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The following is a review of Daisen, the tier IX premium Japanese Battleship (I personally think it's a battlecruiser, but whatever). I was given access to this ship by Wargaming; I did not have to pay to play-test this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.12.3 Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Another dockyard event, another Japanese battleship. I had been on track to get this review out within the first round of the dockyard missions being available. I had recently joined the wiki-team and through it, I got access to Daisen early without having to grind it out. Awesome! I threw myself into play test games! I crunched the data! I started the graphics! I filled out my template! I went to the hospital! Yeah, my health and doctor said "Very no" and I had to scale production waaay back. The dockyard event came and went and I missed the boat (literally). This sat on the back burner, being poked at every so often. I ended up losing a big chunk of it to a save error which was disheartening, so I put it down and focused on West Virginia '44 instead. With WeeVee '44 out of the way, it didn't take too long to push this through to the end. Sorry it's late, but I'm pretty proud of the quality of this one. I very much wanted to share it, even if the boat is no longer available. Please enjoy! Quick Summary: A fast Japanese battleship with eight, accurate, quick-firing 410mm guns, accurate secondaries and torpedoes. She has a special Spotter Aircraft consumable. PROS Excellent torpedo protection with a 53% torpedo damage reduction Quick firing main battery guns with a 27 second reload High sigma on main battery of 2.1 Secondaries with improved range and accuracy Massive torpedo armament for a battleship with 4x4 launchers (!) High top speed for a battleship of 35 knots Very long active time and shorter reset timer on her Spotter Aircraft consumable CONS Small hit point pool for a tier IX battleship and only 3 charges of her Repair Party Long, exposed citadel with a relatively thin armoured belt Soft skinned, highly vulnerable to HE and SAP Small main battery of only eight guns Secondaries have low HE penetration Horrible turning circle radius of 1100m Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme A quick aside: I think it's important to touch base on what it means to be a 'brawling battleship'. Brawling is going to come up often. Daisen has improved secondaries. Daisen has a lot of torpedoes. Daisen is fast! Ergo, she's a brawler, right? Well, it's complicated. This deserves it's own long winded essay or three, but I'll try and keep it short for this review. When evaluating whether or not a ship makes a good brawler, there are traits you want to look for, with some weighted more important than others. The most important are: Competitive speed Good durability Powerful, long-range secondaries Good damage dealing A fast brawler can control engagement distances, dictating when these fights will happen. A tough brawler can survive the damage it will take as it closes, and is better suited it is to trade body blows. You want secondaries that open up early and keep the attrition going with direct damage, fires and critical hits. Finally, you want a knock out punch, being able to deliver a brutal broadside as ships pass one another. This last one can come from overmatching guns that can punch into an enemy even when angled, torpedoes or just a high volume of fire between main and secondary batteries that tears your opponent apart before the joust occurs. Tirpitz is probably one of the most recognizable purpose-built brawlers in the game. She has a top speed over 30 knots. She is nigh-immune to citadel hits and her dispersed armour scheme shrugs off a ton of HE. Fully upgraded, her secondaries can reach out to nearly 11.5km, with great accuracy and high HE penetration. Lastly, she has a broadside of four torpedoes, perfect for ending a joust dramatically. Spoiler warning: Daisen does not tick all four boxes. So you can already guess: Daisen is a bad ship for inexperienced players. She's going to bait them into playing the ship in a way it's not meant to be played and it will punish them hard for it. Similarly, if all you do is stay back then you lose out on the potential this ship offers. Veterans can make this flexible style work and use it to great effect. Daisen ambushing a beached Jean Bart, the Japanese battleship having used a headland to conceal her approach. By the time the Jean Part recognized the threat, it was too late to escape. Options Daisen is a high-tier ship with six upgrade slots, a weird consumable and brawling potential, so this section is going to be CHONKY. Consumables Daisen's Damage Control Party is standard for a Japanese battleship. This has a shortened active time of 10 seconds instead of the usual 15 seconds for most other battleships (20 for American battleships). It comes with unlimited charges and it has an 80 second reset timer. Daisen's Repair Party has one fewer charge than normal versions of the consumable, starting with three instead of four. It queues up to 10% of citadel damage, 100% from fires, flooding and collisions and 50% of everything else. Each charge heals up to 14% of the ship's health over 28 seconds. It has an 80 second reset timer. In slot three, you have a choice: Her Spotter Aircraft is * * * S P E C I A L * * * ! It has a longer active period than normal; 240 seconds (!) instead of the usual 100 seconds. It increases Daisen's range by 20%, from 20.57km to 24.68km. If her range is upgraded with Gun Fire Control System Modification 2, then this boosts from 23.83km to 28.59km. It starts with three charges. It's reset timer is only 90 seconds instead of the usual 240 seconds. Her Catapult Fighter launches 3 aircraft which stay on station, orbiting the ship at a range of 3km for 60s. It comes with three charges and has a 90s reset timer. Personally, I'd go for her spotter. Upgrades In slot #1, you've got two choices. It's exceedingly rare for me to recommend this consumable, but the special upgrade, Spotter Aircraft Modification 1 is worth investing for Daisen. You can buy this for 17,000 Coal in the Armory. This increases the action time of her consumable from 240 seconds to 312 seconds (a 72 second gain! You gotta love percentage-based gains on already big numbers!). The alternative is to take Main Armaments Modification 1. In slot #2, the only upgrade worth considering is Damage Control System Modification 1. In slot #3, it's time to make the decision if you want to play the sniper or if you want to focus on making her a better brawler. Main battery gunnery will always be optimal over brawling, so Aiming System Modification 1 is the better choice. However, brawling is awesome and sniping is for nerds, so taking Secondary Battery Modification 1 automatically makes you cool. It also increases your secondary range from 6.95km to 8.34km. Paired with the commander skill, Long Range Secondary Battery Shells and the Mike Yankee Soxisix, you can get Daisen's secondaries out to a range of 10.51km. In slot #4, you've again got a choice. Damage Control System Modification 2 is optimal, reducing the burn time of fires and wetness time of floods. (Wetness time of floods? Really, Mouse? You know what? I'm not editing that. I'm leaving that in there so you can think about what you did). It helps take the strain off your Repair Party consumable which we already know is of reduced quality on Daisen. The alternative is to take Steering Gears Modification 1. I'm not recommending this to help you avoid damage -- Daisen ability to Just Dodge™ at anything but stupidly long-ranges is about as effective as Arkansas Beta's triple A. This is purely a quality of life improvement to make her handling feel more comfortable; a bandaid and kiss on the forehead for a sucking chest-wound as it were. In slot #5, things get interesting again. Concealment System Modification 1 is optimal. Daisen's surface detection is terrible and this upgrade isn't going to fix that. However, this upgrade also comes with that tasty 5% dispersion increase to incoming shellfire and this tips the scales for me when combined with the concealment gains. The alternative is Ship Consumables Modification 1. This combines with other consumable duration boosting shenanigans. For Daisen, this most importantly buffs her heals (allowing you to flirt with the upper maximum of 20.328% of her hit points healed per charge if you boost it with signals and commander skills) and increases her Spotter Aircraft's active time yet again up to a theoretical maximum of 343.2 seconds if you also boosted it with Spotter Aircraft Modification 1. And finally, we have slot #6. In theory, Main Battery Modification 3 is best. The faster reload just opens up more opportunities to do damage. Damage wins games. You could swap this out for more range. Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 ups her 20.54km reach to 23.83km which is much more comfortable at this tier, just keep in mind that Daisen is already hurting on the DPM front and giving up reload time for range may not be optimal. You do you, though. Finally, for the memes (and not for any reasons of efficiency), you could go all in on secondaries with Auxiliary Armaments Modification 2. This makes your secondaries reload faster and it comes with the added bonus of padding her mediocre AA values. As much as I like to meme about brawling battleships, Daisen is best equipped as a long-range sniper. Commander Skills Oh boy! I get to recycle commander skill graphics again! You're presented with the choice of whether or not to try and make a brawling build for Daisen or not. While it may seem a waste to squander the long-range potential of her secondaries, a survivability build focused on artillery and mitigating damage is always going to be better. You can build for survivability (which is generally optimal). It's boring, but it works. Or you can build for awesome, buffing her secondaries. As much as I joke about brawling builds being cool, this build isn't the best choice. It's fun, but it's definitely prompts some volatile and inconsistent results. Camouflage There are two permanent camouflages for Daisen. The first is the default version with an alternate palette swap (booger green or Strong Sad grey). The second is a Dockyard "War Paint" camouflage which we're used to seeing that includes nice little in-port details such as crew on deck, signal pennants hung from the rigging, etc. Daisen's default camouflage in green. You can unlock the grey and beige version by completing the appropriate section of the Yamamoto collection. Take Daisen out to sea in her War Paint camouflage, and she loses all of the flags you see in port. Firepower Main Battery: Eight 410mm/50 guns in 4x2 turrets in an A-B-X-Y gun layout. Secondary Battery: Sixteen 140mm/50 guns in single-mount casemates along the hull, with six forward firing and two rearward firing per side. She then has twenty 127mm/40 guns in 10x2 turrets mounted on deck and in the superstructure, with five per side. Torpedoes: Sixteen torpedoes in 4x4 launchers mounted into the hull between the rear funnel and rear superstructure. Izumo (bis) Imagine Izumo. No, not the 2016-era Izumo. The present-day one. The good one. The one with the REALLY nice 410mm guns, with their improved penetration, good accuracy and ballistics. THAT ONE, yeah! Her guns are sweet. Their only flaw is that they're "only" 410mm in calibre, so you don't hit that 30mm overmatch threshold for abusing high-tier heavy cruiser upper hull and deck plating. But that's alright. Izumo's guns are great. Daisen gets Izumo's guns, ergo Daisen's guns are great. This isn't like Hizen or Iwami, where they look like the same guns until you do a deep dive and find out their AP isn't quite as good. These are the Real McCoy. Daisen clones Izumo's shell performance to the letter, so you know exactly what you're in for without any soft-numbers weirdness, like different drag or penetration or what have you (this has been a TERRIBLE year for that kind of nonsense). Now, it's not a one to one pairing of Izumo's guns on a different hull. There are some differences, notably: Daisen has eight guns instead of nine. Daisen reloads in 27 seconds instead of 30. Daisen has 2.1 sigma instead of 2.0 Daisen's guns have a range of around 20.6km instead of Izumo's 21.7km. Daisen has that amazing Spotter Aircraft active time. So let's talk about these differences and how they affect Daisen's gameplay. Hey, look, I found a solution for graphics bloat. Just double the number of graphs to cover a singular topic. This is AP DPM for all of the tier IX battleships, with the first graph(with muh closed peepers) being the top performers and the second (with the big red arrow pointing at Daisen) being the bottom half. Daisen's small main battery armament is very nicely propped up by her quick reload. So good job there, Wargaming. Her potential damage output is nice and average, but only if you take full advantage of her reload time. Same deal, but with HE shells: two graphs to show all of the tier IX battleships. This was a lot of work. Back in the day, I would have lumped HE and AP together on a single graph. Now I've four of the damn things. Daisen's AP peformance is just god-tier for a 406mm/410mm and it puts the other 16-inch guns at tier IX to shame. Fewer Guns But More Accurate & Faster Firing Eight guns is right on the cusp of what I consider a "small main battery" for battleships. This might seem odd given the glut of eight-gun armed dreadnoughts but World of Warships is packed with battleships with nine, ten, twelve and greater armaments. The average broadside for this type of ship is 9.4 guns (and yes, I'm an idiot and I counted all 1600+ barrels out there back in patch 0.12.3), so yeah, Daisen's slightly behind the average (especially at higher tiers). I feel there's three general effects that result from smaller main battery salvos: You feel every single shell that misses, so wonky dispersion is much more obvious than it would be in a larger salvo. Every shell counts and it's easy to notice AND get frustrated by individual shells straying. The difference in alpha strike is very apparent. Outright deleting (or gutting) a given target from a single volley is harder. It's unfortunate when you see a cruiser limp away from a "perfect shot", or a battleship survive slamming home citadels in a joust. There's no "accuracy by volume" crutch. If your lead is slightly off on larger salvos, there's always a chance for one or more stray shells to still net you some damage. That's much less likely to happen with fewer shells being thrown. This is one of my standard dispersion tests: 180 AP shells fired at a stationary target at a range of 15km. Daisen was equipped with Aiming System Modification 1. Shots are coming in from right to left (the Fuso bot is bow tanking). You can really see how the 2.1 sigma likes to centre-cluster the shell fall. In short: It feels like RNG matters more with smaller broadsides. Despite Daisen having 2.1 sigma, her dispersion can still feel painfully troll at times. So, if you're a pessimist: Beware. Still, her guns are accurate. She will put most of her shells where you aim and you're still capable of putting out the hurt on exposed targets. Daisen makes up for her smaller main battery with a 27 second reload. After the last couple of years, seeing any battleship get added to the game with less than a 30 second reload just feels weird, like there's something wrong with Wargaming. They have been addicted to greater-than-30-second reloads for so long, I balk whenever I see one now. Anyway, Daisen's quicker reload doesn't quite make up the DPM gap between herself and ships with larger main batteries. Still, she gets close; so close in fact that it's not an area of concern -- at least when she's throwing AP shells. Japanese battleship HE is less competitive, especially when it comes to setting fires, but that's not a problem unique to Daisen. Overall, these are good guns. The faster reload means they're more likely to be available when there's a choice target of opportunity that needs a paddlin'. While larger calibre would have been nice to overmatch 30mm cruiser hull sections, these will do. Home, home on the range... ♫ Finally, we can't talk about Daisen's main armament without talking about their reach. Right out of the box, these aren't especially long-ranged guns, especially when compared to the other tier IX battleships. Even among Japanese tier IX battleships, she doesn't come out too well, with her 20.57km base range outstripped by Izumo (21.68km), Musashi (26.5km) and Iwami (22.3km). She's just barely ahead of the trash-heap that is Hizen (20.33km). But her design and gun performance is just begging for you to extend their reach. Embracing the sniper build on Daisen greatly increases her flexibility. She can take a position within the center of the map, just outside of her friendly deployment area and yeet shells to where they'll do the most good. Between her speed and reach, she can move back and forth to where she's needed. And if you're feeling really saucy, you can even snipe carriers this way which is always popular with your team mates. Daisen's special Spotter Aircraft consumable is a gimmicky way of giving this ship the equivalent of a 