tocqueville8

This is what I'm currently running on the Georgia: With 21 points, I could go for Concealment Expert (boring), Emergency Repair Expert (slightly less boring), Basics of Survivability + Pyrotechnician (still boring, though it would allow me to switch to Engine or Rudder Mod in slot #4) or Close Quarters Combat (tempting). Imho, if you go for secondaries, it makes more sense to sacrifice range than accuracy, as on many occasions you are free to decide how close to the target you want to get, while accuracy is important against DDs in particular. However, secondary range synergizes with Close Quarters Combat, so I wouldn't get the latter without the former. Also, the usefulness of Emergency Repair Expert depends on your skill: if you're a good player you'll get to use the 5th heal more often than someone who either camps or overextends. Since your profile is private, I can't offer a recommendation. If I had the Ohio, I wouldn't take Grease the Gears (30s traverse is excellent already, and even 34s if I went reload would be perfectly acceptable), but instead Priority Target, I suppose. Or Vigilance. I wouldn't even consider Pyrotechnician, as the fire chance of those secondaries is almost double that of the Georgia (which is a bit stupid...). I'm not entirely satisfied with Main Armament Mod 1, as Georgia (and Massa, and Ohio) turrets are pretty tanky, but it's cheap to switch, anyway. The Dmg Con Mod 1 (coal module, +40% fire and flooding immunity) is also worth considering for slot #1, imho. Now, I'm not much of a competitive player, and you could argue I'm not an outstanding Georgia player either, but I think secondaries are still worth going for. For instance: - I had a round in the Silver qualifiers where my secondaries did 50k dmg to an (angled) enemy Georgia, during a prolonged fight: they were simply more efficient than AP; - I had another round where my secondaries did 7.5k on an Akizuki as my main guns were sniping an Alaska on the other side of the map: just like the fast-reloading heals sustain you in close fights, secondaries allow you to engage multiple enemies and to have a broader impact.

I'm not angry at you, but that mentality is why we can't have nice things: "it's better for me, so I'm happy even though it's worse for most other people". As a Co-op player, you would've been happy as well if they'd given some flags for Co-op achievements (or just Co-op xp), but without taking them away from Random and competitive players. WoW's economy isn't a zero sum game, where there are limited flags that they took away from Random players to give them to Co-op players: they can give as many flags as they want, they're free for them. Worst case scenario, as a Random player I'll get them for credits. Credits, not doubloons: WG is just annoying me with this decision, not making me spend more money on the game. It's just petty and it makes the experience less rewarding (fewer of those "little dopamine hits", as someone else wrote above). What's the point of achievements, then? Where's the positive reinforcement? If flags were too easy to get, they could've lowered the number to 5 per achievement, but ZERO?!?

Kotovsky has almost 16 km upgraded range, and a spotter. I'd say go for DDs and cruisers if you can: - your shells are much more likely to pen - most of those targets don't have a heal, so whatever the type of damage, it's going to stick If BBs are the only target left, try to use cover or range to out-trade them. Don't let the opportunity for a permafire slip away from you, and if possible spread your shells so that you have a chance to set on fire the bow and stern as well (or the other portion of the middle, if they don't have Fire Prevention). I don't think I've ever played the Kotovsky, but that's what worked for me on Soviet CLs so far. Consider getting the fire chance skill, if just temporarily: going from 8 to 9% fire chance would make permafires easier to achieve. You might also want to get Last Stand, as your rudder is crucial to your survival.

I don't know about the Harugumo: the DPM and hp are nice, but she's sluggish and she only gets standard smokes, no anti-DD consumable. IMHO she's more of a damage dealer against cruisers and BBs, but then again I was crap with her. The Z-52, on the other hand, can properly ambush you with RPF+hydro+smoke. IMHO the Shima is also a threat: great concealment, great speed and she can basically one-shot you with torps, if you're not careful. She's not very good in knife-fights, but as long as you're playing cat-and-mouse around a cap, sort of smelling each other without seeing each other, she's very dangerous.

I've played some truly braindead games in the Smaland recently, much less so in the Marceau. That they have similar stats suggests that the Smaland is indeed superior, though for some jobs the Marceau is better. The Daring, on the other hand...I mean...it's a small sample but...I...that thing *is* OP, right? I'm not imagining things?

A CQE from 2 secondary hits, niiiice.

My thought precisely: the thing is food for any T8 BB, let alone cruisers...

Anyone can report you and you'll always lose 1 karma (reporting more than once, even for different things, makes no difference). Allies will generally report you for playing poorly (in their judgement, which can be wrong of course), enemies for playing well if they're not good sports about it. Enemies might also report you for being afk, but rarely for playing poorly, as it's usually in their interest. As far as I know, there's no way of telling who exactly reported you, though sometimes it's easy to guess, or they'll plainly telly you. Reports can make no sense to you, and karma is only a measure of a player's skill over many, many games: you might get complimented for a pretty average game, or get reported for an excellent performance. And yes, CVs get reported more often: if you lose, your team will blame you; if you win, the enemies will blame you.

