Current state of CV’s in the game

Its up for serious debate, at the moment. The official forum is full of threads of people complaining either that CV's are brokens stupid OP, and others that are complaining that CV's can't do a thing.

The truth is somewhere in the middle, I find, although my experience with post rework CV's is admittedly limited. They can be extremely powerful in the right situations when piloted by an experienced player, but it requires a certain amount of skill to unlock the true potential of.

CV's alpha strike was universally nerfed in the rework. They can no longer multi-cross drop dev strike ships so aside from a DD, and most of the time even then, you won't be wiped out by a CV in one strike unless you are very low on health or exceptionally unlucky and get detonated (which is exceedingly rare from what I've seen, borderline impossible)

What makes a CV so powerful is its ability to project vision to any location on the map extremely quickly using planes. Ninja DD's can be essentially perma-spotted, negating any advantage they have, a select few other ships like Roma and Atago as well. Any ship relying on stealth can be easily thwarted, if the CV pilot has a mind to, with the only limiting factor being smoke on ships that have it.

AA has been significantly nerfed during the course of the post rework era, and it's generally regarded as a shadow of its former self with a few exceptions. At this point it's practically impossible to shoot down enough planes to prevent a CV's first attack, barring the captain flying directly into a flak cloud on his approach.Flak can be easily avoided by simple means, negating the lions share of the damage that AA does now.

For a DD, who generally has poor AA (Pan-Euro DD's being the exception) preventing a CV's attentions is all but impossible. Shooting your AA guns reveals your ship, so many players turn AA off to avoid detection in a DD, but even with it on the DPS is so low in most cases that knocking down more than a handful of planes in a match is rare. You will not be able to shoot down a full squadron before you are are sunk. Rocket planes, which were added in the rework, are extremely difficult to dodge effectively in a DD although the damage can be significantly diminished with hard maneuvering.

CV's aren't as apocalyptic as they once were, wiping out full health top tier BB's in a single drop, but they are definitely still powerful. A major factor in how well a CV will do in game is the tier of the CV vs its targets. A tier 6 CV in a tier 8 game is going to have a very difficult time doing meaningful damage, likewise if your team groups up to consolidate their AA power.

I apologise for the long winded response, but there is no simple answer for this question. CV's are a very polarising class in Warships.

A potato in a CV is a liability to their team, as they will get squads obliterated, not provide vision, or put their hull where it can get spotted and smashed.

A decent player can ruin the game for whomever on the enemy team they want to. The fact you essentially never run out of planes if you play halfway smart, can perma-spot almost any DD, and strike anyone at will over and over and over and over -- all with virtually no counterplay. I've seen CVs just get strike after strike on alleged AA cruisers and DDs because AA is a joke now unless the CV is bottom tier and/or clinically dumb.

In lower tiers they are 100% cancer. So many boats at tiers 3-5 have virtually or literally no AA and shit mobility. Any CV player not a moron can just crap on whomever they want at will. It's annoying as fuck and why lower tiers are a ghost town where even randoms have bots due to low player population.

Is it as bad as arty in tanks, with the ability to insta-nuke an opponent? No.

Is it a shit mechanic that frustrates everyone but CV players? Absofuckinglutely.

CVs are garbage to play against.  They're broken powerful when top tier unless you are a complete idiot.  Even bottom tier they're strong if you play smart.  They're too strong against DDs especially.  Rockets are mostly a nuisance against BBs, especially well played BBs.  AP bombs can wreck shit, though.  Torps are in between.  They don't hit hard individually.

The CV rework on the live server and using the player base as guinea pigs to figure it all out pushed me out of the game. Right after I'd spent a bunch of money buying ships and premium time. I've played less than 20 games in the past 20 months. Damn shame.

Is this what this is referring too?

forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/224752-st-changes-to-aa-and-detectability-ranges-by-air/?page=2

I’m sure it will change again soon enough

I can testify to the nerfs. They murdered the bomber accuracy to the point that I was missing CAs completely regardless of how low I dove. Hell, I was missing BBs in their entirety. The torp nerf isn’t as bad and can actually work for you, but DDs are now largely immune to bombs other than Brits. The rocket dispersion also took a hit but not as noticeable.

They have nerfed the AP bombers so much that the Graf Zeppelin is now basically a secondary only CA with a bunch of scout planes.

They need to remove rockets altoghether. Literaly got focused by a cv last game and before I got close to the cap I had 1/4 health. Then a roon finished me off.

Meanwhile the dumbshit cv captain on my team didn't bother with giving me or anybody else fighters. Hell, since I started playing again I haven't haf a single cv captain give me any fighter coverage.

I'm about done with multiplayer though once I finish my DD grinds. Then I'm buying Premium camos for those ships and sticking to Coop.

Seriously was rocket accuracy on planes this good in ww2? I pretty sure it was aim and pray but what do I know.

I try my best to spot but everyone else wants me to run to the cap and fight a dd or two by myself with no support and then they talk shit when I die. It's getting old fast, even had a guy msg me in my port the other day bashing me about my 43% win rate saying how I threw the battle. If I would have done what he told me I would have go to the cap and got ambushed by two dds that were working toghther. I feel like mm always puts me on the team that's bound to lose.