24.68km base range. The 90 second reset timer is JUST long enough to make you aware of the discomfort of not having that reach anymore. So this creates a sense player agency and control. I mean, it would be better if Daisen just had a 24km and change base range, but I can't say that I actively dislike the use of this special consumable. Daisen's gun firing angles are almost great and her gun traverse is nice at over 5º/s. Kii Redux Daisen's torpedo armament is ridiculous. SIXTEEN torpedo tubes on a battleship? That looked soooo exciting until I actually started playing the ship. There are two problems with Daisen's torpedoes: The first is Daisen's durability that makes using them incredibly difficult. They only have a 10km range. Daisen isn't Iwami. You can't yeet these fish at targets halfway across the map and net a hit or two every few games or so. They're limited to brawls or maybe catching a lurking stealth-bote by surprise. And outside of PVE modes, Daisen really struggles to make use of these torpedoes with any regularity. A lot of this has to do with her fragility and you'll see what I'm talking about more in the Durability section. For now just know that Daisen's torpedo armament goes contrary to her nominal gameplay which is best done at longer ranges. This also damns her secondaries, which is unfortunate. While she has a lot of secondaries with a high volume of fire and improved (German) levels of accuracy, they do little good if Daisen has to surrender huge chunks of health to make use of them. Her torpedoes and secondaries feel like a trap, the same way they baited others to try out brawling builds on Kii. They look good until you cross-reference the hull they're mounted on. These end up being a waste of upgrades and commander skills to attempt something that will work out so seldom. In theory, if Daisen can survive into end-game as one of the few remaining ships alive? Then yeah, a fully upgraded brawler version will be her best self and give her the best chance of winning. But high tier gameplay so rarely allows for successful brawls, not without sacrifice. And as we'll see below, Daisen cannot afford to trade. Like all brawlers, though, it's SO much easier to instigate close-range fights when the ship is top tier. Those poor tier VIIs don't stand a chance. Daisen's secondary firing arcs, with 140mm casemates in red and her 127mm twins in blue. Her forward firing angles are pretty good, though you need to show a complete broadside (47º) to get all thirteen mounts firing. Her rearward firing angles are pretty terrible. These troublesome firing angles will only exaggerate her durability issues. VERDICT: Great main battery guns, though they'd be nicer if they were a larger calibre or if she had more of them. Awesome potential in her secondaries and torpedoes but nigh impossible to realize them except in VERY specific (and rarely occurring) scenarios. Durability Hit Points: 69,300 Bow & stern / superstructure / upper-hull / amidships-deck: 32mm / 19mm / 32mm / 32mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 305mm belt armour + 76mm turtleback + 76mm citadel wall Torpedo Damage Reduction: 53% Daisen has a small hit point pool, only three heals and structural armour that gets no thicker than 32mm. Yet she's allegedly a brawler. That's a yikes. Daisen reminds me of Kii in this regard, where whatever potential there may have been between secondaries and torpedoes is undone by a protection scheme that will see you punished (and punished hard) if you try and play the ship like her armaments suggest. Kii and Daisen share some similar failings, but Daisen is the better protected between the two, with better (but not good) citadel protection and fantastic anti-torpedo defence. So despite her apparent brawling lustre, Daisen will quickly disabuse her captains of leading the charge. Brawling is only something she can do in a crisis and she should not be thrown forward aggressively unless you have every advantage (and maybe someone to tank the hits for you). I usually do these graphics from the front, but Daisen has more complex armour values towards the rear of the ship, including an extended waterline belt and a massive section of 19mm deck plating amidships. Daisen's forward citadel's transverse bulkhead is thicker than her rear one. Note how her turtelback is part of the forward citadel geometry but not the rear. Soft Skinned and Stonkin' Huge Daisen be long, yo. She's an enormous target. Long-long boat is also soft and chewy (just like Long Sakeru Gummy!). None of her structural armour (upper hull, bow, stern or deck) gets thicker than 32mm. In addition, she has a large section of 19mm deck plating over her torpedoes that counts as part of her superstructure (just where you'd want the thinnest armour -- overtop of the oxygen fuelled water-missiles with giant explody warheads). She is incredibly vulnerable to cruiser calibre HE and SAP rounds, with no protection against these shells if they don't strike her belt. In addition, this also makes her vulnerable to overmatching from AP shells 460mm calibre or greater. Things don't get much better when you look at her belt and citadel. First, it's huge. Second, it sits just over the waterline, making it an easy target. Third, it doesn't have a lot of armour, at least not by high-tier standards. Her outer belt is only 305mm thick. The lower belt runs underneath it at only 127mm thick (this gets obscured in part by her 32mm anti-torpedo bulge). Behind her belt, she has a 76mm turtleback and then a 76mm citadel wall which SOUNDS good on paper, but in practice, this only affects the rear half of the citadel. The forward half INCLUDES the turtleback as part of the citadel, effectively meaning that AP shells need only contend with the 305mm belt then the 76mm turtleback in order to land a citadel hit. That's not a very big ask for the enormous amounts of penetration being thrown around at higher tiers. On the plus side, angling protects Daisen's citadel much better than other high-tier Japanese ships. There's none of that weird octagonal geometry or rounded off edges going on. A hidden horizontal plate in her bow also prevents her squishier, lower transverse bulkhead from being an easy 'in' for long-range shells. For a battleship, Daisen barely earns a passing grade in terms of armour protection. She might be soft and squishy, but she's not like, British battleship or battlecruiser levels of squish. On the left is a better shot of Daisen's weird citadel geometry, with the turtelback counting as part of the citadel for the forward half but not the rear. Thus it's the rear half the ship which is better protected as the hidden turtleback must be bested before contesting the citadel beneath. One of the weird quirks of this half-included, half-not turtleback-as-citadel scheme is that there's two small, triangular 19mm 'voids'. While this is a possible weak spot for incoming battleship shells, in practice I don't think it's relevant. It's too small of a target and you'd never know if you took a hit through there anyway as any hits through her turtleback are likely going to be citadel hits anyway. On the right, you can see these two sections of armour that are hidden or difficult-to-see from in port. These come via gamemodels3d.com which is an invaluable resource tool for people interested in learning more about what makes World of Warships tick. The top picture shows the missing 76mm turtleback which covers the rear-half of Daisen's citadel. This presents the most protected part of the ship. The bottom image shows a hidden 76mm horizontal plate that protects the 32mm transverse bulkhead of her citadel from shells overmatching her bows. Any penetrating rounds plunging through her bows will hit this plate and deflect off, meaning that in order to land citadel hits, the shells must contend with the upper 330mm citadel bulkhead. Health and Hit Points Daisen's hit point pool of 69,300 health is on the low side for a tier IX battleship. That might be okay on it's own, but Daisen pairs this with a crappy Repair Party consumable, neutered with one fewer charges than normal. The end result is that this creates an extreme deficit of potential health she has to play with over the course of a match. This becomes an absolute nightmare when under concerted attack from cruiser spam. I had a VERY unfortunate encounter with a happy-go-lucky Cleveland backed by a Seattle that made me melt in very short order. Her lack of armour means everything hurts. Her small hit point pool doesn't give her a lot of time to extract herself when under fire and her lacklustre heals means she doesn't claw back as much health as her contemporaries. If you're looking for Daisen, look to the right. The ones on the left are the fourteen tier IX battleships with the highest potential health. She's over on the right, second from the bottom. About Those Torpedoes... Daisen's anti-torpedo protection is spectacular with a 53% damage reduction for hits along her bulges. This also provides significant flooding protection As cool as Daisen's quad-launchers are, they break. Often. Chronically even. If decide to upgrade her Spotter Aircraft with it's special upgrade (17,000 in the Armory, it's one of the few times I can actually recommend this in good conscience!), then it'll happen even more often. If you want to brawl, you need to look at trying to keep these alive somehow, but at best you're only going to delay the inevitable. They are not well protected. Like all torpedo tubes, loud noises in their general vicinity will break them and there's a lot of loud noises thrown Daisen's way. Outside of a few test games in Co-Op, I don't think I ever reached for Daisen's torpedoes and found all four launchers intact -- there was always at least one permanently disabled. This should be yet another word of caution about trying to close prematurely with this ship. Random hit point assignments are random. Every time you hit "Battle", each of your torpedo launchers get assigned a value between 300 and 2100 hit points. Good luck. VERDICT: Too squish to be up front. This is a second line battleship until things thin out. Her durability really makes her feel like an up-armoured battlecruiser rather than a true battleship. Agility Top Speed: 35 knots Turning Radius: 1100m Rudder Shift Time: 16.0 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 3.7º/s at 26.2 knots Main Battery Traverse Rate: 5.14º/s Daisen does the whole 'go in straight line' thing good. She does not do the 'go in a bendy line' thing good. This ship is fast. She is NOT agile. She needs a LOT of room to manoeuvre. Her high top speed is definitely an advantage. It helps (somewhat) with keeping her safe at very long ranges. It's harder to lead her accurately when she's stretching her legs. Though it's worth keeping in mind, that's only going to save you against less-than-expert players. She also doesn't quite get up towards 40+ knots where lead times really become a challenge. Sadly, she doesn't have the wiggle necessary to pair this speed with some good turning ability. Her rudder shift time isn't terrible, but it's definitely not good. Her turning radius is so large that it nullifies any bonus her high speed might have given her to her rate of turn. Had she only a 920m turning radius like Iowa, her rate of turn would have been an impressive 4.5º/s, that's how badly her large turning radius screws her. While her speed is wonderful for brawling -- allowing her to control engagement distances against most battleships she faces, her poor handling is a setback. For brawling, a good rudder shift time or rate of turn can help with angling and protecting your citadel in a joust. It can also help with close range torpedo drops. But frankly, her agility woes are the least of her worries when it comes to qualifying as a brawler, in my opinion. This isDaisen has one of the largest turning circle in the game. VERDICT: Fast but HELLA clumsy. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 5 + 1 explosions for 1,540 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8 km. Long Ranged (up to 5.8km): 119 dps at 75% accuracy (89dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 297.5dps at 75% accuracy (223dps)  Short Ranged (up to 2.5km): 231dps at 85% accuracy (196dps) Colour me surprised (she said sarcastically): Daisen's AA power is mostly irrelevant. I say "mostly" because I did have a game where a Lexington kept losing all of his aircraft, but that was an example of someone not knowing how to dodge flak, so... In terms of effective sustained AA DPS in a self-defence scenario, Daisen puts out comparable damage to Friedrich der Große, Alsace or Marlborough, though she doesn't throw out as much flak as the French bote. You're not likely to be rocking her Catapult Fighter, so this is all you're going to have to contribute to punishing enterprising carriers. It's just not enough to see to her own defence outside of anecdotes like I listed above. VERDICT: Stick with friends. Pray you're not the most delicious target out there. Kaga completing a drop against an isolated Daisen. She lost two planes; one immediately after the torpedoes were dropped and another as the rest of the squadron tried to fly out of her AA bubble. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 16.5km / 13.37m Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 11.51km / 9.32km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 16.6km Maximum Firing Range: Between 20.52km and 28.59km Daisen has a big ol' surface detection range. Japanese battleships tend to fare poorly in regards to surface concealment, with some of the worst surface detection values around. It's no surprise then that she's in the bottom third of her tier and that largely carries through with most of her matchmaking. Taking at leasto ne concealment upgrade should be considered mandatory (and thankfully, none of the other 5th upgrade slots are worth taking, so you're safe there) and both makes your life much easier. You may have to give up the advantage of her fast reload in order to better manage her concealment. This makes her smaller gun battery and lower salvo weight hurt quite a bit more which probably explains some of the trials and tribulations I had with this ship. Still, if you're sititng way back, stealth shouldn't be too much of an issue, at least until the carrier starts swinging at you or a lolibote or sub breaks through. VERDICT: Japanese-battleship-bad. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 0.5km to 10km (plus part of the bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: Two Reload Time: 30 seconds Aircraft: One Kawanishi H6K with 2,000hp Drop Pattern: 2 bombs Maximum Bomb Damage: 4,200 Fire Chance: 24% Bomb Blast Radius (1.0x / 0.5x / crit only) : 150m / 300m / 375m Battleship air strikes are largely standardized now with very few exceptions (mostly older, misbehaving premiums that are nerf-proof, so they get stuck with crappy ASW). Daisen isn't an exception, so she has the standard tier IX-X airstrike. Her secondaries can do work, but only if your opponent gets caught out. It's totally hilarious when they do, though. Proxy-spotted Salmon at periscope depth gets shredded. Final Evaluation I am shocked. Daisen isn't terrible. In fact, she's quite respectable. This all comes down to those gorgeous main battery guns of hers. Her gunnery is super comfy. I'm writing this after playing a few more games in Daisen after blitzing through my West Virginia '44 review, and I can't tell you how welcome it was to be able to fire battleship calibre guns with decent ballistic properties again. But I digress. Her main battery guns are good. Even if you don't buff her secondaries, they can be surprisingly effective. And sometimes you may even get to use your torpedoes. I must say that her Spotter Aircraft consumable was a refreshing addition to the Box o' Gimmicks. The extra range on demand (and for a long time) was fun. I liked that. What holds Daisen back is that fragility. Her soft skin and having less healing is a flaw I keenly felt and it dictated the way I played her. Had she an extra charge on her heals, I KNOW I could have turned one losing game into a win and maybe turned around a couple more. But even with this, the ship works reasonably well. All of her other weaknesses are really window dressing to this durability flaw. Yeah, her handling sucks and I did end up beaching myself a couple of times because of it, but whatever. Similarly, her mediocre AA and concealment were things I was conscious about, but they didn't dictate the outcome of matches the way that her durability did. I should end this review with a follow up on the brawling question: Daisen is a brawler. She can be quite a fearsome brawler, but only in the late game. My most dramatic and high scoring games in Daisen all featured brawling. And though I didn't run a brawling build, she still performed well. The most dramatic of these involved gunning down a destroyer, then two tier VII battleships, then a submarine, netting three (yes three) Double-Strike medals. Sadly, we didn't win. It would have been just shy of a 3k base XP game. Oh well, it was fun and that's what counts. I don't think she quite warrants a GUDBOTE evaluation of old, but Daisen is a cozy ship. I'm still surprised we got a decent dockyard vessel. I'm so used to them being crap. Thank you for reading!

