Runegrem

I'll just add to what other people are saying; Kebab is one of the best ships in the game for getting Dreadnought. The heals are fairly weak, but you can almost alway use all of them to their full extent since outside of torps you don't take citadel damage. You also have probably the biggest control over your own survival since the only things you can't really run away from is planes. So just pick fights with everyone until your health gets low, then stay away from everything. Add a ramming flag and you can probably get Die Hard too without too much problem since you've got all that health.

In the end, I think it was touched upon somewhere, but the most important thing is which line you think will be the most fun for you. Which ships are statistically more powerful or better is less important. It's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. Also, you play better if the game's more fun for you. Happy "grind"!

Of course not. It's just that specific mechanic I don't really like. That depends on how you do it. But to not make everyone stronger against everyone else as well you'd probably either need to have some very specific things like ships doing more damage against BBs, which is a stupidly overcomplicated way of doing it when you could use the other option: nerf BB protection in some way. Like, say, re-raise their citadels or something. Yeah. DWTs are really hard to dodge if you don't have some kind of extra spotting. And cruisers can normally have some success in dodging other torps if they aren't caught in a bad turn. The only torps that are harder to dodge is actually the Kebab torps. You have an even smaller reaction time for those. But on the other hand, if you don't know Kebab torps are coming you either don't belong fighting with tier 10 ships or he pulled a sneaky maneuver learnt from dealing with the rest of the line's really limited 4km torps. Germans are in a bit of a weird place shell wise. They have high penetration, low damage HE and low penetration, high damage AP. I think buffing their AP penetration might make them really strong agaist cruiser citadels though. But like I said, the easiest way is probably to nerf BB protection somehow.

About the only time you can readily contest caps in the Kebab without spotting support is if the enemy also doesn't have support. If he smokes up you can rush the smoke, but unless it's a PA-DD you have to worry about torps. If he doesn't smoke up the situation is slightly different but workable. It's dangerous in any case, but you have the tools to make it work most of the time. Oh, with the new paragraph and the previous sentence mentioning the Kebab I thought that was the ship you meant. I find the RU CAs to be the most dangerous with their rail guns. Also, BBs can hurt you a lot if they get a good salvo in. CVs are very dependent on the player. You can easily outrun all CV torps even while maneuvering. The exception being the Kaga's torps, but she's is tier 7 so you shouldn't meet her, and a lot of CV players aren't used to drop on as fast ships as the RU DDs so they often miss. Your AA isn't good enough to shoot down more than one or two planes though, unless you get lucky. And even that's counting when the planes retreat.

I like the 2 tier spread. It makes you meet more different ships which makes the game less stale. Also, even if you're in a bad bottom tier ship you're still not a write-off. Some tiers are worse than others, but in general, it's a decently fair coin flip on which tiers you get.

Also, it is one of two DDs with secondaries. It's not much, just a single 85mm double turret with 5km base range, but it's there. Umikaze A-hull also has secondaries, pretty decent at that. Well, if you for some reason get within the short 2km range that is.

In this game teamplay is a bit unbalanced because it's so rare. Just a little bit of coordination is what separates a 40% winrate team from a 60% winrate team. Also, I think this was more about me not liking smokefiring at all, teamplay or no teamplay. It's just slightly less stupid than the old invisifire. Sadly, special consumables seems to be WG's idea of making new lines. Yeah, PA-DDs are bad. They're like DD Flints. Hmm... haven't seen a Flint in a while. That's more like what I think. Though it doesn't actually have to be a whole lot to have a good effect I think. Wait, that sounds suspiciously like you're implying that it isn't like that now. I think nerfing both smoke and radar in tandem would be a good idea since radar was supposed to counter smoke. I heard they were at least gonna rework Tears of the Desert. The most and the least stealthy DDs tend to do well at that map as well. Isn't the Epicentre cap big enough for DDs to hide in the far end without being within radar range from the RU CAs behind the islands? That's an interesting idea, but I think the potatofactor is too high on that one.

