eliastion

The stats are only useful if you can interpret them correctly. 1. Premiums. The ships you never sail with untrained captain and/or without their top configuration (since they don't get any other configuration). And don't get me started on Flint that's awarded by getting to Rank 1 THREE TIMES. That's a huge commitment of time and requires above-average skill. And if you don't believe that consideration like always being top tier and the way you get a ship has considerable impact on stats, allow me to present you Kongo and her ARP sisters, sorted by win%: ARP Kongo: 53,69% ARP Hiei: 53,10% ARP Haruna: 52,06% ARP Kirishima: 52,01% Kongo: 49,75% Fully upgraded they are the very same ship. No, wait: fully upgraded Kongo is BETTER because it can benefit from camo. Still, it's over 2 pp (percent points) behind the worst ARP version! 2. CV damage. First of all: the stats you show are useless. CVs changed a lot through their existence, the "all-time" stats show absolutely nothing. What you want to look at is 2-week stats that have less aggregated data but at least aggregate it from the actual ships, not ghosts of their past. Still, they do score more damage. The thing is, however, that the most common CV prey are BBs. Yes, there is definitely some DD hunting going on but the thing I find myself striking most often in CV? Unaware BBs that stray away from other ships. Other ships that distribute their damage more evenly across other classes can't get similar damage values. What would count is the DMG% (where, say, 200% would be two full-hp ships killed, be it DDs or BBs) but we don't have such stats, only raw DMG number that's virtually useless, especially for cross-class comparisons. 3. CV survivability. Really, you bring THAT one up? CVs survive because they don't fight on the front lines. They tend to be the last or one of the very last ships to go down for that very reason. Even though it's often an illusion. A CV can die in one of two ways: it can be sunk or it can lose all planes. However, only the first kind of death goes to statistics as death. An empty hull without any actual combat value is also out of the battle for the game but counts as surviving nonetheless. And yes, technically it floats. It's just that he can't affect the game in any meaningful way anymore (and is probably bound to lose money, if on high tier - ships don't pay for repairs but CVs pay for planes shot down rather than for ammo spent, for some reason).

Akizuki line. ...ok, mostly just Akizuki. But yeah, still that one.

Wait. I'm pretty sure my Kirishima uses her own voice. I've played all my rainbow-colored Kongos and it's been ages since I last heard Iona.

The "gunboat" branch is, in fact, good as it is. Shiratsuyu is scary (thx to torp reload) while also somewhat limited in torpsouping potential (reload on consummable). Hatsuharu seems pretty nice. Akizuki is an actual gunboat and a pretty fun one at least as long as even people who should know better (other Akizuki players) happily expose broadsides to you. The regular branch is pretty meh, though. Yugumo seems to be an exception - it actually has good guns to fill up the time between torping. I find myself regularly getting more damage from guns and fires than from torps and flooding but it actually has the guns and stealth to inflict some hurt that way without retreating so far that you spend hours getting back to torping ranges when ready. The rest of the branch usually has 3 torp launchers. Nice but hardly convinving, seeing how your torps don't need to be anticipated to be dodged. It's just underwhelming. Then again, I never even liked the old Fubuki much in the first place so it might be just me who likes guns too much and appreciates torps too little. Either way, voted torp concealment and reload. The line (well, the regular one at least) is about stealthy torps. It's their primary weapon. It really should have some reliability.

They probably will, they stated that nobody will have to research and buy back their favorite ship. Still, it's unknown how similar or how different the expected split is going to be. Also, it's a pity that they split Russians instead of filling up the 2-tier gap in IJN tree. I'd love to see t9 and t10 ships with similar advantages and disadvantages Akizuki has. It's a fun little ship. Strange but fun. If I could just take her, stuff her into t IX or X with no changes other than appropriate modules and maybe a couple knots more speed, I'd be happy...

There were times I wished I had it on my Akizuki. And plenty more times where I was thankful for AFT and CE instead. But, well, I never considered it a great skill. It might be worth it in (and damaging to) Rankeds, possibly completely meta-shifting in Team Battles... but in Randoms? No matter the class and specific ship, I believe there are just way better ways to spend 4 skillpoints. Despite occasional usefulness. It's a potentially great intel-gathering skill but it's just not worth it when teams are big and communication non-existent.

