CV tactics (By Chawp)

1. Don't go and camp in a corner, stay close to your team but far back enough not to be in the line of sight of enemies. This will allow friendly ships to come to your aid faster if you disaster strikes and reduces the travel distance of your aircraft.
2. When manual dropping with torpedo, always leave a enough room for them to arm. You'll find the sweet spot eventually. 
3. If your fighters aren't engaging enemy aircraft, have them stick close to team to act as a deterrent or as a scout for those sneaky destroyers.
3.5. Have your idle fighters stalk an enemy DD so that they are always visible to your team. Be careful not to leave them within AA range for too long.
4. If possible, when vsing an enemy CV, try to leave at least one enemy bomber alive after it made its run. This increases the turn around time for the enemy bombers as a single bomber flying back to its carrier to then rearm and re service is significantly longer than allowing the enemy CV to re spawn a fresh new squadron. Needless to say, if killing the final bomber can save a life of a teammate then shoot it down.

Ships on the minimap (By karrablaster123/Me)

Arrow Head/Triangle DD, 1 diagonal line CA/CL, 2 diagonal lines BB, horizontal line CV

General Tips (By Syanda, benlisquare, _Storm, Makise_Kuristina)

Movement

1. The bottom left hand of the screen has your engine setting. Tap W to increase, tap S to decrease. You can set your engines to 1/4 power, 1/2, 3/4, and Full, as well as setting it to 0 and setting it to full reverse. Note that it takes time to build up to full steam, and you won't hit your top speed right away. Generally speaking, destroyers accelerate the fastest, followed by cruisers/aircraft carriers, followed by battleships. Look up the different ships on the tech tree to find out their top speeds.

2. Steering is done with your rudder. Hold A to steer your ship to port (left), hold D to steer your ship to starboard (right). Q and E can also set your rudder to 1/2 and full to port and starboard respectively. Again, note that it takes time for the rudder to move and for your ship to begin to turn, so plan your course out ahead. Destroyers turn the fastest, followed by cruisers, followed by battleships, followed by aircraft carriers.

3. Try not to cut across a ship's bow. Keep aware of where your teammates are. Some ships, like battleships take a LONG time to accelerate/decelerate, and turn, so don't expect them to be able to take evasive action to dodge you.

4. You are not less accurate when firing on the move. Don't stop to fire.

5. Please do not hit the blue map border. Seriously. Don't do it.

6. Try to move erratically in order to make it harder for the other team to hit you, sailing in a straight line is a good way to quickly lose a lot of your health.

Shooting

1. All ships have multiple turrets, and the turrets will aim as close as possible to where your mouse cursor is. Where each turret is pointing is denoted by an orange circle. When it turns green and is over your pointer, it is able to fire.

2. Left click to fire one turret. Double-click to fire all your guns pointing at a target (broadside). Hold down left click to fire all guns in sequence (rolling broadside).

3. When switching to any of your weapons, a white dotted circle will appear around your ship in a minimap. That indicates the maximum range of your selected weapon.

4. AP deals damage when penetrating a target. As a general rule, battleships should fire AP at other battleships and cruisers, cruisers should fire AP at other cruisers, destroyers should avoid firing AP. If an AP round is fired at a target with little or no armour, it will overpenetrate and deal very little damage. Ideally, you want your AP shots to be hitting the ship's hull as close to the waterline as possible when firing at close range, or plunging down on the deck at long range. AP fire hitting at a bad angle will simple ricochet.

5. HE deals damage when impacting on a target, and has a higher chance of setting a target on fire. As a general rule, battleships should *try* to fire HE at destroyers (but frankly, the slow reload means you can't really switch shell types often), cruisers should fire HE at battleships and destroyers, and destroyers should be firing HE almost all the time. HE rounds deal the most damage when impacting on the deck and superstructure, and may deal no damage if you hit armoured sides where there are no modules present.

6. When your cursor is over a target, press X to lock onto the target. This helps when firing over obstacles. Press G to highlight a target to allies and request fire support. You can only lock on to targets within your range, and call for support on targets you can see.

