THX so much for this! As a mediocre player who occasionally gets loaded and makes bad decisions during crate events, I am swimming in premium ships, with no real understanding at all of how to manage captains. This was super, super helpful to me, especially as I am playing more and more PVP and not just playing in the tub with my virtual botes. On my way to watch your spreadsheet video! :)
Nice guide, that points out some of the obvious stuff I wasn't doing! So unloaded all captains from my premiums and dismissed loads of lower point captains I had around to feed the elite commander XP pool. I'm now in much beter shape to make the most of the grind, thanks!
This was probably the most helpful and organized video I’ve watched in a very long time! I felt like I was watching a TED talk hosted by a professional instructor 😂
Haha! Thanks Insta! If you haven't yet, check out the new version here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html Thanks for watching and welcome to the channel.
A detailed feedback post: 2:19 - 3.333 Kremlin grinds, yes, but if you are fully flagged up, the commander XP is conveniently about 3 times the ship XP earned. (This may change in the new economic system.) I suspect it was originally balanced around getting a commander to 19 points (the old maximum) at about the same time they stepped into their Tier 10 ship. 2:48 The requirement to build the first 21 pointer in a ship that you love to play or will need to play a lot of (e.g. Tier 8 carrier) is a point well made. You lay out the factors to be considered from 7:30 very well. 10:28 "The fewest number of captains possible". Yes, and this is why I put my initial effort into those nations that had the most premium ships that I used most often; it gave me the greatest number of choices for ships to use for particular missions, AND to stop from getting burned out on one ship or one type of ship. 11:19 Very true. However, some exceptions to this sharp focus may be necessary if you are grinding a particular ship and don't want to pay a doubloon or ECXP price to move a 21 point candidate into it. For example, my Italian 21 point commander grind is stalled at the moment because I'm in the last stages of grinding the Saint-Louis towards the Henri IV with a currently 13 point commander and neither my 21 pointers nor the Italian candidate are being played. I've accepted this delay in the name of getting that line finished early. If I were willing to play fully into WG's monetization model, I'd have paid to shift my 21 pointer into the Saint-Louis for the duration of the grind. 12:26 The revised (i.e. current) commander skill system that lets us build optimal skills for all ship types is invaluable for my Commonwealth ships; the same commander can cheerfully bounce between Vampires 1 and 2, Haida (soon Huron), Mysore, Perth and Yukon. 14:18 The flexibility this allowed was, in my opinion, worth the extra hike to maximum rank. The fact that more premium ships than ever in more nations than ever are available at mid as well as high tiers for coal (directly or via completing collections) helps a great deal if you can't afford to buy them. You are very right with regard to the need to think carefully about moving commanders between ships, especially at high rank, but you also need to consider carefully when to do that ECXP dump and when not to, and how it fits into your ship grind (if you don't have them all maxed out). For example, I currently have about a million (E)CXP to go before my best Italian is ready for 21 points, but that's fine because I need to complete the Lepanto grind, move him up into the Colombo and retrain him to it (probably in the Napoli) before I max him out. A reasonable guide is that a commander should be capable of generating far more commander XP when working through a ship than it required to move him into it. An important consideration is that in the current economic system (which admittedly is not long for the world), a full flag and camo loadout that maximizes ship XP also disproportionately boosts commander XP (as described in my first paragraph), and this can inadvertently lead to a commander being much more expensive to shift to the next ship (if he is climbing the line). In the new system, boosts to ship and commander XP are uncoupled from each other and this phenomenon can be greatly mitigated.
All the operations award a 10 point captain for the 4 star award. Good source of free captains. The best way to grind is put your highest point captain on your highest tier premium and play the crap out of it. My secret anyway lol. Good video man. Subbed.
Awesome Clyde, I appreciate the time and effort you must have gone through to come up with all these numbers and that spreadsheet, wicked idea.💡 I think I have about seven 21 point captains, but many on 18 or 19 points that are just straggling behind. Thanks for this insightful video, which will indeed help me to optimise the levelling up of these fellows and ladies. Keep up the good works. 👍🏼😁💜😎
Nice! Yeah....gotta focus up and just dump ALL that XP on the next one. Getting to 21 takes a lot of time and when done with INTENTION, we can do it much faster. Seven is a good number! Congrats on that!
Thank you for this informative video. As a relatively new player who only has one 21pt commander (Halsey), I'm not sure that leveling the next one up to 21pts as fast as possible should be my main goal. Here's why not: 1. A 21pt captain doesn't get the extra 5% ECXP anymore. When I had 1M CXP to go on Halsey, I had enough ECXP to boost him to 21pts. However I decided to not do that and grind out the 1M CXP with him. This then gave me an additional 50k ECXP, which I would not have gotten otherwise. (Of course if you need that 21pts to get an important skill, it might be worth it to forgo the 5% and use ECXP directly). 2. At lot of times I find that my needs to spend ECXP are much more basic. E.g. for new tech tree ships I will get a 6pt commander with credits and then use ECXP to level them up to 10 points (to get Concealment Expert). Or I might level a commander with 11, 12 or 13 points up a point of two to get the next milestone skill (e.g. Adrenaline Rush or IFHE, depending on the ship of course). So getting several 13 or 14 pt commanders on several ships (or for different use cases like Clan Battles) seems actually more useful to me than having one more 21pt commander. But perhaps this is only a problem for a somewhat newer player like me.
Hey Bernhard, great comment my dude! You've got a very solid case here. For a lot of players, it might be better to have 6 or 8 fourteen point commanders than to have only one 21 pointer. I always recommend that people think about their current situation and make a decision based on their own goals and needs and this is EXACTLY the kind of critical thinking that people should be doing, IMHO. I totally agree that people shouldn't starve their other ship-lines of good captains by pathologically throwing EVERY single piece of FXP at a single captain. Most ships are perfectly playable with a 10-14 point captain and its totally worth doing that with a new ship line rather than suffering in a DD without a captain concealment bonus, for example. Thanks for your comment!
I recently, intuitively began doing this, sort-of. Thanks for a more thought out and logical explanation. I'm presuming that buffing your 21 point Cdr. percentage is an additional must.
Hey, thanks for watching. Check out the new version of this video here - it provides a better explanation, and some better tools to do the job (if you decide you want to go the spreadsheet route - its not for everyone): ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
I started this process a while back . . . and just now went in to check my Premiums to see if I have wandered off of the path. I had. Thanx for the reminder on this . . . Xmas packages really bumped up the number of Premiums that I have and concentrating some of them under one captain will help!
Very interesting video. I've almost completed my first 21 point captain and it has really just been a happy accident. I got the AL commander for chapayev and have been playing her in clan battles. Captains level up really quickly with clan battles, not sure how this might compare to other game modes like ranked or brawls but I'll definitely try it out along with your suggestions here. Thanks
Great guide. It actually cost me 500 doubloons when I dismissed my captains for some reason and I actually let them sit there and get liquidated for that. Such is life. Your video compelled me to do the commander shuffle. First dismissed all reserves, second dismiss commander from Bismarck, third purchase Franz Von Jutland and fourth finally assign to Bismarck and retrain now to level 13 almost and will activate Adrenaline Rush when I ding. So I end up running double Vigilance on the Bismark with Hydro. Seems legit and when I am facing the Torps I really see them a long way off - otherwise avoid broadsides. So my only two ships Gneisenau and Bismarck - Gneisenau has 21 lvl captain and the majority of my matches are played with this ship. If I get wrecked bad I will exit to port and jump on the Bismarck for a round. Franze Von Jutland is leveling up very fast at this rate. When I get him to level 21 I am going to transfer over the the Gneisenau to test the double vigilance on that ship which was the plan all along considering I would have to grind so much coal to get Lutjens. Now I have
I am of the opinion that the torpedo protection bonus does not stack with Vigilance if you have a captain with that special skill. I was hoping for an extra 14% torpedo protection.
I have 5 21-pt commanders currently (Including Halsey and Yamamoto), about 500k from getting a 6th (Cunningham). After that I have maybe 4 or 5 19-pt captains to work on, including Lütjens and Sansonetti. Then I need to work on increasing Kuznetsov as I just got him a couple weeks ago.
Nice video Clyde! I forgot that maxed-out commanders give you elite commander XP ever since the rework XD. Guess I have more incentive to get 21 point commanders now.
Technically you grind captains to 21 pts faster if you play the one you are trying to get there. Before the rework you got elite captain xp from having a 19pter, getting elite exp equal to what they earned. This is the same as with 21 pt commanders now. But a new thing after the rework is that when you play a captain below 21 pts, you earn the captain exp for them, but then you also earn 5% of that as an additional amount of elite exp. So you play a 21pter for 10 games earning 100,000 elite exp. You then apply the 100,000 to your 19pter. Your 19pter has earned 100,000 exp. Play that 19pter for 10 games and get 100,000 exp then your 19pter has gained 100,000 exp. But you then also earn 5k elite, meaning you can apply that and your 19pter has made 105,000, not 100,000. What balances it out is that the extra skills on your 21pter may make him perform better, meaning you'll earn more than 105k anyways. In summary when grinding a captain from say 10-18 using your 21pter and then apply elite exp is probably best. But once at 18 (which generally covers all key skills on a ship) its more efficient to play that captain directly
Thanks for the video; I'm very new to WoWs so consuming as much content as I can in an effort to improve. Now slightly daunted by the prospect of how much better other peoples' captains are than mine (my best is a 10 point captain) but more so by how much of a grind there is ahead to max out even 1 captain!
Don't be disheartened. There are marginal gains to be had but solid basics and situational awareness outweigh high point captains every time. One of the nicest aspects of WoWs is that you don't need much more than 10 pts to play decently.
So now I realise I clearly have too many captains, and thanks for making me realise I can use my Sansonetti on destroyers and battleships as well as my Italian cruiser! He'll defiinitely be my first lvl 21 now.
Good luck with your new commander scheme! Check out the updated version of that video that goes to the next step of your ready for it: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Hey Clyde! Great work you have here! I'm not sure if this is optimal, but I buy Pi camo from the Armory, use it on my favorite ship in Narai, and then add those special signals to increase Commander XP. That way, I'm enjoying the grind, and 99% of the time I get a nice haul of Commander XP. And the first ship with the captain I am working to bring to 21-points is always the first ship I play, that way the 1,000 Commander XP bonus goes to him.
