Verblonde

This is your problem right here - you're advancing up the tiers far too fast. I'm afraid this isn't going to work very well, unless you want to spend quite a lot of money on a permaflage for the T10; you'll also need a *lot* of silver to buy the actual ships. Some suggestions: Play a much wider range of ship types and stick to lower tiers for a while (T6 max, perhaps; I would normally say lower, but your WR appears to be rather good for someone with only 150 battles). The aim is to get a handle on all the classes; besides you possibly finding things other than BBs are fun, at the very least it'll help you counter what they're trying to do to you. The way the game's economy is set up it becomes much harder to earn decent amounts of silver at higher tiers without spending money; with a premium account, you usually need to be doing quite a lot of damage at T9+ to make a useful profit. T10 ships with a permaflage generally make quite a lot of silver, but you need to know you'll get a lot of use from said ship to make the doubloon spend worthwhile. Join a clan: besides having people to division with/learn from, you'll get economic bonuses (assuming they have a developed base). Ships at lower tiers are much less expensive than higher tier ones - this gives you a lot of scope for experimenting and trying different things. Take the opportunity. Recall that every time you sell a ship, you lose half the silver value - that really mounts up. There is a lot to be said for keeping, say, ships from T6-8, as credit earners (and for use in Ops for T6-7). The point of the game is not to get to T10 as quickly as possible, so enjoy the journey; there are a lot of great ships en-route to the various lines' T10s (in some cases, they're better ships than the relevant T10!). The game is more likely to get stale very quickly if you just play one ship over and over again, although it'll help your WR (not that WR is worth getting excitable about, at least not early on). Overall, bear in mind that WOWS is very rewarding (IMO), but it does have a long learning curve; you will probably have a lot more fun if you don't rush. Also, be mindful that mistakes are generally likely to be punished much more at higher tiers, and you're far more likely to misplay if you haven't taken the time to acquire the skill-set that is usually developed by playing many different ships, across many different branches and nations...

Presumably, this is all reference to the Russian cruiser line split that (I think) happens next patch: Moskva becomes a new semi-premium (acquiring permaflage in the process, if you didn't have it already). The single cruiser branch becomes two branches, with new T10s for both. If you want the T10 that replaces Moskva, you have to play Donskoi again to get it (or use free xp), as you originally did to get Moskva. There is some discussion as to the fairness/new precedent aspects of this; personally, I don't have a problem with what WG have done here, but that's an entirely personal view (largely based on the new T10 being another made-up ship, I believe). Where I do object is the lack of compensation for anyone who previously bought permaflage for their Moskva (luckily, again personally, this doesn't include me).....

Er, I actually didn't; I didn't think I needed to spell it out, but apparently I do: Potatoes meet potatoes and their WR (or whatever measure) - on average - pushes towards the middle i.e. up. Middling players meet middling players and stay roughly where they are. Unicums meet unicums and their WR gets depressed i.e. goes down. Every type of player ends up with a WR around half regardless of how good they actually are. So, potatoes are again meeting middling players are again meeting unicums, because SBMM pushes everyone towards the same 'middling' category. So, absolutely nothing changes, and all you've done is made it harder for the present unicums to polish their, erm, WR and slowed down the MM algorithms.

They also have an understanding of basic maths: all the proposals for SBMM that I've seen tend to use a measure that will inevitably move towards a median value (50% WR, say) for everyone. Say a potato like me makes a serious effort to get better and manages to nudge my WR a bit higher; all that happens is that I start to meet more players of a similar standard which starts to inevitably depress my WR; this will happen to everyone. Potatoes meet potatoes and their WR (or whatever measure) gets pushed towards the middle, and exactly the same thing happens to the unicums as well. The only useful thing that WG could do - in theory - is to try and balance the number of players between each team by WR; sounds simple, right? Actually, no; take me - my overall WR is (last time I checked) 48% and my class and specific ship WRs vary around that by quite a large margin. If you used my overall WR to assign me to a team, the results could easily be as bad as the existing system, depending on which ship/class I'm playing. In the process, you would inevitably slow down MM drastically, as it now has to run a lot more calculations and you would achieve very little in return.

WOT does seem to try and balance the number of wheelies on each team though, not that it makes me hate trying to hit the little any less though... I can see the appeal though: if ever there was a vehicle type to drive like you stole it, it's the wheelies.

