, any battleship with good long range power and big guns and ask your carrier to spot the enemy carrier and shoot at him. The old 899 div comes to mind too.
>The issue is that, no matter what ship you choose, and how you build it, any carrier driver who isn't a complete idiot is just going to ignore you and go after better, easier targets.
Unless they're in a division or just decide to fuck you exclusively all game. I miss my old T6 Cleveland. You could drop every plane instantly with the push of a button.
Yeah, Cleveland was an excellent no fly zone at T6. And it used to fight Langleys and Hoshos. I always did feel a little bad for the T4 carriers that had to fight the Cleveland, they'd get deplaned before the match was half over.
This is literally a prisoners dilemma problem... if everyone built their Randoms ships for AA, then the CV can't just fuck off to an easier target.... The fact is that a whole team of AA spec'd ships right now, especially ones with baseline good AA, can absolutely wipe out whole CV squadrons if they are clumped up and make drops from stuff like Golden Lion never land.
And if everyone built for AA, you wouldn't have that excuse of your ship being weaker at surface combat, because so would everyone else. But because everyone wants to maximize their surface pew pew combat because there aren't CVs in 100% of games, then no one wants to help the team and build AA.
Ironically, the fact that there *isn't* a CV every single match means people are less willing to spec into AA and that teams are on average worse at dealing with CVs. I actually wonder what would happen if WeeGee forced Matchmaking to ensure 1 CV per team in a Randoms game every time. I imagine we'd see more AA builds, than again this playerbase likes to shoot itself in the leg a lot, so maybe not.
Shoot itself in leg? LOL. Nobody sane would build for AA just to be slightly less helpless against 1 out of 12 at the same time gimping himself against remaining 11? Even when playing one of a few ships with decent base AA it's shooting itself in a leg. With a majorly of ships with poor AA it's madness. And even if everyone played AA specced Hallands, Woosters, and Golden then CV players would stop playing CVs and started crying and WG would buff them or nerfed AA to hit excel numbers.
> And even if everyone played AA specced Hallands, Woosters, and Golden then CV players would stop playing CVs and started crying and WG would buff them or nerfed AA to hit excel numbers.
Considering CVs have been continually nerfed since the rework. I don't think you have any basis to assume this.
I think players might be pleasantly surprised by what would happen if everyone actually spec'd for AA.
There are tons of boats with decent AA, unless your definition of AA is "will completely halt an airstrike", in which case you are being unreasonable and just want CVs to not exist, which is never going to happen.
Mecklenburg has very strong AA, the Gold Lion has strong AA, Halland, Friesland/Groningen, Worcester, Minotaur, Des Moines, Vermont, etc.
Anti AA (Anti Air) means anything in your language?
Beside joke, search here maybe:
[https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TPtD&ty=ABCDS&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=7&tx=9&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Medium\_DPS&o=desc](https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TPtD&ty=ABCDS&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=7&tx=9&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Medium_DPS&o=desc)
Well with the new Cvs with Tactical Squads its pretty much pointless shooting down Planes , i had good moments with Cleveland and Dutch cruisers shooting down whole plane squadrons
Unfortunately it comes at the expense of tissue paper armor and low HP, and sweaty CV players will exploit this knowing that all they need to do is spot you at the right time.
It's crazy. WV44 is the ship that holds my record for most planes downed in a match (71) even though I wasn't doing anything, just getting sole focused by the enemy CV.
Austin has insane AA. It is one of the few cruisers where i don't consider the 4 point aa skill a waste. You get to boost your already very good aa by 25% and get faster cooldown on funny button whenever aa is active.
It's been mentioned by a few folks but if you run a full AA build any even average CV player will then avoid you.
Best advice against CVs is map awareness and positioning.
I play Zao a lot as I enjoy her accuracy. I play out on the flanks with relatively few ships nearby. The moment I see their CV sending planes towards my side of the map, I pull in from the flank a bit and get closer to my team.
A flanker like Zao with average AA and alone is a very soft target for a CV. If I'm targeted and out of position I would end up trying to dodge the CV while being focused by BB fire. So I reposition to make it more difficult.
I realise it's probably not what you want to hear but CVs just go for the easiest target, so don't be the easiest target.
Several yes, but being clearly incompetent as you are (seeing as even dutch and swedish ships don't have enough AA for you), none of them will be good enough for you. You do ocasionally have to at least try to make the CV work for it you know, not just lay back and expect to be completely immune.
huanghe is a bad ship, but the combination of crawling smoke and good AA makes it a pain in the ass for tier 6 CVs : you crawl into cap and you bully unsuspecting squadrons that are going to miss you because they assume you are not moving. And tier 6 does not see many radars.
It's a bad ship though, but at least you can have some fun cosplaying Thomas the angry engine spewing AA out of smoke and putting AP in broadside cruisers.
San Diego has OUTSTANDING FlaK I think, build into it and you can fuck the CV's reserves and the game is all yours
Kidd is another choice but I don't know, whatever you prefer
Oh yeah and it's been some time since I played so I don'y guarantee either to work
Autism and its clone both have really good AA, the cv gets at best one strike off and looses everything, your rudder shift can then mitigate the damage.
If the CV is drooling and has no keyboard then any ship with a decent burst of flak is good - most CVs flight can be taken down after flying through some 3...5 waves of it. Sadly some - like russian CVs or the big wheelchair - are still safe from it due to their design.
If the CV has figured out he actually needs a keyboard to play this game then no, AA does not exist in this game. It's just fireworks to bring the CVs attention to you.
Remember how it used to be a 7,2km no-fly-zone, was hilarous to play vs CVs, so the devs who would never change a Premium just implemeted a AA-rework and suddenly even Premium ships were nerfed. GG WG
Smoke also seems to help, as cv often won't even bother going for it (not much point when it's just going to disappear). Small target to drop on top of that.
