Captain_Newman

Not all bundles are equal - some rewards are better than others, and let's be real, most just want that one reward - the permacamo. Now, in this game, RNG already dictates which map you'll play on, which ships you'll play against, which random teammates you will get (will they have a functional brain cell or two, or just a bunch of 44%-ers), how good your salvos will be, will your torp drops have that convenient target - sized holes in them or not, will you get citadels or overpens / full pens for 0 damage, will you get fires, are your modules going to get constantly broken, what daily rewards will you get from the containers, will one of them be a SC, will that SC be the usual garbage or actually contain something useful, etc etc. We do not need the amount of grind for a specific reward in a temporary event dictated by RNG as well. Especially when, as I mentioned, it means your friends / clan mates which are competent can get it sooner just due to RNG, and then you're stuck with the speshuls the MM assigns you, again, by RNG. So, I don't see how us asking for a specific reward having a fixed price doesn't make sense to you? How is someone getting the same reward in 2-3 battles, and someone else in like 100, fair or fun? Maybe you enjoy gambling. Some of us see it as annoying and potentially helpful in developing bad habits.

And as usual, the spreadsheet says "all is good, don't worry your pretty little head comrade".

Put mine fields on map edges, similar to those we saw in the Dunkirk operation. Also mine areas like the 9/10 line on North/Northern lights, and everything between A and map edge on Okinawa. Add to other problem areas as required. Observe BB's still sailing to those areas then typing "noob team no support" when they die to flooding damage caused by mines. Bring popcorn and beer to enhance your experience.

My personal experience with Monarch was that while she wasn't quite as bad as everyone says it is, it just doesn't really excel at anything. As such I found her to be a mediocre ship, one unlikely I will play again having grinded through it. It's the Lion I actually hated. Not sure if it was just me but the guns simply refused to cooperate, dispersion wise. Had no trouble before or after it, on Conq, but the Lion experience was just miserable for me.

"I really don't like our efforts..." He personally doesn't like what we as a community have to do in this event. What confuses you?

Well, someone just requested that they nerf Smolensk AP (yes, really). Expect a nerf of it's AP now. This will make it balanced, comrade

Agreed, there's more RNG in WG products than in all of Vegas.. Those permacamos should have had a fixed price in filth. One of the problems with this system is, for example - all my clan mates got the t10 camo much earlier than I did (because they got it in bundles 1-14, depending on who). My t10 camo bundle was on 24/24. Yes, my rng was that bad. Now, the problem here isn't that my clan mates got it a bit sooner than I did. Doesn't really matter. The problem is, it got tougher to find clan mates still willing to grind the event after they got their stuff, and even if they go play it as a favor to you, they'll get tired of it in 2-3 games - and I can't blame them. So, now you go from 2200-2700 filth, 3-man-div-kills-Rasputin-and-anyone-who-fires-at-you games, to "both my random team mates died to the first Varg and Fossil that spawn right after the Ghoul does twice in a row" games. And even if I somehow get teammates that survive the first few minutes, it's almost a given that if they have even a little capacity left (say they're at 670/700), and it's 6 min to the end and they are near the portal which is active, they won't go through. Oh, no. They'll go try to solo Rasputin that is already being farmed by another team that has already demonstrated it's hostile. Even if they somehow survived that team, they'll die to the shielded Khabas that start spawning 5 min before match end. If only someone was there to warn them and tell them exactly what would happen if they don't extract.. oh wait.. literally none of them appear to be able to read and comprehend a polite explanation I put in chat on why what they are doing is suicide and they should extract now. I'm not making this stuff up, random teammates I got in this event are beyond terrible. It's basically your bad randoms game team mate made infinitely worse by the fact that if he still doesn't understand the basics of angling or ammo selection after 4 years, he sure doesn't understand the intricate mechanics of this event, making him almost entirely useless. So, please don't have RNG decide how long I'll need to grind something - whoever is less lucky and finishes last will have to go through the pain of random teammates, which is a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

