new account Black Swan-Minotaur speedrun

[Unlooky]

Accomplished over 4 days from a fresh account. No divisions and no money spent. 

 

DO try this at home (for fun, or if you have too much time to waste like me) unless you are actually a new player (then don't.)

https://na.wows-numbers.com/player/1061020200,GP__3/

This was done with a combination of the Pearl Harbor invite code (for Arizona) and a recruiting station link (for Repulse and other bonuses)

 

Some things I noticed while doing this:
 

1) Credits always will be the limiting factor in grinds, not XP. I sold both the Arizona and Repulse to get enough credits, obviously something a new player shouldn't do. I think it's because credit earnings seem to hit the point of diminishing returns before XP earnings do, and the amount of credits needed increasing at a rate greater than the amount of XP needed.  

2) There are actually a pretty good amount of ways for new accounts to level the field against old ones. As soon as I unlocked the armory, I went and bought the Dunkirk brother from the Dunkirk collection, putting me basically on equal terms with everyone else. 

3) I had maybe 10 or so blue boosters left over from doing this, so I probably could reach tier 8 in some other line. Obviously progression at this speed is not sustainable long term. 

 

 

Thoughts on ships in the line:

1) I played before the balance changes to Fiji and Leander, and my opinion on both of them remains unchanged. Leander was absolutely miserable to play. She's at a tier where battleships are vulnerable to cruisers because of their bad armor plating, not large superstructures. Combined with a 9 second reload and only 8 guns, and you find yourself punished extremely heavily by even the slightest of misaimed salvos. She shreds destroyers stupid enough to gamer turn in front of you (which is extremely common at tier 6) but beyond that I still dislike this ship especially compared to her successors.

Fiji, on the other hand, is still amazing to play with her incredible alpha and damage output. With the smoke you can just farm so much damage. The reload nerf didn't really affect her that much for me. Even though her turret angles are truly abysmal, the smoke makes that much less of an issue. 

2) I think Neptune is overhated. Her damage output turned out to be much more than I expected, and I wasn't even running smoke. If her concealment was buffed to perhaps 9.1km, bringing her in line with Edinburgh (9.2km) and Minotaur (9.0 km) then I would expect this ship to instantly become one of the best tech tree cruisers at tier 9 and an excellent ship for aspiring Radar Minotaur captains to learn the playstyle. Even without, I think she's quite good and not actually in need of balancing adjustments. Or perhaps this opinion is a result of my rock bottom expectations getting into this ship. 

3) I remembered Edinburgh being amazing at tier 8.  I think I overhyped her in my mind a bit, but I still think she's an excellent ship. It seems like I omitted the abysmal firing angles from my memory. Running radar on her was definitely more tricky than I thought it would be. 

4) For the low tiers, I was obviously playing against bots 90% of the time. Playing as a torpboat was much more rewarding than attempting to stick to guns. 

5) Minotaur is still the best ship in the line by a nice margin.

6) These ships seriously need an ASW airstrike or even standard depth charges, I have more sub kills with my guns and even torpedoes than the horrible depth charges. You only get 4 per run, and although they have incredible alpha, it's insufficient with the imprecise nature of ship mounted ASW.  

 

Also, if anyone understood the choice of name for this account that would be amazing. 

 

 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

For those interested, the above was obviously boosted by spending money.

Do not expect the same results as purely free2play.

[majmac]

13 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

For those interested, the above was obviously boosted by spending money.

Do not expect the same results as purely free2play.

You are flogging a dead horse!

We know your opinions on the matter of f2p.

[GandalfTehGray]

1 hour ago, Unlooky said:

Accomplished over 4 days from a fresh account. No divisions and no money spent. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

For those interested, the above was obviously boosted by spending money.

... Miss the second sentence? 

[Unlooky]

1 hour ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

For those interested, the above was obviously boosted by spending money.

Do not expect the same results as purely free2play.

Lol.

Care to explain how, exactly, I paid my way to Tier 10? Everything I got on that account was from freebies as detailed in the old Reddit guide.

 

[Andrewbassg]

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

) I played before the balance changes to Fiji and Leander, and my opinion on both of them remains unchanged. Leander was absolutely miserable to play

Gonna disagree with that. She used to be a good cruiser at T6 but Wedgie completely murdered her with the 3 reload and the smoke nerfs. Nobody cared for the Pan Asians, so they killed the competition. + they also made bbabbie guns more accurate and more rewarding to play. Sigh...

Those  coupled with the ops rework, killed her completely. She was hit, hard.

Fiji was a bit less affected, but nowadays I don't play her, unless resetting the line. I have other ships, which are better for ranked or brawls.

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

2) I think Neptune is overhated

Oh yes. Used to be my go to ship for T9-10 ranked and preferred TT T9 cruiser, overall. People regularly called me out for it. Until proven wrong .