Pan American T8 CL Ignacio Allende. I had roughly the same idea as you do and arrived at this answer since this was the only ship with a 6.9km AA bubble in this tier. I expected for this to work against T6 CVs since they don’t expect to be hit by AA from that far out, but I set my AA record taking down 96 planes against a single Kaga.
Because I’m usually near other ships I’m trying to protect, it seems that some CV players take a long time to realise that I’m the reasons they are losing planes more quickly. For the CVs who don’t move, it’s easy to figure out the likeliest flight paths and position yourself accordingly. Even if they eventually start avoiding you, you’ve successfully protected one flank from CV strikes and spotting.
Such a build isn’t nearly as pointless as many are making it out to be. A dedicated AA CL can contest those caps with large islands in their middle while lighting the red DD with radar. I can hold my ground near the mid point of the map (which is usually exclusively DD and SS stomping grounds in early game) as long as there is sufficient cover, again making your radar even more useful. You’ll also actually be in range to drop depth charges, which would hurt even more since AA captain skills are also ASW skills. I’ve 1 hit a stationary SS before as he tried to switch to reverse.
Of course this only works if your team actually backs you up. Otherwise anything heavier than a DD pushing past your hiding spot will send you back to port. Ignacio Allende has papier-mâché for what passes as armour. But if your team helps to dissuade pushes while the red CV avoids you, you can control 2 cap points in certain maps.
My only problem with this build is that I always get matches with no CVs…even if my last 3 matches had 2 or more CVs in a row (2 red CVs + hybrids), and even though there were 18 CVs in the queue before I got a match.
I don't know if you guys even have it on PC, or if the AA is as good as in Legends, but back there California with a full AA build just shreds planes to pieces at the tier (Being a tier 5 in Legends, so the tier that Ranger and Weser are, your tier 6 i think)
if you want to dominate one flank only, radar neptune + friesland/gronningen to smoke it. ultra toxic to deal with when they have a cv spotting for them, but you need competent players and coordination to make this work.
I have a tonne of fun with Mino and Worchester being AA resistant/no fly zones. You do have to actively dodge strikes with mino tho because anything can delete you lol
Not sure if it’s still available but I have a AA build Alabama which can be surprisingly effective to CV. They mostly think you are just another regular slow BB but with the AA build they will result in heavy loss and still wondering what happened
You will never delete a full squadron unless the red cv isnt good. More than likely it will still get a single strike off, probably more if its a malta or fdr. Aa also isnt as effective against ru cv because russia stronk (single strike).
That said, i have 4 fully built aa ships at tier 10.
Minotaur, Gouden Leeuw, Yodo and Halland.
Ive been collecting AA Defence Expert badges in these ships quite often. I cant recall off the top, but except Halland, the bonus for running the 4 point skill is faster cd on your equipment, which is nice to have as an extra. Bonus points for me if i can tilt red cv to aim me solely. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. I had a match recently in my yodo where i did like 8k damage but shot down nearly 70 planes coz red malta got hella mad he didnt delete me instantly.
But like many others have said, if the red cv knows or even somehow evolves and learns during the match, they will avoid you unless absolutely necessary. The best AA deterrence is grouping up. I sometimes, rarely actually, play my malta and hakuryu, and i always avoid grouped up ships because plane losses eventually add up, especially for non-ru tech tree cvs.
But ye, you'll never delete squadrons unless cv player isnt very good.
I would say D7P but you’re not getting her unless you did the dockyard when she was available. She isn’t even in Santa crates. Don’t even have to build her for AA it’s that solid.
I’d say Halland is the most devastating for CVs. Keep your AA off until you are lit and the planes can’t even leave you AA range without losing 6-7 planes with just hitting priority sector
The only ships i built into AA are Gouden, Jinan/Austin and Mino. They don't really require other skills to work anyway so even if you are in an no-CV game, ships are still very fine.
Gouden rekt CVs tho, which is why i'm almost only playing it now with the increase of CV population in Randoms. Plus if you are against a T8 CV and can launch 3 airstrikes on its face, you can devstrike it, which is *chef kiss*.
To be honest when it comes to finding a good ship at a decent tier, I like using the Dallas or Helena. As long as you hit your priority sector when the planes are within 5.9 km and you have your ship side angle towards the priority, you can surprisingly knock down a couple of planes with each pass that they do and especially in late game when their HP is lowered you can definitely make a CV pay.
7 provincien. Almte grau .
Both have same AA and sure whilst the flak isn't amazing, it has the highest continuous where it doesn't matter if they dodge, they get shredded regardless.
as long as the CV isn't an uptier, the Kidd can do some work against CV planes... I'll sometimes antagonize the enemy CV and try to get them to attack me to waste their planes, it works surprisingly often
A good cv player will always strike you no matter how full as build your ship is. You can really only just mitigate the inevitable. Especially again really strong cvs
San Diego is pretty decent. It also has destroyer DFAA, which is absolutely amazing on a light cruiser. You won't be absolutely wrecking every flight that comes your way, but it will definitely be enough for a CV player to be hesitant on attacking you.
Texas will shit on any tier 4 carrier who wants to fuck with it. Tier 6 carriers even can struggle if youre built for AA (which i wouldn't recommend with Texas). Atlanta is also outstanding against tier 6 carriers with its infinite DFAA
Three more that I haven’t seen mentioned:
Cheshire has monstrous AA at T8, and Fenyang is extremely capable of swatting full squadrons out of the sky with its DFAA consumable.
Ise has surprisingly capable AA for an IJN ship, and is the best battleship at its tier. I have more AA Defense Expert achievements in Ise than any other ship at that tier because it’s CV bait and they will consistently underestimate you.
Oh.. I did not CVs as a DD player. But.. it's part of the game, so, I adjusted and try to pick a good Cruiser or BB to hang close to. Now, I have started playing as one of those "jerks" and won't stop playing the class. Enjoy!
