Panocek

And then Smolensk have ASROCs firing sideways on top of launching usual depth charges to the sides new layer of gimmicks for WG to tinker on, ASW patterns

And in other news, pepperoni class BB get

WG added all kinds of ASW stuff to ships they deemed they will need them with this patch, so you might want to take another look at yer boats. Nevsky got ASW mortars, or rather ASROCs the Halland style for example, while before patch she had empty deck in front of her turrets. What amuses me in particular, is how Brit DDs got the best (I presume) ASW loadout, with large number of hard hitting depth charges on top of being pinnacle of a destroyer in this game.

OP asked for "operational" ASW mortars, not to make them actually effective And given there is no indication those aren't your usual depth charges, so I guess new player in those ships is up for a surprise, going over sub, expecting charges to roll off, only to find those launched few kilometers forward

Have you actually tested them? Because mine Halland (and Al. Nevsky as well, as she got those too) make use of their front firing ASW mortars just fine

Or stockpile of doubloons/gold from times when WG ways weren't as peculiar as they are now.

Secondary builds were situational at best on select few battleships to begin with. With Captain REEEwork few months ago, skill affecting secondary accuracy was axed in effectiveness, recent change somewhat reverted that, but its still net nerf compared to what it used to give. "meta" BB build always was survivability and concealment - reduced fire/flood duration, one ignition point less on superstructure as well increased odds of disengaging are simply too effective on a BB, or at least the most consistent to make use of. That said, the same secondary skill no longer have reduced effectiveness on tier 6 and below, which might make secondary BBs for Operations actually viable, or at least interesting proposition.

At the same time, with CV population going down, WG already admitted they will be willing to buff or otherwise change class to bring popularity back up. That said, I don't think much will happen to CVs besides 5-10% tweak here and there, not when subs are Wargaming newest toys now.

Tbh you'd need to have average potats to "overperform" in them and by large margin for WG to take action, and so far, after two, almost three years, this doesn't seem to be the case.

While WG tries to do their best to mimic gacha games and their major whale spenders as major source of revenue, amount of people that spend 5-10 for monthly premium account and occasional ship is surprisingly high for WG titles. And then WG surveyed their (wows) playerbase well and they know average player have "surprisingly big spending power", thus they can go full speshul with 100€+ bundles and they sell anyway

Its all with Wargaming blessing. Its not cheating, its not 3rd party software, its all officially provided tools and mechanics. Thats the beauty of it

During that cutscene mine was ragdolled three times completely off the screen, for next npc interaction I've switched to Zhongli with full hp build... sadly it was next to cliff, and as geo archon found out, any rock can break if you apply enough velocity to it

You mean you will be farmed by the lightings, especially during dialogues with npcs Also truth regarding artifact farming:

No clue about Friesland, but on Halland, prepare to moisten contents of your pants To raise the bar, Nevsky also got ASW mortars, filthy capitalists can't have all the fun for themselves Okhotnik does have rails for depth charges or whatever else crew decide to push overboard, also there are few items that looks like carts for ferrying depth charges to the back. Only thing missing are ready racks for those, to drop them at the moment's notice

The real question should be, where is that leaked l2d "schoolgirl" Taiho skin Out of two cryo lolis, sadly neither are particularly good cryo applicators so Amber could go for melt headshots We don't know yet. But Baal weapon is really tempting. Not so much for being BiS on her, as its mediocre weapon for anyone else, but for looks. Though I suppose craftable Inazuma pointy stick could do, especially as I do have 4pc Thundering Fury with 3x EM mainstats laying around, should I go full meme overload with her and Yoimiya. Also electric jelly get, so geo one isn't as lonely anymore... I think?

At the same time, constellations are rarely that useful, especially on initial batch of characters. If anything, 4* characters tend to gain more from them and then those are, usually, easier to obtain. Now get Klee and assemble your own loli squad. Explosive loli, tsundere loli, dead loli and sleepy loli

Condolences on pulling Qiqi as your first 5 star And reddit in general developed a habit of creating sections for characters... Including ones merely mentioned by name or by datamined character model. And regarding Yoimiya, when outfitted with fat, Fatui legionnaire tier fat artifacts she seems to be working nicely, but crowds of mobs are her major weakness, due to no AoE and no stagger to slow down closing enemies I'm still sitting on 34k primos, which is enough for her. But repeat of Yoink banner will effectively kill my yearly savings on the account