Greetings and Salutations Question? - What are the easier and best, fastest way to acquire Commander XP? There has to be a better way than just grinding away like normal. What am I missing?

Well I didn't think I was going to make, went on holidays over Xmas for the first time in 20 years, so I was two weeks behind. But there is nothing like sleep deprivation and a saline drip in your arm to get you motivated into grinding till you pass out. But I digress. Its over finished till the next one I guess. And here is the little beauty now Well time to just chill out and actually have fun.

battle pass broken been stuck on level 20 for 3 days since thur am it now sunady and say unavalible for another 6 hrs ..wows wants you to play there game but they cant make it work normally ..noone is gonna wait 2 3 4 5 days to do missions or like the dockyard u lock that for 2 or 3 days before you can do next level of missions ..given there only hear for x amount of days they shouldent be restricted or amount per day limited if person wants grind them all day they should be allowed to........

Learned my lesson and just checked the last week of Missions for the Dockyard ship Admiral Schroeder. Been some surprises at the end of these dockyard missions so I checked. Week 7 missions. One mission you need to earn 39,000 BASE XP. In a Submarine! OK dont panic. Another mission you need to earn 39,000 BASE XP in a Destroyer! If you dont like that one you can choose another mission....earn 39,000 BASE XP in a Cruiser. Sooo.... I recommend you take a look at your DOCKYARD missions so you wont be surprised at the end...

I covered Admiral Schroder back in September when the ship was first announced. I was wary of her secondary performance, since she only has base German battleship dispersion on her secondaries. Since there are no secondary accuracy-enhancing skills available for cruisers, the only way to improve this dispersion is through the secondary battery modification 1, which decreases dispersion by 20%. I won't go into the details here, but if you'd like to read more, here's a link to that original post where I discuss the specifics: Now, I want to be perfectly clear that I did not breach my NDA agreement with WoWs - in fact, I've never played the ship. The opinions and statistics I mentioned were entirely based on the devblogs that were publicly available, and were not influenced by others who had played the ship. When WoWs released an article outlining the now live update, they claimed Admiral Schroder had "powerful, long-range, and accurate secondaries." I commented on this, because I felt that this was a misleading description of the ship. A ship which many will likely spend a significant sum to obtain under the impression that this is some sort of German streusel-flavored Napoli. When I directly expressed my concerns to a WoWs employee, the response I received was as follows: To which I replied: The argument this person is trying to make is that having many more secondary guns and poor accuracy is akin to having fewer, more accurate secondary guns. To be clear, I understand the reasoning for the balance decisions, but I disagreed (and still do) that having a high rate-of-fire with mediocre accuracy did not make the ship "accurate". It just increases its chances of hitting something. The response I got was a little disparaging: Now, I'm not trying to drag this person through the mud. I've deliberately left their name out of it for that reason. I respect this person, but we disagree on a few things, the definition of accuracy being one of them. I'm not playing semantics. I'm in my final year of an engineering degree, and I know the definition of accuracy, volume, flux, etc. One could define the rate-of-fire through the dispersion ellipse of secondary guns to be the flux, or volume of fire, while accuracy is the ability to consistently hit targets. I've done the math. I know what I'm talking about when it comes to secondaries. This ship does not have accurate secondaries. Let's look at a very, very small sample size from a couple Community Contributors who posted replays in which they took the Admiral Schroder out into battle with a secondary build: 129 hits for 1001 shells fired = 12.9% hit rate. 76 hits for 613 shells fired = 12.4% hits. 155 hits for 1682 shells fired = 9.2% hits. 158 hits for 568 shells fired = 27.8% hits. This is kinda an outlier, since the CC was basically at point-blank range for most of the time. 93 hits for 670 shells fired = 13.9% hits. 51 hits for 464 shells fired = 11.0% hits. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this is what's on the WoWs website this morning: Yep, still says accurate. 12% hits is not accurate. I'm not saying she should be buffed; I'm saying her description needs to be changed. Just say "mediocre accuracy is compensated by a high rate-of-fire." Easy fix. Is running a secondary build the best way to play the Schroder? That's what I've heard. Doesn't make her secondaries good, though. Personally, if you want a brawling cruiser and are going to spend money on a ship, I recommend the Napoli. Its secondaries are twice as accurate and hit pretty hard, and her main battery guns are more lethal. Also, she's Tier X. I'm not saying don't buy the Schroder - it's your money, and who am I to tell you what to do with it - but I hope that this post will help save some folks from investing in a ship that isn't as advertised. Thanks for reading, and take care, ~Murrel

