GulvkluderGuld

LS > EM: Last stand because your Tier 8 grind will be Hell without it. Every single hit the Trashkent takes breaks the engine, no joke. AFT> anything else, explained above. Vigilance combined with propulsion upgrade because turning circle and rudder shift are crap for higher tier RU dds. Some debate over whether to go DE/SE or get CE on tier 5. Depends on what ship you play. The Udaloi on tier 9 can stealth torp reliably with CE and imo is the best ship before you get tier 10. It really captures the pre-nerf Kiev feeling. If you plan to keep the Udaloi (I do) then CE is a good choice. Tried the DE + AFT build on my Kiev and Tash, then respecced to AFT + CE and I can't say I miss DE. CE is much more impactful and I still get plenty of fires. Get used to the turret traverse. It is part of the playstyle of higher tiers to plan ahead which side to engage on and where to sail to. Also you get new turrets with sub 10s turret traverse from tier 9 onwards.

Second this. I kept my Benson with a 15 point captain for ranked / team battle use and bought the fletcher. It is so much fun. Havnt got the upgraded torps yet, but just using the 3m reload module makes it awesome. Then there is DF and a bit more hp than Bensons have. Or you could go for increasing ROF with the 3 m module, although I believe most prefer the torp module.

There was a thread discussing S4 Ranked stats, and it said Blyska has the highest winrate among players who reached Rank 1. Cant remember what came second - Sims or Mahan I think. The Kiev is great fun in random battles, but it loses hands down to a Blys in any 1v1 or ranked enviroment. Too many hp, dmg and concealment issues. Sims and Mahan will overpower a Blys in close range fights due to ROF while losing mid and long range fights.

Tried and not working. Installed my windows last week, new drivers and all, tried WoWs reinstallation from scratch too. Problems occurred both with Public test and EU clients. Its a new bug, not the old freeze+crash of WoWs where you can exit to windows with ctrl + alt + del and there is an error message. This bug completely crashes the PC so much that even pressing the reset button on my PC doesnt work. I have to physically unplug the power cable to turn it off and reboot. Everything else runs fine including other games. Definitely it is a WoWs issue.

Update: I still have the freezes after reinstalling. No mods. The game was running fine on Win 8.1 before upgrading to Win 10. I also had problems on Win 7. The Win 10 and win 8 installations were the same patch, so I lean towards some buggy interactions between game and windows.

A mutsuki has better concealment than Hatsu afaik = tier 6 is actually better for its inteded role than tier 7 where IJN dds are concerned. Tier 6 BB and CA are exactly as you say. But an IJN dd now....with 2-3 gunboats close at hand. It becomes a deadly, deadly thing to encounter, because as the spotting dd, you must wade into a hurricane of fire from smokescreens to spot your target (or disengage). It is how I saw many of the good IJN dds spot effectively. And in there rank 2-5 bracket there were quite a few of them.

Surveys? Why didn't I recieve one? Only got asked if I found MM to be acceptable when it made 2 CA play vs BB and CA sometimes (which ofc is not acceptable)

Just did a reinstall after having the same problem. That is - if by freeze - you mean the pc cant even be turned off without having to physically pull the power plug. Not sure if it was caused by upgrading my windows, Aslains modpack or WoWs itself and I havn't really had time to test if the reinstall fixed it. Historically WoWs has been quite buggy and crashed often for no reason (mods or no mods) while other games run fine on my pc, so I would suspect the game, not mods to be the problem.

300 ranked battles under my belt and I don't think I ever saw the MM do this - but I usually played during prime time. Seen lots of other crap MM like New Mexico vs nagato + colorado or even 2x Cleveland vs Nagato + Myoko, all of it including assorted dds. The problem with tier 6 ships isn't bringing a mutsuki. I actually disagree with you about how useful it is for spotting. As long as you only get one on the team, an IJN dd is very useful. The problem is that sometimes the MM will decide to give your team 1 BB and give the enemy team 2 (including a tier 6) In fact tier 6 ships are responsible for most of the screwy MM I've seen (by class), but I can't ever remember the MM departed from balancing tiers. Untill now, I didnt think it could!

Udaloi i generally compared to the Kiev when it comes to playstyle while Khabarovsk is more like the Tashkent. She mounts improved guns (the same as Khabarovsk) and torpedoes (3x5, 8 km range, 65ish knts) and her detection range and maneuverability is excellent. I don't know if there is any consensus on her except she is a marked improvement over the Tashkent. She doesnt like Fletchers though - due to ROF and detection range they tend to get close enough to win any duel.

1. Having played all ranked seasons except the pilot, I can tell you DD spam at higher ranks is nothing new (in case you didn't know). The rank 2-5 bracket has always seen 5-6 dd on each team. It has nothing to do with capping XP having been increased, DDs are simply the best ships for carrying games (capping, spotting, smoking friendly ships) unless you are a pro CV player. Getting rid of the dd spam would require more fundamental changes. 2. Would love to see some more diversity as I agree high rank gameplay is very, very repetitive. This season almost saw me burn out and give up on rank 1 because I hated the grind. Using it as a way to add stars however....would effectively transform ranked games into a lower tier league, because everyone will want to optimize star gain. Doubt the grind would be different. As to top loser gets to keep his star, I am still undecided whether i like that or not. It relieves the frustration of being handed potato teams that die like flies. However, it also promotes selfish play and wasted time (ships not playing to win, but to be top of their losing team) Tier mirroring as described is already implemented. Each team has the same amount of tier 6 and tier 7 ships.