It is very silly that CV's are exempted from this. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather not have RNG decide battles at all, but with detonations in the game, they should be present on CV's just like they are on all other classes. I can find no balance nor historical reason for CV's being immune. They're already basically safe until the match ends most of the time, unless they're played by those geniuses that either never move at all or go into a cap early game for reasons only known to themselves. They're already far less vulnerable to fires, which only last for 4 seconds, and that's if you can get a second one before their auto damage con is ready again. I know historical realism is a really bad argument for balance decisions in a game like this, but just in case someone brings this up... IJN Soryu called, said "man I wish CV's couldn't detonate". Ships full of aviation fuel and ordinance that has to be present in vulnerable areas in order to service planes can't detonate? Say what? I'd be curious to hear WG's reasoning for CV's not being able to detonate. It's not a huge deal, just a really weird decision imho.

So can the Genova. The difference being, the Omaha and her clones are actually able to deal damage, especially if you're skilled enough to do it. Omaha is very much a glass cannon - yes, it will get deleted if bb's get half a chance to shoot her, but if you can position right, fire from stealth, or dodge well, you will be rewarded with good damage numbers. With Genova you'll put in enormous amounts of work just to stay alive and if you did really well maybe you'll do like 50k or something? Most times not, though? Trouble is, your targets should really be dd's, and if they're supported by something heavier in any way, good luck getting into a position to shoot them that won't result in you getting heavily punished. Having no smoke, hydro, meaningful AA etc means your team utility is just.. eh. Omahas / Marbleheads are far, far superior boats.

...or outside of it

I'd like to see detonations removed. Want to kill an enemy ship? Bring it's health pool to 0 with well aimed shots or torps. I don't feel good if I detonate and I don't really feel good if I detonate someone, as it's not a victory that was based on skill, but just dumb luck instead. I understand the naval history argument, and maintain it has no place in a game like this. Neither do detonations. Just my 5 cents. At least they're somewhat rare now, I just get triggered when RNG changes the course of a battle. Same thing with cyclones. Enjoy your RNG event that will prevent you from shooting anyone before the battle ends, losing something you probably would have won as a result. And I will never, ever understand people who defend these two mechanics? This game is not supposed to be realistic, but fun. How is having your skill made irrelevant by RNG fun? I just don't get it.

I'm aware. I guess some people actually do buy it? It's honestly hard to imagine. If it was this bad but had actual historical significance, I could see naval history buffs buying her, but she never existed so that motivation to own her doesn't really exist. As she is, I can't see why anyone short of a hard core Italian nationalist would part with their irl money to get this thing. I really doubt the sales figures on it are very good, and it's probably only in the store because it doesn't cost WG anything to put her up there. I have to assume the vast majority of Genovas you encounter will have been grinded for free. At least I hope they were

I think people over react to this - much like with CV's, the issue is partly psychological. If a BB blaps you from the map in a single salvo, you might not be happy, but it's not as annoying as being repeatedly hit by hundreds of shells over a period of time from a target you might not even be able to see or hit, while being constantly set on fire. This results in people being triggered and raging about it in chat and on the forum. However, both situations can be avoided with proper awareness and positioning. I'd be interested to know how many of those people vocal about the evils of Smolensk actually check team lineups at battle start, use an enlarged mini map with last known positions on, and generally spend any time in thinking what could possibly happen on each cap and how to position to deal with these eventualities. A Smolensk is extremely effective against people with bad awareness - it becomes very limited in it's abilities against people who think ahead and position accordingly. Now, are there too many fire spammers being released? Sure. I can agree with this. Is this problem as bad as people say it is, for example, is it causing the bb's to hang back? It's an easy conclusion to make, but here's an issue with this. Back when I started playing, ships like Aki-Kita-Haru, Worcester, Smolensk, Friesland, etc. simply didn't exist. The most dangerous fire spammer was considered to be the Zao. And guess what, the most complained about thing in the game was still the camping bb's that snipe from max range and score last. Walk away from that with whatever conclusions you wish. Too many fire spammers? Sure. Smolensk needing a nerf? Perhaps. All of this causing the sky to fall? I'll respectfully disagree on that one.