The following review of Repulse, the tier VI premium British battleship, was sponsored by my patrons on Patreon who helped me afford this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as patch 0.10.11. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. I've had my head down for over a month, working on a handful of projects (including, but not limited to tier VIII submarines, tier VI carriers and updating my databases). However, even I've noticed the growing hype surrounding HMS Repulse and it's prompted me to throw this together. There's good reason that Repulse is creating a lot of noise. I played the Hell out of her back earlier this year when she was in testing. She was a monster then. She's a monster now. To be clear, Wargaming has nerfed her since I was testing her. The following changes were made: Her reload time was nerfed from 26 seconds to 27 seconds. Engine Boost's speed increase dropped from 15% down to 10% down to 8% (from ~36.5 knots down to it's current ~34.3 knots when the consumable is active) Her main battery rotation rate was buffed from 3.33º/s to 6º/s. Having taken her out again (yes, I whaled all the way up to Marlborough for this review -- thank you, patrons!), this hasn't been enough to tone Repulse down. And, as this review will detail, I'm expecting her to receive another round of nerfs once the population at large gets a hold of her. For those tempted to throw money at guaranteeing getting a hold of her, this may be reason for caution. No one wants a ship they spent time and money on to get nerfed out from under them. So, let's get stuck in on why I see Repulse as being a potential problem vessel that Wargaming will have to reign in with future patches. Quick Summary: A soft-skinned battlecruiser (with surprisingly trollish durability) that has incredible speed and accuracy. PROS Long ranged with a 19.76km reach which can be further boosted with a Spotter Aircraft. She uses Graf Spee (battlecruiser) dispersion combined with 2.0 sigma, giving her excellent accuracy. Her 381mm guns can overmatch up to 26mm of armour with AP shells. Her 381mm guns have 95mm of HE penetration. Decent fire angles and good gun handling. Fast reload at 27 seconds. VERY fast with a top speed of 31.7 knots. Has access to an Engine Boost consumable. Her Repair Party queues up 60%/33% of penetration/citadel damage. CONS Soft skinned structurally, with only 16mm of extremity armour (!) Thin belt of only 229mm. Main battery is only six guns which makes RNG feel more punitive. Only modest AP penetration and inability to overmatch 27mm+ hull sections. Terrible anti-aircraft firepower. Enormous turning circle radius of 860m. Only three charges base on her Repair Party. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Repulse's appeal for new players is the simplicity of her main battery firepower. Her guns are long ranged and accurate. Her ammunition choices are simplified too, with newer players able to spam either AP or HE and generate reasonable results (though AP is preferred). The two strikes against her for inexperienced players are her speed (which can get her into trouble with over-extending) and her soft protection scheme. These will both spake people who like to play aggressively. However, a cautious player won't struggle overmuch with either one of these problems. For veterans, Repulse is a kiting-daemon. You have the speed. You have the stealth. You have the range. You have the accuracy. You have the overmatch. Play keep away and farm damage like a boss. Options Repulse's consumables stand out while the rest is fairly standard. Consumables Her Damage Control Party doesn't have anything unusual about it and is normal for a British battleship. It is active for 15 seconds and it has an 80 second reset timer. It has unlimited charges. It's her Repair Party which is unusual. While it does heal up to the standard 14% of her starting HP over 28 seconds (with an 80 second reset timer), like other British battleship, it queues up to 60% of penetration damage received instead of the usual 50% for most other nations. In addition, Repulse queues up to 33% of citadel damage too. However, unlike most battleships, Repulse only starts with three charges instead of four. We go back to normalcy with her Spotter Aircraft. This increases her range by 20% (up to 23.71km) for 100 seconds. It has a 240 second reset timer and it comes with four charges. Finally, she gets access to a unique Engine Boost consumable. This provides an 8% speed increase for 180 seconds with only a 90 second reset timer. Repulse comes with three charges. Upgrades Start your upgrades with Main Armaments Modification 1. Next up, if you can afford it you should definitely grab Engine Boost Modification 1 from the Armory for 17,000 . This increases the action time of your Engine Boost consumable from 180 seconds to a whopping 234 seconds. If you can't, default to Damage Control System Modification 1. Aiming System Modification 1 is the only upgrade worth considering in slot three. In slot four, you have the choice. Because of her vulnerability to fires, Damage Control System Modification 1 is arguably optimal. However, expert players may want to swap that out for Steering Gears Modification 1 to help with kiting at very long ranges. Commander Skills I wish I could tell you that it was worth having a unique commander for Repulse, if only to make things more interesting. However, you really can't go wrong with a standard battleship build that you're going to use for the British battleship tech tree line. It should look something like this: You're not going to need Grease the Gears given Repulse's very fast turret traverse, so I suppose that's kinda nice. But given that you probably picked it up to help with some of the awful traverse rates found on the rest of the Royal Navy line, it's not the end of the world. I much prefer Priority Target, but that's a personal bias. Camouflage Repulse comes with two camouflages, Type 10 and Snows and Stars. These are cosmetic swaps of one another with the following stats: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% to experience gains. Her basic Type 10 camouflage. If this looks familiar, it's because the devs gave it to HMS Hood for some reason. You can unlock this palette swap of her Type 10 camouflage by completing part of the "Naval Aviation" collection. The Snow and Stars camouflage is pretty terrible. Firepower Main Battery: 3x2 381mm/45 guns in an A-B-X superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Fifteen 102mm/45 guns with nine in 3x3 turrets with a pair straddling the first funnel and the final one superfiring over X-turret and then six single guns with three to each side. Let me get Repulse's secondaries out of the way first: They're terrible. She doesn't have enough of them, they're not accurate and they don't hit especially hard. The only thing decent about them is their range. Do not sink any upgrades, signals or skills into these things. Moving on. Repulse has some of the best, tier VI battleship main battery firepower. Here's why: Battlecruiser Dispersion + 2.0 sigma Nearly 20km worth of range 27 second reload 381mm AP shells with 26mm overmatching 95mm of HE penetration Good gun fire angles with 6º/s gun rotation But she only has six guns, Mouse, you might say. And you're correct to be wary of small gun armaments on battleships. Having only six guns means that Repulse has smaller alpha strike potential and lower DPM than her contemporaries (even with her faster reload time). This spills over to her fire-chance as well, making her one of the worst at her tier. One of the less appreciate drawbacks of smaller main battery armaments is that RNG feels more punitive with fewer guns. When firing with larger broadsides, having a pair of shells scatter wide is annoying but less impactful than it is for Repulse where every shell counts. The quality of her individual hits is an issue too. Repulse does not boast the high-performance Royal Navy HE shells, but rather a chimaera that uses the more modest baseline stats from HMS Hood (lower damage, lower fire chance) yet maintains the 1/4 HE penetration from Queen Elizabeth (95mm of penetration instead of 64mm). So her HE alpha strikes aren't terribly impressive and she's a poor fire starter. Repulse's HE would be largely forgettable were it not for the issues with her AP rounds which will force you to still use HE on occasion. Though the Royal Navy 381mm AP shells are capable of overmatching most targets up to tier VII, that doesn't quite reach the 27mm+ threshold found on many higher-tiered cruisers and battleships. Additionally, their penetration values are only good at medium to close-range and they're largely incapble of dealing with battleship belt armour at distances in excess of 14km. This complicates Repulse's gunnery if you're looking to maximize its efficiency, requiring that you aim more carefully, choose the correct ammunition and pick your targets. Thus, when Repulse is top-tier on those smaller, claustrophobic maps, her guns (specifically her AP shells) are much more impressive. When bottom tier, their efficiency falls away. Yet conscious of these drawbacks, the only other guns at tier VI I'd rather have are the 406mm off West Virginia '41 and I only say that by the slimmest of margins. Repulse's guns are hella-comfortable to use. Aim well, and you'll hit what you shoot at. Pick the correct ammo and aim at the right hull locations and you'll see consistent damage. What's more, between the ship's gun handling, long range and high speed, these guns are excellent for over-the-shoulder kiting, taking steady bites out of your opponents. Woe betide the cruiser that flashes broadside to Repulse up to (and including 20km) ranges. She can (and will) punish careless players spectacularly. Graphic dump time! Here's the bad news. In terms of raw numbers, Repulse's six guns just don't cut it, even with their faster reload. This doesn't tell the whole story though. You have to keep shell performance (penetration, overmatch) and accuracy in mind. Andrea Doria is the only tier VI battleship using SAP on the right graph. It's the same news when you look at her fire setting potential. It's not great but her accuracy helps ensure she gets more hits than these raw numbers would otherwise indicate. Royal Navy 381mm AP penetration obviously improves as you climb the tiers, but it's not exactly an impressive round when it comes to penetration. You want well in excess of 350mm of penetration to contend with most battleship belts (allowing your rounds to defealt some angling). Repulse doesn't have this until you get 14km or closer. Compare Repulse's dispersion (blue, on the left) with Ise's dispersion (peach, on the right). Both ships have 2.0 sigma. Repulse's battlecruiser dispersion gives her a tighter overall dispersion area, making those central-landing shells pack in even closer. Still, if you manage 25% accuracy in Fuso, you'd need to managed roughly 45% or better to keep pace with Repulse; which is a pretty tall order. The alternative is to get her guns in action for longer to compensate, and that relies on good positioning and survivability. Very comfy fire angles paired with a very fast (for a battleship) gun traverse speed gives Repulse brilliant gun handling. VERDICT: Their excellent accuracy and overmatch potential makes them deadly. Kite and kill. Durability Hit Points: 56,100 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 16mm / 16mm / 38mm / 26mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 26mm anti-torpedo bulge + 229mm belt + 102mm citadel turtleback. Torpedo Damage Reduction: 16% I've removed Repulse's 26mm anti-torpedo bulges to reveal the 229mm belt armour underneath. Note that normal tier VI battleships have 26mm extremities. Repulse has ... issues. I suppose it's kinda fluffy that a British battlecruiser has durability problems. In Repulse's case, this comes from two sources: Her extremities are VERY soft. Her citadel is vulnerable to overmatching from 380mm calibre guns or greater. The 16mm bow and stern sections of Repulse's armour makes her vulnerable, not just to AP overmatch (which I'll get into) but all calibres of HE rounds as well. Repulse's extremities and superstructure can be penetrated by HE rounds of 96mm or greater. So not only is every destroyer out there very happy to make your acquaintance, even the small calibre secondary guns off a lot of battleships are capable of plinking some damage off your soft snoot and butt. Combined with Repulse's horrid anti-torpedo protection, getting in close to enemy lolibotes is generally a terrible idea unless you're particularly good at blapping them with your main battery guns. Note that this issue isn't unique to her. Other tier VI and VII battleships may also contend with small calibre HE shells doing damage to them, but normally, the offending vessel must have the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells commander skill to do so. So from an HE perspective, Repulse's extremities are a weakness but not a glaring one. That actually carries through when you look deeper into her AP protection. While her 16mm extremities look like huge weak points, there's hidden armour geometry that prevents these from becoming an automatic pass to her citadel. To be clear: Repulse still takes massive amounts of penetration damage through her butt or snoot, but it's not always going to be catastrophic citadel hits. Repulse has a lot of these hidden armour plates, including a 76mm turtleback along the interior of her anti-torpedo protection and hidden decks. While Repulse's citadel is still vulnerable, the slope of her turtleback is enough to prompt (though not guarantee) ricochet checks for shells fired at close range, giving her some rather trollish survivability at times. Hits from further out are a much greater danger in this regard, but thanks to her agility and speed, these are easier to avoid. Still, playing catch with large-gunned battleships is generally a bad idea in Repulse. It's best to break contact or Just Dodge™ until you can disengage. Though Repulse is capable of recovering up to 33% of citadel hits (be they from bomb, shell or torpedo), it's not something you want to fall back on. It's not all doom and gloom here, though. Extremities asside, Repulse's amidships hull cannot be overmatched. If you can bait shots here while angled, she can ricochet and shatter stuff for days. Similarly, while she may have fewer charges of her Repair Party, she still retains that Royal Navy 60% penetration damage queue, on top of that 33% citadel damage queue I mentioned before. So clever play can help mitigate this damage, particularly if you fight at a distance to give yourself more time to avoid return fire. The 25mm armour plate over Repulse's machine spaces and the 26mm citadel wall is a big weakness against 380mm+ AP rounds which can overmatch. From gamemodels3d.com. The arrow is pointing to the hidden 102mm v-shaped plate protecting Repulse from overmatching AP rounds. This links up to the fore-end armour belt which is visible in port. Repulse's effective hit point pool looks pretty average. Her 60% penetration damage queue and 33% citadel damage queue does allow her to make better use of her Repair Party than the ships like Dunkerque through Mackensen. Unfortunately, she's only working with four charges of her Repair Party which gives her less overall health than her hit points would otherwise suggest. VERDICT: Bad, but not like "historical British battlecruiser" bad. Agility Top Speed: 31.7 knots Turning Radius: 860 meters Rudder Shift Time: 14.4 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.3º/s at 23.7kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 6.0º/s Repulse's turn radius is bad and her rudder shift time isn't good either, but thanks to being able to overtop 30 knots in a straight line, her rate of turn isn't horrid (but I wouldn't call it anything more than average). Though she needs a lot of room to come about, she doesn't take forever to do it, so that's nice. Better still, with her excellent turret traverse rates, she can't out-turn her guns which is a novelty for British battleships. High speed solves a lot of issues, though it's not without its own set of troubles. Repulse is made to kite and control the engagement distances. Between her own high top speed and her Engine Boost consumable, she's more than capable of outrunning just about any threat she faces (or running it down for that matter). Stack this onto her good main battery gun range, decent fire angles and her not-terrible concealment values and you would struggle to find a battleship better suited to dictating when she gets spotted by her opponents short of the smoke-on-demand Italian designs. On paper, she is theoretically capable of playing keep-away to such a degree that she should be capable of mitigating any of the aforementioned durability issues raised earlier. However, the reality is that her tier bites her in the butt. As nice as Repulse's top speed is, lower-tiered maps are often too claustrophobic for her to make proper use of it defensively. So while her offensive power shoots up when she's top tier, her defensive attribute granted by her speed is compromised to a degree. This can be mitigated somewhat by choosing where to fight, ensuring you have enough open water to take full advantage of her speed, but this does limit some corridors through which she can fight and avoid damage. This is much less of an issue on mid-to-high tier maps when facing against tier VII and VIII opponents. This is, in of itself, a mixed blessing given the increase of larger calibre battleship guns at these tiers, to say nothing of the reduced efficiency of her own 381mm battery. The final issue with her speed is that it's far too easy to over-extend in Repulse. Though she's fast enough to disengage, she's also fast enough to be the first ship spotted if you're not careful. Note that Novorossiysk is not included here. I did not have her unlocked to confirm her in-port turning data when I made this graphic. I have her now, but I'm not redoing this! VERDICT: I love her speed and I'll overlook her other agility woes because of it. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 1 explosion for 980 damage per blast at 3.5km to 4km Long Ranged (up to 4km): 28 dps at 75% accuracy (21 dps) Medium Ranged (up to 2.5km): 140 dps at 75% accuracy (105 dps) Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 105 dps at 70% accuracy (73.5 dps) I'm not going to dwell on Repulse's anti-aircraft firepower very long. It's awful; some of the worst at her tier. All of her damage is focused around her 40mm pom poms and 20mm Oerlikon batteries which can only shoot when aircraft are on their final attack run. Thus, they're best described as a "revenge weapons", where any damage you're doing is after already suffering from the CV's predations. While this may end up netting you a kill or two against tier VI aircraft, Repulse stands no chance at dissuading the attentions of a tier VIII carrier. You're never going to deplane a CV with Repulse unless they deliberately orbit around your ship for minutes at a time. Though, this said, it's not like any of the tier VI battleships are particularly fearsome when it comes to their AA defense. Most are just practice targets for even mid-tier CVs. Thus, Repulse has to stick with her allies to have any hope of keeping CV-safe. This runs contrary to her preferred playstyle though -- where she takes up a flank and snipes. This leaves her dangerously vulnerable to aircraft attack. I suppose that's historically accurate and all but it makes for crappy game play whenever a CV is present and intent on ruining your day. VERDICT: Terrible. Just like the state of low-tier surface ship interaction with aircraft. Repulse's AA is so crappy, I couldn't even shoot down this single Bf 109 that didn't even know how to raise its landing gear. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 14.4km / 12.57km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 9.62km / 8.66km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 13.19km Maximum Firing Range: Between 19.76 and 23.71km when using her Spotter Aircraft Repulse pairs average visibility with excellent range. Combined with her accuracy over distance and her great top speed, Repulse feels far stealthier than her visibility attributes would otherwise indicate. It's only the presence of aircraft, submarines or aggressive destroyers that easily sniff her out. While a quick scan of the enemy roster will give an indication of how effective Repulse's ability to control engagement distances, the size of the map matters a lot as well. The ballistics of her guns do allow her to make use of island cover to a degree (though nowhere near as effectively as a cruiser might), these same islands can be her bane, concealing spotting elements and limiting her ability to kite effectively. Open water is truly where her home is and being able to dictate the range between herself and her chosen target is her bread and butter. VERDICT: Unremarkable concealment but good enough to make use of her speed and range. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 1.5km to 8km (plus bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: Up to two Reload Time: 75 seconds Aircraft: Two S.25 Sunderlands with 2,000hp per plane. Drop Pattern: 4 bombs each dropped evenly over roughly a 1.75km column Maximum Bomb Damage: 3,000 Fire Chance: 12% Nothing written here is going to last. We've already received word that with patch 0.11.0, ASW is changing significantly. I'm merely recording this for posterity -- Repulse's anti-submarine airstrikes were pretty good. Without knowing how the bomb blast radius is changing, I can't say for certain, but from the looks of the devblog, submarines are getting a whole lot more survivable against not only battleship airstrikes but gunnery as well. I'm taking you with me! Final Evaluation Repulse comes with a pretty hefty pricetag. If you don't want to participate in any of the dockyard missions, you're looking at a minimum cost of 20,400 doubloons. Alternatively, you can spend the dozens upon dozens of hours grinding to unlock her. If you're already planning to spend a lot of time playing World of Warships this holiday season, you can probably unlock her for free. Just be aware that this is a time commitment and any stages you're missing towards the Dockyard event's end will set you back 1,500 doubloons per. Repulse has a nominal value of 6,800 doubloons (including a port slot) -- so if you're shelling out more than for five stages, it's not worth the dollarydoos. Repulse is a great ship. She carries on the trend Wargaming has had as of late to reduce the theoretical damage output. In terms of balance, I think Wargaming's close, but I'm foreseeing this ship getting hit with the nerf hammer again before 2022 is out. A 28 second or even as much as a 30 second reload may be in the cards for this ship. It will depend how she fares in the wild in the hands of the community. I could be totally off base here, with her speed and survivability creating a perfect storm to make her newfish-bait wherein she gets herself killed way too early (and often) to bring the average score down. But it's hard for me not to see the potential here and worry. For those of you on the fence about opening your wallets, I would strongly caution you to expect the ship to get her efficiency reduced in some way. Instead of Repulse, I think the average player would do much better buying Warspite instead. Warspite trades a little main battery performance and straight-line speed for a slightly larger broadside, better secondaries (they're so good you can do a full secondary spec if you want), better armour and hit point recovery, better fire management and much (much!) better agility. Repulse goes fast and she snipes. Warspite can also snipe, though nowhere near as far. But she can brawl too. She's the better ship for all kinds of PVE engagements too if that's your thing. Repulse uptiers better, I'll give her that much, though the Grand Old Lady is no slouch. You might think Hood a better comparison to Repulse, but tier for tier, Repulse is so much better than Hood that it's no-contest. Here's the list of best to worst British battleship premium and reward ships in my opinion. Thunderer -- I'm biased. Warspite -- I'm very biased, but she's still amazing. Nelson -- ♪ Burn, baby, burn! ♫ Agincourt -- Are they ever going to sell you again? Repulse -- Repulse only rates this low because three of the above ships aren't even available anymore cuz of their performance. How bae-bote has dodged this bullet, I have no idea. Duke of York -- You're not terrible, but I hate what we had to lose to bring you into the game as you are now. Vanguard -- I hate your fire arcs, but you're better overall than Hood. Hood -- The CV rework butchered this ship. Dreadnought -- I want to rate you higher, but Wargaming has neglected low-tiers so badly that you're nothing but a bot-farmer. Marlborough -- Spoilers for my upcoming review! I'm happy to have Repulse in my port, but I am a self-avowed teaboo, so be aware of my bias. If you're a fan of historical British vessels, she's a must have and will serve you well. For anyone else, she's a good ship. Just be aware that her performance statistics aren't permanent.

