Verblonde

I'm hoping for some premium T6 CVs, for exactly this reason. That said, Furry4ss does quite well in the one we had earlier this week, whatever that's called...

I think the key issue with the attacking side is that it generally rewards a more aggressive style than regular randoms, and given the bulk of players' enthusiasm for camping, it takes a while for people to adjust. I also have a strong suspicion that no bugger reads the blurb for the mode, so a lot don't realise right away that dying is less of a disaster (positioning/delay apart) for an attacking player than it usually would be - due to respawns, of course. Edit: similar to the latter, people also don't seem to know that the defenders get a continuous heal, so finishing damaged enemies off doesn't happen as often as it should.

Yup, +1 from me as well...

I'd be interested in this too - I suspect I'll be embracing my inner whale when I get home...

Hmmm, looks like I'll be doing a stupid when I get home...

Something else to perhaps have on the radar is CVs: the notorious 5.5+/- km detection DDs (which also out-spot T9-10 too, don't forget) are almost all rather hammered by the high CV numbers in the game at present. All of them need that concealment to be competitive, and if they're facing a remotely competent CV driver, then that concealment advantage vanishes. The only exception(ish) is Harakaze, which has pretty decent AA - I knocked down something like thirty planes in mine in one battle last night, for example, albeit at the cost of not being much use against the enemy ships due to being spotted much of the time, despite the plane kills. You could perhaps make a case that the situation of many of the T7 DDs has improved lately: most of them are balanced around their less-than-stellar concealment, so they are (relatively speaking) less knackered when *everything* is now spotted almost all the time...

Didn't know about this - after a quick Google, she looks like she would be a suitably unusual addition... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Delhi_(D47))

Apparently, WOT is eight years old (!); to mark this glorious moment, WG's generosity knows no bounds: WOT8ANNIVERSARY should get you a day of all-platform premium account. No idea if it works yet though, due to the shop functionality having wet itself at time of writing. Still, free stuff is always good!

Small update: it appears to work...

Have a care though: as @Egoleter alludes to, it can result in some unhealthy behaviours. The (sort of) equivalent in WOT is something known as xvm, and that is a superating carbuncle on the bottom of the last leper in hell... (I'm not keen)

Also agree with keeping the two separate (for the same reasons as stated above). However, players do need to be rewarded properly for damaging/downing planes, and the rewards need to show clearly in the results screens; at the moment, one is not sure if one is actually doing oneself any good shooting down planes, beyond the obvious 'living longer', and 'helping the team' reasons. Make it obvious that there is a point to dealing with planes, and at least some of the anti-CV sentiment might lessen marginally...?

I wouldn't be surprised if there is currently a bit of a ruck going on at WG at the moment, in the manner of the scene towards the end of Blazing Saddles: on the one hand, whoever designed the latest batch of FSW missions put the part in that requires premium carriers to do it, whilst on the other (I'm guessing) the premium RN carrier isn't ready yet, and other people at WG are noisily keen to avoid a repeat of the whole GZ thing. Harsh language wouldn't surprise me...

@natswright - you can sometimes infer a little bit about relative threats on the opposing side by analysing the team makeup whilst the battle is loading (hitting tab will bring up the team makeups in battle as well), as well as when an enemy is in sight. Look for names/clans you recognise as being dangerous (and say hello if you notice a forumite!); also look for limited availability ships, as they can sometimes tell you a bit about your opponent e.g. Kamikaze are quite common, thanks to the loot boxes; Kami R, and Fujin (sp?) on the other hand haven't been available for a long time, so anyone in one of those is likely to be pretty experienced/competent. Look for camo that can only be got through being magnificent in Clans - that denotes a good player. And so on... That's not to say that you can always spot a good/bad player from the off, but it's still worth looking out for clues (just not at the expense of concentrating on what you should be doing!)...

