Verblonde

I'm rather enjoying Haida: partly because, well it's the Haida, but mainly because she's a lot like Cossack, but gets less hideous MM. Only one set of torp tubes, but the guns are good, and she's pretty stealthy; the creeping smoke, and defensive sonar are handy too. You even have a secondary gun (!) - once in a blue moon you may even do damage with it, but remember to switch the thing off most of the time, to avoid it blowing your stealth. Largely useless captain trainer of course, due to being Commonwealth tree...

I've seen a lot of them about; Texas can certainly ruin any CV's day, although I suspect their prevalence is to do with lots of people having them and being good earners (premium). I played mostly with Kamikaze (because I'm a bad person, and need all the help I can get), so my experience of the current season isn't hugely typical. It's Boise, after she moved to Argentina; stats-wise, they're identical. NdJ is the (so far) only entry in the Pan American (?) tech tree - she was designed to appeal to South American players, but has a really unpleasant history (the real ship), so lots of people noisily complained, so WG did her in her Boise guise as well. If you buy either ship, you get a grind mission that gives you the other one free (plus 3 or 6 point captain).

BTW @black_falcon120 - do you have anything fun in the way of T5 ships? If you do, suggest giving the current Ranked sprint a go - there are quite a few useful flags to be had for not too much effort each time you go up a rank (for the first time for each rank), plus some coal if you get to Rank 1. Plus, you're facing only other T5 ships, so less horrifying MM to contend with; might generate some useful silver and captain xp?

I was wondering about suggesting this earlier too, for the same reasons. The monster heal doesn't do any harm either. The only snag, and what stopped me suggesting it, is that it really helps to have a 14-point captain (CE and IFHE); that said, it's still a decent fire-starter without the latter...

Lately, it's been Tier 10, although you can get rentals by playing a single battle in a T8. All the firm advice apropos fully equipping your ship and captain goes double at that level. That said, there is more to being in a clan than simply playing the Clan Battles mode; often, it can be a source of people to division with in the other modes...

I don't know about that (my 'registered' date refers to WOT; I haven't been playing WOWS long enough to get Arkansas), but it wouldn't be unprecedented. LWM is usually right though, so you may be better playing your other premiums for maximum credit earnings. Clans' recruitment policies vary with clans: the 'teaching' ones will probably just want you to be keen, and willing to learn; the uber-competitive ones will want a unicum WR; the rest will be somewhere in between. There are even a few clans for people who don't want to be in a clan, but don't want to miss out on bonuses/missions that are clan-specific...

The progress bar only starts up when you get your first secondary hit (the other bars were similarly blank when the mission first opened up). Grab your ship with the naughtiest secondaries, mount a suitable flag, and drive into the middle of a bunch of bots in Coop - you'll get it done in a few battles. I think I used KM BBs (T7&8) to get mine done in a few minutes... Edit: you have several of the KM battleships that I used, I see - it'll be easy for you...

I wouldn't worry excessively about spending silver - it's fairly easy to earn back, assuming you're playing an appropriate ship (especially if it's one of your premiums, properly tooled-up). Doubloons are the currency to hoard, as you suggest, if you want to keep spending at a sensible level. BTW assuming you're playing quite frequently, I would suggest you make sure you're collecting coal (via the 'more resources' containers, and missions) - there are several decent premium ships to be had for coal in the Arsenal section of the game (there is also an online version too: https://arsenal.worldofwarships.eu/en/); joining a clan will get you small coal bonuses too, assuming the clan has built the relevant buildings.

Ah, I see!

If you want to still use the voucher, get doubloons (however many you want to spend money on), and then wait until a) you get better and/or b) the tech tree ships and/or premium time go on special offer. Just make sure that the 'auto-replenish' function on anything that costs gold (like cammo, and flags) is not set to use in-game currency on any of your ships - WG have set those options to use gold as default because they are money-grubbing swine!

@black_falcon120 - am I understanding your voucher correctly: it you buy a premium ship for $20 (say), you would also get $40 worth of doubloons at the same time (the latter being free)? If that is the case, there might be something to be said for getting Shinyhorse (say), and then using the doubloons to get other premiums (or premium time, or a mix of both) that are more suited to your present needs. You can always play 'too high' tier ships in Coop, whilst you're letting your skills catch up, and still make a profit.

