Verblonde

Many thanks, all!

You can't hide (no smoke), and you're outspotted all the time by a significant number of opponents, whilst your radar gives you a formidable spotting advantage for only a few seconds. You also have to fire your guns to do reliable damage, which makes you very visible to everyone in range and - unless the opposition are idiots - you'll be a very high priority target. Don't get me wrong, Smaland is a fantastic ship, but she's a very long way from being easy mode.

There's no 'should' or 'should not' here; Smaland is excellent, and I would advise anyone who can (assuming they don't hate DDs) to get her before she's removed. BUT (and it's a big but) you do need to get out the sheet music and play the Real Waltz, and this goes double for anything that is particularly influential in the game: WOWS is a team game, PvP especially, and is not solely about you; if you log into a game where the aim is to win, you have at least a basic responsibility to your team (other people who are committing time, and possibly money) to not mess things up for them, as much as is possible. 'Influential' can mean a lot of things, but it especially covers classes like DDs and CVs, and radar ships, plus anything else that can potentially turn the course of a battle (your Smaland, incidentally, ticks this box twice: DD *and* she has radar). Smokeless DDs are much harder to play well than those with smoke, meaning Smaland needs her driver to have spent time learning how to DD before taking to T10 even more so than most other equivalent ships. Smaland is also very much not an 'army of one' due to having weak torps; you need support to be effective in most battles, more so than a lot of other types, and realising if and how you have that support is another crucial skill that takes time to acquire. Basically, if you mess up (and you will a lot without the requisite skill-set and experience - I still do far too often, and I have multiple thousand battles under my belt) it is not just you that you harm, but also your team mates. People are not urging you to practice at lower tiers because they're Richards (they generally aren't); they don't want you to be fodder for seal-clubbing (besides which, even if they did, make use of the clubbers - they provide far more valuable experience than some random newbie); it's just about making the game as much fun as possible for as many people as possible. Incidentally, I'm assuming you're going to ignore the advice entirely and carry on messing up games for other people; assuming this is the case, may I also suggest you play your Smaland in Ranked rather than Randoms - not because the consequences for others are any better if you drop a clanger (you could argue that they're the reverse, as you represent a higher proportion of your total team), but because a key skill that you're probably still working on is situational awareness, and I find that it's easier to keep track of stuff in smaller team modes (so, Clans too), so you may do less badly, and some of the skills/experience you clock up can then be transferred to Randoms.

There are *plenty* of downsides to this update, chief among them being that it now will cost you 1.2 million captain xp to get a captain from 19 points to 21 (for no overall benefit; there are a number of viable builds that change from costing 19 points to costing 21, and actually get nerfed). You, presumably, are mostly operating with 10-15 pointers at the moment; there is nothing wrong with that, especially at the lower tiers, but you are going to get monumentally bitten on the donkey by these changes when you try to catch up with the old lags with their maxed out captains.

Nice. 50% off a Kidd isn't at all bad; with her heal and semi-decent AA, she's one of the better T8 DDs IMO...

I'm taking the 'hoard' approach: For a start, I think I'll have enough to get at least one 19 pointer to 21, and want to experiment with a few 'full' builds during the free reset. Secondarily, until we actually get to grips with the rework, we won't know definitively what works and what doesn't (where are the noob traps, for instance); if you apply captain xp to a specific captain, it's locked there, whereas you have more flexibility if you keep it in the general pot. It might be the case that you inadvertently apply it to a captain who becomes of less use after the rework. The new patch kicks in on Thursday; nothing much will be messed up by waiting for a few days. (Edit for stupid spelling mistake!)

Does anyone recall the final shot of Homelander in the second season of The Boys (that, you'll also recall, WG urged us to watch)...?

First, I wouldn't worry excessively about the 'magic' captains; they're nice to have but not usually critical, although I have had a very few battles where the extra few hp from boosted SE - say - have actually made a difference. I think the better players worry most about these captains as they (the players) are operating at a competitive level where every small advantage can count; for a mediocre player like me, it's not very common that a game's results would have been different with or without a special captain, as opposed to a standard one of the same points level. As to order of priority, until you hear news to the contrary, I would just target them in whatever order gels effectively with the ships you normally like to play. So far (if memory serves), WG haven't removed a coal captain from the Armory [sic], but if they ever do I would expect them to follow a similar pattern to that which they follow when removing ships (Thunderer is a current example) i.e. give a couple of months' notice. That *usually* gives players enough time to get the requisite coal together, assuming they play reasonably frequently...

Ah, you mean idiots? That isn't usually a function of time playing, but rather a function of competence; it's very hard to significantly influence the game doing that - most players struggle to hit stuff at extreme range, and you aren't applying any sort of pressure at that distance. As a rule of thumb, better players (with big long-range guns) seem to spend their time surfing around their detection distance and/or making use of cover to break contact when needed. FWIW I view any spawn-camping Thunderer etc. as 'yay - the enemy are a man down already' and don't often get proven wrong in that regard.

