Verblonde

DD players - assemble! It's our civic duty (bonus points for DWT)...

I think the issue that you allude to demonstrates that WG's claim that the captain rework promotes diversity is extremely disingenuous (if you're feeling charitable, and a flat-out lie if you aren't); permit me to explain: The cost of a 21 pointer is prohibitive to all but the most dedicated player (or extreme whale), without a major adjustment to the economy; this goes double for multiple 21 pointers. The first consequence of this is that most captains out there will not be maxed out, so they'll most commonly be operating in the 10-19 point range; with the increase in cost of core skills, that means a likelihood of fewer skills per captain in general. A second consequence is that far fewer players will have plenty of ecxp, and certainly not enough to easily generate captains beyond 19 points, so having multiple captains per ship is less practical (so fewer people will have both a 'tank' and a 'manly' captain for secondary BBs, for example). A third consequence is that it is now a good idea to have a more 'general' build (for all classes where you have premiums) on your best captains, as you need them to work acceptably on all your premiums, rather than work well on just one or two ships. All of that means that, in practice, there will be fewer different builds in use, *and* captains will - in general - tend to have fewer skills than before.

More reading of the wiki on the subject of the mechanics is probably called for; the vision mechanics in the game are pretty logical and consistent, *but* you often have to keep track of many different things all at once. For example, lets imagine a scenario like the one you allude to: You are in a BB, say, so you can be spotted from the moon; I'm approaching you in a Kagero (5.4 km visibility with full stealth build) from about ten km away, so I know where you are; someone on your team is near me in a Cossack (5.5 km), say, and circling near where he thinks I am. As I get closer to you, you cannot see me directly (I'm too small) at any time from ten km out (or, actually, whatever your surface detection distance is) until I get to within 5.4 km of you. If the Cossack in our example wasn't there, the only indication you would have that I was out there is the 'detected' icon on your screen. If the Cossack is circling, he's probably trying to acquire me without getting too deep into his own detection distance (unless nothing from my side can hit him, in which case he can be a lot more bold), and his detection of me may well be on-off-on etc. When he is detecting me ('on'), I will be visible to you as well, and when he loses sight of me, I vanish for you as well. So, to emphasise: if that Cossack weren't there, you would not see me *at all* - even though I was getting closer - until I got to within my surface detection distance of you (5.4 km, provided I don't get set on fire and/or fire my guns). What you're describing is entirely normal and sensible, but you do really need to understand how the game mechanics work to be able to make full sense of it, and - more importantly - make use of it to maximise your results. BTW if you haven't yet, make sure you have the 'last known position' indicator enabled on your mini-map; it makes it easier to not lose track of people who know how to 'surf' around detection distances.

For Coop - IMO - you want something that goes fast; your aim is to be able to do something useful before the other (faster) ships in your team hoover up the bots, and speed helps this endeavour a lot. Out of Thunderer, Georgia, and Pommern - for use in Coop - I would get Georgia now, as she's being removed soon, and then get Pommern later. Georgia is ludicrously fast (coal engine boost mod provides useful extra run time), and if you're playing Coop exclusively, who cares about the higher skill floor or if you have a good captain? Be mindful, though, that both these latter considerations matter a lot if you ever want to switch to PvP. Pommern is great against bots too, but I find that she sometimes gets left behind if the rest of your team didn't pick regular US BBs or similar. So, in summary: not Thunderer; get Georgia before she's removed, and then pick up Pommern at a later date...

I think it's pretty much a certainty (or something equivalent), but it may take a few months - WG will probably want to build up the irritation over the bulk of people not having the possibility of maxed out captains, so as to make whatever it is they end up selling extra desirable.

I've sent you one by PM, in case you need it. There are far worse choices, although the BBs do play rather differently to 'normal' (you probably want a proper BB player to give you tips, as they're not really my thing, even if the KM BBs were the first ones that I got to T10; I'm rather less bad with DDs). The aim early on is to be learning - as much as possible - universal rules, from which you then deviate as you get into the weirder stuff later. BTW I like the KM DDs a great deal; for a start, from T5 you get the smoke/hydro combination, which can be pretty powerful in the right circumstances.

