Verblonde

On the whole, I like the game a lot (there isn't, for example, the equivalent of the annoying stealth section in the middle of a no-holds-barred shooter), even after several thousand battles; overall, I feel it's pretty decent. What I don't like is the apparent contempt that WG often seem to show for their customers - when problems occur, there is a corporate tendency to default to 'we know best' and try and force things through, requiring pretty much a riot before anything changes (NTC most recently). Basically, I trust WG about as far as I could comfortably spit a rat; I don't believe I'm unique in this point of view, and that is a problem. My suspicion is that this doesn't come from the folk we hear from day-to-day, but rather from higher up the ladder; if WG want to maximise their revenues, they really need to do something about this lack of trust in them...

I'm up to T9 so far, and have been enjoying them a lot; if you've learned to shoot with the US line already, the guns shouldn't present you with much difficulty. BTW it's worth putting the hydro mod on any higher tier keepers, as it makes your hydro run time gloriously absurd - 216 secs!

I think there may be the slightest, most minuscule possibility that I have too many ships:

That was the pair that did most of the heavy lifting for me; the impression (possibly wrong) that I came away with was that Black is superior if your team-mates are functioning as an actual team, whereas Jutland perhaps has the edge for 'army of one' stuff...?

I might refine this by adding (say) 'beyond rank 10' at the end. As long as you're in the two stars per rank bit, with a reasonable frequency of irreversible ranks, the impact of going in not fully loaded will probably be rather less important than player skill. Easy for me to say though: I went into this season fully loaded from the outset, although I did stop at Rank 10, as that's the limit of my present abilities. I'm a little surprised that captains aren't mentioned: I might suggest that a 19-pointer will probably have a greater positive impact than at least some of the essential upgrades/flags etc?

I wouldn't go all-out to get Aigle (for reasons already outlined), but she is fun with a decent captain; if you get to December and find you have enough coal to get her, but not one of the higher tier ships, and the voucher is about to re-set, then you might as well pick her up. Also, by then you should have a better handle on how fast you'll tend to accumulate coal and if steel is viable as a resource to chase seriously; that'll help you decide how important it is to use the voucher before it expires, and what to use it on. Okt. Rev. *is* Gangut, but after a refit and a tier higher; the silver Gangut in the game is an earlier incarnation of the ship. I quite like having her in my port as she's about the only properly historical Russian BB in the game (reminds me - I really should get the silver version at some point too); I'm not a rabid BB enthusiast though, so don't play her that much.

Nothing directly, but my main reason for not wanting to regrind lines is that I would be without the silver ships until I'd got to them with the regrind, which could take a while. If I have loads of premiums for a line, it makes the missing silver ships infinitely less of a nuisance.

The whole premium thing had slipped my mind - this is a good point; I might well give the US DD tree a re-grind - although I like Gearing a lot, I can manage without her for a bit whilst still being able to play most of the crucial tiers with premiums...

I should have been clearer: by 'lower' I essentially meant Okt and Aigle; the *really* low tier ones are arguably better to buy with money (preferably during a sale), and certainly aren't worth using a ship voucher on (all IMO, of course). Yubari is actually quite worthwhile, for an occasional laugh: put a decent DD captain on her and she does fine - there aren't a lot of guns, but they generally go vaguely where you point them, and she's (comparatively-speaking) quite monstrous against planes. Obviously, if a BB looks at you funny you're probably deader than plaid, but that's not unique to Yubari. I generally play her as a tubby DD with a citadel; thinking in those terms, she's perfectly okay. Cambeltown is fun, but you'll probably only play her long-term for giggles; there are better captain trainers (Gallant/Cossack), and most missions can't be done in T3s. Incidentally, if you end up getting a premium that's 'too high tier' for where you've got to in randoms, you can always give them a lash in Coop (e.g. my Alaska lives pretty much entirely in PvE as I'm nowhere near good enough in her to face real people) until you're ready for PvP modes.

My feeling is that it depends a bit on the state of balance of CVs at the relevant time; if either side has too much of an edge, it would probably be bad, whilst decent balance would just mean the latest meta change. For me, bringing CVs into the game will just change which DDs I select for competitive (and their builds), rather than encourage me to pick a different class. Most CV drivers aren't El2aZer and can be dealt with/avoided with a suitable DD and if one resists the urge to be spectacularly stupid (admittedly, the latter can give me trouble). If the aim is to reduce the DD population, I would think that doing something to encourage cruisers would be more effective - I find a well-driven cruiser (radar especially) to usually be more of a threat than *most* CVs.

No - you're quite right. My feeling, fwiw, is that there is no shortage of 'no brainer' computer games, where you can shoot without consideration and consequence (some of the special modes of WOWS qualify too); it would just be a shame if WOWS joined this race to the cerebral bottom without a fight. As I said earlier, this isn't the hill I die on, but I would prefer it if team damage stayed in the game, even if it is only a mild deterrent for the irretrievably selfish/dim.

I always would - I tend to favour proper training over making the game more idiot-proof. I know the game is overrun with people you might expect to be outsmarted by their own underpants, but I think we should be trying to (as it were) provide better instructions vis-a-vis y-fronts than make it simply unnecessary to wear them.

Correct. Now, strongly suggest you go outside in the fresh air and do something useful with your day. You've already had more attention than you deserve.

