Verblonde

First, you must forgive a certain lack of tact in response to your post(s); forum regulars see variations on this theme quite frequently and are slightly prone to getting a bit bored with the same thing over and over again. The initial thing to do is to get out the metaphoric sheet music and play the real waltz: WOWS is significantly different to a lot of games out there (even WOT, if you've played that before), in that you can't just got at it with decent reflexes and expect to do well. To succeed in the game, you need a lot more knowledge and experience, not to mention situational awareness i.e. the ability to keep track of where everyone is (on both sides) as much as possible, and predict what they're likely to do next, and where. You need to understand the vision mechanics of the game and a raft of other things like hydro and radar. As others have said, the only constant in the game is you; that said, the bulk of games will have the same result, more or less regardless of your actions (win or lose) - where you can make a difference is the 'edge' cases, where good play can nudge your team over to a win, and the reverse is also true. These edge cases are what makes the difference between a tomato and a unicum (most people on here, excluding me) and are why you need to learn the game properly to make a positive difference to your stats. With all that in mind, some key action points: Join a clan (as others have said), and ideally one that uses voice comms. The point here - besides the economic bonuses - is to find players who are willing to division with you (so at least one other player on your side is vaguely coordinated with you), and - more importantly - teach and provide feedback. Watch iChase's Captain's Academy series (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoRQa0D7yVpc05KETkgPsyZHIRZd980cO), although be mindful of the publication date; older films may pre-date significant changes to the game, including the CV reework, and the very recent IFHE changes. Read the wiki (https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships). Although not gospel 100% of the time, it's a pretty good starting point when you don't understand something and/or when you want basic information about ships and builds. As stated earlier, make sure you fully understand the vision mechanics; I repeat this point as it is so crucial to the game, and your success or failure. Play all classes, or at least all of DDs, cruisers (CA and CL), and BBs; you may well eventually end up with one class you focus on (mine is DDs for instance), but you will get your posterior handed to you less frequently if you have a good understanding of all the classes, rather than only your favourite. Play at appropriate tiers; at time of writing, you have a shade over 200 random battles (mode matters, as Coop is an entirely different beast, for instance) - this is, in contrast to many games, *very* inexperienced. WOWS is actually pretty good, in terms of introducing new systems and mechanics in a logical order, but you do have to play the tiers in order and enough to make the most of it. The lowest tiers introduce you to stuff like guns, torps, and smoke, not to mention basic mechanics such as vision, fires and so on; in an ideal world, you'd stay here until your WR was 50% plus, but in reality almost no-one does, I suspect (a lot of the more interesting things are higher tier, there's the unpleasant T4 CV issue, and most missions start around T5). However, do stay there until you're comfortable that you understand how all the classes work at a basic level, and how to counter all of them; about the only positive thing to be said about the T4 CV band is that you get good at evading or you get dead - these skills will help a lot later. Take your time, and don't rush up the tiers. There are several reasons for this: for a start, you can advance much faster than your typical rate of acquisition of skills can hope to keep up with; as well as this, it'll be easier economically (it's abundantly easy to progress without any signals, you just have to be good enough for the tier), and it gives you a chance to get captains that are good enough. So, captains: these do matter a lot. First, understand how they (and their skills) work e.g. you have to retrain to move them to different silver ships, but plonking them in a premium is free, and so on. Second, try and ensure you have a good enough captain for the tier you're playing at; in my view that means at least ten points when you get to the +2 MM bracket (most opponents will have that, and you'll be at a disadvantage if you don't). If you're bewildered about captain builds and suchlike, this site isn't a bad place to start: http://shipcomrade.com/captcalc Understand what premium ships are, what they can do for you, and which are smart choices to buy (and probably only pay money for one, as opposed to getting freebies, after buying premium time - the latter works on every game, whereas premium ships don't unless that's all you play); generally, this means don't get anything (at least not to play in randoms) more than a tier higher than the highest silver tier that you are comfortable at, and it really helps if they're a good captain trainer for whichever silver lines you're focusing on - see previous point about captains. If you already have anything wildly unsuitable for where you are now, stick to Coop and Ops (where they're an appropriate tier) - glancing through your ships, MA is the obvious one that stands out. Keep asking questions on here: despite your initial reception, people on here are generally very helpful if you ask sensible questions and avoid toccata and fugue on the theme of "fix the game because I can't play it". I'd also suggest keeping track of your stats (this is a good site for that: https://wows-numbers.com/); don't get too hung up on WR - short-term it'll yo-you all over the place - but rather keep an eye on things like damage done, experience earned and stuff like that. A very rough benchmark is that you should be doing at least your own hp in damage to the enemy; if you aren't, look at how long you survive and how you play - getting blown up in the first minute doesn't help and neither does sniping from the borders where you can't hit anything, and so on. That's some of the key stuff. If you're still thinking "This emulator-of-Onan doesn't know what he's talking about - I'm great; it's my teams that suck", just think about it carefully and logically, and then start to follow the constructive advice on this thread - you will see your results improve. Finally, if you're struggling with the economy, revise what earns you rewards (meaning xp and especially silver) and what costs you silver: Damage is the key reward driver, so it's another reason to try and do lots of it. If you aren't earning enough, you simply aren't doing enough damage (okay, a slight over-simplification, but only a slight one). A refinement of that is that you get more rewards for higher relative damage i.e. taking half a ship's hp will reward you more than taking a quarter off something bigger, even if you do the exact same amount of damage. The key costs are ship maintenance (fixed regardless of whether you get damaged/sunk/survive without a scratch), which isn't controllable and consumables, which are. The goal is to balance use of premium consumables with doing more damage because they allowed you to survive longer etc. Some ships are more consumable heavy than others; sometimes, this may be a reason to avoid ones that need a lot, as they'll be harder to do well with economically. Also, be mindful that ships get more expensive to fix as you go up the tiers, which is another reason not to rush. As you play more, you'll pick up various consumable cammo and signals that can boost your ships' performance (slightly, but noticeably - skill still matters more) and silver earnings. Pick your spots when using these - don't waste them on coop or any other ship/mode combination where you don't have a good chance of doing well. Once your stock expands, then you can be more profligate if you really want, but it's still not advisable. I would suggest not worrying about the bottom line (beyond not mounting premium consumables that are blatantly unnecessary), but rather focus on driving the top line i.e. earning more in the first place.