Interesting video. The Campaigns for special captains can be run in the background so the points grind can go almost unnoticed. WG made it possible to do in CoOp now so PvE mains like me can participate. (but their special skills seem to be more for PvP) I have just one 21 point captain, a few with 19 and 20 points. I do not play much and only am going up the IJN DD line, and to a lesser extent the French DD line. I should use my ECXP to bump up one of my French Commanders but was playing mostly IJN so have waited. The commander skill rework was very good in that I have more permium ships than tech tree ships. The downside was the rework seems to have reduced the power of many of the skills. Being low tech I plan to use 3x5 index cards to track my commanders and their builds, not that I have that many to manage. Some way to know which captain is optimal for what ship is helpful. I have one French BB captain with a secondary build just to see what effect it has. Likewise the Fr DDs one concealment build and one lighthouse build. You did not talk about doing commander skills redistributions. One advantage of pilling on ECXP and going up fast is that the captains don't have unused skill points as much, unless you do redistributions which is expensive. But sometimes WG offers a free skills respec and also sometimes has a sale (at Christmas?) for skill harvesting from dismissed commanders. (1 db/ 35 xp instead of the 1db/25 xp standard) Have a bit of a Dasha fetish going on there?? LOL
Hey Clyde... great video and packed with so much information... I have a situation that you didn't bring up in the video. I have several tech tree ship captains that I have been grinding and when I grind a new point, I want to use it and not let it set there until I can grind another 2 , 3 or 4 pts to use, as it takes so long and I feel I can be benefiting from that single point, so I master a 1 point skill, and as you can probably figure I have ended up with captains that have 4 or 5 one point skills mastered and now I have to redistribute the points with cost considerable in XP or doubloons... please advise here, am I doing wrong in using single points when I get them, or saving them to use all at one time later... and later, could be many months or even years... Did you find the question in all that.. lol..
Hey Larry - this is a great question. First, a value proposition. 500 dubs is about $2 USD. For Elite Commander XP, the cost to retrain depends on your captain's level, but the general cost can be measured in time or in progress against the goal of 21 points. This is because any XP you spend doing this keeps you from moving up the captain levels. You have two questions here really: 1 - Is it worth using the points immediately if i have to retrain the captains over and over? 2 - Which currency is best for retrains? For me, I try to minimize retrains and design my build for all 21 points from the start. Most 21 point builds have one or two one point skills and the rest aren't that valuable for a given ship. Because of this, i think the value you get from spending an earned point now instead of later is minimal. IMHO, leaving an unspent point laying around is better than spending it now and paying $/XP later to retrain the captain. The XP takes too long to earn, and any you spend on retrains could be pushing you closer to 21 points.... So it feels wasted to me. If you have lots of money, you could spend all the points as you get them, and use doubloons to retrain the captains frequently. However, is the idea of using money to do that is not appealing, then i would just leave the points unspent. Hope this helps!
@@ClydePlays Thanks so much for taking the time to answer this question... I know you must be extremely busy... this answered my question completely. (it is just so hard to see points earned and just setting there not doing any good while you are making a long grind for another point to unlock a skill, IYKWIM) Thanks so much for this video and all your videos, I can tell you put a lot of hard thought and work in making your videos... I will keep watching... GB
Umm... I guess it depends on how much a free loader u wanna be. As for myself... I'm a huge freeloader when it comes to this game. I have yet to give WG a single penny of my money. So leveling up 4 points is usually what I end up doing. It's too expensive respec'ing commanders and if I feel I need Concealment and Fire Protection or Radio Detection and Concealment first... then... 10p to14p save up is what I must do. The most amount of 4point skills you can have is 3 and in my eyes the only class of ships that needs 3, 4point skills, are secondary builds.... So, really it's only secondary builds commanders that I'll hold off on to 18 points. (And/or pray for a free respec commander change/update from wg. They;ll probably do one when they add subs to the tech tree.) And if I must level up a 0 point commander... then I'm going to grind it to 10 (and not announce it in chat... never announce anything in chat. Wow is filled with sensitive, assholes who'll report anyone who isn't them... and oddly usually begin every sentence with 'Please', as if it disguises who they are. And the really bad ones will instigate a dogpile on you via shaming.)
@@ClydePlays yes it was, my German ships are similar to yours, Lütjens on GK plus 7 0r 8 premiums, just got to decide if I will have to retrain him when I get the t9 and t10 alt German tech tree line ships..
Nice. I still need to get Lutjens, so my GK line will keep the 21 point Dasha and I'll put Lutjens on the new line once I get him later this month and start the grind from 10 points on him.
So I have one question that was not adressed here, or I didnt pay attention. So I have a 21pt soviet commander, which I use to all my cruisers, but he has the Heavy Ap shells skill. Although, one of my cruisers is 152mm caliber, so that skill has no effect on that ship. If I redistribute the skills, does it change only for that ship, or for the commander overall?
That would change the captains build for all ships they are assigned to. To truly get the most out of your ships different "cohorts" of ships will need different commander builds. I've got a newer version of this spreadsheet that helps with this.... I'll find the link and post it here. Edit: here's the new version of the captain grind video: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
I have 25, 21 skill point captains and they run a total of 80 ships and all only make ECXP (EliteCommanderExperience) every game played . I also have another 35, 19 skilled captains waiting for the upgrade. 4.6 million ECXP in the bank. It costs 300,000 ECXP or 500 doubloons to move and 210,000 ECXP or 525 doubloons to retrain a 21 skilled captain. A captain can also be trained for 4 different types of ships and move between them( premium ships) and each type costs to retrain.
Good video. I would also think it is better to try to get one 21 point captain for each country for which you have premium ships before getting multiple 21 pointers for one country.
So Clyde, when I understand you well: 1. Have one 21 captain for every nation, then play your premium ships, from this nation, with this 21 captains to get more captains XP ? Or, once have a 21 captain, in this nation, I use lover ranged captains to get them 21 ? Is better to use 21 captains to farm more captain XP ? Thank you helping me to understand this topic better
Hey Jugoslav, The captain grind is a complicated problem. There is not just one way to do it. We do have some basic rules for faster progression, which I cover in my newer captain video (if you haven't seen it, you can watch it here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html). In that new video I lay out the basic rules very directly - but basically the idea is to minimize the number of captains. A lot of people say they want one 21 for each nation - and while that will work, I don't think its required. Just get 21 point captains on ships you play frequently and then reuse those commanders on as many premiums as possible. As you start to get more 21 point captains, you can have more specialized builds and each captain will be assigned to fewer ships because they will be better optimized - but that's later when you have 10-20 twenty one pointers. Check out that other video. I think I did a better job of laying out the rules the second time around.
Since on Update 0.11.6 about the Economic Bonuses about this video, the only way for that about Commander XP is to apply some like a "blue one" or "red one" it will helps them fast grinding all over again.
Yeah, the methods for applying boosts have certainly changed. The strategy for sharing captains among ships remains the same, of course. THanks for watchin' Admiral Prince Eric. :)
Hey Clyde, I just listened to this while on a lunch break. In general all of it makes sense except the line "You should have a captain assigned to each of your tech tree ships". In general most people want to leave all ships tier V and up to benefit from Christmas and other events. On the other hand, most of those ships will never be used again unless there is a need to play that 1 battle to clear the snow flake and then it can be done in coop without captain or even equipment. Few will be played, but in each tier you have few ships that stand out and then you keep captains on them. And buying captains for all those ships and leaving them there just doesn't sound optimal, both from XP perspective or from credits/coal/gold perspective. Am I missing something? Edit: also that line conflicts a bit with "have the fewest captains possible" line.
Hey Dogzilla, thanks for watching. You've got a great point. Couple of thoughts... 1 - This video was from a time when you had to play each ship to knock off the snowflake. 2 - I do assume that you want to have a captain in every battle - although your co-op strategy does bust that assumption quite nicely. :) Given those two assumptions, the fewest number of captains would be one for each tech tree ship that you own. Today, in 2024, I'd change the statement to say.... "You should have a captain on every tech tree ship you believe you will ever play at any point in the future." While this is a bit less absolute, it is more efficient. One thing that has changed is the new snowflake system where you don't have to play any ship if you don't want to - so the concept that you need a captain on, say, Dallas or Konig is kind of out the window. Also, with the new system you are rewarded for simply owning a lot of ships. Some players have gone back and purchased all the ships from tier 1 - tier 4 - none of which technically need captains if you'll never ever play them. Plus they don't count towards missions or most of the campaigns. ... All of this to say - you've got a great point. With your plan to never play certain ships and the changes to the snowflake system since this video was published you can totally skip having captains on those ships you'll never take into battle again. Thanks for watching my video and for the thoughtful question. Hope the rest of your day is excellent.
@@ClydePlays You are very welcome. Thanks for a detailed reply and also for highlighting my comment to ensure people can see that things changed. This made video relevant again. For people reading - there are few ships worth keeping in each tier and there were some posts/votes in old WG forums related to this. For example in tier VIII it can be Baltimore and Tallinn as cruisers, Bismarck and Vladivostok as BBs, etc.
This may seem like a dumb question, but how do you tell if the captain is a special type or one that just came with a tech tree line ship? For someone like me who has only played a little off and on over the years, I am not sure what I have. And must they be a special captain to move between the premium ships, or can any captain do that?
Hey there! Great question.... There are 3 main types of commanders in WOWS: Regular, Seasoned, &Unique Regular captains include every captain you recruit normally and event captains - even those with unique artwork or custom voice parks. Seasoned and Unique commanders have improved Skills and Talents - and each one is uniquely named. Unique commanders are the best. They are easily recognized as they have a yellow background to their portrait. Both Seasoned and Unique commanders have a small star ahead of their names to indicate they are special. As for moving captains around, any captain can be moved between premium ships without a retaining penalty period. You can see an example of the captain portrait backgrounds and the stars I mentioned on this wiki page: wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Special_Commanders
Ranking capt. becomes extremely easy after you achieve 10 or 12 twenty one SP commanders. Play those guys every time you login + whichever capt. you are trying to rank up next. Your 21SP commanders will stack up lots of elite XP quickly then apply that to the next one you are trying to rank up. I now have more fully ranked captains that I can play in a single day. Every match gives me elite commander XP.
Yep - that's the destination. Getting that first 21 point commander is the hardest - but then it starts a snowball effect and the subsequent ones come along much more easily. Thanks for watching and commenting. :D
@clyde great video, fan of your work. Your thumbnail is a trigger though - you obviously mirror imaged that Commonwealth captain. Whilst there are exceptions, 99% of the time decorations will be worn on the left breast.
I DID skip this part, in putting together the guide I forgot to mention this, though it has come up in a few comments. Thanks for mentioning it, hopefully others see this comment and learn about this mechanic.
That's a pretty good policy. I think somewhere from between Tier 5 and Tier 7 is the right place to start carrying a captain up to T10, and eventually 21 points.
Hey Rick! Whenever you have a ship with no captain, you can click on "Assign Commander" and it'll take you to a list of all of your commanders for that nation. If you havea captain trained for that ship but not currently assigned to that ship, they'll appear in the list on the left at the top. All of the commanders on the list on the left are currently in your reserves, but that doesn't mean they aren't used on other ships - that's where the spreadsheet comes in. Let me know if that helped or if you need more info or to clarify your question. Thanks for watching my video.
One note: armory commanders have special perks! if you want em for dubs go get an Armory commander for the perks, it's a little thing but it can be just that little extra on top of the cake.
That's a great point, and one I'm going to be covering soon! For anyone reading this comment later, "Unique" and "Seasoned" commanders have a little star by their name in the armory and provide enhanced capabilities.