7. Some ships carry torpedoes. Hit 3 to switch to torpedo. Press 3 again to toggle between wide and narrow torpedo spreads. A green/yellow arc will appear on either side of your ship indicating where your torpedoes can fire. If you have locked onto a target in range, a white segment will appear to assist your aim. That is where you have to fire in order to hit the direct centre of the targetted ship, assuming the ship does not change its course.

8. NOTE THAT FRIENDLY FIRE IS ALWAYS ON. Always, always, ALWAYS watch your firing arcs when shootings. Do not fire torpedoes in an area where friendly ships are maneuvering. Dealing too much allied damage will result in the team damage system penalizing you.

9. AA guns and secondary batteries fire automatically at targets in range. Hold control to bring up your cursor and left click on a target ship/squadron to get your AI guns to focus fire on it.

10. Tap Z toggle your camera to follow your shells/torpedoes so you can see where they hit. I believe when Z is toggled on, C allows you to switch between seeing each shell/torpedo.

Taking Damage

1. Ships can have their modules knocked out by gunfire - Rudder, Engines, AA guns, Secondary guns, Torpedoes, Ammunition, Main guns. When engines or rudder are knocked out, ships will not be able to maintain speed or change their course respectively. When AA guns/secondary guns/torpedoes/main guns are knocked out, they will be unable to fire. Generally, modules will recover damage over time, but I believe that AA guns and secondary batteries can be knocked out permanently, and main guns have a chance of being permanently destroyed in a battle. 

2. Ships have something called a citadel zone. Generally, this is very near the waterline directly underneath turrets and smokestacks. Suffering a hit to a citadel zone results in massive, massive damage. Citadels, generally speaking, require high penetration and the correct angle to be damaged, so they're usually seen when hitting/being hit with AP shells. Destroyers don't really have citadels, as they're practically completely unarmoured.

3. Suffering a hit in the ammunition store (either torpedoes, or directly under the turrets in the hull) may result in an explosion, which is capable of instantly killing a ship. If you see the "Detonation" achievement appear in chat, some poor sod just blew up.

4. Carriers that are set on fire cannot launch or recover their planes. Want to give a carrier a bad day? Fire HE at it.

Misc

1. Settings > Graphics > tick Animate small objects if you want to watch your secondary guns move, planes appear as squadrons, and a rave party when your AA guns fire. This may result in an fps drop.

2. Settings > Gameplay > tick Alternate battle interface to see healthbars and ship names, as well as the distances ships are from you. This may result in an fps drop

1. Keep an eye on the game timer. If the clock hits zero the match becomes a draw, which is technically a loss for both sides (as far as XP gain is concerned).

2. If you hear a siren sound, check the minimap and see if your base needs assistance, as there are enemy ships currently capping.

Abbreviations

1. BB - Battleship. Some battleships in game are actually battlecruisers, but using BB on them is fine. 

2. CL - Light cruiser.

3. CA - Heavy cruiser, can also be used to refer to cruisers in general. Comes from Cruiser, Armored.

4. CV - Aircraft Carrier. Comes from Cruiser, Voler (French for "to fly")

5. DD - Destroyer

6. Poi means poi.

Accuracy

• Stopping to fire NEVER increases accuracy for you. It increases the accuracy for the ENEMY.

Survivability

• Survivability means movement
• NEVER EVER get too close to enemy IJN CA, CL and all DDs in general. The next thing that you'll need is a BIG fishing net to catch those fish before they touch you

Destroyers..... Briefing (By MasterWolf)

Excellent choice - one of the most fun classes in WoWS

But you ask - what is the difference between USA and IJN ??

As this is the newcomers area i'll confine myself to tiers 2 -5 and talk in fairly general terms

At these low tiers both are primarily torpedo boats - they have really fast torp reload times and fairly average guns so the torp is their main weapon.

So USN - DD killers - The US Navy DD's are dedicated destroyer hunters - their torps are short ranged, slowish and do not hit very hard - but they have lots of them and separate port and starboard broadsides so you get double the fun.  They also have guns that excel at killing other Destroyers and can even annoy a cruiser if used right.