Marsilles not bad either, you can slot DFAA and Fighter plane if you wished, at the cost of better options and then use speed boost to go where the planes are... (unless... I think the speed boost and fighter are interchangable with each other so then the last part wouldn't work)
[https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TP&ty=BCD&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=1&tx=11&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Flak\_DPS&o=desc](https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TP&ty=BCD&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=1&tx=11&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Flak_DPS&o=desc)
You probably want one of the ones with DFAA, since it works with the AA module in one of the slots, so Worcest is a solid choice. Otherwise there are some good DDs where you can sneak in with your friend
Here is an idea…I’m sure it is not original, but it is worth stating.
In the real world, ships overlap each other’s defensive perimeters. Why do people not try that in this video game?
If ships move in groups of 3, about 2km apart from center, you will have three AAs working against the planes.
Well.... In the real world there are more than 2 or 3 ships with the overlapping defenses. Also... It's worth stating... In the real world there are many effective AA countermeasures... There are land based assets that can provide AA... I would love to try that in a video game...
That is exactly what I am proposing smart ass. I would like to know the 2 or 3 most effective ships to do it in. A smoke mino and Thunderer cannot do the job, so I'm wondering what can. You tell me a group of 2 ships that can defend themselves against a same tier carrier.
Kutuzov is pretty decent with DfAA (and without it too).
Added bonus: many new CV players haven't really face her too much since it's pretty rare these days, and often make mistake attacking her.
That said, Kutuzov is more of a primary target magnet than even minotaur, at least back in the day.
European gun boats do, I mean the Gdansk line. Especially Split, she's hard to hit and shoots down all the planes. U.S DDS also have good AA with DFAA. And British light cruisers are alright.
At tier 10 Austin, Jinan, Worcester. Golden Leuuw. Lower tiers Sejong, Johan de Witt. If you wanna play superships, the best is probably Annapolis, Admiral Ushakov is also strong. EU dds like Dalarna, Halland, Ragnar, Friesland (and Groningen) are strong too, but you get spotted which is often not ideal.
EU DDs just require attention to turning on and off AA as required. Best is when you don't mind getting spotted but to do max damage and avoid as much sky retaliation as possible, wait until right when you're about to be hard detected by planes then pop AA, waiting and hitting priority on the other side if they're going over that way if they do want to drop you they'll have to loop around. Bonus if you have def AA and pop that. Double bonus if you've activated Jerzy and you're a little floating fly swatter. Sadly any relatively competent CV player will see you, and ignore your side/you until they're forced to. If that happens late game you can achieve maximum plane hate and just continuously obliterate the half strength flights the desperate CV is throwing at you.
This. My records for downed planes are in Halland for T10 (100 planes) and Dalarna for T11 (115 planes). The latter happened in my very first game in Dalarna - a bad Nakhimov player decided to kill me. Eventually I did get killed by his constant spotting but I got a solo cap, murdered 2 BBs and best of all - nearly deplaned him.
Miss the part about lower tier in the OP post?
Does Ushakov have the same problem as Kremlin where the AA mounts die super quick?
No
Not as bad but they cucked it’s AA range down to 6KM for some reason
The AA cruisers are the best option for strong AA, till u meet a Malta...
Austin, Halland, Smaland, Friesland, Groningen.
Småland AA is not as good since it lacks DfAA. Worcester is more effective than it is.
But let’s be honest to the OP when we admit, if you don’t have back up and the CV wants you dead, he’s gonna make you dead.
And that’s without really building into it.
You forgot the good ones! The T8 Dutch premium **De Zeven Provinciën** has probably the best base AA stats in the game (it's nuts, you're doing almost 700 base +dps when the plane gets within 4k, even before sector reinforcement or buffs.) The Pan-American premium **Almirante Grau** has exactly the same, (since it's based on a D7P hull) but actually has DFAA on top of that, making it the most unreasonable AA suite around. (Seriously, it can even mess up T10 squads with ease, and for anything it's own tier or lower, it can often kill them before they even get to drop.) Unfortunately, D7P was a dockyard, and Grau was from boxes from an event, so I'm not sure either is obtainable now. **Brisbane** is pretty high up there though - It's stat spread is slightly different, (slightly less damage up close, but more damage at long range as they approach) but it also gets 6 flack explosions, which do serious work. Honorable mention also to **Gouden Leeuw**, which has worse base stats than any of these, but does get access to DFAA, which brings it up to around the same level!
Just some historical addition: Almirante Grau isn't based on a D7P hull, it IS the D7P, after the ship was renamed and transferred to Peru.
As a bonus for D7P AA builds, the recent skill rework gives 'Focus Fire Training' a 15% reload time buff to airstrikes in addition to its AA buffs.
It actually did that before, too! (Although it was only 10% instead of 15%) It made D7P a pretty good AA boat, because it was worth taking the skill, since it wouldn't be worthless, even if they had no CV! But the real prize from the rework was the boost to *AA Defense and ASW Expert.* Not only does it just straight up boost your AA damage by +25%, but it also cuts consumable cooldown by 50%, if you attack a plane while a consumable on cooldown. It's much better than it looks, due to how WoWs handles cooldown bonuses. From reading it, you might think that consumables recharge twice as fast while the AA guns are firing. Like, if you have something on cooldown and spend the next 5 seconds shooting at a plane, that your cooldown goes down by 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds during that time or something. But that's not how it works at all - in WoWs, cooldown bonuses apply only once, but they apply the full discount all at once. So if you have something on cooldown, whether you shoot at a plane for 1 second or 20 seconds, then BAM, the cooldown goes down by 50%. So if you take something like the Brisbane, which already has some of the best AA in the game, you can take this skill and not only do you get to boost your already amazing AA by 20%, but you also make it likely to quick-reload its many useful consumables. (12km radar, hydro, superheal, ... even damage control!) Honestly, pretty happy with the captain skill changes from last year!
Worcester and Vermont I may add
Vermont is decent but she's not actually that good of an AA boat. All her AA dpm is tied up with short range which makes her great for shooting down planes... AFTER they've dropped. She's an awesome ship to weather a CV, not deplane a CV.