I am a casual player and literally just got my 19 points commander that I had before the rework already going up to 20 points :) Who knows when he will reach 21 ... Thanks for the video
So, I need some advice. I started 2 months ago and just grinded out my first T10 BB. I have an unique Capt on my T9, should I move that dude to my T10?
Yes - very rarely (basically never) does it make sense to leave your captain on the tier nine. The general advice is, you move your captain up with each ship starting at tier five or six, because the captain grind is SO long, that you want to put as many battles as possible on one guy. Plus, if you wind up getting into ranked or clan battles, those tend to happen at T10 a large portion of the time - though ranked usually features multiple tiers. Good luck on your captain grind!
Here's the newer version of the video you commented on, the first half of this one does a better job of explaining how to optimize the commander grind and it shows a free spreadsheet template can use if you want to track your commander progression in detail. ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Hi, when you say Tech Tree Ship, do you mean Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, Carriers? So I can move a captain from one cruiser to a different cruiser of the same country?
So tech tree ships are non-"premium" and non-"Special" ships. Any ship you buy with Coal, Steel, Free XP, or Research Points is either a premium or special ship. Any ship that is in the line of ships you unlock as you level a ship line, is a tech tree ship. Premiums/Specials can move captains to and from them without paying retraining costs, but the TT ships require to pay either dubs or Captain XP to move them back and forth. Hope this helps.
Hello Clyde. Awesome Video! Finally somebody who explains this the way I understand it. However, I have a tricky question. I think I did a slight mistake with my captain assignment. I was wondering what you would do and what your thoughts are. Recently I picked up Lütjens from the armory and assigned him to my Zieten. Now, Zieten is obviously the tier 8 BB in that line and my intensions where to eventually assign him to Schlieffen (for obvious reasons :D). But that would now mean that I have to retrain him twice. My question is: Should I leave him with Zieten for now and just grind through the BB line with him or should I stop grinding this BB line with Lütjens since with every Level he increases it also costs more to retrain him? Or is this value of 500 dubloons a fixed value to retrain any captain whatever level he is? Because I'm totally fine to spend 1000 dubloons for those two retainings. Thanks for your help!
Great question! My Lutjens is on my Zieten as well and I'm plan to do the same effect thing - Level him as i play the boats and push him up as i move along. In my opinion, the retraining savings you'd get by holding back his training is outweighed by the captain XP progress you'll earn as you level the ships and captain together. It's better to level him now, than to wait until you've unlocked Schieffen and play with a lower level captain on a T10. This is especially true if you don't mind spending the dubs to retrain him. If you'd rather not spend the dubs, you can move him and retain him on premium ships or by spending Elite Commander XP. Whatever one is easier to earn (dubs, elite commander XP, or grinding XP on preems) from your perspective is the best way to do it, and that tends to be different for each player. Whatever you choose to do, best of luck!
I'd only recommend moving it to the cruiser line if you intend to keep it on the CA. If you're going to move it back to the BB, I'd just leave it there and grind it on the BB or some premiums. If you're independently wealthy, feel free to move it back and forth for 500 dubs I guess. But I'm too cheap for that. 🤣
Good video, very well explained. A quick question when you grind down a Captain and redistribute his/her points. Does it have to be to a Captain of the same nationality?
Hey, anyway or Tips to pass the final 2nd chain’n Hasley mission (be the 1st of team with 12 fire or flooding 3 times, win and survives) cus I doesn’t main Cvs and its so hard to get 12 fire and flooding with Gearing.
I'd just repeat a mission you've already done before in a ship class you like. You can still get stars for repeating missions, you just won't get the other rewards.
Couple other points, use Econ commander XP signal flags on higher tier ships (I usually do tier 8 and up), especially when you have premium time. Also, keep the signal flags going when they are 21 points, to get all that additional Free Commander XP, which is super valuable.
These are great additions! I definitely use my best signals on T8 - T10 ships to maximize their benefit. Good point about using flags to push for commander XP even after hitting 21 points too. Those captains still have plenty of work to do earning XP for the rest of your captains.
Thanks so much bro. I did not actually know I could use my higher tier captains on other ship types with no re training crap if of the same nation and as long as they was put on a premium ships. Game def does not make that clear at all. I been playing like 7 years + also.
For sure man! Check out the new version of this video here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html It's got a spreadsheet told and more info on teaching and grinding your captains.
Hey Tony - this is a good question, I made a quick video to answer it for you and anyone else with this question: ruclips.net/video/NRR-uUyCghM/видео.html
Hey Arkangel88Mr! The answer is YES and NO. Reasons below: // NO Argument When you play a captain with fewer than 21 points on the ship they're trained on, they get a 5% bonus of CXP. So the BEST place to use the expendable bonuses is on a captain that you are trying to level which has fewer than 21 points. Essentially in this way, you get an additional 5% bonus to their XP growth which should scale nicely with the bonus. // YES Argument If you are good at the ship(s) the captain is trained on you may be able to earn MORE than that 5% bonus that youg et for playing a non-max'd captain. Plus, maybe you really LIKE playing this ship, and you'll get more out of it in enjoyment and otherwise your bonuses were just languishing otherwise. If you really feel like playing a ship with a 21 pointer and you aren't sure what captain you want to max next, this banks that XP into your elite commander XP pool which allows you to choose where to spend it later and "stack xp" on one specific captain when you're sure where you want to put it. // FINAL THOUGHT At the end of the day, the MOST min-max'd way to do it is to use it on a commander that has 20 or fewer points, but since fun and ship skill come into play, I think that it does make sense to use them on 21 pointers that you enjoy and are good at.
Even for a very unique build, a premium shouldn't need a specific captain because you can use a captain from a different ship class, meaning they won't share builds. For ex, I use my Cleveland (CL) captain on F. Sherman (DD) because Sherman needs the range skill unlike other US DDs... but Cleveland uses the totally separate Cruiser skill list, so the Sherman's 'weird' build doesn't impact it at all.
Hey Stevern! The video description contains links that go to my twitch (www.twitch.tv/clydeplayslive) and also my Twitter (twitter.com/clydeplaysgames). At the moment, those places plus YT are the places to be for Clyde Plays content.
title translation: 'I have too many ships.' (me: nope.... I like having 200 ships at my disposal. Especially at the end of the year.) Personally, 14 points is good enough. Concealment and Fire Protection for BB's and Radio Detection and Concealment for DD's. Cruisers... well, for me,... 10 points for Concealment is good enough to work with. Commander leveling isn't my focus. My focus is unlocking ships. And I make credits by playing Musashi ('cause I missed out on the Missouri). I don't even bother playing T10, due to the xp being useless on such ships.
Hey Rene, thanks for your comment! It seems as though you have mis-translated the title and the information in the video. Allow me to offer a translation of your comment: "I'm too busy grinding ships to worry about the captain grind." This is common for LOTS of players, and its totally fine! You're also right, that most ships do pretty well with a 10-14 point captain. Players love having tons of ships in their port, I myself have 370 ships at present and have been playing this game for seven years. I know people with 500 ships. This video is NOT about reducing the number of ships in your port, in fact the concepts in the video encourage you to go out and get MORE ships. As you add premium and special ships to your fleet, they help you level your captains faster. You should go out and get all the ships you want. Thats part of what makes World of Warships fun. What the video does encourage is reducing the ratio of captains to ships. This ratio which tells you how much work you have to do (ie, how much XP you will need to earn) in order to level them up. The larger the ratio (ie, the more captains you have) the longer it takes to level them up. The smaller the ratio, the faster they level. Coinciding with this is another fact: the larger the ratio, the more specialized your captain builds are for the ships they are assigned to. The smaller the ratio, the more "general purpose" your captains have to be. The sweet spot is where your captains are still well-suited for your ships, but you need the smallest number of captains. For players like you who are still grinding out new ship lines actively, the captain grind is probably less interesting. These players are all about the ships. They provide new gameplay experiences whereas a captain only marginally improves the performance of a ship (or many ships if you staff your fleet like I do). At this stage in your WOWS career, you'd probably prefer my Research Bureau video to this one, since its all about getting ships, haha. You can check it out here if you want: ruclips.net/video/-3amwCRsmHI/видео.html Other players, are more like me. We have unlocked all of the tech tree ships that we want, but there might be a few lines we're strill grinding, albeit slowly. These are typically classes or nations we're less interested in. For players like us, our minds turn to things like captain leveling and optimizations of the economy because we already have most or all of the ships that we want from the tech tree and we're free to focus on these other "late game" goals like top tier captains, coal, steel, or research point ships, and so on. Anyways, thanks again for sharing your perspective, have an awesome day out there! - Clyde
For those who are willing to spend/ people who value their time, the quickest way is to buy 16 Dashas, dismiss 15 of them, salvage the ECXP with doubloons and dump all the XP into the remaining one. The total cost is about 48960 doubloons and you have a 21 point captain in less than 5 minutes.
Haha, I love this comment. I'm not sure if you're joking or a very rich person, but that's even too whale for me. That's a $195 21 pointer, but honestly? If you earn 5k Commander XP per match, it would take you 193.9 hours to get a 21 point captain....so.....that's like $1/hour? Not a bad price.....lol, JK.
@@ClydePlays Haha I'm a minke whale that double as an attorney in real life. I only get at most 45 mins of play time each day, and at that rate getting a 21 pointer would take at least 1 year of constantly playing that captain. Doing the Dasha trick therefore makes a lot of sense to me, esp. for the first couple of 21 pointers that start the snowballing effect. Dasha organ donations are the loophole in this game that whales exploit to skip all the grinds. If you want ships, do a double ECXP - FXP conversion and boom you have WG doing all the grinding for you. I have sperm whale and blue whale friends in PVE modes who express ship lines in terms of Dashas, e.g. the Yamato line is 6 Dashas, Shima is 5 Dashas... That's crazy but it could be done.
It's like I always say - the question is about what is worth more to you, the money or the time. I earn my whaling bucks in the software biz, so I get valuing the time more than the cash sometimes. In fact, when I was making that captain video last year, I ALMOST included the buy-and-grind-into-powder prices for your Dasha plan as well as for doing it with credits only, (since you can buy 6-pointers for 900k). In the end, I decided those were fairly rare use cases and didnt' include them in the vid. Thanks for your comments.
4) 21 point captions. You need to plan your captions for future tech tree new ships so you start with at least a 10 point caption. Also using a spreadsheet as well. The other thing to do is decide want level of tier ships you keep. I do not have T2 and 95% of T3 ships this gave a lot for free elite commander xp when I dismissed those commanders.
These are great points! Always be planning for new lines to be added (Pan Asian cruisers are coming soon!). Good point about only keeping some tiers of ships. For the most part I keep ships from T5 and up and only have a few non-premiums below that tier. Thanks for your comment!
@@ClydePlays anything that doesn’t come with a snowflake goes immediately to the recycling bin lol. I think the only thing I have below T5 is Diana Lima. I kinda like the current style early access events. Lots of new port slots from the ships I sell.