Same problem here - I can get into port, but not enter battle. Means I'm having to slum it with the spotty teenagers in WOT. Oh, the humanity...!

Speaking as a DD main, the biggest threat CVs present is spotting, and also them preventing you doing whatever it was you wanted to be doing i.e. you can't ignore planes, because if you don't dodge any CV will do you too much damage, so you're distracted from capping, launching torps etc. etc. Proper CV players will be able to advise better, but there may be some legs in using your damage dealing to scrag fatter classes, and your spotting and mere presence just to make DDs' lives miserable; hopefully, your allies will do much of the necessary damage to the DDs that you spot, and then you can finish them off, as by that stage fewer hits/less damage will be needed. If you feel a powerful urge to be doing damage more or less from the off (I can dig that), bear in mind that even modest damage - if you can't heal - will change how a lot of DDs play, and make them more cautious/vulnerable once they get spotted, so increasing your team's chances of winning. As a DD main, I'm actually quite relieved that a lot of the underhanded 'teamplay' stuff is often not that well rewarded - if it were, CVs would have less motivation to chase damage and would be a *real* menace...!

As others have said, you're gloriously fast in a straight line (fit the coal speed boost upgrade and the 'go faster' signal and it would be ridiculous if the French DDs didn't exist, and they don't get smoke); play around that, rather than the insane zigzagging of more nimble lines. Fast attacking slashes in straight lines between cover seem to work pretty well. I'm slightly biased as Groz was my first T10, and I still have a bit of a soft-spot for her. Now she gets a heal, she's a pretty decent boat - fast, useful dakka, smoke, and the torps are vaguely worthwhile too, if you want to be sneaky. No citadel, which is not to be sniffed at, and you aren't occupying a cruiser slot either. I should mention that I'm not a good player though, so if you are of a higher standard, you might get better results elsewhere if something else matches your play style more exactly.