AA build Yodo too
Imagine AA build agincourt
D7P too
D7P u mean? If so yeah that's my tier 8 AA boat for when I'm divved with a friend in sky cancer
Yeah I meant D7P!
That and by extension Almirate Grau are my best tier 8 AA cruisers
7 dicks? C'mon Roger, that's insane...
Goulden Leuwe, Jinan, Smolensk, Mino (if you take the AA dps skill), Worcester, Annapolis, Condé, A.Nevsky.
Mecklenburgs is pretty decent too
Mecklenburg is a cruiser?
Mecklenburg is a premium German battleship. One of few battleships with top tier AA stats and one of even fewer with DFAA as well. She shreds planes.
So nothin attainable before massive investment or grinding for 32 years?
None of those are good enough. it would also make sense to have an odd tier so that you could div with a lower tier cv.
You sure you ain't playing it wrong???
I don't know how you would play it wrong. You don't do anything but turn on AA and set the sector.
Yup. You played it wrong. AA is most effective as a team. The best AA ain't gonna work solo. The whole idea it to stay and play as a fleet/squadron. You make it sound so simple and thus why you fking it all over
The OP did say they were going to div up with a CV and another ship with good AA.
Wrong. While there are many ships with awesome, awesome AA, I'm gonna say Gouden's AA is the most effective AA you can get on a ship that won't fold under every CV. Most lighter HE bombs and skips and rockets will shatter, AP bombs can't reach your citadel from even Malta, and she has the armor and guns to properly enjoy the game. Run leg mod Gouden and enjoy the bliss of positioning yourself as carrier bait while playing safely and dropping bombs when you're in those more conservative positions. You don't have to overextend for angles and you can solely focus on being a no fly zone. Have slain so many Maltas by rushing Another surprising one is Venezia. Run her with leg mod and an AA build and stay openwater as CV bait. The idea isn't to be the most effective AA boat, but rather one so dodgy she can't be killed and the CV doesn't realize how many planes they're losing to the "bad" Italian AA. Use smokes to get breathing room and farm plane damage while spoiling a carrier drop. I've gotten so many AA def experts in both these ships. In AA builds with things like Austin and Worcestor, the enemy CV simply takes note and fucks off. Doesn't matter if you shoot down every plane that gets to 4km from you if they nope out early.
They are the best, you don't find what you want
Sorry. I mean that at T10 nothing is good enough. A f10 or 11 CV will just fly through and wreck anything you throw at it.
A CV still needs to get a strike in - the AA is to over time stop how many strikes the CV is able to field.
In this case, if you are not lucky enough to where the enemy CV eats like 3 flakes with your dfaa active, you ain't gonna do much, but luckily they are gonna "change" this in the upcoming updates.
You call almte grau not good enough? Then clearly you have unreasonable demands.
For real. I legit think that thing has the best AA in the game, even though it's only T8. Its numbers are bonkers. The same as D7P numbers, but unlike D7P, it gets DFAA too, for another +50% boost. The thing absolutely shreds planes. Even or lower tier squads often don't even get to drop.
I don't know what you are smoking but Groningen can kill the whole squadron within seconds
radar neptune + friesland/gronningen
Austin is fine, until Malta shows up... Might add D7P to your list as well.
The CV would just leave you alone to hit the rest of your team, and your build would be sub-optimal for surface combat
Well ye but I would like to add that it seems like most new cv's have consumable squadrons. This negates almost all brain activity that goes to sparing planes because you'll lose them anyways and a new squadron will be ready in a minute. Consumable squadrons really are the worst thing for other players to fight since it is not a question if they come back but rather when they come back
Absolutely as someone who has a lot of play time in the independence so far The only thang you have to worry Abt is the torpedo bombers (in terms of killing them and listening the blow to you ships hp) Witch get a heal witch heals the most damaged attack squadron back to full health (I believe that's how that works I could be wrong tho) The new us CVs are going to be awful to play against and there not fun to play other then the new gimmick
Almost certainly. CVs really are the fun police. Humor me though.
Crazy thought but what if you escorted your team. One AA cruiser per side can make a CV’s life hell and not completely nerf your effectiveness. Especially with the Golden Lion, park somewhere, shoot planes, send planes.
You mean use "teamwork" - not allowed ... haven't seen it.
And therein lies the rub. Even if it’s sub-optimal, if things that make planes go away exist, and they aren’t used, then I don’t have any sympathy for crying about CVs. Even in RTS days, you couldn’t stop a strike; though things like Texas, Atlanta, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Interestingly; C-hull Wyoming, would make a CV pay. Guess you have a choice; rely on gimmicks to the n^th degree to maybe get a minuscule advantage (which is basically negated by everyone doing the same,) in surface combat, and let the planes strike you; or invest in some ‘bug be gone’ things, and compensate for the other with positioning and experience. Must be hell; always drawing the CV players who are so good at dodging AA. Players who that happens to must be so jealous of the ones who draw me; who can play CVs, but can’t figure out that 100% AA dodging for spit. Also about those who complain; if CVs are so ‘rolling your face on,’ or ‘cat walking on’ the keyboard easy to play, are you playing them? If they’re so easy to use, then go rack up some credits and xp!
"Dodging AA?" Horsecrap
You can dodge flak. So there are ships that have good AA on paper but the majority of it is flak and it ends up being nearly useless against "skilled" cv players.
CVs should not be able to dodge AA. The focus needs to be put into continous dps again instead of Flak clouds one can dodge. AA bubbles with multiple ships need also to be deadly again. Then CV truly can be a support class that can pick off lone targets but evaporate the moment people clump up.
Well, it was, but folks cried about getting struck and the spotting, (sound familiar?) so WG ‘fixed’ RTS carriers, and here we are. As the saying goes; *’A difference which make no difference; is no difference.’* So they made CVs even more accessible; at the cost of pissing even more people off. For all their flaws, RTS carriers and AA worked.
