Verblonde

So, against my better judgment, I've been playing the Italian cruisers - mainly Coop so far, but eventually with a view to playing proper games. Do people have any strong views on how to build an Italian cruiser captain (besides "Are you mad, sir - play something else!?")? For the T7, my first ten points were: PT, AR, SI (because you can't really start fires), and CE. What would people suggest after that? I currently also have JoaT, plus a couple of points not assigned, but I'm not a cruiser meister, so am a bit bewildered; I was wondering about TA, but I'm not convinced an extra 5 knots will make any difference given how slow the starting torp speed is...

In my, case, it's probably a mixture of non-specific cynicism, plus I've not been playing for long enough to know any different - I *think* I started playing WOWS about three years ago now, and in all that time, the only high tier matches where almost everyone knew what they were doing were probably Clans. It's not just high tiers, but pretty much all of them.

With a decent driver, you're quite right. I'm working on the assumption that the decent CV drivers will rank out fairly quickly, so most of those that I'll meet in practice will be from the shallow end of the metaphorical gene pool - those I can deal with (based on experience in randoms), sort of.

Before I get too excitable one way or t'other, I'm waiting for the actual detail to be released apropos what we actually have to do to get the thing. I don't believe PR will have too disruptive an impact on the higher tiers though: as I demonstrate, any idiot can easily get multiple T10s these days; the game has been around long enough that the era of T10 being a rarefied zone for only the best players has long passed...

This *might* turn out to be quite interesting; as a DD main, I think I might initially give Loyang a try (with the longer range torps, for a change), or possibly Z - both have the smoke/hydro thing. I suspect my final pick will depend on how many times one meets a CV in practice - if it's very frequent, Kidd would probably be a good choice...

Sadly, I fear you may be right; based on recent observation (at the weekend) though, to have *more* German BB captains sniping might well require some re-writing of the laws of maths/physics/the time-space continuum...?

I feel there might be a need for some sort of algorithm in the game that pings up a message to "hand back your Richard-swinging manliness card!"* if a KM BB doesn't get within a respectable brawling distance of the foe during a game...? *Whilst, obviously, not encouraging toxic masculinity!

They do, and it's worth taking a bit of time to work out what they all do, and priorities i.e. which order do you want them. Besides the wiki, Ship Comrade is worth a look on this front: http://shipcomrade.com/captcalc If you're playing DDs, the first ten points are usually pretty easy: You don't have any choice on sequence, as you can't pick a 2-point skill without at least one 1-point one, and so on. Some people prefer PM as the initial 1-point skill (I did, for ages), but generally it's more useful on the first pass to know how many main guns are pointed at you than to have a reduced chance of losing modules. You can argue about SE on more robust DDs (or pick extra dakka or torp reload on the first pass), but I always pick it first, as I find the extra hp have saved my donkey on multiple occasions. You *really* want 10-point captains from T5 onwards, as that's when you start meeting +2 tier opposition, and almost all your opponents will have a similarly good captain; the crucial reason for this (with DDs) is CE - that extra 10% reduction in detection distance is invaluable. Sims is a very worthwhile DD (IMO), with most of the classic traits of mid-high tier US DDs; her detection radius is mediocre at best, and the 'sea mines' take a bit of getting used to (although the range is very helpful), but in other respects she's excellent. She even has reasonable(ish) AA - by DD standards - whilst you aren't an T7 equivalent to an AA build Groz, say, your AA is good enough to deter a lot of CV players and/or maul their planes (as always, it's worth the reminder that a serious CV player will kill you all kinds of dead, no matter what though). Sims has long ranged AA though, so remember to switch it off when you don't want to telegraph your position by firing (p-key). Additional: at time of writing, you only have 33 battles; that's not many, and you probably haven't unlocked all the essential bits of the game yet (like all of captains, cammo, modules, signals, and so on); besides the usual advice of not playing premiums in randoms that are above the level you've got to with the equivalent silver ships, you'll get your donkey handed to you in Sims if you try and face real people without all the upgrades/trimmings.

Does this mean that (if it happens) KM BBs will become able to shoot straight(ish)? What witchcraft is this?!

I must admit, this is where mine have been living for the moment; I'm pretty confident that I need to learn How to Cruiser rather more before trying them on real people... Rather to my surprise, I've been enjoying the Italians, the T7 especially, if only because they provide some interesting variety. Also, because I suck in most cruisers anyway, learning how SAP works has been less of a wrench for me.

