Verblonde

Are you a reroll: It doesn't really matter, but it makes it a bit harder to offer specific advice. Anyway, I can only really comment from the perspective of DDs: The advice given earlier to play CVs is good, although possibly stick to Coop (few things are as hated in PvP as a bad CV); the idea is to learn what each type of plane can/cannot do, how robust they are, the limitations of their attack times etc. etc. Keep your AA off (P key is the default) until it is needed, assuming your AA range is longer than your air spotting distance (press and hold H in game, if you can't remember). Generally, not being spotted is better than killing a few planes (at best) and giving away your position. Make sure you know where all the islands are (unless on Ocean, in which case you're boned); much of the threat from planes comes from their spotting - if a CV is after you, try and get an island between you and as much of the opposition surface fleet as possible, to block their fire. The old (deeply unhelpful for most ships) Just Dodge™ is relevant for DDs; at the very least, you can avoid at least some of the hits from a CV strike. This is where playing CVs is helpful; that will have given you an idea of how each plane type likes to attack, which in turn enables you to make life harder for them (go nose-in to torp and skip bomber attacks, for example; closing the distance if you're not spotted yet can also sometimes force the planes to circle before attacking, which gives you a chance to break visual contact again, and so on). Remember sector reinforcement (and probably map it to something more convenient than the default key - I have mine mapped to a spare mouse button), and use it. On a related note, make use of DefAA if you have it (I believe the optimum sequence is to activate DefAA, then sector reinforcement, but that may be out of date). If you are in a DD with good AA (a very short list), do make use of it, but try and do so when the opposition surface fleet can't shoot you; you may mince some planes, but you'll be just as dead if the opposition can blap you from the spotting. Don't get too focused on the CV, at the expense of all else; radar/hydro are just as much a threat as usual, for example - when evading planes, try not to blunder into some other threat because you were concentrating too hard on the planes. Ultimately though, a good CV player is going to kill you regardless, if they really want to; anyone saying otherwise is being disingenuous. That said, most CVs you encounter aren't that good, so there is some hope; also, if you make the CV work for it as much, and for as long, as possible, they aren't attacking the rest of your team, and/or they may eventually give up in favour of going after someone else. Either way, the more of the opposing CV's time that you waste, the better

I assume the extra 'c' is significant? I fear your logic may actually be horribly faulty: let's imagine you've paid money for your premium, and enter battle; I'm on the other side with another premium that I also paid for. One of us is going to be disappointed if we're both silly enough to believe that paying money for our respective premiums entitles us to win. The 'best' we can hope for is to be more powerful than the ghastly poor people who aren't in paid for ships; thing is, those ghastly poor people are going to get fed up with being cannon fodder for anyone who opens their wallet, and bugger off elsewhere. We aristocrats with our swanky paid-for ships are then boned, because the population drops too low to generate tolerable MM. If you want to win, there is - happily - a straightforward (albeit not necessarily easy) solution: learn to play better. Besides which, who wants to win because they paid for it?! There's no challenge/achievement in that...

Oh dear. You *are* getting something better than a standard ship with *any* premium you buy, even - gods forbid - Cheshire. Premiums have a significantly higher earning potential than regular ships, and enable you to use any captain (of the right nation) in them. That is unequivocally better than any standard ship. If you think premiums should be more powerful in battle than regular ships, then you really don't have any concern for the health of the game; doing what you suggest would equal pay to win, which almost nobody around here wants.

Depends on a number of factors: What's the ship and is it fun/interesting? Not really concerned too much about it being actively good, as long as it's fun, although ZF-6 is actually pretty decent. Do I need steel enough to warrant some whaling? In that case, the ship is almost a secondary consideration. Have WG been monumental Richard Edwards recently? If yes, then the spending reduces/stops. Do I have time to play enough for the thing to be a cost-effective exercise?

What manner of uncouth peasant doesn't have two Pommerns?!

Almost certainly; the crucial thing is they probably don't visit places like the forum...