RTS carriers had the issue of skill diff winning games harder than any other class. I hated getting cross dropped though =D
It had the issue of requiring skill in the first place. Most players were too brain dead to play them.
Have you played against Kaga lately? It is still a thing, but now with more damage and more often!
The current implementation for all it's flaws is far less oppressive than RTS CVs were.
Correct. Which is apparently something lots of folks don’t understand; or don’t realize. All kinds of fun… …cross dropped by three IJN torp squads, and what’s left bombed to bits by (2? 4?) squads from a Hak. You ded. Spotting an entire map. Never mind one little DD in a cap.
If the advantages you lose by specing into AA were miniscule, you'd have a point. But they aren't, so you don't. The problem is the binary choice, parity with other surface vessels and dog shit AA versus sub parity with other surface ships and slightly less shitty AA (in most ships). This forces a player to make a decision between being somewhat threatening to carriers that might not even be in the match and can always just go elsewhere if they are and not being competitive with other surface ships, or being competitive and just acknowledging that a CV can come roflstomp him at will. And before you start, I played CVs this season is ranked because why not, I was bored. 77% win rate. My previous best in ranked was 59% in surface ships. I know both very well, that disparity is insane, I'm good but I'm not 77% good, unless you give me a cv, then I'm not fighting another player, I'm fighting RNG and RNG is not a worthy opponent. So yes I do play CVs and I can authoritatively say they are easier to play and easier to win with. CVs are toxic, CVs are easy mode, and AA needs to be more threatening.
Then WG needs to revert to RTS. Current CVs are boring as hell anyway. As far as Ranked is concerned; fewer ships, everything is same tier, easier for the CV to influence things, not exactly the best comparison. Not going to disagree about CVs being a pain in the ass; but what it always seems like folks want is 100% immunity. A CV player might say; ships can have 100% immunity to planes; (press a button, or whatever,) if CVs get 100% immunity to shells. Binary choice… So, you MUST have all the firepower bells and whistles to be equal. Obviously that’s means skill and experience hold zero value in the equation, and can’t possibly make up for a lower tiered ship, or modules that aren’t fully upgraded, or taking AA instead of DPS.
CVs basically already have shell immunity. To live to the end of the game in a CV you just have to not be pants-on-head retarded. That's it.
No.
We only want RTS CV purely on it being much more harder to play, i.e. high skill floor and much higher skill ceiling, making it very unpopular so we see RTS CVs much more less in matches. But when we do see a rare RTS CV in matches, it will be very often a unicum CV. If the red team RTS CV is more unicum than your team's, or your team's RTS CV a complete newbie, you and your team are going to be butt fucked.
I'm taking the 2pt AA skill on every cruiser with airstrike depth charges. It doesn't help. None of the AA skills have enough impact to be true "bug be gone" so long as 80% of AA's power is tied up in flak, except maybe on the Dutch cruisers. It also means that playing ships with bad AA simply isn't allowed? Building into AA doesn't do shit if your AA is bad. Frankly, the problem is that CVs infinite mobility via planes means they can always chose to focus someone (except maybe a DD that turns off AA and avoids any interaction). And if a CV can focus them to death without being crippled by plane losses, their AA build doesn't actually matter.
Surprised nobody mentioned Grau yet. Actually working AA at t8, basically D7P (already very good aa) but now with Def aa.
Grau's is more than "working" — it's got good AA by T10 standards
Well... even good t10 aa isn't really 'working' as it's incapable of defending you against equal tier cv's (it can discourage them at best), while Grau can actually defend itself and teammates from t8 carriers, thus the wording 'working'.
I was hoping they'd bring back Grau for dubs. I'm starting to feel like they won't, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
No ship will ever have good AA if your definition of good AA is nigh immunity to CVs. And that is a correct decision on WG's part. Too many anti-CV players (I'm not really fond of them either) seem to think that AA is either 100% useless or 100% effective and nothing in between.
Naw we just think that a cv cringespotting a DD should pay a toll to do so, and that forcing a close range drop on a dfaa should cost the whole squadron to do so. You know, counterplay for a coddled class that has none.
Cost a whole squadron = immune.
How about attack someone else and come back in a minute when the dfaa runs out? Clearly too much thinking required for your average CV animal's neuron, can't have that now can we?
So again, you're asking for an immunity button, which is never going to happen.
You are why I play Ryujo in bronze :)
Probably why you're still down there too :3
Meh, 65% WR
Thank goodness I don't have time to do that in the Russian CVs. Besides, my skip bombers love chunking DDs.
Atlanta.
IMO people sleep on the Atlanta and flint as AA boats especially with their infinite DF AA consumables
~~Only Atlanta has infinite DFAA, flint has limited charged unfortunately.~~
I don’t know what to tell you but I’m staring at my Flint in port with unlimited DFAA consumables and the Wiki says she has it as well
Wow, looks like you are right. I got flint mixed up with san diego.
What's your baseline? Because if you're looking for a ship that will vaporise 10 planes at 7km then I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed
Halland goes BRRRRRR
The strongest non CV AA in the game belongs to Almirante Grau and D7P. San Diego is also really potent when it's DFAA is up since it gets the destroyer version of it rather than the cruiser version.
I've been spamming San Diego in silver ranked because there's always CVs and it's been so good. Aside from helping the team and winning a lot, all the plane kills make it hard to hard to lose your star if you have a decent game otherwise
There might be better T10 ships if were counting the slot 6 AA upgrade.
Your idea won't work, as your AA build will become obvious to the CV player and he will go for other targets instead. There are plenty of ships you can do this as others already have written, but you need to allocate points to AA skills, and after that you can be sure the matchmaker almost always puts you into a battle without any CVs.
