Verblonde

Far too early for me to tell, but FWIW T5&6 feel to me a bit like Aigle, due to the turret traverse - I'm trying to get into the habit of not relying on turrets that flick round in a moment like, say, Americans do. The other thing I think I'm seeing is that it helps to do one's torp runs a little differently, due to it being likely that you won't outright kill a lot of targets, even with a lot of hits - you can't just charge the blighters. At the moment, I'm trying out the torp mod in slot 3 (?), as that gives you 68 and change knots torps; each torp is a bit weedy, but if you can land enough of them... It's early days for my captains (I'm keeping the semi-okay Blysk one for a higher tier ship), but I'm thinking standard DD build for the first ten points, then BFT to support the dakka/AA a bit after that, then AR if I play the things enough to get there; at some point EM would be nice, but it's not top priority...

Saw one in Coop earlier; although the price is clearly ridiculous, I might well be tempted if I had a sufficiently well-paying job. As it is, no chance. If people want to get them, fair play.

Finally: That wasn't so hard, was it? When it went live would have been better, but still - baby steps.

So far, I've put IFHE back on my T10 IJN dakka captain; the rest will have to wait until there is more data from other people more motivated than me. She's normally pretty much 100% on advice though, so long as one reads the 'small print' about the playing style she's thinking in terms of, and cross references it with one's own preferences.

Returning to the Ikea DDs after a couple more quick forays into Coop (yes, I'm doing the directives), the T5 and especially T6 have another plus: 2/3 of the turrets point backwards - IJN stylee - so allowing you to continue to negotiate whilst bravely running away (useful, given the lack of smoke). Small thing, but still... BTW am I the only one mentally substituting the 'stock' voice with that of the shopkeeper from Frozen when playing these things (apologies if I'm confusing my Scandinavian accents here):

Randomised. I must admit when I saw the bundle initially, I vaguely thought I might be interested in saving myself some grinding time; then I saw the price. That'll be 'no' then...

Since it became possible to get Kami (and Fujin last Xmas) quite a lot of less good players have them now, including me - you're welcome, good Kami drivers, for providing a bit of a smokescreen so people are perhaps less wary these days. I work on the basis that: Kami R means - at the very least - a very experienced player, and quite likely a good one. Fujin means - on balance of probability - a good player, but you may get the pleasant surprise of it being someone like me. Vanilla Kami - since it's been available in gambling boxes for at least two seasons - *may* be a good player, but your odds of getting someone tuberous are rather better than the other two.

Do you mean Wales, or the finny chaps in the sea? ;)

It's still beyond me why WG just don't offer a simple 'pay x, and get the ship' - this RNG nonsense just encourages me (and perhaps others) to quit whilst ahead and stop spending. If you see your next bundle only has 20 tokens in, and you've done okay so far, why push it?

@LittleWhiteMouse - I salute you! I think it looks like I keep IFHE on the IJN dakka DDs (T8+) then, probably ditch it for Jutland and Daring (and learn to shoot AP a bit more), and that's my DDs covered off. For my HE-firing CLs, it looks like it remains optimal, but I think I'll maintain a few of them without it for 'fires' missions when they come along.

Just a reminder for anyone who isn't fully familiar with early-release ships: they come with all the modules unlocked, but the top ones aren't mounted by default - you have to do that yourself.

I think I may have done it once or twice myself in the past...!

In my case, it's simply a way to bypass having to grind through the T4 CV bracket, without having to use free-xp (which I never seem to have enough of). Not essential by any means (or, in all likelihood, particularly sensible), but it does increase the amount of fun I have.

Likewise, and the T6 too; I think that'll do me for the moment though. My instant - based on one quick Coop game each - impression is that they'll be quite fun, having a heal at lower tiers is nice, concealment is average, fast long-range (for the tier) torps are nice but the alpha is painfully anaemic, and the guns are okayish but the turret traverse is a bit low - EM may be called for when you get to 12 points I think.

