Uncle_Lou

Outside of event awards, I have not seen a SC in a year or so. Either I have horrid RNG luck, or everyone who says they've gotten one is lying.

Once you get to Skane at tier 7 they are definitely torp-first boats, due to having only 2x2 guns with mediocre reload and below average rotation speed. Ok for finishing off wounded targets, but if you go looking for a gunfight you will lose unless the other DD is bad. If you can use an island to block LoS you can try to start some fires with your guns, but otherwise your best bet is to launch torps as soon as they cycle. The alpha is poor, but because they reload so quickly and travel so fast you can tax your target's DCP and floods will often stick. The AA is pretty decent, I had a match in Skane where I shot down 23 planes; that said a determined CV will still either sink you or neuter you. I definitely wish they had more speed as a line, t7 and up max out at about 35kts which isn't quite enough for a smokeless DD IMO. I wish they were closer to 38-39kts base... but whatever. This line is my first attempt at playing a smokeless DD, and while I hate seeing a CV in the lineup the line is teaching me new things about positioning and how to be stealthy and also how to be effective even if spotted. I'm not convinced that the entire line is competitive as is - I think some very minor buffs would make them much more comfortable to play, but they aren't bad boats by any stretch. tl;dr: Patience, positioning. Spot, flank, torp like a maniac and stick DoTs.

Here's my thoughts on it: First, these seem to me to be very much torp-first boats; the guns are (IMO) not good enough to invest too many points into. At 2x2 with a 3.2s reload base and bad rotation, just no. If they were more like Friesland with a sub-2s reload and better rotation, maybe. Second, these boats seem like they need about a 25-point captain to get all the skills they need. So I suppose you could drop 4 points into IFHE but for me the return on the investment just isn't worth it. I am focusing on survivability and torps in my build for this line.

A quick Google search turned up this image of Trento underway and a second image of her in port, and whatever that thing is it is barely visible just below and forward of A turret. Still no idea what it is, but apparently it wasn't used only at anchor. Interestingly enough, her sister ship Trieste does not appear to have shared this feature, as far as I can tell from my limited searching.

I've noticed the trend, and am not surprised that the higher tier boats aren't any faster. If they change nothing else on these boats, I wish they would give the engine and rudder a little more health. Even with PM and the Engine Room mod I lose my engines multiple times per game. I have Last Stand, but it is still painful for a DD with no smoke to be caught out with a dead engine.

With no smoke, I'd like to see them get a small boost to their base speed, or perhaps as a compromise a unique speed boost of say 12-15%. Skane at 36kt feels very sluggish to me. I wouldn't mind a minor boost to torpedo damage either, but can live with it as is. I keep hearing about their AA, but the 5-6-7 boats have not really impressed me thus far and in Skane I feel like I run into a t8 CV in about 60% of my games. They aren't bad boats, but I think they need just a little something at least t5-7. Also, IIRC the Skane torps only do 76kt out of the box, so unless you boost them with the upgrade or captain's skill they don't reach 80kt.

This line I feel just continues to get better as you advance up the line. Amalfi is good, Brindisi is very good and Venezia is excellent and can be monstrous when played well. Zara I thought was pretty 'meh'. So I would say absolutely stick with it, but it isn't until Amalfi that the line starts to get good. The heals and extra rifles on Brindisi make a huge difference.

Not sure if that was a later salvo against the JB, but the green dot above it would indicate it is not stationary but rather moving forward. Perhaps not at high speed, but if you are aiming as though it is stationary it is moving enough to cause you to miss. Also, shooting bow-in targets will generally reward fewer hits and fewer hits for decent damage. You will have much better results if you aim at broadside targets. I didn't have a ton of games in Iowa but carried a 32% hit rate in her; only 29% in Missouri and for both ships even with the accuracy upgrade they frequently felt frustratingly derpy. Stick with it though, it is a good ship. Staying alive longer will also help your damage numbers - your first pic shows you took 10x more damage than you caused, which suggests you may be overly aggressive early.

Ignore this intentionally bad advice. Not sure why this was posted, but as Italian CAs fire SAP instead of HE neither skill will benefit them. I would need to log in to check my Sansonetti build for Venezia, I don't recall off the top of my head. Fortunately, the Italians do not seem to be skill point greedy which allows some flexibility in your build.

Its a decent looking camo, I only wish they had left the bling off the bow/stern... but then I prefer the historical combat type camos to the bright flashy ones so anything with bling is just... nah.