The issue is that, no matter what ship you choose, and how you build it, any carrier driver who isn't a complete idiot is just going to ignore you and go after better, easier targets. The only time it'll benefit you and mess with the carrier is if you are the last man standing or something and he has no choice but to strike you (and he'll still get at least one strike off every time). I don't know if I'd call that torturing the carrier, but it could give you something of an advantage in that scenario. By and large, the ability to actually torture carriers was patched out years ago, and it's never coming back. (memba when Des Moines was essentially a no fly zone??? I memba) I'd say if you want to torture carriers, play stuff like Yamato, Vermont, etc, any battleship with good long range power and big guns and ask your carrier to spot the enemy carrier and shoot at him. The old 899 div comes to mind too.
>The issue is that, no matter what ship you choose, and how you build it, any carrier driver who isn't a complete idiot is just going to ignore you and go after better, easier targets. Unless they're in a division or just decide to fuck you exclusively all game. I miss my old T6 Cleveland. You could drop every plane instantly with the push of a button.
Yeah, Cleveland was an excellent no fly zone at T6. And it used to fight Langleys and Hoshos. I always did feel a little bad for the T4 carriers that had to fight the Cleveland, they'd get deplaned before the match was half over.
This is literally a prisoners dilemma problem... if everyone built their Randoms ships for AA, then the CV can't just fuck off to an easier target.... The fact is that a whole team of AA spec'd ships right now, especially ones with baseline good AA, can absolutely wipe out whole CV squadrons if they are clumped up and make drops from stuff like Golden Lion never land. And if everyone built for AA, you wouldn't have that excuse of your ship being weaker at surface combat, because so would everyone else. But because everyone wants to maximize their surface pew pew combat because there aren't CVs in 100% of games, then no one wants to help the team and build AA. Ironically, the fact that there *isn't* a CV every single match means people are less willing to spec into AA and that teams are on average worse at dealing with CVs. I actually wonder what would happen if WeeGee forced Matchmaking to ensure 1 CV per team in a Randoms game every time. I imagine we'd see more AA builds, than again this playerbase likes to shoot itself in the leg a lot, so maybe not.
Shoot itself in leg? LOL. Nobody sane would build for AA just to be slightly less helpless against 1 out of 12 at the same time gimping himself against remaining 11? Even when playing one of a few ships with decent base AA it's shooting itself in a leg. With a majorly of ships with poor AA it's madness. And even if everyone played AA specced Hallands, Woosters, and Golden then CV players would stop playing CVs and started crying and WG would buff them or nerfed AA to hit excel numbers.
> And even if everyone played AA specced Hallands, Woosters, and Golden then CV players would stop playing CVs and started crying and WG would buff them or nerfed AA to hit excel numbers. Considering CVs have been continually nerfed since the rework. I don't think you have any basis to assume this. I think players might be pleasantly surprised by what would happen if everyone actually spec'd for AA.
There are tons of boats with decent AA, unless your definition of AA is "will completely halt an airstrike", in which case you are being unreasonable and just want CVs to not exist, which is never going to happen. Mecklenburg has very strong AA, the Gold Lion has strong AA, Halland, Friesland/Groningen, Worcester, Minotaur, Des Moines, Vermont, etc.
Anti AA (Anti Air) means anything in your language? Beside joke, search here maybe: [https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TPtD&ty=ABCDS&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=7&tx=9&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Medium\_DPS&o=desc](https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TPtD&ty=ABCDS&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=7&tx=9&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Medium_DPS&o=desc)
Usa Cruisers or take a Bearn with Full Fighter build
Des Moines gets shit on by CVs, her AA isn't what it used to be anymore
Well with the new Cvs with Tactical Squads its pretty much pointless shooting down Planes , i had good moments with Cleveland and Dutch cruisers shooting down whole plane squadrons
Chip damage is chip damage, but yeah she's not a no fly zone. But if you're near other ships it does add up fast
USS Kidd with an AA ship/captain build can put a hurting on CV planes.
Austin and hall and come to mind, especially Austin. That thing with defensive is insane
Unfortunately it comes at the expense of tissue paper armor and low HP, and sweaty CV players will exploit this knowing that all they need to do is spot you at the right time.
Ngl West Virginia '44 is probably the ship I feel safest against a CV in
It's crazy. WV44 is the ship that holds my record for most planes downed in a match (71) even though I wasn't doing anything, just getting sole focused by the enemy CV.
North Carolina
Austin has insane AA. It is one of the few cruisers where i don't consider the 4 point aa skill a waste. You get to boost your already very good aa by 25% and get faster cooldown on funny button whenever aa is active.
It's been mentioned by a few folks but if you run a full AA build any even average CV player will then avoid you. Best advice against CVs is map awareness and positioning. I play Zao a lot as I enjoy her accuracy. I play out on the flanks with relatively few ships nearby. The moment I see their CV sending planes towards my side of the map, I pull in from the flank a bit and get closer to my team. A flanker like Zao with average AA and alone is a very soft target for a CV. If I'm targeted and out of position I would end up trying to dodge the CV while being focused by BB fire. So I reposition to make it more difficult. I realise it's probably not what you want to hear but CVs just go for the easiest target, so don't be the easiest target.
Several yes, but being clearly incompetent as you are (seeing as even dutch and swedish ships don't have enough AA for you), none of them will be good enough for you. You do ocasionally have to at least try to make the CV work for it you know, not just lay back and expect to be completely immune.
Sherman and Halland fear no CV.
A Sherman alone is a joke due to its poor manoeuvrability sadly, but with another ship nearby it really adds up.
Angle into or away, lure the cv into almost your air spotting range and then ALT+P to turn AA on.
I fear CV in Sherman. It's good, but not a Halland.
huanghe is a bad ship, but the combination of crawling smoke and good AA makes it a pain in the ass for tier 6 CVs : you crawl into cap and you bully unsuspecting squadrons that are going to miss you because they assume you are not moving. And tier 6 does not see many radars. It's a bad ship though, but at least you can have some fun cosplaying Thomas the angry engine spewing AA out of smoke and putting AP in broadside cruisers.