Welcome! The best lines for a newcomer are usually the Japanese and Americans (play both, and all classes); the reason for this is that they were the first nations in the game and consequently have the fewest weird 'gimmicks' to get used to. After that, you can do a lot worse than the Germans (all classes, although CVs probably optional), and after that, you start getting into specific class/nation combinations. It's a good idea to stay at low(er) tiers to start with, at least until you run out of fully protective newcomer MM (for your first few hundred games, at low tier, you will face similarly inexperienced players, and bots if there aren't real people around). This is a good time to experiment, as all the lower tier ships are inexpensive to research and buy. BTW did you use an invite code when you started your account? If not, do so (assuming you still can); it'll get you some useful freebies (and a Warspite when you get to T6, I think).

If they did, they gave the job to someone who doesn't play the game much! As someone pointed out on another thread, Cunningham's 'starred' skill is almost entirely worthless for the majority of RN ships...!

I have mine tied to Daring FWIW. He's my 'single captain' for the RN as long as the free respec works too, but that's mainly on the basis of his Talents; I agree that his 'starred' skill is pretty much a waste of a point - WG should absolutely change this one to something else (IMO). I get the impression that whoever assigned this particular skill isn't familiar with the game, at least not as a player.

I think it's way too early to offer concrete advice, but FWIW this is my current test build (Smaland/Halland) at 19 points: At 21 points, my tentative plan is to swap Consumables out, and replace it with - probably - Dazzle. Incidentally, I'm running Liquidator at the moment as I've been mainly playing Ranked lately, and Smaland (in particular) is a lot more useful if you can cause flooding more reliably; she's a magnificent DD killer, but needs all the help she can get against fatties.

It's still inefficient, and the time mounts up when you have to scale over multiple ships and nations (including filtering to find the necessary premiums of each class etc.); yeah, it's a first world problem, but I'd still rather be playing than filtering/clicking on lists. The other aspect to have on the radar: unless all your captains are low pointers, for most classes, you aren't necessarily building your captain for one ship, but rather for several - the idea being to maximise captain xp for a particular captain. As an example, my lone 21 point captain 'belongs' to Gearing, and so the DD build focuses on that specifically (with a nod to Somers as well); meanwhile, the cruiser, CV, and BB builds will need to work with every American premium in the game, as far as possible. When building a captain for an 'average' premium, it matters far less being able to see how the actual values change on a particular ship, because you're building a 'best fit' for all of them. In an ideal world, we could be more specific in our captain builds (and I was before the rework), but there is such a premium now on 21 pointers, and grinding ecxp in general, that most players can't run multiple maxed out captains (I had 20-30 19 pointers, I think), but rather have to focus on one per nation; in that situation (of WG's own making), it is far more efficient to be able to do everything to/with a captain in one place.

For me, it's an annoyance because it would be much faster to manage the builds for all classes of ship from one screen; I have several captains where I need to have all four builds in place (because of premium ships), and it's simply slow and inefficient to have to move them between ships just to edit a particular class' build.

My feeling is that - for the majority of players - WG have effectively removed ecxp from the board, and this was one of several key objectives of the exercise. It's not too hard to guess why: the existing system was far too generous, at least from the perspective of the monetisation people. Getting a 19 pointer wasn't easy, but it was achievable for a newbie (albeit eventually); now, a 21 pointer (and certainly multiple ones) is more or less approaching 'end game' content. I think most players will have to get used to running with - say - 12-19 points on almost all silver ships, and recommended builds will need to reflect that. The other aspect of suggested builds that people will need to pay attention to is sequence (and avoiding paying money): there might well be, say, an optimised build for 19 points, which would be sensible as we'll spend a disproportionate amount of time at that level, but the optimised 21 point build might call for something to be dropped in order to get a more expensive skill - as I mentioned somewhere else, this is an obvious 'pay money' strategy by WG. So, do we run with one or more points un-allocated for the time it takes to grind 1.2 million captain xp (perhaps putting us at a disadvantage), or what...?

That's in interesting idea - might give that a test as well, depending on how long it takes me to get Smaland to 21 points...

Concealment Expert and Consumables Expert Enhancements (4 and 2 points, respectively) spring to mind, and that's *within* the DD skill tree only. Edited after double-checking name...!

