Hirohito

Thanks for the post, that's an awesome rundown. It might be that the server batch window is at 280ms as you say, it wouldn't surprise me as that ballpark is quite common for many games. And as you say, it might mean that AR does not "work" unless you hit another 280ms treshold of where the batches get executed. This is why I personally opted out of AR for Småland (even though I might dabble with it again later), because whether or not it works is more up to the exact value you land on and whether or not that pushes you into an earlier batch. For me, BFT was a static gain of about 9-22% dpm increase, so I preferred to opt into that as it is a high guaranteed payoff regardless of health.

It should be possible to test something similar with Halland and Friesland. They both have very rapid firing guns (although not as fast as Småland's, but close enough), and therefore should be ideal candidates for testing different reload enhancing skills/modules to reach an optimal threshold. Generally speaking, the slower the guns, the less of an issue this seems to become (IJN torp boats for instance can forget about BFT giving a huge increase).

Well to be fair, I don't think it's not strictly a visual rounding issue, even though you could for simplicity's sake refer to it as a "rounding issue" (technically it isn't, but in layman's terms, feel free to think of it in that way). I'm nearly positive on this since when testing, the displayed reload value seemed to remain the same between Småland specced both with and without BFT (1,4s or whatever it displayed). Knowing that servers operate on the principle of batch execution however, this is imo the most likely candidate. So the issue then becomes knowing how large the batch windows are on WoWs servers, and aim to try to get a volley reload speed as close as possible (but still below) the batch window to make it qualify as early as possible. Say if the batches operate on 250ms (all actions are executed on the server every 250ms), you would then need to try to get your reload just barely below a time that is divisible by 250ms. This would cause the guns to fire close to "as soon as they are allowed to", giving the maximum possible benefit from the skill(s) that tipped you over in that reload speed. In the testing that was done on Småland, the reload module + BFT (5%) was enough to produce this large increase, while there was no further increase from having reload module + Fearless Brawler (10%), thus the points in FB were essentially "wasted" over choosing BFT. It should give you an extra 5% reload (BFT 5% vs FB 10%), but it doesn't - BFT suffices to reach what appears to be a certain reload threshold. On other ships, that particular combination (module + BFT) does not produce the same results, again, most likely because it doesn't reach the threshold since the base reload on other ships are different. For Småland this is fortunate, since speccing BFT over FB means we actually save 1 captain point with this knowledge (3 vs 4 points) Which also means, for other ships to benefit from these "thresholds", we need to test each individual ship with different reload enhancing modules/skills to find the ideal or cheapest combination to gain as high ROF as possible. That, or we need to know what the server batch execution rate is, since with that information it should theoretically be possible to create a simple generic formula that can be applied for all ships (since that identifies the particular reload thresholds). The same batching phenomenon has also been present in other games. I don't know if any of you play WoW (world of warcraft), but the servers there also operate on batches, and different versions have different batch windows. In earlier versions of the game, this batch window was rather large (200 or 400ms, cant recall atm) so that it allowed for some clever abuse of mechanics in a similar fashion to pump out additional damage during the same narrow batch window.

I am F2P too, but that didn't stop me from getting her. I just don't blow FXP on random stuff, and went all in on flags/camoes for stuff like CBs (where a win nets you 2500 base XP). Got me some 20-25k FXP each won game, which was more than enough to get the difference in a rather short time frame.

