Verblonde

I'll give it a bit of a lash over the weekend; as usual, the first port of call is premiums for the usual reasons - Benham and Black for me. Jutland and/or Yugumo might be worth a run-out too, depending on what the meta turns out to look like...

There is, or at least there are (or used to be - I haven't been immersed in this stuff in the UK for almost a decade now) a bunch of things that Trading Standards folk want to see, and if you are violating lots of them, you get into trouble. I'm not hugely au fait with how this stuff is interpreted online either, but in the physical world it's usually along the lines of using terms that are commonly understood by an average farty (so WG's common you-have-to-read-the-last-detail-of-the-small-print approach would be frowned upon), and you can't claim a sale is a sale unless the product has been available for sale for a decent period of time beforehand at the full price (used to be 28 days), and in a reasonable proportion of a seller's outlets, and so on. Basically, the aim is to avoid fooling an average and reasonable customer.

Speaking as a sometimes retailer, this isn't a "sale" as the term is usually understood (at least in the English-speaking world), but rather a "special offer" or something like that.

This, right here. On the positive side though, since WG got rid of the bulk of the duplicate ship = doubloons (instead of duplicate ships you generally get an alternative - less valuable - prize) things, if you already have most/all available premiums then there is almost no reason to spend money. I think I can manage without turning my Atlanta into a floating Hawaiian shirt, and there aren't any price reductions on the few ships I don't have already, so no urge to spend money here. Hurrah! A proper, actual sale might well have required opening the wallet...

For *some* DDs i.e. anything with poor AA, it absolutely is. At least if you're only thinking in terms of a CV's ability to damage DDs. For anything with worthwhile AA, it's the reverse: you pay for decent AA elsewhere, so if good AA is rendered redundant, then you're left with a sub-standard DD which then plays like a dull/weaker version of those 'buffed' DDs. Of course, this also entirely ignores the fact that CVs will still be able to spot DDs (and other ships) ludicrously easily; all that changes is that it'll take them slightly longer. Why? Because a CV knows when it is in the general area of a surface target because the 'detected' icon lights up, and after that it's just a matter of zig-zagging across the likely area the potential target is in => spotted ship, and ship is blasted by the opposing surface fleet. If WG wanted to try something sensible, they should have just removed planes' detected warning, and either left the air detection distance alone, or possibly even nerfed it (wherever the balance point lies)...

This. I wonder if whoever is responsible for DDs at WG has been caught in bed with someone he/she didn't ought to be by someone much higher up the food chain....? Again.

One can usually infer likely patch dates, for major patches anyway: They usually happen on a Thursday (presumably to give at least a working day to fix anything that may go wrong). They're usually roughly monthly. If there are patch-specific missions going on, they're usually scheduled to end just before a new patch arrives e.g. the current tranche of KM CV directives etc. say they're available (at time of writing) for the next 11 days. So, the next patch is likely (but emphatically not certain) to happen in the wee hours of Thursday 3rd Sep. However, it is very unwise to plan anything that actually matters around such inferences: always wait for the actual patch notes.

For most CV drivers, the problem they represent to a DD is not really the attacking bit, but rather the spotting. The proposed change, as it stands, doesn't prevent this, it merely delays it. In 'exchange', the seven second spin-up time makes DD AA effectively irrelevant and/or requires you to tool around with AA permanently on if you actually want to shoot anything down. Less relevant (gameplay trumps realism after all), but I also find the notion of planes having to almost overfly a ship to see it very counter-intuitive. Hopefully, this stupid idea will be demonstrated as stupid in testing, and never see the light of day. There is certainly adjustment needed to the CV/DDs/other ships spotting/AA interaction, but I'm pretty confident this proposal is not the answer (unless DDs get an exception to the 7 second rule).

That's not actually correct; there are plenty of DDs that can knock down (non-fighter) planes. I guess the question is how do you define relevant: obviously, a good CV player laughs at any AA; most CV players however may take sufficient losses to give the DD player some rewards to make up for their trouble, or even enough to discourage further attacks on the DD. As we know, you can't stop a determined CV strike; this change most likely means that you won't realistically even get any compensatory plane kills in the process.