You missed one very important premium dd. Also honorable mention to two others: Tier 7: Blyskawica. Best premium dd in the game imo. Only been on sale twice in the history of WoWs. Tier 8: Lo Yang - a Benson with Hydroacoustic search. Very useful on a knifefighter. Tier 9: Udaloi - like Kiev at tier 7, but better.

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Have to agree with the op, he has a point about reasonably close games. A good CV will hunt down the other teams dds or keep them permaspotted --> almost impossible for this team to get caps. A good CV will also do tons of dmg and probably sink 3-4 ships because the potato is unable to stop him. Meanwhile the potato does basically nothing useful and probably no dmg. Works for cruisers and bb, but you fail to grasp is the kind of targets a good cv will go after. take out the enemy teams dds and they cant cap, cant spot and will lose very fast because bigger ships will be perma-spotted with no means of defending themselves. Meanwhile the potato CV player will lose most of his planes torping some big fat bb. Ironically the recent aa buffs you mention also means the only real target for a cv atm is the enemy dds. Again, a bad CV player isnt able to line up the torps properly and make them impossible to dodge for the dd while a good one will sink them reliably. And we all know from Ranked games what happens when one side loses all their dds.

Happens in Ranked, even in the R2-R5 bracket too...

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Does it happen in PvP or only in PvE? So far never encountered it (but MM seems reluctant to give me Atlantic)

What you are describing sounds to me like a "light" version of the high Ranked meta: - Lots of dds = lots of smoke charges, generally used to shoot from and sometimes for capping. - Any capital ship (BB, CA) not covered in smoke by a DD is a sitting duck and gets BBQ'ed to death by out-of-smoke gunfire - the result in ranked is each team camping in smoke on a cap and very few enemy ships spotted by either side. - spotting is carried out by the DD with best concealment, using 1-2 dds for hit-and-run detection of enemy ships - each team seeks to eliminate the enemys spotting ship(s) and focuses fire Of course in Ranked, the team that is behind on points will usually send the BBs in and push as a fleet at some point. And everybody dodges torps extremely well, so smokescreens are CA magnets. I saw some bad teams in ranked without the degree of player skill and teamwork such a push requires. Basically those games were decided in the first 3 minutes and followed by up by the extremely protracted and agonizing death of one team. Congratulations, high tier player skill has improved!

From the Ranked Season 4 announcement: In order to get the Flint you need to have the JR I and JR II as well as get Rank 1 in season 4. When you get the flint you will lose the JR II, but you will be able to win it back in later seasons. Basically you need to achieve rank 1 in 3 seasons to get the Flint. JR I -> JR II -> Flint

It is the best tier 7 dd for sure, but followed pretty closely by the USN dds (Sims and Mahan). What particular aspect of it were you objecting to? WG nerfing of premiums though? You must be new here

2 wins in 8 games in my Kirov. Average damage somewhere in the 30-40k bracket. Usually top 3 of my team. But...No matter what i do, my teams just seem to evaporate in the first 5 mins. And a lonely Kirov is a dead Kirov, since it reacts extremely violent to any hits. Once I even got detonated (full hp) by a Gnevny shooting AP through my bow at 8 kms. What is your jinxed ship?

When I think about it, Omahas get CitPenned from all angles and both with flat trajectory fire and plunging fire. You are probably right about the Omaha being a bit easier, but that is not saying the Kirov is difficult to Citpen. Thinking about my experience against Kirovs, it is more vulnerable to plunging fire than flat shots. That could fit the theory (fact?) of it having been lowered in the water. It does look overballasted in the video. I've never made it closer than 8 km to any boat in my Kirov before losing all my hp, so any sub 5 km improvements are a moot point. Mine simply will never make it there. Maybe I should try it in the training room along with the Shchors to find our how it really performs vs DD a. No time the next couple days though. My experience with the Kirov as of this patch: It doesn't take CitPens when you fire beneath the turrets anymore. It simply detonates. KABOOM, game over

That is because higher tier RU dds are more like small cruisers without a citadel than DDs. I play alot of USN dds because i love the adrenaline and knifefights, and RU dds really dont lend themselves to that playstyle. They are bigger targets with slower handling characteristics.

Uhm, I consider you a very good player, so I have to ask: Did your account get hacked or something? It is by far the easiest tier 5 cruiser to Citadel atm with any cruiser. I dont know about any buffs, but even my Karlsruhe once sneezed at a Kirov and did 10k dmg with a couple CitPens at 12ish (max) range. Maybe the trouble with BB guns (if that is what you use) is that the armor is simply TOO thin for them generate anything but overpens?

True, but I thought he means matched with. If one team has a mutsu, the other team as another tier 6. I also set my Blys up that way, but I sure can't dodge good CV drops anyway