Verblonde

There's yer problem - in the current 'CVs and lashings of radar' meta, an early cap is going to get you exploded a lot of the time. As others have alluded to, be circumspect with early game capping - quite apart from anything else, as soon as the cap starts changing colour, you've pretty much telegraphed where you are to the opposing team. Unless you're in a coordinated division, it's better to assume you'll always get zero support, and play accordingly too...

Good choice - she isn't sheer gloriousness embodied, but she's an inexpensive way to work out how single torps work (plus, the history behind the RL ship is notable)... I still play mine occasionally, although Vampire remains my T3 go-to.

I believe the consensus is that you have him on the ideal skip for his 'special' skills (mine currently mainly sits on Musashi, until I get round to unlocking Yamato). As @Egoleter says, you can plonk him in absolutely any premium you like, provided it's Janapese (or counts as Japanese); the only thing to be mindful of is that (assuming you picked sensible captain skills for Yamato), his skills won't be optimal for some Japanese premiums e.g. most BB builds will be rather sub-optimal in something like Asashio, say.

If you want a gentle introduction, perhaps buy Cambeltown (T3) and/or Gallant (T6) - they both give an introduction to single fire torps, but lack some of the more difficult aspects of the regular RN DDs: they get normal smoke, and speed-boost, for example. You can also run both with the same captain (hopefully ten points - Gallant is much more comfortable with CE).

In my view, not so much: although they exhibit a lot of fairly typical DD traits, the precise combination makes them somewhat distant from being 'easy mode' if you aren't familiar with DDs already, via other lines. I don't believe so, particularly, but the learning curve will be very steep for most people if they don't know how to play DDs already. FWIW, my perspective on RN DDs (I'm average, at best, and that's on a good day): Firstly, they are some of my favourite DDs in the game, but I have to be awake to do well with them - they aren't a 'chill out' line by any means. They are hybrids, but you absolutely need to use the guns if you want to do damage; they are also quite stealthy - meshing these two contradictory aspects is where much of the skill comes in. You have to blow your cover to do maximum damage, so picking your moments wisely is key. You get your first stealth torp window at T6 (I think, but it needs a CE captain); T7 is where the ships start to really come together IMO. Torps are single fire, but that requires a bit more skill to get the most out of; the guns give a healthy amount of dakka, but the arcs are rather unhelpful (learn to shoot with floaty shells with the US DDs first, I would suggest). Although short-ranged, the hydro is excellent - the long duration can make you functionally immune to torps (assuming you can dodge) for an absurd amount of time - on premium/higher tiers, I often run the magic hydro upgrade (available for coal, via the Arsenal) for even longer run time. You get lots of smoke, but it doesn't last long; it's great for breaking contact, and short bursts of smoked-up dakka, but the latter requires careful judgement to do properly. It helps a lot to have good situational awareness: you're very sneaky (T8s are only out-spotted by the 'Kagero sisters', and only by about 100m +/-), but if you want to damage - as mentioned before - you have to open fire with guns; doing this without getting turned into smoking boots by enemy ships requires good awareness of who is where on the map, and what their lines of sight look like. The top two tiers require high-point captains (even more so than usual); although not 100% consensus, the general view is that you need IFHE to maximise damage - that calls for *at least* a 14-pointer (as not taking CE as well is asking for trouble). So, I would learn to DD with other lines (US for similar gunfire, and KM for the introduction to - longer ranged, admittedly - hydro), and then pick the RN DDs for your third of fourth line, perhaps...

Thank you @wilkatis_LV - I'm now blind (Mater always said this would happen)...

A word of caution: I'm sure you know this already, but be careful that Aigle doesn't taint your view of DDs; it isn't terribly typical of DD play in general, as it isn't the most comfortable to play (although I must admit I haven't played it since the recent buffs). BTW if you have the French 'special' captain, he has boosted EM, which makes Aigle rather less horrible to play, and the boosted torp range makes them rather more viable weapons too (I think you now get a small stealth torp window, which was lacking before). I suspect Aigle is one of those ships that really wants a higher point captain, but I haven't played mine enough to establish that definitively. Since I'm between grinds at the moment, I might take mine out later and see if if it's any less ghastly than I remember...! Edit - just gave Aigle its first run-out in ages; the extra range on the torps does make a positive difference, although the stealth is still rather lacking if you're more used to, say, the US line (and they're not ultra-sneaky)... Nah - you're fine. F2P is a perfectly reasonable approach; it just requires a slightly more careful approach with regard to in-game finances.

If you're prone to playing aggressively, perhaps try something like DDs; I have a similar affliction i.e. I often lack the patience for the slower (more cerebral?) classes - DDs allow you to dash around, and engage in rather more high risk-high reward gameplay (although some degree of circumspection is still required). If you're new to DDs, perhaps give the US tree a lash - they seem to work best in the current CV environment, are are decent hybrids (especially once you get the ability to stealth torp at T7); the Germans aren't bad either for broadly similar reasons. Not that contradictory, really: it's about striking a balance; premium consumables give you the significant bonuses of much faster cooldown, plus an extra charge; the free ones save you a lot of silver, but you can't use them as often. On any given ship, exactly which ones to go premium with, and which to go basic will often be (at least partly) a matter of taste. My personal approach is to take DCP (and healing, if I have it) as premiums, always, and pick the rest according to ship/game mode. I tend to pick premium versions as much as possible though, but rely on doing plenty of damage to finance them. Other aspects to consider are things like how much premium content to you have: premium account results in much higher silver income per battle (xp too) from all ships, plus do you have premium ships - premiums that you can do well in tend to generate a lot of silver, with which you can fund games in your less profitable ships. If you're entirely f2p, you'll have to work harder to earn a decent silver income. I haven't looked at your stats, but if you are struggling to do damage, I would suggest dropping back a tier or several - find the level where you can consistently do your own hp in damage (as a starting point, and varying with class), and work from there. Play randoms and operations if you can - both modes are more profitable than coop. Get (and play) as many premium ships as you can; if you're f2p, you want to be looking in the coal section of the Arsenal, plus doing as many 'free ship' missions as possible - such as the Exeter one that's on at the moment. Basically though, as others have said, the game is set up very deliberately to make it harder to make a silver profit the higher up the trees you go without spending real money - WG want you to open your wallet and say 'help yourself'. It is very possible to mitigate this, but it does take some effort...

