Verblonde

This has been the standard for a while now for WG: for the first phase of their release, new premiums are placed in the 'no discounts' section - it's common practice across various 'sellers of stuff', designed to wring maximum profit from the early adopters.

Do you have anything else with DWT that you could test? Either way, this might call for a ticket to WG...?

Mine appears to be behaving as usual: (Worked normally when zoomed out as well...)

Before I go and check mine, what were you locked on to? Fenyang has DWT, so the prediction cone almost vanishes when you're locked onto something you can't hit - it wasn't that was it?

As it is Written:

C'mon, they're just gently taking the pi$$... You may or may not be aware, but the bulk of people on here aren't WG employees (and those that are have appropriate tags on their profiles); so, if you have a technical issue which isn't universal (which this sounds like; if lots of people were losing premium time, there would already be uproar), your best bet is to - as others mentioned - put a ticket in to customer service. On the whole, this forum is actually pretty decent with plenty of helpful folk around; you just need to be asking the 'right' questions...

Oof - if I were feeling tactless, I might suggest finding a new clan! In Ranked, DDs are especially important to winning the game, if played well, and the exact reverse if not; people will get *very* annoyed if you're losing them games by making all the silly newbie mistakes that we all made. I don't disagree with the notion that small map competitive modes (like Ranked) can be useful learning modes (due to fewer ships to keep track of, and smaller maps), but not for learning the basics and especially not in an influential class like DDs. The key things to focus on IMO: Situational awareness: make your mini-map as big as possible (and use it. A lot.), enable as many range circles as you can process, and enable the alternative interface mode (in the control tab of options). One of two most important things to master. The other one is the vision mechanics and how they work (goes double for most DDs). Learning to shoot straight, where, and with which ammo. How armour works, including how to angle.

Yup - 4.5 km versus 9.2 km...

I'm rubbish with cruisers, and I do find Flint especially hard work in Randoms, even by my usual standards; that said, she's still worth playing - I get quite good value from mine in Narai and Coop (missions) instead of Randoms.

It provided me with Yukikaze, which I like a lot (not that this ship *required* AL to be in WOWS, but I assume it provided a bit of impetus)...

Not actively. If I get enough for something interesting, great, but - for example - I won't actively try and persuade people to start playing the game as a new thing: T4 CV plague makes the 'learning' tiers deeply unpleasant. The recent captain rework puts newcomers at a spectacular disadvantage, compared to old lags, due to the unreasonable cost for a maxed out captain. Submarines: why suggest people play a game that may well change out of all recognition, and very soon too, and - quite likely - for the worse?

I'm rubbish in cruisers, but I'd rate this as a definite yes: Your smoke reload time is 160 secs; that's quite a long time to not be as sneaky as you can be. With a fully sneaky build your concealment drops to 8.3 km - you can do a lot with that.

I thought it was - bonus points, sir! (I was struggling to find an emoji that conveyed "I see what you did there, and it made me laugh!" without causing offence on the off-chance it was an actual grammatical clanger...!)

That's certainly true, but we do have both on the forum; the Gameplay section is usually the best place to ask questions where you want expert feedback - there are a few 'CV Gods' who periodically post on there; ditto for the other classes. Although not universally the case (there are quite a lot of folk at T10 who shouldn't really be playing above about T6), as you go up the tiers, you start to meet more experienced players more frequently; these people will be more practiced in things like evasive manouevring, angling, and so on, all of which make getting solid hits harder. Edinburgh (and all the other RN CLs, come to that) is notoriously squishy, and not 'easy mode'; you're also facing opponents with really big overmatching guns, many of whom can aim. I'm a poor cruiser player, but I spend most of my time keeping a very close eye on my mini-map (useful habit from being a DD main, although everyone should do it); the key aim is to try and ensure you don't give anyone your broadside. Cruisers are one of the harder classes to play and the combination of (generally) poor armour and inviting citadels is part of the reason why. The other difficulty with playing higher tier RN CLs is that they generally rely on their smoke for survivability; at higher tiers, you are more likely to encounter players who are good at countering angry smoke clouds, and - with your smoke nullified - you're just another squishy target. The other challenge with the RN CLs is that they only get AP ammo, so your aim and positioning have to be spot-on, and there isn't much you can do against a well angled target. For a relative newcomer, I would strongly recommend not playing the RN CLs as a first cruiser line. Instead, focus on - perhaps - either the IJN (good all-rounders, and worthwhile learning tools), or the Russians (the 'original' line that goes via Chapy; their guns have great ballistics, so are useful for aiming practice, and you get the 12 km radar from T8). BTW if you want to get a sense of your ships' armour layouts, where their citadels are and similar, it's worthwhile using the armour viewer option in port ('Armor Layout', top right, just under the captain panel). This, for example, is Edinburgh, showing only her citadel and turret armour:

?!!

