Procrastes

If there is a CV in play, if it decides to attack the Kremlin, and if enough AA mounts get taken out by HE spam beforehand, then sure - this nerf will have an effect. But those are three big "ifs".

According to what Jingles said in one of his recent videos, even the Russians believe there is a Russian bias in the game. But they believe it is tilted against the Russian ships, and they take such ships as the Kléber and (presumably) the Henri as examples of this. Which just goes to show how perceptions can differ. Me, I never used to take any of those recurring claims of Russian bias seriously, since Russian ships have been consistently less versatile than many of those of other nations (I am looking at cruisers and destroyers here, especially). But with the advent of such ships as the Kremlin and the Smolensk, I am less inclined to profess disbelief.

If the Slava is anything like the Pobeda that was reviewed by Flamu last spring, it will make the Kremlin seem less op by comparison.

It is good to see how Wargaming have now addressed the problem of not being able to say that they have nerfed the op Kremlin, without having addressed any of those core issues that made the Kremlin op to begin with. Five year plan to stockpile coal for Kuznetsov and then free xp the Kremlin still going on as projected, Comrade.

Ah, yes. Of course. It is fairly obvious when I see it written out like that...!

Ok, but... why? The drop chance would presumably remain the same, irrespective of whether the containers are opened one at a time, or all at the same time?

Why would anyone not want to open all available containers as quickly and painlessly as possible?

A new British premium for 2020: The Brexiter To complement the 'Exeter' with a new premium that will fit in well with contemporary Britain, Wargaming is planning to introduce a new tier 8 premium heavy cruiser, the 'Brexiter'. The Brexiter will have many of the usual characteristics of British cruisers, with some notable differences. The Brexiter has a longer rudder shift time than other British cruisers, and is unable to change course once she gets up to full speed. The Brexiter has a longer lasting smoke screen than the norm, and no hydro that will help her to see out from within her own fog. The Brexiter can't be part of a divison. The Brexiter carries torpedoes, but she can only torpedo herself. If the Brexiter ever finds herself as the sole remaining member of her team, she will immediately start sinking. I'll get my coat.

You should absolutely get the Smolensk! And yes, I can confirm that she has the same ability to Draw Fire as the Lady Belfast, Unlike the Belfast, however, she can actually dodge worth a damn. This means that you don't really have to sit in your smoke in order to harass your fellow gamers - it's much more fun to burn them down in plain view, while kiting like a boss...!!! Open up with a salvo at 19,4 km range and have two more in the air before the first one lands, see your getting aimed at-counter bloom to double digits, turn and watch every single incoming shell go wide, duck and weave through the rain of fire with Boney M:s Rah-Rah-Rasputin* at full blast over the loudspeakers, set the nearest three enemy ships on fire at least two times each and then take one 406 mm overpen through your midriff for minimal damage just for a laugh... I swear, you will drink their rage like a fine wine. The Smolensk is the best at what she does. But what she does... well, it ain't pretty. * Courtesy of Yuro.

The Belfast can be very strong! But her most obvious special power, in my experience, is her ability to Draw Fire. The moment she is spotted, everyone and their uncles let go of whatever else they are doing and start unloading all they have at her fat a$$. They will even stop shooting at the enemy carrier, if it means they get a chance to send a Belfast to the bottom. Given how much hurt she can put out if she's left alone to do her dirty work unhindered, I can't say I blame them. But sheesh, does she bring down the fury! I usually have good games in my Belfast, damage- and xp-wise, even if I mess up halfway through and get deleted for my troubles. She is that good. But sailing out in her is seldom a restful experience.

No argument there! You can get away with a lot at tier 5, that would send you straight to Davy Jones if you tried it at tier 9! That is one reason why I mostly prefer middle tier gameplay. People are generally less predictable, and, as a consequence, battles are often more varied and typically give more room for improvisation!

This, more or less. Use your excellent concealment to line up a nice, close-range AP salvo on some unaware, broadside cruiser, and blast that unhappy sucker to Kingdom Come. Although it is "hit and hope" rather than "hit and run", since the Exeter isn't really equipped to run anywhere in a hurry. If you fail to land a good first salvo, you may be in for a more drawn-out battle if your target has the wits to angle against you. If they do, then load HE and melt them down while angling yourself and using your heal to outlast them (and maybe play 'God Save the Queen' over the loudspeakers to keep everyone in good cheer). The Exeter is a lovely ship, and a well balanced premium to boot. She rewards good and careful play, but she won't let you get away with very many mistakes (her heal can get you only so far, especially if you're up against battleships). She may not be to everyone's taste, but I regard her as one of the best premiums to have been introduced these past few years.

