RUSSIANBlAS

Will add my bit here officially I guess: I've played Ranked seriously for 6 seasons now and the last 5 including this one I've achieved R1 so I probably have some experience with it... This season in one way has been better than the others, mostly due to no Premium Ships (yet) at T10 so the XP gains were more or less fair for all players as you couldn't Prem ship buff your way to saving stars. Which brings me to my second point, the star system. I'm not a bad Destroyer player, having ranked out multiple times in them and I'm one of my clan's go to DDs. We got into the Typhoon league without much problem, everyone who wanted a Stalingrad flag got one and I believe most of us have jobs/family etc. However I found progress in DDs harder this season as the XP system simply does not reward caps, spotting or generally keeping a team going which is usually a DD's main role. I can sum the problem below: Game A: You're a DD and your team collapses at the start, with the amount of radar and the sheer HP that T10 ships have you're not going to be killing much and you are simply going to lose a star. Game B: You're a BB (or Cruiser possibly) and your team collapses at the start, you can angle your ship and fire away. The enemy will often be keen to kill you and will split up or make mistakes; this allows you to farm damage. Sometimes this allows you to farm huge damage in fact. You can even undertake dirty tactics like not contesting caps/letting your caps go as you're so far ahead on damage that it's in your interests to end the game early as no one else is going to catch you. I've known others who will intentionally suicide as a BB to hasten a game's end as they know they're in front. Personally I've never done the last tactic as it's somewhat risky but I have farmed with the deliberate intention of finishing top instead of winning. Now, a DD has to go all in to win a game. They simply have to cap as Ranked is a game about capping. A BB, especially a T10 BB has a huge amount of HP and the guns are often extremely accurate compared to the lower tiers. This means a BB can play safe at the start, 15km or so and bombard the enemy, now if it looks like the enemy is folding then the BB can push. If your team has collapsed then the BB is far enough to turn away to farm, whereas the DD simply cannot compete with that. So this season I got to the top using the Montana. I found I was able to reliably keep my stars even if the MM gave me complete mis-matches due to the ability to damage almost anything on the table with AP at mediums ranges without having to take a huge amount of risk. It was irrelevant if my team failed because all I had to worry about was doing a lot of damage. Sure my target selection paid a part in winning but the current star and XP system feels very broken. T10 Ranked probably favours the BB as they can reliably tank a lot of DD strikes which in previous seasons were decisive. When you have Yamatos with 100k HP and a 50% reduction torpedo belt then they can simply shrug off your torp attacks and be safe in the knowledge that it can take you about two minutes to reload whilst they can squish your team. Might be an idea to change the Matchmaker in Ranked as you can very reliably avoid CV games if you quit the queue when there's one there and you can even further "influence" your games by quitting the queue if you didn't like the composition of ships within the waiting list. The sheer abuse from the player base was comical, people always blame their team when they die at the start instead of looking at their own game. I've seen people team kill and deliberately AFK too. Well even if I had time to play another season I probably wouldn't in it's current state. Anyway I'll have that Black please, I'll be sure to enjoy it