Verblonde

I got one in a crate this morning; I've only played her in Coop so far, but very initial impressions (mediocre player): Aki is better, undoubtedly, if only for the superior dakka and torps that can hit anything. DefAA is nice to have (the bot carrier I faced got its planes entirely shredded, but that isn't that hard; a proper player will still go through you faster than a ripe fruit through a short grandmother). The premium economy is good, as is the ability to use a decent captain from elsewhere (as she doesn't get the Aki's HE pen, my initial approach is to use her as a shameless fire-starter much of the time, as well as a tool for practicing the correct use of AP with DDs.). My feeling is that she isn't worth the full price of a T8 premium DD (get one of Cossack, Kidd, or Loyang instead), but she's not bad if you get lucky and one falls out of a crate... Edit: she's *definitely* better than Siliwangi, but then again so's VU...!

This is one of the things I'm wondering about/experimenting with, especially vis-a-vis Smaland. Obviously, a bit of extra dakka doesn't hurt (even if it's half as much of a boost as before), but is it worth giving stuff up for e.g. AR (now it costs 3 points too), or something new? The Artist Formerly Known As BFT gives a 5% reduction in reload time (with no calibre restrictions - yay Z-39 etc.), and a 10% boost to continuous AA (irrelevant for most things without good AA). AR improves both by 0.2% (0.25% for 'magic' captains) for each 1% of hp lost, but also boosts torp reload by the same amount; so, 25% off your hp and your dakka boost is the same, and 50% gives you the same AA boost, *and* your torps are reloading faster at the same time. That ssumes my maths is correct, of course. Obviously, with the old system, I ran both (yay!), but with the new there are a few alternatives that are looking quite worthwhile, so I'm increasingly leaning towards kicking BFT into the long grass unless the ship has really good AA to start with (so not many of them, since it's DDs we're talking about). People might disagree, but I'm tending to think the new BFT is probably not worth three points in most cases; two maybe, but not three.

One thing that strikes me (having done an initial 21 point build, and a 19 pointer - Gearing, and Halland/Smaland, respectively) is that there is another 'urge to spend' built in to the new system: It's relatively 'easy' to get to 19 points, but disproportionately harder to get to 21 points (as we all know). In other words, we are likely to spend a lot of time working with 'only' 19 points. In consequence, if you don't want unused captain points sitting around, you'll be tempted to build your captain(s) to be optimal - as much as possible - at 19 points, and then potentially rebuild them when you hit 21 (basically swapping a 21 point skill, say, for a 4 point one, or something like that). Of course, once the free respec is done, that'll cost you doubloons. So, to avoid this spend, there is perhaps something to be said for coming up with a 17 point build that you can live with, rather than going all the way to 19 (in terms of assigned points)...?

I actually agree - the new skills interface seems pretty decent. Something else I like: the 'recall commander' function. Basically, it appears to be the 'use last commander' functionality from WOT that I've been wishing that WOWS would adopt for years... (Doesn't make the 1.2 million any less of a Richard move - having just bumped my first captain up to 21 points - but I feel I ought to acknowledge when WG don't bollix something up.)

Silly me - it's clearly still far too early over here...

So, I got a Fen Yang out of a crate (because I'm stupid); I thought I might try running the coal DefAA mod on her - a have a spare kicking around from some hapless neutered former AA ship or other - but I don't seem to have the option. Is this a bug or deliberate, does anyone know? Whilst we're all in the middle of much bigger problems, I thought I'd mention this in the way of some slight seasoning...

I had a bit of a sniff around my NA account yesterday; I'll have a more serious look on EU today, but one thing that struck me is that Blysk doesn't have LS as a recommended skill - does she have a particularly resilient rudder etc. that I didn't know about? Genuinely curious, although it doesn't really matter as I usually run Ikea captains in her that do need the skill.

LOL! Of course - thank you for correcting me! I must have had a Senior Moment, probably due to recently having contemplated the dockyard thing...!

Well, T9 premiums are generally a lot more profitable than T8s, so there's that. Z-44 tends to be a lot more effective though, as you don't need to be spotted to fire torps. Unless you already have all the alternatives, or have a kink for Teutonically thorough ships, there are far better choices though. At T8, Cossack, Loyang, Kidd, and Harekaze (when available) are all superior; I even prefer Orkan to Z-35. At T9, the non-premium Yahagi Yugumo (thanks, @dommo77!) is a far better torp truck than Z-44, due to vastly superior sneakiness; you're also a lot better off - IMO - with Neustra (although mine is very new, so that's an initial opinion) if you want a premium...