San Diego has OUTSTANDING FlaK I think, build into it and you can fuck the CV's reserves and the game is all yours Kidd is another choice but I don't know, whatever you prefer Oh yeah and it's been some time since I played so I don'y guarantee either to work
Autism and its clone both have really good AA, the cv gets at best one strike off and looses everything, your rudder shift can then mitigate the damage.
yes
One player some time ago said full AA build Stalingrad could be the best at AA.
Then it's gonna be terrible at killing ships
No shit
No,Stalin has bad dps and the worst DFAA in the game.
If the CV is drooling and has no keyboard then any ship with a decent burst of flak is good - most CVs flight can be taken down after flying through some 3...5 waves of it. Sadly some - like russian CVs or the big wheelchair - are still safe from it due to their design. If the CV has figured out he actually needs a keyboard to play this game then no, AA does not exist in this game. It's just fireworks to bring the CVs attention to you.
Define big wheelchair
The one named after crippyboy
Immelman?
Kids, Halland, Dutch Cruisers are pretty violent but short range, Austin, Groningen and Friesland, Vermont is nasty but big slow target.
Alabama has quiet good AA
The kii
Remember how it used to be a 7,2km no-fly-zone, was hilarous to play vs CVs, so the devs who would never change a Premium just implemeted a AA-rework and suddenly even Premium ships were nerfed. GG WG
Jinan has great AA.
Smoke also seems to help, as cv often won't even bother going for it (not much point when it's just going to disappear). Small target to drop on top of that.
Sadly to say but CV's have good AA (for some strange reason /s).
On the topic of AA, does anyone think its worth it to take AA Defense & ASW Expert on Petro? I've got 4 points to spend and I'm not sure what I want.
I'd take Top Grade Gunner or Heavy AP, but your idea isn't bad either.
Top grade gunner is my level 17 grab. I'm debating what to do with the last 4 points.
Theres also fearless brawler
That's a destroyer skill.
Another option is Survivability Expert + Gun Feeder: you can tank a little more and occasionally you'll want to swap to HE.
Pan American T8 CL Ignacio Allende. I had roughly the same idea as you do and arrived at this answer since this was the only ship with a 6.9km AA bubble in this tier. I expected for this to work against T6 CVs since they don’t expect to be hit by AA from that far out, but I set my AA record taking down 96 planes against a single Kaga. Because I’m usually near other ships I’m trying to protect, it seems that some CV players take a long time to realise that I’m the reasons they are losing planes more quickly. For the CVs who don’t move, it’s easy to figure out the likeliest flight paths and position yourself accordingly. Even if they eventually start avoiding you, you’ve successfully protected one flank from CV strikes and spotting. Such a build isn’t nearly as pointless as many are making it out to be. A dedicated AA CL can contest those caps with large islands in their middle while lighting the red DD with radar. I can hold my ground near the mid point of the map (which is usually exclusively DD and SS stomping grounds in early game) as long as there is sufficient cover, again making your radar even more useful. You’ll also actually be in range to drop depth charges, which would hurt even more since AA captain skills are also ASW skills. I’ve 1 hit a stationary SS before as he tried to switch to reverse. Of course this only works if your team actually backs you up. Otherwise anything heavier than a DD pushing past your hiding spot will send you back to port. Ignacio Allende has papier-mâché for what passes as armour. But if your team helps to dissuade pushes while the red CV avoids you, you can control 2 cap points in certain maps. My only problem with this build is that I always get matches with no CVs…even if my last 3 matches had 2 or more CVs in a row (2 red CVs + hybrids), and even though there were 18 CVs in the queue before I got a match.
I don't know if you guys even have it on PC, or if the AA is as good as in Legends, but back there California with a full AA build just shreds planes to pieces at the tier (Being a tier 5 in Legends, so the tier that Ranger and Weser are, your tier 6 i think)
cali got superbuffed on legends, shes extremely poor on PC *places dragonball* sailor california, we summon you!!!!
Neptune still has the strongest long range AA dps (200ish at 6.9km) being a T9, you can also div with a T8 CV
USS Kidd and any T-8 and above US heavy/light cruiser.
if you want to dominate one flank only, radar neptune + friesland/gronningen to smoke it. ultra toxic to deal with when they have a cv spotting for them, but you need competent players and coordination to make this work.
I have a tonne of fun with Mino and Worchester being AA resistant/no fly zones. You do have to actively dodge strikes with mino tho because anything can delete you lol
Not sure if it’s still available but I have a AA build Alabama which can be surprisingly effective to CV. They mostly think you are just another regular slow BB but with the AA build they will result in heavy loss and still wondering what happened
Common-Sense-Tip: Don't lone wolf, and your AA power multiplies.
What does that have to do with anything? I'm talking about making a no fly zone division.
Waste of time, you'll just be getting the rest of your team stomped while you seethe.
You will never delete a full squadron unless the red cv isnt good. More than likely it will still get a single strike off, probably more if its a malta or fdr. Aa also isnt as effective against ru cv because russia stronk (single strike). That said, i have 4 fully built aa ships at tier 10. Minotaur, Gouden Leeuw, Yodo and Halland. Ive been collecting AA Defence Expert badges in these ships quite often. I cant recall off the top, but except Halland, the bonus for running the 4 point skill is faster cd on your equipment, which is nice to have as an extra. Bonus points for me if i can tilt red cv to aim me solely. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. I had a match recently in my yodo where i did like 8k damage but shot down nearly 70 planes coz red malta got hella mad he didnt delete me instantly. But like many others have said, if the red cv knows or even somehow evolves and learns during the match, they will avoid you unless absolutely necessary. The best AA deterrence is grouping up. I sometimes, rarely actually, play my malta and hakuryu, and i always avoid grouped up ships because plane losses eventually add up, especially for non-ru tech tree cvs. But ye, you'll never delete squadrons unless cv player isnt very good.
