Panocek

6% against tier 10, 4.5% with IFHE

What "game design team" want for the game and what "accountant team" want from the game not necessarily match. And when higher ups all want to see is "green", its not the first team that gets listened to

Manual Massive AA seems to be worthwhile only on low AA ships, otherwise dps gain on reinforced side can outweigh extra initial damage. Also "reload" penalty is no bueno.

If by DD specced cap you mean Khaba or Groz one, I don't see why Smolensk wouldn't work. AFAIK her engine/rudder are quite vulnerable, so LS might come in handy. SE due to tiny hp pool is not as bad idea, you can't go wrong with SI for extra smokes and heals. BFT to crank up reload, Demo for even more salt mining. AFT for 16km range, so you can take reload mod for even more dakka, or CE and make up range with range mod.

There will be/should be announcement of ship going away, Missouri/Musashi/Kron had their announcement two months in advance.

AFAIK there was mention NTC ships will not be immune for "balance checks", though I haven't seen anything similar for coal ships.

Actually, you could argue if 0.8s faster reload on Colbert is worth trading for torps, ballistics and smoke

If Kebab and Groz gets the pew pew job done without IFHE, I don't see why ship having more than double the dakka can't do the same. And I have enough coal, but lack discount coupon because something something Yoshino something

But... but... muh historical accuracy

I'd say Smolensk - she's Russian Atlanta without Atlanta (gunnery) flaws and can accept safely both Groz and Kebab captains. Quality of salt she can mine is also excellent. Yoshino I must say is... balanced. Thing is, with current state of the game, "balanced" ship doesn't cut it

One word of advice - there is no gold pot at the end of grind rainbow. But there are quite high repair/maintenance costs, so premium account, premium ship(s) or fleet of regular mid tier ship(s) will be needed to maintain economy balance. Alternatively considerable dose of git gud if you're not willing to throw wallet at the screen. Russian destroyers - Grozovoi line is all over the place - Ognevoi is freaky torpedo boat, Udaloi is all out gunboat and Groz is "gun oriented hybrid" so to say. Khabarovsk line is all about making as much noise and being that annoying little jackass that keep pestering everyone, though Khaba herself was so thoroughly nerfed you could argue tier 9 and 8 are maybe not better, but easier and more fun to play. UK destroyers I find to be meh with exception of Lightning, that this is borderline broken with her concealment. Tier 9 and 10 needs separate captain with IFHE skill to make use of HE shells, as otherwise they would fail to damage even destroyers. German and French DDs I find to be in somewhat awkward spot of "large torpedo destroyers" - they have hp and good torpedo armament, but without using their respective gimmicks (smoke+hydro for Germans and main battery reload booster for Croissants) they can be outgunned even by Japanese on higher tiers and their concealment... leaves something to be desired. US destroyers remain as gold standard of cap contesting ships with excellent short to mid range gun dpm mixed with overall very balanced and "no nonsense" stats. And "no nonsense" applies to original US and IJN tech trees in general.

Sold after 3 battles

You need BB grade HE with 1/4 HE pen rule to not-break HE shells on T10 armored CV decks.

Flak removal as a mechanic would serve best for this mythical goal of "lowering skill gap", but then AA would become entirely one dimensional. +2 flak at least gives non linear AA improvement, which used to at least give something to crap AA ships, as 0dps multiplied by 1.1 is still going to be zero.

Which totally would not be a catalyst for bot farming and incentive for account thefts

Well, patch that shifted focus from flak to dps, flak was reduced by about 10-20%, while dps was more than doubled. So its not like flak was rendered obsolete

Colbert may be able to put out more shells in air, but with Smolensk standard issue, 130mm, Russian, Bias mk.3 you can actually expect them to hit thing you're aiming within single battle timeframe.

Or Atago for that matter

S tier, as in "spinebreaker" tier tiddies Its rather clear its just an anime captain

Which was the point of whole Sector rework thingy to make AA more interactive and effective when doing so.

You know you can swap it just fine, without reeeing all over the place?

Well, most captain skills and upgrades besides Concealment can be summed as:

Whatever Wargaming decides to be, which seems to be guns above 85mm. Kiev 85mm dual purpose gun is considered mid caliber, but German 88mm is large.

+2 flak used to be good pick simply because there weren't better picks on cruisers and DDs. Then in 0.8.7 this mod is broken if your ship doesn't have large caliber AA, so you get nothing from it.

Or to throw your already won game away. After all, Random Battles are not about battle of skill, but battle of ineptitude. Team with more of it wins defeat.