Hirohito

I'm gonna be contrarian here and say that you should perhaps stay away from Flamu, Potato, Nozoup, Flambass and Notser. Flamu heavily cherry picks his games to make it look like he "casually scores 250k damage" every game (even though his average stats show that he isn't nearly that good on average). He also exaggerates a LOT ("Tallinn is broken OP"). This guy will have you think your 100k damage game is terrible, because most of his videos all show him performing at least 150% better than you. Flambass does dumb plays that heavily relies on him being a unicum in a unicum division, like taking a CV into the middle on Two Brothers, or yolo-rushing BBs in a triple Venezia division. Dont do this crap, you'll just be worse off. Potato is a real BB whiner, and his advice will be coloured by that. It gets annoying to watch once you understand that only some of it is solid advice, while the rest is biased crap without value. Notser is "ok" at best, but you don't get the most solid advice from him. Nozoup is absolutely terrible. Not as a player, but he is whiny as hell and often gives out flat out WRONG advice. Destroyer_Kuroshiokai is as someone else here mentioned, criminally underrated. That guy goes through absolutely everything on his decision making, pauses his games to explain a particular thought process, pauses to explain positioning, aiming, ammo choice, leading... it's generally extremely solid advice. He also does something that most youtubers don't - he shows his bad games and explains where he does a mistake. That particular part is very important, because understanding mistakes is a lot more educational than watching a video where everything goes right. By watching him alone I started DD play from scratch, going directly into purple DD stats even though I was yellow in the other classes at the time. His advice is that good.

Very much agree in waiting out playing DDs until he gets more comfortable, though it can be done if he's determined (gonna be rough though). That being said, I find the RN DDs to be the absolute most forgiving DD line in the game atm. Short burst smokes are a very large crutch to "get out of jail free" compared to other DD lines, due to their ridiculously short cooldown and frequent numbers. It was my first DD line I ever played myself, and I went right into unicum stats with them until T7 or so when I got light blue stats. Not that I was that good at the time, but the smokes got me some high stupid win rates in the low and mid tiers, because I tended to survive stuff that other DDs would be punished hard for. Even though I frequently messed up, the short burst smokes saved me repeatedly where other DDs would be catched with their pants down. The short-burst smokes are just that good, especially for a newbie when you're frequently getting yourself into bad situations. Add in hydro to mitigate torps, as well as a heal from T9, you're having a very forgiving ship line overall. My second line was the EU DD line, and oh boy was that rough compared to RN, playing without the good ol' "get out of jail free"-card. Even USN DDs were a whole lot worse for me personally when used to RN smokes.

Well from the stats I see that you are a fairly new player, and DDs are the hardest class in general to start out with when you're new. In general I think there's less value in giving advice on how to play RN DDs (which is very specific advice), and more value to be gained in learning to play DDs in general. RN DDs are probably the easiest to start out with, but getting better at them mostly involved general DD advice. As for general DD advice for a new player, I'm gonna keep it simple: Blow up your minimap to full size, and learn to watch the minimap a lot more than you probably do now. Your concealment circle especially is what you need to watch most of the time, so that you don't accidentally run into a cruiser or BB. It might sound like really simple advice for most veterans, but for a beginner I suspect that's something you might struggle with still (my bad if not, but it's my experience that it happens more often than not). Try to get caps like usual, and reverse into it when you do so - but only when you feel comfortable doing so, as you will be doing more harm to your team than good if you get killed. in fact, you can probably get your winrate up at this point by not dying early (like most new or bad DDs do), which is helpful in its own right. If you do at any time get spotted, blow a smoke and get out until its safe (and smoke pref. is off cooldown again). Learning when to kill other DDs is something I'd stay away from at this point, as a beginner you most probably still tunnel vision more than you should once you engage, and that is absolutely deadly as a DD. So in general, keep it simple for now and get used to watching your minimap and concealment circle religiously to begin with. Any other ship is not to get inside that circle, or you'll be spotted and (most likely) killed. Once you get comfortable in not getting detected by the bigger ships (cruisers and BBs), you can start getting closer to caps (and bigger ships), at which point you only really have to worry about other DDs spotting you. But watch that minimap, its gonna be the single most important thing you need to learn early on.