Unless you fundamentally alter the nature of the game, there will always be regular snowball games. This discussion comes up periodically both in the context of WOWS and WOT, and the answer is always the same. If one side knows about focusing (or does it by accident) and gets kills as a result with the other side not doing so, then the likelihood of a snowball increases; that fact is baked into the game. @DFens_666 summarises the crucial reason. So, the choice becomes change the game's essentials, or leave it as it is and accept periodic snowballs. WG have chosen the latter, because their current model is demonstrably successful (at least financially).

I'm not convinced it is - I was thinking more 'ideal world'. I have a nasty suspicion if they introduced them to randoms too soon, then said population fairly quickly probably wouldn't be - you won't hear me say this very often, but I would find myself feeling sorry for the BB players, and I imagine at least some would desert the game if required to face something they have effectively zero counter-play against.

I'm 'no' and 'yes' respectively, although the first one is not 100% emphatic - I can imagine that it might be possible to have some sort of submarine presence in theory, but I can't imagine what it would look like to avoid knackering Randoms. I didn't take the 'rework' option, because I suspect that rebuilding from the ground up is called for, rather than even major tinkering with what there currently is. That said, I think a permanent separate mode would be good value, at least with some slight tinkering (mainly with vision mechanics)...

Dev Blog apropos some (final?) tweaks to Odin: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/27 Main gun reload nerfed; secondaries and AA buffed. Also, mildly interesting extract: " Before Odin becomes available for everyone, we will release a small update with these final settings (estimated time: June 2) so that our Community Contributors will be able to make their final reviews and showcase what Odin's got to offer. "

I think I prefer that she does this: most (all?) reviews are biased to some degree; when interpreting them, I find it a bit easier if the reviewers biases are telegraphed clearly (or at least what the reviewer thinks they are). In the specific case of LWM, what she tends to do is provide plenty of data (which - I believe - is as clear and objective as such things can be) and then intersperse it with her opinions, and it's usually pretty clear which bits are opinion and which bits are data. For broadly similar reasons I find it useful to read opinions of ships on here too, because only a few people try and filter out their personal biases, plus you can see how good/experienced someone is in general (and on specific ships in particular) assuming they haven't hidden their stats.

Based on my extensive experience of human nature, I might well put it down to a visit from Mister Cockup... That said, I have no idea how good (or not) Vanguard is, for reasons previously outlined. This is a good example, whichever summary is correct, of reading the whole thing rather than relying on a headline, not to mention being mindful of the date when a review was written - in this case, I think the 'mehbote' review was prior to the reework, and the 'garbage' summary afterwards. It's not like the list of ships that changed very significantly as a result of the reework is particularly short. Personally, reading the review now, what I take from it is squishy BB, with good heal, and needs to show broadside to make use of all main guns (AA bit irrelevant because of the date); I do vaguely recall at the time thinking it sounded close enough to Hood (for the purposes of my own preferences) to not be of much interest for me personally, so I didn't buy it (and then an Xmas box happened). Having played it in Coop since, it's fun enough for that, but it wouldn't be the BB I'd reach for if I needed to play Randoms in the class though (sounds pretty much like a 'mehbote' to me for what that's worth, but such things are entirely subjective, and now dropped from her reviews).

That'll be what the link in my post pointed to... Edit for clarity: I mean the link I posted points to the 'mehbote' review.

As far as I can see, it gets a 'mehbote'? ref: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/175302-premium-ship-review-113-vanguard/ The thing with LWM reviews is one has to really read everything, including between the lines, to work out how good (or not) the thing is that she's talking about. For me, this took a bit of getting used to, as I'm prone to just looking for the headline summary.. I think this may be why the 'gudbote', 'mehbote' etc. thing has been dropped for more recent reviews - to encourage people like me to read properly. I can't comment on her Vanguard review specifically as a) BBs aren't my thing and b) mine (fell out of an Xmas box) lives in coop the whole time, but she's normally there or thereabouts with her reviews of things I do play reasonably frequently.

Virgins. You aren't sacrificing enough of them to the wrathful volcano gods.

I'm a poor player, so those extra 2 km matter in something that sees a lot of radar, and with the aforementioned upgrades they go 'fast enough'. I didn't waste anything in the way of captain points, as I just dropped my Asashio captain in her. I also spent very little on mine: she fell out of an Xmas box. To reiterate: there is no way I would actively suggest anyone buy the thing, but I do maintain that she's not as dreadful as many say she is for a typical player. You lot are unicums, so may well find her more limiting..?

