Verblonde

My gods! It's tasteless and vulgar! Spectacularly so!! I want one! BTW can you get the snake cammo via any means other than the bloated Admiral pack?

I'd probably be tempted by Tone, so...yup! <red face> On the up-side, I'm entirely hopeless with both CVs and cruisers, so I doubt I'll do too much damage myself. Competent players on the other hand... (I think I saw a test Tone in battle a week or two ago; I recall that I knew the player, so their doing well in her wasn't that surprising.)

I picked up Somers recently, via the latest lot of snowflake steel, and I've found her to be pretty worthwhile (although almost all of my games in her have been in Ranked - Silver, specifically): I view her as a sort-of sidegrade to Gearing (I run LU Gearing exclusively, to give a basis for comparison), rather than an upgrade or downgrade. Whilst I haven't looked at the hard numbers, with the same captain, the dakka feels similar, Gearing clearly has much better (any?) AA, and Somers has superior torp firepower. In terms of concealment LU Gearing is better - 5.6 km, to Somers' 5.8 km (although the latter isn't too shabby). DDs are easily my favourite class, so - for me - Somers was the only steel ship that I was likely to get good use from; for more balanced players, how useful she is (both in comparison to Gearing, and to other things that you might spend steel on) is - IMO - a lot less clear-cut. She can be a very effective ship, if not being molested by CVs (and there's the rub), but she isn't some sort of OP monster that every competitive DD player *needs* to own. Given that she's available for the hardest major resource to grind in the game, for most people, I would rate Somers as non-essential (unless you've run out of other things to spend steel on).

It's still early days for mine, but she seems excellent so far: good concealment, nicely balanced armament, decent (for a DD) AA, and the glorious heal. OP doesn't mention her, so I assume they already have her; if not, I think she's a lot more useful than Marceau (although the latter is a hoot in Coop)...

Boringly, wait until we know which resources the upcoming new ships are for, and whether said ships are any good or not...

I do wonder if this is an attempt to reduce the impact of CVs on Ranked; whilst it's inevitable - with the small maps - that their spotting impact will remain ridiculous, at least they're having to deal with T9 AA (for what that's worth). The other thing that occurs is that it might add value to some premium cruisers: although not foolproof, it you bring something like an Atago, Bagration, or Eugen with a heal, there is the possibility that your opposite number will be a ship that lacks a healing potion... From the perspective of a DD main, some of the T8s do uptier rather well too, mainly due to superior concealment, compared to their T9 counterparts.

For me (sub-average player), Ranked has one very significant advantage: it isn't Randoms. Since Deadeye made it 'okay' to camp in pretty much any BB, I've been finding Randoms very painful; Ranked, with its small maps, makes it a bit harder for BBs to do this, and also makes you a more significant proportion of your team - at my standard, I'm simply not good enough to carry a full Random team's worth of 'Deadeyes', but I can usually put on a good enough show in Bronze Ranked to push my WR into less embarrassing territory. Problem with that, of course, is that it makes Ranked a time-limited variation on Randoms which is more fun, which somewhat defeats the object...

Okay, just in case you aren't simply trolling... Neither. The vision mechanics work the same for everyone. Some pointers (based on a quick look at your profile): First, in general, don't skip tiers - you have very few battles, and then a big spike at T7; this is a bad idea - the game introduces different elements and concepts at different tiers; diving in at too high a tier will get you killed. A lot. Better to learn things in sequence. Next, are you equipping your ships properly? For example, a 'naked' Mutsuki (https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Mutsuki) has a surface detection distance of 6.2 km; put cammo on and it drops to 6.0 km; put a Concealment Expert captain in her and you get 5.4 km (about as good as it gets anywhere in the game). Understand how basic vision mechanics work: if anyone is within the surface detection distance of your ship *and* has line of sight, *everyone* on the opposing side can see you, regardless of whether you can see them (air spotting is similar, although planes have to get closer to spot you - as a general rule, DDs want their AA switched off, via the P key, when not in use). Learn about what islands (and smoke) do to vision; all things being equal, they block line of sight. Understand what happens when you fire your weapons: torps don't make you any more visible; AA makes you visible out to your AA range (ditto secondaries, if you have them, only out to secondary range), and - most drastic - firing your main guns makes you visible out to your main guns range. Fire guns in smoke and your vision blooms too, but not as badly, and in proportion to the size of the guns fired (DD guns are much stealthier in smoke than, say, the 18 inchers on a Yamato). Also learn about hydro and radar: they can spot you for a limited time regardless, including through smoke, islands, and adverse weather conditions. Make sure you have all the vision circles enabled on your mini-map (which should be as big as your screen can handle) that you can cope with - these enable you to track what is going on with your visibility at any given time. Learn what your opponents can do - who will see whom first? Learn about weapons systems; if we're interested in stealth, think about who gets a stealth torp window (i.e. can fire from beyond their detection distance) and how big. That's some of the more obvious stuff...