I thought people get penalized for this behavior automatically, no? Pretty sure you can go pink, then orange (only coop allowed) if you're a repeat offender. Now, should people get into coop quicker? Possibly. The trouble is, does WG have the ability to distinguish between game exits, killed processes in task manager, regular disconnects etc? Because you probably want to avoid sanctioning people with a legimitate tech issue. I once went pink when the game had a bug that meant playing certain tiers would lock you on the loading screen indefinitely. Crashing the game and re-running the game would either put you on the indefinite loading screen again, or return you to port while the battle was still going on, making you pink once the battle was over. After a few attempts, it would be easy to get locked into coop. So the problem with a harsh automatic system that penalizes this behavior are the false positives. Simply removing the button won't prevent these kind of people from screwing their teams over, as previously stated here (though I suppose an argument could be made that I've never seen a unicum behave like that, so you could conclude you were unlucky the moment MM gave you this guy on the team regardless if he plays or not). Not sure if WG gives some kind of a warning when people try to leave a battle before it's over? Something like "doing this might prevent you from entering random games for a time period" etc? I legit never pressed the exit button during a battle so I just don't know.

I had a fun little convo with clan mates regarding the Genova yesterday. The general conclusion was that we all expected it to be bad, being a t5 free reward ship we literally had no expectations of it, yet it still managed to disappoint us :) Now, playing glass cannons, I find that fun most of the time. Having lots of firepower but also being very fragile, constantly on the lookout on who to unload on without getting insta blapped in return can be fun - unfortunately, the Genova only gets the glass portion right, having the tendency to explode if a bb looks at it the wrong way, without having either DPM or alpha to speak of on anything except dd's and maybe some cruisers. SAP is far too inconsistent, reload is bad, there's no GTFO smoke, no hydro, no real AA to speak of, and the torps seem to wait for the Earth to rotate into the position of the target rather than move themselves. Nope, nope, nope. Did my directives in this thing and now I can hopefully go on never playing it again. The tech tree t5-6-7 are a bit better but still suffer from the same "all work and no fun" gameplay that seems to be characteristic of this line's tiers that I've played so far. I'm saying this as a response to this line's apologists, saying the skill floor is high - that's all fine. Problem is, a lot of people including myself don't find this fun. Minotaur takes a lot of skill to play, but when you have that skill, you will have fun. Once I've had a good game in one of the new italian ships, I'll just feel exhausted. No fun here. Of course, this is highly subjective, and whoever likes these, all the power to you, go knock yourself out. I might try t8-9-10 eventually to see if they click better, as judging an entire line without having played it's high tiers is kind of dubious, and I'm aware of that - just making conversation based on what I was able to experience so far :)

Fighters are rarely useful in the way people ask for them. Sometimes they don't even aggro on enemy planes that enter the circle, other times they do.. in addition, they're extremely squishy, so dropping them in range of any enemy AA usually results in them not lasting very long. It's just a bad mechanic - you can kinda sorta give AA but not really, while giving away the position of your DD. My personal solution to this was to just stop playing a class I don't enjoy playing, and I'm happier for it.