I had a similar experience a few months ago, same map and same spawn, except I was defending. The Northern team made it South and just casually started to cap us, with our CV refusing to reset them and our BBs refusing to get inside to stop it. I had to personally rush in with my Charles Martel, exposed to a deadly crossfire, because some players are just too afraid to die in a videogame...

It's so funny to go back and read the 2018 reviews and comments for the Asashio: "worst ship in the game! over-specialized! only good for the memes! a liability to the team!" And in this game I wasn't even "clever", in fact I got sloppy and slipped within radar range of a Stalingrad *twice*.

I've never known Dreadnought to be bugged. However, people sometimes forget that the damage must come from at least 4 different enemies, so maybe your game didn't meet that criterion. I've had occasions when I spent most of the game dueling with an HE-spammer on some flank, so maybe 90k out of 120k dmg taken was from that one guy, and the rest, let's say, from the CV, so no Dreadnought for me.

Out of curiosity, I went over my last 10 BB games that were good enough for me to bother to save the replay and screenshots. Here's how much damage I took from fires in each: - République ~2100 xp, 11% fire damage - Conqueror ~ 2500 xp, 13% - République ~ 2400 xp, 14% - Amagi ~1200 xp (a Draw!), 17% - Shikishima ~ 2500 xp, 17% - Shikishima ~ 2800 xp, 0% (out of 153k dmg taken: they had a Colombo on my flank) - Bismarck ~ 2300 xp, 0% (out of 58k dmg taken) - Shikishima ~ 1400 xp (sad Kraken ), 23%, but then again I pushed a Smolensk... - Oklahoma ~ 1500 xp, 16% - Amagi ~ 2100 xp, 30%, but it was a steamroll so I let the fires burn Basically, even if you play competently and probably don't take massive AP salvoes, fires should still only do about 20% of damage to you, unless you really go ask for them.

With the exception of detonation flags for Ranked, or for when I play division and I don't want to handicap my friends with an untimely demise, no flag is "really needed", but they all help, and getting them as a reward for performance was a very nice reinforcement. And no, achievements are not rare: I earn about 1 every 2.5 games. Now, I may be an above average player, but getting a Dreadnought/First Blood/Detonation/Close Quarter Expert/Flesh Wound medal is within everyone's reach: we're not just talking High Caliber, Kraken and Solo Warrior here. Also, they could've simply added flags for Co-op or Scenarios, maybe 3 per day instead of 10, for instance.

The AA is also a lot better on the DoY though, and that's important at T7. KGV: 168 - 270 - 84 + 4 (short, medium and long-range aura + flak bursts) DoY: 375 - 445 - 74 + 4 Hood: 18 - 112 - 155 + 5 (but Def AA will give you 50% more DPS and 300% more explosion damage) Nelson: 315 - 224 - 46 + 1

There's like 54300911 ways to mitigate fire damage. Worst-case scenario, buy (former) Dreadnought and Fireproof flags for credits: your healing ability / fire duration will rise to 120%/80% = 150% of its stock value. Meanwhile, AP overmatch makes a Kongo hopeless against a QE, a Dunkerque an xp pinata against a Sinop, etc. No flag, module or captain skill will do anything about that: it would require changing the plating, which would open a can of worms. Assuming you won't make basic mistakes, the AP overmatch still lets you at the whim of the matchmaker if you play mid tiers, while fires can be managed and mitigated a lot.

Just my opinion of course, but I think the torps are more useful on Kleber (I'm using the Mogador as reference: I'm still at T9 on that line): - the window to stealth-launch them is much smaller, so they're more for yoloing - the detection is also worse + they're MUCH faster + they reload in HALF the time Basically, a Kleber can rush into a cap at the start of a game and have 75 knots torps ready to go, while the Marceau will still be reloading: it's a massive difference in deterrence. The torps on the Marceau are basically too slow, both in speed and reload, to be truly useful against DDs, and 9 km range isn't really competitive for area denial, at T10, with all the radars around. They're kinda neither here nor there, imho.

Other than maybe the Germans, I don't see which T7 BBs can "rely on secondaries for damage": that's much more likely to happen at high tier, in my experience. Huge slabs of rock are common at high tiers: see the islands of Canada, North, Islands of Ice compared to those on New Dawn, Estuary, Trident, which are mid-tier maps. Personally, if the prospect is to enter a funnel and likely get torped to death, I'd rather stay back and deal some good damage, before moving in when it's safer and I can take a 1v1. Killing zones make me want to push less, not more.