That's exactly what most of her review does; I just picked the quote because it tickled me...

I think that's very slightly unfair; whilst there isn't exactly a shortage of better T7 premium DDs, she is tolerable, provided you use TA and the zoomy torps mod. That's not to say that I often pick her through choice (mainly because the AA is so dreadful) or will be clamouring for her to be one of the next Black Friday duplicates or anything like that, but she isn't irretrievably dreadful (for a sub-par player, anyway)...

LWM doesn't mince her words: http://shipcomrade.com/?p=4291 Entertaining quote: "I hate this ship. I hate playing it. I’m glad this review is over. I’m not touching it again until Wargaming does something to improve her lot. Cheshire offers nothing, nothing of value." If that's typical of all reviews, and enough people read them, I'm guessing that sales of the thing haven't exactly been heroic...!

BTW if you have specific ships you're interested in, suggest asking about them on here - you'll usually get a range of opinions of varying helpfulness; read a range of them, as different people will have different perspectives. Also, read/watch as many reviews - ideally from people whose biases you are aware of - as you can, especially for premiums. I find LWM (Little White Mouse - she's based in N America somewhere) to be a good starting point. For example, this is her review of Mikoyan: http://shipcomrade.com/?p=4633 Keep an eye on the dates that any reviews were published - sometimes they can be older than significant game changes, which can render elements obsolete (e.g. anything to do with planes/AA that's older than about eighteen months, and the more recent IFHE changes)...

Finally got my first 300 in one of the crates I got for finishing the third directive! (How do I change my vote to a 'yes'? I'm probably having a senior moment...)

My feeling is that this is the area that still needs most work, although I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is; maybe something like no sub spotting at depth, normal spotting on the surface, and some compromise value when at periscope depth? That might make some intuitive sense. The corollary of this sub spotting thing (i.e. most DDs seem to be massively out-spotted, although I may be wrong as I haven't played the SSs yet) is that in a sub game, it essentially relegates DDs to the role of really tiny cruisers and makes them significantly less inclined to push, if they don't want to die horribly when a sub spots them. I might suggest that one up-side might be to deter the over-eager cappers who specialise in getting sunk in the first couple of minutes, but that's probably over-optimistic. I do think it'll make middling and better players a lot more conservative, which will reduce the likelihood of 'dynamic' gameplay. Of course WG have to make subs attractive to justify all the work (and sell the inevitable premiums), but I doubt the wisdom if it turns (or risks turning) most games into camp-fests for all classes, rather than just the fatties. Of course, if subs spotting abilities were de facto nerfed when not on the surface, they would need to get buffed somewhere else to make up for it. The best a DD driver can do for the moment is play the most stealthy designs they can get their hands on; a surface detection distance of around 6 km seems to get you tolerably close to an SS before you're spotted. I've gravitated towards T-61 and Icarus so far - both are vaguely stealthy for their tier, and both have hydro, besides which they're both capable of dealing with surface threats, which is at least as important as chasing the submarines. Still early days though...

I've started to meet enough semi-competent sub drivers now to start forming an initial opinion (mainly DD-centric though, as that's what I've been largely playing): The big problem for me is spotting - you have to play a lot more conservatively with subs around, or you get sunk by the enemy surface combatants. This strikes me as making the default play style for DDs a lot more 'safe' than before i.e. boring. The counter 'yay' for DDs is depth charges, if you can get to within striking distance, they're pretty fearsome. Still early days, but I'm still of the opinion that subs should stay in their own mode, and not mess up Randoms etc. That said, subs mode, despite making DDs arguably less fun, is quite interesting/entertaining - much better than I was expecting..

Finished the third directive today; nestling in amongst the now traditional 5s, was a 10, and even a single lone 300 - at last. Combined with the ones from having Buggration and Mikoyan, that gets me Hipperski - yay! Everything else now is a bonus...

Oh yes, I forgot to Observe the Solemn Traditions:

I think this is a bit harsh. I was very reluctant to move to WGC, but was forced to by WOT making it compulsory. YMMV but I've found it to be pretty worthwhile, and a lot more reliable than I was expecting (not much faith in WG here, alas)...