Verblonde

Are free xp ships worth it? Absolutely, *but* (and it's a big but) only if you're ready for them and/or know how to play that sort of thing and at that sort of tier; as others have alluded to, jumping into something like an Alaska would be a miserable experience for most unless they have plenty of experience in high tier US cruiser/BB gameplay already. What I would suggest you do with free xp during your initial playing career would be something along the following lines: Don't use it to skip tiers (you miss out on invaluable playing experience if you do); you should play every ship in every tech tree that you go up. I would suggest using it instead to unlock some or all (depending on ship) of a new ship's modules; this avoids playing ships stock, which can be miserable (at least in PvP). Try not to use it to 'finish off' ship grinds as much as possible; partly for the aforementioned 'experience' reasons, but also because free xp is quite hard to get, so it's sensible to save it for when you really need it. I'm not a paragon in this area, recently having free xped at least a third of the experience needed to get past the US T9 CL, because I utterly hated the ship in question (Seattle), for example, but - as much as possible - try not to do as I do in this case! Not everyone agrees, but I also used to use a lot of free xp to develop my captains, especially if it got me to a significant milestone (most commonly 10 points, as that's the minimum you want for +2 MM battles); once you get at least one 19 point captain (or 21 pointer after the rework, as things stand), the need to do this drops off, as it's a *lot* easier to generate elite xp than free xp. The hard bit is getting that first 19 pointer, and free xp can help.

Sir, I salute your restraint; my reflex reaction would be to be a *lot* less kind...

You could always go with an homage to the noted Tank Girl character:

I wouldn't presume to advise in this situation, but you have my support for what that's worth. I suspect that all you can really do is come up with a clever nickname that conveys the same information, whilst being sufficiently smart to go right over the head of the average homophobe. FWIW the bulk of the WOWS community seem to be a pretty relaxed lot, so it might be worth sticking around..?

You're immune to fire/flood during that time. Personally, I never bother with the upgrade, but others may have a different view...

Some replies, comments etc. from the perspective of a DD main: IJN is an excellent choice for a first DD line; they'll teach you how to work with torps and stealth (although you shouldn't forget about the guns entirely; they can be a valuable tool for finishing off wounded foes). You also have - from T8 - excellent dakka on the 'guns' orientated branch. The RN DDs are splendid, but aren't really an ideal 'first choice' due to requiring gun use to do reliable damage, and the shorter duration smoke can take a bit of getting used to; if you are enjoying them, you might as well stick with it though - T7 onwards, they are amongst my favourite DDs in the game. The Americans are the 'other' standard first line to choose; I found their short-ranged torps (you don't get a stealth fire window until T7) frustrating when I first played them, but they force you to learn to use guns intelligently, and the long duration smokes are extremely helpful for screening allies. The other thing in their favour these days is their AA isn't entirely useless (for a DD) and they get DefAA; they're a good choice if you're trying to get the hang of anti-CV play. I like the German DDs, mainly because of the smoke/hydro combination, although they pay for it with slightly weaker armament (although the 'big gun' option that appears now and again in the line can be quite worthwhile - citadelling cruisers that mess up never gets old). Honourable mention for the the T-22; smoke/hydro at T5 is glorious, and it's a lot less vulnerable to planes than most DDs at the tier. I'm not sure I understand the question re: commanders fully, but the following approach should work: from T5, you generally want at least 10 point captains (i.e. from the moment you start meeting +2 opposition) if possible. BTW I would suggest keeping every T5+ ship you can, if only to get the snowflakes at Xmas (and beyond), but once you're past a ship, it doesn't need a high point captain if you're not playing it actively, as you can bag the snowflake in Coop. With DD captains, you are in the fortunate position that the first ten points are almost universally agreed to look like this: This build will work with essentially any current DD (although some prefer to take PM over PT for the first one pointer; I favour information though, having used both); CE is the reason you want at least ten points - any DD without it that even remotely uses stealth is badly gimped without that skill. What to do after those initial ten points is a matter for discussion, but for the RN, I tend to go BFT, then AR; after that, I usually go with SI and PM, but many would favour RL instead (I don't because the enemy knows when you have them with RL, but I could easily be doing it wrong). On the subject of captains, be aware that there is a rework apparently incoming (although we don't know exactly when yet); as things stand it won't change all that much for DD captain basic builds (initial look suggests that PM will be the initial 1 pointer, but no change after that for 10 points), but if the promised free respec materialises, you'll be able to rebuild all your captains without having to spend doubloons. With regard to ammo choice; I would generally default to HE, and then switch to AP if a suitable target presents itself (you need to be more precise with AP, and your aim needs to be better - in general). BTW on a related subject, there is a lot to be said for cruising around with torps selected - this is due to the PT skill; a ship with this gets a little number on their screen telling them how many ships are aiming main guns at them; if you start with guns, switch to torps, then back to guns again, your target's counter drops by one then goes up again; an awake captain will know this means increased likelihood of torp attack (although you can spoof them by making the switches without firing).