OK half way through the video & I find that I am doing it right because I'm only using tech tree ships & have no intent on spending money to buy a premium ship. What I've done is as I moved up tiers I've moved the same commander to the new ship & mostly sold the old ships or just stuck a 6pt in the ones I kept. Lets see if the rest of the video has anything useful for me.
@@ClydePlays Yeah there was a couple of bits later in the video that will help, will give the 2.0 a watch & see if there's more I can do to help boost my commanders up, ty.
My eventual goal is to develop one 21pt commander for every nation in which I have both tech tree ships and at least one premium. The more premiums of different types (i.e. CV, BB, cruiser, DD) I have for a nation, the more powerful a 21pt captain is for that nation (because he can take all ship types' skills optimally now) and the higher the priority to get at least one. So far: US, UK, IJN, Germany, USSR, Pan-Asia, France. Coming soon: Italy. (Others may have to wait a while.) After that, I will go back and back-fill any special commanders (Halsey, Lutjens etc) who aren't there yet and then the rest of my 19 pointers. The process slowed down after the first four or five because I was no longer starting with 19 pointers but with commanders who were only at 15 or 16, some even lower. It's still quite pleasantly surprising, even given this handicap, how quickly I am getting them all done.
Thank you for this video- I have always wanted to know how to grind them thank you I just subscribed- awesome content and clear, vocals excellent production - I follow Sealord and potato- I am so excited to add you to my daily routine- do you have a patreon? Thank you!!! Hopefully in time I might develop skills thanks so much
Thanks Mike! PQ and Mountbatten?! That's some good company! Thanks for adding me to that group of awesome creators. I don't have a Patreon at this time, the best thing you can do to support the channel is tell a friend, or come by and hang out on Twitch. Thanks again for your kind words!
I recommend using the website wowsft.com. The tool is called "research XP" and there is a link at the top of the page for it. I'll tweet a picture of the table I used and add the link here...
When you start this game years after the release you have a huge disadvantage. You are competing against people with way more experience, they have most likely better ships and often form up with others in a division who are also better then you. The reason they are still playing this game years after the release means in most cases that they are good at it. That is the reason you should try to make the gap between you and other players as close as possible. In order to do that you can give yourself an advantage by getting a captain with a level that is as high as possible. Therefore I recommend maxing one captain out to level 21 and using that captain until you have upgraded another captain to level 21. Then you have two captains that you can use to upgrade a third, etc. This way you minimize your disadvantage as much as possible. There are some nice lower tier ships available for a relative small amount of coal like the Galant or the Hill that can give you some nice benefits until you get better in this game.
Hey Edward, yes this is all for PC. I'm afraid i don't know much about the differences on console. As I understand it, the captain system is very different on that platform.
i am confused about your recommendation to have a captain for every techtree ship? thats literally hundreds of captains? i have only ever had 1 captain per shipline and kept retraining them for the next ship i unlock. if i hadnt done that, my 10k matches over the last 4 years would have been spread over ....150ish captains, none of which would be even halfway to 21. edit: 12:35 the "blackhole" is still better than buying a completely new captain and therefore "loosing" all the cxp you earned on the original captain.(you can only ever play 1 captain at a time, all cxp on other captains is unusable, therefore lost) not only do you loose access to all the hard earned cxp of the old captain, you also just doubled the amount of battles required to get them to 21.(i think its about 2k battles per captain depending on the boosters used?) funny thing is you pretty much say that at 10:20
Hey Tom - I think you are doing the right thing by moving the captains up the line. The reason we need to have a captain on every ship is that if we EVER want to go back and play the lower tier ships again, they need a captain, and moving your T10 captain back to play, say a T7 match is not a reasonable plan. Essentially, you need hire skipper for each ship you leave behind so you don't have to re-train every time you play a lower tier tech tree ship after moving past it (and taking your captain with you). I am NOT suggesting that you need to level those captains up to 21 points - just want to focus on the one you moved up to the next ship, that's the one destined for the T10. Of course, if you sell all of your ships as soon as you move to the next one, then no worries, you don't need a captain for those ships. That said - if you follow that strategy you still have a captain on every tech tree ship - instead of hiring new ones for the lower tier ships, you just sold the lower tier ships reaching the same state of one captain per tech tree ship. Re: "XP Black Hole" - Totally agree that it's worth spending the XP to transfer rather than getting a new cap - but it might be worth $2USD to just not lose the FXP. Depends on whether 500 dubs or the XP is worth more to you. Largely I think we agree on good strategies to get to 21 faster. Thanks for your questions/comments!
@@ClydePlays thank you for the clarification! it is not something i have ever done, but yes, if i where to randomly go back to some ship in the techtree for a few matches, retraining a 21 would be a waste. ;)
So far, i have gone for ships almost every time, though I do have a few special caps. My logic has been centered on this idea: ships, particularly those with unique playstyles, provide more gameplay variety IMHO, plus there are 25% off coupons for ships! That said, my next buy is a special captain (Lutjens). I've been putting it off because i like boats, and he's pretty expensive - but kingofcastlechaos has a good point about the captains, since there are some really good ones. Keep your eyes on the channel, as I'll be going over all of them in an upcoming video! At the end of the day, i think it's a balance. If there's a special captain you want for a given line - grab him! If perhaps more than that, you want to get a fun or unique ship that will help with your captain training for a nation where you don't have many (or any) preems - go for it! There are reasons to go both directions.
Hey Roy - yes you can! Those are what are called "Hull Classification Symbols" and each is a code that designates a type of ship. In WOWS, we really only use five hull classification symbols: CV - Aircraft Carrier BB - Battleship CA - Cruiser (though technically, CA is a heavy cruiser and CL is a light cruiser - so you may see CL as well, but most players just call all cruisers CAs regardless of gun size). DD - Destroyer SS - Submarine Hope this helps! Is your want to read more check out this article on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_classification_symbol
So, after grinding to the first 21 points Commander, what should I do next? Continue to grind with the new maxed-out commander or begin a new grind, etc? ( maxed commander + premium ship runs as often as possible, then what to do with those points saved?)
Hey Tonkyo! Once you've got your first 21 point commander - you basically want to continue doing the same thing that earned you the XP to push that captain to 21 points. Once you have a captain maxed, 100% of the XP you earn becomes "Elite Commander XP" (aka free captain XP) which you can use for other commanders. Its SLIGHTLY more efficient to grind captain XP on a non-21 point commander because you get a bonus 5% in that case - however, if you play your 21 pointer as much now as you did to push them up to 21 points - you'll find that you start seeing Elite Commander XP piling up. I go over this better in the new version of this video here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html If you haven't seen the new version, it provides a newer spreadsheet with more powerful tools and a better description of how we want to max our captains. Thanks for watching and hit me up if you have any other questions - either here or on the Clyde Plays Discord (link in the video description).
Hey Jeff! I made a separate video about the spreadsheet where I show you how to use it and provide a link to an example spreadsheet your can copy from Google Docs. Here's a link to the video: ruclips.net/video/vPI4b8zxdKw/видео.html
These are good uses for Elite Commander XP. Once your captains have arrived at the T10 ship and you get your build where you want it, then it becomes time to dump Elite Commander XP on that captain to grind up their level.
I just use my credit to get new commander with 6 skill points, then i resign em with credits to get elite commander xp . Able to quickly trade up enough elite xp to level up my captain fast
That's one way to go. When i made this video, i did the math to see how many credits that method would cost to get to a 21 point captain. I ultimately decided not to include it as it's probably out of reach for most players, that said it's an easy, no-money way to earn elite commander XP. Glad it's working for you!
It goes against your idea of "fewest captains possible", but a few weeks ago their was a 30% sale on 10 pt captains and I picked up a lot of them for 500 dubs each. (I always watch for sales on port slots too.) Did you know that the new excel spreadsheets can pull data directly from websites? I use that technique to populate my ship spreadsheets, but have not figured out the best way to pull captain info. New subscriber, thanks for the hard work!
Yeah, I hear ya. I break the "rules" too. I just unlocked the ork captain and I'm going to choose him for my Pan Asian cruisers, even though I already have better, higher level captains.
I'm not sure I understand your question, do you mean to ask where are your captains who are not currently on ships? You should be able to see them by going to a ship of the nation you want to investigate, clicking on its captain and selecting "change commander."
@@ClydePlays ok, thanks. I remember in the past there was a reserve and you could see all your captains at once without having to go via a ship, but that must be years ago. I'll check your path out, thanks
Not to worry! You'll get there - but it takes starching damage (XP) on your top commander until you do! After that first one it gets much easier! Watch the newer version of this video for more tips if you'd like: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
I have only 1 21 points capitan and 1 20 point and cuple of 19 i got after rework of capitan. I think on 10 points is min on tier 5/7 and 15 is good capitan on tier good for 9/10 tier ansd more is for my rank /clan ships
My highest point captain is a 19 pointer, trained for Hindenburg. But he goes in a lot of my premium German BBs and Cruisers (I’m pretty sure I have have all of them 😅).
Didn't even know I could use the free captain xp to level with, thought it was only for retraining. It's not very clear. I don't even know how to do it.
@@ClydePlays I think the only thing I didn't get from the video was how to use the xp to level up with. But I found out that there was a little plus sigh that I never paid any attention to at all. Not knowing it was possible I never really clicked it to see.
Today's the day, Bacon. Today's the day you pick one and make a plan to push them up to 21. Y'know, if you care about that stuff. No big deal if not. 😄
@@ClydePlays inthink i have 19 pointer who was my us dd commander who spent most of.his life in the sims since i pretty.much played only that ship for a really.long time
Hey Luis! Currently I don't have good instructions or notes on how to use the spreadsheet. I plan to share the spreadsheet soon with a short video that explains how to use it.
Yeah - you still have to keep one commander for each tech line ship. What we're looking to avoid is having bonus commanders that are ONLY assigned to premiums. What happens, especially to long-time players, is that they collect commannders over and over and over again from missions or other things - and then they fail to optimize their use and try to level too many of them, so they wind up with 40 seventeen point captains and no 21s.... I explain it better in the new version of this video if you are interested (with a better spreadsheet): ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Very confusing, maybe in this case, because you jump from one thing to the other. I saw u video for 10 minutes, and I was the same as I was at minute 1. We need something easy, like taking one of your captains and going into the full process about dismissing him, or sending him to reserve, change commander. and explain the pros and cons of each one of the options. And what to do when you dont have more space in your reserve.
Hey suburban - this video is focused on leveling commanders and is targeting a different audience than the one you're suggesting - so I'm sure it was a bit confusing. I'm happy to help out with a more detailed description of commander interactions, if you want, come by the twitch stream (I'm streaming tonight at 8pm Pacific/LA Time) or if that doesn't work I've got a stream on Saturdays which is easier for folks on other continents (though I'll miss this week's saturday stream sadly). If you have specific questions I can answer here, post them up and I'll try to get you an answer.
