Verblonde

I agree that WOWS should reward spotting a lot more (as alluded to elsewhere, WOT has a pretty serviceable system in place that could be adapted). What I've been finding very frustrating lately (especially at higher tiers, but mainly because it matters more there) is that I get the impression that a lot of players really don't think much about sensible target prioritisation in the context of their team makeup. I may be being unfair here, but surely it is common sense to blast radar ships if you have stealth-orientated ships on your side (IJN DDs in particular), to blast gun DDs if your side has torp ones, and so on. As others have said, a DD that survives deep into the battle can be very influential; doing this is rather hard though, if no-one is shooting the ships that exist to prevent you doing so. An extreme example is Asashio: I'm grinding silver at the moment to equip my new Feltcher, so mine has been getting quite a bit of use lately. As everyone knows (and complains about), she is spectacularly situational; equally, she can be a significant plus for your side if you can keep her alive - fantastic spotter, and death to BBs. Thing is, if you have one on your side, you're far more likely to win if your BBs blow up the enemy cruisers, rather than just damage farming BBs. I don't think this problem is unique to DD drivers though - the other classes must get just as cross when people are similarly dumb with target selection.

These enormous battle counts in Ranked are horrifying (to a potato) - how do you guys stick at it for so long?

I do wonder a bit what the point of Ranked actually is, from WG's perspective? If it's to get people to play more, I suspect it won't work terribly well in many cases. I don't know how typical I am, but my experience thus far has been approximately as follows: Play a few games at T8, and get to Rank 15 pretty quickly (because of getting to Rank 14 the previous season, this was single figures games). Play several games at T10, get my [edited]handed to me repeatedly. Conclude I'm *really* not good enough for Ranked in T10s. Bugger off and do something else instead. That's not to say that Ranked is fundamentally pants, but rather to suggest that if you aren't good at the game, its appeal is rather limited (I was done in less than a weekend). My suggestion to WG would be to somehow split the thing; perhaps have three different tiers in play (6, 8, and 10), each with 10-15 ranks within each tier group; if you've never played the mode before you start at the bottom of the T6 rankings, whilst those who have played before can choose to either start higher, as presently, or go back to the bottom again. With a model like this, players might be prepared to stick around a bit longer/more? In terms of irrevocable ranks, I would have plenty at the lowest ranks, and thin them out drastically higher up.

Calm down, OP: you're going to hurt yourself... Also:

I'm another who just views all the current captains on offer as 'just another 10-pointer'; I've bagged three so far though (all space ones, I think), simply because I tend to keep a lot of ships, so large numbers of captains that I don't have to train from scratch are incredibly useful. The Dasha captains all speaking Russian only is a bit of a turn-off for me, in all cases except the actual Russian one - I find the idea rather jarring.

Short answer to this part: no, unfortunately. As to how to mitigate this, @Ze_Reckless has covered it off splendidly.

I was hoping that ranked might spare me from the idiots who don't seem to have realised that the game now has radar in it - no such luck...!

(Disclaimer: I have a lot of premium ships, so I may be biased, although my best run in T8 ranked was with Z-23 this season) Nah - I suspect that the impact of premiums is largely (although not entirely) psychological on Ranked overall; most players will be merely average in most of them, so shouldn't unbalance things excessively. A really good player in a Kidd, say, may well wreak havoc, but the relatively lower numbers of such players probably don't result in the game being harmed much overall. Plus, with the current arrangement, such good players will tear up to ranked 15 in no time, at which point they're out of the T8 pool anyway (even a stinker like me has got to Rank 15 already)...

In answer to the OP: WG could usefully nick an idea from WOT Blitz: there you can get token things that are good for a day of premium (say), and they start from whenever you cash them in. If that sort of model were introduced, it might help some people. I usually run premium account, so I tend to forget about this stuff a bit, as any premium time won just gets added to whatever I happen to have already...

@Thracen I have to admit, I would feel a bit gloomy faced with that lot in a Benson too! Quick question: do you have at least a 10 point captain in her, with CE? Probably a stupid question, but thought I should check... On the up-side, meeting TX carriers is pretty rare these days, and you'll be all T8 in Ranked itself, which may help you a bit.

I'm interested to read this; lately, unless asked, I've essentially stopped using smoke to screen friendlies with big guns entirely... I've also moved to TRB, rather than smoke, on those ships where it's possible to do so; that was mainly because of radar, but the reduction in utility of smoking up friendlies was also a factor.

In case it hasn't been posted elsewhere, HERDEGC18 seems to work (as of a minute or two ago) - no idea what it does, or for which game (most likely WOT though, so perhaps ignore if you're WOWS-only)...

I'm a fairly new player and the term 'elite xp' makes me think of ship xp too; 'commander' or 'captain' xp would be a better term for (currently) elite xp as that would be more idiot-proof language. When dealing with the public, always use the language that is as close to impossible to misunderstand as possible - basic marketing, to avoid pi$$ing people off (no-one ever reads things properly, and you need to compensate for that as much as practical).

Aye - that would do it...

I tend to agree with this - the OP is almost certainly a better player than I am (most people are), yet he has to stop playing Ranked now, whereas I'll be able to fail for as long as it takes me to get bored, because I have a couple of T10 ships. My feeling is there should have been some way of unlocking T10 ships for those players who lack them, in the manner of CW (although you would need to think a bit about the conditions - the CW approach of play a game in a T8 is probably a bit too easy, considering Ranked is supposed to be at least partly about skill)...

Worked for me - many thanks!

Yup - KM = Kriegsmarine (technically not correct in the game, of course, as the earlier time period ships are Imperial, but that's pedantry). I'd play all of them, at least at lower tiers, and pick two or three lines that you turn out to like. Russians tend to be all about the guns (the torps are horrifyingly short-ranged); sneaky play is generally not their forte; mind you, Grozo (T10) is one of my favourite ships at any tier, and that's a pretty decent hybrid. The Russian premiums (whether in the Russia tree itself or elsewhere) are mostly good hybrids too...

If only all the BBs played like this! <hat-tip>

I have to admit, I do feel a bit of a Moment of Weakness coming on too...

@Migantium_Mashum I feel your pain! I'm relatively new to high tier battles still, so I'm still surprised/horrified by quite how inactive a lot of people are at high tier (and it's usually the BBs). My tentative hypothesis is that playing almost a 'micro-game' with your DDs (or cruisers) may be the way to stay sane i.e. assuming most BBs on both sides are similarly pusillanimous, you can rush around in your DDs/cruisers blasting away at each other, and generally having fun, and then move on when you get exploded. In that sort of approach, most of the BBs are effectively like the arty in WOT... Mind you, it can be fun (if you have decent range on your torps, and it won't knacker your team to do so) to go and hunt camping BBs, if the opportunity presents itself...

I've been introducing a newbie to the game over the last couple of evenings - as far as I could tell, the protected MM still works fine. If a newbie is going to be put off by the game, it's unlikely it'll be because they got clubbed by a more experienced player (unless a similarly experienced players takes them out in a division)... If you have enough games to avoid the protected MM, then I do rather feel you're fair game, and hopefully, you're smart enough to realise that a) you probably want to get a better boat, and b) watching the people who exploded you might teach you something useful.

I would think that at least some of the established T10 players wouldn't mind excessively, unless the rentals were all on one side - not being able to fit cammo on a rental puts you at somewhat of a disadvantage...? I could be spectacularly wrong though...!

Do you pre-date the smoke changes? If you fire guns in a smoke screen, you are now more visible than you used to be (how much more varies with ship/gun)...