This is hardly a new thing; my equivalent is the lack of Kami R in my port - I would *really* like one, but tough luck; I started playing too late to get her. Something to bear in mind though: the campaigns to get the special captains were hardly a case of 'log in and job done'; you had to play quite a lot and - if you didn't have a massive ship collection - some stages could be quite hard work. Coal, on the other hand, is pretty easy to get; you just have to play the game and take 'more resources' containers (with occasional boni like snowflakes and missions making life even easier) - when you have enough, pick up whichever captain you like; simple.

Then why stack things so heavily against them (with the new captain rework, specifically)? I'm quite an old lag now, so it'll be quite straightforward for me to get at least one 21 pointer more or less right away as I have plenty of 19 pointers to jump off from; after that, I can generate elite captain xp at an alarming rate compared to a newcomer who lacks such a captain. The effect is even more dramatic when you consider the ship collection I've built up: with the new ability to have class-specific captain builds, I can play across a diverse range of premium ships (that a newbie won't have yet) with just one captain, hoovering up daily first win bonuses making my ecxp gains even faster. I mean, yay for me, but that isn't suggestive of a system built to help newcomers...

The advice to play at lower tiers to learn the game is still entirely valid; there really aren't that many seal-clubbers at those tiers (a few, certainly, but not even close to 'saturation'), to judge by the occasional games I've played lately at T5 (one of my clan mates likes T5, for some reason, so an occasional visit is in order in division; plus, I regrind now and again too, starting playing at T5). The only thing that requires adjustment is that spending much time at T3, and even T4 sometimes, can be painful due to all the CVs. New players are absolutely not better off playing at T8+ (or at least, not against real people) for the simple reason that while the *relative* power levels of ships is pretty similar, mistakes are punished much harder (due to increased lethality levels). You have a chance to survive at least one mistake in a T4-5 ship, whereas if you mess up facing T8-10, you have a much better chance of being instantly deleted. For effective learning, it helps if you survive longer in the game... That - of course - is before we even think about differences in captain level; you will face a lot of people at higher tier with maxed-out (or close) captains, which a new player is unlikely to be able to match. The other thing to bear in mind are the 'difficult' consumables (meaning radar and hydro); jump into a T8+ and you face all of them, in full effect, whereas a T5, say, will not face the scariest 'German' hydro, and will only face a very few radars (two T7 premiums only) - it is much easier to learn to counter such things when facing a lower threat version than it is against - say - a Chapy, an Alaska, a Smaland, and a Loyang, and all at the same time. Full disclosure: I'm a bit of a hypocrite: I would have a far lower average tier if I'd done it right, but I made the mistake of not spending enough time at lower tiers; that said, I did at least linger a bit in T6-7. It is worth noting that I'm not a good player (48%+ WR is pretty poor, objectively), so supporting the case that doing what I did (not spending enough time at lower tiers) is unwise if you want to actually get good at the game.

Nah, sorry, can't help you - I agree with you 100%. Whoever devised/approved the rework in its current form are emulators of Onan to such a degree that it requires the invention of entirely new superlatives to adequately encompass. I suspect that, by and large, we'll end up seeing something along the following lines: Very few people will run maxed out captains (it'll mainly be we old lags; finding 1.2 million for us shouldn't be impossible), making the default 'good enough' captain somewhere between 10 and 19 points. Overall, captains at a given level will get weaker, due to the increase in costs in the 'key' skills that we've all identified; everyone will be impacted equally here though. There will be two classes of players: the 'haves' with at least one 21 pointer, and the 'have nots' for whom that source of elite captain xp is simply out of reach. I imagine that the latter will be the majority of players. For me the key Richard move with this rework is the massively boosted cost of those last two points. In other respects, it's just a change that impacts us all in much the same way, or it would be if everyone had the same ability to generate elite captain xp. At it's root though, this is all about money; I've spent a lot (too much!) on my account, such that I have almost all the premiums in the game (missing a few steel, event, and early-access ships) - I'm going to be at an even more dramatic advantage over a new player (or anyone else with relatively few premium ships). Every premium ship represents an extra daily first win bonus; at time of writing I have 28 (I think) US premiums/event ships of T6 and up - that's a *lot* of potential elite captain xp with only one 21 point captain, and every day too. The thing with captains being able to have multiple class skill trees is most welcome (to me, anyway), but it does boost the value of premium ships; a player that wants to be competitive in things like Ranked and Clans now has even more pressure to spend on premiums. Of course, there are quite a lot of freebie premiums/event ships available, but they tend to be dispersed across nations; for the full 'maximum rinsing of one captain' effect, you really have to spend money. Alternatively, a player can just throw money at the screen and convert free xp; that'll get you your 21 pointer if you spend enough. TL;DR this isn't about improving the game; it's about extracting money from the players. I don't have a problem with WG trying to make a profit, but this particular way of doing so is unacceptable. I'm personally going to be in a much better position than most with these changes, but I want to win because I managed to suck less than usual, not because I spent a stupid amount of money on the game, giving me consistently better captains than the average.