Of course not - silly idea; others have covered off well why. Doing so would make my life a lot easier (I struggle with cruisers myself, but it's because I'm not good enough yet; I'd much rather L2P though than have the game simplified for me), but I still think it's a bad idea. With one small tweak, this becomes a magnificent idea; WG - please implement immediately! (I'm a believer in the whole 'I may suck/get sunk, but I'll look gorgeous doing it!' approach.)

Could something be changed to make it better? Why, yes: to be brutally honest (having tried to be vaguely constructive and having apparently failed), you need to learn to play. The game works in a certain way, that happens to discourage playing like a total Richard; it is not that hard to get the hang of, otherwise everyone here (who are almost entirely 100% of the view that you're wrong, if you haven't noticed already) would be permanently pink. Question for the (at least) semi-competent players: has *anyone* played consistently badly and/or failed to learn some really basic stuff to the extent that they've been orange, even once? Even I've never managed it, and I'm pretty clumsy with torps in Coop. You have a choice here: accept that you haven't learned the game properly yet, and seek advice/help to improve (this community is very good at helping people who want to improve), or carry on as you are - in denial - and continue to suck, and keep turning pink/orange. Entirely up to you, although you'll probably have more fun with the former option. As to the first part of your question, you are being 'battled' because your suggestion is a foolish one (sorry); whilst this forum tends to be very helpful towards those who want to learn, there also tends to be a world-class lack of sympathy for folk who turn up with posts to the effect of "I haven't understood the game properly and/or can't be bothered to learn, and bad things keep happening to me - the game needs to be fixed to stop this." If you fall into the latter category (which your posts emphatically do), you can expect to be told so, in no uncertain terms.

It's going to take a while (although I have 80% in Fujin after only 10 battles, which is consistent, albeit statistically not significant) - I feel rather guilty playing these things too often...

I suspect that this wouldn't be a terribly good idea: For context, my overall WR in DDs is a shade north of 49% at time of writing... Of course, this doesn't stop WG using these things as blatant bait for Xmas containers (although mine fell out of a SC - the best thing I've ever got from one, by miles).

I'm afraid it was your fault; this is not to diminish the stupidity of the ally in question though (if he hadn't died already, I would have been strongly tempted to unload my guns on him in your situation). This is what I mean about cost/benefit analysis; it's just that in this case, the probabilities didn't work out for you. Presumably, all that happened is that you went pink for a couple of games; unless one is incompetent, it's very unlikely that you'll get caught by the curse of the blithering idiot very often...

I suspect you may have a more positive view of the average member of the player base/humanity in general than I tend to have, especially by the middle of Sunday after several hours of weekend play...!

Indubitably, but our OP was whinging about getting banned from PvP due to incompetence with torps (paraphrasing), so I was mainly thinking about avoiding that.

Yes, always. The firer has to take into account the possibility that the player potentially in the way of their torps is a blithering idiot; but, if they are, and get hit it is still the firer's fault. You just have to make the best judgement you can, and decide whether or not to fire on the basis of a quick cost/benefit analysis. I'm not convinced this would be a good idea: I suggest it would encourage people to abdicate responsibility for their own torps ("I told him I was firing, so not my problem, even if dodging the friendly torps would have, say, exposed his broadside to that Yamato over there..").