The following review of Marlborough, the tier IX premium British battleship, was sponsored by my patrons on Patreon who helped me afford this ship. Yes, I whaled for this damn thing. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as patch 0.10.11. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Wargaming has gone out of their way to actively sabotage anything redeeming about Marlborough. I would like to say that this is the kind of design I would have cooked up if I was actively trying to troll the community, but I have to be honest with myself: I am not capable of coming up with something this frustrating to play. Marlborough's sins are many, though the base premise is one that is very appealing: Lots of guns big guns firing very quickly. It's a testament to how badly the ship is built that this core design gets mangled so thoroughly. Quick Summary: A tier IX battleship with an enormous battery of sixteen, quick-firing 356mm guns. She has poor fire arcs, poor gun handling, anemic AP and HE shell performance, horrid accuracy and bad armour. PROS Enormous battery of sixteen 356mm guns with ridiculous DPM potential and fire setting. HE shells have 89mm of penetration. Solid top speed of 31.5 knots. Good concealment with a surface detection as low as 12.07km. CONS Horrible citadel placement and protection. Highly vulnerable to HE spam with her homogenous 32mm structural plate. Poor anti-torpedo defence. Some of the worst battleship sigma in the game at 1.4. Only modest range. Awful fire arcs and poor gun handling. Terrible shells with anemic individual performance across AP penetration, HE damage and fire chance. Slow rudder shift time. Unlike other British battleships, her Repair Party only queues 50% of penetration damage. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Marlborough punishes players. If you try and use her as designed, you'll end up back in port very quickly. Her horrible citadel placement combined with terrible fire arcs means that if you open fire and the enemy shoots back, you're going to lose the exchange. And better still, she's just fast enough to get you into position to get spanked without enough agility or protection to survive attempting to disengage. This is toxic to inexperienced players who will find themselves getting smoked for playing the ship exactly as envisioned. How is that fair? Marlborough's carry potential is as mild as may. The surest path to reasonable numbers from this thing is to spam HE. But those reasonable numbers won't come quickly and you better know when it's safe (and necessary) to push. Marlborough doesn't do you any favours when it comes to outlasting the enemy and you're certainly not going to win any damage trades. Most of your game play in this thing devolves to bow tanking and hugging islands. Options The only surprises with Marlborough's options is how few (and crappy) they are. Consumables For instance: Marlborough only has two consumables. Her Damage Control Party is standard for a British battleship with a 15 second active period, unlimited charges and an 80 second reset timer. Her Repair Party is also standard, but not for a British battleship, which often have all sorts of weirdness going on. Instead, Marlborough's consumable is akin to one you might find on a French, German or Japanese battleship. Marlborough's version comes with four charges base and an 80 second reset timer. It heals up to 14% on her maximum health over 28 seconds. It queues up 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage coming from torpedoes, bombs, rockets and shells and 100% of all other damage types. Upgrades I'm not a fan of using upgrades to band-aid over flaws, but on Marlborough, it's almost necessary. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Next, start building up your anti-fire regimen with Damage Control System Modification 1, though we might not go full hog here. You have a choice in slot three. Aiming System Modification 1 is generally going to be optimal, HOWEVER, Marlborough's fire angles are crap and her gun handling isn't good, so Main Battery Modification 2 isn't a bad idea. it will also save you a couple of commander skill points from having to purchase Grease the Gears. Priority Target is much more important for Marlborough, so saving those two points here is pretty important. Similarly, in slot four, Damage Control System Modification 2 is optimal for reducing fire damage. HOWEVER, Marlborough's fire angles are crap and her gun handling isn't good. Therefore, having the improved rudder shift time from Steering Gears Modification 1 isn't a terrible idea. Concealment System Modification 1 is the only consumable worth considering in slot five. You've got another choice to consider in slot six. Understandably, having an even faster reload is most appealing in Marlborough. Main Battery Modification 3 enables that, dropping her reload from 25 seconds down to 22 seconds. However, given Marlborough's fragility woes, standing further back from the action isn't remiss. Taking Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 increases her range from a modest 20.86km to a respectable 24.2km. Commander Skills I don't think anyone is really surprised I get to re-use this same battleship commander skill graphic yet again. Without improved secondaries, there's nothing really noteworthy here, so fall back on the standard battleship survivability build. Camouflage Marlborough came with two camouflages when you unlock her via the dockyard. They provide the usual bonuses for a tier IX premium: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -20% to post-battle service costs. +100% to experience gains. Marlborough's War Paint camo is the typical over-the-top patriotic style we've seen repeatedly in World of Warships. As garish as the War Paint camo is, Marlborough's default Type 10 camo makes it look downright appealing. Blech. This camo pattern is hideous. The alternative palette (unlocked through the Naval Aviation collection), tones down the Type 10's garish colours at least. Firepower Main Battery: Sixteen 356mm/45 guns in 4x4 turrets with an A-B-X-Y superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Sixteen 133mm/50 guns in 8x2 turrets in superfiring pairs firing forward and aft down each side. Let's start with the obvious: On paper, Marlborough has fantastic damage output. Sixteen battleship calibre guns with a 25 second reload are a potential nightmare. With the right upgrade, Marlborough can reduce this to 22 seconds. Marlborough puts a lot of shells downrange very quickly and she has the potential to stack damage out faster than her contemporaries. This is the dream that Wargaming is selling, but it's not a dream that's easily realized. As we'll see, there are a stack of problems that get in the way, making this advertised gameplay challenging to achieve at best and downright frustrating to pursue. Marlborough is a case study on why DPM charts shouldn't be taken at face value. Problem the First Much ado has been made about Marlborough's poor dispersion but it's not as bad as players imagine. This lies solely at the feet of her 1.4 sigma which is among the worst sigma values in the game. Marlborough's dispersion values are otherwise normal for a British battleship, using the same horizontal dispersion values as most of the British, American and German vessels. Thus any accuracy woes the ship suffers must be laid at the feet of her shell grouping. So the question becomes just how bad is 1.4 sigma? Well here, judge for yourself: These are three of my "standard dispersion tests". This is 180 AP shells fired at 15km at a Fuso bot. All of these tests were conducted using the Aiming System Modification 1 upgrade to reduce dispersion by 7%. The Fuso bot was stationary and lacking camouflage. Shots came in from right to left. Two of these dispersion tests were conducted with Marlborough's 1.4 sigma. One was conducted with King George V, who uses identical guns but has 1.8 sigma instead. The difference may be a little harder to discern than expected. Sigma is an often overvalued statistic among players and represeents only a trend, not a guarantee of better accuracy on a per volley (and per match) basis. Dispersion is highly volatile, even with excellent sigma parameters. Marlborough's poor sigma makes it less likely that shells cluster towards the centre of the target area, spreading them out to the same overall area as her contemporaries but more like a "shotgun blast" than ships with higher values. Still, thanks to RNGeebus, it's entirely possible to have good salvos with poor sigma and terrible salvos with excellent sigma. With how few salvos are often fired in a single match of World of Warships and how few key "match defining" shots are needed to make accuracy stand out for good or ill, Marlborough's poor sigma value generates vastly different experiences for players. Missing key citadel hits when the perfect broadside is available is infuriating and likely to stick in someone's head, especially with the knowledge that had the shells behaved, a Devastating Strike was guaranteed. I spent a few days combing over accuracy statistics of some of the better players who had unlocked Marlborough and compared them to how said players did in HMS Lion. The overall accuracy difference was about 1% to 4%. So Marlborough's accuracy is worse, but it's not worse on a level that would be readily apparent if you just went by number of hits. That's perhaps misleading as the quality of said hits will also suffer. There's an enormous disparity in player experience for having a salvo land three citadel hits versus one that lands three over penetrations through the super structure. So yes, Marlborough's sigma value is bad, but it's not game-defining terrible. It's a flaw that's worth keeping in mind, but I personally feel that the import of sigma is overvalued. Problem the Second Marlborough's TERRIBLE fire angles are why I hate playing her. It's no secret that I despise a ship with poor firing angles, particularly if it's paired with shoddy gun handling. Marlborough ticks both of these boxes and, as we'll later see in the durability and agility sections, compounds it with hilariously bad protection and sloppy turning. In order to fire all sixteen guns, Marlborough opens herself up to taking citadel hits in return from not only enemy battlehips but some high-tier cruisers as well. This danger is so pronounced that you can only cycle all your sixteen guns when the Red Team is too busy to shoot back. And so, her main selling feature is horribly compromised. In practical terms, Marlborough is not a sixteen-gun battleship. She's an eight-gun battleship, incapable of using her full broadside for fear of getting clobbered or beaching herself every time she does. For expert players, the big drawback here are her rearward firing angles. Marlborough cannot kite to save her life. In order to trade fire, her only option is to fight bow-in, preferably keeping an island to one flank to prevent crossfire. This severely limits not only her firepower but overall flexibility. Marlborough should be treated as an eight-gun battleship that can occasionally fire sixteen guns. Between her awful fire angles, poor protection and agility, she cannot take advantage of her full broadside unless the Reds are already losing or they're idiots. While bow-tanking at high tiers is nothing new, it is much more pronounced iwht Marlborough. Thus, I feel that it's this second issue, Marlborough's gun handling and fire arcs, that is the most damning for the ship. But we're not done trash-talking yet... Problem the Third Marlborough's AP shells are effectively non-functional. Alright, I'm exaggerating but Marlborough's AP shells are very bad. As 356mm rounds, they lack penetration necessary at this tier. Outside of 14km, they lose all ability to contest battleship belt armour and their ability to citadel enemy battleships falls away significantly closer. Given Marlborough's horrible fire angles, gun handling and protection woes, taking her into a brawl to be able to use her AP decisively is a loser-move. Firing at range means aiming for superstructures and the upper hull, but her dispersion makes that a bit of a crap shoot anyway. You would think that it would get better when facing cruisers but it's still a mixed bag. While she has the penetration necessary to land citadel hits against cruisers at just about any range, she lacks the ability to overmatch anything but very light cruisers like Minotaur, Edinburgh or Smolensk. I would have thought Wargaming would have at least gone so far as to give her AP rounds improved auto-ricochet angles to prop up their poor penetration values and lack of overmatch but it's not meant to be. This means that most cruisers can simply face-tank Marlborough's salvos, risking only taking over penetrating hits through their superstructure or turrets. And speaking of over penetrations, Marlborough doesn't even benefit from the short fuse timers of other Royal Navy battleships. Her 0.033s fuse timers makes over penetrations much more likely against cruisers, especially ships with a narrow beam like Ochakov and Smolensk. With her AP rounds being such poor performers, that just leaves her HE. Problem the Fourth So Marlborough is ostensibly relegated to being an HE spammer. With Marlborough's AP being so crap, I would have thought that Wargaming would have leaned more heavily on Marlborough's HE performance but that's not the case. Like Agincourt and Repulse before her, Wargaming has been nerfing the HE performance of newer Royal Navy battleship designs. But while Agincourt's HE was only gently nudged away from these higher damage and fire setting values, Marlborough's were thoroughly gutted. So while Marlborough is an HE spammer, she's a bad HE spammer, especially when you remember that between fire arcs and accuracy, you're not landing as many hits as her on-paper design would have you think. Those fearsome 10k+ salvos just don't materialize very often and Marlborough is usually only slapping targets for 3k at a time (if even that -- her individual shells usually strike for 480 to 1,584 damage). She's not even a particularly fearsome