@@ClydePlays Yeah, I really dont care about commanders and keep track of them, I want to change my Monty 21 pints commander to my new Meine, but at the end, just used XP commander points to get 10 for it, and start playing with 5 addons. Thanks for the help.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
THX so much for this! As a mediocre player who occasionally gets loaded and makes bad decisions during crate events, I am swimming in premium ships, with no real understanding at all of how to manage captains. This was super, super helpful to me, especially as I am playing more and more PVP and not just playing in the tub with my virtual botes. On my way to watch your spreadsheet video! :)
Glad it was helpful Aaron! Thanks for watching, tell a friend... :D
Nice guide, that points out some of the obvious stuff I wasn't doing! So unloaded all captains from my premiums and dismissed loads of lower point captains I had around to feed the elite commander XP pool. I'm now in much beter shape to make the most of the grind, thanks!
Glad it helped you!
I was out of the game for about 4 years. My how things have changed. Subscribed
Welcome back to the game and welcome to the channel!
This reminds me about the graph of commander exp needed for each level, looks like a normal exponential graph until you get pass 19 points
Yeah, a graph would have been a cool thing to make for this video.
Commander rework was a cash grab
Currently have 36 21 pt captains
Dude. That's insane. Way to go!
This was probably the most helpful and organized video I’ve watched in a very long time! I felt like I was watching a TED talk hosted by a professional instructor 😂
Haha! Thanks Insta! If you haven't yet, check out the new version here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Thanks for watching and welcome to the channel.
that was the best explanation of the Captain exp... Very Helpful.
Thanks! Tell a friend, LOL!
I appreciate the detail and the way you change the speed of your words and sentences to draw attention to certain points.
Thank you! I try to keep it interesting.... :D
A detailed feedback post:
2:19 - 3.333 Kremlin grinds, yes, but if you are fully flagged up, the commander XP is conveniently about 3 times the ship XP earned. (This may change in the new economic system.) I suspect it was originally balanced around getting a commander to 19 points (the old maximum) at about the same time they stepped into their Tier 10 ship.
2:48 The requirement to build the first 21 pointer in a ship that you love to play or will need to play a lot of (e.g. Tier 8 carrier) is a point well made. You lay out the factors to be considered from 7:30 very well.
10:28 "The fewest number of captains possible". Yes, and this is why I put my initial effort into those nations that had the most premium ships that I used most often; it gave me the greatest number of choices for ships to use for particular missions, AND to stop from getting burned out on one ship or one type of ship.
11:19 Very true. However, some exceptions to this sharp focus may be necessary if you are grinding a particular ship and don't want to pay a doubloon or ECXP price to move a 21 point candidate into it. For example, my Italian 21 point commander grind is stalled at the moment because I'm in the last stages of grinding the Saint-Louis towards the Henri IV with a currently 13 point commander and neither my 21 pointers nor the Italian candidate are being played. I've accepted this delay in the name of getting that line finished early. If I were willing to play fully into WG's monetization model, I'd have paid to shift my 21 pointer into the Saint-Louis for the duration of the grind.
12:26 The revised (i.e. current) commander skill system that lets us build optimal skills for all ship types is invaluable for my Commonwealth ships; the same commander can cheerfully bounce between Vampires 1 and 2, Haida (soon Huron), Mysore, Perth and Yukon.
14:18 The flexibility this allowed was, in my opinion, worth the extra hike to maximum rank. The fact that more premium ships than ever in more nations than ever are available at mid as well as high tiers for coal (directly or via completing collections) helps a great deal if you can't afford to buy them.
You are very right with regard to the need to think carefully about moving commanders between ships, especially at high rank, but you also need to consider carefully when to do that ECXP dump and when not to, and how it fits into your ship grind (if you don't have them all maxed out). For example, I currently have about a million (E)CXP to go before my best Italian is ready for 21 points, but that's fine because I need to complete the Lepanto grind, move him up into the Colombo and retrain him to it (probably in the Napoli) before I max him out. A reasonable guide is that a commander should be capable of generating far more commander XP when working through a ship than it required to move him into it.
An important consideration is that in the current economic system (which admittedly is not long for the world), a full flag and camo loadout that maximizes ship XP also disproportionately boosts commander XP (as described in my first paragraph), and this can inadvertently lead to a commander being much more expensive to shift to the next ship (if he is climbing the line). In the new system, boosts to ship and commander XP are uncoupled from each other and this phenomenon can be greatly mitigated.
A wonderful and well thought out comment from Ensign Cthulhu. Thank you, you bring up some good points. This is worth the read.
All the operations award a 10 point captain for the 4 star award. Good source of free captains. The best way to grind is put your highest point captain on your highest tier premium and play the crap out of it. My secret anyway lol. Good video man. Subbed.
Those are good tips! Good call on the operations, BTW. I wasn't aware of that, (or had forgotten?).
Awesome Clyde,
I appreciate the time and effort you must have gone through to come up with all these numbers and that spreadsheet, wicked idea.💡
I think I have about seven 21 point captains, but many on 18 or 19 points that are just straggling behind.
Thanks for this insightful video, which will indeed help me to optimise the levelling up of these fellows and ladies.
Keep up the good works.
👍🏼😁💜😎
Nice! Yeah....gotta focus up and just dump ALL that XP on the next one. Getting to 21 takes a lot of time and when done with INTENTION, we can do it much faster. Seven is a good number! Congrats on that!
@@ClydePlays Cheers Clyde..😎
Thank you for this informative video. As a relatively new player who only has one 21pt commander (Halsey), I'm not sure that leveling the next one up to 21pts as fast as possible should be my main goal. Here's why not:
1. A 21pt captain doesn't get the extra 5% ECXP anymore. When I had 1M CXP to go on Halsey, I had enough ECXP to boost him to 21pts. However I decided to not do that and grind out the 1M CXP with him. This then gave me an additional 50k ECXP, which I would not have gotten otherwise. (Of course if you need that 21pts to get an important skill, it might be worth it to forgo the 5% and use ECXP directly).
2. At lot of times I find that my needs to spend ECXP are much more basic. E.g. for new tech tree ships I will get a 6pt commander with credits and then use ECXP to level them up to 10 points (to get Concealment Expert). Or I might level a commander with 11, 12 or 13 points up a point of two to get the next milestone skill (e.g. Adrenaline Rush or IFHE, depending on the ship of course). So getting several 13 or 14 pt commanders on several ships (or for different use cases like Clan Battles) seems actually more useful to me than having one more 21pt commander. But perhaps this is only a problem for a somewhat newer player like me.
Hey Bernhard, great comment my dude! You've got a very solid case here. For a lot of players, it might be better to have 6 or 8 fourteen point commanders than to have only one 21 pointer. I always recommend that people think about their current situation and make a decision based on their own goals and needs and this is EXACTLY the kind of critical thinking that people should be doing, IMHO. I totally agree that people shouldn't starve their other ship-lines of good captains by pathologically throwing EVERY single piece of FXP at a single captain.
Most ships are perfectly playable with a 10-14 point captain and its totally worth doing that with a new ship line rather than suffering in a DD without a captain concealment bonus, for example. Thanks for your comment!
i appreciated the care you put in this video man, subbed
Just got my first 21, thanks for all the info I can move on a bit quicker now I know this.
Congrats! That first one is a big accomplishment.
I already knew all this, but well presented giude. Subbed
Thanks Tony!
That was excellent. I may have to watch this again as the grind struggle is real. Subscribed!!
Welcome aboard! Thanks for the kind words!
I recently, intuitively began doing this, sort-of. Thanks for a more thought out and logical explanation. I'm presuming that buffing your 21 point Cdr. percentage is an additional must.
Hey, thanks for watching. Check out the new version of this video here - it provides a better explanation, and some better tools to do the job (if you decide you want to go the spreadsheet route - its not for everyone): ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
I started this process a while back . . . and just now went in to check my Premiums to see if I have wandered off of the path. I had. Thanx for the reminder on this . . . Xmas packages really bumped up the number of Premiums that I have and concentrating some of them under one captain will help!
Great Video. A bit quick fire though. I have subbed.
I do tend to yammer on at light speed, heh. Thanks for the sub!
Awesome content, deserving of way more subscribers!
Thank you!
Excellent video. Very informative and well presented. Well done I'm now a follower because of it.
Thanks for the kind words! Glad to have you aboard!
Very interesting video. I've almost completed my first 21 point captain and it has really just been a happy accident. I got the AL commander for chapayev and have been playing her in clan battles. Captains level up really quickly with clan battles, not sure how this might compare to other game modes like ranked or brawls but I'll definitely try it out along with your suggestions here. Thanks
Clans are one is the BEST ways to level a captain quickly. Way to go getting your first 21. That's a big accomplishment.
For the algorithm. Good luck with your channel!!
Excellent upload sir. You have a new subscriber.👍
Thanks! Welcome to the channel. 😁
Very nice video. I currently have 21 21pointers. A lot , so not in a hurry for more, but slowy getting them (have two at 20-pts now).
Nice! That's a great little admiralty you've got there, heh.
Great guide. It actually cost me 500 doubloons when I dismissed my captains for some reason and I actually let them sit there and get liquidated for that. Such is life. Your video compelled me to do the commander shuffle. First dismissed all reserves, second dismiss commander from Bismarck, third purchase Franz Von Jutland and fourth finally assign to Bismarck and retrain now to level 13 almost and will activate Adrenaline Rush when I ding. So I end up running double Vigilance on the Bismark with Hydro. Seems legit and when I am facing the Torps I really see them a long way off - otherwise avoid broadsides. So my only two ships Gneisenau and Bismarck - Gneisenau has 21 lvl captain and the majority of my matches are played with this ship. If I get wrecked bad I will exit to port and jump on the Bismarck for a round. Franze Von Jutland is leveling up very fast at this rate. When I get him to level 21 I am going to transfer over the the Gneisenau to test the double vigilance on that ship which was the plan all along considering I would have to grind so much coal to get Lutjens. Now I have
I am of the opinion that the torpedo protection bonus does not stack with Vigilance if you have a captain with that special skill. I was hoping for an extra 14% torpedo protection.
I have 5 21-pt commanders currently (Including Halsey and Yamamoto), about 500k from getting a 6th (Cunningham). After that I have maybe 4 or 5 19-pt captains to work on, including Lütjens and Sansonetti. Then I need to work on increasing Kuznetsov as I just got him a couple weeks ago.
Nice video Clyde! I forgot that maxed-out commanders give you elite commander XP ever since the rework XD. Guess I have more incentive to get 21 point commanders now.
Yeah buddy. It's a huge bonus that helps level up the rest of your commander pool. Takes an effort to get there, but it's super valuable!
Technically you grind captains to 21 pts faster if you play the one you are trying to get there.
Before the rework you got elite captain xp from having a 19pter, getting elite exp equal to what they earned. This is the same as with 21 pt commanders now.
But a new thing after the rework is that when you play a captain below 21 pts, you earn the captain exp for them, but then you also earn 5% of that as an additional amount of elite exp. So you play a 21pter for 10 games earning 100,000 elite exp. You then apply the 100,000 to your 19pter. Your 19pter has earned 100,000 exp.
