Verblonde

Well, that sucks; I guess someone important at WG caught the person responsible for DDs in bed with his wife, and beloved pet poodle (Fifi). Again. There is no-way WG can't see this coming from orbit, so presumably they've decided that stealth play is too complicated for their 'volume' consumers to deal with...?

Assuming the hybrids aren't restricted, then that's everything stealthy unplayable in the relevant tiers for the duration; that's assuming the hybrids' planes work in a broadly similar way to regular CV ones. As always, the real threat from planes isn't really the damage (although the return of cross-dropping, if the hybrids get torp bombers, will be 'fun' to deal with), but rather the spotting...

If she didn't have the 'may be nerfed' label and if submarines weren't about to happen, I would have bought her right away (she's real, and I seem to have developed a filthy pagoda habit) - I don't play BBs much outside of Ops/Coop though, so there is too high a probability of her getting shafted by one of subs or (less likely) nerfs before I got value from my purchase. It's a pity; besides being real, she's very pretty, and would probably be fun in Narai (although I already have, amongst other things, Scharn - twice - and Ashitaka, with Kobayashi dress, which cover me off nicely for suitable BBs). I've fought both with and against several, but always in DDs; she's seems to be pretty typical for a BB in that sort of context...

+1 to @Aragathor for the interesting history - cheers!

I know, I know - I seem to be the only silly bugger under the known sky who isn't any good with her...

I intend staying in Bronze; I'll probably try and bag R1 at least once, for the hell of it, but that's it. I've spent the last few battles getting to grips with Vampire II, so I imagine Haida will be a logical progression for Ranked; it doesn't hurt that she's actively good too. Z-39 is always good value as well. I vaguely wonder if I should make another attempt to get the hang of Belfast; I seem to be the only person that has one and royally sucks playing her...

Didn't even try; too grindy for silver, so I just played things I wanted to rather than optimal picks for the missions...

FTFY. When AA mattered, Texas was splendid; these days, she's fodder for CVs same as everything else! Whilst Texas isn't a catastrophically bad choice in general terms (she's a real ship for a start), most T5 BBs aren't something you'll play a lot long-term - they tend to be food for CVs, and are often slow and cumbersome to play; also, because of the way MM works (specifically with regard to protected MM up to T4), you'll get up-tiered a lot which can be very frustrating. If you want a premium BB, I might suggest one of the T6 ones; compared to T5s they have the significant advantage of being usable in all but one of the Ops (Narai at T7 is the exception, and - sadly - there's no sign of WG bringing back the T8 ones), and generally being good picks for them. The point is that you'll probably still get value from a T6 BB long after you've mostly stopped playing a T5. Also, submarines are being introduced soon, and they could easily trash the main game modes that they're added to (just Ranked initially, but there is zero chance of WG pulling back on them regardless of how that turns out); things you can escape into Ops with may well be good to have because of that too.

To me, this smells of dumbing down the game, which is rarely a good idea; one aspect of WOWS that I value is that it forces me to think (I can play other things if I want 'mindless'). On the other hand, as others have mentioned, there's been no team damage in WOT for ages, and it doesn't seem to have ruined the game (at least not noticeably). It *might* even work out as an improvement, as you'll still get punished for torping your own side...

I'm not sure yet, really - still single figures games, and I've made a complete hash of at least half of them! I think the 'T10 Haida' label mostly holds up (so far), but I think she may be harder to play, although that could be at least partly because I've got used to not playing at weekends and focusing on the smaller teams/maps of Ranked. Compared to Daring, the lack of a heal makes her more unforgiving, but I'm liking the better concealment a lot (ditto the extra reach on the torps, although you only get one launcher, of course, and they aren't very fast), not to mention the 5 km hydro. I suspect she may well be extremely useful in competitive modes where you don't have to be an 'army of one' as much. Most of my embarrassing early exits from battle so far have been largely due to having no-one supporting me; this is entirely on me in that I should have worked out that I wasn't going to get help, but it's worth mentioning, as I suspect this sort of thing may make Daring better for Randoms. Regardless, Vampire II is great fun so far, and - given I'll never be a good player - that's what I'm really after. If she's anything like Haida, I should be able to manage at least 'average' with a bit of consistent practice... Edit: a lot seems to depend on whether the enemy lets you play mobile angry smoke cloud or not; today's lunch break consisted of this when the opposition did: (I was heavily loaded with signals; in more meaningful terms, that was 2,251 base xp, and second in my team)

Resisting the urge to make the obvious "the one that half a dozen of your torps just hit" type jokes: Either of the US or IJN line if you want to learn the basics; for the non-aficionado, the main difference appears to be that the US line gets HE dive bombers, whilst the IJN get AP. I prefer the IJN line personally, because I find the bombs more useful (you've got rockets to make DDs lives miserable) . The Germans are quite worthwhile, if only for the variety - their rockets are AP which are perhaps a bit more interesting to use. The British CVs are probably the last choice, although I'm fond of Furious (although that's entirely on historical/aesthetic grounds). If you can't be bothered to play the silver lines; just buying Ark Royal (or the soon to be removed Loewenhardt) will do the job - they (along with the silver T6s) are very worthwhile for Ops, and you won't spoil anyone else's game there. Full disclosure: I don't really like CVs either, and mine spend almost all their time in Coop or (especially) Ops; if you want an opinion on which to use against real people, you want one of the CV meisters on the forum...

Thank you! That game was streamed? I had no idea. That was my first (and, so far, only) game in Vampire II; glad I wasn't a complete disaster - I felt a bit disjointed as I was trying to get a feel for the ship...