First, and as per usual: what your torps hit is *always* your fault. No ifs or buts. Always. I'm afraid this is a - very common - L2P issue; the trick is to develop your situational awareness such that you know where all your allies are, and where they could be at the end of your torps' run-time. To start with, if it is physically possible for you to hit an ally, don't fire; assess this with reference to your mini-map (and, as a general point, make sure it's a large as possible, and shows as much information as you can cope with). Once you've got the hang of this - and it's habit-formed - you can start layering the more risky shots back in again, only they will now be better judged such that your general return on your torp use will generally exceed the costs to your side. Some more specific observations/responses: To actually get banned from PvP takes quite a lot of effort and multiple egregious instances of friendly fire; if this has happened to you twice, you *really* need to learn the above lessons. 12 km torps are actually pretty average ranged for the game overall; if you can't handle them, you're going to struggle even more at higher tiers. Long-ranged torps are actually extremely easy to use, if you've taken the time to get the hang of situational awareness; quite apart from anything else, they mean you're often less exposed when firing. Do bear in mind though that the further away you fire from, the greater the chances are of someone spotting your torps and/or changing course/speed; it's often better to save torps for closer ranged shots (area denial excepted). Yahagi is a cruiser (no sh*t, Sherlock!); as a general rule, your torps aren't your primary weapon - your guns are. Yes, torps can do cataclysmic damage, but the peculiarities of cruisers (not much armour, a citadel, average concealment at best) mean that you will often struggle to use them; don't be tempted to fire just because you can - save them for when they may actually be effective (and you won't hit allies). Nonsense. I'm afraid you need to adjust your mental benchmarks a bit: 20 secs isn't that long; to provide an extreme example, Black can more or less reload her torp launchers completely in the time it takes her fish to reach maximum range! To repeat, this is just a practice/learning thing. As a final note: learning to use torps effectively isn't idiot-proof, and cruisers (because they aren't meant to/can't fire them that frequently, if you're not doing it wrong) are often a poor tool for learning the basic necessary skills; I'd strongly suggest practicing more with your IJN torp boats - they're *supposed* to fire lots of torps and will give you the sheer number of shots fired to start to get the hang of this stuff in a more useful time-frame...

Another thought: it's worth taking a bit of time to memorise the broad strokes of who has which hydro and what it can do e.g. high tier German DDs get fairly long-ranged hydro (4-5 km, 6 km at T10), but it has semi-modest run-time (120-144 secs, with a coal mod); you can do a lot with two minutes, but in contrast, the RN DDs' hydro runs for 216 secs with a coal mod, but only get 3 km range. Three plus minutes effectively immune to torps is really rather handy on the latter. There are a couple of oddball premiums with hydro running around too: Loyang is the most common (5.5 km range), but Siliwangi (same) also gets it, as does Friesland (5 km). Haida is also worth a mention: she gets the RN defensive hydro too, and is another excellent DD hunter, although not the easiest to do well with. Radar DDs are quite unusual, but still commoner than they once were: Black will be familiar (mainly let down by its - very slow - torps, but that's heavily mitigated by getting smoke as well), but we now also have Orkan/Smaland (both excellent DD hunters with a heal too), and you can run radar on the high tier silver PA DDs, although most people don't as you have to give up smoke. I'm not sure that radar is really more prevalent than it has been overall (at least in the time I've been playing), *but* you do get big spikes whenever a new silver line with it gets released, and I think we're still in the tail-end of the spike caused by the new Russian cruisers; I suspect it may be dying back a bit at last though - I've had several entirely radar-free games these last few days, and it's been a while since that happened more than once in a blue moon.