Imho it's the opposite. Islands need to be tall enough to prevent you from being spotted, but low enough to allow you to fire over them while staying fairly close, in their "shadow". On low tier maps like New Dawn or Ring, you can easily find these islands and use them to punish players who push too aggressively, but the chaotic nature of low tier games, where CVs are highly common, and the small size of those maps, means that you can't abuse that mechanic for too long. Basically, they allow better players to outtrade worse players, which is good, but only for so long. At high tiers, on the other hand, you have huge slabs of rock (North, Northern Lights, Canada, etc.) or Icebergs (Islands of Ice) that are very hard to fire over (they have no "outcrops"), so the islands act as giant funnels toward killing zones (see the Eastern cap on North), where only some brawling BBs, or maybe a Petro, would ever push. Things get complicated by the omnipresence of certain maps: for a T10 BB it's easy to fire over the islands of Haven, but for a T6 BB much less so, so again you get the funnelling effect that locks down the teams and makes the gameplay a bit static. High tier maps often have no islands outside of the immediate vicinity of the caps, which gives no safe haven for a wounded ship to hide and still contribute with long-range fire: Canada for instance only has a "CV island" in each spawn, but that's it, "Tears of the Desert" doesn't even get that. Imho that contributes to roflstomps, as good players who otherwise might use terrain to slow down and (temporarily) outtrade the enemy are just mowed down in the open.

Some recent games where I reckon I played almost flawlessly: So much bleakness On the other hand, my Z-31 grind is going rather smoothly: "Keep your expectations low..." and all that.

Imho she is worth it. The superheal allows you to tank HE spam extremely well, and that's important for a ship that's going to spend a lot of time hugging islands to protect herself from crossfires. Keep in mind though, that you can only pen 50% of regular AP/HE/SAP damage, and I believe 33% of citadel damage, so the effectiveness of each heal, which in theory can restore almost 50% of your hp, in reality goes down with each charge. Example #1: - you only take 100% healable damage (fires, floodings, overpens) - all your heals are used in full, so you can restore 50% + 50% + 50% = 150% of your hp (200% with Superintendent) - best-case scenario, your maximum hp is 300% of your original Example #2: - you only take 50% healable damage - to use your first heal in full, you need to go down to 1 hp, then heal back to 50% - you go down to 1 hp again, use a heal, but now you only go back to 25% - same, to 12.5% - basically you heal 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 with Superindendent = 93% (total hp = 193%) Example #3: - you only take "citadel damage" (33% or 1/3 healable) - same reasoning, you heal 1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 + 1/81 with Superintendent = 49% (total hp = 149%) As you can see, you'll be a true zombie if you bait Harugumos and Colberts into trying to melt you, but any North Carolina overmatching you with AP, even without hitting your citadel, will eat into your hp for good. Having said that, the DPM is awesome, if a bit difficult to use due to slow shells and poor rudder/gun handling. You'll murder DDs at close range, you'll murder cruisers that show even just a hint of broadside, and you'll laugh in the face of BBs with 15'' guns (Bismarck, Alsace, Lepanto...). Against 16'' guns and above, you might take heavy damage in response, but even with just your front two turrets you'll make them pay dearly. Basically, it's hard to have a really low-damage game in the Salem, which is why I find her very re-playable. Just a piece of advice: take RPF to make up for the shorter radar range (and lack of hydro). It's useful to know when a DD is spotting you from the flank and the position just isn't safe. Because the heals give diminishing returns, you might consider skipping Superintendent (the extra Def AA isn't too great, either) and take Top Grade Gunner, which is very useful in those nose-in brawls that are so important in the late game. I read or LWM's review that the heal queues 33% of citadel damage instead of 10%, but maybe it's been changed since 2018. WoWs FT doesn't show it: does anyone know how to be sure?

Imho she's a pretty good ship: - forget about the hydro, which is mostly for self-defense against torps, as the ship acquisition range is a meagre 4 km - she's got the best AA of all the T7 British BBs - the AP angles are very nice against cruisers and same-tier BBs - the reload is bad, but not stupidly bad like an Oklahoma's, for instance Her main problem is her crappy armor, particularly her huge bow: it's very hard to carry in such a ship because in the late game, when you can't hope to catch distracted enemies broadside, you're far less tanky than an angled Sinop, North Carolina, or even just a Bayern. You get overmatched and you can't overmatch back. Both Nelson and Hood are more unique: I got the DoY because of her history, but I barely player her. I wouldn't get it as my first "expensive" coal purchase. Also...I'll be honest with you: you're basically a beginner and you've barely played T7 so far, so I wouldn't recommend a ship that is so fragile.

Your record damage is in the Wickes?

Gotta love how a Salem with Def AA on does ZERO damage to those planes as they slowly despawn, robbing the player of some deserved xp for dodging that carpet bombing...

I think if they hit on the bulge, there's about a 45% dmg reduction (the Yamato has one of the best torpedo belts in the game), but in any case there can be a damage saturation mechanism, which I'll never properly understand.

I welcome the addition of a maneuverability captain skill, but let's be honest, virtually no one is going to spec Swift in Silence. Not on a BB at least. Instead of +10% speed only when the ship is unspotted, I propose the new Proficient Pilot (or whatever) skill for 4 points: +5% speed -10% rudder time -25% acceleration time to be active at all times. It would be equivalent to a speed flag, half a Rudder Mod and half an Engine Mod, which compete with Dmg Con Mod 2 (which reduces fire and flooding duration) for module slot #4. I see it as a reasonable alternative to Emergency Repair Expert or Concealment Expert, especially for sluggish BBs like most low-tier dreadnoughts and some high-tier behemots.