 

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

3) I remembered Edinburgh being amazing at tier 8.  I think I overhyped her in my mind a bit, but I still think she's an excellent ship. It seems like I omitted the abysmal firing angles from my memory. Running radar on her was definitely more tricky than I thought it would be. 

For me Mainz completely replaced her for PvP and irian for ops, unless resetting the line. And then Wedgie starts  speaking about "diversity"  and "diversifying" 

 

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

5) Minotaur is still the best ship in the line by a nice margin.

 

Go figure, I used to prefer Neptune over her 

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

6) These ships seriously need an ASW airstrike or even standard depth charges, I have more sub kills with my guns and even torpedoes than the horrible depth charges. You only get 4 per run, and although they have incredible alpha, it's insufficient with the imprecise nature of ship mounted ASW.  

Yeah that's one of the reasons why I play a LOT less the line.

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

Also, if anyone understood the choice of name for this account that would be amazing. 

 

Dunkirk. Jack Dunkirk. 

Edited June 18 by Andrewbassg

[Ensign Cthulhu]

3 hours ago, Unlooky said:

If her concealment was buffed to perhaps 9.1km, bringing her in line with Edinburgh (9.2km) and Minotaur (9.0 km) then I would expect this ship to instantly become one of the best tech tree cruisers at tier 9

I liked my Neptune grind. I remain convinced that if she had Minotaur concealment and could stealth radar, she would be OP.

[Unlooky]

8 minutes ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

I liked my Neptune grind. I remain convinced that if she had Minotaur concealment and could stealth radar, she would be OP.

I don't think she'd be any more busted than Edin or Mino at their own tiers. Although the firing angles are better than Edin's they're still quite bad, and bringing all your guns to bear against a destroyer remains a highly dangerous maneuver. 

 

21 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

For me Mainz completely replaced her for PvP and irian for ops, unless resetting the line. And then Wedgie starts  speaking about "diversity"  and "diversifying" 

 

I don't play her as a long range open water kiter or smoke farmer, so Edinburgh fills her own niche for me.

28 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Dunkirk. Jack Dunkirk. 

I meant the username, lol 

[Verytis]

Edinburgh's strength lies in it's survivability, unlike others of the line. It is unique in that it has 19mm midsection upperplate and 16mm bow, while being in a tier with limited overmatch from other CAs. Combined with the fact most CAs get no heals at all, it is a lot more sturdy than it looks.

Neptune on the other hand, is mostly constrained by concealment issues. For a CL, it is absurdly bad at spotting for itself since it gets outspotted by CAs including other TTs like Buffalo and Drake. If you have DD and/or plane spotting to compensate, then it's not too bad. Just never take it into small formats like ranked.

ASW is usable, but you need hydro active to get a precision drop. Otherwise it is garbage if you're hoping to blindly carpet an area. But yes a buff would be incredibly valued considering the distance involved

 

Otherwise, the number of matches required to reach T10 was much shorter than I expected.

This really makes me want to reconsider visiting another server...just to see if I can fish for cheating, hacking accusations and other "compliments".

[ReDiR20]

I'm doing similar on my various acconts. Resetting the line and playing like 20 battles with each ship to compare the stats or results of all the ships with each other and with others in those tiers.

 

Solid stats, but you were clearly lucky to avoid regular teams in randoms. Unavoidable to to have 30% WR in some ship in so few games.

Edited June 18 by ReDiR20

[Ensign Cthulhu]

3 hours ago, ReDiR20 said:

Solid stats, but you were clearly lucky to avoid regular teams in randoms.

OP is good enough to make his own luck. His Leander stats in this accelerated grind seem to be an outlier.

3 hours ago, ReDiR20 said:

Unavoidable to to have 30% WR

No, not unavoidable.

[Unlooky]

11 hours ago, ReDiR20 said:

Solid stats, but you were clearly lucky to avoid regular teams in randoms. Unavoidable to to have 30% WR in some ship in so few games.

Thanks. I dislike complaining about bad teams in Randoms when it's fairly typical that the enemy team is just as bad. Losses for me occur when the other flank gets snowballed out of control before I can have an impact there, or if there is a significant skill disparity in the two teams.

I agree that 70% is the limit for any winrate one can reasonably expect solo over a significant sample size. 

 

[ReDiR20]

8 hours ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

OP is good enough to make his own luck. His Leander stats in this accelerated grind seem to be an outlier.

No, not unavoidable.

Unavoidable even for unicums like me. 

[Kynami]

53 minutes ago, Unlooky said:

I agree that 70% is the limit for any winrate one can reasonably expect solo over a significant sample size. 

I've run into a CV main that can keep it around 72% solo for 1700+ games for the Chkalov. And once you throw in the division play its over 74% over 2200 games for that one ship. Only reason I managed to pull a win against that was they drastically underestimated how quickly the weak flank that was only a DD and my Dmitry Pozharsky could dunk their HP bar. Though yes generally that 70% limit is pretty true outside of a small handful of three or four actually over-tuned ships.

