AnotherDuck

No.

You don't even need to specify that potential damage isn't rewarded. Practically nothing is rewarded other than damage. Even capping is laughable. I remember one game in particular where I had three solo caps, still did a chunk of damage (about 150%, or something like that, which is better than carrying my own weight), and I still barely got on top of the scoreboard, with a fairly crap result. That was probably the only time I've ever gotten top in Ranked in a destroyer.

If it's output you want, then RoF is the way to go. But then again, at least for me I do more damage on average than in Missouri. Still can't beat Amagi, which is plainly awesome at dealing damage, and Bismarck, which can add a decent chunk of damage with secondaries. One thing it does is making it easier to shoot around islands and through gaps. If you go around an island, you're going to have your full firepower very quickly. You have relatively flat arcs, so shooting over islands isn't that easy, but you don't need a large gap if you find one. But with high tier battleships, what I really find threw the balance out of whack was lowering so many citadels so low they might as well have turtlebacks. That's one of the main reasons I think FdG feels lacklustre. That extra citadel protection the Germans were supposed to give up their accuracy for? Everyone's got it, without downsides. Except the Japanese.

No torps.

There's a distinct lack of a duck patch.

I'm one of those idiots who didn't want to bother with respeccing a captain for an IFHE build for Mogami. Then I remembered I had that old 16 point Hiei captain from way back, who was still unassigned. And since I'm planning on buying Akiduki soonish, I thought I'd just spec Hiei for Akiduki, and use her on Mogami meanwhile with some cross-compatible skills (I'm lazy like that; I'm sure you've gathered), which also makes for a hilarious Demolition Expert build. First game was naturally a loss. And I broke my damage record with 170k damage (with High Calibre and Witherer, and probably Confederate). I knew there's be a difference, but I never thought it'd be that much of a difference. Maybe I should do that with Donskoi as well... But then I'd have to respec again for Moskva, which is a pain, since I don't have any spare captains, and I don't have that much spare xp for it. Also bought Hipper. Had a fun game where I died after three and a half minute, but still ended up with some 50k damage and spotting damage each, plus 1500 base xp (second best), and I was probably the main reason why three of their ships sank even earlier. Conclusion: Hipper + AP + Mogami broadside = Hipper.

Oh, I definitely agree that Izumo could use a buff or two. I just don't think the guns are one of the bad aspects of the ship. I remember citadelling various battleships at angles I'd normally expect bounces. I find the gun performance to be very good, and bow-on the armour is excellent against AP to pick the other strong point of the ship. Buffing against HE would be an option, and buffing the guns even further could also work (although for the guns I'd probably want a better reload instead). There is a matter about getting used to the guns if they don't fit your own experience. It was the same for me when I got Missouri (not that Izumo didn't take getting used to, for various reasons, but the guns weren't a problem). With Izumo, I felt that the shots really hit where I aimed, but with Missouri, it felt like a shotgun, and it added to that it ate a lot more damage than Izumo. But later when I got some premium time, I decided to grind some money with Missouri, and then I found the right way to aim, and my games improved immensely. I regularly sniped destroyers. Improved armour against HE would be a blessing. The turret, on the other hand, is kind of a mixed bag. I find it more unusual than straight out bad.

The accuracy is one of the good things about the ship, and the penetration is still fairly good. The ship has faults, but those aren't it.

PM, LS, SE, and CE is the base 10p build that works for all DDs. If you're playing with a CV, then RL has less value. Sure, you can always point to where you want the planes for undetected DDs, but those situations are rare, since planes are so fast anyway if they're just for scouting. In other words, I'd recommend picking three T3 skills instead (unless you want to go for AFT for troll AA; extra gun range for USN DDs is mostly irrelevant). BFT in this case becomes much better, since it meshes well with DD hunting and AA. SI gives you more of those smokes, and DE gives you better performance firing out of those smokes.

