Midnitewolf

The thing about Salem is she is pretty much a close carbon copy of the Des Moines. Obviously she has some gimmicks and differences some better and some worse than the Des Moines but the Des Moines is free. Also I wouldn't think there would be any reason to have both a Des Moines and Salem in your bay so the only reason I would pick up Salem is if never wanted to advance to USN CA line of ships.

I wouldn't say it is definitive that you won't be able to obtain Smolensk through containers since they haven't announced the Santa's Gift for this year yet. However, they haven't ever had any Tier 10s available in the past and I don't think they will have Tier 10s available for at least the next few years if I have to be honest. Kutuzov, on the other, is likely to be available in the Santa's Gifts. However, generally speaking the higher to tier, the lower the chance of getting a ship to show up. If your willing to spend enough though, you do stand a fair chance of eventually getting it, well if they haven't reduced the chances of a premium ship popping up in a Santa's Gift. Generally speaking the way Santa's Gifts work is you only get premium ships you don't own, then the rarity of the drop depends on Tier. If for example you have all the Tier 2-6 premiums in the game already, the first premium you will get will be a Tier 7. Then you will get mostly Tier 7s until you run out of Tier 7s to get, then you will get Tier 8s. I also think they go by rarity or rather by how badly WG doesn't want them to show up in the game. For example, if WG thinks one Tier 8ship is OP and another isn't, you have a higher chance to get the non-OP Tier 8 then the OP one. Eventually though, spend enough money and you can acquire all the ships in the list. I did this the first two years of Santa's Gifts. It cost me around $250-$300 to get all the ships I was missing which was still cheaper than if I bought all the ships straight out plus the camos, special signals and dubs allowed met to get several free XP ships relatively quickly as well. Of course if you don't have most of the premium ships, already, it is going to take a lot of cash to get all the premiums. The one caution I have is that if your looking for one particular ship, like the Kutuzov, its high Tier, like the Kutuzov and you don't have most of the other premiums already, you can expect to probably go through 40-50 gifts or more just to get the Kutuzov. Basically you really have be dedicated to wanting that ship or else it just isn't worth it. Also as a Kutuzov owner, its not that special. Don't get me wrong, at the time it first came out, a cruiser with smoke was OP, but there are so many cruisers with smoke now, it just isn't that special any more. As for the Flint, I wouldn't recommended it. The upcoming changes to captain skills are looking like they are removing AFT from the skills available to cruisers meaning you will be stuck to an 11.1 km firing range on a ship that has a huge easy to hit citadel. Hell even Smolensk is going to be taking a HUGE nerf bat upside the head when it too looses the benefit of AFT. That is going to reduce its range by 20% as well.

Considering that income potential on any Tier 9 premium ship, this is a no brainer. Yes it is worth it. The only time it wouldn't be worth it is if you already had a good Tier 9 premium. You have to consider that Tier 9 ships in the premium shop cost close to $80. At around 30$ that is about a 60% discount, give or take. As far as the grind, you do have to consider that the grind gets you tons of other rewards as well. The problem though is if you have enough time to grind out 22 phases in the limited window of time that they give you to complete them all. Grinding the Anchorage which is only 18 phases, really started making the game feel like a job after a couple weeks. I am honestly not really sure I have it in to me to be required to play the game 4+ hours a day, virtually every day or again to be honest.

Oddly enough, I found Tallinn to be better than the Hipper due to the gun ballistics. As far as the rest, the Petro is very highly regarded and has a lot going for it, including the 360 degree back turret which makes it pretty easy to keep all 9 guns on target. As far as the Bagration, it is also very highly regarded with its one flaw being very poor firing angles. I would say it is probably the best trainer for the RU CA line. The Italian Cruisers are pretty meh until you get to the higher tiers though I haven't found them as bad as some people make them out to be.

About 2 weeks ago I had a run where I got the 1200 coal container at least once per day and on one day I got it 3 times in a row. I think I ended up with the triple coal container 5 times that week.

