Year in Review / Looking Forward

[Ensign Cthulhu]

ACHIEVEMENTS IN 2024:

The following commanders were promoted to 21 points from ranks stated in brackets:

Halsey (16), Swirski (16), Sansonetti (15), Auboyneau (14)

 

The following grinds were completed:

Worcester, Richthofen, Preussen, Essex, Venezia, Petropavlovsk, Elbing, Jinan, Nakhimov, Grozovoi, Cassard. 

(Balao arrived courtesy of the Wargaming Expedition to the North event; I had only barely unlocked Salmon when this was announced.)

 

GOALS FOR 2025:

* Promote at least two of the following commanders: Cunningham (14), Kuznetsov (12), Zhenbing (11), Lisboa (11). Expectations for numbers completed are lower this time because they all have further to go than 2024's commanders did. The new Legendary Dutch commander, Conrad Helfrich (10) doesn't yet have a release date, so unless a miracle occurs, he (nominally coming in at 10 points) isn't in the running to promote all the way in 2025.

* Complete the following grinds: Yodo, Kremlin, Nevsky, Gouden Leeuw. If I can finish the Nevsky early enough (she has less than 100K XP), I might try to grind through the Los Andes as well, which will also help with the commander promotion.

 

REMINDER: No plan survives first contact with the enemy. 2024 was a FAR more productive year than I anticipated because I had the carrot of two completely free dockyard ships to drive me. 2025 may or may not have similar inducements.

Edited January 1 by Ensign Cthulhu

[Pugilistic]

My immediate goal had been to get two Unique Upgrades when I do a X2 reset in three weeks, but Christmas containers and upgrade to the clan port put me at the point that I now get to make the choice of Brennus or Sicilia versus three UU's. I frankly find Brennus pretty attractive, but need to look at armor models and ballistics. 

Other than that, I want to promote more commanders to 21. The low hanging fruit here is 13 twenty-pointers. 

I need to work on all my skills, but most on subs, then CV, then BB. 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

Goals for 2025:

Play this game less.

Finish part 2 of my novel and get into part 3.

[Tread_Head57]

2024 in review:

After much neglect of tech trees, grinded the following lines to tier X: Gearing, San Martin, Venezia, Castilla, Kremlin, Louisiana, Halland, Gouden Leeuw, and Libertad. 
 

Goals for 2025: 

Finally get the Yamato and complete Japanese/German/US and Russian cruiser lines.

Edited January 1 by Tread_Head57

[Taylor3006]

For 2025 my goal is to rebuild my resources. My credits and FXP are at very low levels. Coal is under one million going into the new year. I do have record amounts of steel and community tokens although there isn't anything available I want to spend them on. 

For ships, I plan on grinding out around 8 lines of DDs, playing for those first wins every day. A couple are tier 7, the rest are tier 8s. My goal is to unlock their tier 10s. I am trying a new credit saving strategy with the DD grind. I am not spending credits to buy them ship upgrade modules or buying hull upgrades when I get those unlocked. Essentially I am playing the stock ships the entire time but the amount of credits saved is huge. I am also grinding out the Alsace in Operations but with her, I have mounted equipment. The only cruiser left for me to grind is the Cherbourg. It is painfully bad and is why I abandoned it long ago. I refuse to FXP the ship because I had mounted equipment on her and unlocked her upgrades using it before I determined it was crap. I expect that the rest of that line will be unlocked using FXP. They are terrible ships IMHO and only wanted for the snowflakes they represent. 

The last thing on my list is to buy all the rest of the superships I have unlocked. I want to have this done before the Anniversary event. I figure I should be able to buy one a month without depleting my credits so fast that I can not replace them. 

[Estimated_Prophet]

Went over 500 ships.

Promoted a few to 21; my Illinois, a few others.

Broke down and used a dupe commander for the first time. (Dusty Rhodes. I put him on Archerfish because he looked like he fit.)

Bought TWO Steel ships, (my steel total is screaming…)

Sitting here as the clock turned over; watching Victory at Sea, getting ready to eat, and drink my single shot of single malt scotch. (I can smell it sitting next to me.)

Part of someone’s fireworks hit my house…

Goals for next year in game?

Who knows; maybe start getting at least one 21 point commander in each fleet? Either by raw xp, or commander xp.

[Ramsalot]

I got handful of ships this year, biggest highlights are Ohio and Bourgogne.  But the real surprise to me was Gearing.  I never cared to actually get Gearing, because most known contributors out there did not speak highly of Gearing, instead they raved about Daring, Gdansk, Kleber, Marceau, Sherman - I got every one of those.  But there is something about Gearing.  It’s just well rounded ship that clicked with me, and for some reason I really like it.  I think Gearing and Daring are my favorite DDs because they both excel at what DD are supposed to do for the team; front line support ships that are good for contesting caps, controlling objectives, spotting, area control.