That was the impression I got; trouble is, it also knackers everything else in the process....

I've just seen the Dev Blog apropos latest AA changes (or rather, the test of): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/63 The bit that bothers me is "When activated with the 'P' key, AA defenses will no longer instantly operate at 100% capacity, but will instead gradually increase in efficiency, reaching 100% after 7 seconds. The inverse applies when deactivating AA with the same key " As usual, my focus is very much DDs; this looks an awful lot like words to the effect of: things that generally already have very poor AA now have to wait seven seconds (much more time than a CV needs to land a strike) before their already pitiful AA is operating at full efficiency. I read this as CVs will (quite rightly) still be able to find you, but it will take longer; however, once they have found you, your defences will be even more pitiful than before. What am I missing?

And right there is why you'll get almost zero sympathy. Normally, I would offer some constructive input (CVs are a damn nuisance, but can be dealt with most of the time), but my desire to even try and help evaporates in the face of blatant selfishness.

I did what I aimed to do i.e. get to R10 and then call it a day; all (I think) my games were in Orkan. My feeling is that it's abundantly clear that having CVs on small maps is a spectacularly foolish decision on WG's part; at the times and ranks I was playing I got enough CV-free games that it was tolerable, but those game with a CV present were - as I imagine we all expected - very one dimensional affairs, as the options for interesting manoeuvre and stealth essentially evapourated.

I'm on the verge of another reset, as the latest bonus just kicked in; the sensible thing is to do nothing, though, until WG confirm what the score will be vis-a-vis reset ships and anniversary rewards. The new patch drops in - what - a couple of weeks(ish); that's not too long to wait.... (I'm assuming the new patch will probably be Thu 3rd Sep, as the KM CV missions - at time of writing - show 12 more days left to run.)

Yup - the UU occupies slot 5, which most people have the usual concealment mod in; the latter gives a 10% reduction in surface spotting distance, whereas the UU only gives a 5% reduction. Edit: for me, this is the problem with the bulk of UUs; they commonly require one to give up stealth, which - IMO - is usually far too valuable (*usually*, not always).

Not as a primary aim, no. That said, it's been fun to see what I can do with the IJN torp line (my standard regrind line) now I suck very marginally less than the first time I played them; that didn't require a regrind though, as I tend to keep everything from T5 and up (snowflakes etc. plus the occasional mission or special mode). I wouldn't regrind without a solid reward at the end of proceedings...

Normal full concealment build Zed gets 6.1 km surface detection (and 6 km hydro).

(Copied from the RB; I'm actually only a few games away from getting it the old fashioned way - doubt I'll bother using it though, since you lose half your concealment mod effectiveness)

The only Correct way to play a BB is manly; the usual 'snipe from long range' approach that one tends to see is the WOWS equivalent to screaming and jumping on a table when a mouse appears. Besides which, when a chap is tired of dakka, he is tired of life...

Having just emerged from a double CV game in my Yuki (one each T8 and T6), I'm afraid I have absolutely zero sympathy for CV MM woes right at this point... Personally, right now, I feel that +4 MM would probably be about right for the d*mn things.

Dev Blog (changes to test ships): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/62

I vaguely remember seeing something about changes to which things were available at which account level, but don't remember details - if something has changed, the wiki may have not been updated yet?

I feel that the torps on Yugumo are rather superior, if only because the extra 2 km reach comes in handy now and again (plus, they do more damage of course). Of course, if one is feeling frisky, the F3s can be glorious (although I've been leaving that to Yuki myself)...

I'll be resetting the line (again) once I've knocked the next lot of snowflakes off; I was idly wondering about trying a few more gun-orientated builds this time around, just out of curiosity...

I think the algorithm may be a bit more complicated: as I was moaning about earlier, I got the BB mission chain; however, I have absolutely no shortage of BBs in port, *but* most of them only get played in Coop/Ops...