Geek Control 2 Major Tim, World of Warships: Destroyers, The Mother in Laws of the Sea!

A short while back, I started this series of WoWs blogs to try and encourage better behaviour, and good game play habits among low tier players. One of my first points that I made was that new players should avoid torpedo-armed ships, and admittedly, on the day that I started the blog, I had just been team-killed about six times in a row by friendly torpedoes. I'm not kidding you when I say that it was a single gaming session that pushed me over the edge, and with the exception of the matches I survived, and one instance where I yolo'd into the enemy team and died, every single death that day was friendly fire. I specifically warned new players that they should avoid playing destroyers until they'd matured a little as WoWs players and come to understand the basics by playing safer ships, like the American cruisers. However, the torpedo problem wasn't just the fault of destroyers. In fact, I'd say it was just as common to see friendly cruisers sending off a salvo of torpedoes at ranges that match their gunnery range (10-14km), which is well beyond any effective torpedo range. These low tier cruiser players were arguably the worst offenders, since they were usually stationed behind friendly destroyers, who were up front doing their jobs as scouts and hunters. In fact, the final act of that day of team-killings that I mentioned was not a friendly destroyer sinking me, but a friendly Japanese cruiser. I'd been keeping my eye on the guy the whole match, as he'd been thoughtlessly derping out torpedoes from the moment the enemy was sighted 24km away. It was genuinely hard to tell if he was intentionally trying to fuck with his own team, or if he was simply that clueless as to how the weapons worked. The game was one of the best I'd ever played, with my Wicks class destroyer bagging 5 enemy kills (only 5, no MLG here), and pus
hing our team into the enemy capture zone. At that point we should have had it in the bag. As the first ship to enter the cap circle, I had the majority of our capture points, and so I ducked and weaved, and focused on not getting hit by enemy gun fire (which would reset the capture). Our enemies had ships in our capture zone, who were beating down on an "away from keyboard" (afk) battleship on our team. We had the victory at hand, and I would gain a massive bonus to experience earned, as it would be my first victory for the day in that ship. At that point, a salvo of friendly torpedoes detonated my ship. It was our friend in the cruiser, who was sitting completely still behind me, making an easy target of himself, and blind firing torpedoes at enemy ships that were well beyond his torpedo range. He quite literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, since all my capture points were lost, and then he proceeded to sit still and let himself get hit, losing his points in the process. Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to understand not only why I do what I do with these blogs, but also why it is that I am finally going to start telling you about how to not suck at playing destroyers.

I've given DDs a bad rap so far. Sure, low tier players should be banned from playing them until they've at least played a thousand games, but they aren't always to blame for a team's shitty performance. I've played games where our battleships have sat with their thumbs squarely up their asses, and blown the whole match through inactivity. I've seen cruisers completely abandon any kind of supporting role, and sail straight into the enemy fleet, before exploding in a dazzling fireball. I've seen carrier drivers drop anchor in the first second of the match and sit there even when their defenses collapse and the DDs close in with stiffies in hand. So, why do I discourage new players from DDs? The honest answer is that DDs require the most experienced captains in order to perform well, and they bear the biggest margin for error of any ship class. If you screw up in a battleship, you've got a lot of hitpoints to play with, and repair party abilities to recover. If you screw up in a cruiser, you can always improvise. DDs have to play in a pretty specific way, or they risk immediate death, or worse, they have a high chance of hurting their own team.

The biggest reason that I promote cruisers as a new player's first port of call is because they are a bit hard to screw up. As fairly versatile ships, especially in the early game, cruisers can adapt to changing circumstances. If a DD screws up, they have about 3 seconds to decide on how to fix it, and being such role-specific ships, DDs cannot simply adapt and change tactics, they must withdraw and reset the circumstances to suit them. If any of that sounds complicated, stick to cruisers.

DD gameplay can be summarized thus:

• DDs are scouts and hunters, they can always detect their opponents before they are detected in response.This means that they can always choose the terms of the engagement. It is there choice when to reveal themselves, and when to stay silent. For new players, staying silent is pretty much unthinkable. Remember, you are often providing a better service to your team by merely spotting the enemy than fighting, so keep calm and hush.
• DDs are ambush predators. They choose the exact moment of attack, and must time it to cause the maximum damage with the minimum amount of reply. They excel at killing battleships because they do so much damage in such a short amount of time that the battleship won't have time to put their repairs into effect. 
• DDs are fragile. DDs cannot stay alive long while they are spotted. Enemy ships, particularly cruisers and other DDs, will prioritize a DD for fire. While they are fast, small targets, it only takes a few lucky hits, or one well focused hit to bring them down. Not being spotted, or breaking line of sight is the DDs first priority. 
• DDs can support. While the enemy is distracted, the DD can offer gunfire and torpedo spreads in order to distract and confuse the enemy. Setting fires with HE rounds will make the enemy use their repair abilities at inopportune times, and putting wide torpedo spreads in the water will make enemies maneuver and pull their guns off target. This is adds an extra dimension to DDs that broadens their gameplay options, though they should never prioritize it, and should break contact immediately if the enemy shifts attention to the DD.
• DDs have the greatest initiative of any ship (the ability to act instantly and decisively), which is a quality built from their speed and stealth. You should always consider it your duty to react to calls for help in your fleet, but also your duty to exploit openings in the enemy lines.

