jss78

It's not a bad skill. From an occasional carrier player's perspective, it's surprisingly nasty when you have several catapult fighters flying around enemy's ships. They don't shoot down much, but crucially they slow down your bombers which means more time spent under AA fire. Also if they're active engaging the torpedo/dive bombers, the torpedoes fan out wider and the bomb drop circle widens. They're quickly dispensed with by fighters, but you don't always fighters available, or you'd much rather have them elsewhere. So overall they're pretty good speed bumps to carrier planes, and incrementally more annoying the more you have in the air. And then you have the additional benefits of spotting. However, for that first 1 pt skill, I consider Priority Target the most important one by far, for cruisers. But if you have a hard-to-use 1 point left over later, why not.

I got it, and it's ridiculously OP. The Nassau was already a seal-clubbing machine par excellence for her tier, and this is a straight-up improvement. It's really weird to me that WG first does the Nikolai I, then removes it from sales for being totally unbalanced ... and then they do the same thing all over again with the K. Albert. I don't get it. Game balance issues aside, what I love about the König Albert is that it gives me a Kaiser class ship I can play in authentic WW1 spec. The Kaiser with her imaginary 1920/30's refit always felt a little wrong to me. For WW1 buffs the K. Albert and the Emden are just gems. (What makes me sad is those people I see trying to use ship to snipe from 11 km. The nice thing about the German line is that it's a crash course in the proper, manly way to play a BB. Get close, crush them, and make the emperor proud.)

I'd love this. It's a very pretty shade of pink. Maybe as a permanent camo for some of the British ships? Though I suspect this post was only a pretext for posting those boobies.

What's the threshold exactly for getting a chat ban? Does the system have a "memory" so that it remembers past offenders and lowers the threshold? I ask because I do occasionally complain about team performance, and I've never received a ban. I only tend to report people for abusive language. I think even pointed criticism is OK, but nerd rage gets old.

Personally, I still don't have a single ship beyond T8. This is both because of the specific ships concerned, and general gameplay in the high tiers. For example I have a 19pt guy and 200+ games in the NC, and I love that ship. Then Iowa, I very specifically don't like as a ship. So why move ahead? A second thing is that at least for me, the stagnant and slow gameplay in high tiers just sucks. Or to be fair, it's fun, but the mid tiers are MORE fun. I get enough of that in the NC and it kills my desire to move ahead. For me the T9-10 ship would need to bring something exceptionally interesting to the table, to make the generally worse gameplay worth it. Maybe one day I'll see that T9-10 ship that I NEED to have. I'd agree that T7 is something of a sweet spot for the game. Best of the mid-tier gameplay style, relatively experienced players, and even a friendly MM.

I dunno, I've always been kind of OK with the Type 5. At least on US and Russian ships it tends to look fine. I wish however that some of permanent premium camouflages were more distinctive. I always liked the New York icicle camo because it's really unique but also historical (though I think never on USS New York herself, but other WW1 USN BB's).

I don't think that's even a fighter deck ... 26k damage average in Independence isn't actually that easy with AS (just thinking about how little those DB's do in my stock loadout). And I'm not sure that's a bot. I think it's just a weak player in the stock loadout. If you look at those numbers from another angle, that'd give about 60-70% win rate for the opposing CV. That sounds about right for an average CV player when the opposing CV does little to stop him. True, and I think even worse is that he's not opposing the enemy CV. Nothing as devastating in this game as an unopposed CV. I guess theoretically people would gather around AA cruisers, but in randoms that'll never happen ... there's always that one guy sailing out there that's easy to delete, if you don't have to worry about enemy fighters. I can't think of a solution short of some in-game skill rating and then skill-based MM.

I fell in love with the Dewgay with the very first game: The guns have GREAT arcs, I couldn't believe how useful they are, all the way out to that max range of 15 km. Plus, too many people ignore those torps (maybe the best among T4 CL's?) in their assessments. What the stats don't show is the incredibly wide firing angles. You only need to wiggle your tush a bit to fire all twelve, towards either front or back. When I realized I'm still getting hydro and a plane and couldn't believe my luck. With that combination of offensive potential and speed, something obviously needs to give, and yeah that's the armour. I guess the jury's still out as far as how she'll hold up once BB frequency is back to normal. T3 BB's will be helpless against the well played Dewgay though.

T2-T4 all feel very strong to me. T4 I figure I'll keep. I haven't got beyond that one yet. Friant feels potentially OP at T3. Wonderful torps: range, speed, damage, and ESPECIALLY the firing angles, only need to wiggle a bit to launch 12 towards either front or back. Also nice gun arcs, good speed. It really feels anachronistic at that tier. Potentially same with Duguay-Trouin at T4.

"Best" is indeed subjective. If it comes to getting started with cruisers though, I might suggest the Japanese line. In terms of overall gameplay style they're just average and middle-of-the-road, which might be good thing here. I started the game with US cruisers, and in many ways I think it's a good line to learn on. A lot of the ships are good IMO, and they teach you ALL about survival through WASD hax. But they're unusual in that only T4-5 have torps, and those are so short-ranged that they're strictly situational. Brits are good, but they are a bit gimmicky with the lack of HE and unusual consumables, and I wouldn't recommend as first cruiser line. The Japanese are just well-rounded. Useful, long-range torps, AP/HE guns, no unusual consumables, a good mix of CL/CA. Plus plenty of ships in the tree reputed to be good. Will teach you all you need to know about cruisers. (This is with the huge caveat that I've personally only played the T1-3 plus ARP Myoko. But a division mate is an IJN fanatic, so I have one sailing by my side all the time...)