Isn't Monte the Tier 5 and Trento the T6? (title: "Montecuccoli: the floating disaster")

Any silver captain can be put in any premium ship of the same nation* and function 100% without retraining (class doesn't matter, unlike in WOT - you can put a DD captain in a BB if you want, although the skills match-up will be atrocious). Moving a captain between silver ships will require retraining, as will re-setting captains skills (the cost for the latter increasing with the number of assigned points). For one's first few premium ships, it is usually sensible to get ones that work with the captains from their equivalent silver lines; your Sims is a good choice for the US DD line, as the skill-sets are pretty much an exact overlap all the way up to T10. There are a number of 'oddball' premiums available, which really want a specialised captain to get the best out of (e.g. MA really needs a secondary build, which none of the silver US BBs call for); avoid these until you have a good captain available. *There are a few exceptions to this: for example, there is a version of the 'Ovenchicken' captain who works in both US and Russian ships. These captains are pretty rare though.

FWIW I did my first tree re-grind in less than a week, I think (with heavy use of flags and cammo, plus premium time); a newbie that spends money ought to be able to equal that very easily - I'm a pretty poor player...

Nice! I have nothing against the ship - BBs tend to be very much a L2P issue in my case! Quite. A decent bit of self-awareness is always useful when trying to suck less...

You only have 41 battles in the thing - with that sort of battle count, a couple of relatively modest losing streaks can easily tank your WR (the reverse is also true - I have a 62.5% WR in Minsk after 32 battles, and there is no way in the gods' green earth that I'm anywhere near that good!). Play a bunch more games in the ship, and your WR will almost certainly end up somewhere more normal. Edit: all the best people have a 32% WR in the QE though - coincidentally, that's what mine is too (25 battles)...!

I would also emphasise the need to fully understand the various visibility mechanics in general, including things like smoke, radar, hydro, plus the various skills/upgrades that can impact them. To illustrate the difference this can make: have a look at Kagero - a classic sneaky IJN torp boat. Naked, and without any tweaks, her default Surface Detectability range is 6.84 km; with the right skills, cammo, and upgrades this drops to around 5.4 km! If anyone was silly enough to go into battle with a default Kagero they would very rapidly be deader than plaid: 6.84 at that tier is mediocre, whereas 5.4 is about as good as it gets.

One useful, and perhaps not obvious tip: when you start encountering CVs and are playing anything with longer ranged AA than the distance from which you are spotted from the air - press and hold the h key in game to see the relevant info - toggle the AA off until you get spotted (or want to fire for other reasons). This mainly applies to DDs. The p key is the AA/secondaries toggle.

Some pointers, in no particular order (from another WOT player): For a start, a statement of the bleedin' obvious: this isn't tanks. What I mean by that is that whilst some stuff does transfer over (the general idea of vision mechanics, for example), a lot doesn't - for me, I found that a key aspect was working out which was which. As in WOT, the wiki is a great source of useful info: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships Besides reading, there is a lot of good YouTube etc. content out there (be mindful that older stuff may have gone out of date, especially if it involves AA and CVs - they got changed radically about a year ago); iChase might be a good place to start, with his Captain's Academy series: Take some time setting up your interface (as with WOT), for example, you probably want the alternative interface mode switched on, and an aiming reticle with diagonals (I use static type 7, but there are plenty of viable alternatives). I would suggest playing as many classes as possible; whilst you'll probably end up with a particular favourite, playing everything will help you do better in your eventual preferred class because you'll have a handle on everything's strengths/weaknesses. I might suggest starting with the US and IJN lines (all of them) - they're the original two nations in the game, and as close to being 'not weird' as possible - learn them, and everything else develops from there. Don't get too hung up on direct class analogues between WOWS and WOT e.g. DDs do a lot of the spotting heavy lifting in WOWS, but they often have a monstrous alpha strike ability (torps) which Lights - their apparent analogue - lack. Premium account. You can get premium that works across all titles, but you'll get better bonuses with the WOWS-specific (which is much like the WOT-specific equivalent); as in WOT, it has a positive effect on everything you play. After that, port slots; you will run out quickly until you've accumulated enough spares - buy them on promo though; they periodically drop to 150 doubloons (no unified currency, alas) which is a rather more sensible price. As with WOT, wait for promos if you possibly can - much of the 'buy for money' stuff is over-priced IMO. As with WOT, there are a large number of premium ships to choose from; if you feel the urge, try and get ones that you can use as captain trainers (read up on captains carefully - not messing them up makes a significant difference), that you actively want to play lots - to get maximum value - and ideally that you can get plenty of damage with, as that's the key driver for rewards from battle. Hopefully, you know this from WOT, but it's a spectacularly bad idea to buy high tier premiums before you've got the hang of the game (although if you ignore that, you can always play them in Coop where you won't annoy anyone) - as a rule of thumb, try and avoid buying any premium that's more than a tier higher than you've got to with silver ships (maybe even same tier). Other than that, take the time to get your account established (it's number of battles limited) i.e. you'll get crucified if you drop into even mid-tier battles before you've unlocked things like cammo, captains, and the various upgrades. Keep asking questions on here - WOWS is at least as complicated at WOT and takes just as long to fully learn. Join a clan (when you've unlocked the option), preferably one that is happy to teach - besides a ready supply of division-mates (the WOWS platoon), a clan with a well developed base will provide you with a bunch of useful economic bonuses. Good. To return to the matter of captains, you generally want to avoid going above T4 without ten-pointers; T5 is where you start getting +2 MM, and most of your opponents will be experienced and have at least a ten point captain on their ship. Welcome to the forum, and good luck!