If you hover over the person's name, a card - as above - pops up; you just click on 'Ignore User', and you're sorted. (Naturally, I didn't actually click in this example.)

This. (If anyone doesn't know about this stuff, this article from a few years back is a good primer: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/worlds-biggest-grave-robbery-asias-disappearing-ww2-shipwrecks)

I tend to agree that it's a bit of a pi$$-take, but it is how it's always been (with occasional exceptions like the recent Leroy Jenkins - sp? - who came trained for Kidd). It's one area where WOT aren't more robbing swine than WOWS - when you get crew there from missions, they generally sit in a 'recruits' section, and they only get assigned to nation/tanks/roles when you recruit them. As an aside, if you're going to spend doubloons to get a 10 point captain for a silver ship, it's cheaper to recruit them directly from the ship's captain screen - there your 1,500 (?) doubloons gets you a 10 pointer trained for that specific ship, whereas captains from the Armory [sic] come trained for the nation's T1 and then have to be retrained to the specific silver ship you want.

To maximise the majesty, I put that Frosty Fir 'extreme gastric distress' cammo on mine earlier - glorious! My enemies will be too busy shielding their eyes to shoot at me; I'm a tactical genius, I tell you... Also, encouragingly, mine came with a most satisfactorily mustachioed captain; when I get to try him (and the ship) out later, victory is inevitable! BTW as is customary with these early access things: everyone - remember to equip to the top modules (they come researched but not fitted)...

Ah - I hadn't considered that aspect; might give it a look later then...

On the basis of only a few (fingers of one hand, max) Coop battles, I do - she's basically a variant on the IJN T8 cruiser theme, with a healing potion, but down a couple of barrels; the planes are just a bonus - with the longer cooldown (compared to Ise), you won't be using them as frequently; that isn't a bad thing though, as you generally can't do the Ise thing of fire main guns, launch and attack with planes, and be back in time for the guns to finish reloading (except possibly for suicidally close range targets). Mine probably won't see much PvP use as I'm all kinds of hopeless with cruisers (although I tend to dislike playing healing cruisers less than the regular ones), but she'll be useful for missions and general messing about in Coop. I do wonder if Tone's planes are a kind-of test to see how nerfing the planes on Ise might go...?

I'm not intending to at the moment; there's no powerful reward reason to do so, and I'm not really interested in entirely made-up super-fatties, alas. If I get bored, I might give it a look at some point, I suppose, but not really keen...

Don't worry too much about captains for Ops; they're actually a pretty good place to develop newer ones (although I often play 21 pointers to generate elite xp, it doesn't have a huge impact on match outcome most of the time). More useful is to either watch YouTube videos on how to do each Op, and/or division with people who are already familiar - it'll make you less likely to mess up, and help maximise rewards (Ops are generally predictable, so the trick is often about doing what needs to be done, at the right time, and with maximum efficiency). You're very kind, but be aware I'm merely an average DD player at best (and sub-average when you take all my PvP battles across all classes into consideration). I have played a very wide range of ships though, so my experience has perhaps quite a lot of breadth, if not much depth! So, any tips from me are from the perspective of an average player; if you're after the word from the unicums, you're better off listening to other people (but look at their stats - not everyone who says they're an expert is!).

Anything like that, report the buggers, blacklist them, and never think of them again. Everyone makes mistakes; that goes double when first learning. That said, higher tiers are really not the place to get better; despite their many faults, WG have done a reasonable job of introducing new things in phases as you go up the tiers (with the big exception of the CV plague at T4, which is a damn nuisance), so you'll generally do better mastering your trade at lower tiers before venturing higher. Sure, at higher tiers you get more powerful ships, but then so does everyone else; the other crucial difference concerns captains - at higher tiers there is a better chance that you'll face people with significantly more powerful captains; if you don't have one, you'll be at a noticeable disadvantage. Again, I would urge you to play all classes too: even if you want to focus on DDs, you'll do much better in them if you can play cruisers and fatties at least a bit. Also, play DDs of other nations more; for instance, playing the Americans more will improve your gunnery-related kung fu (not to mention how to ambush people with short-range torps), which will help you with the IJN DDs (they have great alpha, but low RoF, and because you're so reliant on stealth you want to make blowing that stealth count, so you can vanish again before enemy supporting fire sinks you).

I'll stay out of this one, except to say that - don't forget - this is an arcade game first and foremost, so more realistic elements like ammo limits will always be trumped by gameplay considerations. After north of 15K games, I still don't know what is needed to 'fix' CVs, if indeed it can be done. Personally though, the damage they do is usually the least of my worries - what gets me is the spotting. That said, I play something like three quarters of my games in DDs (against real people anyway), which impacts my view of the class. Rather than suggesting fixes (that WG will generally ignore), you'll probably find it less frustrating in the short term to focus on working out how to play round things as they are...