What they are not however is brawlers - they lack the armour and HP to do this as well as a cruiser and must rely on agility to stay alive - so fire off a spread, then snap of a few HE rounds and RUN until your torps reload.

With USN DD's try to pick your targets - lower tier cruisers are fair game but and equal or better tier cruiser or any BB is going to eat you alive in short order.  You can sometimes get in really good torp runs on these big opponents, but don't expect to sink too many unless you get lucky.  What you will do is annoy the heck out of them and soften them up for the main fleet.

Spread your torps out unless you have a sure thing - you fire a lot so a wide spread can make it hard for the enemy to dodge them all - you don't do as much damage but if you are hunting DD's one is enough.

ok so onto the IJN - the glass cannons of the WoWS lineup at low tiers

They have a limited number of long rage fast running, hard hitting torps and are a terror to any unsuspecting or inattentive ship of any size.

IJN DD's are ship killers - they can drop a BB in one salvo and many Cruisers in 1 or 2 torps  (what they do to enemy DD's if they hit is best not described using PG language)

The problem is - they are fragile and they do not have a lot of torps - so you need to pick your shots to make them count.

On IJN guns - forget it - at best they are handy for finishing off a crippled ship or setting fire to a fleeing carrier - other than that - the guns on an IJN DD are best left as decoration - if you are concentraing on shooting the guns you are not dodging, or setting up your next run and both of these are much more important

A pair of IJN DD's especially isokazes (as at their tier one torp is deadly) can own an entire match by combining their fire and flooding the enemy fleet with an un-avoidable spread of torps.

A word to the wise - spam torps with care - your torps will run a long way and an incautious drop can often see your team mates being the in intended victims of your enthusiasm.  - They will not thank you for it!!!

Try to use the close spread setting as it increases your chance of a deadly blow and means that even at the end of your run the chance of a hit is high if they do not dodge.

onto a bit about the DD's worst enemy AA fire - TURN IT OFF - if you are trying to be stealthy - the moment you open up on enemy aircraft you generate spotting checks and almost certainly loose any cover you had.

Turn it back on once you are in the thick of things - but your smoke is far less effective if some ensign is rattling of 100 round bursts off AA tracer from the back deck at a spotter plane when you are trying to run for your life..

How to Evade Torpedoes (All credits to Syanda)

It's generally basic situational awareness. Not many ships carry torpedoes, and only IJN DDs can launch torpedoes before they're seen. The moment you realize there's a ship present that is capable of launching on you, you really ought to be taking steps to mess up their launch calculations. Torpedoes travel in a straight line up until their maximum range, and simply varying speeds and moving the rudder back and forth will cause them to miss.

Furthermore, the moment torpedoes enter your detection range, an icon denoting where they are appears on your HUD, triangles appear in the water where they are, and there is an insistent beeping that grows louder as the torpedoes get closer. For most ships, that means there's sufficient time to pull hard on the rudder and evade the worst of the damage, or even pull parallel to the torpedo tracks and drive between them. Torpedoes can be easily dodged outside of a minimum-range point-blank launches. As for minimum-range launches...well, that's typically the player's fault for letting a torpedo-armed ship get that close.

Now plane-dropped torpedoes are another matter. The general counter to this is to always have your nose pointed towards any torpedo squadrons as much as possible, and find a friendly cruiser to sail near.

Note that with OBT - your crew will now call out the location of torpedoes (ahead, astern, port, starboard).

/u/limitbroken

To expound on planes, since dealing with torpedo bombers can be a little complicated until you're familiar with how they work: TBs have a minimum distance that they need to be beyond to lock into their final run prior to dropping torps. Any TB within about ~2.2km of you and flying at you or on a vector that intersects your path is almost certainly already locked into its final run: at this point, unless you're a DD or a very agile CA you need to be pointing as close to dead on at or dead on away from them as possible to dodge the full spread. Once it's over the threshold and locked into its run, it'll dip, drop torps, fly ridiculously close to you, and then either turn immediately back towards the CV or continue to its next waypoint if it has one. Plane torps still have an arming range, too, so if they make a particularly aggressive manual drop and misread how close you are or how narrow your turning radius is, you can sometimes bonk them harmlessly.

