Verblonde

Assuming you aren't just here to whinge (and I'll almost certainly repeat some of what's gone before), the root of your problem is that you are very inexperienced (369 random battles at time of writing) and haven't had a chance to learn all that you need to yet. You haven't fallen into the classic newbie trap of rushing up the tiers too fast (thumbs up for that), but it does mean that you're presently trying to deal with the T4 CV plague, which is a whole bunch of no fun for DDs especially. Speaking as a DD main, I can assure you that there is plenty that you can do about *most* CVs (the actively good ones will probably kill you almost regardless); some pointers follow: At the start of every battle, make sure your AA is off (p-key is the default) if your AA range is larger than your aerial spotting distance (press and hold h in game to see the relevant numbers); this is mainly relevant to DDs. Most CV players will struggle to strike you if they didn't acquire you until they were at this distance, whilst it's relatively straightforward to strike DDs with longer range AA if they left it switched on, so giving away their position earlier than necessary. Also, make sure that your minimap is showing all the necessary range-circles, and make it a habit to watch it like a hawk (this is true for all classes, regardless of the presence of CVs; situational awareness and good positioning are what win battles). I assume you already know to make it as large as your display will practically allow? Dealing with planes is largely about three crucial elements: positioning, positioning, and - not to forget - positioning. Forgive the flippancy, but putting your ship in the right place and being mindful of where everything else is are absolutely key. You've identified a key danger from planes - spotting; if there are planes about, you want to be able to get something solid between you and the enemy surface fleet, and preferably before they actually spot you. Bear in mind that this stuff is the bread and butter of WOWS and does take a while to get the hang of - experience again. Smoke is your friend; don't use it to camp in, but rather use it strategically to break lines of sight; this can include evading planes. Bear in mind that your AA fire (and surface fire) tracers are visible through smoke, and more experienced players are rather good at shooting at them. Also, don't blind your team! Learn how planes attack (it's a good idea to play some CVs to really get a handle on this, even if it's just in Coop); this informs your evasion methodology. Although not 100% universal, torps generally are launched at your side, ditto rockets, and bombers will try and hit along your long axis; try and make this harder for them. Turning into an attack can be worthwhile, if it causes the planes to overshoot (close range); manoeuvre hard when under attack (the notorious 'just dodge' stratagem) - make the CV work for his hits. Know how good your AA is (at the tiers you're currently at, it's almost all negligible, but at higher tiers you can sometimes fight back), and read up on sector reinforcement. Understand that you probably won't stop an attack, but you can sometimes encourage a CV to go after easier prey for a while. Good players evade flak easily, but a lot of the rest will take hits. Use DefAA intelligently, when you get something that has it (i.e. unload on something that can't quickly escape, so you do maximum damage). At the very least, your rewards at the end of the battle will be less bad if you take a few planes with you, plus any time the CV is spending attacking you he isn't attacking someone else (and hopefully those others will do something useful with the time). If you want DDs with less bad AA, the higher tier Ikeas are the best (but horribly newbie unfriendly - no smoke), but the US line, PA, and some Russians can give unwary CVs a bit of a whack. Don't forget to switch AA back on when the situation calls for it, and don't forget sector reinforcement. You generally won't inflict huge casualties, but every plane counts (if your team can down enough, you'll temporarily reduce a CV's capacity to attack); the ideal situation is for you to be aiming at planes that are passing by your side, and to reinforce that side (map sector reinforcement to a more convenient key too; I have it on a spare mouse button for example). Switch AA off again afterwards. Beware fighters: T4 CVs can't do this, but T6+ planes can drop fighters on top of you, to keep you spotted; again, we return to finding an island to hide behind, using smoke to break contact and so on. Join a clan; CV wrangling is easier if you're in a division with someone who is on the same page as you are (you'll get better rewards too, generally). Beware the next patch or so: I recall reading somewhere that if you fire your AA guns, your spotting distance will remain at maximum AA range for two seconds, rather than dropping back the moment you switch it off. This probably won't make an enormous difference, but will inform the 'should I switch AA on?' thought process. CVs are probably the hardest thing a DD driver has to deal with in the game (although they're a lot better than they were - my IJN torp boats were entirely unplayable for several months early in the reework), and it's mainly because of the spotting. Make understanding positioning/situational awareness a priority and you'll be able to mitigate them a lot. Don't forget though, an actively good CV driver will take you to the cleaners regardless; luckily, these are rare beasts (especially at lower tiers), and all you can do if you meet one is to try and keep them occupied for as long as possible. Finally, it's worth honing your skills at lower tiers (so, facing T6 CVs max perhaps); once you start facing T8 opponents (plus a few T7 premiums), you encounter the *other* DD bane i.e. radar - learn to deal with CVs first, and then layer in radar countering (the two are related, but not identical).

First, for the avoidance of any doubt: I'm not a good player - around 48% WR overall, last I looked. That said, a few pointers that may be of some use: Don't get too hung up on WR; yes, there are stats snobs out there, but I would suggest using it as a tool for self-assessment - to provide information about what you tend to do well with and what needs attention. Also, bear in mind that a decent data-set is needed before WR becomes meaningful... Recall that the majority of battles will be won/lost almost regardless of what you do; your aim is to edge as many of 'the rest' over the line to victory - these edge cases are where you matter, but there aren't as many of them as you might think (possibly unless you are an utter unicum). Stock ships tend not to be your friend if you want to pad your stats; conversely, don't get too disheartened if you stink in such a ship initially - things will improve when you upgrade it fully. Quite a few people avoid stock ships for this reason: either play them in Coop until you've unlocked the crucial modules, expend some free xp that you might have, or just throw money at the problem to convert xp to free xp (it's usually not a good idea to skip ships entirely though). What you're really after though (IMO) is an indication if you are contributing meaningfully to your team; if you use other metrics (damage done, ships spotted and so on) to identify where you could improve, your WR will generally increase along with that. Tiers matter: generally, the game is simply easier at lower tiers (partly because there is a higher proportion of newer players lower down, and partly because mistakes are often more harshly punished higher up); this is one reason why overall WR isn't terribly meaningful - if you really want a high WR, there are two ways - broadly speaking - to get it: be actually good at the game, or seal club at lower tiers. I doubt there is much disagreement that the two methods will produce wildly different qualities of player for a given WR. Like I said though, don't obsess about WR; set your own personal goals and move up the tiers when you meet them, and use other numbers to work out where your problems are whenever you meet a plateau. By asking for help, you're already ahead of the bulk of the player-base, pretty much regardless of tier - keep doing that too!