Nope, they aren't, and part of the skill involved with the game is knowing who to target and with what. If you removed the health bar you, for example, wouldn't know that you were about to waste 95% of your Scharn's torps by firing them into someone who is already mortally wounded and could be easily finished off with guns/secondaries; your CVs wouldn't know they were about to attack a 100% health AA monster (as far as such things exist these days) and get shredded, perhaps. Again, nope. All that would happen is that the really good players would have an even greater advantage over those of us who are less good (I know I have a lot of battles, but my WR is still dreadful); you just go forth in things with massive alpha strike potential and Dev Strike anything that's one-shottable - still removing guns from the game, and you'd still get blown up at least as much. I'm not going to take the pi$$ though, as we were all newbies (261 random battles at time of writing is *most emphatically* a newbie) once and cannon fodder for the better players; you're just the latest example of "I don't understand the game fully yet, so please change it to fix whatever got me killed this time" - this is seen quite a lot over a year, hence the lack of much sympathy in most of the responses. Basically, you have a choice: learn this game as it is (and be prepared to adapt when things change - and they will - in the future), or go and play something else. Assuming you take the former approach, might I offer a few pointers: You're in a clan; try and find some more experienced players to division with (ideally on voice comms); they'll be able to provide you with pointers, hopefully with a view to you not being the person who gets focused. Learn the game mechanics (playing battles and seeing what happens isn't learning the mechanics); good places to start are iChase's Captains Academy series on YouTube and the wiki (https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships). You're already playing all the classes - this is good; keep doing it - but you've got a couple of premiums of too high a tier in relation to where your skill-set is at the moment; drop back a bit in randoms (keep playing your premiums in Coop/Ops; the latter when Narai returns) and acquire the necessary skill-set. Without this, you'll struggle against scarier opponents. Concentrate on developing 'good enough' captains; the bulk of your higher tier opponents will have them, and they do make a difference. How good 'good enough' is varies from player to player, but my personal view is that you generally need *at least* ten points as soon as you start in the +2 MM bracket as a newer player, and you definitely need that level of captain against higher tiers (recall that your T7s will frequently face T9s). Make sure you've picked sensible captain skills as well; if you don't know what sensible is in this context, have a look at the wiki and/or ask on here (people here are generally very helpful when you aren't telling them that the game is broken without sufficient knowledge of said game). Adjust your play style according to the damage you've taken; make sure you're keeping a close eye on the mini-map - where are enemies that can one-shot you, where are non-spotted enemies most likely to be, which islands can you hide behind when things get too hairy. Don't play manly if you've had 80% of your hp shot off. Learn about the ships in the MM bracket you're playing - who has nasty torps, and what range are they; do you need to worry about radar; what about hydro; who out-spots you; is anyone probably a more experienced player to worry about (besides how they play, having ships like Kami R are a dead giveaway). In a similar vein, study the team lineups whilst the battle loads - who is a target, who is a probable threat, who should be given a wide berth, or not. There's plenty more, of course, but this is already quite long; basically, WOWS is *not* like Borderlands (say) where all you really need is a fast enough computer and good reflexes - you have to learn the detail of how the game works, or you're cannon fodder. Take the time to learn, and it'll be you triggering posts like your original one on here...

This is my dilemma; I'm getting the impression that these are boats where you wish you had thirty-odd captain points available...! I have a suspicion that the answer may vary a bit with tier: 5-7 need the guns now and again, especially 5-6 as their torps aren't rocket propelled; you're also often not facing excessively scary opponents yet (although Kami sisters are a bugger to deal with, but that's hardly unique to Pan-EU). Tier 8 (and up? don't have any of the T9-10 yet) may be where one has to try something else. More testing is required, and it's a real shame that WG had an attack of the stingy w4nkers when it came to the free captain respec...! I should perhaps mention that I'm tending to build for a typical random opponent, rather than for typical (scary) forum players; if I run into any of the latter, I'm Doomed, pretty much regardless. Same thing for CVs - a good one will take you to the cleaners, but a typical one will have to work for it, and I've made one or two seriously regret coming after me (I assume the latter had only just got the ships or similar).