I don't believe this has happened to me (at least not in recent memory); that said, I'm running 100% vanilla - not a mod in sight. What does happen to me though is that when I remove all signals from a ship (to play Coop, say), and then replace them for a 'proper' mode, the 'resupply using in-game currency' option is re-enabled by default if any of the signals have that option, assuming I also select the 'resupply automatically' option. The same is true for cammo as well, if something that costs gold is selected...

You're assuming a sensible and well-informed customer base, presumably, not to mention the last (and probably future) season being T10? In general terms, the current Ranked set-up isn't punishing enough to drive weaker players away, and - in some quarters - there is cachet from being of a high rank, especially in higher leagues; in most of our cases we're either good enough to achieve that with ships we already have, or accept we're rubbish/not masochists and call it a day after the 'x wins' rewards have been bagged (I'm in this latter group). Meanwhile, many farties will fall into the old trap of "if I only had a better ship, I'd do better in Ranked..." thought process, and buy a premium with that in mind. That sentiment is the profit driver that I see for Ranked: for the current season, it'll initially apply to regular premiums, and then T10/Firepower crates once people have failed upwards to the point where they're needed. Of course, I could just be being cynical, and the general customer base is far better informed than I suspect...?

It depends a bit on what the aim with Ranked actually is (as I think I've probably said before), and I suspect that there are several different 'aims', depending on whether you're WG, a competent/realistic player, and an average player: WG want to be able to make lots of money (and presumably spend it on epic debauches at Madam Olga's); for this, I suggest the current system works majestically - I wonder how many Firepower crates/T10 ships got sold recently? For the average farty, they probably want to feel that they're a 'good' player, and the current system, complete with irreversible ranks and leagues suits them fine, if they have enough patience. For better players (and more realistic players), the solution proposed by @Hirohito is probably the only way to go, and I would suggest the removal of irreversible ranks should also be implemented - basically, if you want an actual, true ranking, this is about the only way you'll get it. Personally, I don't think it'll ever happen, mainly because of the first point (filthy lucre), but also because of the second - most players aren't very good, and human nature dislikes having this sort of thing pointed out, which a 'true' ranked system would, in spades. If we want a ranked mode of any description, with reasonable player numbers in it, we're almost certainly stuck with something akin to what we have now.

Absolutely guessing: What @ColonelPete said about the mid-tier ships. She relies on guns to do damage, and that requires more than a basic understanding of vision mechanics, and situational awareness (that many average players seem to lack). She isn't particularly hyped at the moment.

Someone at WG looked in the mirror one morning, and realised that the person staring back at them had put Cheshire in the game, where any impressionable small child might find it. They were clearly overcome with inexpressible shame + remorse, and had her removed from sale immediately...?

I just got a message in-game that sent me to the Amazon Prime gaming page thingy - there appears to be a very early access T4 Italian DD, if anyone is interested...

Then play less; if the game is getting on your t*ts, do something else. I've just spent the evening playing Borderlands 3 for example, which made a refreshing change. I also spent more than a year off WOT when that ceased to be fun; I was then able to return later and enjoy it again. There are more good games than you can play in a lifetime; time's too short to play one that irritates you.

Based on the T4, I'm rather looking forward to the rest of the line; I can't imagine - with their very manly gun range - they'll be terribly competitive, but they certainly look potentially great fun...

Whilst staying out of the 'SE or not' row, it's worth noting that the Suzuki brothers get enhanced SE - theirs is more like +22% of Shima's hp. (If you run IJN premiums, that equates to +24% on the original Harekaze.)

True, but that one has a rather un-manly 12.1 km gun range, versus the altogether more manly 6.3 km of Turbine (or 7.7 km of the upcoming T6)...

I mainly have it for a combination of the fast/free shipping (yes, I've contributed to putting Bezos' willy-rocket into space - I'm a bad person), and the TV (The Expanse was pretty good, for example); a freebie early access ship is neither here nor there really, although this particular one looks rather fun.

