Captain_Newman

In my opinion it's a pretty safe bet Smol will be in christmas containers. Yes, it'd be the first time a t10 is found in one, but it's not like WG hasn't been pushing that boundary constantly, so it wouldn't be unlike them to cross this one as well. It also happens to perfectly fit the pattern of "release broken ship - make it unavailable when it gets the broken reputation - put her in lootboxes - count the money come christmas". It comes in the footsteps of Kamikaze, Gremy, Belfast, Kutuzov, etc... It'll happen, just wait and see.

You're not giving us enough info, tbh. Do you have personal preferences in terms of class? Do you prefer bb's, cruisers, dd's...? Where do you want to play it, randoms, coop, something competitive? Etc etc. The two coal ships being removed soon are the Smolensk and Jean Bart, so I'd focus on those. One is broken and boring, the other very strong yet fun, but a tier lower and less useful for competitive environments. It really depends on your preferences though. Overall though, your first t10 should absolutely be a tech tree ship, not a coal or fxp one - you need to learn as you progress through tiers, skipping to t10 with resources won't help you get better. Since the two ships I mentioned are being removed, though, you do want to get at least one before that, but as you do that I'd keep her in port / coop until you're confident you can be effective at t10. I also wouldn't necessarily listen to everyone recommending the Smolensk. Yes, it's broken and getting removed soon, but let me offer my personal experience with it, which happens to be similar to many other people's I know: you get bored of it. Fast. If I was only allowed to keep either my Smolensk or Jean Bart, I'd be keeping the JB, no contest. Why? Because it's actually fun. But, like I said, get either, but whichever you go for, get to t10 in silver line ships of the same class before you take it into randoms, both you and your teams will have a more enjoyable experience.

I would agree if the JB and Smolensk weren't getting removed. As it is, one of those two is the better buy, because there's nothing stopping him from going for the Thunderer after, say, the JB, as the Thunderer will remain available for the time being.

Thunderer is primarily an AP ship. Yes, her HE is excellent too, and you shouldn't shy away from using it on bow-on BB's and DD's, but otherwise? AP all the way. You get the highest accuracy 457's in the game, and it doesn't have the Conq's short fuse so you can cit bb's all day long. If you're going to play it with HE, you may as well take a Conq instead, you get a higher volume of shells and a superheal.

Wut? Jean Bart, alongside the Georgia, offers the most mobile gameplay you will find in battleships. It's a fast roamer / flanker, not a boring bow-in tanker, if anyone plays her like that they just don't understand the ship. I can't recommend this ship enough, get her before she's removed. Smolensk is strong, broken even, and getting removed as well, personally I got bored of her fast and don't play her all that much - on any other ship, getting a high damage game feels rewarding, with the Smol you're like "beh, I did it in a Smol, nothing special". But, if someone tells me "I like BB's but hate static gameplay", the JB is the first thing I'd recommend.

Ark Royal, I guess? HMS Incapable seems pretty bad to me. Haven't bothered even trying the Audacious.

Yup. Had so much fun yesterday when I got a Saipan with 500 battles (and all red stats, ofc) on my team vs. a very decent Shokaku on the enemy one... They shouldn't be allowed to play high tier premiums outside of coop until they at least reach that tier with silver lines for the class they're playing. Even that would be a very generous and minimal requirement.

Roflstomp matches where you can't even win with a good score because the enemy melts too fast sure are annoying, but I don't think making potatoes artificially survive longer would be a good design choice, nor do I think it would result in better gameplay. Now you'd have bismarcks sailing broadside and it'd take as long to kill them as a kremlin... not being punished for making mistakes, or being punished less, is the wrong direction imho. The main source of frustration in this game always comes from the mixing of super casuals, good, and unicums all in the same MM. This isn't easily fixed, but let me try to make a suggestion which I'm not even sure if it'd work or not, but here goes... It's more of a carrot (rather than stick) system of motivating players to invest effort. Imagine something called "random battle plus", or some such. It's basically random battles with a league system - you qualify for the next league by consistently performing good. Rewards are better in higher leagues, and much like clan tags changing colors the higher in leagues you go, so do player names. If someone wants to do their JuSt FoR fUn shenaningans, they can still do normal randoms, coop, or stay in the bottom league in randoms plus. Those that don't want to have a bunch of 40%ers on their team get to advance and avoid the bottom tier players, but on balance, it would also prevent them from sealclubbing much less skilled players as they'd be in a league of their peers. I guess you could described it as a hybrid of randoms, CB's and ranked, that's available all the time. Overall, I think something like this would give people options, as long as it's introduced alongside classic random battles and not replace it. A potential down side here would be divisions - if they're allowed, you'd need to division with someone who has access to the same league as yourself.

You guys didn't read the whole thread, did you? A Graf Spee team torping from 200m away being deliberate at the start of a game is not hard presumption.

A few weeks ago I had someone that had about 6k games and multiple t10's type this in chat: "remind me again, does Montana have radar?" One of those t10's he owns? Montana. And I don't think he was joking, either, he seemed genuinely relieved when we told him that the enemy Montana won't be radaring him.

He makes a great point there, it's a shame it's worded in that way though, makes it easy for WG to dismiss. Not that they wouldn't do it anyway.. sigh. But yea, good point - these suggestions do mostly come from people who play it very casually and have the "wouldn't it be cool if WG introduced <insert something naval from WW2 they heard of>" without having any actual understanding of the game and it's mechanics. In comes WG with it's catering to the lowest common denominator and you get the bs we have, and keep getting. The sad part is, subs could have actually been fun had they stuck to the concept introduced during that halloween event with subs - as in, limited time can be spent underwater, and you actually have to aim your torpedoes, no guidance. I would have been fine with that. How am I supposed to go counter a sub in a DD if he'll just ping me, and even if his magical mk48 adcap torps don't nuke me by some miracle, the fact he pinged me makes my smoke useless so his surface ships can just keep shooting at me? The way they set this up, I don't see anyone who's not suicidal going for subs in their DD's.