firebug. On paper she's the best at her tier. In practice, Alsace and the German battleships are more apt. Marlborough just doesn't get to fire all sixteen guns often enough (or hit often enough) to realize anywhere close to her potential. The best thing she has going for her is the increased HE penetration on her shells, but 89mm of HE penetration isn't that much more effective than the 59mm of HE penetration she would have otherwise had. There's a few decks and upper hulls that she can now directly damage that she might not have otherwise, but it's such a niche ability that it's not a merit worth considering. Marlborough's fire setting potential is the best at her tier though it's surprisingly only marginally better than that of Lion. This, of course, hinges on the ability to be able to fire all of her guns and hit stuff reliably ... which you won't. Problem the Fifth This last bit is just nit-picky but it plays into how inept Marlborough's base design is. The best way to counteract all of Marlborough's gunnery and durability issues is to keep her at range. From further away, she's a less appealing target. This, in turn, gives her more opportunity to take full advantage of her fast-reloading broadside. Her HE (crappy as it is) isn't affected by distance and her armour becomes more effective against AP rounds fired back at her. But, once again, Marlborough is held back. While her 20.86km range isn't terrible (it's average for her tier) there's two things to keep in mind. First, Marlborough does not have access to a Spotter Aircraft consumable to provide a temporary boost to her reach. Second, unlike most of the other battleships at her tier, Marlborough's performance improves considerably the more reach she has. When you're bad or your battleship is bad, humping the back of the map and farming fire damage is the way to go. If Marlborough had a few more kilometers of base range, then her design would work as advertised. As it is, taking Artillery Plotting Room Modification 2 helps band-aid a lot of her other problems. Secondaries They suck. Ignore them. Summary Marlborough is a ship that punishes you for trying to play her to her advertised strengths. Her guns are difficult to bring to bear. And when you do get guns on target, she's not going to land as many hits as you might imagine. And what few hits you do land aren't likely to be effective on a per-hit basis. Would that Marlborough's problems end here, but there's more problems coming that compounds her gunnery woes. Her dispersion is bad, but it's not as bad as you're imagining. She has a lot of guns and they do fire quickly, but it's rare you get to use all sixteen of them. Her individual shell performance sucks. Unless you can land a lot of hits, her salvos don't feel particularly strong. VERDICT: Wargaming believes that you should be punished for wanting to shoot Marlborough's guns. Shame on you. Durability Hit Points: 76,800 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 32mm / 19mm / 32mm / 32mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 381mm belt Torpedo Damage Reduction: 23% You could be forgiven for imagining that Marlborough's citadel layout mirrored that of Vanguard or the King George V-class battleships. But it's worse than that. It's much worse. While those battleships have citadels that sit at or just slightly above the waterline, Marlborough's citadel is hiked up to her nipples. The one (and only) advantage of this is that her citadel roof is made up of the 152mm reinforced deck found on most ships that's usually hidden by the armour viewer, making her immune to overmatching AP rounds that strike at a shallow angle. But, because her citadel sits so high (indeed, taking up the full height of her belt armour) the above advantage is irrelevant by making lateral hits against her citadel such an easy shot. I might have been okay with this if she had REALLY THICK armour, but 381mm of nearly vertical plate with no extra bells and whistles is pathetic at tier IX. Marlborough is dangerously vulnerable to citadel hits against her contemporaries at almost any distance. But it gets worse. Remember those awful fire angles we discussed earlier? If you try and fire sixteen guns at a target, their return fire can (and will) citadel you. Marlborough's fire angles are so terrible that incoming shells striking her belt will auto-pass their ricochet check a minimum of 81% of the time when she's firing forward and ALWAYS when she fires over her shoulder to the rear. It's never (EVER!) a good idea to trade fire with enemy battleships using all of Marlborough's guns. You'll give up huge chunks of your health if you don't simply die. Things don't get much better against cruisers or destroyers. Her homogeneous 32mm structural plate makes her an easy HE damage farm from heavy and light cruisers. Given her damage output woes, she's not likely to fare well in these trades. Incoming torpedoes from lolibotes and subs don't have to contend with very much anti-torpedo protection either. And if you're thinking "oh, well she's soft skinned because Royal Navy battleships get a good heal", stop right there. Marlborough has a worse heal than any of the other Royal Navy battleships in the game. So not only does she take more damage than other Royal Navy battleships, she doesn't recover health anywhere near as quickly. If you see Marlborough on the enemy team, know that she's an easy target. As an xp pinata, there's a lot to like with Marlborough. But playing her? She's a total drag. Marlborough's potential health is totally average. But when you combine this with her poor protection scheme, she's a lot more fragile than these numbers suggest. There are hidden armour plates in the bow and stern of Marlborough. Unfortunately, her citadel sits so high that any shells bouncing off these plates will just slam into her 305mm bulkheads and citadel her anyway. VERDICT: Bad, horrible and terrible. Agility Top Speed: 31.5 knots Turning Radius: 860 meters Rudder Shift Time: 16.8 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.2º/s at 23.5kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 4.0º/s I wish Marlborough's agility was enough to bandaid her other problem. Sadly, one issue sours the experience. Let's start with the good: Marlborough's top speed is great. 31.5 knots is very comfortable at this tier. Similarly, her 860m turning radius isn't terrible; it's better than a lot of the other high-tier battleships, so I've got to give her a pass here as well. These two factors combine to a 4.2º/s rotation rate when she's at top speed which isn't stellar but it's okay. Unfortunately, this is enough to allow her to out-turn her turrets, but I've already complained enough about that. So you're probably wondering where the issue is. It's her rudder shift time. 16.8 seconds isn't appalling but it's pretty bad. And given her fire angle woes, her lack of torpedo protection and her citadel vulnerability, it's just that much worse. Marlborough feels like she handles poorly. Just Dodging™ isn't in her repertoire and you can forget being able to swing her butt out and back in order to flash her guns and avoid return fire. If she had Vanguard or Yukon's rudder shift time, I might be more forgiving here but given what Marlborough needs, her agility just doesn't deliver. Two things to note with this graphic. First, Giuseppe Verdi's agility is assumed -- I have not tested it yet. She appears to have the same agility as Marco Polo (I suspect her agility performance is cloned) but until I get my hands on her, I won't know for sure. The second item to note is the lack of data for Prinz Rupprecht. I have not unlocked her yet to test her. VERDICT: Close but no cigar. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 3+1 explosions for 1,540 damage per blast at 3.5km to 6km Long Ranged (up to 6km): 80.5 dps at 75% accuracy (60 dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 528.5 dps at 75% accuracy (396 dps) There's not much to say here. Marlborough doesn't put out a lot of damage overall. She's pretty crappy when it comes to how many flak explosions she generates (even if the individual hits are beefier than many at her tier). The best that could be said about her is that she has good reach with her long-ranged batteries so she can support her allies decently. But she just doesn't generate the numbers needed to make any CV player balk. VERDICT: A whole lot of meh. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 15.36km / 12.07km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 11.94km / 9.67km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 13.35km Maximum Firing Range: Between 20.86km and 24.2km when equipped with Artillery Plotting Room Modification 2. Marlborough's concealment is good. As it stands presently, Marlborough has the tenth lowest upgraded surface detection of all of the battleships within her matchmaking spread. She ends up with a surface detection around 12km which is very comfortable and about on par with a lot of cruisers she faces. With her guns silenced, she has little to fear from being spotted by larger ships, with only the usual culprits of submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers being able to routinely outspot her. In late game settings, this gets quite powerful, particularly when she needs to disengage. It's unfortunate that she cannot pair this with good kiting fire angles, but such are the woes of her design. There are two other flies in the ointment. The first is her relative lack of range with no ability to boost it short of taking a 6th-slot upgrade. The second is a lack of any bonus detection consumables. Though the days are long gone where orbiting aircraft could help sniff out threats, consumables like Hydroacoustic Search aren't unheard of on a fair number of battleships and Marlborough goes without. Overall, her concealment is one of the few straight-up good things about the vessel. Marlborough has excellent concealment for a battleship. VERDICT: Good, but not good enough to save the ship. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 1.5km to 10km (plus bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: Up to three Reload Time: 75 seconds Aircraft: Two S.25 Sunderlands with 2,000hp per plane. Drop Pattern: 4 bombs each dropped evenly over roughly a 1.75km column Maximum Bomb Damage: 3,000 Fire Chance: 17% I'm again merely reporting this for posterity's sake rather than speaking towards its efficacy. The Royal Navy battleships have some of the better airstrikes in the game at this stage in testing. But with overhauls planned, who knows how things will change in the future? VERDICT: Don't know, don't care until things get closer to final. Final Evaluation Welcome to flavour country. Like the tobacco industry, Wargaming will tell you their product is well researched and fine for consumer consumption. This is despite their own evidence that players do not enjoy ships with compromised main gunnery performance. Playing Marlborough isn't likely to give you cancer as far as I'm aware. It just feels like it. This is a bad design on Wargaming's part. The amount of arrogance or ignorance needed to think that it's a good idea to [edited]-slap players for playing the ship the way they promoted her is just astounding. The worst thing is that Wargaming is patently aware that frustrating gunnery isn't received well by the player base, yet they go out of their way to cook up this mess. I'm glad most players I've encountered seem aware that this ship is poorly designed and are keeping away. I really wish Wargaming would stop jerking us around with bad products like this. But let's talk about what a "bad" product means in the context of this game, because invariably there's going to be someone that enjoys this ship -- whether by it's own merits or simply to because they're an unrepentent hipster that can't help but find enjoyment in things panned by the community. It's important to appreciate that unlike her sister game World of Tanks, bad premiums in World of Warships create the illusion of being redeemable. Any ship in the game is capable of damaging any other. It was a meme back in the day, but you could take a tier II Umikaze into tier X matches and with a bit of skill, still pull of some surprising numbers. This addage holds true for Marlborough. She's a bad ship, make no mistake, but she can still generate numbers. Fire and HE spam are the great equalizers after all. All it takes is someone stubborn enough to sit behind the helm and keep trying and Marlborough will eventually deliver. What makes Marlborough bad is the amount work needed to get the same results as other ships. Meanwhile, your team is forced to carry harder to make up for your ships deficits. This isn't an insurmountable ask by any means given how World of Warships is designed. But Marlborough is still a liability. This is obviously in the context of PVP modes. Bots are dumb and you can make nearly anything work in Co-Op. It wouldn't take much to make Marlborough less punitive to play. Wargaming can't do much about her fire angles without clipping into the ship's geometry, so that's a wash. But they could do one of or any of the following: Drop her citadel down another deck. Give her an improved Repair Party. Increase her range by 2.5km. Give her Duke of York's improved auto-ricochet angles (60º to 75º) on her AP shells. Give her King George V's HE rounds. Improve her rudder shift time dramatically. Improve her gun handling dramatically. Even the addition of only of these would vastly improve the experience of playing Marlborough. Some are admittedly powerful (KGV HE, I am looking at you) and might necessitate further balancing measures. Preserving her as-advertised 25 second reload might necessitate giving up range, speed and concealment. I would happily sacrifice those to make her a better gun platform. Main battery performance is the key aspect of game play for battleships in World of Warships and Wargaming screwed it up bad with Marlborough. You shouldn't feel like you're fighting with the ship in order to fire her guns -- especially not with a vessel that comes with a $200 price tag. Shame on you, Wargaming. Mouse out.