1. I actually tend to win most fights at all ranges vs. other DDs in the Kebab. 2. "Small" concealment disadvantage? Yeah. The Udaloi is awesome. I played it a lot before the split though, and after the split I had a newbie captain on it, so I'm not entirely sure how she's changed. When I played her she was awesome though. Good guns, workable concealment, but I hear people say her concealment is lacking though. Also, she has three torp launchers, one mid and two on the sides, with the side ones having a really good forward angle. I think there are some RN BBs that are fairly broken, and a bunch of premiums are clearly more broken. Don't overestimate the armour though. It might be able to stop any HE that's not 200mm with IFHE or BB HE and bounce even Yamato AP shells with the right angle, but it only covers part of where the citadel would be on a real cruiser.

Well, for me it was such a close range battle that hitting the target wasn't an issue. He probably had more trouble turning and keeping his guns on me. But to get all guns on me he showed me his broadside, at 3km. Oh, I get where you're coming from in that. It's just that the source of the attack, the radar ship, is sitting safeish behind an island and can't be countered, only avoided or baited, which amounts to pretty much the same thing. Sure, sometimes you can get around islands or shoot over them if the radar ship makes a serious enough mistake, but often enough it means you have to overextend so much that you can't really turn away again. I'd actually prefer it if they made caterpult planes a bit more reliable for spotting since as it is now you can't really use them if you're close to the enemy since it will just get shot down and then you have to wait a few minutes to try again. Yeah. That felt nice to be in a cruiser and some thoughtful DD left a smokescreen for me to use while he spotted things for me to shoot at. Didn't feel well balanced though. When I play DDs myself however I'm kinda bad with smoke useage, which is partly why I choose to not use smoke if I get the choice, like using torpedo reload or heal or something. If I'm in a DD I want to move around, not sit in a smoke and shoot. You can probably tell by how much I mention the Kebab. Just throwing out an idea here, it may be interesting if they nerfed smoke more, and then compensated by putting in more islands for ships to hide behind. They could give players a better chance to turn around and retreat without getting deleted if they overextended. It might even make radar more manageable. Or maybe it would just turn the game into a stale cover-based shooter, and it seems people have had enough of those...

Sure, BBs, and everyone able to shoot you, gets a new target if you do get out, but if you don't the DD doesn't get spotted. So it's a difference of having someone else to shoot at and not possibly dying. Yeah. Probably a good choice. I'd do so myself most likely. First, nope. And second, well, just yesterday I got into a little bit of a pickle in my Kebab when I first accidentally sent both torps towards a smoke but then had to run around an island where a New Orleans was waiting. We both had about full health. Let's just say that if I had just saved one torpedo launcher for him I would've had a lot more health left when he went down. Then again, a Kebab vs. a New Orleans. It's not really a fair fight, is it?

Ah. That's true. But the Kebab excels at close range fire support.

It removes the punishment to DDs being close to islands. And how many in this thread have said something along the lines of making DDs or CAs more visible will mostly benefit BBs? This makes them less visible. Worst case being you lose half your health? That's probably one of the better outcomes for the DD, worst being death. So the risk and reward doesn't match at all. And if you're alone in a Missouri there's probably already something tactically unsound with the situation. Are you rushing them with a DD or a cruiser? If it's a cruiser then you will be visible as soon as you fire anyway and you will fire as soon as you see him so the difference is what? 2 seconds? And then it's a brawl between a cruiser and a DD, those tend to end heavily in the cruiser's favour. If you're rushing in a DD then you've stated that DDs with hydro is an "I-win", maybe even more wrong than radar on a BB and something that basically lets you kill other DDs at will. I don't see the problem with nerfing that. I've several times said I'm unsure about the need to nerf hydro like that but you make such convincing arguments that it should be nerfed. Since spotting rewards in this game is a joke the only thing I could see is that you have a higher chance of winning the game, which means 50% more xp.