You rang? In my defence, it'll be rather a long time before I have enough coal for FS. So... I haven't played her properly yet, but I have to enquire: were the ones you met trying to torp you (or anyone else)? I suspect that one trap a lot of people will fall into is trying too hard to make use of the torps, unless very practiced with them: because of the narrow arcs, it's quite easy when new to the ship to follow a course that gets you shot up, just trying to get a target within arc. Based on my initial assay, the dakka is rather promising, but the torps are hard to make proper use of (at least for the tuberous, like me)...

Nah - it's the same sketch as the last time they did something like this: Source: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/general-news/upcoming-changes-to-the-tech-tree/

I agree with you entirely (learning to shoot straight, and when, made quite a positive difference to my results), but my point wasn't about what the peak output of a line might be, but rather what the profoundly tuberous can do with it. A hopeless newbie will get more satisfying results (big damage numbers on BBs look splendid, if all you worry about is hp damage done) from torps than with guns, and it's easier to get those results with the Shima line - all of it. An expert such as yourself will wreak havoc with a Shima, but that's not why so many potatoes play them (in my view) - I suspect it's more to do with the comparative ease for a poorer player of getting to Shima, compared to most of the other top tier DDs.

I occasionally wonder if the Russian DDs are deliberately kept slightly sub-optimal (in many cases) to fend off accusations of Russian bias, especially given that WG are known for it (particularly in WOT - anyone remember when Defender was released, for example?)...? Alternatively, a more prosaic answer might be that they're optimised more for the playstyle found on the Russian server, which might be rather different to that found elsewhere. I don't play on RU, so don't know, but NA is certainly a little different to EU...

This. Arms Race in particular significantly changes the fundamental nature of Randoms; for example, I'm reasonably confident it's not possible to get a Dreadnought in Gearing at the moment, yet I have one from a previous Arms Race event. I'm not sure whether or not I disapprove of Arms Race being added to Randoms (I'm erring towards 'not keen', but might be wrong), but it is going to make stats 'before' and 'after' rather different beasts; from a DD perspective (a lot of cruisers too, come to that), suddenly getting the ability to heal will make a very significant difference to a lot of ships, for example.

My suspicion is that it's more than just Shima herself being a potato magnet; my feeling is the whole line - more or less - is. Thinking back to when I first started playing, I was (of course) spectacularly hopeless; about the only way I could reliably do damage with DDs was via torps and the IJN line was about the only one that got a decent stealth launch window at low tiers. I'd read about the ferocious gunboat DDs, but whenever I tried to play them, I usually died horribly (mainly due to having not yet fully grasped basics like vision mechanics etc.). In that sort of situation, I tended towards playing the IJN torp line more. What I did next was make the effort to learn about vision mechanics, how/when to use guns, captain skills, and so on; although I'm still pretty rubbish, I can now do tolerably in - maybe - more than half of the DD lines in the game. Thing is, that took quite a bit of time (and, as my stats clearly demonstrate, is a long way from being completed even now), and a more casual player may not be prepared to put in that time, or even know that they need to - in which case, the whole IJN torp line becomes the path of least resistance. So, I suggest it's not merely the potatoes making a definite "by George, I fancy me some of that Shima!" type decision, but rather more that the way the game works, in the context of effort required, that inexorably pushes them in that direction because of the fundamental nature of the whole line. Basically, the Shima line is the DD equivalent of playing BBs for the average farty.

I always think more data is good, so why not? Of course, it probably won't happen, as I'm not seeing how this makes WG more money, alas...

FWIW I probably am more cautious about Weimar, when facing them in my DDs, although a well-played Lazo can be nasty too. Lazo is perhaps more effective at range, due to railguns and the magic spotter plane, but Ranked usually involves smaller maps and shorter ranges, so playing more to Weimar's strengths. Doesn't Weimar have longer-ranged hydro too, which can give you an edge? Also, engine boost gives you a bit more tactical flexibility which doesn't hurt. To emphasise though: I wouldn't play either in Ranked myself, as I suck at cruisering; this is just from the perspective of a primary target...