That base build is very solid. I'm not sure there's any DD that won't do well taking that one. Adrenaline Rush I often take as the fifth skill. It's just so useful, in particular for the IJN DDs, since they're often not detected, and can play with low health for entire games without any serious repercussions. It's one of the most useful skills in the game, period. Almost all IJN DDs get Torpedo Armament Expertise. Exceptions are Tachibana, Akizuki, and a few people build Yuugumo as a gunboat instead (but I wouldn't recommend that to someone who isn't very experienced). Russian DDs do well with Advanced Fire Training. A few of them can skip Concealment Expert in favour of it. AFT doesn't work well for other DDs, since their arcs aren't that good. The IJN DDs do have good arcs, and can work with it, but are mostly better off with a torpedo focused build. Lastly, if you really want to build an AA DD, pick it. Not on the recommended list, though. Radio Location (a.k.a. RPF) is something you have to be good at to use properly, but it can help anyway. It's extra information that's very valuable in some circumstances, in particular for battles with fewer ships. Instead of RL you can go with three T3 skills, since there are many useful ones there. Survivability Expert, as mentioned, is the overall best pick. Torpedo Armament Expertise, as mentioned, is good for torpedo boats. Basic Fire Training and Demolition Expert are good for all gunboats (BFT is for fighting DDs and AA, and DE is for setting fire to larger ships). Superintendent is good for pretty much all DDs as well. Vigilance is decent, but not as good as the rest. For gunboats, this leaves a point over for Priority Target.

I'll probably repeat a bunch of stuff, but here's what I consider: Never use wide spread. Just don't. You want to learn how to aim, not roll a dice and hope for the best. Be as close as safely possible when you fire, even if you have longer range. Exceptions are if you're heading in a different direction and won't get closer without delaying your destination. That said, don't get spotted. Don't smoke up. Just move away. If they don't know you're there, you'll have a much higher hitrate. The white indicator is a suggestion, and works for straightliners. It doesn't work for other targets. If someone is turning, wait until you can figure out where they're going, unless you have very fast reloading torpedoes. Remember what players do when they see your torpedoes. Aim accordingly. Don't fire everything at the same spot. Most of the time, you want to fire one slightly ahead of the marker, and one a little bit after it. This makes for the overall most accurate hit rate. Exception is if you're very close and you're sure or if you're firing into a narrow channel. If you have quad launchers or three or more launchers (including IJN torp reload), consider firing at different targets as well. In Shimakaze especially, but also other destroyers with a long reload (like Benson), consider firing once, wait half a minute, and then firing the other launchers. If both volleys hit, you'll have a perma flood. Torpedoes move roughly twice the speed of ships. This is variable, but as a rule of thumb it works. Consider this when you're aiming at ships moving away from you. This means you're probably not going to hit, even if they are in range. You can set them up for a cross-drop, though, or a battleship broadside. On the converse, ships moving closer to you can be hit outside your torpedoes max range from the position you're firing from. See the first point, but this can help you get a stealth torpedo launch for ships with a shorter torpedo range than concealment, which includes some cruisers. I'm so used to that that I forgot I was using Torpedo Acceleration on Kamikaze, which has almost the same ranges. Sending torpedoes along the edges of islands often works well enough if you're not sure about what they're going to do. Don't fire your torpedoes if you're seen by an airplane. Your torpedoes will be spotted immediately.

I really don't get along with the higher tier Russian cruisers. Or rather, I get crap winrates in them, even if I have decent individual performance (on the same level as my overall winrate). I have a lot of matches where I end up in or near the top. The radars help me get a fair amount of destroyer kills, but apparently that's not enough to carry. On the other hand, this is still only about winrate, which isn't that accurate even at a hundred games.

I've often said that tier for tier, tier 8 is the best tier in the game. There are a lot of very strong ships there. On tier 10 we have the top of the line, which can only face lower or equal tiers. And tier 9 happens to sit right between those two. There are some exceptions, but on the whole, tier 9 is not in a good place. Fletcher is an awesome DD. Plays a little differently from Gearing, and some argue it's an overall better ship. While I've only just gotten Gearing (yesterday), I've actually played it quite a lot more than that. Either way, Fletcher is worth keeping. Yuugumo used to have a good edge over Shimakaze in stealth, which was one reason to play the ship. Now it's not quite so different. Yuugumo also has one of the best guns for IJN DDs, but they're still IJN DD guns. It's not as awkwardly placed as many other tier 9 ships. The progression is fairly even (although I think the main line should go Mutsuki -> Hatsuharu -> Shiratsuyu -> Kagero). Personally I quite like Yuugumo. Can't really speak for the other destroyers, but you mostly want to tier 10 if you're at tier 9 anyway.