I agree that the spotter plane in itself doesn't make much of a difference in this context, since with good timing you can usually rely on your team mates doing the spotting for you. The combination of heal and smoke gives a ship a lot of extra survivability. The Leander and the Fiji both have this combination of consumables. Both are generally thought of as very good ships, but they are not usually considered to be OP.* I sometimes wonder if being equipped with HE shells - which would be the main difference, here - is really such a huge game-changer? The Fiji in particular can dish out a lot of damage to most targets, and is not all that held back by having "only" the special British enhanced AP rounds. One could argue that light cruisers can make more use of a smoke screen than heavy cruisers, since they are more dependent on being able to keep up a continuing barrage. The Belfast, for instance, would probably be considered a weaker less strong ship if she had 203 mm guns rather than 152 mm guns. So a heavy cruiser with access to smoke, heal and HE shells would probably be less strong than a light cruiser with the same set-up. Or am I missing something, here? I do think that a ship like the London could be well balanced, with some effort and a lot of pre-release testing. But Wargaming should tread carefully here, or they risk making a lot of other heavy cruisers redundant overnight.** Maybe they could remove her torpedoes? The lack of torpedoes is a saving grace (sort of) for the Belfast, since there is always the option to just rush her smoke (and hope you don't find her in the company of something like, say, a Jervis). * Although the jury may still be out with regards to the Fiji. There are those who think - I being one of them - that she is in many ways a stronger ship than her sister Belfast. ** The Furutaka says hello to the Exeter, by the way.

Exeter as she is, is fine. Exeter with smoke would be super-duper OP. Perth as she is, is fine. Perth with a Heal would be super-duper OP. So yes, I can see a possible balance problem in the making, here. I guess the London wouldn't have her own spotter plane, though (?), so there is that - people tend to underestimate just how versatile and self-sufficient the Perth is thanks to having that little Walrus float plane, which lets her see out of her own smoke.

The T-61 is arguably the best all-round destroyer of its tier, in my opinion. Her combination of good concealment (6,1 km), excellent torpedo armament (8 km range + 66 sec reload with the relevant captain skill) and hydro makes her one of the most versatile ships in the game. She has weak guns, which force you to play smart rather than aggressive, which in a way is not a bad thing. I think she uptiers quite well.

Promoting captains to the requisite number of skill points is one of my main uses for free xp. It saves a lot of time in getting my captains up to speed, and the more of them reach 19 points, the more elite xp I get, which accelerates skill training even more. My best use ever of a million free xp was to get my first 19-point captain, which was what really made my captain training programme take off. But as always, it's a matter of personal preference!

Good points! I preferred the former underwater mechanic, where submarines have a finite amount of oxygen that is depleted while they are submerged, and which can be only very slowly replenished while on the surface. It made the ability to submerge into a valuable resource that had to be conserved and properly deployed, and opened for a cat and mouse-flavoured play and counterplay in relation to enemy ships (although which ship is the cat and which one the mouse may be subject for debate). I can see why WG is trying out other possible game mechanics in this regard, but I really don't think it is a very good idea to give submarines the ability to stay submerged indefinitely.

So, do I get this straight? If these changes to IFHE go through, light cruisers will, when fighting battleships, basically get to choose between continuing to consistently deal direct damage but with half the chance to set fires, or they could retain the chance to set fires but do a lot less direct damage (basically, only hits on the superstructure would count). If the above is correct, and if Wargaming is trying to sell these IFHE changes on the idea that light cruisers will no longer feel obliged to choose IFHE in order to be able to deal consistent damage to same-tier cruisers, then I don't really follow their way of thinking. What sensible cruiser captain would make a choice that would work out only if he would never again face battleships in combat? Not to mention the somewhat suicidal aspect of such a choice - since there will be plenty of battleships around - it would also go against the basic rock-paper-scissors mechanic that lies at the very foundation of how ships in the game are supposed to interact. The IFHE skill is to all intents and purposes mandatory for light cruiser captains in the current game meta. Mandatory skills are in actuality skill point sinks rather than skill choices, so the idea of making that skill less mandatory is in itself sound thinking on the part of Wargaming. But from what I have learned so far, I can see little incentive to skip taking the IFHE skill on light cruiser captains even if these proposed changes go through. It will in most cases probably be better to learn to live with the halved fire chance. So maybe this is the main part of what Wargaming is trying to achieve, here: They are going for a stark reduction of fire damage from light cruiser HE spam?* If so, it will be interesting to see how that turns out with regards to balance between the ship classes. I will miss the merry bonfires, but fire damage is not a real substitute for direct damage anyway (due partly to the element of chance and partly to the fact that fire damage can be healed to a 100%), and the heavy cruisers have been left in the shade of their lighter brethren for a while now. Ships like the Atlanta, Flint, Smolensk and Colbert will be hit harder than most, I guess, but maybe that is intentional as well? Either way, some adjustments to burn times might be called for in order to make those fires that are still set, count - and I do hope that this does not turn out to be just another bone thrown to the BB Mafia - but on this note, I will keep a positive outlook and wait to see what happens. As I've said above, I don't really know if I've got my facts right on this one. There are most likely a lot of factors that I've missed or failed to take into account. I wish you all a grand 2020, fellow forumites! * If this is what they are aiming at, though, they should just say so.