[Admiral_Karasu]

I was still playing.

[Justin_Simpleton]

Last year I got more serious about playing DDs and managed to get a couple dozen and worked a couple of lines to tier X.  I bought Ragnar and I like it a lot. 

I think this year I will try to learn carriers and finish my grind to tier X. Or, maybe I'll get a job.  Who knows.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

6 hours ago, Ramsalot said:

I never cared to actually get Gearing, because most known contributors out there did not speak highly of Gearing

Gearing suffered from the start because her model was too fat and sat too high in the water. Those who argued that the Fletcher was the better ship had a point.

Gearing got a remodelling some time ago to make her a bit lower and a bit slimmer, and this appears to have shifted the picture somewhat.

6 hours ago, Taylor3006 said:

The only cruiser left for me to grind is the Cherbourg. It is painfully bad and is why I abandoned it long ago. I refuse to FXP the ship because I had mounted equipment on her and unlocked her upgrades using it before I determined it was crap. I expect that the rest of that line will be unlocked using FXP. They are terrible ships IMHO and only wanted for the snowflakes they represent. 

That was my impression as well until I checked out the Brest in PTS. I found her gun power a big step up from Cherbourg's, and that encouraged me to finish Cherbourg's grind and move up. I haven't been disappointed.

9 hours ago, Pugilistic said:

Other than that, I want to promote more commanders to 21. The low hanging fruit here is 13 twenty-pointers. 

Imagine them all fighting to be the first to get that sweet, sweet ECXP.

Actually, don't; I got an AI to visualize it for us:

9 hours ago, Pugilistic said:

I now get to make the choice of Brennus or Sicilia versus three UU's.

7 hours ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

Goals for next year in game?

Who knows; maybe start getting at least one 21 point commander in each fleet?

A very worthy goal.

If you can, try to overlap it with getting each Legendary commander to 21. Various choices forced upon me by timing, circumstance and sentimentality (I chose to promote an Italian commander with the same name as one of my grandfathers above promoting Sansonetti) mean that I had to double up some of this effort.

[Taylor3006]

9 minutes ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

That was my impression as well until I checked out the Brest in PTS. I found her gun power a big step up from Cherbourg's, and that encouraged me to finish Cherbourg's grind and move up. I haven't been disappointed.

But my god she is awful. Kind of like having a 4 course meal where the first three courses are cow anus and you have to eat all of that before you can have a top sirloin. That begs the questions  #1 Can I do that?  and #2 Is it worth it?..  I don't expect it is worth it even with better guns. Never a fan of the all gun cruisers in the first place but this is seriously a miserable experience. IIRC this is my third attempt to get thru the grind and already tired of her again. She is slow, her guns reload slow, and even more aggravating is every time I fire a salvo (and I mean every time) one stray shell just flies off on its own willy nilly like some brain damaged winged monkey. Sometimes it flies right, sometimes it flies left, sometimes it drops short. The only fun playing the ship is predicting where that one stupid shell will go. 

[Ramsalot]

4 hours ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

Gearing suffered from the start because her model was too fat and sat too high in the water. Those who argued that the Fletcher was the better ship had a point.

Gearing got a remodelling some time ago to make her a bit lower and a bit slimmer, and this appears to have shifted the picture somewhat.

The issue I have with discussions about the best DD is that they often come from a highly individualistic perspective, focusing on personal performance rather than team utility. For example, the first video you’re likely to find on YouTube when searching for the best Tier 10 destroyer is Flamu’s tier list. While it highlights undeniably powerful premium ships like Ragnar and Småland in the S tier, these ships are hard to acquire and not representative of the broader player base. Among tech tree options, Kleber and Gdańsk are the only ones placed at the top, yet both suffer from significant detection ranges that make them poorly suited for traditional DD roles in a team context. Meanwhile, versatile and team-oriented destroyers like the Daring are relegated to A tier, and role-specific ships like Shimakaze and Gearing, which excel at fulfilling traditional DD responsibilities, are only rated in the C tier.

Personally seeing skilled player on my team driving Gearing or Shima is more comforting then someone in Kleber and Gdańsk.

Edited January 1 by Ramsalot

[Sumseaman]

Just picked up Neustrashimy as the first milestone for the year. Archerfish and Shinano will be added at the end of the month. As I'm a randoms player I like to maximise the ships I have so it's all about improvement.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

3 hours ago, Ramsalot said:

The issue I have with discussions about the best DD is

My comparison was between the Gearing and the tech-tree ship directly before her in the same national line, long before any of the other destroyers you mention (except obviously Shimakaze) were even in the game.