What do you mean by support? Since the Kebab is very good at supporting a DD trying to cap. While it's a bit iffy to cap by yourself you can use your superior firepower and survivability to scare away or kill any DDs threatening your capping DD. There are few DDs that are willing to go up against a Kebab without support. And while capping is most often hard, if the enemy DD doesn't have any spotting support like hydro, planes or other ships he can't really shoot you from smoke, which means you only have to worry about torpedoes. And if a DD sits in smoke and you have an opportunity to go close enough for your 6km torps to work they're very effective. The torps are slow, but they have the shortest detection range in the game which means the enemy won't see them until it's probably too late. They're also fairly strong, dealing almost 20k damage each. The great speed and high health, for a DD, of the ship makes it one of the most survivable ships in the game. Despite your big size you're one of the hardest DDs to hit at a distance, you actually have a little bit of armour that can protect you from some damage and your big health and heal lets you tank what damage you take and if things get too rough you can always run away. All in all, if you want a more normal DD experience, go with the Grozovoi. But if you want to be able to cruise around picking fights with anyone you want, go with the Kebab. I haven't actually played the Grozovoi, but I have it researched and will buy it as soon as I can get enough credits and manage to resist buying any cheaper ships while earning those creds.

Nerfing radar would be good. In what way is debatable. I'm unsure about hydro. Like I said, it might be overkill. It's still a risk the CA has to take, which leads to the radar range not being such a killzone. Also, like I said, quite often radar cruisers are already spotted when they hydro. Well, yeah. That's what happens when you base a line of ships on a stupid game mechanic; it's hard to do anyting about it without completely reworking the line or screwing them over. Well, a... Damn you for predicting my stronk Russian argument. To be more serious though: same thing here, some ships need smoke firing to be effective since you can't always rely on there being islands available to shoot over. That doesn't make the mechanic less stupid. Better map design could probably help though.

Yeah. It's the right place to be as a radar cruiser. Also, yeah, North is really badly designed. It more or less forces everyone to camp the big island in the middle and the first one to show his face loses. And that was our tactic that match. Just sit and wait between the caps on the north side and wait for the enemy to overextend, which means showing just a little bit of your face. Eventually, I got the cap, maybe the Chapa had run out of radars, but it took a long while of camping to get there. Also, if I had moved around that way I would've been alone against more than just the Chapa, they had DDs too, otherwise I might've done that.

Except that you have the power to choose when to activate it. That's not to be underestimated. Also, torp detection, which is what hydro is mostly used for. Of course, if it was like I and many other want, you wouldn't be able to do that anyway since radar and hydro going through islands is stupid. DDs will probably not profit from that in most cases, no, but they will be punished less, which is what the issue is. Also, everyone shoots at radar cruisers, not just BBs. Radar cruisers being passive isn't a problem right now, and I don't think this would change much since as @ForlornSailor said earlier, when radar cruisers use their radar they're most likely already spotted. And cruisers playing a bit passive don't get nearly the hate DDs get whenever they don't beeline for the closest cap or the next cap if the ship positions are better for that. When I play the Kebab, I can sometimes avoid getting complaints about not capping, but in other DDs, not as much. Just the other day in ranked I got some serious hate from a few in the team when I didn't want to go into the A cap on North in my Benson because we knew there was a Chapa hiding behind the big island as the common tactic is.

Smoke firing as a whole is stupid. Smoke should be a defensive tool. Yeah. Those DDs have strong guns, good speed, great smoke and powerful torps only at the cost of not being able to torps other DDs. Not sure what WG was thinking. Last I saw the tier 10 one outdamaged the Kebab which a lot of players say is overpowered. I only have 16 battles in the Gaede so far, and a few of them were to unlock the hydro. It's so easy to bully ships out of caps, and often I don't even need the smoke for that; I can just use the enemy's. But Missouri having radar is fine, because I have one. Not obsolete. You can still use it for spotting torps and for situations where you being spotted is and acceptable cost. So no, it wouldn't be worse than just removing it. And if you're worried about being detected you can always not use it, which is about equal to not having it in the first place. That said. I don't know if it would be a good thing to do to hydro. Radar, yes; hydro, undecided.

