Verblonde

I think that: You need to learn to play DDs, as per advice given on the thread you opened previously. This thread is going to get closed too, due to not being constructive.

Sinking BBs is doing Good Work, obviously, but you'll have more scope to do so if you: Spend a bit of time getting the necessary skill-set. Do your job as a DD properly. BTW you're mostly playing the wrong DDs if you actually want to learn how to DD (and the wrong classes too, paradoxically - you'll become a better DD player if you play some cruisers and BBs as well); the French and Ikea lines - with their lack of smoke - are really not the way to get the hang of the way to DD. Play Americans (force you to learn to shoot straight, and how to ambush), IJN (the Tao of Torping), the original KM line (the new ones suck and won't teach you smoke/hydro), and the RN (because they're flat-out excellent).

Yes, but very inconsistently. A key skill (which I still struggle with) is keeping a close enough eye on your team-mates, to see who is/isn't playing like a fully paid-up sapient life-form, and adjust your own play accordingly. This is especially important in DDs (which, at time of writing, are 71%ish of your battles) which are the embodiment of high risk-high reward; you need to watch your allies (on the mini-map especially) - which BBs are 'Deadeyes' and which are actually trying to be useful; where are your cruisers and what are they doing - can they make use of your spotting opposing DDs; are there CVs present and is yours hopeless or not; what are your DDs up to and which are/aren't specialised DD hunters, and so on.

I would suggest that this may be illustrative: TL;DR don't skip tiers. Frustration can come from many sources, but I tend to find that I get less exasperated in games where I can contribute more, and that derives from knowing your ships and how to play them. It can also be impacted by how tired you are, your mood, and many other things. At time of writing, and sorry to be boring, you probably haven't spent enough time in the low-mid tiers. This does tie in to handling frustration in that you will do better, and get less pi$$ed off, if you aren't playing in tiers that are harder than where your current skill-set has got to. So, when I'm having a bad day, I usually go with some combination of the following: Pick an 'easier' ship (or at least one that I'm less bad in), or an easier mode (I do better in Bronze Ranked than Randoms, for instance). Drop down a tier or several; sure, you can't get uptiered in a T10, but you are expected to carry your weight. Go and 4rse about in Coop; some mindless destructive fun can reduce my levels of irritation. Play something else (for me that means WOT or Valheim at the moment).

FWIW the drop rate last Xmas on these containers ('Big Gift') was roughly 10% (+/-) chance of getting a ship, and - based on my results - of the order of 50% chance of getting cammo of one sort or another.

What's the USA T9 CL? That would probably be my vote for the worst ship in the game (that I've played) bar none, tier for tier...

Play other things, when I feel I'm getting a bit fed up with WOWS; currently, Valheim is providing me with an entertaining diversion, or I can just mess about in WOT for a bit...

I tend to go with a mixture of captain xp and doubloons, but most usually the latter; that said, I don't usually move captains any more. T1-4: because of the T4 CV plague, I usually free xp most of these, or skip entirely through early access; the exception is my NA account where I keep the whaling to a minimum. T5+: I generally keep all these ships anyway (snowflakes etc.) and leave a 6+ point captain at least on everything; anything I'll actually play for real (i.e. PvP) gets a 10+ pointer.

Setting BBs on fire is (generally) a bit useless as a primary aim for a couple of reasons: firstly, fire damage is 100% healable, so all you're doing is wasting your damage on something that is a damage sponge as one of its primary functions, rather than shooting at something that matters. Incidentally, this is one reason why long-range sniping BBs are generally worthless - they remove themselves from their tanking function. The second reason, which is more pertinent to this thread, is that damage to BBs is generally the least rewarding from an earnings perspective. Whilst it's true that damage is the key reward driver in the game, the specific damage matters more - what you're really after is % damage i.e. the proportion of a target's hp that you remove, not the absolute number of hp that you remove. In short, you'll be rewarded more for doing 1,000 hp of damage to something small like a DD, than for doing identical damage to a fatty like a BB. For more on how earnings are generated, this wiki page is a good starting point: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Base_Earnings Luckily, for the purposes of this discussion, a lot of the primary targets for a cruiser are also the most rewarding; rather than wasting time on BBs, focus the enemy DDs and their supporting cruisers (*especially* radars) - besides being more likely to win (killing opposing DDs before they get yours often leads to victory), you'll make a lot more silver. All of that is not to say that fire isn't a useful tool (if a BB target has just fixed a flood, you might as well set him on fire if there isn't a DD that needs sinking, and/or if something puts out your fire, then they may be vulnerable to flooding from allied torps), but that only burning BBs to the ground is often foolish, if you aim to win, and earn decent rewards in the process.

Most likely - as @Europizza alludes to - to reduce annoyance amongst those who bought her with steel. Mine fell out of a Satan Crate, so I'm fairly relaxed about all this stuff. That said, I find Neustra to be excellent: you can do a lot more than simple 'torp truck' stuff (which is all that Z-44 is good for, really, due to meh concealment), and the zombie heal allows you to - usually - get away with at least one muck up.

That sounds about right. I do admit to wondering if some of it is that people don't know what she can do yet; specifically, getting up close and personal with opposing DDs and popping MBRB can really ruin their day - once more players realise that, they'll probably try harder to stop you doing so. Mind you, if I can do okay with her, then she'll be pretty fearsome in the hands of someone competent...