Not so long ago, WG announced the Pan-American tier VIII premium dockyard battleship "Atlântico". She is a Brazilian battleship based on a combination of two main projects, primarily Design 782 (a proposed alternative to Design 781, which was chosen by Brazil in 1914 to be built under the name "Riachuelo"), from which it takes most of its characteristics (armor, main battery layout, hull shape), and additionally Design 686 (one of the proposals for a Brazilian battleship in 1910-1911, which would eventually result in the "Rio de Janeiro", later "HMS Agincourt"), from which WG took the inspiration to add an intermediate set of armaments in the form of 8x2 234mm guns (Design 686 called for only 3x2 240mm guns). The ship is also presented under a series of modernizations that could've happened had she actually been built. Historical inaccuracies with the ship itself aside, the biggest issue me and many other Brazilian players had was regarding the name chosen for the ship, "Atlântico". This has to be one of, if not the worst case of misnaming a ship in WoWs, worse than Congress, Milano, and Yukon combined. In this post, I intend to explain why it's such a poor choice, and how it could and should be changed. Before I do that, however, I would like to point out that I tried reaching out to WG to raise this issue through our Brazilian CM, and the fact I'm writing this should show how successful I was, so my only option is to reach out to the community, and hopefully expose the issue enough for WG to at least explain their reasoning for choosing such a terrible name, and ideally changing it before it's too late. So, why is "Atlântico" such a bad name? Simply put, this battleship is a modified design from 1914. Brazil would only name a ship "Atlântico" 104 years later, in 2018, with the purchase of the British carrier "HMS Ocean". To put it into perspective, in 1914 Brazil hadn't even celebrated 100 years since its independence. The name is completely disconnected from any standards the Brazilian Navy would've had at that time. I can only assume that the reason for choosing this name had more to do with marketing than history, since "Atlântico" being the name of the main capital ship in the Brazilian Navy right now might attract more players who neither know nor care about Brazilian naval history, but are aware of our Navy's recent acquisitions, if only by name. While Brazil may have only had two dreadnought battleships, plus a third that was built, but never served Brazil, and a fourth that was ordered, named, and then canceled, that is still four named ships of this type, enough to form a pattern to understand naming conventions in the Brazilian Navy, so let's take a look at those first: -"Minas Geraes", "São Paulo" and "Rio de Janeiro": These three Brazilian states from the southeast region gave name to three Brazilian dreadnought battleships. They were (and still are) all highly populated, and had a strong economy, making them particularly valuable for the nation, and worthy of having their names used in what were the most powerful ships in the Brazilian Navy at the time. From these examples, it's very clear that Brazil had a standard for naming dreadnought battleships after its most relevant states. From that, we can guess what other Brazilian ships of this type could be named, states such as Paraná and Santa Catarina (also important states with economic relevance, they are located in the south region of Brazil, between São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, the latter having its name used in one of our Bahia-class cruisers, also acquired in the early 20th century), or Pernambuco (State in the northeastern region, part of the Brazilian coast, and as such, also an important state, in fact, "Pernambuco" was one of the main names considered for our modern carrier "Atlântico") or even Amazonas (well known for its great size and major forests, and also for having its name used in the frigate comanded by Admiral Barroso, one of the most famous Brazilian Admirals, during the Battle of Riachuelo. The name was going to be used in one of the Barroso-class cruisers, the sistership to the tier II cruiser "USS Albany"), though any of our 26 States' names would be preferable over the Atlantic Ocean. -"Riachuelo": The last of the dreadnought battleships Brazil tried to acquire changed the naming convention of the previous dreadnoughts of the nation. Instead of being named after a Brazilian State, it was named after the Battle of the Riachuelo, a major and decisive battle in the Paraguayan War, won in 1865 by the naval forces of the Empire of Brazil, led by the previously mentioned Admiral Barroso in his flagship, the "Amazonas". The name "Riachuelo", chosen to be carried by this Brazilian dreadnought, would become a common name for Brazilian submarines in modern times. During the last decade of the Empire of Brazil, the navy named it's largest battleship, acquired in France, as "Riachuelo", setting an important precedent in naming conventions and breaking away from the naming conventions of man-o-wars (Brazil was the only nation in South America to operate such vessels). Based on the fact that this name remained extremely relevant, we can look into other names that also relate to the Paraguayan War in order to find something more suitable for the inaptly named "Atlântico". One big example is "Humaitá", a name that refers to the Fortress of Humaitá, a major fortification in the Paraguay River, that was considered to be the "Gibraltar of South America". Seen as the main bulwark closing access to Paraguay by river, the fortress was taken by the Brazilian forces in 1868, in what became known as the Siege of Humaitá, yet another major victory in the Paraguayan War that is celebrated to this day alongside the Battle of Riachuelo, throughout the 20th Century and in modern times, wherever there's a Brazilian submarine named "Riachuelo", you can expect the next ship in the class to be named "Humaitá". Another example is "Aquidabã" (or its old orthography: "Aquidaban")*, a name that refers to the Aquidabán River, where the last battle of the Paraguayan War took place, in 1870. The name was chosen to become the second battleship under the Riachuelo-class (although slightly smaller than the lead ship) in the 1880's. Unlike "Riachuelo" and "Humaitá", the name "Aquidabã" was not used after 1906, when the Brazilian ironclad carrying the name was sunk in an accident, probably because the battleship was used as flagship of the opposing forces during the civil war that broke out after the monarchy was overthrown in 1889. Part of the navy rebelled against presidential authoritarianism - high-ranking officers included - leading to an episode know as "Revolta da Armada" (literally, revolt of the navy), which joined forces with the Federalist Revolt raging in the southern states of Brazil. This rebellion would set two groups inside the Brazilian Navy and the rivalry would last for another half century. To avoid further animosity inside the navy, the name "Aquidabã" hasn't been used since. Regardless, the name still fits the naming conventions of Brazil, especially for a ship based on an alternative design for the dreadnought "Riachuelo". Additionally we can also extend this standard to include other names used by Brazilian ironclads and frigates during or after the end of the Paraguayan War, as well as names of any ships that took part in the major battles of the conflict. Naturally, this once again leads us to some previously mentioned ships, like the frigate "Amazonas", but we also get a few new names, such as "Ipiranga", "Beberibe", "Belmonte", "Araguari", "Iguatemi", "Mariz e Barros", "Herval", "Cabral", "Lima Barros", "Silvado", "Sete de Setembro", "Pará", "Alagoas", "Piauí", "Ceará" and "Santa Catarina" (and wouldn't you know, these last five names are based on Brazilian States, it's almost as if we usually name our ships after those, rather than... the ocean). Many of these names were used and re-used to designate coastal and fluvial monitors and smaller armored vessels during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So, that's what we get with the existing standards for Brazilian battleship names, but I am not done yet. I am not joking when I say "Atlântico" is one of the worst names WG could've chosen, as it is so bad we Brazilians would rather get something akin to the american cruiser "Congress", a name that isn't necessarily fitting for a ship of the type WG wishes to introduce, but at the very least, it's a name that was used before in a ship of the same Navy, any ship at all. While less than ideal, there are some good names with meaningful history behind them that can result from this otherwise lesser standard, for example: -"Niterói" (or its older orthography: "Nichteroy"): Named after the Brazilian City of Niterói, which used to be the Capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The name was used by a few Brazilian ships throughout history, a notable one was the frigate "Niterói", the first ship in which served the legendary Admiral Joaquim Marques Lisboa, Marquis of Tamandaré, back in 1823. It would also be the name of the modern Niterói-class frigate that would carry the ashes of this same Admiral, now recognized as the Patron of the Brazilian Navy, back to the city where he was born (Rio Grande, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul) in 1994. While not within our standards to name a Battleship after a city, the fact this name also carries with it the history of the Patron of the Brazilian Navy does give it much more value, more than... the ocean. -"Rio Grande": It seems pointless to repeat myself, but once again, this is the name of a city in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, the historical significance of which comes from being the birth place and final resting place of the Patron of the Brazilian Navy. The name was used before by a Pará-class monitor that participated in the Siege of Humaitá. -"Solimões": The name refers to the Solimões River, and was commonly used by Brazilian monitors. -"Paraguassú": Another name of a river used by a brazilian monitor. -"Brasil": Much like "France" or "United States", Brazil also named an ironclad after the entire nation. -"Angostura": Not as well known as "Humaitá", Angostura was also the name of a Paraguayan fortress that was taken by Brazilian forces in 1868, during the Paraguayan War. The name was first used in an Imperial Marinheiro-class corvette, but was also chosen as the name for the fourth modern Riachuelo/Scorpéne-class submarine, earning a meaningful spot alongside her undeniably more famous sisters, "Riachuelo", "Humaitá" and, to a lesser extent, "Tonelero". -"Tonelero": A name used mainly by Brazilian submarines of the Oberon and Scorpéne classes, it references the Battle of the Tonelero Pass from 1851, where Brazilian forces broke through the forces of the Argentine Confederation. For even longer than "Angostura", the name "Tonelero" stood side by side with "Riachuelo" and "Humaitá". -"Independência": Literally the word "independence", this name references the Brazilian Independence. It was considered for a Brazilian pre-dreadnought, but would end up only being used with any level of significance in modern times as the name of one of the Niterói-class frigates. -"Constituição": Literally the word "constitution", it is currently the name of another Niterói-class frigate, but was also used in the past to name a Brazilian frigate that took part in the Cisplatin War. -"Vitória": Literally the word "victory", it was for a brief period the name of the Brazilian monitor later renamed "Paraguassú". -"Guanabara": The name used notably by one of the Balao-class submarines transfered to Brazil, and currently used by a patrol boat, it refers to the Guanabara Bay, in Rio de janeiro. -"Recife": The name of the Capital of the State of Pernambuco, it was not commonly used, but happened to be the name of a Brazilian frigate that served as our flagship in the Battle of the Tonelero Pass. -"União": Literally the word "union", it is currently known as the name of yet another Niterói-class frigate, but was also the name of a Brazilian corvette during the Battle of the Tonelero Pass. I should make it clear that I don't like all of these names, but all of them would be preferable over "Atlântico", at worst they have more meaning and history behind them than "Atlântico", and at best they actually fit with the naming conventions of the Brazilian Navy in 1914. If it was up to me, my ideal choices would be "Aquidabã", "Humaitá", "Paraná", "Santa Catarina", "Pernambuco", and "Amazonas". Others may have different preferences. As a reminder of how bad the name that WG chose is, the official launch of World of Warships predates the first Brazilian ship named "Atlântico", this game is older than the name WG chose for a battleship from 1914, you can't make this stuff up. So please, WG, listen to the very community you are trying to please with this ship, and change its name. Thank you.