Play that 19pter for 10 games and get 100,000 exp then your 19pter has gained 100,000 exp. But you then also earn 5k elite, meaning you can apply that and your 19pter has made 105,000, not 100,000. What balances it out is that the extra skills on your 21pter may make him perform better, meaning you'll earn more than 105k anyways.
In summary when grinding a captain from say 10-18 using your 21pter and then apply elite exp is probably best. But once at 18 (which generally covers all key skills on a ship) its more efficient to play that captain directly
This is a good point and a subtlety to the way the grind works that few folks know! Thanks for sharing.
Great video, wish I had known this years ago, thx man.
Happy to help! Did you see the new version? Just came out last week!
ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Useful reminders, thanks.
Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for watching.
Thanks for the video; I'm very new to WoWs so consuming as much content as I can in an effort to improve. Now slightly daunted by the prospect of how much better other peoples' captains are than mine (my best is a 10 point captain) but more so by how much of a grind there is ahead to max out even 1 captain!
It's a big grind, but a 10-12 point captain is still very serviceable on most ships. Good hunting!
Don't be disheartened. There are marginal gains to be had but solid basics and situational awareness outweigh high point captains every time. One of the nicest aspects of WoWs is that you don't need much more than 10 pts to play decently.
Stephen's right! Intuition and experience are worth a LOT in this game. Just keep playing and learning, the captain points will come in time.
So now I realise I clearly have too many captains, and thanks for making me realise I can use my Sansonetti on destroyers and battleships as well as my Italian cruiser!
He'll defiinitely be my first lvl 21 now.
Good luck with your new commander scheme! Check out the updated version of that video that goes to the next step of your ready for it:
ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Hey Clyde! Great work you have here! I'm not sure if this is optimal, but I buy Pi camo from the Armory, use it on my favorite ship in Narai, and then add those special signals to increase Commander XP. That way, I'm enjoying the grind, and 99% of the time I get a nice haul of Commander XP. And the first ship with the captain I am working to bring to 21-points is always the first ship I play, that way the 1,000 Commander XP bonus goes to him.
Nice dude! I love how many people are sharing tips, tricks, and optimizations. Thanks for this!
Amazing video Clyde.
Thanks Thomas!
Thank you very much, I have a lot of prems so this should work well!
Interesting video.
The Campaigns for special captains can be run in the background so the points grind can go almost unnoticed. WG made it possible to do in CoOp now so PvE mains like me can participate. (but their special skills seem to be more for PvP)
I have just one 21 point captain, a few with 19 and 20 points. I do not play much and only am going up the IJN DD line, and to a lesser extent the French DD line. I should use my ECXP to bump up one of my French Commanders but was playing mostly IJN so have waited.
The commander skill rework was very good in that I have more permium ships than tech tree ships. The downside was the rework seems to have reduced the power of many of the skills. Being low tech I plan to use 3x5 index cards to track my commanders and their builds, not that I have that many to manage. Some way to know which captain is optimal for what ship is helpful. I have one French BB captain with a secondary build just to see what effect it has. Likewise the Fr DDs one concealment build and one lighthouse build.
You did not talk about doing commander skills redistributions. One advantage of pilling on ECXP and going up fast is that the captains don't have unused skill points as much, unless you do redistributions which is expensive. But sometimes WG offers a free skills respec and also sometimes has a sale (at Christmas?) for skill harvesting from dismissed commanders. (1 db/ 35 xp instead of the 1db/25 xp standard)
Have a bit of a Dasha fetish going on there?? LOL
Good thoughts! 3x5 cards are a good idea, and XP conversion sale is good to watch for if you plan to use dubs to convert. Thanks for sharing!
Nice vid !
Thanks Jonas! Glad you enjoyed. If you're looking for the 200-level class, check out the new version: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Hey Clyde... great video and packed with so much information... I have a situation that you didn't bring up in the video. I have several tech tree ship captains that I have been grinding and when I grind a new point, I want to use it and not let it set there until I can grind another 2 , 3 or 4 pts to use, as it takes so long and I feel I can be benefiting from that single point, so I master a 1 point skill, and as you can probably figure I have ended up with captains that have 4 or 5 one point skills mastered and now I have to redistribute the points with cost considerable in XP or doubloons... please advise here, am I doing wrong in using single points when I get them, or saving them to use all at one time later... and later, could be many months or even years... Did you find the question in all that.. lol..
Hey Larry - this is a great question. First, a value proposition. 500 dubs is about $2 USD. For Elite Commander XP, the cost to retrain depends on your captain's level, but the general cost can be measured in time or in progress against the goal of 21 points. This is because any XP you spend doing this keeps you from moving up the captain levels. You have two questions here really:
1 - Is it worth using the points immediately if i have to retrain the captains over and over?
2 - Which currency is best for retrains?
For me, I try to minimize retrains and design my build for all 21 points from the start. Most 21 point builds have one or two one point skills and the rest aren't that valuable for a given ship. Because of this, i think the value you get from spending an earned point now instead of later is minimal.
IMHO, leaving an unspent point laying around is better than spending it now and paying $/XP later to retrain the captain. The XP takes too long to earn, and any you spend on retrains could be pushing you closer to 21 points.... So it feels wasted to me.
If you have lots of money, you could spend all the points as you get them, and use doubloons to retrain the captains frequently. However, is the idea of using money to do that is not appealing, then i would just leave the points unspent.
Hope this helps!
@@ClydePlays Thanks so much for taking the time to answer this question... I know you must be extremely busy... this answered my question completely. (it is just so hard to see points earned and just setting there not doing any good while you are making a long grind for another point to unlock a skill, IYKWIM)
Thanks so much for this video and all your videos, I can tell you put a lot of hard thought and work in making your videos... I will keep watching... GB
Umm... I guess it depends on how much a free loader u wanna be. As for myself... I'm a huge freeloader when it comes to this game. I have yet to give WG a single penny of my money. So leveling up 4 points is usually what I end up doing. It's too expensive respec'ing commanders and if I feel I need Concealment and Fire Protection or Radio Detection and Concealment first... then... 10p to14p save up is what I must do. The most amount of 4point skills you can have is 3 and in my eyes the only class of ships that needs 3, 4point skills, are secondary builds.... So, really it's only secondary builds commanders that I'll hold off on to 18 points. (And/or pray for a free respec commander change/update from wg. They;ll probably do one when they add subs to the tech tree.)
And if I must level up a 0 point commander... then I'm going to grind it to 10 (and not announce it in chat... never announce anything in chat. Wow is filled with sensitive, assholes who'll report anyone who isn't them... and oddly usually begin every sentence with 'Please', as if it disguises who they are. And the really bad ones will instigate a dogpile on you via shaming.)
Great video, and subscribed..
Thanks Geoff! Glad it was helpful!
@@ClydePlays yes it was, my German ships are similar to yours, Lütjens on GK plus 7 0r 8 premiums, just got to decide if I will have to retrain him when I get the t9 and t10 alt German tech tree line ships..
Nice. I still need to get Lutjens, so my GK line will keep the 21 point Dasha and I'll put Lutjens on the new line once I get him later this month and start the grind from 10 points on him.
So I have one question that was not adressed here, or I didnt pay attention.
So I have a 21pt soviet commander, which I use to all my cruisers, but he has the Heavy Ap shells skill. Although, one of my cruisers is 152mm caliber, so that skill has no effect on that ship. If I redistribute the skills, does it change only for that ship, or for the commander overall?
That would change the captains build for all ships they are assigned to. To truly get the most out of your ships different "cohorts" of ships will need different commander builds. I've got a newer version of this spreadsheet that helps with this.... I'll find the link and post it here.
Edit: here's the new version of the captain grind video: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
I have 25, 21 skill point captains and they run a total of 80 ships and all only make ECXP (EliteCommanderExperience) every game played . I also have another 35, 19 skilled captains waiting for the upgrade. 4.6 million ECXP in the bank. It costs 300,000 ECXP or 500 doubloons to move and 210,000 ECXP or 525 doubloons to retrain a 21 skilled captain. A captain can also be trained for 4 different types of ships and move between them( premium ships) and each type costs to retrain.
Good video. I would also think it is better to try to get one 21 point captain for each country for which you have premium ships before getting multiple 21 pointers for one country.
That's a solid point right there. Thanks for the comment Mack!
So Clyde, when I understand you well:
1. Have one 21 captain for every nation, then play your premium ships, from this nation, with this 21 captains to get more captains XP ?
Or, once have a 21 captain, in this nation, I use lover ranged captains to get them 21 ?
Is better to use 21 captains to farm more captain XP ?
Thank you helping me to understand this topic better
Hey Jugoslav,
The captain grind is a complicated problem. There is not just one way to do it. We do have some basic rules for faster progression, which I cover in my newer captain video (if you haven't seen it, you can watch it here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html). In that new video I lay out the basic rules very directly - but basically the idea is to minimize the number of captains.
A lot of people say they want one 21 for each nation - and while that will work, I don't think its required. Just get 21 point captains on ships you play frequently and then reuse those commanders on as many premiums as possible. As you start to get more 21 point captains, you can have more specialized builds and each captain will be assigned to fewer ships because they will be better optimized - but that's later when you have 10-20 twenty one pointers.
Check out that other video. I think I did a better job of laying out the rules the second time around.
Since on Update 0.11.6 about the Economic Bonuses about this video, the only way for that about Commander XP is to apply some like a "blue one" or "red one" it will helps them fast grinding all over again.
Yeah, the methods for applying boosts have certainly changed. The strategy for sharing captains among ships remains the same, of course. THanks for watchin' Admiral Prince Eric. :)
Hey Clyde, I just listened to this while on a lunch break. In general all of it makes sense except the line "You should have a captain assigned to each of your tech tree ships". In general most people want to leave all ships tier V and up to benefit from Christmas and other events. On the other hand, most of those ships will never be used again unless there is a need to play that 1 battle to clear the snow flake and then it can be done in coop without captain or even equipment. Few will be played, but in each tier you have few ships that stand out and then you keep captains on them. And buying captains for all those ships and leaving them there just doesn't sound optimal, both from XP perspective or from credits/coal/gold perspective. Am I missing something?
Edit: also that line conflicts a bit with "have the fewest captains possible" line.
Hey Dogzilla, thanks for watching.
You've got a great point. Couple of thoughts...
1 - This video was from a time when you had to play each ship to knock off the snowflake.
2 - I do assume that you want to have a captain in every battle - although your co-op strategy does bust that assumption quite nicely. :)
Given those two assumptions, the fewest number of captains would be one for each tech tree ship that you own.
Today, in 2024, I'd change the statement to say....
"You should have a captain on every tech tree ship you believe you will ever play at any point in the future."
While this is a bit less absolute, it is more efficient.
One thing that has changed is the new snowflake system where you don't have to play any ship if you don't want to - so the concept that you need a captain on, say, Dallas or Konig is kind of out the window.
Also, with the new system you are rewarded for simply owning a lot of ships. Some players have gone back and purchased all the ships from tier 1 - tier 4 - none of which technically need captains if you'll never ever play them. Plus they don't count towards missions or most of the campaigns.
...