Beside what has been said already, at time of writing you have 138 battles; whilst I understand the urge to get the high tier premiums (says he who got MO far too early, for example), I would suggest one of the lower tiers to start with, which will probably be more useful whilst you develop your skill set (unless you're a prodigy, in which case get whatever you want), and - at least as important - develop a few higher point captains. Okt. Rev. is quite worthwhile, and is a useful trainer for the Russian BBs, if you like that kind of thing; I quite like Aigle since the torps got buffed, but it has a few down-sides and isn't a terribly good vehicle for learning 'how to destroyer' (no smoke, and mediocre detection range, for starters) - it also helps to be using one of the 'magic' French captains (the Honores) with their enhanced EM for maximum mitigation of the horrible turret traverse, which removes the possibility of using the same captain on a French BB (at least optimally, as DD captains want a very different build to those for a BB). Something to keep in mind is the voucher cycle - you'll have noticed that (if you haven't used it yet) you have a voucher in the Armory (sic) that knocks 25% (I think) off the price of a coal/steel ship; from memory, the current vouchers are valid until late December, when they will be replaced by a new one, valid for another six months. Obviously, this means you can save quite a lot of valuable resources on one ship every six months. So, there might be something to be said for using your current voucher on one of the less expensive coal ships now, and then you'll get a new one in December to perhaps use on one of the higher tier ones later (BTW if you get to a point where you're earning useful quantities of steel, using these vouchers for steel ships is a better idea as steel is harder to earn than coal).

Besides what @ColonelPete said, the 'usual' promotional rate is 1:35, versus the normal everyday 1:25. If you're looking to spend money to get free xp ships though, most of them are available through the shop and (I think) it's significantly cheaper to get them that way, rather than via buying doubloons and then converting free xp. BTW at the risk of sounding like a stuck record, unless this is your second account, most/all of the free xp ships will probably be a bit much after only (at time of writing) 430 battles, with the lowest tier one being Nelson at T7. Whilst I wouldn't tell someone what to do apropos spending in the game, it is usually wisest to spend money to get premiums that are of a similar tier to wherever you've got to (without spending money) in the regular silver trees.

Absolute tosh - there is a lot you can do about friendly fire to prevent it happening, like take even the slightest modicum of care before firing. Your torps. Your responsibility. Always. Incidentally, I'm starting to suspect you are just trying to wind up people on the forum for attention, rather than actually make a sensible point. In which case, ha ha, jolly well done - suggest doing something more useful with the rest of your day.

If you are habitually firing torps from 2 km behind DDs then you deserve to be banned, not just turned pink. The whole point of a team game is to play cooperatively towards a common goal, not do whatever one's own selfish urges dictate. Also, I believe one of the key aspects of this game is that it is rather more cerebral than many others; the friendly fire aspects add to the need for thought when playing - if one wishes to just blast away without having to think too hard, something like the Borderlands series is magnificent. Incidentally, if you (say) fire 20 km torps and a friendly turns into them 19.5 km away then it is still your fault, and still your responsibility. It is not your allies' job to dodge friendly torps, it is your responsibility not to be a donkey when firing them - use your brain and predict which friendlies might conceivably end up in the firing line; you have to do the same thing to hit enemies so is it so unacceptably hard to do something similar to avoid friendly fire? If this is beyond your capabilities, perhaps switching to non-torp classes might be wise? The selfish and borderline narcissistic view expressed in the quote above is an extremely good illustration of why team damage should remain in the game, at least in the main modes.

FWIW in Jutland, I run the same build as @Donnerturm; for T8 and below, I ditch IFHE and take SI and PM instead - that assumes primarily randoms. For competitive modes, there is a case to be made for taking RL with those four points.

...it is still my silly fault for careless firing of torps. Look at my stats - I'm no elitist, but I do have sufficient sense to be slightly mindful of the situation around me.

I was wondering about this myself; there aren't too many lines where I have a T10 where I'd be happy to lose the line and/or the T10 for the duration of a regrind. Maybe the IJN torp line, but that's about it, and regrinding that would be all kinds of no fun if CVs ever come back...

Probably, although I marginally would prefer them to leave it in (at least for the main modes) - my feeling is that it slightly encourages more cerebral play. If team damage were removed there would be nothing to stop blithering idiots just spamming torps from the second line, rather than taking sensible shots that might contribute something useful to their team.

Personally, as a bit of a potato, I find the two play similarly for me*; however, I almost always pick Cossack: It's a premium, with the associated rewards. More importantly, it's a premium, so you can put your best RN DD captain on her when you're higher up the silver tree and moved your top captain accordingly (for me personally, this means a 19 point captain versus a ten pointer). I run the coal hydro mod on both, but I suspect that if people don't have the coal, they're more likely to equip the premium, and that mod can give a helpful edge... *Defined as I get similar results, rather than them being similar ships.

The 'separate mode' bit *may* make a positive difference. That said, I can't imagine anything will stop WG ploughing ahead with eventual PvP implementation, even if all the customers tell them to knock it off - I can't help recalling that the Halloween subs had 'real' subs underneath all the gubbins. You don't make that much effort unless you're fairly hell-bent on going ahead...

We do. If I were WG, I'd be rather concerned about this - it can't be good for them to have this level of cynicism and general distrust amongst the more active elements of the customer base. Of course, we could be even more wildly unrepresentative of the wider customer base than usual I suppose...

Whilst WG's track record isn't great (CVs anyone?), at least it looks like they intend proper testing this time; if the time spent in a distinct mode allows subs to be balanced and useful (and fun), then I wouldn't object to them. I'm not optimistic, but we may yet be pleasantly surprised; contrary to that, I note that we're getting close to the first anniversary of the CV rework...