Verblonde

Apropos Vampire - perhaps the working assumption is that having no heal balances out the rest...?

I do tend to try and keep an open mind - people in glass houses and all that! That said, I tend to groan inwardly if more than one of the following conditions are met: Newly added premium; bonus points for high tier. CV, especially top tier. Non-clan player; bonus points for 'sniper' in the name and/or noted German general.

I'm rubbish in cruisers, so I'll always pick one of the DDs; of the two, I much prefer Neustrashimy - zombie heal, good concealment, and 'good enough' torps/guns. For me, her key plus is survivability - as we all know, the longer a DD lasts (if it's doing useful things) in a game, the more impact it tends to have, and Neustra is excellent in that regard.

This. I voted 'Cherry Blossom' as it was probably the most use of the discontinued ones (more ship choices), although Dynamo was probably my favourite...

I'm another 'wait and see': It might fall out of a crate. It's a BB, which I probably won't play much anyway. There *might* be a coal destroyer in the pipeline that I don't know about (although I'm gloomily assuming that Vampire II will be another 2 million free xp effort). Still, I agree she does look very pretty...!

If they could blag her as a convincing T6, I'd open my wallet (provided Ops are still a thing by whenever that happens)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_aircraft_carrier_Béarn To be fair, she looks rather like a potential T4 though...

Thanks, @lovelacebeer! (Works on NA too, at time of writing)

If that's the case (it's the only Op I actively avoid, because it always used to be far too unreliable a use of my time, and was almost never actually fun), I might give it another go - thanks for the heads up. Not sure I have any of these for Newport..!

Of the coal ships (I have all three, but suck in at least two, probably all of them), Salem is probably the most 'useful', due to radar and powerful heal - assuming you know how to avoid non-healable damage. She's also 'cosplay Graf Spee', so there's that. Really, it comes down to the sort of ship you gel best with, as they're all very distinct. Marceau, for instance, is glorious fun but very hard to do well with unless you're a meister with the garlic-flavoured 'drive it like you stole it' playstyle (I'm not). I don't have either of the RB ships mentioned, but I would pick Ohio - always take the more manly option; you know it makes sense!

This is worth noting (if the methodology is repeated); to get an Enterprise via the 'usual' method (Satan crates) requires you already have a *lot* more premium ships in port. It's much cheaper to buy just the premium CVs than to buy everything else that you don't want to fall out of a crate before whatever you do turns up...

I spent some doubloons, although 'embarrassed' would be rather closer to my feelings on the subject: Primary reason was to avoid having to play T4-5 BBs, and early access isn't an entirely inefficient way of doing that. A few permaflages thrown in are a not entirely worthless bonus. That said, I'm probably not what WG was hoping for, as I don't care that much about anything beyond the T7 that I got from the mission chain (my mid-tier BBs live in Ops, and I have premiums for Coop mission grinding at T8+), so my spend wasn't enough to cover much more than a small glass of vodka...

Having meh rewards is a modest win for me: means I don't have to play the mode. I'm wondering if WG have collectively learned something recently - over in WOT you don't have to play the latest iteration of Steel Hunter either (you did previously, if you wanted the reward tanks); by doing things this way, you (WG that is) may not get the warm fuzzy glow of high participation numbers on the spreadsheet, but you do avoid pi$$ing off people by putting an interesting reward behind a disliked mode...

IMO T-61 is probably the best T6 DD; she's a great pick for T6 competitive (when that happens), not to mention fearsome in more prosaic modes. If you have Z-39, I wouldn't rate her as 'essential', but she is extremely nice to have (and I prefer mine to Z-39)... (Apply coal hydro mod too.)

Worry not: I'm sure they'll return in a post-capture-by-the-glorious-Soviet-forces form (suitably buffed, of course), possibly along with a similarly treated Novorossiysk...

I'm not qualified to comment on Lenin (mine gets used for missions in Coop generally), but Haida is excellent - probably my favourite T7 DD. She's - to a greater or lesser degree - a nerfed Cossack a tier lower, but with crawling smoke; add a coal mod or two for maximum effect... The only real down-side to Haida (IMO) is the fact that there aren't any silver ships to grab a decent captain from, but with the recently added ability to snag a ten pointer for doubloons that's less of an issue than it was (or if you have Perth, say, already).