So there seems to be a bit of confusion about the skills involved (BFT and others), where people here think it works the same across all DDs. Having tested this extensively some months ago (also feel free to check out my posts on page 1), I can tell you that the skills are not the issue here. The cause for the varying benefits of reload skills/modules (and the actual % dpm increase) is most likely a technical one, rooted in how the WoWs servers handle information. I haven't pinpointed the exact reason for this behaviour on firing mode and BFT, but the most likely candidate (I'm about 90% sure of this) is that the WoWs server cannot handle fractions of reload increase beyond a certain point. Most servers work on the system of "batching", where (in order to reduce strain on the computing power), execute all actions in a game in certain "batches" that come at set intervals, rather than continually updating inputs and outputs live. If a server for example operates on batches that are 0,1s (100ms), it means that any input you do (like ordering your guns to fire) gets "saved" by the server and executed (along with every other command in the game) once the next 100ms batch window opens up. BFT, since its already an extremely small increase (Småland fires every 1,5s or less with the module), likely causes that tiny fraction of a second increase to shift the Småland's guns into an earlier batch, where it executes much earlier than the advertised 5% increase would lead you to expect. Say for instance that you fire your guns every 1,412 seconds. Since the server cant handle the last two digits, it makes your guns go off at 1,5s. But a minor increase like BFT then pushes the reload into some other fraction like 1,395, which then qualifies for 1,4s batch, making them fire 100ms earlier. For most guns this is not noticeable, but for guns like Småland it definitely is if you can repeatedly qualify her guns for an earlier batch through a specific combination of skills (module + BFT in my case). When I tested this (I tested multiple times, 30 second and 60 second engagements), I got 4(!) additional volleys off over a 30 second engagement with BFT skilled, compared to no BFT. Needless to say, 4 extra volleys during a 30 second engagement is absolutely massive in a DD vs DD fight, which worked out to be a 22% increase in DPM. Another tester tried BFT on a Fletcher, and found 0% increase from the skill. This makes me suspect that a batching system is in fact in place, since if the 5% does not push you over a certain threshold, it shouldn't qualify for an earlier batch and thus have no effect. I have myself also tested this on a Hatsuharu and Daring, and the benefit is between 0% to 4%, in stark contrast to Smålands gain of 9% to 22% increase in DPM. This has the implication that while skills like BFT were assumed to behave correctly (5% is 5%), this actually needs testing on the individual ship in order to work out how the guns actually behave. In Småland's case, you get a ridiculously high benefit. And if my hypothesis is correct, it is also unlikely to get patched anytime soon, since that would have WG redesign the whole way their servers handle data transmissions between servers and clients to begin with.

Let me be frank here, but your stats show that you are one of those "trash team" players. At 47%, you should be playing in Bronze and be happy for the rewards you are getting there, you should not be in Silver and especially not be complaining when you fail to rank out. Last night my teams were full of 47% players like yourself, and my ranked WR (usually at 70%) went complete dogsh*t as the enemy teams consistently had a few green (about 52%) players sprinkled in, while I was the only one dragging up my teams who were filled with 47% players (I got no green players on my teams yesterday at all). I can't always carry the game for a win when there are too many of you, since players at 47% do really dumb plays for no gain and overall hurt their teams. Poor positioning, poor decision making, poor output - all of these things drag down the chance of winning for the team, before I can start carrying your a**. Stick to Bronze, the league was created for players like yourself and there's no shame playing there. But don't complain about "bad teams preventing you from ranking out in Silver", when you yourself are one of those players.

That's the dumbest thing you can do, and it just hurts yourself and your team with that attitude. Had a game today against two unicums (one from a known Hurricane clan) and overall pretty good players on the red team, and we were down 5 to 7 early with only 1 vs their 2 caps. We gave it our best, and eventually won.

Eh, I can't complain. Got me a steady (almost) 70% WR for two seasons straight now, and having a blast.

I honestly don't see the problem here. You are playing bronze league, and the players are on or below the median for WR, as should be expected from bronze. Looks to me like the system is working just fine here, so I really don't see the point of lambasting the other players in this case. If anything, you are the odd one out that plays way above the expected league level. Which is fine, but don't complain about the others then.

Deleted.

They perform good in these boats mostly because the players are way less skilled in the tier spread that they face, not because the ship is that broken OP to begin with. I just tend to club most of these down with guns when I grind a new DD line (RN was fun to say the least), and if one is near when I play BB, WASD or other physical torp shields tend to save the day. Not saying it's not a strong torp boat, but it's certainly not this invincible powerhouse in the hands of the right players, as long as you're competent yourself. Torp boats have some strong limitations that individual skill alone won't always overcome.