This part I strongly agree with. DDs dont directly "counter" BBs. As long as the BB is semi-competent, landing consistent torps on a BB that tries to evade will usually take a long time for him to go down. The way DDs "counter" BBs is that they can somewhat reliably zone them out, but even that is not always guaranteed if the BBs is determined to push forward and dodges the torps. Competitive play really showcases the imbalances this game has. BBs need to be artificially limited to 1 or 2 because they otherwise would dominate over a balanced setup between all classes. And radar is similarly a band aid in order to give cruisers a clear role vs DDs, which is evident through how the absolute majority of lineups feature an over-representation of radar cruisers over the amount of non-radar cruisers in the game.

I like to open up on cruisers as well, but let's be honest here. Unless the Smolensk is broadside at a short'ish distance (go ahead, open up) and assuming equal skill, you should generally not pick a gun fight with a Smolensk.

I haven't checked the details on the original post, but skimming through it I saw that you can't skim it really, you have to read it all in detail and take time to understand it correctly. As such, the original poster should definitely have treated this like any other scientific paper if he thinks his findings are important. Create an abstract first to summarize why this post is written and what it's looking to uncover, and finish with a summary that lets the reader see immediately if there's any interesting findings here. Failing to do so, it's hardly any surprise that the first post was buried and forgotten. People have generally better things to do that dedicate a lot of time to read an in-depth topic like this without knowing whether it's worth it beforehand. Making the stuff even less inaccessible (through using "bigworld" units of measurement, instead of the standard meters, also serves to make it even less accessible).

That's power creep in a nutshell right there.

That's some next level radar right there.

Especially when the armament to achieve that is AP shells. What cruiser in his right mind would sit there flat broadside for half a minute or more, and eat all those shells until he finally blows up?

I'm losing more and more respect for BB players each day..

Test it if you're curious. Most of the commander skills are still not tested fully by the community, and you do have infinite respecs right now. Definitely a good time to get creative, you can always change your mind afterwards if you didn't like the result.

Had this map again today for the first time in several months. Would pick this map once every day if I could, its just that much fun. :-)

Getting ridiculous amounts of room to work with these days. With BBs sitting so far back, cruisers generally follow suit and I'm free to wreck other DDs in my DD and cap without issues. If BBs wanna continue spending 4 skill points to buff the enemy DD then so be it, I'm not gonna stop them.

I wouldn't be so sure of that though. The reason is that, assuming it is a batching system in place (which seems likely), it requires WG to completely overhaul their servers and change how the server handles data to begin with. Some other tester reported that BFT gave his Fletcher a 0% increase, so iif those tests are correct it's not like it's the skill that is broken, but rather the server mechanics that handle fractions of a second regarding reloads. Same might in fact be true for AR, it should behave wildly inconsistently depending on a few % difference in health damage taken. In fact, I might try to test this during the weekend to see if there are identifiable breakpoints where AR starts to go from 0 to a much higher value.

The voice is good and I don't disagree with Thunderer. Though to be fair, he is not that skilled and occasionally jumps on the "BBs are too weak the days!"-train, like NoZoup did. I wouldn't take him too seriously to be honest.

The AR and FB effects need to be tested further for. As I don't know what the server refresh rate actually is, you might get more or less than you're supposed to also here, depending on which exact reload threshold is crossed. For Småland though, 6th slot MBM mod (-12% reload) coupled with BFT (-5% reload) gives a ton more than it should (which is the combination I tested for). If the server batching system works as suspected, it means that AR would behave generally very inconsistent for Småland (and possibly Halland/Friesland), depending on whether you lost enough health to qualify for an earlier batch. In the most extreme example, I suspect that going from 75% health (random number, for example's sake) might give a low effect, but once you go down to 74% health you get a massive boost to dpm since you now qualified for an earlier batch breakpoint. I strongly encourage more people to test with combinations of other reload enhancing modifiers like AR and FB (tho AR might be hard to test consistently, since the number fluctuates depending on HP). For now though I skipped out on AR, as BFT already provides a boost equal to a very hurt Småland, right from the start.

I dunno. It might be because the 10% modifier didn't qualify for an earlier batch and was then working roughly as intended. The other reason (which I believe is more likely) is because I haven't seen that people have actively been testing this sort of stuff, and just assumed that 10% meant 10%. For a slow-firing ship (5s reload) 10% means 10%, but not when we're getting into the ballpark of something like 1,3s reload (which Småland can reach). Then the fractions of a second start to become wonky, and server/reload interaction behaves differently.