Sorry, I missed that. Where did he say he was focused down? Could you point me to that post? Concealment doesn't matter for being focused. The moment you're spotted, you're focused. Period. If anything, being spotted at a longer range means you're less focused than if you're spotted at shorter range.

It's only the worst map in the game. People tend to camp so hard on that map, and if one team manages to push beyond the line of islands, they win. There's one line of defence. It's a very hard line to cross, but if you do, you're home free.

The game is entirely social. Just look at all those ships sailing together in a small cluster, usually towards the back end of the map. Moving like sheep in a herd. Then again, I'm the antisocial one. I'm the one camping alone in the middle of the map. Especially if it's Epicentre. No one's even within my gun range then.

Someone whined that I abused the border in Ranked before. Which may have been true, but when the other option is to turn broadside to a battleship, you kind of don't have a choice. Especially if you're on low health. I don't really have much of a problem hitting those on the border, though. Since they're blocked in one direction which forces their position at a single line for quite a while, it's easier to hit on that line. Torpedoes are a little trickier, but then you can usually get close enough to just not give them any escape, since, as mentioned, they're only at 50% power.

Yeah, winrate is the statistic with lowest signal-to-noise ratio. You need up towards a thousand matches to have good statistical significance. A win or loss streak of five to ten games can happen to anyone who in the 40% to 60% winrate bracket. And that streak doesn't have to happen at once; it could just as well be spread out, and it'd still have the same effect. I mean, yesterday I had a horrible winrate below 40% (forgot exact number). Today it was 66%. Amusingly, mostly in Missouri, as I had a rare premium day so I was grinding credits (and bought Gearing). Now, imagine what one of those days do to your overall winrate with a ship. I tend to have horrible luck with my Russian cruisers, usually getting into games that are impossible to carry. But for the amount of games, it doesn't tell the whole story. Crap winrate, but good statistics otherwise. Considering how many different ships you play, some are bound to get a significantly different winrate than the rest of them.

Then I must've missed it when I explicitly checked for it to see if it always was like that.

Again, two is not "alot [sic]".

There's something about proper boots to a dress. I've always liked that.

Random pics I've added to my collection recently. Cool Asashimo. Classy Chiyoda. Flowery Oilers. Playful Kamika. Bare-legged Ashigara. No collection complete without her.

Maybe? I couldn't check, since I had to leave the game for some off-line stuff, so I just grabbed the screenshot and quit. However, I didn't get any notice before when I did a whopping 24 (or was it 23?) damage a few games before that, which is why I reacted.

I've got to revise my opinion of the new system. I got pink from 3 points of contact damage, for three games. I mean, I don't care much about it, but that's a little bit excessive, isn't it? Sure, I did that torpedo hit before, but now that I think about it, it might've been before the new system was implemented. Not actually sure. It was the same week, at least. Anyway, other than a bit of other contact damage, which happens from time to time and isn't a deal at all, I've not done any team damage. And other than that torp hit, last time was maybe a year ago. Also, it was an excellent game, as you can see. 233k damage and 2554 base XP in Ranked with Shimakaze, so you can't really say it has anything to do with damage proportional to how much you do.

You just need luck to go in that direction once. Skill optional. No one said anything about trying to bow tank. That's just how he ended up taking the hits. So if you don't turn, you try to bow-tank, you risk getting deleted. If you show broadside, you risk getting deleted. Dodging? Well, the player we're discussing used the increased rudder shift instead of concealment, which is explicitly for making dodging easier. We're also talking about the least agile cruiser in the game. As in, he's doing exactly what you say he should. In conclusion, following your advice makes someone a horrible player, in your own words. Good we got that cleared out.