I thought it was a nice interview. My major gripe was the reply to the mid-tier MM issue. Regarding T5, he said, in essence, that there is an issue, but they can't or won't do anything about it. Also essentially said that maybe we shouldn't be playing that tier anyway. I get that T5's getting uptiered is an inevitable consequence of tiers up to 4 getting guaranteed +1/-1 MM, and it's probably good for the new-player experience. But didn't much enjoy the way he brushed off the issue, or they way he wanted to guide paying customers about how they should be playing the game.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but your Warships Today stats are public, and your Marblehead main gun hit % is indeed 33%. That's precisely the server-wide hit ratio on the Marblehead, so you're not having worse luck than anyone else in that regard. What is exceptional about your Marblehead stats is only surviving 9% games, so you might try working on your tactics and positioning, to be able to have more of an influence on the game. I find the Marblehead a strong ship and capable of quickly dealing a lot of damage. In my experience, it especially benefits of a Demolition Expert + HE Inertial Fuse captain, if you happen to have one in another US ship. But it's quite tricky to play, because you need to get relatively close, and need to have really good WASD skills to avoid crippling hits. But the ship does have the agility to achieve that.

Good point about the speed -- it's really the only BAD thing about the Colorado now, but how much does it matter really when high-tier BB's just sit around anyway. I have about 150 games in the Colorado, and have found it a supremely comfortable ship to play, including during the last Ranked season. Excellent guns, good AA, surprisingly useful secondaries, VERY good at dodging torps, rarely takes crippling hits. It even uptiers pretty well, because even against T9 the guns are still useful, and I find that's all you need. It's a bit of a floating anachronism with the WW1-grade speed at T7, but in actual gameplay it's really quite rare that I find it a problem.

I'm sure they'll get around to it. As the last T7 without one, I imagine it's near the top of the list. I really like the ship in its current form in WoWS. I also like the historical 1944 camo, it's nice and distinct from the non-premium ones -- if they bring this one in I'll be throwing money at WG on Day 1.

For me the fun started right at T2 and Storochevoi. The trick is to not be tempted by those short-range torps and go YOLOing with them, but to recognize the ship for what it is, a gunship. You get truly excellent gun arcs for T2. It really comes alive with BFT+AFT, as the gun arcs are so flat and quick that you can hit from range. Then just WASD to avoid hits and don't worry about maintaining concealment. (I have the luxury of running a 10-point guy in Storochevoi as all my other Russki ships are premiums.) Same applies for at least Izyaslav and Okhotnik, just that they get more guns and (slightly) longer-ranged torps. Shameless humblebrag:

The Tier 2-4 German DD's are really similar in concept, but I felt the Tier 2 was clearly the best of the three, for her own tier. It had good speed, superb concealment, and hard-hitting torps with good range for Tier 2. The next two were quite similar but just seemed to fall behind tier-for-tier. I really enjoy their basic layout, with 2x2 centreline torps and 2x1 towards the front.

PvE economy is a tough balancing act. I get that WG wants to incentivize playing PvP, as that game mode needs a healthy player base to function. But IMO you should be able to play PvE and make at least a meager profit. A lot of unnecessary elitism from the PvP crowd IMO. I like occasional PvE if I'm feeling too tired for PvP. You see a surprising number of these dedicated PvE heroes running fully tricked out ships.

For variety mainly, I play all classes and BB's offer something different. I like the "lead from the front" brawler play style of USN/KM BB's of the WW1/interbellum era.

I'm not compelled that it's a huge balance issue. The MM tries to balance # of divisions in each team, I think the max allowed difference is one. If you get a three-man of comp-level players, for sure they influence the outcome. But more commonly they're no different from any other player, just a few friends playing together. Taking another angle, for me that it's easy to casually play (in a non-competitive environment) with 1-2 buddies a big selling point for WoWS. I literally came to this game from another game for this reason.

The bottom line is IMO that the torps are exceptional for T3, but you don't fire many of them so no walls of skill to rely on. High skill -> high reward, which is generally a concept I approve of. (Just wish I was that high skill DD captain.) I've never tried it without CE, like so many others got it with a 12pt captain in that event.

Omaha is actually an excellent ship. The guns are FAR from useless for her tier. It's a citadel magnet, but so is every other CL in this game. But the Omaha has superb agility to avoid getting hit in the first place, so it's really all about that. The MM makes it tough, no question about that though. But again that's a problem of all T5's. Humblebrag (not technically Omaha, but the worse version you need to pay real € for ):

I played the Karlsruhe after all the buffs, and I never felt it was bad. Guns feel good for the tier, and I felt I was doing consistent decent damage. My problem though was that it's so... very... slow. While OK it just never felt FUN. Not like the Phoenix always did, or Kuma, or how I think the Duguay-Trouin will.

I do this! I typically have either 20, 21, or 24 ships. Those neat rows fill me with a strange feeling of peace. I also never, ever have more than one ship of each type for each tier. Though that's more about having a good variety of ships to play, while minimizing the # of captains to train. I'd totally love having the flags in neat order too, but can't really achieve that.

I think I understand the OP's dilemma, I've felt the same way. I'm in principle not the slightest bit competitive as a gamer. I play with a cavalier "OMG WARSHIPS PEW PEW" attitude and generally don't give a sh*t. But then I love statistics, and I love looking at them. And then I get that feeling I'd like to make the numbers better. So it becomes an internal struggle, between wanting to relax and have fun, and improving those metrics. I dunno, I guess my advice is ... don't look at the stats. Or at least, don't look at them too much. I had a stage where I was preferentially playing ships I had a good WTR in, to improve that number. That was when the game really started to become less fun. Then I saw the light and started to stubbornly play whatever ship I'm having fun in, at the time. I know people who've removed the computers from their bicycles, to let them enjoy the outdoors better and at peace. Same dilemma I guess.

Worked for me too. https://worldofwarships.eu/en/userbonus/