It doesn't work uniformly for all DDs. I have a few hypotheses as to why, but generally the increase in rate of fire is due to ultra-rapid firing guns (like Småland). Småland gains a tremendous amount in rate of fire, way above the intended 5%. To elaborate a little, I believe that the WoWs server uses a batching system with a rather low refresh rate, rather than continuous service. This means roughly that commands in the game are stored in "batches", where the server executes all of them in certain intervals. I don't know how long these intervals are, but I suspect around the ballpark of 100ms. The reason for this is to reduce the load on the server, as this requires less of the CPU. This means that any input you do during a timeframe of 100ms (assuming 100ms is the correct number for a batch), gets saved and executed in the next 100ms timeframe. Since Småland's guns are already firing ultra-fast, a 100ms difference (again assuming this is the correct number) can be several % worth of dpm. This is important because it suggests that the server cannot handle a 5% increase in rate of fire on already rapid-reloading guns, as the number is lower than what a batch might handle (5% would equal a very a small fraction of a second in Småland's case, especially with other reload-modifiers already in place). However, it might be enough to push the reload into an earlier batch, meaning that the guns fire sooner than they are supposed to, simply because the server has to choose between one of them when it executes the "shoot guns" command. If such a batching system with a low refresh rate is in place (most servers use batching system), it's not something that's easily fixed on WGs part without them updating how their whole server handles data to begin with. I hope this clarified some, and explain why certain slower-firing guns might get no or 0 effect out of BFT (some tester in the other thread here found 0 effect on Fletcher), while Småland gains a monstrous amount. This also suggest that each ship should be tested individually from now on in regards to any % modifiers, as they clearly don't work as advertised for DDs that fire fast, as is usually assumed. 10% (for instance) is not necessarily 10%, it depends on the ship in question.

BFT is broken on Småland atm, it adds between 9 to 22% increase in rate of fire (and thus DPM). Should definitely be a top contender in its current form. Haven't checked out if the same holds true for Halland, but for Småland there is little reason not to go BFT atm.

Ok, I have done some extensive testing now, both with sequential fire and salvo fire, and with and without BFT. The results are very(!) surprising and suggest that BFT is broken atm for some unknown reason, like @Gebe_ suggested. Similarly, players might want to be mindful of the way they fire their guns, as firing mode matters for DPM. As usual, I ran two sets of tests - one of them lasting 30 seconds, and one of them lasting 60 seconds. Both tests were run with sequential fire (holding down the mouse button), and with salvo fire (hammering the mouse button). After these tests were made, I ran the same test with BFT. Here are the results: No BFT: 30 second sequential fire: 72 shell hits (test 1), 72 shell hits (test 2) 30 second salvo fire: 76 shell hits (test 1), 76 shell hits (test 2) 60 second sequential fire: 144 shell hits (test 1), 144 shell hits (test 2) 60 second salvo fire: 152 shell hits (test 1), 156 shell hits (test 2) With BFT: 30 second sequential fire: 88 shell hits (test 1), 88 shell hits (test 2) 30 second salvo fire: 88 shell hits (test 1), 88 shell hits (test 2) 60 second sequential fire: 172 shell hits (test 1), 172 shell hits (test 2) 60 second salvo fire: 168 shell hits (test 1), 168 shell hits (test 2) Conclusion: The results were very surprising to be honest. It seems that if you do not run BFT, salvo fire is consistently stronger than sequential fire. For my 30 second tests, salvo fire turned out to be a consistent 5,55% DPM increase. For my 60 second tests, salvo fire turned out to be on average a 6,94% DPM increase. However, the results were even more surprising for BFT skilled. With BFT, it seems that salvo fire is no longer as efficient. In fact, you barely lose out a salvo (4 shell hits) over 60 seconds unless you perfectly mash the mouse button. Sequential fire is therefore (very slightly) superiorto salvo fire. The most surprising result however was the DPM increase for BFT. For the 30 second tests, BFT yielded an insane 22,2% DPM increase for sequential fire, and a 15,78% increase for salvo fire. For the 60 second tests, BFT yielded a 19,44% DPM increase for sequential fire, and a 9,09% DPM increase for salvo fire. The results of this test suggest that if you do NOT run BFT (why wouldn't you? Its very strong), you should always fire in salvoes. If you do run BFT (you should!), there is less of a difference between firing in salvoes and sequential fire. In fact, unless you want a strained arm, I suggest you fire in sequential fire, its more likely to yield the best results regardless. Either way: SPEC BFT RIGHT NOW, it is broken in its current form and gives between a 9,09% and 22,2% DPM increase!

