tocqueville8

1st win in the Yodo To paraphrase Joey Tribbiani: "What's not to like? Custard? Good. Torps? Good. Alpha? Gooood."

Gold qualifiers are a bit of a pain, so choose something strong (say, Venezia), fun for you (Colbert for me) or just reliable (AFT F. Sherman can bypass the DDs and put the hurt on their "burly protectors"). Once you're in Gold, just play whatever you like for the rewards. I find it liberating: I don't care about Rank 1, so I'll play until at least one win in each of a variety of ships. No pressure, which actually helps playing well.

I like that ship but she basically prints 1.6k xp losses for me No idea how one could play her in Ranked, where enemies are even more likely to be nose-in and make my AP as pointless as a broken pencil.

That's fine, but what does it have to do with Naval Battles? I honestly don't know: can't CCs also earn stars for their clan?

F. Sherman for me, not even close. Granted, I don't have the Black, but beside the smoke+radar gimmick (which is strong, obviously, but very centered around cap-contesting) we're looking at wonky torps (good DPM, stealth and range, abysmal speed) and unreliable damage-dealing potential. I'm sure I'd do well enough with her, but I don't think I'd have a lot of fun. The other two I have played far less combined than the Sherman alone, despite getting her many months later. Sherman has: good self-defense capabilities, between the smoke, hydro, Def AA (yes, it helps a bit) and SAP against cruisers great damage-farming potential (highest avg dmg for me in a Tier 10 DD, even higher than some BBs...), thanks to SAP and the great ballistics slow speed and nigh-unusable torps Imho she's a great pick. I run range instead of concealment and there's no game where I feel completely useless. Halsey's Confederate talent also procs quite often (again, the range & ballistics allow you to damage multiple distant targets in a typical game), meaning even better reload. Z-44 is...alright, but not in this meta imho. She'd be great with few DDs/subs to have to go through before getting to torp those juicy BBs, but now there's too much screen in the way, and she's plain bad against DDs: poor turret angles and traverse, shells geared towards damaging large targets (improved AP damage & HE penetration, neither of which helps much against DDs), no hydro... Neustra is...frustrating, for me. Good concealment, but it doesn't synergize with the superheal (unless one trades CE for damage skills, I guess...); torps that hit hard, but reload slowly and have poor range; good ballistics, but only 4 guns, etc. She's a good performer but I always get the impression I'm running the wrong build, one way or another.

Btw you can use https://wowsft.com/ to experiment with builds and see what values turn out. Select "Fitting Tool" in the top menu, then your ship. I think it assumes that all the conditional skills you picked, like Top Grade Gunner, Swift in Silence, Furious, Close Quarters Combat etc., are active.

Judging by these stats (all solo games), so far my best performer in Randoms is the Roma, but she doesn't sound like what you're looking for: the armor is good, at least as long as you angle the guns aren't especially large nor especially accurate, though they have other qualities (turret traverse, shell speed...) I wouldn't take her to Ranked, given the mediocre AA, overmatch and secondaries she uptiers well, but again that doesn't matter in Ranked

Imho Azuma has a lower skill floor and a lower skill ceiling: she has less potential, but is more comfortable. She's also less unique: Zao, Yoshino, Nevsky and Moskva (radar aside), Goliath, Henri, Marseille etc. play or can be played similarly.

This is the game where your planes can climb a mountain and drop torps from a 500 m precipice, only for them to start working perfectly, and in a tidy spread...

Just had this one. What's that superunicum playing, then? Could that be a premium British sub, perchance? Incidentally, great job with the matchmaker: my team and I really had a ball...

Torpedo skills in general are questionable in PvP, even on DDs imho, but in Brawls/Operations they bring good value. The point of Heavy HE/SAP, I think, is to give a straight buff to super-light cruisers, which were nerfed by the loss of AFT, while also enabling lighthouse builds (together with TGG) on CAs/CBs with good ballistics, meaning a larger caliber, probably. As such, it's a skill I take on a lot of ships. And honestly, which CL with DD-caliber guns needs a range buff that it can't get from the module in slot #6? Flint and...? Sure, large cruisers were shafted with the loss of FP+BoS, but I think a nerf to the category was in order given how popular they were, especially in Ranked.

I mean...since the captain rework they've introduced two lines of cruisers that are "torpedo focused" (certainly compared to their peers), plus there are brawling modes where the 15% extra damage makes a lot more sense than, say, Superintendent. Same for Coop and Operations, possibly. Not saying there's a huge variety, but I'm enjoying lighthouse builds, which were not a thing before the rework.

I see lower WR than usual, higher damage but also higher tier. 132 kills over 115 games is 1.15 each, better than his average...

The OP is a 55% solo WR player at Tier 10, so I don't think he deserves these comments. He probably just had an unfortunate matchmaker for the last couple of dozen games, which can happen to anyone.