I'd suggest it's a bit more nuanced than a flat-out good/bad thing, and I imagine the better CV players know this. My (DD main) view is along the following lines: A CV's most powerful impact is through spotting and denying the opposition spotting (i.e. neutralising DDs); I rejoice when the opposing CV goes into damage farming mode (usually against BBs) from the off, as it means I have a much freer hand. How much use fighters are to friendly DDs is very situational; for instance, early game, plonking a fighter over a friendly DD is often a big flashing 'here he is!' sign, whereas later on it can be invaluable - I've been playing several DDs with heals recently, and fighter cover can be very helpful after you've been shot up a bit; you can heal a lot of damage, but AA defences don't grow back. So, early fighter use should probably be mostly about spotting, with potential defensive use becoming more useful later in the game. This illustrates nicely what many have been saying for ages: the game needs better (any?) tutorials. The key message that newer players get is to blow stuff up; the whole thing about percentage damage gets lost. When you realise that it's percentage damage that generates the rewards, rather than absolute damage, blowing up opposing DDs suddenly makes infinitely more sense; possibly fortunately for me, most CV drivers never seem to take this on board.

What @Yedwy said, although I can see why WG might not be keen: No CVs in Gold (as previously mentioned), plus there'll be a lot of whining about full-fat Belfast too. Anyone with a Kami (maybe GC too?) will have a field day in Bronze, if there isn't a competent CV present. I still hope they do it though - it would make a nice change from the usual top tiers...

Me neither, although I've played rather fewer games - probably in the 20-40 range, at a guess. Although I tend to get bored if I play too many games in a row, I quite like the mode for a bit of a change. I'm increasingly preferring smaller team modes as I'm less reliant on my notional allies, and you can't get a smaller team than just you...

Polemic? That's a far politer word than I might have chosen! FWIW I assume the reverse, until there is evidence to the contrary; mind you, 'CV skill estimation' has become rather an important part of DDing these days...

Rarely, but it happens to my DDs often enough to be a nuisance. Obviously, you can't avoid continuous damage, but a competent player can easily avoid sufficient flak clouds to ensure a solid strike, if not two; assuming they did it right, that'll shred the bulk of your AA and you're a sitting duck from there on. AA isn't all useless, and I never claimed as much, *but* while most players may take significant damage from less bad AA ships there are enough that don't to be a problem. Naturally, I take damage from flak myself but this is because I'm not very good in CVs (and have no inclination to make people more miserable than I have to for missions), and that bears no relation to whether or not other people can avoid flak or not - I'm pretty sure that, say, @El2aZeR and I are not quantum entangled such that my inability to avoid flak reliably makes him suddenly start driving into it. All of which is rather off-topic: my point was that a premium DD with actively good AA might well be a good seller - I'd pay money for something that was largely immune to, say, same tier CVs (beyond the obvious spotting issues) i.e. something roughly akin to what Kidd was like pre-rework.

I do wonder if WG missed a trick with AA and premiums (I'm obviously mostly thinking about DDs): if AA actually worked, as opposed to only really working against idiots (and people who can't be bothered), I would expect that to be a powerful draw for sales of premiums. For instance: Benson lost the AA hull (although I vaguely recall that AA got buffed on the B hull, for what that's worth); if AA worked, I'd probably pay money for a premium C hull Benson, but only if AA worked. Mind you, we sort of had this with Kidd, right up to the point where AA got gutted; Kidd is still a decent ship, of course, but it's not really because of the AA. I miss the old 'stealth AA' ambush days...

I haven't been paying much attention to Marco Polo, as she strikes me as just another BB (only with SAP); I can strongly recommend Pommern for Coop though, especially with a semi-manly (at least) build - she's glorious at closer ranges...

Isn't she a Gleaves? Loyang is C hull Benson (for the obvious reason)...

Time for someone to dust off the BBaby Bingo card...?