I'm not sure how this works myself, only that clicking seems to fire the guns slightly before an automated sequential fire would fire them. It could be that the server uses a batching system, where it has these small windows (batches) where any input (gun shots in this case) are applied in the succeeding batch. Meaning that if you spam click gun shots prematurely, the game might apply them the very next instance (batch) the guns come off reload, whereas an automated sequential fire might miss one or even several batches. I know that a similar system was used server side in World of Warcraft back on their older versions, as the system should save a lot of processing power over smooth and constant client/server interactions. Not sure about any of this though, but it warrants enough interest since the guns behave wildly inconsistent atm, with the difference in number of gun shots produced being larger than what could be explained from simple timing errors. Even in my second test which only yielded a 5,5% increase (60second tests) on average, I ended up with two more shots (8 more hits) over 60 seconds. If I had timed it slightly wrong, I would expect to see at most one more shot (4 shell hits), not twice that amount. We are talking about 3 seconds worth of gun dpm over 60 seconds in this case, and this was just my "low" result. BFT also seems to interact in an odd way here, producing results it shouldn't, even if we assume timing errors (on the stopwatch). If the batching hypothesis holds true, it could be that the percentage increase pushes the reload down to an earlier batch, allowing it to fire much sooner than they are advertised to do (5%).

You won't really miss at point blank range against a BBs belt armour though. In my tests I made sure that I watched the ribbons and that they incremented in sets of 4, which they did. Testing for reloads in the 4-5 second range would be interesting as well. However, I strongly suspect that the game incorrectly handles fractions of seconds of gun reload, meaning that Småland atm is the ideal candidate to test since it is the boat most affected by fractions of gun reload to reach its "true" listed dpm (or any incorrect number for that matter). The slower the guns are, the more likely it is that they start behaving like "normal" (the extreme example being a 30s BB reload).

On paper I'd agree, but check out the "Småland test" thread that was posted. It might be that there either is a bug in play here (also related to rapid salvo firing), or that the server incorrectly handles fractions of gun reload time, resulting in much higher dpm than one would expect.

I would spam it more frequently than every 0.2s, as that is already about as fast I can click. If it would be possible to reduce the clicking interval down to 0,05s or something similar it should be interesting though, as that is way faster than a human can click. Whether or not lag causes it (or something else) is irrelevant, the clue is to get the guns firing as soon as the server allows for another shot to be made, and the further one can reduce that window (more clicks per second) the better. Edit: Make sure to post any results here (also whether you used BFT or not). The more we can find some consistent pattern to raising DPM, the better!

Those were the extreme numbers I found for 30 second engagements, yeah. The effect dropped off for 60 second engagements, but it was still positive. The results were too high to be explained by me mis-timing the stop watch, since that should have created one extra salvo at most, not 3-4 extra salvoes which I got in my 30-second tests. And since I ran the tests multiple times, the chance that I mis-timed one of the tests is even slimmer. If my hypothesis is correct in that lag between server and client causes this, it means that you could likely improve the numbers further by using a rapid-firing mouse (holding the mouse button down with rapid fire activated) to spam out left click inputs which get transmitted to the server. That should make sure that once the server-side reload is finished, the rapid-fire function on your mouse should immediately issue a shot command regardless of whether the client thinks the guns are reloaded or not. Unfortunately I don't have a rapid-firing mouse, but if anyone who has one wants to test this further, the results could be interesting. That being said, @Gebe_ apparently found (in some select cases) that the shot number went down when he tested salvo vs sequential fire, even if other tests showed the number to go up. What is certain is however that the stated in-game number for rate of fire is incorrect, and salvo fire for the time being tends to trend upwards (producing more salvoes than you should get from sequential fire). If BFT is bugged as well (which seems to hold true), it seems to suggest that there is an very large difference in rate of fire that could be gained (used to win a DD vs DD fight mostly) if one works out how to maximize the number of shots, over someone who doesn't know how to do so.