Your stats are somewhat important in light of this particular discussion because they show that you are precisely the kind of player you rant about in your opening post: You have lots of experience but no desire whatsoever to improve. If you lose, it's bad team, always. If you keep losing, it's WG and their rigged MM that keep you from getting better results. It's not. It's you. Sorry. Oh and as for Wtf are you even going about? You posted some nonsense how one in a million (or was it even more) times within 1000 you could get a 10-streak. I just pointed out that your chances of getting such streak in 1000 random 50% draws is, actually, not one in a million - they're significantly bigger than not getting one. And your claim that over enough battles you always end up with 50% is just mind-boggling stupidity. Yes, it would be 50% if people had no influence over the result of the battle. Seeing how people can, you know, SHOOT AT ENEMY SHIPS AND SINK THEM, increasing the odds of victory for their side - and seeing how some people are obviously better at shooting at enemy ships as well as at keeping their own ships from being deleted prematurely... why would they get 50% winrate? They just perform well enough to win more than they lose. That's what make their WR better than 50%, not some statistical abnormalities due to low number of battles. But, just out of curiosity - do you really expect a bot that enters battle and does nothing at all to have - after, say 100 000 (or whatever you deem to be big enough number) battles - something close to 50% winrate?

You don't know ANYTHING about probability. If you draw only 10 times with exactly 50% chance, you have exactly 1/1024 chance to get 10 victories and 1/1024 to get 10 defeats. So, a chcnce for clear streak is 1/512. The actual chance of getting 10 victories in a row somewhere within 1000 random "coin tosses" is 38,6%. The same for 10 defeats. The chance of getting an uninterrupted streak (winning or losing) like that across 1000 draws is about 62,3%. Which is - I believe you do understand math enough to understand that part - more than 1/2. You're more likely to get a streak than not. And that's assuming that it's completely random, which is obviously false because even if you are a potato with global 50% winrate, you still have varying disposition and you can be focused and play well one day while - another time - you can be distracted, tired and frustrated about your growing streak of defeats. Leading to more mistakes and, in the end, more defeats. Because, regardless of what your poor performance ang high self esteem has you believe, your results do depend on your performance. It is, obviously, not the only factor but it's a pretty important one. Especially after you accumulate literally thousands of battles. But, of course, it's much more comfortable to blame rigged MM "keeping you at 50%". I'm pretty sure those AFKing 35% winrate bots are kept down too. Otherwise they would quickly rise to 50% since victory or defeat doesn't depend on personal contribution.

The tags were never so relevant!

The very basic assumption made in the opening post is wrong. The whole perspective is skewed... But let me explain why. The main point of opening post: BBs are the core class when it comes to pushing as well as to holding position and it means that they're more important than other classes. That's wrong. They are IMPORTANT all right and yes, their big alpha and great survivability are their things. This, however, is like claiming that your average MOBA is all about tanks. And similar case could be made about, at the very least, DDs. The game is about capturing key areas - and that's what DDs do. A BB can't really cap anything - he'll be spotted and shot upon forever and one day therafter. BB is there to keep the enemy occupied and scare them off while the stealthy DD does the main job. Cruisers are there to support DDs in DD vs DD engagements so that the friendly DDs are the ones that remain alive while enemies sink or are forced to retreat. Carriers, similarly, are there primarily to spot enemy DDs and keep bigger ships from effectively engaging friendly DDs and their bigger escorts. The game revolves around DDs. The thing is, you see, that the game needs more than one role. BBs have the alpha and they have the tanky but there are just some things they aren't meant to excel at. The same goes for DDs. Cruisers can try performing BB and DD roles in a pinch and bring a lot of firepower to the table. CVs are the only class that's purely there to support the fleet... but the "support" more often than not means "trim the enemy fleet by inflicting heavy damage", they're supporters because they can't really contest the objectives like other classes do. The rock-paper-scissors design of the game went out the window somewhere along the way but the problem is that that was what the whole balance of the game relied upon. The problem people have isn't that the meta is BB-centric. Because it isn't. It really isn't. What it is is: BB-heavy. Meaning: there is too many BBs because they are not reliant enough on other classes. The problem isn't that a team with no BBs would be screwed - it should be. The problem is that a team of only BBs would be almost viable... the only thing they'd be lacking would be spotting.

Imagine if CS only counted planes that actually took off... that would be the bare minimum to make this achievement fair.

Possibly for other UK cruisers as well, since smoke-setting time is their major problem. If it ends up giving them a reliable second smoke puff, it might be good enough that some people take it. Also, while the duration is reduced, the actual reduction is lower than listed because it's generally the last puff of smoke that counts. If available on German t2 DD (lowest duration in the game) the actual duration might even increase since it has setting time of 20 seconds and duration: 45 s. With +30% setting time you gain 6 seconds. With -12% duration you lose 5,4 seconds. So, your last puff should actually last ever-so-slightly longer (counting from when you start laying smoke) than it does normally.

Don't even compare the two. Fiery takeoff might not be worth its points but it is a perk. Yes, it's not exactly often that I'm on fire and hope I could launch my planes but, well, it's still something I'd like to have from time to time. I don't imagine myself EVER wanting my strike planes to return SLOWER. Especially considering how speed is usually the most important defense they have - empty strike planes often travel too fact to be caught up to and strafed (thus engaging built-in infinite survivability against fighters that can't engage you ). Why would I even want them to be more resilient to damage when I can have them home faster while actually avoiding taking the most dangerous form of damage in the first place!? At first leaks I thought it was a powerful skill with heavy drawback: super-stealthy and tougher aircraft that fly slower. But when it works ONLY on the return, when the effect is a liability rather than something potentially useful? What a joke...