This - I was actually going to suggest this on the survey (that WG will ignore), but ran out of characters...

I'm not sure what my final build will look like yet, as I 'only' have 19 points on Smaland. FWIW my current test iteration looks like this (he's technically my Halland captain, but he gets used far more often on Smaland): The tentative logic is as follows: PM obviously, with Liquidator as the other 1 point as Smaland's torps are so anaemic that getting less inconsistent flooding is very helpful. LS obviously, with Consumables to boost radar and engine boost run-time (I think this'll be for the chop when I can get another 4 pointer); I get 26.4 secs radar with this set up, which includes a coal mod too. SE obviously, with AR as it seems to be of more use more often than BFT (especially since this captain has boosted AR), plus the extra consumables are all useful - healing potion, radar, and boost. CE obviously (and I note that bloody WG have given us more than one skill with the abbreviation CE...!). Subject to further testing, I think - for 21 points - I'll swap out Consumables and replace it with Dazzle (assuming the latter is useful in testing on other ships).

Already done!

Technically, yes - I have it on my US DD captain, but have, so far, only played one Ranked game (Somers). In that lone game, I don't think the opposition shot at me once though; they clearly a) had no idea that sinking DDs is a good idea and/or just wanted to mess with me and my 'new skill' test! I don't know how essential it'll turn out to be; on the one hand, you often get spotted so close to that the opposing ship will struggle *not* to hit you, but it might be useful to help avoid getting blapped by all his mates that you don't realise are out there because you skipped PT...?

I'm really not sure how badly we've (i.e. DD drivers) been hit; on the one hand, BFT getting knackered is clearly a nerf, as is paying an extra point for AR, but we do have some promising additions too, such as the boosted flooding chance, and extra run-time on consumables (one thing I've been testing with Smaland is whether or not another 10% run-time on the radar makes a difference, and how often; an extra six seconds of engine boost seems to be handy more often than you might expect too.), not to mention that 'Dazzle' thing, or whatever it's called - I'm trying the latter on my lone 21 pointer at the moment; not sure if it's actually any use or not yet.

At the moment - on DDs anyway - I'm trying to manage without it for now; the problem (for me) is that if I just recreate my old builds, they just get two points more expensive and slightly nerfed (generally). If we have to have this rework, I might as well try and find builds where I actually get something useful from spending 1.2 sodding million xp...! The most interesting problems seem to be things like Smaland, Orkan, Kidd etc. where you're juggling the needs of dakka, torps, *and* consumables (especially heal and radar), to a greater or lesser extent, and simply can't afford everything you'd like to have. In that sort of context, you simply have to give up one or two skills that you'd really like to have, and PT is harder to justify for 2 points, whereas it was a slam-dunk at 1 (IMO). Of course, quite a few players didn't bother with PT until their last point (or not at all) under the old system - this gives me a chance to see if they were right or not!

I don't mind the rework - as such - and some aspects (like the increased complexity) I actually quite like; I'm usually in favour of things that don't dumb down the game, at least within reason. I do think there are good bits and bad bits within the skills; for example, yay for the one point flooding buff for DDs, but boo for the removal of the ability to go full manly with cruisers. So, if it was just this stuff, I'd be moderately happy. The reason I only voted '5' was that this was the most positive I could bring myself to be given the ludicrous cost of the additional two captain points, with all of the 'overt greed' stuff that it implies. This mammoth (perhaps even Titanosaur?) turd really rather spoils what could have been a decent change to the game...

Purely against bots, I like Spee a lot, although I haven't checked her out with the new captain skills etc. yet. She also has the merit of being excellent for Ops, and - if you're feeling slightly extravagant - the 'National' permaflage dramatically improves her silver earning potential. Exeter is also very good, although I think her skill floor is higher (I have a friend who does excellently in her); she also has the plus point of being able to make CVs regret their life choices better than most other T5s. I have Genova, but don't play her very much - I have far more interesting things to take out instead...

My logic at the moment, at least on DDs where mortal combat is to be expected, is that you're (well, *I* am) going to get shot up regardless, so might as well take advantage of the inevitable...!