BruceRKF

Politicians don't keep their promises, business managers don't either, so why should WG? Normally I'm not one to resort to insults, but I have half a mind to tell WG to screw themselves.

Save gold , yes, but better MM? I feel like tier 7 gets really bad matchmaking and often gets tier 9 games these days since the changes to MM a couple of patches ago. You can farm nicely in Narai though, so there's that.

Just sent my ticket. Thanks for the opportunity to get the ships back! I love Myoko, so having six of them is fine

I play Alsace with a full secondary build. Which is far from optimal, but lots of fun. In my opinion, it's best to always keep moving in her, contrary to the possibility of static gameplay in Richelieu and Jean Bart. Her best defense is definitely not her armour, but her ability to re-position quickly. With the speed boost you can close in on targets quickly and then also get away again if necessary. However, finding the correct timing for getting close is not always easy, and as someone else already mentioned it's easy to overextend. She is quite well suited to support your cruisers or get out on a flank where she can't get shot at by too many enemies. Ammo choice is also quite important on her, don't hesitate to load HE against angled, non-overmatch targets. On the other hand, AP has good pen for 380 mm guns and can seriously hurt broadside BBs. Against cruisers you can get a lot of overpens unfortunately. Overall, probably my favourite t9 BB.

First of all: Massive thanks to all the donators, you are awesome! Secondly: Congratulations to the lucky winners! As for me: better luck next year

Not only has gameplay gone down even further in Narai (two BBs going for the CV, one of them dying to the Nicholas, all four cruisers going for the transports, one of them dying to the Nicholas there; meanwhile me in the DD, "tanking" for our convoy. Sad times. No, recently the AI ships decide to go full yolo before unloading their troops and of course dying. Hermes, Cherry Blossom, Ultimate Frontier, where have you gone? I'll be waiting faithfully and (im)patiently...

That is true, also for HE cruisers. It is often far more frustrating to shoot at t5 and 6 dreadnoughts where you get a lot of shatters even with IFHE (especially Fuso) than higher tier BBs where you sort of know where to shoot to do damage. Some of my favourite ships are tier 7 as well (both German BBs, Myoko, Akatsuki, Fiji, Maass, etc), so that MM change is a bit of a bother.

Since my thread about my MM spreadsheet go closed, I'm just gonna share it here instead. First of all however, Happy New Year everyone! I want to share my own experiences with random game matchmaking in 2019. I started my own, let's call it "spreadsheet", to see what MM really was like and how it correlates with subjective experiences. Overall, I have 2200 random games recorded in the sheet. I realise that for tiers 3 and 4 the sample size is too low to be significant, but for the rest of the tiers it should give a decent overview (tiers 2 and 3 I play almost exclusively in coop). I rounded the percentages to the fist decimal place, so there will be errors of up to 0.3 when adding them up, but I thought this was good enough. Further observations for after the MM changes in patch 8.can't-be-bothered-to-look-up-the-number: Tier 5 gets more +1 and less +2 low tier games. Tier 6 gets more -1 top tier games. Tier 7 gets far worse MM than before. Tier 8 gets slightly better MM. Also, t8 only games (0 spread) more prevalent. Tier 9 gets far better MM and is top tier a lot more often ("the new tier 7"). Also, I had t9 only games (0 spread) only after the changes, never before. Tier 10 gets t10 only games (0 spread) far more often. Some things I could have done better and will possibly do this year: I did not make a difference between mid tier games (+/-1 tier spread) and all same tier games (0 tier spread), except for tier 9 (where it occured only after the MM change). Also, I only recorded games where CV(s) were present, but not the number of CVs per team (one, two or, once or twice at tier 4 three), as well as not taking into account the tiers of the carrier (e.g. t6 or t8 CV in a t8 game). It might also have been wise to make a new sheet for after the matchmaking changes. No idea how/whether the data are even statistically significant, but I am quite hopeless at anything mathematical. Hope some of you find this interesting anyway and maybe can share your own experiences. In any case, thanks for reading and have a good one!