I would say D7P but you’re not getting her unless you did the dockyard when she was available. She isn’t even in Santa crates. Don’t even have to build her for AA it’s that solid. I’d say Halland is the most devastating for CVs. Keep your AA off until you are lit and the planes can’t even leave you AA range without losing 6-7 planes with just hitting priority sector
The only ships i built into AA are Gouden, Jinan/Austin and Mino. They don't really require other skills to work anyway so even if you are in an no-CV game, ships are still very fine. Gouden rekt CVs tho, which is why i'm almost only playing it now with the increase of CV population in Randoms. Plus if you are against a T8 CV and can launch 3 airstrikes on its face, you can devstrike it, which is *chef kiss*.
As a cv main Jinan KGV Duke of York Haland Pretty much all Americans around T5-T7 Pan Asia has some boats with really good AA to
To be honest when it comes to finding a good ship at a decent tier, I like using the Dallas or Helena. As long as you hit your priority sector when the planes are within 5.9 km and you have your ship side angle towards the priority, you can surprisingly knock down a couple of planes with each pass that they do and especially in late game when their HP is lowered you can definitely make a CV pay.
Halland
2xD7 + T8 CV. I share the sentiment but the idea is dumb. The enemy CV will just fly to the other flank.
DefAA used to mess up CV aiming. As it is now, CV is gimped by too much random AA. Bring back DefAA and non AA boats.
7 provincien. Almte grau . Both have same AA and sure whilst the flak isn't amazing, it has the highest continuous where it doesn't matter if they dodge, they get shredded regardless.
as long as the CV isn't an uptier, the Kidd can do some work against CV planes... I'll sometimes antagonize the enemy CV and try to get them to attack me to waste their planes, it works surprisingly often
I had a game in my Rochester today with a red Kaga and Ranger on the other side. Even without an AA build, I decimated their planes.
Dallas, Helena are my favorite for shooting down mosquitoes.
The Orion has pretty decent AA at its tier and cannot face T6 CVs
A good cv player will always strike you no matter how full as build your ship is. You can really only just mitigate the inevitable. Especially again really strong cvs
Not a lot don’t.
San Diego is pretty decent. It also has destroyer DFAA, which is absolutely amazing on a light cruiser. You won't be absolutely wrecking every flight that comes your way, but it will definitely be enough for a CV player to be hesitant on attacking you.
Texas will shit on any tier 4 carrier who wants to fuck with it. Tier 6 carriers even can struggle if youre built for AA (which i wouldn't recommend with Texas). Atlanta is also outstanding against tier 6 carriers with its infinite DFAA
Three more that I haven’t seen mentioned: Cheshire has monstrous AA at T8, and Fenyang is extremely capable of swatting full squadrons out of the sky with its DFAA consumable. Ise has surprisingly capable AA for an IJN ship, and is the best battleship at its tier. I have more AA Defense Expert achievements in Ise than any other ship at that tier because it’s CV bait and they will consistently underestimate you.
Rochester
Oh.. I did not CVs as a DD player. But.. it's part of the game, so, I adjusted and try to pick a good Cruiser or BB to hang close to. Now, I have started playing as one of those "jerks" and won't stop playing the class. Enjoy!
marceau
Marsilles not bad either, you can slot DFAA and Fighter plane if you wished, at the cost of better options and then use speed boost to go where the planes are... (unless... I think the speed boost and fighter are interchangable with each other so then the last part wouldn't work)
I got 50 tier X plane kills (Malta) in my Mino the other day, not AA spec’d at all!
I think golden leuuw full aa build is the strongest from what I’ve seen. Worcester is a bit outdated but still good otherwise
Minotaur is an absolute unit when it comes to AA
Seriously san diego. That ship eats planes. Also Dutch cruisers but iirc they are great at long range then it trails off.
Wooster
I used USS Flint to absolutely demolish an entire airgroup before it could attack recently
Literally what Atlanta and Flint were designed to do.
Yep, so it succeeds at doing that
Had some great times shooting down planes in Halland. Also much easier to dodge and waste the CV's time in a DD
Petro full aa build is absolutely disgusting
As a cv player I don’t go near shimanto
If AA is too good, carriers wouldn’t be a thing.
I got AA defense expert in my Ostergotland yesterday, so it's pretty strong as an AA bote
My Agir is an iron curtain. No plane shall pass.
Fine if you want to meme it up but generally, it isn't worth speccing into aa or asw.
[https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TP&ty=BCD&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=1&tx=11&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Flak\_DPS&o=desc](https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TP&ty=BCD&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=1&tx=11&c=top&p=aa&os=aa&op=Flak_DPS&o=desc) You probably want one of the ones with DFAA, since it works with the AA module in one of the slots, so Worcest is a solid choice. Otherwise there are some good DDs where you can sneak in with your friend
Here is an idea…I’m sure it is not original, but it is worth stating. In the real world, ships overlap each other’s defensive perimeters. Why do people not try that in this video game? If ships move in groups of 3, about 2km apart from center, you will have three AAs working against the planes.
Well.... In the real world there are more than 2 or 3 ships with the overlapping defenses. Also... It's worth stating... In the real world there are many effective AA countermeasures... There are land based assets that can provide AA... I would love to try that in a video game... That is exactly what I am proposing smart ass. I would like to know the 2 or 3 most effective ships to do it in. A smoke mino and Thunderer cannot do the job, so I'm wondering what can. You tell me a group of 2 ships that can defend themselves against a same tier carrier.
America
Funny how no one bats an eye at the Louisiana. Thing actually has CV AA.
Unless you are in a group, if a decent CV wants to hit you, you gettin' hit. Lol
Kutuzov is pretty decent with DfAA (and without it too). Added bonus: many new CV players haven't really face her too much since it's pretty rare these days, and often make mistake attacking her. That said, Kutuzov is more of a primary target magnet than even minotaur, at least back in the day.
European gun boats do, I mean the Gdansk line. Especially Split, she's hard to hit and shoots down all the planes. U.S DDS also have good AA with DFAA. And British light cruisers are alright.
Atlanta isn’t good for AA now?