I don't recommend the Gascogne at all. I love the Republique and figured I would also like the Gascogne but all I can say about the Gascogne is the ship just doesn't play well. I am not sure what it is specifically that makes her not play well so about all I can say is the sum of her parts just adds up to it lacking....in about every way. I know that doesn't make sense but its really hard to put your finger on why it sucks however, you just find it sucking despite that. Roma would be a great ship except she has both dispersion and overpenetration issues. Basically he shells just sling out all over the place and more often than not, if you actually hit with them, they overpen. She is very hard to do consistant damage with and can be frustrating because your constantly let down by either the dispersion, overpens or both. Mass is supposed to be a very fun BB and probably the most highly regarded of the bunch you mention however, without a full secondary build, she is pretty much just a slightly worse Iowa, However if you like the Iowa and the North Carolina, you will probably love the Mass. Also if you do love either of those ships, I wouldn't be too concerned about the captain because she will still play just like the Iowa/North Carolina even without the full secondary build. The secondary build is just the icing on the cake. You will have to have a dedicated captain for her though as you will eventually want to have that full secondary build, which can be a downside. Lenin is a very nice ship but doesn't play like a traditional BB due to the all front firepower. Also it has very weak flanks and can be citadeled easily so when playing it you have to adapt those conditions. Once you adapt though, it is very powerful and with proper positioning, can often hold an entire flank by itself. Of all of them, this is the the one I would go myself if I could only pick just one.

Yoshino isn't bad exactly, it just isn't good and there in lies the crux of the matter. Most people seem to consider it equalivant to a Zao, maybe slightly worse.

Any game play under Tier 5 at this point sucks. I have taken to skipping at least to Tier 5 just to avoid the nightmare mess lower tiers have become.

See you actually get what I am trying to get across. I too play tons of ships I don't enjoy because I know I will enjoy a ship that comes after. It is that motivation which drives me forward, often playing many more hours than I would have originally, because I want to progress to the next ship. See to me the fact there is nothing much useful to do with your Tier 10, besides just playing for fun, seems like a huge omission and a missed opportunity, a missed opportunity if for no other reason than having something productive to do with your Tier 10s, besides fun, would keep at least some percentage of the player base engaged for a longer period of time. The more players that find a reason to stick around, whatever that reason is, the more money WG makes and the more everyone benefits for WG making more money. I think this is why I am a bit shocked so few people in this thread seem to get it. I mean think about it. WG has already identified that there needs to be something for people to do after they have grinded all the various lines and have nothing else to do, that is why the added in the RB. It gives players for whom the game has gone stale something else to do, that feeling of progression I keep harping about, and work toward getting the unique ships in the RB. This is actually End Game content and it is already in the game so even WG knows there needs to be something even if some of its players don't seem to feel that way. However, my view is that the RB is flawed because it requires you to reset everything and start over which in my view defeats the any real feeling of progression. What the game needs is a progression mechanic that is actually extends beyond Tier 10, not one that requires you to go back to square one. Right now there is no reason to play Tier 10s besides fun and you can get fun from playing a Tier 8 as well AND have progression. Why can't there be some reason to also play a Tier 10. I mean hell, even something like being able to covert some of a Tier 10s EXP to coal or used to buy special signals like Red Dragon flags or something along that line would be a reason to play a Tier 10 over another ship. It doesn't have to be a super complex, just some reason goal that can ONLY be achieved by using a Tier 10 ship.