[Aethervox]

All I see here is another thread about how Wedgie has broken ships that allow for exploits to happen. Tell us something 'new' next time. 😒

 

[Verytis]

5 hours ago, Aethervox said:

All I see here is another thread about how Wedgie has broken ships that allow for exploits to happen. Tell us something 'new' next time. 😒

 

The Minotaur branch has existed for well over 5yrs at this point.

I've seen comments about the ship being so easily one-shotted. Now I see comments implying how it is supposedly broken instead.

Either we have some extreme outliers in this forum, or the playerbase is so lost they still struggle to understand a ship line years later.

[Itwastuesday]

6 hours ago, Aethervox said:

All I see here is another thread about how Wedgie has broken ships that allow for exploits to happen. Tell us something 'new' next time. 😒

 

What? What's the exploit?

[YouSatInGum]

On 6/17/2024 at 4:54 PM, Unlooky said:

2) I think Neptune is overhated. Her damage output turned out to be much more than I expected, and I wasn't even running smoke. If her concealment was buffed to perhaps 9.1km, bringing her in line with Edinburgh (9.2km) and Minotaur (9.0 km) then I would expect this ship to instantly become one of the best tech tree cruisers at tier 9 and an excellent ship for aspiring Radar Minotaur captains to learn the playstyle. Even without, I think she's quite good and not actually in need of balancing adjustments. Or perhaps this opinion is a result of my rock bottom expectations getting into this ship. 

 

 

 

As a fellow Neptune enjoyer/masochist I share your feeling on the Neptune hate. 

It's really an armorless machine gun nest.  It's practically the only T9 cruiser with decent DPM with Sejong as an honorable mention.

Neptune has 3 problems that leave players with a bad taste....

Horrible firing angles that turn... oh no I just lost 1/2 my HP into game over - spin again moments

The over matchable 16mm armor that used to be an occasional matchup inconvenience but now 90% of what's released and therefore fight over matches you.  Of course BB's could always overmatch you but usually their buck shot dispersion and sigma combined with a profile reducing turn would result in luck being on your side.  However, with so many large cruisers that have CB or even CA/CL cruiser dispersion being added to the game in the last 2 years, the wiggle and pray strategy will only work for the luckiest of neophyte potatoes.

...and the 3rd problem is the detection.  You mentioned this already as 10.4 is not in keeping with any ship in the line before or after and seems to have been created as special *fiddlesticks* you from WG to all T9 cruiser players.  But don't feel bad as WG spreads that special T9 feeling to nearly about all tech tree T9 cruisers.  Any exceptions like Sejong are pure accidents from the rest of the line being garbage and needing multiple buffs to be relevant. 

.... Anyway, I degressed for a sec.... Yeah that 10.4 km conceal together with the kick me Now! sign on it's ginormus citadel, precludes any thoughts of continuing your anti-DD Mino training from Edi except for the truly Masochistic among you.  Oh....and you make sure that *fiddlesticks* you translates over to the smoke squatters as well, the 6.4 smoke fire penalty that again is nearly a solid 1 km bigger than all else in the line, guarantees any experienced DD player with a BB (or previously mentioned overmatching cruiser) in a division will be licking their chops. 

Now you mentioned 9.1m as a solution but I suspect that will not only run afoul of WG law of T9 mediocrity, but also their reluctantance to create any new stealth radar ships to honor their previous non-miscommunications on the subjects....unless of course it's premium with money to be made (Then it's perfectly fine.... no miscommunications here!). 

I suspect giving it a Baltimore like not quite like radar stealth 9.9 out of 10 detect to radar ratio would help enormously not only with DD hunting party's but even just keeping the ship alive long enough to find an nice protective island to settle down with and have baby CL's with.  (Get it?.... sorry my humor goes of the rails sometimes...)

Unfortunately, while Korabley is some interesting, even if Vodka influenced bat shit crazy changes, to year's old ships...their EU outcast brethren who are now Art-Dept-less to carry them are concentrating on keeping the lights on not with interesting balance changes but the the tried methods taught at the last Gacha game symposium held in Las Vagas....( with Masters classes in how to get parents to gamble their kids college savings being held at 2am nightly.... hookers and blow are optional). 

So in conclusion, even if the future looks bleak, fellow Neptune masochists will still keep singing the praises of 484,000 AP DPM while marching to back to port early to do it again!

[Unlooky]

12 hours ago, Aethervox said:

All I see here is another thread about how Wedgie has broken ships that allow for exploits to happen. Tell us something 'new' next time. 😒

What rule/bug have I exploited by doing this? 

[torino2dc]

5 hours ago, Unlooky said:

What rule/bug have I exploited by doing this?

That you can make this game your own if you have the stones and the skill to back it up. Congrats on a beautiful run 😃

[Ensign Cthulhu]

Neptune: OP Co-op monster. 

I can think of worse ways to grind this ship.