Well, it would've made sense if it was supposed to train captains... ...but I doubt that's gonna be the case, seeing how it gets own "flag" in the background AND a "dragon" captain.

Well, depends on how they were coded. But Co-op is hardly WG's priority and proper AI is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) challenges in games (outside of graphics). Basicaly, yes, it WOULD have been possible to make a bot that scouts caps, actively looks for enemy DDs and performs evasive maneuvers to account of unspotted DD torps. In fact, it wouldn't be all that hard to create bots that perform better than average players - optimal angling and perfect aim on short-mid ranges (taking into account ships current speed AND current turnrate) not to mention focus fire: these would be perfectly achievable and would suffice to outperform if not average players then certainly most "baddies". But making bots into challenging opponents that play "fair" would require resources. And WG doesn't want to spend resources on coop since that's not the focus of their game. They might include some low-cost improvements (convoy missions will be a nice change of pace) but things like more advanced SI on bots? When you can just give them a homing instinct and some basic island-avoidance behavior, slap the ability to shoot at spotted enemies and call it a day?

The question is not "what is more common: Destroyers or Carriers". The question is "what is more common: a DD attack that got me but wouldn't (or would hurt less) if I had RPF or a CV strike that got me or someone right next to me that could've been dealt with/blunted with manual AA". Basically - while I meet DDs much more often than CVs, these encounters rarely make me wish for a skill like that. Encounters with CVs make me wish for some more AA much more often. Then again, even if I did reconsider - manual AA is just one of the skills I mentioned, possibly the least important one. Fire prevention, manual secondaries, AFT - there are just so many skills/combinations of skills I'd prefer to RPF.

Well, I don't think I'll take it on ANY of my ships. I might consider it for Ranked builds but for Randoms? Sure, I've had my share of moments where it would've been useful (and even more moments when I thought in my DD "well, this only works because there's no RPF yet" ) but there are so many less situational/more important skills. On cruisers I'd take CE and manual AA over this. On BBs there's manual AA, manual secondaries, the "try burning me down now, b*tches" skill AND concealment... and I'm only listing t4 skills here, 4 points might mean 2 t2 skills instead. I don't like this skill, I believe it shouldn't be in the game but as for its actual usefulness/balance... I just see so many others that I consider more relevant in Randoms. Maybe dedicated DD-hunters should pick it up, yes. But that's about all.

Recently on the webpage appeared a buildmaker for captains (skill calculator). It's a nice thing to have so that players can plan their builds without looking for 3rd party calculators (or calculating thing by hand) BUT there seem to be some hilarious bugs present with recommended key skills. It's not just that I disagree with them - they're obviously not what they were supposed to be. Recommendations for DD: BFT (so far, so good) Superintendent (looks good too) Fire prevention (wait, what?) Manual control for secondary armament (FEAR THE SECONDARY BUILD KIEV!) Recommendations for aircraft carriers are even more hilarious though. Because who wouldn't want to equip their CV with: AFT (well, I guess it aids AA) Vigilance (to, you know, detect these unspotted torps launched at you from unexpected angles) and last but not least EXPERT MARKSMEN YEAAAAAAAH Yes. I know I should make a ticket or something. But these particular recommendations were just too funny to pass on making fun of in public

I must say I never noticed Leander to be that much of an improvement over Emerald in the first place. I gave up on British line for now - maybe I'll pick it back up sometiime but for now my Leander is gathering dust. What's strange is that my actual performance in these ships wasn't bad. Emerald gave me 75% winrate over 20 battles. In Leander I managed 64% winrate with decent damage and 1,2 frags per battle over 14 battles. So one would expect me to have great time in them - be it luck over relatively small number of battles or me being made for these ships, I certainly had results. But the experience just never was that great. I remember playing them being extremely draining - and I don't exactly play the game to get stressed and tired. However, my experience makes me think that Emerald doesn't really suffer that much due to being much worse than Leander. I believe they are, in fact, pretty comparable tier-by-tier. It's more of the (old) Furutaka effect: you hit the point where you really need to adjust to playstyle your previous ships just didn't support or at least didn't require. Danae still plays more-or-less like other cruisers of similar tier. Emerald requires some new skills - ones specific for high-tier cruisers, ones specific for DDs... and perhaps some known only to UK cruisers. How to use smoke. How to not get torped in your (tiny!) smoke cloud. How to use solid cover, friendly DD smoke and other friendly ships that could draw enemy attention to themselves because you just can't handle being shot at. That's a very nasty thing to learn, especially for people who lack experience with DDs and didn't play at least some higher tier cruisers. Me, after all that beating I took in Mogami, I didn't find these two ships unplayable nor did I find them extremely different from each other. They just seem pretty un-enjoyable, especially with all these BBs everywhere - you need to be extremely focused all the time because making a mistake means hp just evaporating magically. Although it's worth a note that your heal isn't just an ornament - as long as you DON'T make mistakes, the heal will actually keep you in the game, preventing you from being forced out of normal play by accumulation of minor damage that ceases to be so minor halfway through the battle (as I often experience playing gunboat DDs). So, the heal is great. But I remember maybe one game where I made a mistake, lost 3/4 of my hp, somehow survived, healed up what I could and lived to contribute to the battle afterwards. Usually a serious mistake just means a trip to port. Even DDs are usually more forgiving due to better stealth and lack of citadels.