Let's try this. Let me try to explain another way. I am going to use my Nevsky and Baltimore for an example. Since the topic of fun comes up a lot I will state right now I enjoy playing both ships. The fun factor is equal. So then, if I decided to play 10 battles in my Nevsky, I will have fun. But I might make 300-400k credits if things go well or break even/loss credits if it doesn't. Further the XP earned on the ship is useless since I am not going to convert any of it due to the obscene conversion cost. Basically playing it goes no where. However, if I play the Baltimore, in 10 battles I can earn 30k XP or so toward the Buffalo. Additionally I will probably make between 2-4 million credits which I could use to help pay for the Riga and Grozovoi I have unlocked but can't afford. See the difference between the two "Fun" ship. If you don't I will point it out. With the Baltimore, I have FUN, progression and reward. With the Nevsky I just have fun. I want it so that I have equal reason to play either ship be it a Tier 8 or Tier 10. I want to be able to jump on my Nevsky and say, "Ok I am going to use this ship to work toward this specific goal" whatever the goal may be. However, the only goal I can have when I reach tier 10 is to reset the line and regrind it so I can earn something in the RB. Why can I earn something with my Tier 10???? Yeah this is exactly the point I made in my response above. I find the Tier 10s a hell of a lot of fun but I also find many of my Tier 6, 7, 8 and 9 ships fun as well and with any of those ships, I have fun AND progression. My time playing a Tier 10 just feels wasted because it lead nowhere. Well you can read my responses above to figure this out. Gameplay is fun, that is why I am still here but I want there to be just as much a reason to play a Tier 10 as their is to play a Tier 8 that I am grinding. That is what is missing. Tier 10 just dead ends. I guess if I had every line maxed to Tier 10 and had a couple hundred million credits, then fun would be all there was to the game and it would be the entire reason I played but that is not the case so instead I am stuck between choosing to use my limited game time to progress while having fun or to stagnate while having fun. At the end of the day, progressing always wins out and that Tier 10 that I worked so hard to get, just ends up being a port queen because of it.

For me it is probably Carriers though after the re-work I actually find them kinda fun to play and have been playing them a lot more often. I even bought several premium CVs which I thought would never happen.

I am not really too happy with this myself. I just recently got a few 19 point commanders up and running so don't have massive reserves of ECXP to fall back on a when I suddenly need to skill them up to 21 points. Further, I have several captains that are getting very close to 19 and was really looking forward to being able to use them to also start gathering ECXP but considering how much CXP its going to take to get them up to 21, I am going to be set back tremendously before I can get them online to start accumulating ECXP. The whole thing annoys me because I was looking forward to having the ECXP to actually start backfilling in captains for my lower tier ships I wanted to keep, not to mention, start using the ECXP to retrain my captains when I get ready to move up a Tier and also just for the ability to reset my captains and actually try out multiple different builds to see what works best for me. I refuse to spend real $$$ for these sort of things. I think want makes me even more annoyed is that considering how critical captain skills are to being competitive, there shouldn't be this grind in the first place and it should be easy as hell to respec so you can experiment with different builds without hassle or cost, yet they are adding yet more hassle and most cost to the process. All this does is just sour me more and more on WG. Their just such a crap company when it comes to how they treat their players.

Yeah the event was never designed in such as way as you could get anything valuable out of it for free. I was 100% designed in a fashion to where you would have to spend a significant amount of $$$ if you wanted anything. Honestly it was about the most blatant cash grabs I have ever seen come out of WG'ing, especially since so much of the event is unclear unless you read all the fine print. Further, the fact that they waited like half a day after the event started before offering the Florida in the premium shop, which turned out to just be long enough for many people to misconstrue that the only way to get the Florida would be to spend the $88 dollars on those bundles, was just icing on the cake.

Time = Money. Some people just have more money than time. I don't think I would ever do it here but when I played Mechwarrior Online, I usually pre-ordered just about every mech that came out simply because I didn't have the time to grind the credits to buy the mechs in game. Then again the value of the pre-order early access packs was much higher than anything in WoWS offers.

Oh give me a break. There are so many drama queens over CVs in this game. There is exactly one CV that is broken in this game and it is the FDR which is pure toxicity. As for all the other general CVs in general gameplay, I hardly even notice they are around and I can sure as hell say that I am killed a bizzillion times more by HE spam or when I am playing DDs, Radar, than I have every been killed by a CV in any class. Most of the time the planes are just annoying at their worst that is unless I am playing a different version of the game than anyone else is playing. The only other explanation would be that I play my ships differently than other players and because of that, CVs don't tend to drop on me but if that is the case, then YES YOU TOO CAN LEARN TO PLAY THIS WAY. So it one of the three: 1) The version of the game I play is different than everyone else's. 2) I play in a fashion where CV aren't and issue which means the issue is with the players who can't figure out how to play correctly. 3) These people are just drama queens who want to complain. Honestly I just don't see anything else that it could be.