No surface travel for the new submarines? Of course they should be able to surface! I watched the latest submarine videos by Jingles and Flamu, and it seems that Wargaming is now planning to remove their submarines ability to travel on the surface, because - and here I quote Jingles quoting Wargaming - "no one derives any benefit from it". This sounds like a really bad idea. Of course submarines should be able to travel on the surface, for a number of different and very important reasons. Submarines look really cool and historical while traveling on the surface, just as they do while traveling at periscope depth or fully submerged. Remove any one of those three travel modes, and you lose out on a big part of the submarine experience. Submarines will be that much less fun to play. If a submarine surfaces, it will benefit a number of different parties. For starters: - It will benefit the submarine player, because he or she will be able to extend his or her view range. - It will benefit any nearby enemy players, as they will be able to more easily spot the submarine and attack it with their guns. - It will benefit any player able to observe and enjoy the supercool surface/dive animations, as well as look at yet another gorgeous in-game ship model going into battle. If Wargaming replies that the above statement is wrong, since there are no such benefits currently built into the submarine gameplay, then I say that they should jolly well go and build them in! Because if they do not, submarines will be a much less fun addition to the overall game experience. Best wishes for the upcoming 2020, everyone!

Any thoughts on the new Italian premium ship, the Gorizia? I thought there should be a dedicated thread on the ship as such, without any debate on the Christmas grind (there are several threads on that topic already). So let's just focus on the pros and cons of the ship itself, here? I have been hoping for a nice premium Italian cruiser for a while now, and one that has all those special characteristics of the Regia Marina cruiser line. The Genova ticks the boxes except for the special Italian smoke, but since that is a rather big part of the deal, I have been waiting for something like the Gorizia. Ideally, she should be on a par with her silver sister the Zara, with some nice little tweak to mark a difference but without making her straight off either better or worse. From what I've read about the Gorizia so far, she has a somewhat faster-reloading smoke screen than the Zara, but slower-reloading guns and no torpedoes. The presentation of the ship on the sales page in the shop also hints at the armour of the Gorizia being a bit stronger, but since we are talking about a cruiser, I'm not holding my breath on this one. I would have expected the lack of a torpedo armament to perhaps be compensated by stronger guns, and not the other way around. The reload on those Italian cruiser guns is slow enough as it is, and so it seems a bit unappealing for the Gorizia to have an even bigger weakness in that regard. But maybe I'm missing something? How about her manoeuvrability? If that is markedly better than that of her sister Zara, then that could potentially make a big difference for a ship that relies on avoiding getting hit between high-damage alpha strikes. Over to you, fellow forumites!

Excellent advice, Captain Europizza! I tested range kiting in my Smolensk, and it worked surprisingly well! Everyone and their uncles started shooting at me but they mostly missed because I was so far away and such a small and moving target, and I zig-zaged between the splashes and fired back and scored overall a lot more hits than they did and set them on fire to boot, and I kept waving encouragingly from the bridge which made them so happy they cried right out... we all had such great fun together! After a while they kind of gave up shooting at me and focused on my allies instead, and they killed most of them and then I went after a Henri IV that was dueling with one of my destroyer allies, and we started trading salvoes but as he began to get his aim right I thought it best to settle down for a smoke while my DD ally kept him spotted, and then we lost on points. But I finished top of the team, which I usually don't do in high-tier battles, so I must have done something right. Anyway, thanks again for your words of inspiration!

This. Big battleship guns firing HE at your Smolensk will hurt you so much... but it is a good kind of pain, because it means that there is balance in the world after all. And it is also good to see an element of play that rewards battleship captains for using their brains when choosing ammunition, instead of just spamming AP at everything. And on that last note... ...it seems I really should try to find some opportunities for using the AP on my Smolensk - and my destroyers, for that matter - a bit more. I must confess that there is usually little incentive to do so in ranked or random battles, since I am not very likely to find myself close enough to a broadside enemy for that to be a valid ammo choice. But I played my Atlanta in a co-op battle the other day, and had the opportunity of testing her AP capabilities close up to a broadside Pensacola. That was surprisingly brutal.

"Teach a man how to reload his torpedoes really fast and he can yolo one extra battleship. Teach him how to hydro, and he can dodge torpedoes for a lifetime half a battle."

I had forgotten about the torpedo reload booster. But don't you have to give up another consumable, to choose it? That I actually a fairly big difference. I can see that I may indeed have underestimated the Huanghe. And add thot her comfy Russian shell ballistics that people speak of, and that I also hadn't previously picked up on... the things I don't know about this game, I could write a book. I shall definitely have to take her out for a spin!

The Leander and the Fiji are very good ships! And they really kick a$$ in operations, where their heal adds a lot of survivability and the bot ships tend to sail past showing broadside without changing course. The British short-fuse AP shells will absolutely murder cruisers under those circumstances.