I’m currently playing La Surprise, so don’t have much input to give on VLT-1 or La Combattante, but, in my humble opinion:
Overall, French coastal tree is well balanced
Your proposals is made of only pushing the boats down in BRs 🤨
MTB-96 vs VTB-19 - I’m not sure what’s up, but it seems to me that the MTB has a better survivability, and by no means it plays bad at BR 2.0. I wouldn’t move it down. Compared to 🇺🇸PT-71 it actually feels OP, lol. BR 2.0 is quite awkward in every tree.
L9059 - all it needs is moving more of its crew into the armoured section below the deck. Right now it feels like you can pepper it with 7.7 mm and still get a kill. I wouldn’t move it in the BR at all.
Arras - It could be moved to 3.3 and still have a positive K:D ratio.
I didn’t play them, but have-an-opinion (I’m Polish, so I always have opinions about stuff I did not try - it’s in my blood)
VLT-1 & -2 - intuitively speaking it seems like a worse MC-490, moving it to BR 3.3 would make sense. Honestly: having a tilted torpedo launchers seems like a gimmick, when you have to deal with just two 2 km range torpedoes (well, 4 km with torpedo mode). MC-490 might be more fragile, but it has up to 7 km torpedo range, and it has 4 of them, which is a huge deal when trying to counter anything-bluewater that you regularly see at BR 3.3 (even more so at BR 3.7). For me it makes no sense to have VLTs at 3.7, it should go down.
La Combattante - How is it in the same BR as USS Douglas? It’s much slower than most destroyers (even those at BR 4.0), has a potato-level anti-air, and has to sit exposed close to the targets while its missiles crawl through the air (14 seconds to reach target at 3 km (max) range vs 5 seconds for the missiles of Douglas, and Douglas can sit as far as 14 km away from the target). And that’s before we start discussing the kill potential of the SS.11 on anything but a perfect hit into the magazine…
My win rates and K:D
VBT-13 - WR 56% K:D 2,4:1 (16 respawns)
VBT-19 - WR 50%, K:D 1,2:1 (34 respawns)
MBT-96 - WR 58%, K:D 1,8:1 (37 respawns)
L9059 - WR 57%, K:D 1,3:1 (37 respawns)
Arras - WR 69%, K:D 2,9:1 (28 respawns)
La Surprise - WR 50%, K:D 3,6:1 (just 4 matches behind me 👀)
Note: K:D ratio includes both: surface vessels and airplanes killed.
VLT-1 et -2 are just PT59 with less guns… Still wooden, that why 3.0 look great.
When players will understand how to ammo rack Arras, AFD1 (2.7) will kill them easily.
Then there is no AA at all. 3.0 is good in my opignon
L9059 is fine where it’s at, it performs its role quite well and is fun too.
But everything else I agree with, just about all of the torpedo boats above 1.0 could use at least one if not two steps down. Especially the VLTs and La Combattante.
Now that you say it… it’s actually true, to a degree. The lack of torps and somewhat lower max speed is an issue, but then again - the 1919V’s are… bad. Even with the torpedo mode enabled, they are nothing to write home about. And PT-59 has an advantage in having one extra compartment than the VLT.
So whether it’s BR 3.3 or 3.0 - it’s fine with me.
Either way, I think we all agree that the VLTs should go down in the BRs.
When players will understand how to ammo rack Arras, AFD1 (2.7) will kill them easily.
Yea, but there’s so few AF D1s that it’s not a big problem. Also: Arras is much faster, so it can just avoid being anywhere near AFs, while this mobility also allows it to avoid the main source of AFs deaths - torps and bombs.
After playing the whole tree, I agree with most of these proposals. I listed my impression (without La Combattante at that time) here :
VLT’s 1 and 2 must be lower. I had a few brillant matches with them, skeet-shooting somes vessels in a row, but usually when you meet a focused opponent, you are dead in seconds. (I am barely at 1:1 KD on VLT2, and surprisingly better at 1,2:1 with VLT1)
Comparing them to PT-810 / 812, I really don’t understand the BR difference (Mandatory french vehicle tax, I guess).
L9059 is fine where she is imo. I think most of my kills were with the Bofors, but you can have nice surprises with the 2 guns. (K:D 1,5:1 for me)
I liked La Surprise, but the DD spawn is a pain. I avoided spawning it first because once you are targeted by an enemy DD you’re in for a bad time. If you reach the coastal brawling area, you are the bully (watch out for torpedoes).
She’s fine where she is too. I have my best K:D of the tree at 3,5+:1 with her).
La Combattante should be lower too, because SS-11 are really situational (maybe I don’t know how to use them rn)… Many of the boats I intended to use them against (Ashville, Orla, LCS, Drache, MPK’s,…) are hollow hulls so you hit them (while not using your Bofors to aim in the last 100m. of the missile), just for the missile to remove a few % of crew. I don’t think it creates a breach, and using a missile to destroy a gun which will be repaired in a few second is not a good trade.
You are then reduced to a slower, less maneuverable, VLT with a smallest field of fire if you don"t use the missile… RN, I have a 1,1:1 KD
IRL, La Combattante used the SS-12 missile, designed to be an Anti-Ship missile, so it would be a better option to have them while not reducing the BR :
TL-DR In my opinion, with my experience with them, proposed changes :
- VLT’s should be 3.7 → 3.0 / 3.3 (maybe 3.0 for VLT1, 3.3 for VLT2) - La Combattante should get SS-12 and stay at 4.0 (or even climb at 4.3), or go down to 3.3
L9059 should really go to BR 2.3, she’s not better than the HMCS Brantford. The situation in uptier is even worse with her, the crew get shredded like sawdust.
L9059 doesnt even qualify for 2.0 BR… if you compare it to other similar 2.0 boats like MPK-163 or MPK pr.122A its inferior in every single aspect, yet its almost 1.0 BR above… the worst 2.7 in the game Krischan der Grobe outperforms L9059 easily.
L9059 needs to give all of its side to use the 40mm Bofors, alternatively you can shoot 1 20mm with some angling, its it sooo slow… the 88mm 25pdrs are useless for conventional combat due to one of the worst RoF of similar weapons and very low muzzle velocity. they are obviously great at engaging stationary or big targets like a Destroyer.
L9059 its big and slow, easy target for airplanes and Destroyers, and i face Destroyers with it every battle, its easy target for the torpedo of a G-5…
I can do soooo much more with a pr.122A or any other 2.0 ship, actually i can do more with a 1.7 BR german R-130
This cancer along with the fact Gaijin removed the ability to connect a cable to other ships its Gaijin yelling at me and begging me to stop playing this game and never touch it again like i did with World of Tanks after playing it for over 10 years… and thats what i will do with the next completely inexcusable shit Gaijin does to me.
I have been playing with MPK Pr.11451 and if i spawn with it in the map Fiji it get instantly stranded… its not enough that its a catamaran catamarans have the worst agility of all coastal ships in the game, i dont play this game to get frustrated and treated like a RETARD, which is what Gaijin thinks its players are when it does the balancing of its game and im supposed to waste my time begging Gaijin to properly balance its own game?
Its the simplest thing there is!!! I look at a ship card and i can tell, i play against it and i can tell, i play with it and it becomes obvious… so why is this shit still going on, on a 12 year old game!?
Look fine to me?
(Note that I use VLT-2 with BB deck too since it was the only one available after the pack drop. Note that I haven’t played them since their BR get revised)
If you compare the French Coastal tree to other nations Costal trees I believe this makes a lot of sense. I normally play British costal and I just finished unlocking the French tree but if you compare BR(insert number here) with ones at the same BR in other trees I think these changes are reasonable.