I've been playing T7-9 a bit recently, across three accounts, and this is a pretty good summary; fwiw I'm leaning towards them being the worst DD line in the game (although they're probably easier to play than, say, the French). That said, I haven't played many games in them, so I may be missing something I suppose, although whatever it is, is pretty well hidden. On the other hand, ZF-6 is looking to be really rather splendid, based on several runs out in Ranked - I like her a lot!

When talking about battle ensigns, indubitably! Bonus points if they gain holes in them as your hp are depleted during the battle...

As a general point, I feel that all ships should at least have the option of colossal battle ensigns as per the above; if your flag isn't wider than your ship, you're probably doing it wrong...

Only occasionally, when I want to move unseen amongst the peasantry, in the manner of the kings et al. of old...

First port of call is the clan recruitment page on the forum: https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/forum/508-clan-recruitment/ Bear in mind that the clan you join isn't 'forever'; you can move on when you need to (although I believe there is a cool-down period between leaving one clan and joining another). I would suggest starting off with one that mentions that it's happy to teach; one that uses voice comms is also desirable, as it's infinitely easier to coordinate and learn if you can talk in real time, rather than having to type.

I found the 'basic' Jenkins missions ludicrously easy (too many ships in port meant I had optimal picks for everything), and the 'superior' Jenkins one (I've had Kidd for years) wasn't too onerous - I just thrashed the nuts off her in Ranked (she's pretty decent for that, In Bronze, incidentally) until I ran out of games due to hitting R1, and after that moved to Randoms for the last few kills... I thought the Kidd-specific missions were a nice pat on the noggin for existing Kidd owners.

Same reasons we have all the others (that others have elucidated nicely)! So long as it doesn't include in-game guided missiles, my view is that any ship is fair game - the more variety the better. Besides which, post-war stuff that actually existed is - to me - far more desirable than vodka-fuelled fever dreams to make less well-endowed naval nations feel less inadequate...!

Nah - I got that French dakka cruiser, whatever it's called (I'm about to go into a meeting so can't check; is it Colbert, or is that the T8 thing?). It's good for missions in Coop, but I can't cruiser to save my life, so I avoid proper game modes with her...

Longer term, there never was; when reading anything from WG I always mentally insert the clause "if nothing noticeable changes" or "for the time being", whilst also reminding myself that - often - the people writing the copy are often clearly not native speakers, and working for a company with a rather relaxed attitude to consumer legislation. In this context, I find that the sensible approach when thinking about time/money is to file WOWS under the same heading as I would things like beer, partying i.e. things where you have nothing tangible at the end of proceedings (except possibly a hangover in the case of beer). So, do I mind - essentially - pi$$ing my dosh away on this, say, premium ship in much the same way as I would do the same with a case of beer? If I do mind, don't buy it... In practice, even with WG's usual approach, stuff you buy in game isn't quite as ephemeral as beer, but it's still temporary at best. Spend, or don't, accordingly.

Kinda. It's a good idea to play all the classes, and from several nations at least; the idea being to understand how all the classes work - besides possibly finding new things that you might like to play, it'll make you a better player e.g. if you know how a torp DD works, you'll be better placed to defend against them when playing other things, and so on. Don't obsess about BBs and CVs though; whilst you should learn to play them, and they can be worthwhile, the former are a bit slow/dull and harder to be influential with, whilst the latter can be a bloody menace in PvP (if you're good, you give your team a powerful advantage; if you're rubbish, you've massively gimped your team). Danae herself isn't a bad learning tool, although she does have a major snag - from a learning perspective - in that she only gets AP ammo; to learn about the ammo types and when to use which, it helps to play ships that get both AP and HE. If you want to learn to cruiser, with some torping along the way, the IJN line is very worthwhile as a starting point. If you have a powerful urge to stick with the RN though, I'd suggest going up the CA branch, as they do get HE ammo to play with (the Japanese are better though, IMO). Again, kinda. Apart from Clan Battles, you can play pretty much all the modes in the game as a solo player. That said, I would strongly suggest joining a clan, especially one with people willing to teach; besides having people who can help speed up your rate of learning, if a clan has a developed base, it'll give you a range of very useful economic bonuses.

For people with relatively low battle counts, it could be as simple as the improved economy that these things have as well - this is another way of getting a T9 premium or T10 'special' with permaflage, either of which will be much more profitable than a silver ship of the same tier. If you're still actively researching new lines, RB ships are a straightforward way to generate the necessary silver...? (Says he who - currently - has one RB ship and almost never plays it.)

I agree - it's great work. Pity I'll probably never have the ship - 2 million free xp?! I'm not sure what my personal favourite is; it's probably one of Haida's "Oh, Canada!", the Scharn one with sharks teeth, or maybe AGS' "National" one...?

They've always been (theoretically) liable to nerfs; it's one of the things that makes them not 'full' premiums (although the latest tranche of premium ships rather blur that distinction). Speaking of premiums, I note that Fenyang gets a modest reload buff; yay - she's now a marginally less carp Aki...! Slightly surprised by the RN CL nerfs; perhaps WG feel that the better players needed a slap - for a potato, these ships are already hardly easy mode.

Nerfable premium, and I can't get the pretty cammo without a bunch of worthless bumpf? Easy decision then: add it to the Satan Box (or their successors) list...