My feeling (yuk!) is that it does make a difference, although the degree varies with circumstances: if planes are attacking you directly, its usefulness is somewhat moot, especially if the planes are at full health, and/or if you have short-ranged AA. Meanwhile, if planes are traversing across your AA auras, and/or you can keep your ship orientated such that the reinforced side remains facing the planes, it's very much worthwhile. I should mention that this perspective is almost entirely based on playing DDs. As others have alluded to though, I would probably leave my AA set to 'neutral' is the primary threat is surface ships, as they're what you generally need to concentrate on, rather than messing about with (currently too complicated) AA buttons. If I'm using things like Groz, or the US DDs, where actively hunting planes is a viable proposition, I try and put an island between me and the enemy fleet whilst I engage the planes - this allows most effective use to be made of things like AA reinforcement, and DefAA, without compromising positioning with respect to enemy ships...

All kinds of +1 for this idea. At the moment, I have the AA reinforcement thing bound to the 'c' key, but it's still far too damn many clicks. @Ubertron_X's suggestion above is far more sensible (perhaps ctrl-click, to be consistent with things like targeting secondaries?).

On the up-side, there is no limit to the number of ships per request; if you build up enough silver/port slots in advance, you could theoretically restore every premium in the game (if you'd had them, and sold them first) in one go...

+1 to this - it's one of the best premiums in the game (IMO, of course), tier for tier...

Heroic music you say? How about:

Looking at the ships I've *actually*played the least, in randoms anyway: It does remind me: I should make a bit of an effort with Molotov, at least; quite a few of my less played ships are often because I've simply forgotten I have them, or similar - case in point.

No way they'll be daft enough to let that past testing, surely? The clubbing would be glorious...!

I missed that - one wonders if WG are trying an experiment to see if they can make a collection of ships almost entirely unattractive, to all but the most committed of masochists...?

So, basically more cruisers, just sans citadel?

Me too - due to being an excessive hoarder, I think the only eligible RN ships that I'm missing are Vanguard, and whatever the silver T8 BB is called... I'm slightly puzzled by the tier restriction; from a potato's perspective, playing higher tiers wouldn't have made it *that* much easier. It would have been nice to use T9 specifically - I'm in the process of working towards the T10 in both the CL and (especially) the DD lines...

Do we have a southern hemisphere polar map? I got the impression the existing ones were all Arctic ones... Polar Bear: "Sh*te!"

I'm currently plodding through the 'citadels' bit - I bagged seven in a couple of games last night. '3 Kills' was surprisingly straightforward, even with lots of real people in coop - two games, and did it the second one with Fiji or Belfast (can't remember which); there seemed to be quite a few DDs out in coop, so the CLs weren't a bad shout for that. I can see why people would find the Exeter grind annoying though, particularly if they don't have lots of eligible ships - there have most certainly been optimal choices for the various different missions, and I can see it would be very frustrating trying to do some elements in the less ideal choices...

@RevelAndQuaff - +1 for the handle; I assume the phrase "Tell me, was I with you last night?" is pertinent?

Nah, you're not the only one! One of the benefits of being distinctly tuberous is that one sucks similarly in a T8 ship to most other tiers, so making getting repeatedly uptiered less vexing (plus, I play mostly DDs against real people, and they usually uptier better than most other classes)...

Absolutely! I look forward to it! Wichita might be worthwhile if they bring Cherry Blossom back (in vaguely the same form as it was before): that used to be quite a good operation for making decent silver in premiums. I assume, being American, that Wichita has fairly decent AA? If you want to restore premium ships that you sold, I think you can: https://eu.wargaming.net/support/en/products/wows/article/22943/

I would advise against selling premiums, more or less no matter how dreadful they are - at the very least, they insure against you getting them again in Xmas containers! I struggle with cruisers too; I tend mainly to keep mine for use in coop, and ops (to a lesser extent) - missions come along quite often where they're a good choice, and (being premiums) you're more likely to come out ahead in rewards than you might in a silver equivalent. I quite like Irian, although she doesn't do much that Kutuzov can't, apart from having the longer range torps - that's to be expected though, as MK is generally viewed as being OP...

I think I have almost every 'standard' premium in the game (apart from some of the newest), and just don't have time to play all of them regularly. That said, I don't think there are many that I actively avoid playing, in some mode or other; for example, I suck in cruisers, but still play my premiums, just in coop... The ones that get the least use are the low tier ones, I suppose, as (apart from snowflakes) missions can't be done in them - to play a low tier premium really requires that I have more free time than usual, or am in a division with a newbie, or just want to muck about a bit...