[2021] The End Times Have Begun Petro Is Now Trash

The reason why Petro is regarded as so strong is because:

50mm deck and upper hull - Nothing overmatches it and most cruiser HE shatters. This makes it extremely resistant to most shells.


Sits very low in the water - Citadel is hard to hit even broadside because it's "The First Submarine".


Advanced Penetration Angles on AP - The guns have Stalingrad pen angles and extremely high velocity.


Thin top-down profile makes it extra-resistant to most CV's.

All this makes the Petro just too damn useful to NOT take in competitive modes where things get hyper-optimized.
I realize that a half-second reload nerf seems low. You have to understand that things like the Petro have to be balanced delicately and carefully because the top players / clans in the game will determine whether or not something is broken as they optimize. No joke, there will come a reload time when the top clans go, "yeah it has the armor, but the DPM isn't worth it anymore". That line has to be approached gingerly rather than leap-frogged.

Yeah - Petro is hardly broken in randoms. It's mediocre at best because of the DPM and lackluster accuracy at range.
It's the armor and the pen angles that allow the top competitives to exploit it. In the game of out-trading your opponent, Petro just resists too much damage. Without completely revamping the armor scheme (making it a new ship basically), you have to adjust the other details.

And Golden Lion has the 2nd. I'd hardly call it overpowered

And Salem has the absolute worst WR.
I'd never call the Salem underpowered. I'd say that most people probably don't realize that the Salem is all about that super-heal and the super-heal doesn't work if you take citadels or torpedoes. Salems are in fact seen in KOTS and in CB seasons where there are no carriers because of the specific things it does extremely well.
Petro is certainly good in randoms - no question. I would not call it "broken" in randoms. I would also not call Stalingrad "broken" in randoms even though it has the #1 WR.
Again, I'm not arguing here that the Petro isn't too good - I'm arguing that there is a fine line when it comes to balancing and that baby steps are often more appropriate than leaps.
FOR EXAMPLE: I wanted more than a 5% nerf to FDR plane HP I wanted a nerf to the TB's ability to turn 90 degrees and not lose accuracy.

This is not on-topic...
Testing Submarines for 7v7 was done in Ranked.
Testing for Randoms was to test for 12v12 and the primary game mode.
Don't conflate balancing adjustments with trying to prepare and entire new class of ships.

That's not what I said...
I'm saying that balancing a ship is an act of weighing what the best players in the game CAN do with it vs. what the average player WILL do with it.
Suggesting that this is not reality would be grossly irresponsible...

I know what you mean - I believe it feels this way because of the flatter ballistics on most Soviet Shells.
The American ones are "floatier" so they come in a different angle and are harder to pin-point when the distance gets longer.

I confess: this was all done to spite YOU

Nah, no warning - I'm just playing with you :)

@DolphinPrincess

Does this mean you are of the opinion that Petro does not deserve to be banned from KOTS?

What would you do to balance it, if given the opportunity?

Alright, so - speaking balance wise since you asked how much trouble it would be to raise the freeboard 25% (a fair question):
How much would the freeboard have to be raised for the ship to be absolutely worthless?
The Petro's "thing" is it's tankiness. It doesn't have good DPM. It doesn't have reliable accuracy. It doesn't have good HE pen. It has a 15 second radar.
So how much freeboard does it have to have before it's balanced? How much more freeboard until it's so borked that it's not tanky anymore?
These are serious questions. High-comp players don't bring Petro for the dpm... they bring it for that tankiness.

I completely agree with your assessment, Edgecase. Raising the freeboard and opening the citadel up would have little effect on bow-in tankiness, you're right.
All it would do is punish it harder for exposing it's side. That would reduce overall tankiness, but not affect it's ability to sit bow-in and deflect damage off the 50mm plates.
So my question again is, how do we gauge how much it could conceivably be raised before it's effectively a worthless ship?

I agree :)
Trying to determine how a 10% raise to the freeboard of the Petro would affect it across thousands of competitive games is not the same as... well.... DOING it across thousands of games.
This is why the nerfs / buffs are generally small. Add a little here and there and see how the numbers are affected across thousands of games.
So you're correct - there is a "sweet spot" for the Petro. Right now DPM vs tankiness are being weighted against each other directly. It could always be the case that Petro may have the freeboard raised a bit to allow broadsides to punish her more - but we have to be careful that she doesn't just become a slightly different Moskva... because the Moskva and Stali have extremely vulnerable broadsides and that sets them apart from Petro, but I'd argue they have more reliable guns and better HE.