Thanks, always been curious about the actual number! :-)

I think part of the problems is that a lot of players on the forums are very far ahead of the average players skill wise, even those non-forum players with "good" stats. This leads to increased expectiations. I suspect that the "average WR" is being misunderstood by forumites though, in that when we talk about "the average player" we are in reality talking about the median player, yet we stick to measure the median player according to "average winrate", which is about 50%. The reason I'm mentioning this is that MM monitors clearly show a consistent overabundance of sub-50% players, and the "worst offenders" being as low as in the 36-39% bracket (somewhat rare, especially 36% which is very rare). Yet on the upper end of the scale, we find several players at 60%+ (with some very rare exceptions above 70% WR). This leads me to believe that the median player is somewhere around the 46-47% mark (if anyone has actual median numbers, please post them), which again means that the 52% players we see in ranked are actually very significantly ahead of the curve. So in a sense, it could actually be that those 52% players in Gold really do belong there, and that the system is fundamentally working as intended. Compared to many forumites however, those 52% team members have a very low WR, so we get a clear case of high expectiations and high letdowns, as there is a massive difference between a 52% and a 58%+ forumite. We thus get a clear case of high expectations for many high-WR players As for suiciding DDs, I thought I'd mix it up recently with a game in my Anchorage (I hardly ever play cruisers, as I don't like to rely on having good DDs spotting and screening). The one game I decided to run my Anchorage, was the same game where I got one of those suciding idiot DDs on my team. The most infuriating thing was how he suicided - he just gunned me, eventually dying from the reflected damage after about 30-40 seconds, and then leaving to repeat it in another DD in the next game. Infuriating attitude to say the least!

The quality of the player base is what it is, but other players are unfortunately not a factor that we as individual players can influence. That being said, I had a look through your ranked stats and maybe you could try changing your approach a bit? It seems you are in somewhat of a slump recently regarding your own performance as well, but it's unclear why. I do see however that you "main" the Småland for ranked, as your by far most played ship (I can't fault you for that, I use it as my main ship as well!). Your average damage/kills are rather low, which could indicate that you aren't aggressive enough towards the enemy DDs. On the other hand, your survivability rate is below what it should be, so maybe you are too aggressive and on average get sunked before you can influence the game? I have a slight suspicion on the latter, but I can't really tell, it could also be an inconsistency in that you are inconsistent in your performance in her across games, sometimes being too aggressive and sometimes too passive, but overall dying more than you should. What I do see though is that your torp hit rate especially can be improved, so that's a place I'd look to practice a bit more. For å Småland I'd usually expect to see about a 10%+ hit rate for a good player like yourself, so that's definitely an area to work on, as well as partially the gun hit rate (though far less improvement needed compared to torps). Currently though it seems that while your WR overall for Småland is in the good area, the actual performance (damage, kills and survivability rates) need to be upped if you want to push your influence (and thus WR) higher to offset for the bad average players. Personally I've had good success with the CE+RPF spec, as that is the most consistent way for me to play aggressive around the caps and delete DDs early. I say consistent, because while I do get the frequent games where my teammates are dying quickly, I usually "counterbalance" that by managing to take out enemy DDs very early as well, so the net loss in ships on our side tends to be lower (and the net gain very high if we don't lose friendly ships).

Seeing this, it just had to be a BB main whining. And lo and behold, the profile page shows 66% games played in BBs.

I agree for BBs in particular. BBs are largely balanced around worse dispersion to counteract their absolutely superior stats in almost every department bar maneuverability and detection. There is a reason why so many play BBs in this game (apart from the class fantasy), and why WG has to repeatedly hard cap the number of allowed BBs in CBs to maintain any sort of semblance of balanced setups. What so many of these BB mains whining over their accuracy and "OP cruiser HE spam" seem to miss, is that there wouldn't be any point playing (cruisers especially) anymore if BBs just were straight up better ships. Buff BB play in any way other than messing with dispersion, otherwise the class becomes proportionally more broken as one of their key balancing factors gets mitigated.

Slightly off topic, but that chart is really interesting. So the new German TX DD, Elbing, has the fourth worst AP DPM, while strong AP was supposed to be its main strength? Considering it was supposed to hunt CLs (lol), even if you get half of those AP rounds to consistently cit every time you fire (lol), it still barely pushes ahead of the AP DPM of Haru/Marceau, assuming those boats never cit? I can't fathom for the life of me what WG is thinking with that line.

Elbing looks like a bottom of the barrel boat as well, months before it has even arrived.

More paper ships, or were these actually a thing? The airstrike gimmick really sounds odd, I'd expect a more prominent navy to combine arms like that.