Many thanks!

I can't imagine she'll ever be back on regular sale (her reputation makes her too useful as bait for Xmas box sales etc.); I imagine the best hope to get the ship - kind of - is for WG to add Novorossiysk to the game at some point...

Hopefully, someone will be able to confirm/deny, but my understanding is that the early release of the Russian cruisers (T8-9) happens with the next patch - tomorrow? - and the switch of Moskva to semi-premium happens the patch after that. As of now, everything that WG have said indicates that you only need to have Moskva researched to get the semi-premium version, but at least some folk are waiting until the actual patch notes to sell their existing ship as WG are not the most reliable in these matters, and could conceivably change their minds - everything so far has technically been WiP...

Which one is which, as a matter of interest? I haven't been paying much attention to these things...

Not really, given that WG have conditioned their customer base to expect such things. I suppose they might be trying an experiment, to see if they make more money if the initial release only includes 'bumf' packages. Edit: all a flap about nothing, given the information that @ColonelPete just posted.

No 'standalone' ships (that we know about)...

Hmmmm, the bumf is strong with these ones... BTW are either of the new T8 premiums real, or are they more evidence for not downing an entire bottle of vodka before lunchtime?

Aye - people often forget that too; there are plenty of down-sides to the ship, but she's far from worthless in competent hands (so, not mine then). I believe you can now put the coal radar mod on her too these days, to extend the radar run time, although I haven't bothered with mine as I don't play her enough.

One of today's Dev Blogs (https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/20) talks about the - WiP - upcoming UU changes. A quick glance from my ill-informed perspective suggests that there isn't much change to the desirability of these things; could players who know what they're talking about confirm or refute this impression?

This summarises exactly my reaction when I got detonated earlier (for the first time in ages)... (I may well have used slightly different wording - I recall that 'bugger'* featured - but the sentiment was the same) *naturally, I took my reference from the flyfishing world - I'm wholesome like that.

I'm not a good player, so I do find Sharkbait hard work; that said, the radar is very powerful at T7 (not just any radar either - 10 km!!) and a lot of the DDs you'll meet have no idea what to do about it either...

I'm afraid I'm in the "doesn't bother me" camp; I like the minor nod to historical accuracy (hah!), and it's pretty rare so it rarely gets a chance to be irritating. FWIW, I'm a DD main, and currently have 49 Detonation awards from 4,309 random battles; that's only 1.1% - not going to lose much sleep there. That said, I'm a very long way from being a good player...

As Irene Adler in Sherlock tells us - know when you've been beaten....

Yeah, you're right; I just suffer from occasional moments of (entirely) irrational optimism. It's probably some hideous alien brain parasite or something...

It gets easier with each subsequent reset too (obviously) as each 19 pointer you do get speeds up the acquisition of the next one, and so on...

Was anyone seriously in any doubt that there is any chance whatsoever that subs won't end up in the 'proper' game modes eventually? That said, they're in a distinct mode to start with, which I have no problem with - if (as many of us expect, given WG's track record) the whole thing turns out to be an enormous rat-fornication, it won't harm the rest of the game. You never know, they might even turn out to be a decent addition to the game eventually. The key word being 'eventually', and the key thing being whether WG have the patience to wait until they're actually mature enough for the main modes...

FWIW I kept each captain (minimum 10 points) on everything from T5 and up (free xp until then) assigned to their respective ships; I've done several resets now, but always to the same line (IJN torp boats), so maximising the number of points each captain ends up with. I'm now at the stage where I have an actively good captain on T6 and up (I think that at least three of them are now 19 pointers), making future resets less painful on the captain front... I should say that I tend to keep all ships in port, from around T5 and up (basically, anything that gets a snowflake), so having lots of captains around isn't as wasteful as it might be otherwise.

For question 5, might I (facetiously) suggest a useful response option would be "Dear gods, yes, PLEASE! <bursts into tears>". That said, I didn't utterly hate this season (which - for Ranked - is a big win), although it was just as frustrating as usual, possibly more so - the 'COVID' players made the reliability of one's team-mates even more flaky than usual. Arms Race mode didn't upset me hugely either, as otherwise it would have just been randoms with slightly different rewards (plus, as a DD player, firing speculative torps into buff circles and getting the hit ribbons never gets old)...

Hololive (whatever the hell that is - I haven't Googled due to a developed sense of mental self-preservation) is mentioned at the bottom of this FWIW: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/19

Standard bonuses in exchange for the (almost) most hard to get currency in the game for a typical farty? That'll be a no for this particular farty...

Short term, the addition of steel (as an option, but why wouldn't you?) to dailies will make me happy - I'm too rubbish at Ranked and Clans to earn much steel the 'proper' way. That said, presumably all this will mean longer-term is that WG will eventually bump up the prices of steel things, so making the change moot.

Dev Blog on new ships (which I think the data-miners have found already): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/18

Dev Blog on the subject of the Unique Upgrades: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/20