Not surprised; if I'd written something like that in my past lives, I would expect to get into trouble with Trading Standards...

This is simply poor advice; this is why: Better advice to follow is to never sell anything from T5 onwards, *but* you don't need to have a decent (or indeed any now it seems) captain in them - just leave them lying around until the periodic snowflake (or equivalent) events roll around. To do otherwise wastes silver. Edit: keep good captains for any ships you won't free xp in any lines that you regrind for RB points too; regrinds are a lot less irritating if you have decent captains for each ship that you actually play.

No idea how many captains I have overall, but I do (as of a few minutes ago) have enough xp to bump one to 21 points. It's now just a matter of picking which one, although it'll probably be US Ovenchicken, as he allows me to play a diverse selection of premiums, including Somers (which has been working okay for me in Ranked). After that, it's a matter of working through the remaining ones, or at least those where having 21 points makes a practical difference (mainly due to them working on non-US ships that I play a lot, so being more useful ecxp grinders)...

<rushes off to make *really* sure Urban Dictionary isn't open...>

Ew!! I think that particular aspect of the English language will *not* make it into my lessons on the subject...!

Without things like re-spawning, we're probably stuck with roflstomps at least to a degree, due to the mathematical principles we're all familiar with i.e. 'snowballing'. Exactly how much of an in-game disadvantage will depend, I imagine, on where the captain skills end up in terms of their real impact, and how much tangible difference the extra 2 points make. I strongly suspect we'll see some rebalancing applied to captain skills as we go (*after* the free respec ends, of course!), so the final position vis-a-vis real impact of a good captain versus a mediocre one may take a while to fully resolve itself. The crucial thing that we 'haves' will be able to do is to get captains to 'good enough' so much faster than a 'have not' can, even if that level isn't a fully maxed out captain (provided you have at least one to generate the ecxp needed)...

Probably this, for most people. The actual captain skills probably won't change much, in terms of how effective players are relative to one another; the only significant change long-term will revolve around ecxp - if you can generate a lot of it, you will be at a major advantage (all things being equal) compared to those who can't. I take the view that I'll object to it as noisily as I can until it's a done deal (so, Thursday), and after that just get on with it; that said, it doesn't do any harm that I'm most certainly a 'have' as far as captains and generating their xp goes...

<hordes of vodka purveyors and ladies of negotiable affection in the environs of WG's office burst into tears>

That's the impression I have; it won't be the first time though. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I tend to think of premium ships as non-permanent (even in the context of something that could end at any time, at least in theory i.e. an online game), so when I buy them, I'm expecting them to be at least partly ephemeral. So, to be a worthwhile buy - as a minimum - they need to provide me with fun equivalent to their value before WG bugger them up somehow. As an illustration, Hood used to be hilarious because of the ludicrous thing with the AA rockets (ditto Atlanta with her AA, and ditto pretty much any AA-focused ship in the game); with the rework, that particular 'kink' vanished, so the USP of the ship vanished too. There is now no particular unique reason to spend money on Hood. On the positive side, as long as Narai is running, I don't mind having spent money on Hood, but the value would have ended with the reework, if all I cared about was the AA gimmick. Some premiums will get worse with the changes to captains, whilst I think at least some will probably get better, albeit maybe indirectly in the latter case e.g. I have a 10-13 point captain on Perth (I can't remember exactly); with the rework, this instantly jumps to 19 because I can apply cruiser-specific skills to my Haida captain (as well as the existing DD build).

Whales are happy - I'm going to get a massive boost to my relative ecxp earnings compared to those with few or no premium ships... I need all the help I can get, but it is an upside (for me, anyway; sucks to be the peasantry). <happy whale song>

WG entirely deserve all the criticism; previous posts cover off why well, but I fear you haven't understood what WG are doing here. Short version, from my perspective: The captain skills change; many typical builds can be retained, but cost two more captain points than before. Everyone is in the same boat vis-a-vis captain skills, so I'm not really too upset about things like the BFT nerf etc. What is wholly unacceptable is that this rework means that to stand still - i.e. have maxed out captains - costs players 1.2 million captain xp *per captain*. To put that in perspective, in the past you needed to grind a 19 point captain to start generating elite captain xp; after the rework you have to grind (according to the old system) more than a 17 point captain *as well* In turn, this means that old lags (including me, frankly) will have a massive advantage over newer players in that we'll be able to generate loads of ecxp, while they can't. This goes double if (you guessed it, like me) you have buckets of premium ships, and can so get (lots) more first win bonuses with a single captain. Short version: old lags and (especially) whales will be in a drastically better position than newer players, unless the latter spend a lot of money. This isn't about improving the playing experience; it's about trying to extract money from people, to an unacceptable degree.