Standard Battle, teams dead even on points and only their Charleston and my Nassau left. I went middle to ambush him, but then the my cap's icon rotated, so I had no option but to turn back and peek around the island into a "sudden death": I had 900 hp left, so it was going to be him or me. Thankfully, he flubbed his salvo

Sir, this is a cemetery

Not that you asked, but I would say there are several fun RB ships besides Ohio I would say Azuma and Groningen (Friesland, in my case) are about as good, the latter having a higher floor and a higher ceiling, as well as being more unique in playstyle (and historically interesting, if that pleases you). The captain might be an issue: leaving Yamamoto's perks aside, at least you have an IJN captain. Still, the Groningen should do fine even with a 10-pointer, which doesn't take long to train. Overall, I'll once again defend the Azuma as a relaxing second-line cruiser, but I'll admit the Groningen is more interesting. Still, this is about you, and you seem to struggle a bit in DDs: with Groningen you need to be particularly aware of enemy radars, which can spoil your smoke, and cunning enough to use your hydro offensively from time to time. If you're having problems with Mahan and Fletcher, maybe she isn't for you, with all due respect

There are too many variables: wanting to skip stock modules on new tech tree branches wanting to skip whole tech tree ships, because they have a poor reputation (say, Vittorio Veneto...), they're "unethical" (Soviet CVs, subs...) or just to make RB regrinds faster availability of ship xp boosters to mitigate these issues quality of the FXP ship pool vs the coal ship pool availability of coal by other means (auction for FXP, auction for credits, steel conversion...) Only the OP knows his "economic" situation in full. I'm probably biased because I have all the tech-tree lines, all the RB ships and many Legendary Modules, and I'm sitting on a ton of next-to-useless ship xp boosters, so I'd much rather use those to regrind a line and save my fxp, but I think my points stand that: Yoshino is pretty far down the list of most interesting/fun coal options coal is easy to get, but also easy to spend and there's no way of skipping it, while you can substitute ship xp for fxp (in fact, one could look at it in reverse)...except for fxp ships.

I'd get Azuma or neither. The reason is that you have a bunch of good/fun options for coal (Napoli, F. Sherman, Tromp, Iwami, Kearsarge, Malta, Black...), while for FXP it basically comes down to Azuma, Agir or Groningen (Hayate is twice as expensive), or dump some of it on Research Bureau regrinds. Yoshino has been around for year, but I haven't brought myself to buy her yet: there were about 15 coal ships before, plus some unique captains...

I welcome secondary damage being revalued, not spotting damage: it's often completely accidental and it's still ancillary to...actual damage, which someone has to do.

Disregard then, @OldschoolGaming_YouTube. Still, for 51k points 2 full resets with the x2 bonus wouldn't be enough: you need to do another one for 10.2k, or buy the premium Battle Pass next patch (10k points will be the final reward, according to the article). You say you only have FXP for 2 regrinds, but that may change if you wait 3 months. If not, I'd do one grind the old-fashioned way, buying and playing the ships, before the x2 RB bonus resets. You might spend some FXP on the stock modules, or to pay your way to the Akizuki if you don't like the earlier torpedoboats. Remember: after the economic rework FXP is about 4 times harder to get than ship XP, for the same level (color) of boosters.

"Soviet BBs have a gimmick where the closer you are to the target, the better the dispersion. So, ideally with like the Kremlin and the line you're encouraged to push into close ranges. Slava flipped that around: the farther away you are from the target, the better your dispersion is." So much wrong in these sentences. The guy's a teacher ffs

This scheme is a bit confusing. The bottom line is that: the reset assigns 200, 500, 500, 1500, 1500, 6000 points (10,400 in total) on the ships from Tier 5 to Tier 10, or twice as much with the bonus the points stay on each ship until you claim them buy buying her and playing her once any real "work" you do on the line, researching upgraded hulls or the next ship, either with FXP or ship XP (by playing the ships) goes towards accumulating RB points: using FXP and not buying the ships, letting the points accumulate, is fine for saving credits, but you might prefer buying the ships and playing them (with ship xp boosters) to save FXP instead. For instance: I have 200M credits but "only" 1M FXP, plus a ton of ship xp boosters to spare, so I prefer replaying the ships. Now, the cheapest way to get 6,000 RB points for the Colbert is probably: reset Harugumo during the current 3-month period, probably close to the end so you can enjoy her in the meantime FXP it again, don't buy anything when the x2 bonus resets, almost 3 months from now, reset Harugumo again now the Akizuki has 1,500 x (2+2) = 6,000 RB points, enough for Colbert even if you get no RB points in the meantime some other way buy Akizuki, play her once, get your points buy Colbert BUT that requires waiting almost 3 months! It's more logical to: reset and FXP the line now buy only Harugumo, play her once, get your RB points (12,000 of them, if you haven't used the current x2 bonus already) buy and enjoy Colbert enjoy Harugumo for almost 3 months, when you'll reset & FXP the line again if you want to: the 8,400 RB points not collected yet aren't going anywhere in the meantime if you want to, you can sell the Harugumo at half her price 3 months from now, after you reset again with the x2 bonus, you're going to see: Hatsuharu 800 points, Shiratsuyu 2000, Akizuki 6000, Kitakaze 6000, Harugumo 12000 (instead of 24000)