I must admit, the upcoming submarines and nerfable premiums are making even an inveterate whale like me less likely to spend; about the only things I'm likely to get value from before the game gets potentially trashed (or the ships themselves get trashed) are DDs now. I would have bitten their hands off for Repulse until quite recently; now, I suppose I might if she looks like she's great fun in Ops (emphasis on 'fun' as I have plenty of options that are good already), but otherwise, nah...

Will do! I've only played one battle so far (Randoms), so it's very early days; she does looks distinctly promising though: any DD at T10 with sub-6 km surface detection is nice, and in most respects, she really is a T10 Haida. I've plonked both hydro and smoke coal mods on mine, which gives you about two minutes run time for both (120 sec, and 117 sec, respectively); the only real issue I had with making best use of the combination was that in my battle it was quite rare that I wasn't the only one with LoS to suitable targets, so it was common that letting others spot whilst I played angry wandering smoke cloud wasn't possible. Vampire II is also *slightly* faster than Daring (36.8 kts, versus 35 kts), and gets engine boost (usual 8% for two minutes without mods etc.), which isn't entirely irrelevant. The other thing to recall, of course, is the old perennial 'no silver ships' captain issue: I imagine most people on here will have either a decent captain available from one of Haida, Perth, or even the original Vampire, or have no shortage of elite xp to create one, but a lot of players may not have a good enough Commonwealth captain to hand. FWIW I was using my 19 pointer that I built for Haida, and the skill build seems to transfer over pretty well. For me, she is sufficiently different to Daring to be worth having, but Haida is one of my favourite ships, and I do err towards sneakier ships; for a more definitive view though, I'll wait until I have at least double figures battles in her...

Three lines (I think - both IJN DD lines, plus the Russian cruisers), although I've reset the IJN torp line multiple times, most recently on the day of the latest bonus reset. I've technically only bought two ships (the most recent being Vampire II this morning), but a lot of the free xp for my Smaland came from the RB (before that option was removed)...

Besides what everyone else has said, are you a fellow WOT player too? It's worth noting that the spotting damage mechanic works differently in the two games, so - for reasons others have outlined - you have to try a bit harder to get it in WOWS...

I occasionally wonder if players should somehow demonstrate that they have at least a marginally higher IQ than their own underpants before being allowed to play DDs? Such people as your idiot there give the rest of us a bad name...

You can move any commander to any premium/special ship (of the same nation, obviously) for free. Any time that you move a captain to any silver ship that they aren't trained for, you have to pay (doubloons or resources), and the captain will be 'locked' to the silver ship you just trained them for. If you have a commander on a silver ship, you can move them to a premium for free (as per last point), but they remain trained for the silver ship they came from, so you can move them back to the silver ship afterwards for free. So, for example, the following sequence would be free: Gneis->Tirpitz->Odin->Scharn->PEF->Gneis, as there is only one silver ship involved (Gneis) and moving captains to and between premiums (the rest) is free. *Most* captains from the Armory [sic] come trained for the T1 silver ship of the relevant nation, so you have to re-train them for any silver ship you want to run them with. Occasionally, you'll get event captains either from missions or the Armory who are trained for other specific ships; for example, the recent Leroy Jenkins captain was supplied trained for Kidd (which is obviously not that helpful in that particular case from a training costs perspective as Kidd is another premium). The current Kong/Godzilla thing is another unusual case as those captains come ready trained for the relevant T8 silver BBs that feature in the related bundles...

I personally don't run it, because I dislike people knowing that there is someone nearer to them than anybody else on their team, and I seem to get better use out of spending the points on other things, *but*: I'm not a very good player, and a better player can probably get more out of the information than I can. I don't play competitive modes at a high level, where it seems that the information from RL becomes more useful (even if at higher levels there is a better chance of the person you've tagged knowing how best to react to the information that you've got them).

Nope - it's always your responsibility if your torps hit a friendly. Not torping your own side accidentally is a key skill to develop; quite apart from anything else, the situational awareness that is required tends to help win battles (the whole not going pink thing is just a not-that-valuable bonus).

I might suggest taking a pragmatic approach: what do you need the ship to do, and pick the one that'll be most useful. As others have pointed out, neither ship is going to be pulling up trees in Coop, so which one plugs a gap for you in terms of missions and suchlike? As others have pointed out, a lot of Coop battles are often essentially over before you can do much in a BB (if I'm Cooping in BBs, I usually play things with speed boosts, as they get you into useful range before the DDs have sunk everything). That said, being RN, Monarch will still be useful for bagging 'start fires' type missions etc. Lexington is your 'spotting ribbons' missions tied up in a few games, plus any of the other CV-specific things that come along. You won't usually earn epic rewards, but the simple fact of your planes being able to cover the entire map very quickly can make for quite efficient leveraging of Coop battles. If it were me, I might go with the CV; there are far more entertaining BBs for Coop matches...

They should turn up in the same location as the daily containers that you get by just playing - click on 'containers' (or whatever the exact wording is) on the left of your port screen, about two-thirds of the way down. There is sometimes a bit of a lag between claiming the containers and them actually arriving though...

Ah, you must be new here...?

Toxic is possibly a trifle harsh? This smells to me like the classic 'newbie buying a too high tier premium without knowing what to do with it' thing that we see pretty much every week, and a lot of us have done ourselves at one time or another (the IS-6 on my NA WOT account was mine). On the up-side, this one found the forum and asked sensible questions; that's a big improvement on some of the unfortunate specimens I see in game...?

If you're worried about missing out, you needn't worry about Tirpitz - as far as I know, she isn't going anywhere. Lenin is being removed though. The Dev Blog (and the usual news items, of course) isn't a bad place to keep an eye on this sort of thing: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/140 BTW if you want to learn, it's a good idea to join a clan which has members willing to teach (on voice comms, for maximum efficiency); it'll also give you some economic bonuses if they have a developed base.