Procrastes

For 10 000 Italian tokens I'd probably have paid up 1500 doubloons as well, yes. Getting the first three ships in one go seems like fun!

I am going to get what ships I can from mission tokens and free bundles, but I'm not going to spend any money on it. Incidentally, I just unlocked the Dante Alighieri and took her out for a spin. I'd say it went beyond expectations - mine own as well as that of the opposition - since I sank one Kaiser and one Kirov, as well as beating the living daylights out of a New York and an enemy Dante. Them SAP shells can do a hilarious amount of damage, or so it seems anyway. I am looking forward to see what the middle-weights can do!

I'd say: Give it a go, and welcome back!

I'm not sure how to respond to this, so I won't. As for your list of statistics... ...on its own and without taking the underlying calculations into account, it carries no inherent truth other than the numbers. A ship's win rate, for example, is just one factor and it does not necessarily correspond to its relative strength. Moreover, someone has to be the last one over the finish line even in a group of olympic athletes. If a certain ship's place in statistics were to always qualify it for a buff, that would start a rotating buff sequence where every single ship would be briefly circulated to the top of the list until replaced by the next ship from the bottom of the list, and so on. But if you are campaigning for a buff to the Blyska, then best of luck with that!

That would nice, yes.

That's true, of course. Boy, do I feel sheepish. Sorry, WG! I guess I'll wait for half an hour and see what happens...!

This has been an issue since the beginning of this week at least; there is an ongoing thread about it (see below). Wargaming is aware of the problem and is (presumably) working to fix it. Also, and as was just pointed out to me, the servers are currently down for scheduled installation of the new patch for another 22 minutes...!

And now I can't log in either. From the various posts above, I'd say this all seems too random to have anything to do with the particular user interface. I hope it's a bug and not a feature.

This. When the Blyskawica was first introduced, she was basically sold as the Open Water Stealth Fire Gun Boat. She had good overall stats even beyond that, though, which is why she survived the (very well merited) removal of open stealth fire with most of her virtue intact. Since then, however, she has been badly power-crept. The arrival of such ships as the Haida and the Jervis, to name but two examples, has left her bobbing in the backwater. With a good player at the helm she can still perform, but besides the affection value there is sadly little reason to recommend her these days. Calls have been heard for giving her some useful soft buffs along the lines of what Captain @ColonelPete suggests above, but Wargaming is understandably cautious about buffing a premium ship that was once upon a time - back in the olden days - regarded as one of the strongest ships at its tier. And to be fair, she is still a good ship. Her flat fire arcs and excellent shell velocity give her quite an edge in mid-range destroyer dog fights, as I discovered when I was up against some French gun boats the other day. So in short, while I would welcome a few buffs to this scrappy little Polish gladiator, I think she is overall a stronger ship than one might think from just looking at her stats.

Hi, Captain @DEADSNAKE2! It was interesting to read of your opinions concerning the Budyonny! I consider her to be a good cruiser at her tier, but I wouldn't call her overpowered. In my experience, long-range HE spam is too unreliable and too dependent on circumstances - such as access to cover and team members willing to spot - to be very much of a game-changer these days. You can do a good amount of damage if the stars are right, true, but you can also find yourself shooting a lot of ordnance that just drops into the sea. And if you get caught in the open in a big, slow-turning cruiser like the Budyonny, you are liable to get blapped by battleship AP in short order. They only have to get lucky once or twice, while you have to keep getting lucky all the time. This is not to say that the Budyonny can't put the hurt on her enemies. You've clearly managed to do so with great aplomb, for which I can only congratulate you. You are quite obviously a far better marksman than I am! If I am going to try my own luck at long-range HE spam, I personally prefer to sail out in the HMAS Perth. She doesn't have the same shell velocity and base range as the Budyonny, but she has a sneaky combination of moving smoke, hydro and spotter plane that makes her uniquely self-sufficient. Have you tried her out? If not, I would definitely recommend her! And by the way, I would also like to hear your thoughts on the tier VII Russian cruiser, the Lazo? With access to long-range rifles and a near-constantly available spotter plane, she might perhaps fit your palate equally as well as her tier VI silver cousin?

