Verblonde

She's still fun in Narai...?

Presumably the former, as the OP was complaining about QE, and she's fine (apart from being, y'know, a BB)...

Many thanks! (Works on NA too, for those with accounts there.)

I'd probably go with Neustra - longevity is so important, especially if your opponent knows what they're doing. Smoke/radar on Black is glorious, but - as observed elsewhere - without it you're basically a nerfed Feltcher, and better players know how to render your party piece moot.

She's splendid; the only reason I didn't mention her is that the original query was talking about T9s (ditto some of the more interesting T8 options too, if one is paddling about in Bronze)...

If you have doubloons, the easiest way is to recruit a 10 pointer for each silver ship; that's probably 'good enough' for T5-maybe 8, although the higher you go, the more pressing the need for a higher point captain. Your ultimate goal (although it's a bit long term thanks to the recent changes - Richard move, WG!) is to get at least one 21 point captain; this isn't because they're massively more powerful than - say - an old 19 pointer, but because they generate elite xp, which speeds up the advancement of your other captains. Ideally, this captain should be assigned to a silver ship that you need a decent captain in (used for competitive modes, perhaps?), and be for a nation where you have one or more premium ships available - the idea is to be able to hoover up as many daily 'first win' bonuses as you can. As an example of this latter approach: I have a 21 pointer assigned to Gearing (I think), but I can also use him in any US premium as well; that's potentially more than thirty first win bonuses, if I stay at T5+ (and don't mind an occasional 'good enough' build here and there)...! Whilst the cost of getting a 21 point captain was WG at their most "If WG were an ice-cream flavour, they'd be Pralines & Richard", the recent change such that each captain now gets a class-specific build *partially* redeems them, as it means you can make maximum use of more premium ships with fewer (even one) captains.

Doh! Never sell a premium, ever, no matter how bad it is or how badly you gel with it. Luckily, you're not entirely Doomed; you can restore sold premiums (albeit with a 10% 'tax' I see), so I would do so as a matter of priority - Strasbourg in particular if you're short of silver; besides being the cheapest, she'll make you a lot of silver in Narai. The site you want to head to is this one: https://eu.wargaming.net/support/en/products/wows/article/27196/

Lately, I've been amazed how many hits I get with the things; I mean, I know I'm playing in Bronze, but still - it's not like you have to hit a special key combination to make your ship turn!

I would suggest playing the other classes as well - you'll do better if you know what everything else can do, and what they're trying to do to you; also, don't get too hung up on T10 - there is a lot of fun to be had on the way there as well (apart from the odd deliberate clunker that WG put in to encourage you to spend on free xp conversion). Depending on how long you've been playing, your existing steel was most likely from doing daily missions (you get a steady trickle from that), although there might be a bit from snowflakes too. It occasionally turns up in SCs as well, but they're very rare. If you want more (and don't want to play Clans), keep doing the daily missions; there is also some to be had by getting enough wins in Ranked. I would suggest not selling ships to buy the next one (T5+ anyway) for several reasons: firstly, you lose half the silver value; secondly T6-7 are useful for Ops (which can be useful earners); thirdly, snowflakes - every time there is one of these events, you miss out on coal/steel/whatever if you've sold your eligible ships. You get new port slots from daily missions, so room in your port for ships is less of an issue than it was (plus if you have doubloons, stocking up whenever there is a special offer is a good idea). If you're out of credits all the time, despite running premium time, you may need to refine what you're doing in game. The crucial driver of rewards is damage, and more specifically relative damage; what this means is that you want to be shooting smaller ships - 10K damage to a DD will reward you a lot more than absolutely the same damage done to a fatty. You also want to shoot things that are higher tier than you, when sensible (there's a bonus for damaging higher tiers). You may find this page useful to read: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Economy As to containers, stick with 'more resources' - the coal is generally the most valuable thing you'll get from a container (lucky SCs aside) with 400 as a minimum. Recall that the T10 coal ships can be very good earners, compared to silver equivalents, as they come with permaflage *and* have half the repair cost. Of course, T9 premiums for coal are even better earners still, all things being equal. It's the same as for any other captain: you need to retrain them when you switch them between silver ships, but you can plonk them in any premium of the same nation without retraining. Something that's worth noting: although captains don't work at 100% if not fully retrained in a silver ship, they still work fine in premiums, so a common approach (to save resources) is to partially train your captain for his new silver ship, and then finish his training off by playing him in premiums. Further on the subject of captains: when you have enough silver T10 ships (I think it's five) you get access to the RB; *if* you want to, you can then regrind lines for RP (which can be exchanged for various things, including premium ships); if you do this, it helps to have a 'good enough' captain for each ship that you'll actively play in your 'regrind line' (it's generally sensible to do the same line repeatedly rather than lots of different lines, for this reason), so you avoid having to repeatedly retrain a single captain each time you go up the same line again, and again.