I can feel your pain, I had a similar experience yesterday. It was actually worse than saturday, which was already atrocious enough, being on patch weekend. What does amaze me is the sheer consistency of german bb players being terrible. If you have one on your team, you can be sure that he will do one of three things they always seem to do: either snipe from max range / hide behind islands the whole game, or yolo into half the enemy team alone and die, or just be one of those geniuses that goes mid range than sails broadside to literally everything while spamming HE. Oh, and ofc they always fix single fires. I mean, I like them when they're on the enemy team, they're good damage farm, but having them on my own team usually means you have to carry that much harder because you effectively started with a ship less.

There's also the issue that simply dividing in below 50% and above 50% is painting with a very broad brush here; while it would exclude the worst players from being thrown in your match, it doesn't account for the fact that there is a vast, vast difference in gameplay quality between like a 50.2% WR player and someone that's over 60%. Maybe even greater than between a 42%er and a 50% player.

Even though HE spammers can be countered with smart positioning as well, I can kind of see the complaints about them, WG went full tard on the HE spammers. Anyone who thinks DD's are an issue, though, with the amount of hard counters WG has, and keeps introducing into the game.. needs to uninstall.

Stealthiest class in the game with guided torpedoes that can citadel and ignore torpedo protection, because reasons. (I thought the purpose of torpedo protection was, y'know, to protect against torpedoes? Seems like a complicated idea to comprehend, though...). Main counter are DD's that, in order to actually get in a position to kill a sub, they need to enter a cap, probably on the enemy side of it, while it's probably being covered by a CV / radars / radar DD's / hydro / SAP spammers / Smolensk / whatever else WG came up with that hard counters DD's (do they even come up with anything else these days?). They also need to do this while hoping the enemy sub doesn't get them pinged and nukes them with torps. Added fun: being pinged means your smoke is useless as well, on the off chance there isn't an enemy radar available to light you up. As usual, though, the actual counter to the subs are going to be CV's. Because it's perfectly balanced to have that one class that counters everything else in the game with no actual counters to itself.

A very fresh and novel idea. Too bad it's been proposed 50 million times, and explained why it wouldn't work about 4-5 times more. Other than that, a damn fine plan.

It depends on which BB, but overall I'd say your right in that playing solo, a cruiser or a DD will have far more carry potential. In a solo carry situation, I think a fast roaming / flanking BB will have more of a shot of influencing the match positively than something that typically sits bow in and tanks. So, Georgia, JB, Bourgogne, Repu, etc...

You know, reading this makes me think that all those JuSt PlaYiNg FoR fUn 42% WR folks aren't just regular players, they're WG employees that work in the balancing department...

The lack of effort is such that even winning is rarely satisfying anymore - because more often than not, you won because half the enemy team were dead in like 7-8 min, yours owns all the caps, and the rest are sailing to a map corner away from anyone because in a game that doesn't really sanction you for dying in terms of xp or credits, they still have that "don't care if I'm losing the game, I must survive" mentality. Like, a lot of them will say "I just play for fun" - what is fun about sailing away from a fight (that doesn't cost you anything to participate in)? At least put up a fight, do something...

Repeat offenders become orange (locked into coop) for a while, I guess if they keep doing it they get banned.I'm not sure what you'd have to do to actually get permabanned, even the least desireable teammates are a potential revenue source for WG so I' don't think they're all that eager to permaban anyone, tbh.

3x Gremy, especially top tier, would be pretty evil...

They won't, as it would defeat the entire purpose of them adding the whole thing in the first place, as you outlined above.

There's plenty of good, experienced players telling them to only address individual ships that are deemed problematic, and not replace one set of problems with a giant clusterlovemaking bundle that makes IFHE rules per tier a lot more complicated, and create whole new sets of problems for a bunch of ships. As usual though, WG isn't listening. I'm still hopeful they give up on the whole thing, but knowing WG, they'll shove it down our throats after some very brief and inadequate testing sessions.

I was ok with all of them so far, the Albemarle seems a bit problematic, though. It can happily outtrade most cruiser opposition if top tier, problem being BB's - the limited range and lack of speed and maneuverability means that you get hit, hard. These are supposed to be tanky cruisers meant for pushing, but the issue is you will often be forced into a kiting stance, and there's much better ships for that. Albemarle is still mostly ok when top tier, but in t10 it can be a downright painful experience. Being forced into being less than 14km away from the 457 gang that laugh at your 25mm plating.. Thunderer, Ohio, Kremlin, etc.. yikes and a half. You're too slow, clumsy, and short ranged to effectively kite those, and good luck pushing a flank with these kinds of BB's on it, you will be eating shells, and they won't be overpens. I find myself trying to keep islands or other people's smokes between me or the enemy team, or trying to ambush something lighter between the islands, but overall Albemarle can be a bit of a struggle. I'll see how I fare with the Drake.

I'm seeing the same trend. I can also tell you that out of 24 people in any random battle, at least 16-18 will usually have red stats (WR in low 40's, PR around 500 or lower, etc). I've also noticed that people with below 40% WR overall are becoming less rare - before if you ran across one of those it was something talked about, because rarely people managed to suck this bad. Nowadays, I see one at least once every 20-30 battles. 42% used to be the standard of bad - I have a feeling that's soon going to be 38%.