The first bit is right i.e. you will sometimes be matched against much better players (equally, you'll also sometimes get matched against utter potatoes e.g. me). The second bit not so much - MM is (allegedly) entirely random; it isn't skill-based, at least not in randoms (a quick search of the forums will probably show up a bunch of threads explaining at great length why SBMM is a bad idea and won't happen). As @Egoleter says, to avoid the worst privations, play a maximum of T4 ships - up to T4 only faces one tier higher at worst.

With the current meta, I tend to think the best T10 DD is Gearing, if only because of the excellent (for a DD) DefAA-reinforced AA, and the long-ranged torps, which come in very handy if you're facing a lot of radar. Z-52 looks distinctly promising - its AA can hold its own against CVs (relatively speaking) - but I haven't had mine long enough to have a fully informed opinion. Last I heard, the French DDs don't have smoke; this may well be a deal-breaker for some people...?

I don't mind space battles (or the Halloween events); they provide some welcome variety. Less relevant for old lags with multiple 19 point captains, but they provide a valuable way for newbies to grind some elite captain xp as well. So long as the option to switch it off remains, I don't see any harm in having the silly camo schemes in regular battles either (although I would like to see the ability to use said silly camo, without having to see silly camo, if you see what I mean)...

Might be, in randoms anyway. FWIW I've been mucking about with T4s quite a bit of late, whilst I try and get the hang of the things in a fairly benign environment - the rewards are appalling for low tier CVs in coop, and the games last long enough in randoms for you to actually do something vaguely useful (ish)...

You're better than I am! I usually hover just above the 48% mark, depending a bit on what I've been playing lately (DDs tend to improve matters, whilst everything else usually tanks my WR!)... I can dig that, just be careful of wasting money - fifty-six quid (or whatever Alaska costs at the moment) is a lot to pay to test a hypothesis. Says he, who just got Salem, which I have absolutely no business playing in randoms whatsoever! My experience with coops is that you'll almost always win (assuming all/most of your team aren't bots - not a given for me, as I play at weird hours), and the bots are fairly predictable, so you'll probably do okay - even in a wildly inappropriate ship. Most of my high tier BBs and cruisers more or less live in coop, whilst I try and learn to suck less in them in randoms. BTW if it hasn't been mentioned already, give the space battles a lash - they're (sort of) Tier 10 Lite, as it were, as everything in there is a tweaked T10 ship (no upgrades or premium consumables); that might give you some useful(ish) data re: higher tier battles against real people. Obviously, the battle modes are a bit non-standard, but still...

T-61 is glorious (especially if you meet someone who doesn't know about the smoke/hydro combination), but its gun arcs aren't hugely representative of what you'll get with things like Atlanta. Atlanta (and a lot of other American ships) are noted (notorious?) for shooting rainbows i.e. their shells have great looping arcs; this can be both a benefit and a curse - benefit, because it can allow you to shoot over islands, whilst remaining protected from counter-fire; curse, because it takes ages for the shells to reach longer range so making hitting smaller/faster targets troublesome, to put it mildly. This is why both @Nautical_Metaphor and I have pointed you at lower tier Russians; at higher tiers, the Russians are noted for their 'rail guns' with very flat trajectories, but the lower tiers incline more towards the rainbow end of things. Hence KK (although the point above about MM is very well made), which even has short-ranged torps like Atlanta too. Ignoring the torps, the T3-4 Russian cruisers are good practice for learning to shoot rainbows - I still occasionally take out things like Aurora just for fun too, as they're actually a giggle as well as being good practice.

@NikeAjax1 Additional: there is a common misconception that having more powerful ships will increase one's chances of winning/doing well e.g. "Tirpitz has bigger guns and more armour than Graf Spee (say), therefore I'll do better with a Tirpitz" is an understandable thought process. What tends to get forgotten is that, yes, you'll have a better ship (with your Tirpitz, in this example), but then so will everyone else, *and* they'll have more experience using theirs, *and* they'll probably have a better captain too. The other thing to have on your radar is, well, radar (and other similar things) - if you jump up to high tiers via premiums, you'll start facing, and (perhaps as importantly) using things like radar - if you're still getting the hang of the more basic stuff, adding extra elements will probably make your job even harder still. Of course, the traditional response to this sort of thing is for the newer play to say "knickers!" and go and do it anyway - if you do follow that path, I'd suggest playing your new toy in coop only; you'll have a lot more fun there, and won't get turned off your (expensive) purchase after getting a (likely) repeated tonking in randoms...

