Verblonde

It's not really surprising that the Brave New Belfast would be a bit meh; WG are presumably desperate to avoid any repeat of the original Belfast difficulties. In that regard, better to start a bit lame (silly buggers like me will probably buy her anyway - it's Belfast, after all, and now she gets torps!), and work from there. I imagine there isn't much enthusiasm for having to do 'Belfast 1944, mid August, some time around elevenses' having used up all the other 'time stamps', so a more cautious approach makes some sense. At least one more smoke charge wouldn't surprise me after testing though...

Now, now - let's be entirely fair to WG here. Orkan is already in the Armory [sic] for doubloons, and that was released much less than eight months ago...

Thanks guys - I missed the expandable stats bit of the Dev Blog...!

Is that including SI? Not much at all, if so...

It's possible the Dev Blog has been edited - unless I'm blind, there is now no mention of hydro. So far it looks a bit like Edinburgh, but: Gains radar; apparently loses hydro and probably heal. Gets RN smoke, rather than Edinburgh's standard smoke. Gains HE. Did I miss anything?

Just worked - many thanks, OP!

Dev Blog apropos anniversary and next dockyard event: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/56

That sounds like a result to me - I'll probably buy one, assuming WG don't mess it up. It'll be interesting to see if they maintain the T7 version as lootbox bait...

Thanks!

While this is true, there is perhaps a case to be made that keeping an eye on what's going on with your AA adds an extra layer of complexity to playing Halland (etc.)? I wouldn't object to having more robust AA on my Halland, but monitoring the state of my AA (and making judgements of when to engage surface targets, or not, partially informed by the risk/reward balance for losing AA) does - I suppose - make things more interesting. I'm probably weird though...

Daily Bounce on Florida in ST: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/supertest-u-s-premium-tier-vii-battleship-florida/ Also, Kansas in ST (not sure if this counts as 'interesting', but still): https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/supertest-u-s-tier-viii-battleship-kansas/

I was wondering if I missed something about Donskoi - I don't actively dislike her (she feels like a tolerably robust cruiser to me), but I much prefer Chapy. Still, although I've only given her a couple of goes in Coop so far, Nevsky is looking distinctly promising (Incidentally, how did I miss that she had torps!? I was expecting essentially another bleedin' Moskva-alike; I suppose reading is hard.) - perhaps the distress caused is worth it?

I'm curious: why is this the case? I like Halland's general CV-resistance, but I don't believe I've ever had to deal with an actively good CV player in mine; I'd be interested to know what I'm not seeing yet...

Basically, yes! Although, in all fairness, any silly bugger that runs around with their AA on all the time deserves every mighty issuing of wedgies that the CVs hand out... My working hypothesis is that the 'balance' between CVs and AA is - or rather WG are attempting to - arranged deliberately so that competent CVs can blast anyone, *but* also such that the hapless target will be able to knock down a few planes in the process, such that they feel marginally less bad about things and - more tangibly - actually get some rewards even though they got scragged.

(emphasis added) First, to save @El2aZeR the effort: there is essentially nothing in the game that a competent CV driver can't strike. Right, having got that out of the way, I would suggest that this isn't a 'broken game' problem, but rather a lack of knowledge; there are very few DDs with actively good AA, and none where weird builds will make them surprisingly more lethal. At the risk of being unceremoniously thrown out of the Ancient and Worshipful Guild of DD Drivers, really the only DDs you need to know about in this regard are the following: Tier 10: Halland, and maybe Groz/Marceau. Tier 9: Friesland, and Ostergotland. Tier 8: Kidd, and Oland. That's more or less your lot. There are a few others to approach with caution (i.e. attack directly, rather than cheerfully transiting across their AA bubble on one side of the ship) - essentially, anything American, including PA, and/or anything with DefAA. This all assumes that the DD driver has a basic level of competence and knows about things like sector reinforcement and suchlike. Basically, learn the relevant ships, and you'll soon be back to making pretty much an entire class miserable in your CVs in no time.

Not really - you usually give up rather a lot elsewhere to get the AA, and it's still not enough to prevent spotting, which is the real danger that CVs present. Slightly over-simplifying, but you can either pick something with dreadful AA, but with torps that hit like a dump truck (Shima, say), or you can pick something that roundly molests sub-standard CV players (especially if they're lower tier), but gets torps that make entertaining squeaky toy noises when they hit something (Halland, and basically nothing else at T10). Speaking as a DD driver, there are *very* few things in my port that a semi-competent CV driver can't shred, or spot into oblivion...