Well... 81th was Qiqi, 171th was Yoimiya. So as hard pity as it can get

Kutuzov wasn't really "blowing anyone out of the water", as back in the day she was seen as inferior to Mogami 155 except smoke gimmick. Then WG decided to remove BFT/AFT bonuses from CL calibers and compensated Kutuzov in range and reload for loss of these, thats why she have 19km range, which kinda highlighted her "OPness". At the same time, when everyone were pointing fingers at Kutuzov, Chapayev was very capable of enjoying stealth firing, as anyone past 14.5km could be fired upon without being seen. Khaba is overnerfed, to the point Tashkent tier lower is just better gunboat, at least have range and can hope to dodge shells. Also entire concept of open water high speed gunboat is obsolete, as not only CV will happily pounce on you, permanently spotted DD, but also power creep in shell velocities makes such gameplay increasingly difficult. And then, last time WG released a line without blatant "OP" gimmicks, everyone forgot about those on day one, writing these ships as bland, not bringing anything to the table. UK heavy cruisers. Heck, first lesson in "box of gimmicks" for WG was release of Prinz Eugen - literal copy paste of a Hipper, haven't sold well, gained some footing after receiving heal while Hipper got some gun reload bonuses to make ships stand out a bit more. Frenchster destroyers never were viable as DD proper as well. And amusingly, all "large destroyers" in game have "improved AP" as their gimmick, as their guns/turrets were unable to keep up with US 127 or UK 113 guns in terms of rate of fire. Back in the day when there were three DD lines, Russians fulfilled role of long range firestarters as well broadside abusers with AP, as 130mm AP was significantly better in pen than IJN or US 127mm guns. Then Frech long 139mm with CL grade pen arrived. Then Ger 15cm DD line with 203mm penetration arrived BBs in general could see raise to their citadels, as outside lucky shots or stuffing them with torps, you can't outright delete them like they can do cruisers. But then, when Iowa and Montana had such feature, you could hear constant skree coming from over the pond about Freedom battleships actually taking damage. And WG in their recent Q&A said they don't intend to balance ships separately for "competitive", thus Hinden being excellent random farmer but useless in "comp" is okay in their book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

WG pushing fantasy for Russian fleet can be seen as... questionable, but in grand scheme of things, WoWs is a game. If "fantasy ships with fantasy guns", end up as balanced and fun line to play with, especially as WG art department can make convincingly looking napkin designs, I see no long term harm with those. And if you would actually spend any meaningful time with "OP Ruski ships", you might realize how overspecialized, how narrow is their margin of effective operation. Cruisers from tier 5 onwards completely shed any semblance of agility, being rather long vessels that are fast in straight line... and thats it. "High velocity" guns have indeed better ballistics than same/similar caliber guns, but at the same time, they are significantly restrictive when it comes to island cover. 180mm armed ships are even more extreme in that regard. AP does have nice pen, but so what when angling still works and HE damage output is lacking while having no penetration advantage over hightier 152mm guns. 220mm guns crank that up to eleven even more - Petro or Moskva can perforate BB citadels in "optimal conditions", but outside of those their gunnery leaves something to be desired. Destroyers from tier 7 onwards completely shed any pretense of being destroyers, which is not a good thing, as ship that can't carry out its class tasks in battle is a handicap to the team. Sidekick branch is all over the place too - Ognevoi is "torpedoboat" not because of good torps, but she's so hilariously outgunned by everyone, Kageros included. Udaloi is Tashkent sidegrade, Grozovoi is hybrid but of bad kind - neither good gunboat nor torpedoboat. Any other BB with citadel sticking out goes back to port instead "oof my 30k hp, let me pop heal so I get half of it back". USN lowered citadels doesn't make them invulnerable to citadel hits either. If anything, only line of BBs with consistently exposed citadels are... Russians. Just like Germans, armored all around to shrug off AP shells and ignore HE spam to certain degree, but once BB grade shells are going towards broadside ruski battleboat, all bets are off and you win ticket to gulag for not making Stalin proud. Meanwhile scoring citadel hit on Ger BB is either freak shot or something that can happen at longer ranges, when shells stop ricocheting from turtleback. Which also works for hightier German cruisers, dispatching yoloing Hipper, Roon or Hindenburg before it stuffs you with torpedoes is nigh impossible. But hey, that goes against your "russian inferiority complex by screwing over german and japanese ships in general" Well, there are tier 7+ UK battleships too, and they completely lack armor plating to stop overmatching AP shells or HE spam, relying on their magic heals to carry on. If memory serves me right, Ger BBs had their main gun dispersion brought close, if not equalized to USN BB one. And unlike USN, you still have faster turning turrets as well access to Hydro. And if you think USN BB Anti Air is "serviceable"... well, no. It is not. Or rather, no ship on its own is allowed to deny CV dealing damage Or I'm just enjoying the discussion

And yet, its you who brought "russian fantasy" after receiving answer to your question why IJN ships can be citadeled through the funnel. "Russian fantasy" that have, for once, nothing to do with game mechanic of shell ricochets. And if you were to remove internal ricochets to solve "citadels through the funnel" - congrats, you've just killed German BBs that rely on ricochet angle on their turtleback to go unpunished for sailing broadside at short to medium ranges. I'm just of the opinion, BS not called out is BS approved, whether its from WG, playerbase, friends, family or random people, it matters not

Except Groningen will get "can be nerfed" tag. Which intrinsically makes her inferior clone of a Friesland, whom still may be nerfed, but that requires WG putting game on its head... again.

Or load AP, if you're using 420mm guns or smaller and aim for usual citadel. As long as its not point blank, where citadel overpen can occur, it will go poof just fine. Which, breaking news, can happen to any not excessively obese cruiser. So that usually writes off Alaskas and the such, but Minotaur, Zao, are plausible for overpen at yolo ranges on perfect broadsides. And its not only BBs that can overpen citadels, even high velocity DD guns can. And Smol was nerfed four times with Captain REEEwork in one go, in usual WG fashion - it is technically nerfed, but does nothing to underlying cause of being broken TL;DR is, you don't like anything that can threaten your precious BBs, if it happens to be Russian then even better, so you can pull "Russian Bias" narrative.

And yet, barging in onto nearest cap, shooty shooty and move onto next cap and targets of opportunity is enough to get so called "unicum" stats in those