I will now struggle to get the song 'Kinky Boots' out of my system - thanks a bunch guys!

Whilst I suck in cruisers generally, something to be mindful with these two is that you represent a serious threat to enemy DDs (due to the radar); as a result, any team that isn't brain-dead will prioritise you with their big guns (yes, I know that in randoms 'not brain-dead' can be a bit aspirational at times) - if you can knock off the enemy radar, your DDs can wreak havoc. Because of this, there is a lot to be said for exercising caution in the early game - your ability to light up DDs (and other sneaky blighters in smoke/behind cover) is more valuable than the damage you're likely to do by opening fire if anything serious has LOS to you. Speaking as a DD main, don't underestimate the importance of your radar; even when it isn't switched on, you will be hampering the enemy DDs by forcing them to play round your radar radius (and try and keep track of things like radar cool-downs) - this stops when you get sunk. It's just a shame that the reward system doesn't reflect the importance of this stuff...

Don't forget though that you lose half the silver value of anything you sell (including upgrades - expensive at higher tiers - unless you use doubloons to demount them) - I would urge not selling anything from perhaps T7 and up, if at all possible, at least until you've reached the point where you generate silver without even trying (due to having permaflaged T10s, and plenty of premium ships)... If you find yourself short of silver, you have several options: Play more at lower tiers; it's easier to make a decent profit - depending on competence - at T7 and lower (T8 if you have premium account). Use premium account; if you're F2P, when you win some (like in the current Italian collection), try to do so when you can play for as much of the premium duration as possible, and play ships/modes where you can reliably do a lot of (ideally, proportional) damage. Get as many premium ships as you can (ideally ones that you want to play a lot, and don't suck in); besides freebies from missions, you can (obviously) pay money for them - ideally wait for special offers - or focus on collecting coal (there are a lot of good earners available for this resource, and don't forget upcoming snowflakes). Blow up DDs; by this, I mean try and knock off a high proportion of your targets' hp, rather than simply trying to do lots of damage in isolation; you probably know this already but you'll be rewarded a lot more for doing 10K of damage to something like a DD than you will for doing 10K of damage to something with a whopping hp pool like a BB. Only use premium consumables when you need to (but don't be stingy - sometimes the extra spend will net greater rewards e.g. I always take premium DCP) e.g. if you're in a mode without CVs, you really don't need premium DefAA, and so on. Raid your cammo supply, and sell useless modules: people often forget to sell stock modules from ships they've upgraded (check - you may have a bunch that you can usefully sell); also, after playing for a while, you often accumulate a lot of consumable cammo - when you have a surfeit, you can generate extra silver by selling the excess (usually those with poorer bonuses).

For me, it just turned up through having Twitch on for an hour or two - Flamu, I think. It's part of the Twitch drops thing - I also got a container maybe half an hour before.

It may just be me, but the Bella Italia mission (from Twitch) appears to be bugged: progress from the Duca D'Aosta (in Coop, which should be eligible) appears not to be counted. Perhaps when the conditions say 'Italian Cruisers' (T3+), they mean only the new silver ones...? UPDATE: I'm an idiot - as people have kindly pointed out, the mission is working correctly, but simply doesn't report on the results page at the end of the battle...

I call that a result then! Many thanks!

I'm probably a strong candidate for 'worst cruiser player on the server' (I'm less bad in DDs), but Boise might be worth a look - quite apart from anything, with the heal (which Helena lacks) it's very good in Narai. So, at the very least, you'll get some decent returns from that. Get Boise though, rather than NDJ - the latter suffers from the whole 'single premium nation' thing, so you'll have to blow a lot of captain xp on getting said captain to a respectable level... Besides that, I like Atago too (nice balance between guns and torps, plus a heal), but there isn't much to do with it apart from randoms, if you find you hate it...