Many thanks as well! Won my last two Donskoi games playing a bit more conservatively; that was enough to unlock the T10 - yay! Slightly to my surprise, the latter looks like it might be fun; it's got torps and everything...!

Many thanks - much appreciated!

Right at the moment, I'm all manner of pants at playing Donskoi... I suspect I'm trying too hard to radar DDs early in the game; there seem to be sufficient people awake enough to blast a radar ship when it appears (although, why are none of these buggers on my team when I'm playing DDs?!).

I wouldn't necessarily sell her (I kept mine); just keep her in reserve as a potentially useful 'just in case' if you ever need a radar DD for T8 competitive. Can't remember the last time I played mine though - probably the last time we were knocking off snowflakes...

I suspect there may be a number of factors: You've just come from GM, which is excellent, and the contrast is a bit painful. The advantages of the torps are not terribly evident: they're just as slow as the equivalents on Benson, and you can't hit DDs with them. You lose one gun barrel's worth of dakka, compared to Benson, and the AA increase is negligible. It's followed by - essentially - a Feltcher, which is pretty excellent.

Obviously GM is viewed as a highlight of the line, so the T8 was always going to struggle to follow that. I don't think the T8 is entirely disastrous, but she is rather 'meh' - she's more or less a Benson (well, she's a Gleaves, but you know what I mean) that can't torp DDs. My suspicion is that Hsienyang is mainly in the line to encourage you to spend free xp to get to the better things that follow. For the PA line, it's worth trying the radar on the T8; it's much harder, but at least it makes the ship less dull (although if you have money available, Orkan is far better at the 'T8 radar DD' thing, IMO). The argument for the radar build increases if you're playing in a division, or in a mode where it's more likely that what you spot will actually get shot at by your allies. T9 is essentially a Fletcher, so pretty worthwhile, and even the much-abused-with-the-nerf-bat YY isn't bad; my feeling is that they're worth having for a bit of variety (and possibly for use in competitive with radar), although I prefer their US incarnations for more general use... I would rate them as not essential but still sufficiently fun to be worth playing...

This. Gods know, I really wanted to like her; I'm usually a sucker for anything remotely DD-shaped, but her various ranges are simply too upside-down - as I said when she was released, Loyang is a far better use of one's ackers. Mind you, I'll actually be happy if she falls out of a Christmas crate or something; she is still a DD after all, albeit a rather non-essential one. My guess is that there is some fun to be had there, but it's most certainly not worth paying full price for, given the available alternatives.

As already mentioned (do watch the video @Greyshark posted, and there's a wiki entry here: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Detection), each ship has a detection range, which can be modified by things like cammo, upgrades, and captain skills. There are a few ways that ships can appear/disappear: Passing behind cover (like islands or smoke screens) will block your LoS to the target for as long as they are behind smoke/hard cover, but you say apart from that. Surfing the detection range: a ship that's roughly as far away from you as its detection range may, either deliberately or by accident, move over the detection boundary - this will make it appear/disappear. A zigzag course can easily have this effect. Firing guns: as you'll see in the wiki etc. when a ship fires its main guns, the detection distance of that ship 'blooms' to the maximum range of those guns for 20 secs; if the guns take longer than 20 secs to reload (or the ship simply holds fire), the detection range will reset to normal. If the target ship is between its spotting distance and gun range, it will appear when it fires, and potentially disappear 20 secs later. BTW if the spotted ship breaks contact (via smoke/hard cover), its gun bloom resets much faster. A couple of illustrative examples: The recently released Z-35 DD has shorter ranged torps (6 km) than its detection distance; if it wants to just keep you spotted it'll stay outside its detection distance (6 and a bit km with full concealment build), but it needs to get close enough to be seen to fire torps. A sensible way for her to proceed is to dash into torp range, fire, and then flee again; in this case, the ship will appear and then disappear again. Something like a Yamato without concealment can be spotted from a shade under 13 km away; however, her guns have a range of north of 26 km (and take about half a minute to reload). This means that a Yamato can park itself anywhere between those distance numbers (13 and 26 km) and glue the fire button down, and still be invisible for about a third of the fire-reload-fire cycle. Again, it will appear and disappear. Of course, the two are closely related and doing something similar; mastering working around the detection mechanics is one of the most important skills for a player to develop.

Even though we've had threads on this before, it bears repeating - the 'updated' logo is pretty ghastly. Not that it matters one iota, but I've switched to using the "didn't suck excessively in Japanese ships for a few battles" instead, as the new "mighty whale" badge distresses me...