Worst case, your aim should be to cause the CV to waste as much time as possible sinking you; if you're leading him a merry dance then he isn't making a nuisance of himself elsewhere (plus, any planes you shoot down and/or damage you do in the meantime will increase your earnings at the end of the game). Slightly better case, better CV players know about the time wasting approach, and may well leave you alone for a while if they decide you're too much work to be an efficient use of their time - good CV drivers tend to be about efficiency i.e. maximising the amount of time they're doing something useful, and a lot of mucking about with a DD that knows his business may well not be efficient. Whilst I much prefer games with no CV when I'm playing IJN torp boats, such games can still be fun (at the very least, it can be an interesting challenge if the CV driver is merely average), it's just a bit less consistent fun than - say - a T8 CV running straight into your BFT Halland with DefAA ready to go...

I live for games where the CV doesn't hunt me down as a priority, almost regardless, as it dramatically increases my chances of a win. A CV that doesn't make its first order of business finding and sinking the opposing DDs is doing it wrong (quite apart from anything else, they'll spot the other opposition ships at the same time). Luckily for me, there are plenty of such CVs about, and I would strongly encourage them to keep doing it, please, at least when they're on the red team... Similarly, I strongly approve of red CVs that concentrate on damage farming my side's BBs; please keep doing that as well.

This isn't really a practical solution to the CV issue, as it generally makes you a 'mission kill' - if you're hiding under something's AA umbrella for an extended period, you aren't doing your job, and become effectively a cr4p cruiser. It doesn't even work that well against a competent CV driver, as they'll strike you anyway. That's not to say that occasionally running away for AA cover isn't a bad idea; just don't spend your entire time doing it.

Everything that isn't German has HE rockets, and of the Germans GZ also gets HE. A subtle distinction to be aware of with the Americans is that the higher tier ones can have the option of taking Tiny Tims instead of the more traditional type; these monsters are generally less of a threat to you as there are fewer of them so harder to get a hit with (although they hurt if they do hit) - generally, you'll only work out if they've got those when they open fire for the first time. A proper CV driver will need to confirm, but I get the impression that Tiny Tim usage has dropped off somewhat since the recent reticle changes. BTW whilst most CVs will try and sink you with rockets, the German AP ones are much less use for this (as others have said); be aware that KM aerial torps are (mostly) very fast however and, as such, are a much more viable anti-DD weapon than other nations' equivalents The newer exception is the T6 premium, which gets laughably slow torps; the most effective anti-DD weapon she has are her HE Stukas, which take skill to hit with, but really hurt when on target. GZ's torps are more average, but she gets HE rockets, so won't often fire them at your DD...