I have to admit I am thinking almost exactly along these lines for the T8, as that's the point where torp reload goes over a minute, and same tier DDs start to horribly outspot you. I am torn about ditching BFT too though, as the ship itself already has torp focused upgrades, and with BFT your AA against a typical CV player (up to T8 anyway, haven't faced T10 yet) seems to be sufficient to encourage them to go elsewhere a lot of the time... Whilst the things are acting as premiums, for captain purposes, I may just try both approaches and see which I end up preferring...

Cue: row between those who think the battles of the Pacific campaign - with its abundance of CVs - don't count as 'naval battlefields', and those with a contrary view... <reaches for popcorn>

A straight reversal back to RTS CVs exactly as they were, although it will never happen, is a 'no' from me as well. I would have preferred the reework to have actually been focused on making the RTS CVs work properly (we all know the problems with it), but it is what it is. My order of preference would be: 'Proper' rework of RTS, such that it worked, was balanced, and the skill differential mattered a lot less. What we have now (although it still needs work IMO). RTS exactly as was. All completely moot though, as a change away from the reework isn't going to happen.

FWIW I seem to have acquired T5-8 (although no games yet with T8 as only got it last thing last night), and I'm thinking along the following lines at the moment: The torps seem to be at the heart of a lot of what you're trying to do to the enemy, especially when they start to get fast at T7; with this in mind, I've taken the 'zoomy torps' upgrade on all of them so far. I tend to almost never stop moving (no smoke to hide in), so have taken rudder shift over acceleration. In terms of the captains (I have several at or around 13 points, rather than one good one, having not played Blysk etc. enough for that), the first ten points is the usual DD build, and after that, I've gone with BFT to prop up the guns and AA (the latter being better than average, I think, and I've given several same tier or lower CVs a nasty shock already). Next in line will be SI (for the extra heal), but I'm not certain this is the right way around; perhaps SI should be before BFT - I've gone with BFT then SI because I often don't live long enough (or take the right damage) to make full use of all heal charges, but I do make use of the guns essentially every battle. You could make a case for TAE in place of/before BFT, if you want to go 'full torp'; I haven't because the torp reload is pretty respectable anyway, and I prefer not to have all my eggs in one basket. The wiki thinks TA is a very good choice; I think I won't (at least not initially), as 12 km range is nice to have with all the radar about, plus the torps are not exactly slow anyway (with 'zoomy torps' fitted). Ultimately, I think I'll probably end up with the following (i.e. a pretty generalist build for hybrid DDs): As always, that's assuming a pretty mediocre player (me), playing against the typical opposition you find in randoms.

There is only one choice for the Correct class to get Dreadnoughts with:

I actually mind this change a lot less than most (for selfish reasons: I mainly played the Op because it was fun; so long as the new rewards are at least vaguely worthwhile, I won't be losing my rag over a reduction). Might I offer a suggestion though: if you're getting tired of people losing their temper with WG (I hope it isn't with you personally; that would be poor), it might be a good idea to have a word with your comms and marketing folk, and encourage them not to shoot WG in the foot pretty much every month - there are plenty of suggestions vis-a-vis this on the CC thread, and others.

Well done, WG! Thank you.

Pop!

Yes, but in spite of me rather than because of me. These days I generally view it as 'no Ops for me this week' when it comes up in the rotation.

That'll be because you're good at the game and I'm, er, not...!

Just saw @MrFingers out in his Nelson; I, in my Skane, decided that discretion was the better part of valour (especially given that I tend to be Cursed whenever I see a forum person in game) and chased foes who were where he most emphatically wasn't....

