AnotherDuck

You can do well enough with a standard build, even in Bismarck. It depends entirely on your playstyle. You're never going to be a good sniper, so without a secondary build the best engagement distance is probably 10-13 km. You're still going to do well at closer ranges, so don't be afraid of that. You've got a tough brawling ship with or without secondary optimisation. With a secondary build the best engagement distance is about 8-10.6 km. If there is no or little danger of torpedoes, you can go a little closer, but the key is to stay outside the secondary range of enemy BBs. Show enough broadside to keep your secondaries firing, but not so much so you'll get penetrated by other BBs (or cruisers, for that matter). That will also get enemies to shoot at your stronger belt armour more, where you'll bounce more shells. A secondary build requires (if you play with the build, rather than against it) you to know how to get within the right distance while at the same time not overextending. That can sometimes be a little tricky, and you need to know when to use the sonar, when to turn broadside to turn away if you can't find an island (or smoke screen) to turn away in a safer manner. That's overall a skill that's very useful for battleships, since they're at their most vulnerable while turning and showing a broadside. Bismarck is very hard to citadel, so you're often going to avoid the worst damage, but you will still take a ton of penetration damage if you show broadside at the wrong time. Planning your exit route is one of the key components in pushing or maintaining pressure. You don't want to get screwed over the moment your allies don't push with you (which often happens, but it also often glorious when it doesn't). It's one of the best ships in the game for pushing into objectives, even if you lead the charge without a destroyer in front of you. Your main job isn't necessarily to do damage (if that's what you want, I'd recommend one of the other BBs), but to take damage in place of your less protected allies, and to act as the big, bad enemy that scares away the opposition. Players respect the Bismarck, so make use of that reputation.

Domination is generally less campy and static than Standard. Epicentre also works, especially on Trident. Epicentre on Tears of the Desert if fun if you're in an IJN DD, and there are no carriers. Otherwise, it's kinda meh. At least it's more fun than anything on North. Or Mountain Range.

Now, I don't have Atago, so I can't speak for her, but I do have the Tsundere Heavy Cruiser, a.k.a. ARP Takao, so I can at least say something about the ship. It's a reasonably tanky cruiser. Not quite as tanky tier-for-tier as Myoko, but I still find the citadel to be less of an issue, and then you have the best concealment of any cruiser, except maybe a few British and Russian CLs, so you're often not going to be spotted before you want to, or before you have a DD to shoot at (which you can do with great effect, due to IJN HE).

Bloom time of 10-15 s would work for DDs. 30 s probably works better for BBs. Getting a bloom time faster than your reload, especially with the already buffed bloom size for BBs.

If they're buffing the guns, alpha damage and/or fire chance rolled back to what it used to be would be better than turret rotation. Giving them better AA would only really work if they also rework the AA mechanics, since the random chance is spotty as it is anyway. But at least most of them aren't as bad as Kamikaze. That ship has a guy in the crow's nest with a UZI as the entire AA defence of the ship.

How did I miss this topic? "7.Speed is not armor." You're not a Russian destroyer, after all. "11.Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at." That's my strategy in Bismarck: Since I'm odd (see 12), the enemy will shoot at me, therefore shoot less at my allies. That means my allies won't drop like flies around me, which would leave me alone. "12.Odd objects attract fire. You are odd." This is the one I can relate to the most. I suspected that was the case, and then I got Priority Target. That confirmed it. "17.No matter how you try to compensate, your first salvos will always fall short." For some reason, my first salvo, especially in Fuso, tends to hit on target. And do 50%-100% damage on an unfortunate cruiser. "20.The secondary armament won't see any action, unless they can double as AA guns." Unless you're talking about Bismarck. "27.Your ship is just as likely to take damage from friendly sources (blast damage, collisions, running aground) as from enemy fire." I usually hear this one as, "There are no friendly torpedoes. All torpedoes are hostile." To add one of my own: 33.No matter how far away from the enemies you are, there's always a friendly battleship behind you.

I find Haven to be one of the best maps in WoWs. I've never had an unfun game on it, at least on account of the island placements. People don't seem to camp too hard on it, so there's always action. Worst map in the game is probably Mountain Range. A corridor shooter map, with some freckles on the sides. It's just awful. I also really don't like North. It's just such a boring map. One of the least fun maps to play. At least Northern Lights is one of the prettiest maps in the game. Trap consists of three capture points: A, where ships go to die the moment they get around the corner (a.k.a. a trap). B, in the middle of the map with no escape (a.k.a. a trap). C, to the far north with a huge, open space on and around the cap, with no where to hide (a.k.a. a trap). Summa summarum, it's the most aptly named map.