Any TB making an indirect approach or pass inside this minimum distance is one of four things:

• the CV making a ballsy and likely ill-considered redirect for a different torp run right over you (possibly because he knows your AA sucks or he out-tiers you enough that it doesn't matter): ctrl+click his air group and try to blow it out of the sky, shaking your fist impotently if he knows he's got you beat
• the CV being blind as a bat and flying straight over you en route to something else: ctrl+click his air group and blow part of it out of the sky so the next guy has less to worry about
• the CV botching a manual run by trying to assign or change the drop target while his plane is already past the run threshold, causing it to bounce and try to do a slow fly around so it can try to attempt the run a second time, which it will probably also botch because plane AI is dumb as bricks: ctrl+click his air group and blow it out of the sky, and laugh at his failure
• the CV somehow managing to botch an automatic run by changing its vector while it's too close but not locked in, or you managing to steer such that you screw its vector up entirely: ctrl+click his air group and blow it out of the sky, and laugh at his misfortune, and also that he auto-drops

The big takeaway here is that you can generally figure out if a set of TBs is coming at you from at least 5km away - even if you're alone so they can come from any direction AND they're competent enough to make indirect long passes and then divert into flanking torpedo runs, they still have to deal with plane turning radius AND minimum distance which all contributes to telegraphing their intent. For all but the slowest ships, this is a pretty fair amount of time to designate them primary secondary/AA target and begin maneuvering. Even if you don't blow the entire air group out of the sky, every plane you take down is another torp that you're not going to have to dodge. For spreads that aren't just every TB dropping on you in the same vector at the same time, this can mean the difference between getting splattered and escaping mostly without harm.

Sometimes you're still going to get caught in what's basically a cat's cradle of torpedo f***ery, where they get a crossing run from both sides, and sometimes throw another one down in front of you just to spit on your corpse and catch you out turning into one of the others. Pretty much every CV wants to do this to you, whether they actually get to depends on how much other shit is going on around them, how many allied fighters are dogging them, and how much AA you have around you. The easiest solution is to never have to deal with this by staying with a pack and keeping at least a CA around (or being the CA) - the AA booster that starts showing up on tier 6+ CAs is not just extra good at shitting on planes, but also causes the spread to blow up even larger with more holes to sneak through and a better chance of turning a 6x+ torp hit run into a 1x/2x. Fighters do the same thing to whatever unit they're attacking, for whatever that's worth to you.

If you missed the inbound run or things went wrong some other way and they've got you dead to rights and turning seems hopeless and you have no idea what to do, come to a full stop. Pretty much all TBs drops are going to be leading you to some degree, so at least this way you're not going to sail right into some more torpedoes and absolutely certain death, just mostly certain death.

I'm sleep deprived so this was all pretty babbly but whatever, take this if you can't be bothered to read the whole thing:

TL;DR:

• ctrl+click to designate TBs as your primary AA target when they get within AA distance of you, no matter where you think they're going
• watch their approach vector(s) and steer accordingly
• you can see the trajectory of their run long before torps hit the water
• if they catch you out and you're f***ed anyway, try coming to a full stop, it might help a bit
• please forget all of these tips if you wind up against me in a game, thanks

And as an additional note - plane AI coming in on auto-drop doesn't really like it when their target is turning, and will drop a very weird spread that is extremely easy to dodge. So keep on turning when you see planes approach

Bad Advice EP#1

This is the series by Wargaming about what to do and what not to........



This Video is about how not to spam AP shells at everyone. This is because some ships with very little armor won't be affected by them as the shells will go through one side and come out through the other without exploding so doing little to no damage.

How to use:

If BB:
CA - HE
DD - HE
CV - HE
BB - AP
If CA:
CA - AP/HE(If lower tier HE, if higher AP)
DD - HE
CV - HE
BB - HE
If DD:
CA - HE
CV - HE
DD - HE
BB - HE
PS. You'll most likely use torps
         

Think I'm gonna get this blog running again....

Ok recently on the SEA server there has been noob rampage(as expected during OBT) so I thought about restarting this blog......