Stealthy DDs are better off going first IF they can count on support (or handle themselves in particular match-up). Spot while unspotted, let your support engage (preferably support means gunboats, don't count on cruisers too much as they are further back AND don't draw attention so much) - only then you open fire to dispatch enemy DDs quicker.

...that's stupid. RDF is going to be useless for sealclubbing - it's a skill that can counter DD ambushes and/or flanking, how often do beginners actually do that (and well enough for the skill to be useful)?

Evasive maneuver is a joke. Many times had I wished my returning strike planes to be FASTER. Their health and detectability never bothered me. If anything, lower speed is shooting myself in the foot - it's a noob trap because I do remember many, many situations where my fighter cover was a bit too late to intercept enemy strike group - and then too slow to avenge the drop because the planes without their load were pretty much the same speed as my fighters. Not anymore with this skill - now I could catch up to them and strafe through them. And sure, they have more hp so I won't kill as many as I would otherwise but, guess what: "otherwise" would often mean no barrage run at all! This skill is less than useful - it's simply harmful for most carriers. As for Emergency Takeoff, that's a nice bonus I might pick having some spare points with nothing to spend them on. A bit of a bonus that might help me deal with snipes and/or pesky DDs. Nothing crucial though since being caught with my pants down will usually still mean a trip to the bottom. I do like the flattened tree though. We don't need the CV skill tax (Air Supremacy) to require 5 points and 15 point captain.

Also, pre-aimed guns are a big thing when it comes to DDs. I've won some DDvsDD fights because I appeared in a place the opponent didn't expect me. I also lost some being outplayed similarly. Now - if one of the two has the skill - all the guessing and tactical play goes down the drain, you just KNOW where the opponent is.

Like bringing in more BBs to populate this dying class? No, seriously, I'm not nearly as extreme as some with my evaluation of RPF (frankly, I do believe it will wreck Team Battles and hurt Ranked Battles but won't be very noticeable in Randoms) but the general trend of wrecking anything that's not a BB is... worrisome. BBs got new tools to deal with fires. Their secondary build got more AA and their AA build got buffed (+20% AA instead of +10% on BFT). DE got nerfed - but NOT FOR BBS, it now helps their secondary builds! Oh, and did I mention that BBs now CAN - if they want - go AA and Secondaries simultaneously? There is a big overlap and they have enough skill points for both. BBs got new tools to deal with other classes - and while they need to choose who they want to be most effective against, the tools to choose from are there. Other classes? Well, the anti-air and anti-DD roles were buffed with new skills and tweaks to old ones. So, those who want to fight against BB counters got somewhat buffed. The anti-BB role, on the other hand, got nerfed: fires were the only tool for many ships to deal with BBs and now fires got nerfed. All this happens in BB0heavy meta where there is simply too many Battleships!

Not sure about your numbers, but I can explain to You where your problems might be. It's the way things stack. If you use a +100% XP camo, +50% XP flag and get a +50% first win AND have a Papa Papa on top of that, you get +200% XP - meaning x3 (300% )normal XP for the battle. Free XP is calculated based on that number. And that free XP is then multiplied by 4 (+300%). So, you get 300%x4 = 1200% - twelve times the number earned normally by similar battle. Now, let's change only one thing: swap +100%xp camo for +200% freeXP camo. What does it mean? Well, you get +100% XP, meaning 200% normal XP. That's the base for free XP. Then freeXP is increased by +300% (Papa Papa)+200% (camo), meaning +500%. So x6 freeXP. So... you get 200%x6 = 1200%. So, you should - on your regular 1st win - get the same free XP with +200% freeXP as with +100% XP. And if it's not a 1st win, it gets even worse. with +100% XP camo, +50% XP flag and Papa Papa you get 250%*4=10000% free XP With +50XP flag, Papa Papa and +200% Free XP flag you get 150%*6 = 900% free XP - less than with XP camo.