AnotherDuck

Not respeccing my Bisko. While I do use secondaries on other battleships, I mostly aim them at other ships if they're in range. However, most other ships are afraid of getting within secondary range, so only battleships tend to remain in range. Purpose solved, I suppose.

I think radar should just be removed entirely, as it's causing more problems than it solves. Just buff the ships instead of giving them a ridiculous consumable. But if radar is kept, I think a ship using radar should be auto-detected by any ship within radar range. Could possibly be applied to sonar as well. And stop going through islands.

And WG wonders why they have a problem with BB overpopulation? They pull stupid crap like this all the time, buffing BBs directly and indirectly.

I use the same as above. Priority Target isn't necessary if you aim to get undetected ASAP anyway. It's only if you intend to stay detected and shoot it has a decent value. Preventive Maintenance keeps your torpedoes from being damaged when you do get detected, so that's my T1 skill pick. Last Stand is obvious, and Adrenaline Rush helps a lot, since you can stay alive for a long time even with a sliver of health left. Torpedo Armament Expertise is just nice to have, since torpedoes are your main weapon, and Survivability Expert does help a decent amount. These are probably the most replacable, though, since Vigilance is occasionally useful, and Demolition Expert or Basic Firing Training are nice if you use your guns a lot (but remember it's still not a gunboat, so other skills are probably better). Concealment expert is as obvious as Last Stand, and Radio Location helps a ton if you know how to interpret it. It can especially make that sliver-of-health gameplay last longer if there are stealthy destroyers around. If you use your guns often, Advanced Firing Training is an option, especially if you've picked something like that from the previous tier. I'd not recommend it personally, but each to their own.

Best = Most suited to your preferred gameplay. That's really all there is to it. They're so different that if you do particularly well with one style, or just find it very fun, you're going to have the best time in that line's DDs. Personally I've only actually tried Shimakaze, but I'd probably still say that's the most fun for me. I like sneaking around, occasionally flanking, and unloading walls of skill at unsuspecting straightliners. Or just catching them off guard by actually predicting their turns. I can buy Gearing, but I like Fletcher enough, so I've not bothered.

If you're only going to T5, I'd say IJN. All DDs up to there are good to great. You're not going to outgun anything (unless you get a premium one; Kamikaze and Shinonome (T6, though) can actually use their guns decently if you're not in a fair fight, and Tachibana is a straight out gunboat), but your torps are relatively quick on the reload, and they're not as much nerfed to the bottom as in higher tiers, so you get to use them often enough. Higher up, especially at T8 and up, USN DDs are awesome. They're still good below that, though. Haven't played the other lines enough to say much, other than the Russian ones are sometimes, especially high tiers, practically light cruisers and should be played as such.

Amagi actually has my highest win rate (70%) for any ship with more than 15 matches (which would be Shinononome). I just looked at the stats before posting this, and I was surprised at how high it was. At least you're having fun, then. If I have fun, I don't really mind it if I don't get good results.

I find that Kirov is good at citadelling cruisers at any range. And at that tier, it's a very good range (plus Russian railguns), so even if the ship is squishy, it's not too much of a problem.

The main reason it is like that is the battleship overpopulation. On the rare cases you get into a battle with only a couple of battleships per team, you suddenly find that cruisers are a lot more aggressive. Wonder why that would be...

Only have Shimakaze and Fletcher, but the latter isn't on the poll. And I'm too cheap to buy Gearing, so I have no opinion on that ship yet.

I loaded up the Navigator mod, and most of the time I forget I have it. I find Running Lights more misleading than other "manual" observations, as it often shows a purple dot (backing) when someone is just turning. If someone's changing course, one way or another, it's usually better to go with your gut feeling and predict rather than to rely on the mod. There are a few visual mods I like (such as clearer warning and ship icons). Now, if WG would decide to actually show the full name of the players in the side bars rather than just the clan letters, it would be wonderful...

I don't think cruisers should be outnumbered by any other type of ship. While realistically destroyers should be by far the most numerous, for gameplay purposes cruisers are the generalist type of ship that doesn't overcrowd or tilt the game like all other types if they appear in greater numbers. My preferential ship balance is one carrier, three each of battleships and destroyers, and the rest cruisers, give or take one.

I get this from time to time as well, usually every 5-10 games, rarer if I'm lucky. Still happens if I remove all mods, and after reinstalling the game. Usually works if I restart the client, which means I lose a couple of minutes of the battle. The worst part is that the loading seems to work properly, finishes to the counter, which goes down to zero, and then... nothing. Mission tab on the loading screen updates map correctly, so there's still a connection to the server, but you're just not allowed to join the game, despite everything being loaded by all accounts you're allowed to see. There's no error message, so the only thing you can do is wait and see if nothing happens for a while, and then just restart the client. So what the hell is happening?