You're absolutely right. For doing tolerably (my minimum target, speaking as a distinctly tuberous player) in Ranked, I find the radar is the crucial one to keep an eye on though, as that's (for me) the consumable that makes Black such a monster; it really does help to have played the EU radar DDs though - with Black you suddenly have this lovely fluffy security blanket *as well* that you didn't have before...!

It's perhaps worth noting (in Ranked anyway) that it isn't uncommon to be able to use your opponent's smoke as well as/instead of your own: Encounter opposing DD. Opposing DD pops smoke. Fire up radar and teach him the error of his ways. Use existing smoke cloud to cover whatever you want to do next, adding your own if necessary. If you don't pop your own, it can make it harder for the opposition to guess exactly where you are because they'll only have seen the smoke cloud forming in relation to their own side's DD that laid it. That isn't to say the advice to keep them in sync is bad (quite the reverse, in fact), but rather there is potential for variation that can be useful... (Radar DDs making use of sunk opponents' smoke is a nasty habit I got into playing Smaland/Orkan.)

I was under the impression that she was generally felt to be fairly decent, if you have the skill-set to match. Predictably, I'm usually awful in her, but still...

For context, I've been playing exclusively in Bronze this season, and I'm not a good player: I would probably pick Neustra first, simply because of the heal and 'general purpose' nature of the ship - she's decent pretty much regardless of the opposition, and that heal usually allows me to get away with at least one mistake. After that (for me), Black and Benham are similarly useful (and I do often pick them first, if I'm feeling awake enough to make fewer mistakes); in Bronze there are plenty of people who aren't good at dealing with DD radar, and walls of skill, respectively. In both cases, the smoke can be very useful too, although you do have to think a bit strategically about its use; we've all seen 'those' DD drivers who blind most of their team with an ill-judged smoke cloud for very little gain. BTW I would rate both Jutland and Oster as being in the same sort of league as all of my favourites; the only reason I don't make more use of both is that they - obviously - don't get the premium economy (I think I have a high enough point captain for both, otherwise that would be a factor as well). 'Best' is highly subjective, and does depend a bit on the opposition...

FWIW I've found Neustra very effective for Ranked, although I'm not a good player - she does come in several percentage points above my usual Randoms WR in Ranked. She has a decent balance between guns and torps, is pretty sneaky, and has (for a DD) 'good enough' AA; the crucial factor for me seems to be her heal though - that quite often gives you the longevity needed to maximise the impact you have on the game. Besides her, I've mostly been playing Benham and Black, although a lot of that is to do with the rewards (from being premiums) as well as their effectiveness...

Yes - assuming the clan in question has a reasonably developed base, you get bonuses to the silver, coal, and steel that you earn; there's also an upgrade for RP too, but I imagine that won't be relevant to you yet? Make sure that you pick a clan that is happy for you to be PvE only; there are some that are fine with that (we have at least one PvE-only person in the clan I'm in, for instance).

No idea which ship is the worst statistically-speaking, but Seattle is the ship I enjoyed playing least - she really is pretty dreadful (and, yes, I do have Cheshire - may the volcano gods be merciful!)...

