Backwards_Logic

Same. It happened to me in a carrier and again in a surface ship. I've never had lag issues and since this update I'm on occasion hitting 3000+ making the game unplayable.

This:

Cracked 1100 base XP in co-op for the first time ever. I think.

The true answer is complex and varied because it depends on a number of factors: Do you win a lot in that ship? Because if you do, that's an extra 30% to your base XP and no one likes wasting their expensive camouflages and signals on a loss. Do you do well in that ship? Self-explanatory. Are you comfortable being bottom tier? Damaging higher-tier ships seems to give you more XP. Do you like to stay at range and damage farm, or can you brawl close? Nuking a destroyer for 20k HP will likely kill it; doing the same to a battleship is relatively insignificant. The former gives tons of XP, the latter not so much. Can you get yourself into a position to cap or reset enemy ships? That's an easy way to drive up XP totals. Shooting down planes helps too, but that requires a carrier who doesn't make it his life's mission to kill you. So that all said, you have to take your play-style into account to pick the "best" ship for you to generate high XP totals. Everyone's will be different based on their level of comfort in said ship and how their play style lines meshes with generating those high XP totals.

Historical rate of fire: 1 shell per 30-45 minutes. You get one shell per match; you better make it count. Pro tip: don't use it versus a cruiser - you'll just over penetrate it. Bow on battleships might be your best target.

Survivability Expert on a battleship is dumb. You really think an extra 3500 (or 4000 if a special captain) is going to save you from HE spam? I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain the health you bleed per tick of fire damage is based off of a percentage of your overall health. So in this regard, SE would cause you to lose slightly more HP per tick (and still only give you enough extra hit points for one extra battleship AP penetration hit). The skill you should be talking about is Basics of Survivability which reduces your fire burn time by 15%. It plus Fire Prevention goes a long way toward flat-out ignoring single fires on your ship. I run both on my Battleships and it plus smart positioning keeps effects of the HE spam to a relative minimum.

When all you want are easy wins in Co-op and MM decides to give you only one human teammate and the rest are dumb bots.

Hindenburg is one of those ships that can take on pretty much any build and when paired with a captain that can maximize it do well. I personally have 3 captains for her, though to be honest one doesn't see much use due to the neutering of AA-based captain skills. Random battle build using Lutjens: PT/EL/PM/EM/SI/CE/AR/FP/IFA. It's front loaded with 1 point skills out of lack of better options, as Lutjens gets buffed PM, I personally rely on PT for my play, EL is a god-send with her AP being what it is and the rest of the build only leaving one point. SI grants me an extra heal, CE helps with disappearing when I need to, and AR is free DPM as I get shot at. I run range mod in slot six for extra opportunities to shoot sooner and thus start working my way towards the 140 hits Lutjens needs to get another buff to DPM. FP let's me trade slightly better versus the HE DPM slingers though to be honest I could see an argument against it. Clan battles: This build didn't exist prior to her most recent buffs, but it plus the potential for cyclones means she's viable: PT/EL/AR/SI/CE/IFHE/FP or RPF depending on team comp (leaning towards RPF right now). When it comes to IFHE the choice is really simple: do I want guaranteed damage from shell hits or do I want to rely on fire RNG against a target that has a very quick damage control party consumable? As a result, IFHE is a must when squaring off against Yamatos and especially Kremlins, arguably the top two BB choices for CB's. AA build: PT/EM/AR/BFT/SI/CE/AFT. It's not perfect, but against bad carriers her flak with AA mod 1 installed can chew through squadrons with ease. AFT buffs it (I know, I know, it's dodgeable, but against a good CV player your build is ultimately meaningless anyway) and BFT is the only meaningful AA skill in the game right now. Admittedly this captain doesn't see much use right now. Bonus Zombie-build: PT/EM/AR/BoS/SI/CE/FP, run legendary and DCSM 2 for giggles. Run around, pick fights with HE spammer ships and laugh maniacally when their fires do nothing to you. Probably not an optimal build, but hey, it's a thing. It's hard to pinpoint a specific build for her because she's so versatile as a ship. There's no real wrong answer here though there's certainly some builds I'm going to question. Vigilance with German hydro is a waste. DE is an overrated skill and your barrel count and rate of fire are going to easily make up the difference. That said, since the ship doesn't really *need* all of its points I can't directly fault people for taking it. Jack of All trades on a non-Jutland commander is certainly a waste (save 4 seconds on repair party reload and 6 seconds on hydro, whoop-dee-do), and even with a Jultand commander those numbers doubled isn't that huge of a difference (though your mileage may vary).

There's about 5 other things I'd take on Friesland before Vigilance: CE, SE, BFT, SI, IFHE, and maybe even Demo before it. That ship's captain is so starved for points I can't justify it over any of the above.

It's a waste of 3 points. It allows you to see torpedoes that will still hit you that much sooner. Battleships get more mileage out of skills like Superintendent, Basics of Survivability, and possibly Basic Firing Training than it.

I'll be stunned if there's more than 20. The requirements to get there are just mind-boggling.

My maternal grandfather served on the USS Enterprise from December of '42-'46 as an electrician. He has a cameo in the Victory at Sea TV series and was interviewed and briefly starred in Battle 360 episode 10 (I think) of the Enterprise saga. My paternal grandfather served on the USS Houston (CL-81), a Cleveland-class cruiser until she was torpedoed twice. After evacuating to a "tin can," he finished out the war on the Wichita. So yea, I'm heavily invested in this game. Still hoping a premium CL-81 Houston is released to complete the set for me.

The Gearing is slow to begin with, so many cruisers can just run it down. It's also not exactly nimble and large, so as far as DD's go it's an easy target to hit. Add in good Italian ballistics and yes, they will splatter you if they catch you right. Trying using both speed changes and course changes to avoid fire - Gearing needs all the help she can get trying to dodge stuff. Spot them for your friendlies and let them shoot the cruisers. They don't have hydro so with accurate predictive aiming you will hit some of them with torpedoes. Italian cruisers do annihilate DD's with their SAP and struggle against heavier angled targets, so this is as designed. Their reload is already long and can be measured in geological epochs so increasing it isn't an answer. And you can angle against it (see: every other ship in the game versus SAP), just the Venezia gets better angles than her lower-tier counterparts. Bow-on works if you must. It's just another thing to learn how to counter.

Is it too late to claim my camouflage? XD That's what I get for trying to watch at work and we get busy.

Yea, I too wish WG would have come by the NC this year for their tour. She's a great ship that's in-game and she's been taken care of very well. Hopefully next year!