Almost as stupid as radars, especially radars on battleships or destroyers. BB claims they want to reduce the number of battleships, and yet they keep pulling stunts like this, which obsoletes cruisers step by step. Cruisers don't have the firepower, range, armour, or healing that battleships do, and now they don't have the stealth either? So cruisers are slightly faster. Sure, the cruisers with excellent stealth are still a little better, but compared to the huge advantages battleships have, it's marginal at best. WG is actively developing World of Battleships, not World of Warships, and if you want the best ships, you better fork up some cash.

It's there, so why not use it? I think RPF is cancer, but I still use it because it allows me to know exactly where to aim, when I to advance or retreat, without counters. I think radars are cancer, but I still use them because it's allows me to get DDs deleted at my leisure. I mean, I have absolute crap games in Chappy (after enjoying the previous Russian line, this is just a cursed ship for me), but I can still get those no-skill kills no matter how crap I'm playing. Yes, you can work around radars. That has never been the issue. The issue is that they promote camping (game has gotten a lot campier since radar was introduced), passive gameplay, and overall just much more boring games.

Not really, since it only means you run out faster. As it is now you still have plenty of time to use all of them, and if they're as limited as they are, a little faster reload won't really do much. It's just a tweak meant to look like it makes it less of a nerf, but doesn't float any more than a BBaby dev hit by a full Shiratsuyu torpedo salvo.

On one hand, I think people on these forums are incredibly bad at spotting trolls. On the other hand, on these forums there really isn't that great of a distinction between a genuine troll and someone who actually believe that bullcrap.

I don't think you realise how important it is to have smoke in a ship that's as slow as Shiratsuyu. She's one of the slowest DDs out there, with bad guns and survivability, so if you're caught, you're straight out dead. And without the reload booster? Worse torps as well. So in the end, WG encourages the very same long-range torpedo spam they claim to dislike.

Because they're a good counter to battleships, and we can't have anything that's effective against battleships. #notevenjoking

Missouri having radar is only slightly better than P2W Belfast having smoke and radar, and Black having radar as a destroyer. It's one of the several things that pollute the game into something people don't like to play. For people who say that people will adapt to changes anyway, of course they will. That's not the problem. The problem is that the adaptation makes for worse and less fun gameplay. Since radar was introduced the game has become campier. Sure, people adapt to it, but it only makes the game worse for it.

Radar was a bad idea from the beginning, and it only gets worse as time passes. It only made it a viable option to hide completely behind an island and still be able to get ships killed by pressing a button, and as a consequence of DDs not wanting to get as close anymore, the game got campier. And that's just for cruisers. Giving it to battleships means they now have a counter towards the class supposed to counter them, while still not giving them anything to do about it. But hey, at least that can't be as catastrophically stupid as to put radar on a destroyer.

I think that that one change would help a lot. Battleships are already strong enough to handle getting a few fewer citadels. I'm also going to assume that it's about overmatches that would not be penetrations (regular or over) otherwise, since as far as I've heard, overmatch is the first check. If not, disregard this.

The one caveat to that was that prior to the stealth fire nerf (and yet another BB buff), Shiratsuyu had good stealth fire capabilities with good stealth and good range. Now she's just too squishy and slow for that type of gameplay.

I've always wanted to play an Umikaze with Shimakaze speed at high tier. No other changes. Umikaze and Minekaze have always been the least tier-dependant ships in the game. I used to play Umikaze at T4-T5 in divisions since I found that that was a lot more fun, since you could take better advantage of the excellent stealth more, and she's already got a good amount of tankiness, assuming anyone can even hit that tiny ship (and bouncing BB shells in a DD is always hilarious). The main reason they handle different tiers well is that DDs rely a lot on stealth, and the earlier ones are almost always smaller and stealthier, so even if they've got weaker guns, they can still do a good amount of damage with torpedoes (which generally get slower to reload but bigger alpha, as you mentioned). On the whole, I don't really mind that, but that still doesn't mean the upgrades should be negligible. It shouldn't feel like a downgrade to go up a tier, or non-progress. At T8, DDs get the concealment module, which changes the balance completely, since they now get better stealth than the previous tier, plus all other upgrades. Now, as I mentioned, upgrades should come with higher tiers, but they shouldn't still just screw lower tiers over, like with how they did with the low tier CVs if they meet higher tiers. We don't want the WoT mechanic where higher tiers just plain win unless there's an extreme difference in skill.

What's plain bad is rewarding players based on experience. It encourages selfish play. As it is, you can play without mistakes and do your job perfectly to carry your team, but if you sit in a DD, you can still end up in the bottom half of the experience list. And WG absolutely hates a silver ship performing that well, so they hit her with the nerf stick. But Belfast is P2W, so that's okay.