Not poorly, but certainly frankly. You must understand that this matter is not in isolation (most company PR problems rarely are), but rather the latest in a series of occasions where WG - and more specifically their comms - have apparently not taken any consideration of the fact that not all markets behave the same, and different sets of customers have different expectations. For example, Europe and NA have an expectation of courtesy and not having the feeling of the company trying to fool them; this may well not be the case in other markets. It's abundantly possible to get customer buy-in to some pretty awful stuff *if* the messaging is intelligently tailored to the target audience and at least is aware of their expectations. By consistently not doing this, WG create a building problem of increasingly angry customers, or at least a sub-set of them. You'll be aware of the mantra that a happy customer tells four people, and an unhappy one tells ten (or variations thereon)? This is why it's wise to make at least a basic effort to avoid too many of the latter, such that the voices of the former drown them out. I'm reasonably confident that the current thing (IFHE changes and short time-scale for reset) could have been a win for WG: Dedicated articles (plural) explaining, both in detail and TL;DR top-line detail, why the changes are an actively good thing for players. Just doing it once or twice won't cut through to enough people, so it needs to be an ongoing process. Don't use the 'opt-in' mechanic for the reset - just make it automatic and have a pop-up in game that says words to the effect of "you lucky people, you just got a FREE short-term respec - click here for details". You'll surprise people in a positive way. Don't let people who take what I guess is a rather 'Russian' approach to customer comms anywhere near things like this when they need to be communicated - you need someone with highly polished language skills who is expert at selling things as a good idea "tough t*ts - deal with it" is not really the tone you should be going with, if you want enthusiastic buy-in. The impossible part would have been not to have this current thing following on from the several various PR howlers that WG have recently committed, that make making a good impression rather harder for you guys. You will always get some whinging whenever you change something that people care as passionately about as WOWS; the trick is to apply a bit of marketing nous to keep the amount small enough that it doesn't gain critical mass and become damaging.

Assuming you happened to be reading the game news and noticed that you have to opt-in to get the respec, of course. Hey, @Tanatoy, here's a small tip from someone who sells 'non-essentials' too: if you want to carry on selling said items, whatever they are, it helps to occasionally not make your customer base think they're idiots for giving you money. If you look at my ship collection, you'll see that I'm not exactly averse to wasting money on the game, but WG's recent behaviour really does make me start to think that I would have to be an idiot for continuing to do so, at least at the rate I normally do. The key aim is to construct a dialogue with your customers such that they are enthusiastic about the prospect of spending money on the product, not to (apparently) try and alienate them, so the reverse becomes true.

It appears that there is a free captain respec (due to the IFHE changes), but you do need to activate it: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/game-updates/update-092-european-destroyers/

I'm not bothering - I've just zeroed the ships impacted, and then will come back to them when the real impact of the changes becomes clearer.

It's not just WOWS either - I've been playing WOT today, and the ping has been dramatically up and down there too. To be fair, it's only got me killed once - I think - so far.

You really think - even for a second - that this logic is remotely valid?! I'm sure you have mighty spreadsheets somewhere indicating what proportion of your customers actually use the PT, but I'm prepared to bet at least a pint that it's a small minority. Tell me, who made the bet to see exactly how many players WG can pi$$ off at one time? This doesn't impact me personally - I've already zeroed my relevant captains - but because I'm not a psychopath, I have some empathy for others.

Oooo - didn't know about this. Thanks for drawing it to my attention - guess that WG won't be getting my 'disposable' budget when this gets released...

Perhaps someone at WG is especially sensitive about tubers, having got one lodged somewhere they didn't ought to get lodged and had to go for an embarrassing trip to Casualty? Ever since that fateful day, woe betide anyone who utters that hated name in their vicinity...?

As the owner of far too many ships, and mindful of WG's attack of the stingy w4nkers vis-a-vis respec duration, I think I'll just reset all the 'likely' captains (T9+ RN DDs, any light cruisers with IFHE, and the relevant dakka IJN DD captains) and wait until the meta shakes out a bit before assigning captain skills to most of them...

This. I find this sort of shabby stuff really poisons my view of WG; I can't believe the extra they make from doubloon sales to the unobservant makes up for the loss of goodwill that probably comes with such practices. I ought to be significantly stoked about the new update (new line of DDs and all), but this sort of thing, combined with the 2 million free xp business, means I'm really not sure I can be bothered. I probably won't ignore it, but depending on how typical I am, this sort of outlook really ought to be of concern to a competent company.

Hmmm, I'd missed that it was 12 v 12 (that's what you get for opening the forum too early in the morning) - why bother with this mode then, if it's basically just weird randoms, unless whatever missions that are going on at the time can be done in Sprint or the rewards are truly spectacular? For me, it's about efficiency: getting the maximum amount done in a sensible time-frame. If Sprint doesn't tick the boxes, then I won't play it, but if it does then I will (but not with any aim/expectation of getting to Rank 1, because it'll be far too dependent on the random distribution of those few players who are even worse than I am).