All of this to say - you've got a great point. With your plan to never play certain ships and the changes to the snowflake system since this video was published you can totally skip having captains on those ships you'll never take into battle again.
Thanks for watching my video and for the thoughtful question. Hope the rest of your day is excellent.
@@ClydePlays You are very welcome. Thanks for a detailed reply and also for highlighting my comment to ensure people can see that things changed. This made video relevant again.
For people reading - there are few ships worth keeping in each tier and there were some posts/votes in old WG forums related to this. For example in tier VIII it can be Baltimore and Tallinn as cruisers, Bismarck and Vladivostok as BBs, etc.
Absolutely - we all have a few favorites....Fiji comes to mind for me. Thanks again. :D
This may seem like a dumb question, but how do you tell if the captain is a special type or one that just came with a tech tree line ship? For someone like me who has only played a little off and on over the years, I am not sure what I have. And must they be a special captain to move between the premium ships, or can any captain do that?
Hey there! Great question....
There are 3 main types of commanders in WOWS:
Regular, Seasoned, &Unique
Regular captains include every captain you recruit normally and event captains - even those with unique artwork or custom voice parks.
Seasoned and Unique commanders have improved Skills and Talents - and each one is uniquely named.
Unique commanders are the best. They are easily recognized as they have a yellow background to their portrait.
Both Seasoned and Unique commanders have a small star ahead of their names to indicate they are special.
As for moving captains around, any captain can be moved between premium ships without a retaining penalty period.
You can see an example of the captain portrait backgrounds and the stars I mentioned on this wiki page: wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Special_Commanders
@@ClydePlays Thank you!
@@illustrated369 For sure man. :D
5:51 a jest 8 capita from batel of best siting in rezerve
Ranking capt. becomes extremely easy after you achieve 10 or 12 twenty one SP commanders. Play those guys every time you login + whichever capt. you are trying to rank up next. Your 21SP commanders will stack up lots of elite XP quickly then apply that to the next one you are trying to rank up.
I now have more fully ranked captains that I can play in a single day. Every match gives me elite commander XP.
Yep - that's the destination. Getting that first 21 point commander is the hardest - but then it starts a snowball effect and the subsequent ones come along much more easily. Thanks for watching and commenting. :D
@clyde great video, fan of your work. Your thumbnail is a trigger though - you obviously mirror imaged that Commonwealth captain. Whilst there are exceptions, 99% of the time decorations will be worn on the left breast.
oh crap....you're totally right.....you're the first to point this out, but certainly not the first to have noticed.
Also did you skip the part where commanders under 21points earn an extra 5% elite commander xp on top of what they get normally?
I DID skip this part, in putting together the guide I forgot to mention this, though it has come up in a few comments. Thanks for mentioning it, hopefully others see this comment and learn about this mechanic.
13:00 i mucve capitna on tech tree grind from tier 5 up to 10
That's a pretty good policy. I think somewhere from between Tier 5 and Tier 7 is the right place to start carrying a captain up to T10, and eventually 21 points.
New player; you're awesome. Thanks
Thanks! Welcome to WOWS.
When i get a new ship, how do i know if i have a captain unlocked already that i can use? Is there a page i can look at all of my captain’s?
Hey Rick! Whenever you have a ship with no captain, you can click on "Assign Commander" and it'll take you to a list of all of your commanders for that nation. If you havea captain trained for that ship but not currently assigned to that ship, they'll appear in the list on the left at the top. All of the commanders on the list on the left are currently in your reserves, but that doesn't mean they aren't used on other ships - that's where the spreadsheet comes in.
Let me know if that helped or if you need more info or to clarify your question. Thanks for watching my video.
One note: armory commanders have special perks! if you want em for dubs go get an Armory commander for the perks, it's a little thing but it can be just that little extra on top of the cake.
That's a great point, and one I'm going to be covering soon!
For anyone reading this comment later, "Unique" and "Seasoned" commanders have a little star by their name in the armory and provide enhanced capabilities.
@@ClydePlays An example would be my Groningen captain from the armory: enhanced demo expert for plus 0.5 fire chance on HE I believe
I am a casual player and literally just got my 19 points commander that I had before the rework already going up to 20 points :)
Who knows when he will reach 21 ...
Thanks for the video
Congrats!
So, I need some advice. I started 2 months ago and just grinded out my first T10 BB. I have an unique Capt on my T9, should I move that dude to my T10?
Yes - very rarely (basically never) does it make sense to leave your captain on the tier nine.
The general advice is, you move your captain up with each ship starting at tier five or six, because the captain grind is SO long, that you want to put as many battles as possible on one guy.
Plus, if you wind up getting into ranked or clan battles, those tend to happen at T10 a large portion of the time - though ranked usually features multiple tiers.
Good luck on your captain grind!
Here's the newer version of the video you commented on, the first half of this one does a better job of explaining how to optimize the commander grind and it shows a free spreadsheet template can use if you want to track your commander progression in detail.
ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Hi, when you say Tech Tree Ship, do you mean Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, Carriers? So I can move a captain from one cruiser to a different cruiser of the same country?
So tech tree ships are non-"premium" and non-"Special" ships. Any ship you buy with Coal, Steel, Free XP, or Research Points is either a premium or special ship. Any ship that is in the line of ships you unlock as you level a ship line, is a tech tree ship.
Premiums/Specials can move captains to and from them without paying retraining costs, but the TT ships require to pay either dubs or Captain XP to move them back and forth. Hope this helps.
Hello Clyde. Awesome Video! Finally somebody who explains this the way I understand it. However, I have a tricky question.
I think I did a slight mistake with my captain assignment. I was wondering what you would do and what your thoughts are. Recently I picked up Lütjens from the armory and assigned him to my Zieten. Now, Zieten is obviously the tier 8 BB in that line and my intensions where to eventually assign him to Schlieffen (for obvious reasons :D). But that would now mean that I have to retrain him twice. My question is: Should I leave him with Zieten for now and just grind through the BB line with him or should I stop grinding this BB line with Lütjens since with every Level he increases it also costs more to retrain him? Or is this value of 500 dubloons a fixed value to retrain any captain whatever level he is? Because I'm totally fine to spend 1000 dubloons for those two retainings.
Thanks for your help!
Great question! My Lutjens is on my Zieten as well and I'm plan to do the same effect thing - Level him as i play the boats and push him up as i move along.
In my opinion, the retraining savings you'd get by holding back his training is outweighed by the captain XP progress you'll earn as you level the ships and captain together. It's better to level him now, than to wait until you've unlocked Schieffen and play with a lower level captain on a T10. This is especially true if you don't mind spending the dubs to retrain him. If you'd rather not spend the dubs, you can move him and retain him on premium ships or by spending Elite Commander XP. Whatever one is easier to earn (dubs, elite commander XP, or grinding XP on preems) from your perspective is the best way to do it, and that tends to be different for each player.
Whatever you choose to do, best of luck!
@@ClydePlays Thank you for the quick answer! It greatly helped me!
hi clyde! Is it good idea if I have 19pt commander on my BB line.. then I will grind the CA line and move it there to keep it grinding level? tia!
I'd only recommend moving it to the cruiser line if you intend to keep it on the CA. If you're going to move it back to the BB, I'd just leave it there and grind it on the BB or some premiums.
If you're independently wealthy, feel free to move it back and forth for 500 dubs I guess. But I'm too cheap for that. 🤣
Good video, very well explained. A quick question when you grind down a Captain and redistribute his/her points. Does it have to be to a Captain of the same nationality?
No, any XP you get from dismissing a captain ("grinding them into a powder") goes into your Elite Commander XP pool and can be spent on any commander.
This video is worth a Sub and Like
Hey, anyway or Tips to pass the final 2nd chain’n Hasley mission (be the 1st of team with 12 fire or flooding 3 times, win and survives) cus I doesn’t main Cvs and its so hard to get 12 fire and flooding with Gearing.
I'd just repeat a mission you've already done before in a ship class you like. You can still get stars for repeating missions, you just won't get the other rewards.
I was the 999th like (exactly) very helpful
So close to 1,000. Thanks for watching! Check out the new version here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Couple other points, use Econ commander XP signal flags on higher tier ships (I usually do tier 8 and up), especially when you have premium time. Also, keep the signal flags going when they are 21 points, to get all that additional Free Commander XP, which is super valuable.
These are great additions! I definitely use my best signals on T8 - T10 ships to maximize their benefit.
Good point about using flags to push for commander XP even after hitting 21 points too. Those captains still have plenty of work to do earning XP for the rest of your captains.
Thanks so much bro. I did not actually know I could use my higher tier captains on other ship types with no re training crap if of the same nation and as long as they was put on a premium ships. Game def does not make that clear at all. I been playing like 7 years + also.
For sure man! Check out the new version of this video here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
It's got a spreadsheet told and more info on teaching and grinding your captains.
But how does one "grind up a captain"? When I dismiss captains, the only thing I recall seeing is a "you have an hour to change your mind" notice.
Hey Tony - this is a good question, I made a quick video to answer it for you and anyone else with this question: ruclips.net/video/NRR-uUyCghM/видео.html
@@ClydePlays Thanks. I've been dismissing captains for a long time, and _never noticed_ the dialog. I must have a head injury.
@@tonyennis1787 No sweat dude! Glad to help.
Does it make sense to use expendable bonuses on a 21 point cap ?
Hey Arkangel88Mr! The answer is YES and NO. Reasons below:
// NO Argument
When you play a captain with fewer than 21 points on the ship they're trained on, they get a 5% bonus of CXP. So the BEST place to use the expendable bonuses is on a captain that you are trying to level which has fewer than 21 points. Essentially in this way, you get an additional 5% bonus to their XP growth which should scale nicely with the bonus.
// YES Argument
If you are good at the ship(s) the captain is trained on you may be able to earn MORE than that 5% bonus that youg et for playing a non-max'd captain. Plus, maybe you really LIKE playing this ship, and you'll get more out of it in enjoyment and otherwise your bonuses were just languishing otherwise. If you really feel like playing a ship with a 21 pointer and you aren't sure what captain you want to max next, this banks that XP into your elite commander XP pool which allows you to choose where to spend it later and "stack xp" on one specific captain when you're sure where you want to put it.
// FINAL THOUGHT
At the end of the day, the MOST min-max'd way to do it is to use it on a commander that has 20 or fewer points, but since fun and ship skill come into play, I think that it does make sense to use them on 21 pointers that you enjoy and are good at.
Even for a very unique build, a premium shouldn't need a specific captain because you can use a captain from a different ship class, meaning they won't share builds. For ex, I use my Cleveland (CL) captain on F. Sherman (DD) because Sherman needs the range skill unlike other US DDs... but Cleveland uses the totally separate Cruiser skill list, so the Sherman's 'weird' build doesn't impact it at all.
That's exactly correct! That's literally the only way to do this effectively. Thanks for your comment.
can you put links in the comments that takes you to your twitch and other media that you place content in.
Hey Stevern! The video description contains links that go to my twitch (www.twitch.tv/clydeplayslive) and also my Twitter (twitter.com/clydeplaysgames). At the moment, those places plus YT are the places to be for Clyde Plays content.
title translation: 'I have too many ships.'