That being said, I can't help but agree with everything you've said. My personal DD guru was always Destroyer Kuroshiokai, but his Youtube hasn't seen any activity in at least a year, and videos related to the broad spread of tech-tree ships are generally even older, going back all the way to the RTS CV era. 

[GandalfTehGray]

13 hours ago, Taylor3006 said:

But my god she is awful. Kind of like having a 4 course meal where the first three courses are cow anus and you have to eat all of that before you can have a top sirloin. That begs the questions  #1 Can I do that?  and #2 Is it worth it?..  I don't expect it is worth it even with better guns. Never a fan of the all gun cruisers in the first place but this is seriously a miserable experience. IIRC this is my third attempt to get thru the grind and already tired of her again. She is slow, her guns reload slow, and even more aggravating is every time I fire a salvo (and I mean every time) one stray shell just flies off on its own willy nilly like some brain damaged winged monkey. Sometimes it flies right, sometimes it flies left, sometimes it drops short. The only fun playing the ship is predicting where that one stupid shell will go. 

Iirc it got better in the t9, but asym or operations would be my recommendion to power through it. 

[Wolfswetpaws]

On 1/1/2025 at 8:41 AM, Taylor3006 said:

But my god she is awful. Kind of like having a 4 course meal where the first three courses are cow anus and you have to eat all of that before you can have a top sirloin. That begs the questions  #1 Can I do that?  and #2 Is it worth it?..  I don't expect it is worth it even with better guns. Never a fan of the all gun cruisers in the first place but this is seriously a miserable experience. IIRC this is my third attempt to get thru the grind and already tired of her again. She is slow, her guns reload slow, and even more aggravating is every time I fire a salvo (and I mean every time) one stray shell just flies off on its own willy nilly like some brain damaged winged monkey. Sometimes it flies right, sometimes it flies left, sometimes it drops short. The only fun playing the ship is predicting where that one stupid shell will go. 

So, the projectile trajectories are the basis for a "drinking game"?  😉 

[Ensign Cthulhu]

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

the basis for a "drinking game"

Take a shot of your preferred liquor every time a shot goes wild.

Continue until:

a) You stop caring that your shots are going wild

b) Your aim is so impaired that the wild shots are the ones that are hitting

c) Your ability to get the liquor into the glass is as impaired as your ship's ability to get all shells on target.

[Sumseaman]

3 hours ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

Take a shot of your preferred liquor every time a shot goes wild.

Continue until:

a) You stop caring that your shots are going wild

b) Your aim is so impaired that the wild shots are the ones that are hitting

c) Your ability to get the liquor into the glass is as impaired as your ship's ability to get all shells on target.

 d) The wee wee you somehow managed to get in the glass tastes similar to the liquor you were consuming and you're firing shells by licking LMB

Do we want e, f and g?

 

 

[Wolfswetpaws]

3 minutes ago, Sumseaman said:

 d) The wee wee you somehow managed to get in the glass tastes similar to the liquor you were consuming and you're firing shells by licking LMB

Do we want e, f and g?

If the scale of this trend continues, then possibly we'll all have to face the music and be in a world of treble?  😉 

[Sumseaman]

10 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

If the scale of this trend continues, then possibly we'll all have to face the music and be in a world of treble?  😉 

e) You no longer need the glass to drink the wee wee and some of it landed on LMB, firing shells which hit somehow...

Edited January 2 by Sumseaman

[Ensign Cthulhu]

@Sumseaman, I think you need to calm it down a couple of notches. At this stage, your posts are nothing more than...

 

[BCGrog]

My goal for 2025 is to lose weight to get my BP and blood sugars under control.

But to still play the game. 

So I think I'll set up a recumbent stationary bike to a generator that powers my monitor which will replace my handle bars.

No pedal, no image.

[Justin_Simpleton]

1 minute ago, BCGrog said:

So I think I'll set up a recumbent stationary bike to a generator that powers my monitor which will replace my handle bars.

I want to see that picture. 

[BCGrog]

Still working out the details with my electrician brother in law.

Stay tuned.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

14 minutes ago, BCGrog said:

My goal for 2025 is to lose weight to get my BP and blood sugars under control.

But to still play the game. 

So I think I'll set up a recumbent stationary bike to a generator that powers my monitor which will replace my handle bars.

No pedal, no image.

The ideal video game for you. Based on an older game called Prop Cycle, which I played once on a ferry from Melbourne to Devonport. Seriously, if I could have had infinite credits, I'd have pedalled the whole damn way across Bass Strait. 

I'm not sure I could co-ordinate WOWS controls while pedalling worth a damn.