No, not dead, but you do have a lot of counters that you need to play around; the sneaky (and semi-sneaky) DDs are still some of my favourites to play, but one has to exercise a bit of judicious caution (especially at weekends, or any other time when the less capable are out in force). Some pointers (apologies for any repetition of others' suggestions): Be very cautious, and always have an exit plan, especially if you don't know where the radars are yet; try and get your team to blow up radars as a priority (F3 them), but don't be too hopeful - there is a deeply depressing thread live at the moment where some foolish BB driver explains why blowing up cruisers isn't his job (yup, BBs are still the hard counter to cruisers as they've always been). As long as radars are extant and in your area, your priority is to stay alive, over almost all other considerations (capping especially). Your situational awareness needs to be as good as possible (mini-map is essential - make sure it's as large as possible, and showing as much information as you can cope with); you will get spotted at some point, and you need to know what to do to get hard cover between you and the foe, and where everyone is who might help/harm you. You also need to keep an eye on what your allies are up to and where; try and be where there are people who may support you (and vice versa), and not where our aforementioned BB player and his ilk are - you're more likely to do well if you and your team-mates are working in concert. CVs can be a bugger (technical term, you understand); if you meet a good one, you're basically dead, regardless. Happily, the bulk of CV players are not that good, so there is hope. First thing is to check your AA range and air detection distance; if your AA shoots further than a plane can see you, make sure it's off (p key) until you're spotted. Learn about and use (when appropriate) sector reinforcement, especially in conjunction with DefAA if you have it; I would suggest mapping sector reinforcement to a spare mouse button if possible, as that is a lot easier to use than the defaults. Activating sector reinforcement will also switch on your AA at the same time, so avoiding two key/button presses (assuming everything is in it's 'resting' state - if you switched off AA in the middle of a reinforcement cycle, you'll need to use p to reactivate AA until everything has settled down again). If it's likely that a CV will spot you, try and get a mountain between you and as many surface threats as possible; as you allude to in your OP, CV spotting will generally kill you more often than direct damage from the planes. The most intelligent uses of smoke have evolved a bit (and familiarise yourself with smoke firing penalties if you've been away for a long time); most of the time, just camping in smoke is asking for trouble - if you get radared/hydroed the enemy can see you and you're blind, plus the old strategy of torping angry smoke clouds is pretty standard. That said, you can still make good use of smoke: screening allies, breaking visual contact with surface and airborne threats, making people think you're somewhere you aren't (if you're fast enough), baiting radar (hydro too, to a lesser extent), and so on. There is still scope for unleashing gunfire from inside a smoke cloud, but pick your spots - there are a lot of ships out there that are extremely good at countering this (besides radar cruisers, smoke/hydro DDs, and a few radar DDs as well). Stay alive. This is perhaps the most important thing; regardless of what you're told in chat, it is almost always better to stay alive as long as you can, especially in stealth DDs - for every radar ship that gets sunk before you die, you have scope to wreak havoc with your torps. The T8-9 IJN torp boats have class-leading stealth and monstrous torps; if you can survive for long enough, the opposing fatties are almost certainly boned (beware KM BBs, and any others with hydro though, plus MO with her radar). Use your guns, but pick your spots. There is a widespread (and entirely erroneous) belief that IJN torp DDs' guns are not worth using; nonsense - their alpha can often finish a wounded target off, but you need to pick your moments carefully, due to the loss of stealth (check that the way gun bloom etc. works matches your current understanding; it's changed a few times over the years). That's not definitive, but gives a few pointers; I've reground the IJN torp line several times now, and they are most certainly still viable, provided you run full concealment build and know how to minimise the CV threat to you and what to do about radar. BTW more generally, it's worth reviewing what new ships have been released since you last played, and what they can do; from the perspective of a sneaky DD, there are some highly effective predators out there these days; besides radar ships, the RN DDs are good DD hunters, so are the French (although their concealment is lousy), and several of the EU ships are a serious threat (Orkan and Smaland especially, due to their radar). Several of the 'old school' threats are viable still too, but I imagine you know all about them already.

So, just to clarify: it is everyone else's job to tell BBs what to do, because they are incapable of doing it themselves? I suspect the competent BB players who do have more than a couple of brain cells to rub together might well be rather insulted by that suggestion...

For single figures minutes though - surely even a typical BB player can manage that? If that's a bit advanced, just shoot anything that's a cruiser - all cruisers are priority targets; it's just that the radars are more important (unless you get a DD-free game). To be honest, if a player is at high tiers and can't remember which the radars are, they probably should drop back a few tiers. Stay at T6 until they've learned the mighty number of ships that have radar in your MM spread (it's only six - I think - ships for the US, and three Russians, plus a few rare weirdos) for example. Only advance when you can cope with learning a few more names. WOWS is supposed to be complicated(ish); it's not a twitch reflex competition (which is partly why a lot of older guys like the game), but requires one to exercise the brain cells very slightly. In that context, remembering a handful of ships is not an unreasonable ask, even for BB mains. To be honest though, not being able to work out that anything with a name ending in something like ov or grad, or named after a Russian leader or city that *everyone* learned about at school is most likely Russian (or even more so, if it's named after somewhere in America, it might be vaguely, y'know, American) does rather fall into the same category as struggling to walk and chew gum at the same time. (All of which said, I would be very appreciative if everyone would keep secret the fact that Orkan and Smaland have radar, as I'm having far too much fun at the moment bushwhacking smoke camping idiots who can't be bothered to learn this stuff. Thank you very much for your consideration and discretion.) Post-script - this page shows everything that has radar (and at which tier); to memorise *everything* that *might* have radar at every last tier calls for recognition of 34 (or 35, if you count Alaska twice) ships - not hard: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Surveillance_Radar_Data

They want us to distribute them to all and sundry...

Because they're morons! And - as a DD main (sorry, @ForlornSailor!) - this is a stupidity I'm quite frequently grateful for...!