Relax mate, noone was lecturing you about anything. I was only contributing with my experience on what makes the Småland so powerful in a DD vs DD environment, and why I find she has the upper hand in most close range engagement pairings. If you like to use your Harugumo in a forward DD hunting role, more power to you. I personally won't since she just lacks the overall toolkit for me compared to the Småland, but you are free to do whatever you please with it.

Definitely agree on the heal part, I tend to seek out very quick engagements with chip damage as well, as it gradually secures a favourable position that you can work off of to get the ball rolling. Radar being the second threat, since noone forces the Småland to actually open up on the Haru when he's certain that he's within 7,5km (I prefer the CE build personally, partially to get a larger stealth radar window). It's a very powerful zoning tool all in all.

Absolutely. I was just making a very generalized statement in this case. All things being equal (which they never are), a Haru should generally not seek out a 1v1 fight over a cap against a prepared Småland.

I never claimed I know Harugumo better than you do, that's a strawman. I just said that a Harugumo has no business creeping up to a cap trying to pick a fight against a (good) Småland, as the Harugumo is at a clear disadvantage all things considered. I do after all have lots of experience fighting other Harugumos, even the very good ones, so I'm perfectly qualified to comment on that part. A Harugumo trying to play the "1v1 cap contest game" or "frontline DD hunter game" against a prepared Småland is in for a world of hurt, even before considering support on both sides. After a lot of these engagements you can tell pretty clearly how the Haru's maneuverability is like, how his guns perform over different distances of engagement, and use that to your advantage.

I didn't comment on whether Småland has bad AA levels or not, just on the fact that when you consider how a CV present in a game can ruin a DDs play, Småland is not the worst DD of the lot to be sailing in. What your opinion is on Daring vs Småland is mostly just word against word, I won't argue for or against it as such exercises are pointless on the internet. My point was that external factors matter a lot, a Daring is no full counter to a Småland if we're just looking at "all situations", so you can't make a blanket statement that I interpreted as "Daring beats Småland". I would for instance happily engage a Daring in open spaces with about equal support on both sides, but be shy of engaging him in closed spaces. Overall I would probably still engage him in closed spaces if I could get a quick jump on him, but only briefly before disengaging behind a rock, and I'm confident that the brief trade usually benefits me in most cases. Same principle I would take when playing Daring as well, try to get the jump to get a favourable trade, then disengaging before things get hairy. And against a Småland I would be playing a lot more conservatively than against most other DDs. Why would I need to have played Harugumo? I just hate it when people use that argument on the internet, wanting to "win" a discussion right out of the gate like that. It's really dishonest. There is plenty of source material out there on how Harugumo handles, the detection radius and hp values are undisputable, as well as her choice of consumables for the situation. I'm not arguing that I know how Harugumo handles in the finer details of gun performance etc., but that is mostly irrelevant. I know from experience that I can happily trade favourably against a Harugumo in most cases (even the really good ones), especially if (like I posted earlier) played an aggressive position to contest a cap. A Harugumo has no business trying to wrestle control of a cap zone when he knows a Småland is trying the same on the other side, and that Småland is captained by a good player. The torp risks are too great, and the handling too poor to get out of those situations, and there's always the risk of getting stealth radared to zone the Harugumo back out (which again, benefits the Småland even if Småland just stays dark). I'm not saying a Harugumo can't be played in such a position in the average random game against a random DD, but he's risking a lot trying to pick a fight at a cap against a prepared Småland.

While I don't like to have a competent CV hunting me, Småland is definitely not one of the worst boats to be sailing if that happens. Decent air concealment, speed boost (in case you need to get back to friendly ships asap), heals to mitigate drop damage, she has all of these traits, while lending very good AA when paired up with other boats. Daring would be my preferred ship for avoiding CVs with her short smokes, but Småland's allright. You can beat a Daring in Småland by a slim margin (often depending on external factors, like terrain etc.), and as for Harugumo - it has no business picking a fight with Småland, as that ustually means Harugumo mispositioned. Raw DPM numbers are not what count in these gunfights, you have to look at the wider picture. Haru is exceptionally vulnerable to torps, is rather sluggish for evading incoming fire in open waters, and has big problems with shell travel time over larger distances. She also has no heal, and a somewhat poor detection. Not a boat that you would drive up to a cap with to fight a Småland, even if the "paper DPM" and "paper HP" looks superior.