From memory, WG (?) have said that TYL works in the following way: when you get a container you have x% chance of getting a SC instead; if the first 'roll' doesn't produce a SC, then you get a second chance with TYL, again with the same x% chance. In short, the odds don't strictly double with TYL, but rather you get twice as many 'goes' at getting a SC as you would with a regular container, with each 'go' having the same odds as a regular container. This is rather hair-splitting IMO, but apparently this is the mechanism. As far as I know, WG haven't published the odds of getting SCs (but of course), but community data gathering exercises have tended to suggest the odds of getting a SC are around 1% (again, if memory serves) from 'normal' containers, which means that a TYL container gives you two 1% chances of getting a SC.

One of the (very few) plus points of the captain rework is that I'll be able to stick a 19-21 point captain on VU, thanks to the thing with having a separate class skill tree on each captain. My Halland/Smaland captain is about to become an expert in fatties too...

I'm a DD main - my tongue was very firmly in my cheek...

This is what I like about WOWS: the caring and supportive community - always here for the sad and unfortunate. It's really rather touching...

As a minor aside that might be useful to some people: don't forget that Sims gets - apparently - a base xp boost, so she might be a good pick for finishing off the base xp mission at the end of the campaign. Personally, I think I can do better (well, less badly - this is me, after all) in other ships, even with the boost, but it might make a difference to some people.

Perhaps because, when in a division, there is at least one other person to tell you if your tin foil hat is on too tight?

Well, I just unlocked the final mission of the last stage with - maybe - around four hours' play (possibly only three - I slightly lost track) in Coop. I basically took out some big-bottomed BBs (yes, I know - I'll be thrown out of the Guild of Honourable DD Players) and thrashed the nuts off the 'BB damage', 'damage', and 'top five' missions. Off to Ranked now, to knock off the final 'base xp' mission...

I would tentatively say it isn't too late, but you'll need to play quite a bit over the weekend, and not having premium account won't be doing you any favours. Some potential tips: To get silver, focus on PvP modes (Randoms, or Ranked if you have ships for the latter); ideally play premium ships that you can consistently do decent damage with. For the next stage, there is a multi-star mission that requires you to come top five in 12 games; rinse Coop for this, and repeat the mission as often as needed. As a general point, the Task rewards are unremarkable; pick missions that you can do easily and repeatedly (and ideally in any ship type, unless you always play one class) - stars are your primary concern (you can always hoover up missing tasks once you've got Strasbourg). If you ever buy premium time, now is the time to do it: it'll boost silver earnings, and give you a third task slot. You will probably need to put in a few hours, but if you focus on optimising your star gaining, it should be eminently doable (I only got round to finishing the task you're on now earlier today, and I fully expect to complete the campaign tomorrow sometime, but I do run premium account).

I'm a DD main, so tend to view BBs as targets, but my perspective is as follows: Thunderer is the duller of the two, although it gets less dull if you are adept at using the right ammo (you see a lot of them spamming HE from the map borders, which is a complete waste). Thunderer, being T10, gives access to some modes that require a T10 (although the next Clans is apparently T9). Georgia, as a true premium, is the better earner of the two; she does apparently have a higher skill floor though. Georgia is very useful for doing missions in Coop, due to having excellent secondaries, plus the speed boost can get you into position before too many of the opposing bots are wiped out by your DDs. If I could have just one, it would be Georgia, as - IMO - she's more fun (but I do have a lot of T10s, so for me the 'access to T10 modes' isn't relevant). If they weren't about to be removed, I would make the usual comments about not getting premiums above the level you've got to with your silver ships; in this case, go for it - if you need to, you can always play them in Coop while the skill-set catches up. Full disclosure: I very rarely play BBs against real people (the last time was grinding Izumo en route to Yamato, if memory serves), so you'll need others to tell you which one is objectively better, from a performance perspective. I'm also assuming that you have a 'good enough' captain to put in either of them.

Every hit on a DD will reward you more than equivalent hits on BBs of the same tier; this is one reason why cruisers should blast DDs as a priority. Yet another reason is that sinking DDs (and radars too, come to that) is more likely to win you the game, and you get a big boost to rewards from a win (although it won't change your relative position within your team, of course).

There's more if you follow the link, but in general it helps to think along the following lines: Damage is the most important thing, and it needs to be *proportional* damage i.e. 10% of the hp knocked off a BB will get you the same rewards as knocking 10% off a DD (assuming they're the same tier). To put it another way, a hit that does 10K hp of damage to something with a low hp total (so, DD, for example) will get you far more xp/silver than an absolutely identical hit to something with a higher hp total (so, a fatty). If there is tier variation in the teams, shooting higher tier things rewards you more than shooting lower tier things. You get some rewards for capping, spotting etc. (and shooting down planes, which can come in handy if someone parks fighters over your head), and a bonus for kills (again, more in the article I linked) but it is damage that is the key driver. So, if you knock every last hp off a full health BB (so killing him), you will get the exact same rewards as if you did the same to a DD of the same tier even though - in pure hp terms - you did a lot more damage to the BB than to the DD. Crucially though, most of your rewards come from the damage; the rewards from the actual kill are comparatively trivial...

Your rank in the team is - more or less - entirely to do with how much proportional damage you do, so you'll do better if you blow up DDs than BBs; you also get bonus points for damaging things of higher tier than you (and a reduction where the reverse is the case)... Edit: there is more here: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Base_Earnings