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Greetings Captains,
Welcome to the third week of the New Player Captain's Log! For those of you who aren't sure what this is or what it might do, feel free to check out the introductory post here.
Without further ado, let’s proceed with Week 3!
Accomplishments
Here’s a list of personal milestones that I hit during the week:
1. Obtained my first Collector’s patch
2. Participated in the Killer Whale operation solo
3. Played the German Cruiser Line from nothing to Tier V
Focus Points of the Week
After talking to a number of you in last week’s thread, I made a few changes in focus that I think were beneficial to my learning experience. Here’s a few things I accomplished:
1. Branched out from Tier IV to V and VI, but mainly stayed there as I feel that is where my skill level is best suited.
2. Explored other Cruiser lines, namely the German line.
3. While still wanting to familiarize myself with Cruisers a bit more, I branched out more this week to BBs and DDs for a change of pace
Cruisers - Randoms (Tiers 1-5)
Last week, I dove headfirst into the US Cruiser Line, and reported about their floaty guns and my overall middling success with them. After some advice from y’all as well as @Ahskance, I decided to try out a new line to see if I had a preference for other lines. As it turns out, I very well might!
The line I decided to go with was the German Cruiser Line. While Tiers I-III didn’t really feel like anything to me (by design, I’m sure. It makes more sense to keep it simple in the first tiers for new players), I definitely felt a noticeable change at Tiers IV and V with these German ships. I am beginning to think I prefer them, but I’ll definitely need to play more to be sure.
Ships I used: Phoenix, Omaha, Hermelin, Dresden, Kolberg, Karlsruhe, Königsberg Observations: I continue to be destroyed in the Omaha, but with some adjustments to how I position myself (both towards other ships and on the map as a whole), I was seeing some small increases in my output overall. While going through the German Cruisers, I found that I really loved the range on them. As someone who is still focusing on survivability primarily, this allowed me to be more of a utility player, which I found appealing.
Things I need to be more cognizant of:
1. Location, location, location: The Sequel - While improvements were made and I am surviving more often, I am now finding that occasionally I am useless until I decide to overextend and get punished for it. Still, I think this is a step in the right direction.
2. Torpedo Troubles - The instinct to play some Cruisers like DDs and rush in brandishing my torps is strong. I have since learned that doing this is not useful for obvious reasons, but I often find that my torpedoes don’t serve a lot of use if I am playing at range. I need to find the balance here.
Other Classes - Impact of my Cruiser Focus
One thing I wanted to be sure to point out is how my focus on Cruisers has impacted my playing of other classes, because I think it has done so in a significant way. Luckily, it is for the better! DDs: At lower tiers, I loved rushing into the cap, popping smoke and seeing how many ships I can take out with my torps until I inevitably faced my own demise. After playing cruisers more, I am focusing more on strategic positioning and stealth in my DD play, which has helped me stay alive considerably longer (albeit at a small sacrifice of damage and kills, at least for now).
BBs: Ranged damage is obviously the BB’s bread and butter, but my experience with cruisers has given me insight on more strategic map placement as well as ship angling to avoid those dreaded citadels
CVs: Typically in a CV, I will try to see if there is an over-eager Cruiser that extends themselves too far so I can target them and take them out relatively unscathed. I’ll give you three guesses as to why I do this (hint: I may have been that over-eager Cruiser player once or twice…).
Operations - Killer Whale
Operations continue to be a mode I thoroughly enjoy despite not being great at them! I still very much like the PvE experience, and love the focused, tiered objectives. Unfortunately, I ended up doing this one solo (as in not divisoned up with my fellow WG fam) due to time constraints, but I still had a blast! Ended up sinking in this one near the end as I retreated towards the cap (I had about 2k left) right as the final reinforcements wave spawned and they took me out.
Also, I echo the sentiments that Killer Whale is a bit easier for a new player such as myself. I felt like I could contribute more meaningfully and had range to explore the map a bit more.
Ship used: Perth Results: 31k Damage, 3 kills, 4-Star completion (did not completely wipe out reinforcements) Observations: Perth’s speed combined with her range and spotter planes seemed like a really good choice for this specific operation. The only time I felt in danger was right at the end, where I overextended myself simply because I did not know the spawn points of the bots and I put myself in harm’s way. That will disappear with experience.
Things I need to be more cognizant of:
1. Study up - I really think my only main complaint was that since this was my first time running this operation, I just didn’t know what to do strategically. Going forward, I think I will just run ops multiple times to get more familiar with AI spawns and patterns as well as the objectives in general.
I think that about covers it this week! See you next week for some more New Player musings. Fair winds and following seas!