Hello! I m currently trying to get better, or at least "good enough", in the handling of my Daring. It is a bit of an uphill battle, and considering just what destroyer we are talking about, the fault is obviously all mine. I acquired the Daring shortly after Wargaming had changed the mechanics for high explosive shells so that the IFHE skill was no longer as mandatory as before. As I've understood it, the Daring was one of the main beneficiaries of this change, since she now no longer needs a commander with the IFHE skill in order to fight other destroyers effectively. This, as far as I can tell, is still the case. The esteemed Little White Mouse, to name but one authority, does not recommend IFHE on the Daring. As for armour piercing shells, the Daring has those special 'improved AP angles'. I have understood this to mean that her AP shells can handle steeper angles than most other shells of that type without bouncing. They are not SAP shells, though, so with a steep enough angle they will still bounce. It is on these basic premises that I have endeavored to master the Daring. I have not enjoyed a thorough success. Firstly (and this is a shortcoming I'm aware of): I have not trained myself to continously switch between HE and AP during destroyer knife fights. Since destroyers will typically twist and turn in such a fight, and never present a full or close to full broadside for more than a few seconds at a time, I have rationalized that the upside of switching ammo type would probably tend to balance out over time and be mitigated anyway by the loss of accuracy as I struggle with making the switch. I have instead tried to remember using AP on such targets as the superstructure of broadside cruisers and battleships, or even the the waterline of broadside cruisers at close range. Yesterday I had a bit of an eye-opener. I was in my Daring in a battle against two other destroyers, one of which was a Gearing. I used my hydro to dodge their torpedoes, snuck up on the Gearing in his smoke cloud, and spotted him almost broadside to me no more than 3 km away. I started unloading all I had at the Gearing, going full HE. The Gearing started to kite away at a bit of an angle, returning fire with the help of some of his team mates. I expected him to melt rather quickly, but it didn't happen. In short order I was sunk myself. In the post-battle report, I found that I had landed forty-one (41!) HE hits on the Gearing, doing a total of just above 7000 damage (not counting the fires). I was stunned by my own incompetence. Clearly, I have been going about this the wrong way. I haven't saved the post-battle report, but my best guess is that the majority of my shells must have shattered on the Gearing's side armour. Should I have used AP shells for the whole engagement? Or switched to and fro between He and AP? Or is it just that my gunnery sucks and I need to get better at it? The Daring is a wonderful little ship, and I want to do her justice. Please help!

I spent close to two full days working through speccing and re-speccing my captains after the new skill system came live. I transmogrified more than half of them into elite xp first, of course, so that I now have no captains with less than 10 skill points around. But there's still a hefty bunch of them. There's no way I'm going through that operation again in a hurry. If there happens to be some rebalancing in the future that makes further reshuffles necessary, I will just have to bite the bullet (but don't quote me on that).

Thanks for the information!

Still waiting for some kind of feedback from WG on this. I thought it was just syrup in my connection, but it seems to be a more widespread problem. I eventually got into the game in time to have my fat black (m)a$$ handed to me in the M[edited]achusetts Black, before going off to work. So I guess there is hope for a full recovery...?

That helped, muchas gracias! Didn't even know about the Alt-Tab trick before...

So I see that you have Captain Blackadder as your Trento Captain? He serves mainly as a commander of the Giulio Cesare, in my navy!

Your Skåne captain takes the prize for best moustache, easily... ...which I can readily accept, since I am from Skåne myself!

On the other hand, you were in the Kidd. I have the Kidd myself, fully AA-specced and loaded for turkey, and I always feel vaguely cheated whenever I sail out in her and have a battle with no carriers. How many planes did you bag...?

Dang, that's one for the books all right. The 'Tone Cross Drop' will be the new thing for the cool crowd down by the docks...!

I think it can make a difference in that perceptions may change over time. Right now, most everyone - me included - has made a go at trying out the Deadeye skill on at least a few of their battleships, but that doesn't mean that everyone will make it a keeper. Once players realize that the "old" skill builds - i.e., with emphasis on survivability rather than accuracy or perhaps even on secondaries - remain more effective or at least more fun, things will probably balance out a bit. As for me, I currently have the Deadeye skill on my Thunderer captain only. The commanders of my standard USN battleships all have the good old survivability skill build - Heal, Concealment Expert and Fire Prevention - and on my German battleships as well as on the Georgia and the Massachusetts I have gone for a full secondary build as usual. It might not be the most efficient, but it's a lot more fun. To be fair, the Deadeye skill might not be all bad if it's used in a good way. In my Thunderer, for instance, I like to think that the increase in accuracy will help me make a more useful contribution during that first part of the battle when I do stay a bit to the back and lob volleys at long range. Having this skill will not, however, stop me from making a push when I feel that the time is right - it only means that without the Fire Prevention skill I will be more vulnerable to HE spam when that time comes. On a German or Russian battleship I would never even consider taking the Deadeye skill, since I tend to prefer playing to a ship's strengths rather than to mitigate its weaknesses.

On the plus side, it will now be possible - with the introduction of the Tone - to put all Tones and carriers in their own separate game mode. And when submarines finally arrive, we can shovel them in there as well; I'm sure they will all have lots to talk about. Ok, I admit it; this was a bit on the bleak side for an early morning post. I'd better go and get myself a cup of coffee.

It's a bit of a relief to find that I'm not the only one with a penchant for collecting majestically-moustachioed WoWs captains. My Nueve de Julio captain has sadly seen precious little action, as has my Viribus Unitis commander, in spite of them boasting the most majestical moustaches in my navy. Now with this weird anaconda ship on offer, perhaps this might change!

Jingles always makes an effort to try to see both sides of an issue. That in itself counts a lot in his favour, in my book. As a Youtuber he is first and foremost an entertainer, which is also fine by me. As for his statement on perception being the main culprit in how Deadeye affects the game, I think he is absolutely right. I was leaning in that direction even before I watched his video; I believe I expressed the opinion that those battleship players who keep playing to the objectives - i.e., getting close enough to make a difference, support a push and tank damage for their team - will continue to do better than the border campers, irrespective of whether any of them take the Deadeye skill or not. (That opinion still stands, by the way.) Jingles' video on the importance of perception carries a bigger and more general message, worthy to take note of. Some of the best, and worst, instances of human history have come to pass due to how certain individuals have influenced the perception of those around them.

Thanks for showing me the ropes, mates!

I use Radio Location on all my destroyers except the Kléber.