As per the title, can you still obtain the 4,000 research points from the Dockyard event if you have not yet unlocked the research bureau ? Planning for the future, i wouldn't hate to waste those points (receiving another currency alternatively). Thanks in advance

I ended up missing a box when I claimed dockyard stage 4-11 rewards. It showed up in the notifications yet not in the containers section. Note I already had several of the special ones I was saving for a day where I can use the premium time. I claimed the 4-11 stages on 12/12/2021 around 5pm pacific. So I filed a ticket indicating what happened. I claimed rewards 4-11 at the same time. It skipped 4 which is a Santa's gift container. The other rewards all came in and or activated. I didn't see it even mentioned in the notifications to the screen. stages 1-3 were blue and 4-11 were gold. Stages 12 and one were white, so the system knew I had reached it but not claimed it. They also showed the checkmark and said obtained, but nothing received for stage 4 And supports response from some Time warped universe...note the dates in the response! Hello, Commander. Thank you for contacting customer service. I appreciate time and effort that you spent on creating ticket regarding this matter. As for this, I'd like to note that I double-checked this case but didn't find out any issues. Based on our data, you have successfully received the mentioned container on December 9 at 21:14 PT. Furthermore, you have successfully opened it on that day at 22:07 PT and received x50 signal flags Equal Speed Charlie London. Should you have any other issues, please don't hesitate to contact us. Best regards, XXXX So I filed a note in the ticket about their research and dates used. Anyone else run into game issues OR support issues like this? Has anyone x that spent $ on this game run into the issue? Maybe claiming 8 stages of rewards are too much for the system. I would have expected Support to at least check the right dates in the database as part of their research. Not give an absolutely wrong answer. Oh well, it's wg so as expected. Just something to watch out for if anyone is doing the dockyard rewards.

Special Operation P Scapa Flow U - 47 enters the base and sinks HMS Royal Oak, one of the most famous and daring Naval Operations in the Second World War. I have long advocated special two ship premium sales, not just throwing any old ships together but ones that have significant history. This is just such one, it has it all adventure, cunning, daring and most of all HISTORY. WG could make a fortune here in sales and appease the history collectors . Alternatively WG why not have a dual dockyard featuring both ships being built side by side, again you have a historical precedence here, these ships are legendary, its a win win for all. And you get to redeem more goodwill will your community.

Can someone please confirm when the Dockyard event ends for me? I couldn't fine the end time on the event page other than when 10.5 drops, and all it says in game is 2 days. I'm cutting it close and want to spend as little as possible finishing the event.

It's a bit slow; just under 40 knots with speed boost. The AP is really nice, and can take big chunks of cruiser and battleship health. The reload booster is just long enough to kill a destroyer and disengage. The torpedoes are nice and fast with the torpedo module and hit very hard. The 8km torpedo range is short, but with a very low 5.8km ship detection it's not a big issue as long as you keep an eye on the radar ships. More importantly it's fun to play, which I cannot say about anchorage, hizen, or puerto rico. Probably the best dockyard ship released so far, as far as fun goes. Completing the last three stages (6000 doubloons, $25USD) gets you 10,000 coal, which almost covers the entire cost of the Speed Boost module in the armory. 8/10 Wunderbars

I finished up all 19 phases of the dockyard today. That is a healthy set of rewards for just playing for free. Thanks, WG! What I can't decide on is whether to complete the dockyard for the ZF-6 or not. I've got the dubs but I haven't seen too many positive reviews of the boat. Please share your thoughts - from those who have her or those who adamantly won't get her. I do consider myself a DD main (and play a lot of CL) but I don't go buying every DD that is available. I am happy to let them "come to me" in a Santa crate. I also don't find the KMS DD line that appealing. I haven't even tried the new line. I just like my IJN torp boats best. Edit: on top of the awards above, the crates gave more special signals. Nice!

Italian BBs are due early in 2021, though two T9 BBs (Hizen then Marco Polo) back to back seems inconsistent with what WG has done in the past with the dockyard. Probably one of the Ducas will be the 1/2 or 2/3 dockyard consolation prize. The only alternative could be Vampire II with Mysore as the consolation prize, but that would be even more inconsistent because they likely would not sell her simultaneously with the event as they have done with post Puerto Rico dockyard ships. She would also be the first DD in the dockyard (although that would not be a bad thing) and the first T10 since the botched Puerto Rico rollout of the dockyard. Also there hasn't been any clue that we are getting a Commonwealth tech tree line for the Vampire to correspond with, though I'd love to see one. That leaves the Vampire as a resource/FXP or Research Bureau ship. She looks like a coal or FXP ship to my eye, but that is more rampant speculation.

Allow me to get this out of the way as the title may not be the clearest - this is actually not a rant against the event to get Oklahoma, other than there should have been enough crates in missions to ensure getting it if RNG gave you the finger and not require daily login cause sometimes things go wrong and you cant or don't. More that events like this, the Dockyard events, etc - THIS is how they should be. That if you play a ship around the same tier as the reward one (in this case 4-6, in the case of PR 9-10) for a couple hours a days during the course of the event - you get the ship. Not 12 hours a day for a month+, not 8 hours a day and 30+ dollars, not 6 hours a day in tier 9 and 10 with your absolute A-game basically setting personal records in the ships you do best in for a tier 4-6 ship - A couple hours every day if your already at that tier, if you have something under that tier that the missions apply to then yeah - maybe you have to put in closer to 5+ hours a day, every day of the event, and your fine. Because this is the first event in years that I can remember - I could use ships of the same tier, and still just knock it out as I go, in fact while knocking it out - I knocked out some of the Epoch missions which included ships I needed to grind XP on, I was able to do grinding on Colorado (seeing as the issues that prevented me from getting daily containers just barely cost me Kansas before that - which was also a fairly good set considering but maybe a bit much for a tech tree ship). I didn't have to play specific ships, I didn't have to play the best ones I have, I didn't have to play the boring as hell meta - I could just play with a focus on the missions objectives when they weren't overly general (like do damage). For the first time in a long time doing one of these mission chains for a ship or the like - I actually had fun and don't feel burned out trying to do it. For a tier 5 ship - the challenges were FAIR, which is more than I can say for a lot of these types of things you've done. Because I don't have a problem with a challenge - I just want a fair one, preferably without me having to treat the game like a full time job. But that's me - I like my events that even if they can be a bit of a grind at times cause MM won't give you games where capturing or getting base defense is easy let alone normally happens - they don't FEEL like a grind.

To complete a stage requires finishing 6 directives. Do you get the Stage final reward (dockyard token) when you finish 6 directives, or do you have to complete all the directives in the stage to receive the token?

Ok, I understand Dockyard is meant to be a fixture for the game in the long run, it is a nice extra layer of content and generates revenue, but as it is now there are some limitations to being really engaged in the dockyard dynamic. IMO the more evident are: Reward ship being uninteresting for many players, and time constraints when added to the rest of the events, missions and grinds. My proposal is turning Dockyard into a permanent fixture, to have a Dockyard Tab in your port screen and there you select which ship you want to build from a list of suitable ships from different tiers, in order to keep revenue up, a proportional fee in doubloons could still be required to "launch" the ship (as it is now). Construction process requirements could vary from ship to ship to have a fair degree of variability and keep things fresh, for example you could need some "base resources" in the form of coal, steel or even research points, you can even throw in some modules from the tech tree that required to be unlocked and bought to be "fitted" into the ship, and also some the usual "labor" of completing tasks and mission. Anyway, that's just extra and could be adjusted, the main thing here is to be able to select which ship to build and to remove the time limit to completion. By making it more interesting and accessible to every player, you could guarantee an increased revenue from the Dockyard mechanic, some players that don't partake in the Dockyard event would be enticed to use it to build ships of their choice, and some "hardcore" players could even be able to build many ships in the time span of a regular Dockyard event.

I’ve already spent the 8k doubloons for the boost at the beginning of the dockyard event. I have a little over 3500 doubloons currently. If I bought the last two dockyard boosts with those doubloons would that mean I effectively get more RB points? Reason I’m asking is I’m a little over 10k RB points away from Ohio and the dockyard event SHOULD get me the rest without needing to reset a line again.

Anchorage!

Does anyone have this screenshot, but without the setence in the mid and the "collect" button? Thanks in advance

Hey @Hapa_Fodder , I just want to get it down on the record that showing that you can do a mission in the Scenario game mode but then limiting the mission to T7+ is an confusing at best. The combination is impossible so why do they give a false impression that a mission could be done in a game mode when it really can't? I mean, why even allow that game mode on the mission?

I keep having issues with the dockyard loading. It will just give me the never ending loading circle, have the dockyard directive bar at the bottom but still display my port, or completely freez up my computer to the point where I cant even control alt delete I have to restart. Is there anyone else having a similar issue or know what I can do to resolve it? I have already re-downloaded the game and nothing has changed. It's very hard to check on the directives or progress to the next one when I cant even get to the dockyard to collect the previous one. Any help would be appreciated.

Essentially, the title. After the unmitigated disaster that was the Puerto Rico, I'm legitimately surprised that WG decided to bring back the Dockyard again. I'm also rather surprised that I haven't seen a deluge of threads of people saying they're going to quit the game forever because of the return of the Dockyard. Really, that's about it. Just me remarking on the lack of an utter sh*tstorm that I'm seeing because of what might be the single most reviled decision WG has ever made in this game.