IMO, they're all good in one way or another, although my Lenin doesn't get much use because of, y'know, BB Cooties. T-61, tier-for-tier, is a strong candidate for the best DD in the game; I don't believe she's as OP as many think, but a lot of that is due to planes, radar, and MM. She is certainly very good though - perhaps the closest to being a 'must have' in your list. Haida is one of my favourite DDs in the game; she's pretty much Cossack only a tier lower and with a marching band or similar on deck who won't shut up (hence worse concealment), plus less bad AA. That said, we all know about the issues with T7 MM at the moment, although I feel Haida copes better than most due to decent concealment. If you have the resources, she's very much worth having, but I would pick T-61 first. Asashio is (I think) still my most played DD, although most of that was in the early days (I've played her a lot less since the reework); because she's exceptional at ruining BBs' days, I feel that every righteous DD player should have one - anything that pushes back against WG's h4rd-on for BBs has to be a good thing. More objectively, I don't think she's 'essential' (there are several other sneaky torp boat options around that tier), plus - as observed elsewhere - the black version will probably come back later in the year. I'm not really qualified to comment on where Lenin sits in relation to the others on your list, as I don't play mine against real people (to me, she feels a bit like a T8 Nelson, only rather better)...

Not really - the information they contain is usually exceptionally well researched. I wouldn't get too hung up on the final 'mehbote' etc. ratings - as she implies, half of them are tongue-in-cheek; the other thing to be mindful of is that her reviews regularly get overtaken by events (as do everyone else's come to that). So, I would view her reviews as an extremely good source of information, and then what you do with that information is up to you...

Depends a lot on what you already have, and what you like playing, and in what sort of way. I have Yoshino and have enough coal for Marco Polo (but I read the LWM review); I'm a DD main, but not a very good player - 48% overall WR, or it was the last I looked. In that context: Neither is 'essential', but either/both could be useful, depending on what you already have. If I had neither, I might be tempted to get Yoshino first because there is more already in the game that does what Marco Polo does i.e. fairly standard BB things. That said, what Yoshino does (spam HE from a long way away, and occasionally get a chance to use her torps, assuming you aren't into torping your own side from behind) isn't wildly exciting, and most 'useful' if you're trying to do missions, IMO. Apart from the SAP, Marco Polo is a fairly typical BB (no smoke), so not wildly interesting either. If LWM is right (and she seems to be a lot more often than she isn't), Marco Polo rather needs Deadeye to be effective at longer ranges, and there are better things to fight at distance with (plus Deadeye is for the chop), and she's a bit too short on hp to fight more effective at manly distances than several other choices. So, if it were me, I would get Yoshino first if I had a need to start fires from long range (and felt able to deal with all the Deadeye BBs until the skill is removed, and don't mind not being able to make use of BB skills on supercruisers any more), and Marco Polo first if I didn't already have any other typical T9 BBs, and/or didn't need a long-range HE spamming supercruiser. I do find Yoshino to be more fun than most 'normal' BBs in Coop though, but fast and/or manly BBs (Georgia, JB, Pommern) are all more fun than she is - YMMV of course.

For the more puerile, Aoba does have the merit of becoming - with the addition of a suitable cammo (Twitch, perhaps) - a Purple Aoba (pun on 'oboe')... <tumbleweed and crickets>

Normally, I likes me some containers; but having to play cruisers in Ranked in the current meta? <contemplates priorities for a moment> <undoes trousers> <liberally applies jam> <wanders off in search of ant hill to belly-crawl over>

Nah, although I did buy the coal via the Armory [sic]...

I was just comparing her to the vanilla Daring i.e. WG might be thinking along the lines of 'okay, we made a more powerful Daring - if we remove the heal, that will be fine, da?' <drinks vodka> It doesn't have to make sense, of course; I just wondering if that is the thought process...

Vampire as it stands looks distinctly promising to me too, and I'm about as far away from being a good player as I am from being prima ballerina at the Bolshoi...!

I'm a bit rusty on this, but from memory (UK law): Was/now type messaging requires the product to have been on sale at the higher price previously (it used to be 28 days, although it *may* have changed to a 'reasonable' amount of time). You can do MSRP/Our Price type stuff without selling at the higher price first. Bundle pricing, which is what WG usually go in for, is - I think - kosher. For instance, Marco Polo alone doesn't show as a reduced price, but the bundles do. I do think that plonking 'special offer' tag on the plain 'ship only' Marco Polo is probably against the rules though...