What I really want is the old high-alpha guns for the IJN DDs. Would've been better to adjust their damage instead of nerfing that and making them faster and more generic, but still worse than any other DD guns, and now with less of the actual advantage they actually once had. But buffing the dectection range of the torpedoes is long overdue.

Step one: Reward spotting at all. Playing Shiratsuyu in ranked, I only really got good xp if I got many torpedo hits. Even with regularly capping one or two solo, I rarely found that to be a big contributor to my xp. Only thing I felt gave xp was doing damage, especially on destroyers. So no, players aren't evenly rewarded. It kind of words for randoms, but for ranked it's either play for the team or play for yourself. Playing for the team consistently gets me less xp.

How about removing radar instead? Or as well, rather. Don't need radar to find the invisifiring ships anymore, it's completely overpowered on any ship that also has smoke, and they've already nerfed torpedo boats several times over.

Met Aotearas in a T9 battle today. Couldn't see his name at first, because clan names make it impossible to see player names in the team lists. I spent most of the time fairly alone (after our DD there died) in the middle of Warrior's Path capping B, (B stands for Bismarck, so the cap clearly had my name on it), and then shooting up a Big Freddy. Was an easy battle. I'm not sure entirely what Aotearas and his two division mates were doing, but they mopped up the A cap nonetheless. I ended up third in the team, despite not really doing much, let alone brawling like I usually do in Bisko. While trying to beat luck (which turned out to be impossible) in Ranked, I met Aerroon twice (once on my team, and once on the enemy team), Tuccy, voulezvous, SkyBuckFlying, and probably one or two more I forgot about. Haven't been checking the forums much lately (as opposed to, you know, actually playing the game).

Didn't do badly until rank 5, with a win rate at 60%-70%. At that point it was a dead stop. I got down to rank 3, but since every single battle where I didn't do very well we lost, and in the ones we still lost and I did well I almost always got second place, so I still lost a star. It doesn't help that spotting isn't rewarded, capping is barely rewarded (several games with multiple solo caps and still mid-xp). Only things that's rewarded is sitting in smoke and doing damage. Sims has a decent xp advantage for no reason as well, which also means it's harder to not lose a star when your team sucks. Had to carry the team just about every single won battle, which doesn't really hold up at length, even if I have an overall win rate higher than it is in ranked, which is even counting my crap stats from when I was a beginner. Been stuck there for a week, so I won't be able to get to rank 1. The season also confirms my initial reaction to the introduction of the radar as making WoWs suck more.

You can say whatever bad things you want about DDs. Just don't expect anyone to listen if you clearly show you've got no clue what you're talking about, which is what usually happens. Almost always, it's about how overpowered torpedoes are, or invisifiring, whether smoke-based or stealth-based. Either of those show a lack of understanding for the actual effects. It's fairly realistic to make destroyers more powerful. After all, they're basically the same cost as battleships and cruisers. In real life you could get a ton of destroyers for the price of a single battleship. Individual torps are less powerful, though. You could expect one or two torp hits to sink any ship. As it is, some battleships can survive full broadsides of torpedoes.

I think it was the Graf Spee missions or something where it was really obvious, since those had three pins needed, but only two missions at one pin each, so even the total amount of pins from all missions were lower than the total needed. Thus, the only logical conclusion was that they were repeatable.

I probably don't. I'm not one to play it safe and survive longer than the rest of the team. While I usually don't take unnecessary risks, I do take risks I deem necessary, such as stepping up if I see teammates pushing and I judge them to do poorly if I don't actively back them up. It might be that I'm more prone to play more passively if we're in the lead, since it's easier to defend than to attack and as such that's the better option, but you also tend to not get as much damage then.

The equivalence of the artillery limitation in WoT is the WoWs limitation of CVs. There are generally more BBs than DDs in games. Even considering that, the influx of DDs is caused by the influx of BBs, since a greater number of BBs means a lower number of CAs and CLs, which means a greater number of DDs because there are fewer dangerous ships for DDs, and more ships that are easier to hit.