First of all, Happy New Year everyone! I am creating this thread to share my own experiences with random game matchmaking in 2019. I started my own, let's call it "spreadsheet", to see what MM really was like and how it correlates with subjective experiences. Overall, I have 2200 random games recorded in the sheet. I realise that for tiers 3 and 4 the sample size is too low to be significant, but for the rest of the tiers it should give a decent overview (tiers 2 and 3 I play almost exclusively in coop). I rounded the percentages to the fist decimal place, so there will be errors of up to 0.3 when adding them up, but I thought this was good enough. Further observations for after the MM changes in patch 8.can't-be-bothered-to-look-up-the-number: Tier 5 gets more +1 and less +2 low tier games. Tier 6 gets more -1 and less -2 top tier games. Tier 7 gets far worse MM than before. Tier 8 gets slightly better MM. Also, t8 only games (0 spread) more prevalent. Tier 9 gets far better MM and is top tier a lot more often ("the new tier 7"). Also, I had t9 only games (0 spread) only after the changes, never before. Tier 10 gets t10 only games (0 spread) far more often. Some things I could have done better and will possibly do this year: I did not make a difference between mid tier games (+/-1 tier spread) and all same tier games (0 tier spread), except for tier 9 (where it occured only after the MM change). Also, I only recorded games where CV(s) were present, but not the number of CVs per team (one, two or, once or twice at tier 4 three), as well as not taking into account the tiers of the carrier (e.g. t6 or t8 CV in a t8 game). It might also have been wise to make a new sheet for after the matchmaking changes. No idea how/whether the data are even statistically significant, but I am quite hopeless at anything mathematical. Hope some of you find this interesting anyway and maybe can share your own experiences. In any case, thanks for reading and have a good one!

That is one thing to worry about. If the Tirpitz and Bismarck babies actually enjoy the game, there will be even more of them. Oh, the horror...

This. On a more serious note, since you already have the Huanghe, there is none I would avoid at all costs.

Got myself one Mega container the previous years. Nothing this time. Wargaming doing too much wrong with the game, imo, so no money from me.

Used the dubloon coupon way back when it was introduded on Hood (didn't have to buy a single dubloon for it either, all leftovers/containers/missions/whatever). The coal one I used on Yoshino. Not sure what to use the new ones for. I'll see how many dubloons I can get for free over time until the coupon expires and then buy something just before then. For the coal one I would get Thunderer, but I'll first wait what resource Siegfried will be for. That is the one I'd really like, even if she proves to be bad. She will probably be free xp, but since it's not confirmed, I'll wait. What is definitive however is that I'll not get Smolensk (ever), despite being a cruiser main, simply for the fact that I don't want to support that kind of crap, no matter how op or broken she might be.

So I guess I was kind of right. Thanks for the clarification, couldn't be bothered to look it up myself ;)

wasn't Borodino also a name (maybe even the class name) for the same class as Izmail is right now?

This is why I said "might be" (wows-numbers didn't even show the number of battles played for me when selecting anything but "all"). Apart from that, I can only relate what it feels like to me and for me Yamato is the weakest t10 BB (not the least fun though, that is why she is till kind of fine).

Well, if you take the top 5% players on wows-numbers, Yamato is last in winrate and third from the bottom in damage, so there might be a point to it. Overall, I think she is still fine, but it's also the t10 BB I fear the least when I'm in a cruiser. It's a bit different when you are in a BB (except in balans BB). Yamato feels to me the t10 BB that can be citadeled reliably the most. I also hate her "cheek" citadel or whatever you want to call it because it means close up any angling bar bow-in is useless. That is the only thing I'd really like to change about her, so that you can actually brawl like all the other BBs and not get oblierated in a drive-by way before being broadside because of that weakness. Just my two cents. Also, I'm kind of bad in her because I like brawling ;) Edit: She is far from being the worst BB in the game, only possibly the worst t10 BB.

The change to the MM is one reason why tier 9 are more fun these days than tier 10. Tier 9 has taken over from tier 7 getting the nicest MM while tier 7 got shafted and is the new tier 8 MM-wise. Also, many of the tier 10 ships play differently from the tier 9s and it can be hard to adjust to. In the first couple of games they might subjectively feel worse e.g. because of worse concealment and maneuverability, although objetively they are actually stronger ships. Another, probably minor point is that while grinding a tier 9 ship you have a "goal" to get to tier 10 as special incentive, while at tier 10 you get "nothing" for playing lots of games in the ships.

I'm just gonna grab a beer and some popcorn while watching the stream. Could be interesting.

10,000 free xp 50 signal flags (+50% captain xp) interestingly, both twice

At least one extra zero...

Am I the only one who thinks that most of them look reasonably ugly? I like only the third camo, all the others look too immersion breaking for my liking.

Full secondary spec Umikaze is the obvious answer.

Thanks awfully to everyone providing prices! Despite never having luck with lotteries, I'd still like to participate.

You were not the only one with the better team yesterday XD I lost eight in a row before getting a win... Especially frustrating since I didn't do too badly personally (as you seemed to notice, thanks). Anyway, at least the games were interesting for the most part...