100% agree. For 'true' fairness, WG would have to strip out RNG for the key elements at least and - unfortunately - their enthusiasm seems exactly to be the contrary. So, given their current tendencies, the present thing is fairer compared to what went before.

Depends a bit how you define your terms (especially if you know about the Defender etc. in WOT). The reason I think there is most likely a bias to at least make Russian things more powerful than they were (if they even existed) is that it makes economic sense for WG to do so; they have a large Russian customer base who seem to be spectacularly insecure about their own nation, so WG will make more money if they pander to these tendencies. Most Europeans - at least - have a more relaxed view of their own nation's greatness etc. which suggests that we're (I know I'm Canadian as well, but I started in Europe) rather more relaxed if 'our' ships are weird/fun rather than flat-out powerful. The other thing to have on the radar is that it doesn't have to be just about the ships; in WOT at least, the overall environment in which the vehicles operate matters at least as much e.g. in WOT, the Russians often tend to be very good brawlers with high alphas; if the maps all favoured sniping, they would be underpowered, but WG make sure almost all maps favour brawlers, so effectively handing the Russians a built-in advantage. I'm not sufficiently expert in WOWS Russians to be able to pick out examples (they even not be many), but you see the logic? To me, the interesting question is what - if anything - happens if the reports of Russian server numbers dropping are true and a long-term trend? If the Russian market changes, we could easily see a shift in emphasis to maximise income from the 'new reality'...?

Don't forget: pretty shell tracers too (says the bimbo in the vicinity)!

Many thanks, OP!

RNG per se isn't fair (I may not have been clear enough, although I did say I can do without it) almost by definition; what I was trying to get across is that the current event is fairer - IMO - than what has gone before. Previous iterations (like the RN CAs, French DDs and so on) tended to have a range - based on luck - of essentially nothing all the way up to lots, in terms of what you actually got. Meanwhile the current thing, assuming you do the directives, all but guarantees that you'll get at least one free ship, which strikes me as fairer than the previous versions - on balance of probabilities. Of course, the high end of what you can win is still wildy variable, but that speaks to my not-entirely-complimentary comments about game designers' love of RNG/gambling elements.

If you're playing the game 'now' (as in late at night - as I write this it's about half-past two in the morning in the UK), it helps to play at tiers that are more popular. Getting a 6v6 random (I assume) means that the queues at the level you're interested in are very sparse. I had a quick glance at your profile; at time of writing, your average tier played is 4.5, with the peak being at T4. There's nothing wrong with that, but it might help to be aware that most missions tend to need at least T5 ships, so when a grind is on (like the current directives) the queue situation will be a lot healthier at tiers that qualify for missions. This can mean that when playing off-peak, you're more likely to get denuded teams, and then any afk (or slow loaders, which often looks the same) has a greater impact. Nearer peak times, you can play whatever you like and still have reasonable queues...

Not in the slightest; I just have to moderate my language sometimes (having got a warning for a 'beer and ladies of negotiable affection won't buy themselves' joke a while back)...! This. They key problem with earlier events was that plenty of people got nowt; this one, if you do the directives, you are extremely unlikely not to get at least one ship - that seems rather fairer to me too. I can really do without the RNG elements, but the old methodology included them, only the split between lucky and unlucky was a lot greater than the present mechanic. I think we're stuck with RNG - I think I recall people sharing articles in the past explaining why game designers love random elements; I also recall thinking that this aspect of games is clearly not designed for me, but it is what it is. I don't really like stealth elements in FPS games either, but they still keep turning up - like WOWS, it's my choice whether or not I participate/play the game. If I were going to suggest a tweak to the current event mechanics, it would be to have all the permaflages available in one long grind that could be done with any/all of the early release ships (with higher tiers requiring incrementally higher xp 'steps', presumably); I feel the current model is perhaps counter-productive, if the aim is to make people play more - I've done the maths and I think the best I can hope for is the T7 permaflage (and maybe the T8, if I get spectacularly lucky); this calculation makes large chunks of the event irrelevant for me, and - crucially - not worth playing more for.

<rushes off to play as many HE spammers as possible>