[2021] Official Status Update for USS Black!

Hello, Captains,

We'd like to clarify the situation with USS Black. Recently we issued a couple of contradicting replies regarding the future of this ship, and it created the impression that she would not be sold for coal as initially planned. This happened due to a simple human error, and we apologize for misinforming you. Here is our current plan on USS Black:

We're going to incrementally address her balance, as she is currently too strong, even considering the average skill of her owners;


When it's done we're going to make her available for purchase for coal;

Her balancing process will definitely take time, as we always try to apply incremental changes to the released ships. However, our intention is to make her available, and you will be able to follow the further updates on this process in Development Blog.

Thank you for your attention and patience!

Thank you to everyone whose put in their thoughts on this. In reading over it all, a few points are brought up repeatedly.

The USS Black was hard to obtain and has few battles played. She's likely only strong because of the players that went through the process of attaining her.


Concern over nerfing Premium/Steel ships.


Re-releasing her for Steel and leaving her as she was.

Black was offered as a Steel ship, but wasn't seeing enough interest from the playerbase with that hard-to-obtain currency. Ships are made to be played and sailed~

When the decision was made to move some of the lesser valued Steel ships to Coal, each ship was reviewed. Coal is a much more readily available resource, so more players will be expected to attain the ships. Black was found to be overperforming even in the hands of average skilled players and needs to be adjusted. Choices made for the health of the game are always the most important.

While it can be frustrating to hear about nerfs which will be happening in the future, it's important to keep ships available and our game in a good state. Other Steel ships like Stalingrad and FDR have received balance changes because game health is paramount.

As to replacing her as a Steel ship, she would simply be returning to a situation where she was undervalued. As well, balance changes are still important and would still need to be undertaken, which would simply compound the previous situation.

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A few things to note!

As of now, there have been no changes announced. For those that have her, she's the same as she's been for years... go out and enjoy her.

When changes are announced, they should be in small adjustments just like we've done when balancing other ships. These adjustments will allow her to seat more comfortably in the Tier and amongst her peers, which makes the game healthier for everyone.

The statement itself was fairly direct. The USS Black will go through some balance adjustments, then she will be release for Coal when the sweet-spot is found.

There haven't been any changes announced yet, so the process can be expected to take some time.

You've already identified the outliers of the ship.

This is the main thing which jumps out. I've heard some people make a case for the Torpedos in the sense that they're very hard to detect, but the Smoke/Radar combo is what's powerful.

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Black was used quite a bit in Tier 9 Clan Battles because it's a DD that allows you to smoke a flank with long duration US Smoke while still retaining the 7.5km Threat of frontline radar.

The more recent explosion of Smalland/Ragnar play has given everyone ample idea as to what Radar threat can mean when it comes from a Destroyer. Especially a Destroyer that has Cruisers ready to respond. Because of this, the Black's potential to solve two problems with one ship really does mean a lot.

Why wasn't it pounced on sooner? Probably because it was Tier 9 and most competitive matches were Tier 10. Just because it didn't show how much of outlier it was to the general playerbase doesn't mean it isn't still an outlier.

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There are many folks in this thread that argue for game balance being more important than having an outlier ship. I'll leave that discussion between the folks that are having it, but please understand we want to re-release the ship in a form which plays well in a balanced way.

It was literally stated that she is too strong in the statement at the beginning of this Thread. I have Bolded, Italicized, and Underlined the part which states that directly.