I did that once, because a teammate was a complete [edited]. I was in Shiratsuyu, scouting one of the flanks (we had A on Neighbours, I scouted southeast), while the other Shira was somewhere in the middle of the A cap. Then that Shira decided to go to where I was, rather than to scout the northwest flank, which led to one Shiny Horse dying to torps from that direction and immediately started to blame me for it and just wouldn't shut up. At that point I just decided to screw it and play for my own score. Which I got. And said Shiny Horse got dead last. I definitely agree with the opinion that score should not be rewarded at all. I tend to win more if I get a mid-range score than if I get a top score, because the gameplay that wins me more matches doesn't reward as much xp. Spotting and smoking allies gives crap xp, but it's good for the team to kill enemies and survive themselves. Strangely, the same holds true while I play Nagato. I often get pretty bad damage in wins, and good damage in losses. Not quite sure why, but I get the impression I'm still doing something right.

I finally got a Solo Warrior award in Shiratsuyu yesterday, by winning with 20 or so points ahead. It's really all about luck and getting into the right situation. Five ships remained when my last ally was sunk, and at that point the entire enemy fleet was almost half a map away from me. I do take credit for capping and getting the necessary points, as that's my job in a stealthy destroyer. There was one cruiser with Radio Location going for me, but a torp to the bow took care of that problem. Didn't have much health left at that point, and I was only alive thanks to Survivability Expert.

That's roughly what I do as well, although with half as much money. Don't run the USN cruiser line, but I do run all the others, and they're all at T7 at the moment. Myoko's been stalling, though, because I've been playing Ashigara a lot. Also run IJN DDs with only Akiduki left (Shima researched but not bought), German DDs sporadically, and German BBs Bismarck. Currently have 40 ships in port, with a single free slot. There are several I might as well sell, though, since I most likely won't ever use them. And 39 captain reserve slots, half full, mostly redundant ARP or low-skilled captains from various missions. All extra slots are from missions, containers, and stuff.

If I'm playing Epicentre with Shiratsuyu, I tend to spend the match camping in the most comfortable position I can find, where I'm in range of as much as possible so I can choose my targets freely. Which also happens to be in the centre cap, most of the time. That's my experience as well. You can play selfishly to not lose a star, or you can play with the team to gain a star.

I have those no-progress days about every other day I play Ranked. In between those, I have good days. Day before yesterday (well, two days, considering the time's well past midnight now) I pinballed between ranks 11 and 8 back and forth a few times. Yesterday I had a great day, and got to rank 5 very painlessly. Today I at least managed to remain, but it wasn't a good day, so I decided to quit before I got behind. And it's been like that most of the time. If my winrate sticks, it shouldn't be too hard to get to rank 1, but it's all about statistics. Funnily enough, I never seem to really do that good for many of my wins (only some 50k-60k damage in Nagato), but the games are still solid. It seems too consistent for just being good luck, so maybe it's just more about positioning and being a threat than actually doing damage. With Shiratsuyu it's more expected, since spotting, capping, and area denial doesn't give a great deal of experience, or none in the last case. Wouldn't agree with that. I've seen plenty of cases where one team gets a lead in ships or cap points, and then decides to push unevenly into the enemy controlled waters. That very often ends in a defeat for them. Capping is often more or less irrelevant, as most games go to last kill before even a few minutes of capping makes a difference. It's more of a morale thing. A destroyer loading in late can also make up for it by being with the main fleet rather than way ahead, and then smoke them rather easily. Not that they often will, but I've seen it a few times. Then again, once you get to a sufficient rank, very few people seem to have loading issues, to the point where it's almost a non-issue.

Happened upon Flamu in Ranked. He was in my team, thankfully enough. And true to any YouTuber, he immediately set off to distract two enemy Belfasts. And by that I mean they chased him around the map while the rest of us capped (Epicentre mode) and killed in peace.

I didn't start at the bottom rank, since last season gave a better starting rank, but at rank 10 and onwards, there are very few late loaders, and I'm not sure I've seen anyone idle for longer than a minute. I have seen one or two interpret "A" as going to the A line rather than the A cap, but that's about it.

In one game, four enemy battleships went there. I was alone there in my team (who were all at C). I was in Shiratsuyu. I had fun.

The only way for a lemming train to work is to go full lemming. You've got the force of your entire team. Use it aggressively. If you don't, you lose. One or two ships can try to slow the opponents down on the other side.