It depends entirely on what kind of play style you want. A heavy cruiser is defined by it's armament - basically anything with 203's or above (305 mm and above would be considered a supercruiser). So, you have plenty of choice, but overall I like to recommend the Zao as the first t10 cruiser; it's combination of great HE, good AP, great stealth, solid torps, maneuverability and troll armor make for a strong combination. It's the embodiment of a kiting cruiser, and it will teach you a lot about that play style; it will teach you good positioning and awareness, ammo selection, how to use predictive torps, and so on. If you want an island camper, look no further than a DM. It's literally the best at that play style. Team utility is great with radar, hydro, and great AA, DPM is really high with excellent HE and probably the best 203mm AP in the game with very forgiving autobounce angles. If you want to lock down a cap bow on, tanking everything while covering the cap with your 12km radar and very accurate guns, Moskva is your friend. Get a legendary module for it, it makes the dispersion insanely good. Stalin is also nice but I find it plays a bit differently. Henri IV, more of a one-man-flank sort of deal. You generally stay at long range, punishing the enemy from a flank all by your lonesome. Accomplished by great speed, range, responsive throttle (use speed boost mod 1) and what appears to be a quantum singularity that eats shells placed inside it's spaced armor. Mino, very unique playstyle, high skill ceiling, high reward sort of ship. Leave this for later, when you're more experienced in cruiser gameplay, as this one requires developing it's very own skill set. Better get good with cruisers in general before you do this. She's a light cruiser, anyway, and you said you wanted a heavy one. tl;dr - keep calm and get Zao :)

I got 22 t10 bundles so far, and I can see what bundle 23 is going to be - and it's still not the camo. Yes, the permacamo is literally in the last spot for me. Given how much rngjesus loves me, I'm well aware of the grind :) The point I was trying to make, with a good 3 man div you can come back full almost every time and even have fun doing it. Killing the Rasputin, coming back to the portal with full holds, then have an enemy team try to rob you and you kill them all instead? Have to say, I find that stuff fun. But yes, as with everything else from WG, the amount of grind one needs to do to get the rewards they want is entirely RNG dependent - and in my case, there's a lot of grind involved. That part I'm not ok with - but the actual gameplay of the mode I find pretty ok.

At least I got schooled on how to play yesterday. I was in a Smolensk (because sometimes you just want to watch the world burn), an enemy Le Terrible decided he was going to go in a gun duel with me. He kept at around 10-12 km distance, and I pretty much never missed a single salvo on him, because, well, he kept sailing in straight lines. Then he taught me a valuable lesson (after insulting me in chat): you're not supposed to shoot lower tier ships, even if they're dd's spotted close to you. They are two tiers lower, you can't shoot them as a t10, that's cheating! In order to demonstrate I learned my lesson I then proceeded to kill his Repu, and when I did, I concluded in chat that this ship was a t10, and asked if he is happy now. Given that he reported me (still worth it, though), I'd have to say he wasn't. So glad this 44% wr, 15k average player taught me the basics, though. Now, jokes and sarcasm aside, that right there is the mindset of a typical potato who will always remain a potato: he plays badly, and blames others when he loses, which he does most of the time. There is no basis to learn from with that mind set, I'm afraid - most players seem to have an ego that prevents them from saying "ok, I'm not doing great on this ship / class / in general, what can I do to improve?" Knowing how to pick one's fights would be a good start, but hey, easier to just report the enemy when they kill you after a suicide move. This guy will continue to make his teams miserable until he finally stops playing one day. The frustrating part is, I don't think there is a combination of words that will make people like that take a step back and rethink what they're doing. I'm ok with new players being bad because they're still learning and trying to improve. People like the guy above? Not so much.