For Dynamo: not so much; a standard build will do the job - I only have the AA mod on mine because I was trying to see what the maximum number of planes I could zap was (86, although I think I read someone got over a hundred, using manual AA). Sims is a good way to get plenty of stars on Dynamo, and is a good earner as a result. I'm not that good a player (very enthusiastic, but a bit short on competence), but I run her much like most US DDs, only with a bit more emphasis on guns. You'll be out-spotted by IJN DDs, but *most* other opponents have similar or worse visibility (but watch out for the new RN DDs at T8+, and Haida); the key threat to be mindful of is radar (T7+) - always have an idea of where to run to if/when you get zapped, and play cautiously until all radar ships are dead/elsewhere. Try and stay alive - you matter more and more, and can influence the game more the longer you live in a DD (true of other classes, but especially so of DDs). Don't forget your torps - they can make a difference, even if only for herding/area denial - but don't rely on them too much. You really need a 10-point captain (hockey dude will be ideal, if you earn the US/dual version) - CE is pretty much essential. Edit: the above assumes that you aren't in a game with a CV in it; if you are, you may have to do duty as AA cover (although that's usually the cruisers' job).

In an ideal world (where you always meet CVs), that might well be the recommended build - that's why the thing is lethal in Op. Dynamo. If I were doing a quick + grubby guide, it might be something like this, for general use in randoms: 1) Modules: Main Armaments, Damicon (assuming captain has LS), Aiming Sys (AA Guns, if you hate planes), and Propulsion. 2) Captain: standard(ish) DD build: PM (lots take PT), LS (always), SE (wiki thinks Super), and CE (always); once you've got your basic ten points done, you've got a bit of choice - I like extra dakka (BFT), extra dakka when maimed (AR), more smoke/DefAA (Super), and whichever 1 pointer you didn't take (PT or PM). I think that's 19 points. 3) You are reasonably fast, very nimble, and have the glorious US smoke; you are facing radar a lot though, so beware. Most of your damage will come from your guns, which work best at fairly close range (the rainbow arcs make hitting small/fast stuff at distance tough, hence why no AFT in the above captain suggestions). I personally take the sea mines, so 9.2 km range, and you have time to read War & Peace before they get to where you sent them; flooding damage can be useful, especially against dim BBs who don't know about WASD hacks (although they're rarer around T7). I might summarise Sims as a classic US DD with great guns and the usual smoke/wiggling, but with excellent AA (for a DD at her tier), at the cost of torp effectiveness...

Have a butchers at this: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/159769-dummies-guide-to-the-uss-sims/ US forum, but I doubt the meta is *that* much different to that on the EU... Basically, she's a rather good US gunboat, with possibly the most relaxed torps in the game...!

Did it Saturday evening, in (I think) 29 battles. Going to hell though - about two-thirds of those battles were in Kamikaze!

OP: the vast majority of your games are in top tiers i.e. you don't seem to have spent the time learning how DDs (or other classes) work at lower tiers. Are you really terribly surprised that you then get tonked when you drop straight into high tiers in a brand-new DD line that is noted for being slow, and therefore tough to escape in when spotted?

She is a good earner, *if* you know how to play her, *and* you equip her properly (all modules - look at the wiki for advice); a good captain helps a lot too. How much silver you generate is largely dependent on how much damage you do (there are other factors, but that's the key one); how much damage you do usually relates to how good you are at the game. I didn't think you had any 19-point captains yet? If you don't have a 19-point captain on any silver ship, this isn't going to be of any use, except for training up the captain you've assigned to the silver ship in question (one of the key points about premium ships is you can drop any compatible captain in - usually compatible = same nation, but not always e.g. HSF etc. - and use them in that ship, without having to re-train).

I've only just got Lightning, so I don't have the personal experience yet to have a view one way or the other. How much of this 'please nerf' stuff is real, and how much is similar to what you get whenever anything new is released, and people haven't worked out how to counter it yet? For example, people had fits when the RN BBs were released, but (last time I looked) their results suggested they were about average overall, once they'd built up a decent battle count, and average players had got their hands on them.