I have at least a few games in each of the tiers 5-7, and I find almost every stat for these ships to be mediocre. Concealment (6.2 min @ t7), speed (35kt @ t7), turning radius(610m @ t7), HP pool(13k! @ t7), and gun range(10.1k @ t7) are all low/middle of the pack. The guns on the t5-6 have a fairly slow reload at 7.5s stock; the t7 is better at 3.2s but it has only 4 rifles in two turrets where as the t5 and 6 have 5 and 6 rifles, respectively. HE shell damage seems to be on the low side; fire chance is 7% stock. The torps reload VERY quickly with the t7 coming in at 59s, and they have excellent range - 8km on the t5, 10 on the t6, and 12km on the t7. Max damage on the torps is barely better than CV torps though; the t7 torps max out at around 7500 damage. Once you factor in the torpedo reduction on most ships and practically speaking they only hit for maybe 5k on average. I had a game in which I hit an Amagi with 9 torps for a total of 40k damage. Unless you get a flood to stick, you aren't going to sink many ships via torps. OR guns. I feel like these ships are at their best in the mid-late game, when there are fewer enemies about and most will be at less than full health. Their ho-hum concealment is less of a factor, and targets are more likely to have their DCP on cooldown so that floods and fires have a better chance of ticking for a while. They reward patience and persistence, and both are required to have any kind of big impact on the game. The ships I have played so far do NOT like to be uptiered, and games with CVs tend to lead to early trips back to port because you simply cannot hide from a CV. The rather small health pools mean that rocket attacks can be devastating. One good rocket attack will cost all of your heals and then some to recover. I can't say they are bad ships, but I feel like they need just a little something. The low alpha on the torps makes them somewhat unrewarding to play IMO in that even perfectly executed attacks rarely result in a dev strike type kill. The whole death by a thousand cuts method takes time and frequently allows a teammate to secure the kill. And while ultimately getting the enemy ship off the board is the important thing, its hard to deny that it is much more satisfying to secure a kill that you earned. I have a feeling that this line may be similar to the Italian CA line in that it just gets better and better as you move up the tiers, with the tier 10 ship being the best in the line. But that is pure speculation on my part as I've only gotten as far as t7. Should have enough XP to unlock the t8 as soon as the line goes live though.

Other than events that reward SCs, I don't believe I have received a SC from the three dailies in at least a year. I just assumed that they no longer dropped. I generally earn all three dailies during any given play session; occasionally I play late enough into the night that I even earn the first one or two for the following day (I work nights anyway and am typically up until 7-8am). Even given all of that, I never see SC drop. I normally choose the resource containers though for a little extra coal.

While I will never complain about improvements to Roma, I'm not sure giving her SAP is going to make a huge difference, especially with a nerfed reload. Her wonky dispersion is the much larger issue and until it is adjusted Roma will continue to have performance issues. SAP will be terrific for use against lighter targets, but those targets tend to be smaller and the odds of landing hits go down accordingly. If it were up to me I think I would prefer to keep her current terrible HE and fix Roma's dispersion issues. I also think she should have a slightly improved reload of around 28s, since most other 15" armed BBs have sub-30s reloads. But I will take what I can get. A maneuverability buff would be most welcome to help minimize exposure during turns.

Ehh. Not sure how I feel about it. The late-night MM dumps that create the under strength matches frequently results in off-balance teams. Smaller teams also means that having even one potato on the team is literally a no-win situation. I guess the flip side of that is a single player has a better chance of carrying. But that type of mismatch alone leads me to think it would not be popular. Bigger teams are better able to absorb or mitigate large discrepancies in player skill.

I had several games in Visby and a few in Vasteras before unlocking Skane. So far I feel like the line needs just a little something more to make it competitive, but I'm not sure what. Most of their stats are very mediocre, and the total package is just kind of 'meh'. Flinging 6 torps around every 55-60 seconds is fun (I guess?) but its really damn hard to get a kill with just torps. I hit an Amagi with 9 Skane torps and did a total of 40k damage, and did not get the kill. When I first unlocked Skane, I thought it was going to be a big improvement over the previous two - guns reload twice as fast, 12km/76kt torpedoes, and slightly better turret rotation. But the very mediocre concealment and poor top speed and turning circle really hamper Skane. None of them handle being uptiered well at all, which was almost all I saw with Skane. Overall my impression of the line is that they are mediocre, rather boring, and not terribly rewarding to play. You can work your butt off to set up a perfect torp run or ambush and land an entire salvo and then watch your enemy sail away, only to return a few minutes later with most of the damage healed back up. Really hoping the t8+ boats are better.