This is true of all ship classes, so it may seem redundant when I say you need to have really good awarness to be effective in a cruiser. When you start a game, first look at your and enemy team: how many bb's are there, and how many overmatch you? How many radar cruisers? How many big gunned supercruisers that might overmatch you? How many dd's? Which type are they, torp spammers, gunboats, cap contesters or flankers? Are there CV's? This is all very important information when deciding on what to do and how to position initially. Checking this alone will put you above most players, and it takes a few seconds to check this info and take it on board. With experience, you will be able to say with relative certainty things like "enemy DM will probably go to that island at D5, and the Stalingrad will probably bow tank A" or stuff like that. At any rate, you should have your eyes glued to the mini map, and take note of where specific ships are going, paying special attention to the enemy ships that are particularly dangerous to you / act as your hard counters. Secondly, look at where your team is going. If they're abandoning a flank completely, well... that's not good, and you should try to get them to not do that, but if you can't, don't go to a flank alone then rage at the team because you died. Of course you did, you tried to hold a flank alone. Now, your team did potato by letting the enemy have it and potentially catch them in a crossfire, but even worse than this happening is you dying at the start, removing your ability to do anything about this. Don't. Yolo. Alone. So many people do this. In addition, think of playing cruisers like doing a bank job: you always want to have a clearly defined exit route from any situation you might find yourself in. You might be going to a flank, with the enemy team still unspotted, and that's all fine, but think about what happens if enemy bb's get spotted going to that same cap, or the one next to it: if you get spotted and focused, what's your game plan? Will you be able to turn and kite without presenting broadside? Is there island cover to help you get stealth and position to a better angle? Assume you won't be able to tank for a lot, and act accordingly. If you're playing something like a DM and going to a radar position behind an island, consider - can you survive if you get spotted on the way there? What's your exit plan from that spot if the enemy pushes through that cap, or the cap next to it? Think ahead. Other than that, understand your ship, and what it's role is: "cruiser gameplay" is a very broad term. For example: Des Moines, Zao, Stalingrad, Henri IV, Minotaur, Alaska. All of these ships are technically the same class, and none of them play similarly. Well, technically Henri and Zao are both kiters, but in a different way - Henri is more of a long range spammer / one man flank sort of deal, while zao with it's excellent stealth can afford to get much closer than a Henri would, and thus plays a lot differently.

Just lock their high tier premiums to coop until they've reached that tier with a silver line of the same class. There, you can't complan you bought a ship and can't play it. But you're also not allowed to ruin other people's experience by being on their team without a first clue on what to do.

Introducing the new t9 premium Soviet submarine. Only obtainable for Steel. At t10, you can get the Red October, distinguished by it's caterpillar drive making it impossible to detect with hydro. Only obtainable for the new in-game resource, Uranium. DW, germany gets a type VIIC to fight this. Da comrade, is balans.

There is a way you can deal with idiot team mates that shoot you for no reason (usually someone with either hidden or very bad stats too, amazingly). If I can, and if it's the start of the battle, I bump into them (as long a it doesn't take me too far off course), so it's obviously on purpose. This is usually enough for them to start all out shooting or torping you. Hold your fire, and observe them killing themselves with reflected damage after they go pink. Now you probably have a better chance of actually winning the battle than with a player of such.. caliber.. on your team. But if this happens do your best to really try hard and help your team win. Communicate about what just happened. The other players on the map will probably understand and at least some of them will report him. Presto, now he's pink, dead, and reported (not that it's very likely he had positive karma to begin with, but w/e..)

It's stats are probably dropping due to more people acquiring it. More people = more potatoes. It will level off after a few months, we should have a clearer picture by then. TBH it's weird.. I love playing DD's, but everything I've seen and heard about the Fries Land, as I call it (wows's first fast food boat, yay!) made me save my fxp for something else. I somehow doubt I'd enjoy the play style, while I can't deny the boat is strong in some situations, it also seems quite limited in others. So far, a hard pass for me.

Difference being, Alsace is not russian, and screaming "french bias", even when they have some incredibly strong ships, like Henri IV, Jean Bart, Repu, etc, simply isn't a thing. A single well played Daring or Mino can totally dominate a randoms game. British bias? No? Nobody? A russian ship strong or even OP? OMG russian bias reeee <insert Stalinium memes>. Yes, WG does sometimes introduce ships that are plain OP. Sometimes they do shady stuff like nerf a tech tree ship then introduce a premium that basically has the pre-nerf tech tree ship performance. But I do not see this tied to any nation. Russian bias is basically a meme at this point. Good example would be the Stalingrad. When it came out, everyone screamed how op it is and stalinium this and ru bias that.. then people learned how to counter it and suddenly, it's no longer considered the "I win" button everyone thought it was. It's basically a Moskva sidegrade - a legendary Moskva will outperform it in some situations, and the Stalin will do better in others. But does anyone really seriously consider it op still? Just your normal post-release hysteria that tends to follow strong ships, particularly russian ones.