I've completed the mission - the Russian version gives me an excuse to start on the Khaba branch of RU DDs; not sure what to do with the US version when I complete the collection - might use him as a Kidd/Sims captain; I have decent captains already in all my existing silver US DDs... Got nada from the freebie crates; ended up buying ten of the premiums, and got the Chapy mission from the last one - quite worthwhile, and saves me a lot of grinding time (comes fully upgraded - yay).

I feel this is the main strong-point of (lower) single-tier events; they provide an opportunity to play things that might work against same-tier opponents, but their awful showing against higher tiers pretty much precludes their use most of the rest of the time. We saw something similar in the Frontline mode that WOT ran recently; things like Emerald seem to be WOWS' T32...

I've actually thought of something that you can't deduce from WOT: flooding slows a ship down, as well as doing damage (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Flooding). The reason this matters is that when you're sharing the love, via something that uses lots of torps (so, mainly DDs, but anything that can zap people multiple times with torps), you will sometimes be hoping to stack damage and DoT effects via multiple torps or waves of torps. I assume you've found the aiming triangle (the white thing that appears when you're locked onto a target with torps selected)? If your target is dumb (sailing straight and at constant speed), you fire your first torp/spread straight down the aiming cone, and you should score hits; if you fire your second torp/spread in exactly the same direction, and your first go hit and flooded the target, the resulting speed drop may cause your second shot to pass in front of the target. Torps in general require a rather different approach/mindset to anything in WOT (if you've played the KV-2, or most things with a derp, you'll already have a handle on the basics of slow, ballistic shooting), so it's well worth spending the time getting the hang of them, and there is a lot to learn (not least, when *not* to fire them, as any torp that hits your own side is always your fault), but the slowing-down-when-flooding thing is easily missed...

There isn't a definitive signal; you have to deduce when DCP has been triggered based on other information. @MoveZig covers it off well, if you triggered the DoT effect (fire or flood) yourself; if you happen to be looking at a ship that is ablaze, and you know those fires are recent and you didn't start them, if they suddenly vanish it's likely that DCP got triggered. It's worth having an idea of how long fires burn for on the different classes (much longer on BBs for example), as well as the immunity period after DCP is used too...

I'm another WOT convert; I've found that being fully au fait with WOT helps avoid a lot of the more obvious clangers (the equivalents of buying an IS-6 when you haven't got beyond T2, not using the mini-map, and so on). The crucial things to know about WOWS could be deduced from one's WOT experience, but you'll go faster if you follow the advice already given. For what it's worth, my list to focus on might include: 1) The Wiki (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships) - this does the same job as the WOT equivalent; if you want a single written resource, this is it. 2) Captain skills - perhaps the single most important thing to get right; I should have spent more time reading up on this at the start than I did, although most of my guesses were good. Each ship entry in the wiki has suggestions for relative usefulness of each skill on each ship (plus look at shipcomrade, as others have said). 3) Modules - read up carefully on what they all do, and on suggested builds (wiki is a good start); more so than in WOT, there are sometimes more viable builds across the various ships in WOWS. 4) The forum - people here are generally very helpful if you want to know stuff (rather less adolescent willy-waving than on WOT, in general). 5) Join a clan as soon as possible (one that'll teach, if you're new) - there are a number of helpful benefits to being in one, quite apart from anything else. 6) Premium ships - get some, but they can be freebies. Read reviews; Little White Mouse (LWM) is a good starting point - almost every premium ship entry in the wiki links to her review. 7) iChase et al. - I personally don't like watching videos much, but iChase and some of the others are worth breaking the habit for. 8) Set your crosshairs up right, and make sure you're showing a suitable amount of information on your mini-map (holding down ctrl and clicking the cogwheels top right in game will open up the options for the mini-map for the ship you are playing - you'll want to configure them for each ship specifically).

According to the Dev Blog, CE is getting nerfed for things that are tubbier than DDs (if my memory is correct): Am I correct that this would nerf the concealment of anything fatter than a DD?

She's not really 'another' BB - GC is arguably the best T5 BB, plus she isn't as AA specific as Texas, so better against other ships. GC is also generally viewed as OP too...