Okay, so it's not overkill.

There are no downsides to that. Though it would also hit the Black. And since I said the same goes for hydro, Loyang and the KM DDs would also be affected. Cruisers probably get visible anyway as soon as they open fire, to say nothing of KM BBs moving through smoke. Though hydro/smoke is far less of a problem and it's more common, so that might be overkill. Sure, you're not gonna make more credits than someone who's really good at the game and plays like it. But you're going to make more credits than players who take risks but don't manage to get a lot of damage done because they're doing more support than damage. XP is a bit more dependent on actually winning since you do get that 50% bonus. Well, it happens. I probably shouldn't have mentioned a specific clan since that's probably dangerously close to naming and shaming, so I think I'll stop now.

Ah. Also, Takao best Atago. Exactly. It's a very fuzzy area. Which makes it even more valuable to hear someone else's opinion about it. Also, like Jingles likes to say, "If it's stupid but it works. It's still stupid; you just got lucky." I think everyone has had cases of that.

It's far easier to answer if you don't need the answers in "good" and "bad". An enemy radar punishes all DD play that isn't doing stuff from far distances and rewards nothing. A friendly radar well used rewards being there to take advantage of it, whether that is by shooting at the revealed ships or sneaking in to cap while the enemy runs away. Radars on both sides in a cap contest turns it into a shooting gallery. DDs lose. You have the ARP Takao camo while the ship name says Atago. Why? Some mod? The problem is that game rewards still heavily favours farming damage over winning. Credit gain is the same whether you win or lose, spotting rewards are a joke and damage gives far bigger gains than anything else. Unless you're a BB. Then you can get some profit from sitting back and sniping. It's not at all like the people in the bar. They can't learn from seeing someone make mistakes and hearing advice on how to avoid those mistakes. Also, those small positioning or turn timing mistakes are still mistakes. It might not be "bad play" but it is sub-optimal play that can be improved. It might be on a higher level of skill, but that only means it can be helpful to other players who are on that level of skill. Also also, I like Flamu's game commentary vids. There are players on all skill levels who forget about the minimap. Even in Flamu's OMNI clan there are players like that. So essentially radar would only allow you to see through smoke? I like this idea. Also, using radar should make your ship visible. I think that would eliminate most related cases of "my consumable is stronger than your consumable, so I win". Of course the same goes for hydro. This would be interesting. Only ships shouldn't be stuck on things, just be stopped by them. Being stuck isn't fun gameplay, even if you misplayed. Also, I know some of these things have been addressed already. Eff me for being away from the forums for a day.

That. Domination is generally the best game mode. I have had a lot of fun Epicentre matches though. Also, a newbie is a new player who might not know his lefts from his rights, this includes some Derpitz players with twenty games played. A noob is someone who just refuses to learn. There are lots of both types of players in this game.

@ForlornSailor, if you want to post a dozen pictures in a row, could you please hide them behind a collapsible spoiler tag or something?

You quoteminer, you. Belfast. Of course it's not a gimmick if the end result is just a 10% change in stats. You can always justify balance changes with better balance. Well, if you would only take out the hydro and do nothing else it would still be stupidly overpowered. Take away smoke and it'll be something like a Chapa at tier 7 or an Atlanta with flatter shell arcs, and both of those are only situationally powerful. So just taking that specific consumable away would make it balanced. Maybe. No, it would be the first. At least if there's a competent player behind those BB guns. More accurate guns would lead to more binary results. You either miss everything or you delete the DD. And at close ranges even a DD won't have enough time to dodge BB shells. It would also obsolete cruisers when it comes to fighting DDs since their main advantage over BBs is their accuracy and fire rate. But when a BB can just delete the DD in one salvo with just as accurate shots then reload is irrelevant. It would also make it completely impossible for anyone not a BB to rush a BB.

??? At present? I don't actually play WoT; I've only heard of the playersbase there. And I like the function just fine here.