It's been a while since I've done a WoWs post, and to be frank, I've not been playing for ages. I originally said to myself that I'd resume playing once the British were in the game, so I could take my Warspite captain, and put him to work in the new ships. Since Wargaming has continued updating the game without any sign on the horizon of a British line (I'm hoping that they release the whole fleet on WoWS anniversary), I decided to come back and check out the state of the game, as well as try my flipper at a bit of Soviet DD action.
The game has had a few cool updates. I noticed that BBs felt a bit more dangerous than last time I ventured into the game, and can see from the patch notes that a few buffs were finally made to their dispersion. The skill-trees have been revamped, and the retraining system has also been redesigned, reflecting a need for the captains to actually fight to gain their skills back. At its heart, WoWs is still good old WoWs, complete with everything that made the game great, and just a few less of the things that made it a pain in the ass. A persistently annoying issue that I noticed straight away was the rarity of aircraft carriers in higher tier matches, making my Pensacola's AA build risky to take, since about half of the games I loaded into had no carriers. This problem is still a fundamental one, where you can't force players to play carriers just to make the game fun for others.
Having enjoyed my time in the Gremyashchy, the tier 5 Russian DD, I figured I should transfer my captain to the Russian DD line, starting at tier 2. Low tier games are still fun, more so than World of Tanks in my opinion. I already knew going in that the Russian low tier ships had a shitty reputation, suffering the atrocious 3km torpedo range. Coming from an American DD background, I was already pretty comfortable with close range combat, and death-defying torpedo runs. The Storozhevoi looks like a submarine that surfaced and forgot how to dive again. It is narrow, sleek, and has a super sad armament of 3 DD guns, with two located at the rear rather than the front. These guns aren't even superfiring, meaning that if the enemy is in your rear quarter (you know, where the guns are concentrated) that you can't fire both at once. This means that the Storozhevoi ends up frequently only able to fire one gun at its foes, making it look less like a warship, and more like a kid spitting peas across the classroom. I make a big deal of these shitty guns because the torpedoes are so close range that you'll want to rely on your guns a lot more, and that is supposed to be the Russian way. On this ship, you really do need to learn proper ambush tactics, and get in to use those torpedoes. In that department, Russian torpedoes have stunningly short ranges, but this is complimented by the high speed, and evasive nature of the tiny Russian ships. Also, the other flavour of these ships is that they launch a lot of torpedoes, and have super fast loading tubes. Once you can initiate a favourable ambush, you can start wreaking absolute havoc, since torpedoes launched at those kinds of ranges basically can't miss. It is an even more suicidal tactic than American torpedo strikes (bet you never thought you'd be longing for that 5km range), but it does lead to a fast and furious lifestyle. In Russian DDs, you live fast, die young, and leave a lot of beautiful flaming wrecks. As this line progresses, the Russian guns start to get really good, but I feel this early ship is meant to force you to get used to this style of torpedo play.
I still recommend that new players steer clear of DDs as a rule, and you need a pretty advanced skillset and understanding of concealment to make these ships work, but I would probably recommend them to newbies over the Japanese line, who become a massive hazard to friendly ships. Stick to American cruisers if you really want a friendly learning tree. It's good to be back on the high seas.