It's quite likely, but that isn't necessarily a reason to avoid clans entirely (assuming you can get enough people together) - at the very least, you'll have set a reference point against which to judge future progress. Atlanta is hilarious, but quite hard to play (mainly due to being very fragile); the closest silver ships are some of the US CLs, or perhaps the higher tier US DDs (Atlanta has DD guns, essentially), especially with a BFT/AR captain, but none are basically the same, only silver (that's partly why Atlanta/Flint are good premiums - they're pretty much unique). If you want a similar experience with cheaper premiums, some of the low tier cruisers might be worth a look, or perhaps even the much maligned Krispy Kreme...

Plus, occasionally, you get lucky and the person hiding in the smoke doesn't understand the mechanics - I got a complaint when driving my Groz a few weeks ago, from a Gearing (I think), who accused me of cheating after I proximity spotted him in his smoke...!

Besides what others have (accurately) said, with varying degrees of tact, you may find elements of the wiki helpful: Spotting mechanics: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Detection Smoke Generator consumable: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Consumables#Smoke_Generator (elsewhere in the section is information regarding hydro and radar - the two key counters to smoke) I'm afraid that previous respondents are correct: if you're getting your posterior handed to you by people in smoke, then it's a matter of learning the game more; don't fret though, with (at time of writing) only 368 random battles under your belt, it's still *very* early days. WOWS isn't like a lot of games, where you can (essentially) turn up with a teenager's twitch reactions and do reasonably well more or less instantly - it's far too complex, and strategic for that; you have to learn the basics of how the game mechanics work (especially vision mechanics) to perform even to an average standard. This isn't a bad thing though, as it helps the game stay interesting for longer.

As mentioned above (by @Miragetank90) , you get the rentals immediately after playing a random battle in a T8+ ship, assuming your account is at a high enough level. @thiextar makes a very good point too: if you are all very new to the game, you'll probably get your posteriors handed to you, as you'll likely be facing rather more experienced opponents. That's not to say you shouldn't give it a lash though; assuming all your clan is inexperienced, you aren't harming anyone (the opponents will probably appreciate a less difficult win, although you may surprise them), and it'll give you a bit of a benchmark to reference as you all develop. You are at a bit of a disadvantage in a rental; although they act like premiums (as far as captains go), so you can put your best captain in them, you can't put camo on them, which makes you a bit easier to see and hit. I would strongly advise putting all available upgrades on the rentals though - you'll be at a significant disadvantage without them (no CVs though, I believe, so you don't need to worry about AA builds), and you'll get them de-mounted for free when the rental ship is removed. Probably mount mainly premium consumables too - the reduced cooldowns, and extra charge can be very helpful; take DCP at the very least, and others depending on how you find the economics work out for you (I find clans very profitable, even with full premium consumable loadout, but I run perma-camo on my T10s - I'm not sure how it is currently with rentals). One tip: you only get one BB per team, so put your best BB player in it; an incompetent (or just inexperienced) player in that role is a significant hindrance to the team.

I would suggest playing at least some randoms (maybe the space battles, as that will generate valuable elite captain xp) - besides the rewards being a lot better, it'll help hone your skills as real people tend to be a lot more unpredictable than bots. Suggest not going above T4 to start with though, if playing 'normal' randoms, as that way you only face +1 opponents (space battles are single tier, so no problems there in that regard). Possibly not the wisest move, if you struggled with Sims and Exeter; if you're thinking about spending that much money (I assume you don't have a million free xp spare yet?), you'll get much better value from a bunch of extra port slots (although wait for them to be on special offer), and/or a couple of lower tier premiums.