<sigh> Okay, I'll bite - against my better judgement. There are no invisible ships, and (as far as I can tell) very little cheating; what there *is* (or rather *are*) are vision mechanics that require a small amount of thought and understanding to cope with. I suspect the OP may be a lost cause (or - more likely - just trolling), but in case anyone happens by who does want to understand a fundamental part of the game, this bit of the wiki may be of help: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Detection Fail to understand how vision works in the game (*especially* if you're a DD driver), and you'll receive a tonking; make the effort and you'll do significantly better...

Lots of little fires are generally the way to go. FWIW my approach is along the following lines: I pick things with ludicrous amounts of dakka, but usually low alpha (to avoid sinking my targets too quickly). I usually play Coop for this stuff as being a pure firestarter is usually a major Richard move in 'proper' modes. Don't forget that bots will usually fix the first fire (or flood) immediately; it's helpful to shift your fire across several different bot targets - you're trying to set permafires, whilst taking advantage of the bots' coded in behaviours. Play at antisocial hours, so there are fewer real people around in Coop, who could be - say - doing 'kills' missions that clash with your need for lots of slow cooking. We have a free captain respec in place at the moment: perhaps remove IFHE from captain builds temporarily, to maximise fire chance (on things like IJN dakka DDs) without needing signals.

You may be right; I'll be delighted to be proven wrong! I tend to prefer DDs that are good at doing the traditional DD jobs like capping, spotting, and engaging in mortal combat with other DDs; these new KM things are sounding a bit like an alternative take on the French/Khaba lines i.e. small cruisers. I don't really gel with that playstyle (outside of Coop), hence my tendency towards pessimism...

This is impressive by WG: they've actually managed to make a new DD line that I'm not excited about in the slightest. That's really quite hard to do...

One plus point occurs to me with the new season: assuming it does go ahead with T8 and T9 in Bronze at the same time, CVs may be marginally less of a menace as they're having to contend with less bad AA - in general - from the T9s...

Dev Blog (next season of Ranked starts on the 17th, rewards improved, and Bronze will be T8-9, amongst other changes): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/118

Dev Blog (tweaks to some Italians, and two new KM DDs get worse torps): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/117

BTW if anyone doesn't know, this site can be a useful reference: https://wowsft.com/research It allows you to calculate the xp needed to research the various lines, which might be helpful when deciding which line(s) to reset.

Would the battlecruisers be too much to hope for, do you suppose? Mind you, there hasn't been a sniff of a rumour on this front (that I've seen, anyway)...

I believe I saw someone on another thread had found it somewhere - it's actually historical...!

Daily Bounce apropos Agincourt: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/supertest-british-tier-v-premium-battleship-agincourt/

FP, due to the disproportionate effectiveness of turning the middle two fire locations into one, and the fact you will make use of it every game, without fail.

I'd probably still leave Randoms as they are, despite the problems (and Randoms has been pretty hideous since the introduction of Deadeye apparently made things even worse than usual), but I would like to see Ranked running pretty much all the time, as a distinct mode. Perhaps changing the tiers around season-to-season might be worthwhile? This time we had 8, 9&10, and 10 (I think); next time perhaps go with 6, 6&8, and 8; something else the time after, and so on...? CV-free Ranked would also be a significant improvement (small maps); if that happened, Randoms staying as they are would be necessary to stop the CV fans having a complete meltdown.

This. All manner of this! (Thanks for the reminder - I should have included this in my earlier post.)

That's about the size of it, although how hideous an experience it is can vary dramatically. FWIW I take the following approach: Try and only regrind lines where I can get the x2 bonus (unless there is a pressing time-related reason to get RP as quickly as possible), to maximise return on my time - I don't believe the RP you get for a 'standard' regrind justify the effort. Have a decent captain for every ship you actually need to play (so probably T5+, and certainly those ships higher up that you'll probably have to play repeatedly). Regrind the same line multiple times, rather than lots of different ones; the reason for this is that you can pick a cheaper line (in my case it's the second cheapest - the IJN Shima line), and it's easier to maintain a decent captain for each ship you need to play (T5+). Use Free XP, but pick your spots; personally, I free xp (and don't buy) up to T4, ditto T5 (and buy the ship), and from T5, I free xp modules. If you want to be profligate, you can use free xp a lot more than that, but by actually playing ships, you save free xp that might be needed elsewhere (bloody 21 point captains for instance). Save up your best cammo and signals: things go a lot faster if you stack things like dragon flags and Asian cammo (this matters more as you go up the tiers, of course). On a related note, keep an eye on missions that are happening; you're going to generate a lot of all types of xp whilst doing this (assuming signal/cammo stacking), and it's nice if you can be maximising the usefulness of these earnings at the same time. Luckily, there isn't really anything that's 'essential' in the RB (at least not yet, and this was the key source of the uproar over the original proposal in ye olde times - the first version would have made regrinds essential for competitive players), so you can generally take your time and/or ignore the thing entirely.

Aye, I was wondering about that; I'm still loathe to give it up, even if the benefits are questionable. Mind you, I'm not picking Deadeye on principle, so I have points to spare (on captains for my premiums anyway)...

I do wonder slightly if EM will get a tweak in the future: with the switch to a percentage-based approach, it's now surprisingly worthless on a lot of ships (i.e. the ones that need it the most)...