They stalk you from the shadows, noting your every move. They always join in thrashing you when they have someone else to hide behind, and fade the moment things are looking bleak. They wait until the perfect moment to torpedo you and your lady, ruining your day. The destroyers are truly, mother-in-laws of the sea. But I've always been a charmer when it comes to the mature ones, so how about we discuss ways of getting you and DDs working together.

Your first decision in the game is to choose between Japanese, American, and the soon to be released Soviet DDs. More will come, but let's look at what we have to play with. The main choice currently is American or Japanese, and I mostly play the American DDs. For the longest time, people always thought that the Japanese DDs were overpowered, and put the American ships to shame. This was, as usual, due to superior torpedoes on the Japanese ships. This combined with superior stealth characteristics makes most players feel superior when playing Japanese DDs. As I said in my torpedo blog, there is a sense of impunity when you play the Japanese DDs. They are universally able to fire from stealth, launching at ranges beyond their detectability range. This allows Japanese DD captains to strike without ever risking so much as a scratch to their paintwork. Comparatively, American ships typically have to cross no less than 2km detected before they can launch their own. This makes launching torps from an American boat a little less like sniping from the bushes, and more like attacking a bunker with a grenade. This is the reason that most new players chose the Japanese line, and why they generally contribute very little to their team, and score very poorly.

Japanese destroyers are excellent when used correctly. In my torpedo discussion I said that having super long range on your torpedoes is nice, but also kind of pointless. Since torpedoes have travel time, and your enemy can't be trusted to maintain a straight course, firing torpedoes at those super long ranges is rarely a successful proposition. I recommend that you always try to fire them from as close as possible without being spotted, as it increases your likelyhood of a hit. Fortunately, the Japanese torpedoes are good in almost every respect, with high travel speed, making the likelyhood of connecting even better. The real advantage of the super long range torpedoes, especially the ridiculous high tier ones (which can strike out to 20km) is that if you aim them into a corridor, or a position where they can hit multiple ships, they can be very good at disrupting an enemy fleet's formation. Most of the really good gameplay I've seen from high tier Japanese DDs involves missing the primary target, but hitting secondaries that were within the huge range. The good stealth characteristics mean that Japanese DDs can really maximize their potential as scouts and ambushers. The Japanes DDs are the purest examples of torpedo boats, since their other armament is only useful in limited contexts. They really are ninjas, since they strike from the shadows, poison their enemies (flooding and fire), and always fade when detected. Japanese DDs are not gunboats, and are significantly less effective in their supporting roles, which is why the American DD line attracted me more.

American DDs are closer to a gunboat style of gameplay. Where they beat the Japanese hands down is in their gunnery, and toughness. Japanese DDs are handicapped by slow turret traverse times, and overall inferior guns. The Americans make me think a lot of Popeye, and I sometimes hear that tune play in my head when I spot a Japanese DD and proceed to unleash a beat down that goes something like this: first impact, "What the hell was that?", second impact, "How did this guy even see me?", third impact, "I'm almost dead!", forth impact, "fuck, fuck, fuck, please don't kill me". I've made so many Japanese DDs pop smoke and flee like a startled kitten that I actually wonder how the Japanese DDs ever got such a nasty reputation in the first place. However, the American DDs do deserve their reputation for having shitty torpedoes. Their torps have ranges of 5-7km for most of the game, with 5.5 being pretty average. With detectability ranges around 7km, they can pretty much never get a stealth kill without using terrain, or ship/captain upgrades. This general opinion on the American torps is probably about to change. The Russian DDs are scheduled to be implemented into the game shortly, and their torps are looking to have even shorter ranges (3km). This is likely to re-orient the meta of the game, and people will likely start to see that such short ranges are the norm, and that the Japanese are the exception to that norm. Meanwhile, the American DDs will continue to be just plain more versatile than the Japanese equivalents. American DDs can get such a superior performance from their guns that it means they can take on a cruiser-like role, and offer gunfire support, as long as they aren't the main target. Similarly, the American DDs eventually receive the option of using the AA defensive fire ability, which allows them to either take up an even more effective support role, or make them an unstoppable nightmare as a carrier hunter.

Your choice between the two will be more about what you value as a player. Do you like that sniping, loner style of play? As long as you appreciate the need for fire discipline and discretion in the face of danger, then maybe Japanese DDs are for you. If you like versatility, and a more knife-fighting gunboat style of play, with moments of screeching terror as you plough towards the enemy, torpedoes at the ready, then American style may be your thing.

I'm hoping by this point you've come to understand that captaining DDs is a dangerous life, and that they reward understanding of the game mechanics more than they reward twitch reflexes. Your key takeaways from this should be that you really do need to understand the game's concealment mechanics, its torpedo mechanics, and the idiosyncrasies of the different ships before you can expect to play DDs with any degree of success. They are by far the hardest ships to do well in, and hopefully you've taken my advice and earned your stripes elsewhere before attempting to go balls in on this particular lifestyle. Like mother-in-laws, you'll never win in destroyers until you've come to truly understand them. Learn their ways, master them, and sooner or later your wife will crash through the front door of your house in her car, and be furious that she didn't kill you... of course, she missed because you were upstairs with your DD, scoring like a champ... I think I got muddled on that analogy, but now you know why I like DDs, and why I warn you so vehemently to learn before you take one to your bed... port... uh, TORPEDOES AWAY! Yay :D