vak_

I disagree once more. Just one example: DDs sometimes will use guns to shoot at targets that your team is engaging, just to add that extra bit of damage. You'll definitely be spotted unless you sit in smoke, and it's useful to know if someone is aiming at you as you're doing this, so you can start zigzagging or can decide go back into invisibility altogether. Even torpedo DDs should use guns offensively when appropriate. Players that don't do this severely gimp themselves. It's always a DPM race. Against your teammates taking damage and against time. If you lower your DPM because you didn't have information that PT could have provided, you've hurt your team. Also, in your post that I've initially replied to you didn't limit yourself to only DDs. PT is also great on cruisers and BBs (for randoms).

Again, knowing is better than assuming. If you know nobody is aiming at you at the moment, your DPM and speed could be higher. Speed loss is only a meh if you don't have some destination in mind, be it an objective or a group of enemy ships. This obviously isn't always the case. PT is least useful in a knife fight. Not sure why you decided to pick this particular scenario to illustrate your point. Literally none of the captain skills are necessary for success. They just make it more likely.

You lose DPM, in certain cases you can't even risk unmasking some turrets if you are assuming people are aiming at you. You also bleed speed during zigzagging. This isn't nothing.

This is wrong.

Knowing is so much better than assuming. This is often the case, good players have no problem cycling guns on reload even while dodging shells themselves. AR is a wonderful skill on any ship.

Often enough to justify this skill. I agree with others, this is the first two-point skill one should grab on pretty much any battleship or cruiser, and DDs hugely benefit from taking it after you have LS

Just use the minimap, you can reasonably assume a DD is going to try to contest A cap if he's heading there. On a more general note, dont expect people in randoms to communicate well or even act rationally half the time, or you'll be dissapointed :) Sometimes you gotta help your teammates despite their best efforts to sabotage the match.

Well, if your guns are trained around the friendly DD, you can quickly shift them over to the enemy DD when it is spotted by that teammate of yours. Sorry I wasnt clearer. Basically just point your guns in the direction from which you can quickly open fire when an enemy DD gets spotted. You dont want to waste ten seconds traversing, visibility windows are often short because one of the DDs will often release smoke to disengage, or just break distance to go back into concealement. And the reason it's more advanced is this: you need to reasonably predict when the enemy DD might get spotted, based on the teams' position minimap and objectives. You dont want to idly wait for an enemy DD that never appears instead of shooting up red battleships or cruisers :) For now just play as you did before, but remember to prioritize smacking the enemy DDs whenever you can. You'll get better at it with more experience. And I would second the suggestion to play some DDs as well, it helps to understand the logic behind each class' gameplay. That way, for example, you'll get better at predicting torpedoes when driving a BB.

Same. I already run the 5km torps anyway, because they're great for cap contests, so this is a huge buff for me.

Great, so half an hour long wait in queue then. Maybe more.

Probably Chapaev. Radar range is long enough for you not to expose yourself too much, and you have good enough DPM to make radar matter even if you're the only one shooting. Plus it's just a very fun bote.

To keep him at 50%, his team would constantly need to be stacked with bad players. So his point stands.

This is what I would consider an advanced maneuver, especially at the beginning of the match. Your positioning and map awareness needs to be on point, otherwise you're just throwing your ship away.

A very easy way to support DDs is actually shooting at the enemy DDs that they're spotting. Dont feel obligated to switch to HE if you're in a BB and have AP loaded; a single BB shell overpen will still take 5-10% of HP, this is a huge help. Heck, even if you whiff, the enemy DDs will get nervous from shell splashes and the PT counter, and might disengage from the objective and/or waste smoke. A more advanced maneuver is training your guns over to the friendly DD when you think he's about to run into an enemy destroyer, for example during cap contests. This alone will do wonders for your team's destroyers, seriously. You don't even necessarily need to position differently from what you do now (unless you sit waaay in the back -- which you should almost never do anyway), though once you gain more experience this will improve the quality of your support also. But for now just concentrate on shooting and hitting DDs whenever they are spotted. Get good with leading and predicting their movements. And thank you for asking for advice in this regard :)

That will make tier six permanently bottom tier, and it's already bad to begin with. MM should just be +2 for all tiers, including four.