This is your first port of call: Although not official, the graphic at the start of the linked thread gives you a pretty decent indication of how profitable the various premiums/event ships are. Do be aware though, that rewards are almost entirely driven by damage, so which ship(s) you can consistently do the most damage in will have an impact; for example, my MO is almost certainly not my most profitable ship, as I'm not much good in her (my most profitable ship will probably be one of the T9 premium DDs, or T10 event DDs)...

While I may noisily object to WG's Richard moves (I haven't exactly been shy and retiring apropos the captain rework, for instance), I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face, although I acknowledge that this does make me part of the problem. I will consider anything that WG try to sell me on its individual merits (whilst not denying that I'm far less likely to spend when pi$$ed off, like now): basically, will it provide me with my money's worth in the time before the game becomes unplayable? If yes, I'll consider it, if no then not so much. This is why, for example, I didn't consider the ARP Yamato for a moment (I'm not a BB enthusiast, so it would take at least a year for me to get the value from that thing), but did buy Xmas crates that were almost certain to give me Neustrashimy (which will probably take 10% the time to get value from, at worst). FWIW I'm currently using the introduction of submarines as my 'unplayable' reference point; that may be pessimistic, but that's the big unknown at the moment, which may be when WG ruin their game entirely (although I hope not).

I'm thinking that my US Ovenchicken will be my initial pick, followed by some sequence of Yamamoto, Russian Ovenchicken, Cunningham, and maybe that Polish chappie (my Russian with the ridiculous heal ability is nowhere near 19 points yet). I'm trying to balance avoiding boredom while grinding millions of damn captain xp with the need to show up to competitive modes with a decent captain for the ships I'm least terrible in. For IJN cruisers, I'll focus my skill picks on Atago as a) she's more fun, and b) I have three of them, versus one Yoshino!

No; I don't believe WG should be rewarded one iota for the captain rework - it's egregious greed on their part (rather than a legitimate commercial enterprise), IMO. So, my approach is as follows: Grind as much elite captain xp as I can before the patch; it looks like I'll have enough to instantly promote a 19 pointer to 21 points right away, or near as dammit. I'll pick that first 21 pointer such that (s)he's from a nation with plenty of premium ships of each class, where - as much as possible - a single build for each class is 'good enough'. I'll then focus on playing the hell out of that captain - across many ships to avoid boredom - to get as many first win boni as possible, so maximising elite captain xp gains. I can then apply that ecxp to another captain, and repeat the process, and so on. It's basically the same process as one applies when getting one's first few 19 pointers with the existing system, only a lot more expensive - to get a maxed out captain now costs - under the rework system - more than it used to cost to get a 19 pointer *plus* a 17 pointer! Although I haven't really studied the new skills in detail, we're all in essentially the same boat vis-a-vis relative captain strength, so I'm not hugely bothered about individual skill buffs/nerfs as such (*everybody's* cruisers get the same kick in the teeth, and so on); what is apparent though is that - as before - having at least one maxed out captain will make a massive difference, even if it is very expensive to get. So, we all know that WG are ignoring the (legitimate) complaints in this case and going on regardless; in that case, all we can do is make the best of it, and express sympathy for the new players who are going to get the ordure-coated end of the stick, whilst not doing anything that rewards WG for this particular Richard move. BTW I assume the wiki will be updated at some point, so this is a screen capture of the existing cost structure, for when WG inevitably try to tell people that the new cost structure is fine:

Exactly - hence my final suggestion to the OP. My first T10 battles were Clans, where I did far less badly than my initial forays into randoms; part of it was having voice comms ("Verblonde, try not to be an idiot; you are about to get jumped...etc."), but perhaps the most important aspect was that it was harder to miss something important happening when only needing to track singles figures ships on each side.