(me: nope.... I like having 200 ships at my disposal. Especially at the end of the year.)
Personally, 14 points is good enough. Concealment and Fire Protection for BB's and Radio Detection and Concealment for DD's. Cruisers... well, for me,... 10 points for Concealment is good enough to work with.
Commander leveling isn't my focus. My focus is unlocking ships. And I make credits by playing Musashi ('cause I missed out on the Missouri). I don't even bother playing T10, due to the xp being useless on such ships.
Hey Rene, thanks for your comment! It seems as though you have mis-translated the title and the information in the video.
Allow me to offer a translation of your comment: "I'm too busy grinding ships to worry about the captain grind." This is common for LOTS of players, and its totally fine! You're also right, that most ships do pretty well with a 10-14 point captain.
Players love having tons of ships in their port, I myself have 370 ships at present and have been playing this game for seven years. I know people with 500 ships. This video is NOT about reducing the number of ships in your port, in fact the concepts in the video encourage you to go out and get MORE ships. As you add premium and special ships to your fleet, they help you level your captains faster. You should go out and get all the ships you want. Thats part of what makes World of Warships fun.
What the video does encourage is reducing the ratio of captains to ships. This ratio which tells you how much work you have to do (ie, how much XP you will need to earn) in order to level them up. The larger the ratio (ie, the more captains you have) the longer it takes to level them up. The smaller the ratio, the faster they level. Coinciding with this is another fact: the larger the ratio, the more specialized your captain builds are for the ships they are assigned to. The smaller the ratio, the more "general purpose" your captains have to be. The sweet spot is where your captains are still well-suited for your ships, but you need the smallest number of captains.
For players like you who are still grinding out new ship lines actively, the captain grind is probably less interesting. These players are all about the ships. They provide new gameplay experiences whereas a captain only marginally improves the performance of a ship (or many ships if you staff your fleet like I do). At this stage in your WOWS career, you'd probably prefer my Research Bureau video to this one, since its all about getting ships, haha. You can check it out here if you want: ruclips.net/video/-3amwCRsmHI/видео.html
Other players, are more like me. We have unlocked all of the tech tree ships that we want, but there might be a few lines we're strill grinding, albeit slowly. These are typically classes or nations we're less interested in. For players like us, our minds turn to things like captain leveling and optimizations of the economy because we already have most or all of the ships that we want from the tech tree and we're free to focus on these other "late game" goals like top tier captains, coal, steel, or research point ships, and so on.
Anyways, thanks again for sharing your perspective, have an awesome day out there!
- Clyde
For those who are willing to spend/ people who value their time, the quickest way is to buy 16 Dashas, dismiss 15 of them, salvage the ECXP with doubloons and dump all the XP into the remaining one. The total cost is about 48960 doubloons and you have a 21 point captain in less than 5 minutes.
Haha, I love this comment. I'm not sure if you're joking or a very rich person, but that's even too whale for me. That's a $195 21 pointer, but honestly? If you earn 5k Commander XP per match, it would take you 193.9 hours to get a 21 point captain....so.....that's like $1/hour? Not a bad price.....lol, JK.
@@ClydePlays Haha I'm a minke whale that double as an attorney in real life. I only get at most 45 mins of play time each day, and at that rate getting a 21 pointer would take at least 1 year of constantly playing that captain. Doing the Dasha trick therefore makes a lot of sense to me, esp. for the first couple of 21 pointers that start the snowballing effect.
Dasha organ donations are the loophole in this game that whales exploit to skip all the grinds. If you want ships, do a double ECXP - FXP conversion and boom you have WG doing all the grinding for you. I have sperm whale and blue whale friends in PVE modes who express ship lines in terms of Dashas, e.g. the Yamato line is 6 Dashas, Shima is 5 Dashas... That's crazy but it could be done.
It's like I always say - the question is about what is worth more to you, the money or the time. I earn my whaling bucks in the software biz, so I get valuing the time more than the cash sometimes. In fact, when I was making that captain video last year, I ALMOST included the buy-and-grind-into-powder prices for your Dasha plan as well as for doing it with credits only, (since you can buy 6-pointers for 900k). In the end, I decided those were fairly rare use cases and didnt' include them in the vid. Thanks for your comments.
@@ClydePlays 👍Yup its your money or your time, cant agree more. Great vid btw +1 subbed🤗
Thanks!
4) 21 point captions. You need to plan your captions for future tech tree new ships so you start with at least a 10 point caption. Also using a spreadsheet as well. The other thing to do is decide want level of tier ships you keep. I do not have T2 and 95% of T3 ships this gave a lot for free elite commander xp when I dismissed those commanders.
These are great points! Always be planning for new lines to be added (Pan Asian cruisers are coming soon!). Good point about only keeping some tiers of ships. For the most part I keep ships from T5 and up and only have a few non-premiums below that tier. Thanks for your comment!
@@ClydePlays Looking forward to you video about special captions :)
@@ClydePlays anything that doesn’t come with a snowflake goes immediately to the recycling bin lol. I think the only thing I have below T5 is Diana Lima. I kinda like the current style early access events. Lots of new port slots from the ships I sell.
lol I have 88 ships and 88 captains, ive been moving my captain up the tech tree line as I go, guess its time to rethink how I do this
I still wait when i get legendary comendesr with grinds on nations with tahat capitnas (5 for coal )
OK half way through the video & I find that I am doing it right because I'm only using tech tree ships & have no intent on spending money to buy a premium ship.
What I've done is as I moved up tiers I've moved the same commander to the new ship & mostly sold the old ships or just stuck a 6pt in the ones I kept.
Lets see if the rest of the video has anything useful for me.
Well!? Did it!? If you enjoyed it....you may want to check out Captain Video 2.0: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
@@ClydePlays Yeah there was a couple of bits later in the video that will help, will give the 2.0 a watch & see if there's more I can do to help boost my commanders up, ty.
Rad. Thanks for watching.
My eventual goal is to develop one 21pt commander for every nation in which I have both tech tree ships and at least one premium. The more premiums of different types (i.e. CV, BB, cruiser, DD) I have for a nation, the more powerful a 21pt captain is for that nation (because he can take all ship types' skills optimally now) and the higher the priority to get at least one. So far: US, UK, IJN, Germany, USSR, Pan-Asia, France. Coming soon: Italy. (Others may have to wait a while.) After that, I will go back and back-fill any special commanders (Halsey, Lutjens etc) who aren't there yet and then the rest of my 19 pointers.
The process slowed down after the first four or five because I was no longer starting with 19 pointers but with commanders who were only at 15 or 16, some even lower. It's still quite pleasantly surprising, even given this handicap, how quickly I am getting them all done.
I love leveling a good captain! Great to have your comment over here Ensign Cthulhu!
Thank you for this video- I have always wanted to know how to grind them thank you I just subscribed- awesome content and clear, vocals excellent production - I follow Sealord and potato- I am so excited to add you to my daily routine- do you have a patreon? Thank you!!! Hopefully in time I might develop skills thanks so much
Thanks Mike! PQ and Mountbatten?! That's some good company! Thanks for adding me to that group of awesome creators.
I don't have a Patreon at this time, the best thing you can do to support the channel is tell a friend, or come by and hang out on Twitch. Thanks again for your kind words!
hello clyde where can i get the spreadsheet for xp of ships tier 1-10 that you showed bro in this video
I recommend using the website wowsft.com. The tool is called "research XP" and there is a link at the top of the page for it. I'll tweet a picture of the table I used and add the link here...
@@ClydePlays ahhhh...I completely forgot about that mate though I only refer it for checking alpha, sigma and dpm
Here's the table! twitter.com/ClydePlaysGames/status/1458493318707306496
@@ClydePlays thanks a lot mate big love to you ❤️
@@ClydePlays Do the listed XP for Tiers I-X reflect clan discounts or is that straight xp without discounts?
When you start this game years after the release you have a huge disadvantage. You are competing against people with way more experience, they have most likely better ships and often form up with others in a division who are also better then you. The reason they are still playing this game years after the release means in most cases that they are good at it. That is the reason you should try to make the gap between you and other players as close as possible. In order to do that you can give yourself an advantage by getting a captain with a level that is as high as possible. Therefore I recommend maxing one captain out to level 21 and using that captain until you have upgraded another captain to level 21. Then you have two captains that you can use to upgrade a third, etc. This way you minimize your disadvantage as much as possible. There are some nice lower tier ships available for a relative small amount of coal like the Galant or the Hill that can give you some nice benefits until you get better in this game.
I take this is pc? Any ideas on consul??
Hey Edward, yes this is all for PC. I'm afraid i don't know much about the differences on console. As I understand it, the captain system is very different on that platform.
why didnt I find your site more early ? Greetings from Germany
Hello Egal Egal. Welcome to the channel!
i am confused about your recommendation to have a captain for every techtree ship? thats literally hundreds of captains? i have only ever had 1 captain per shipline and kept retraining them for the next ship i unlock. if i hadnt done that, my 10k matches over the last 4 years would have been spread over ....150ish captains, none of which would be even halfway to 21.
edit: 12:35 the "blackhole" is still better than buying a completely new captain and therefore "loosing" all the cxp you earned on the original captain.(you can only ever play 1 captain at a time, all cxp on other captains is unusable, therefore lost)
not only do you loose access to all the hard earned cxp of the old captain, you also just doubled the amount of battles required to get them to 21.(i think its about 2k battles per captain depending on the boosters used?)
funny thing is you pretty much say that at 10:20
Hey Tom - I think you are doing the right thing by moving the captains up the line. The reason we need to have a captain on every ship is that if we EVER want to go back and play the lower tier ships again, they need a captain, and moving your T10 captain back to play, say a T7 match is not a reasonable plan. Essentially, you need hire skipper for each ship you leave behind so you don't have to re-train every time you play a lower tier tech tree ship after moving past it (and taking your captain with you). I am NOT suggesting that you need to level those captains up to 21 points - just want to focus on the one you moved up to the next ship, that's the one destined for the T10.
Of course, if you sell all of your ships as soon as you move to the next one, then no worries, you don't need a captain for those ships. That said - if you follow that strategy you still have a captain on every tech tree ship - instead of hiring new ones for the lower tier ships, you just sold the lower tier ships reaching the same state of one captain per tech tree ship.
Re: "XP Black Hole" - Totally agree that it's worth spending the XP to transfer rather than getting a new cap - but it might be worth $2USD to just not lose the FXP. Depends on whether 500 dubs or the XP is worth more to you.
Largely I think we agree on good strategies to get to 21 faster. Thanks for your questions/comments!
@@ClydePlays thank you for the clarification! it is not something i have ever done, but yes, if i where to randomly go back to some ship in the techtree for a few matches, retraining a 21 would be a waste.
;)
I figured that must be the case, since you were all like, "WTF?" Cheers!
That Friesland issue is why I moved to Groningen.
That is, IMHO, the #1 reason to have swapped Friesland for Groningen, (unless of course you already had a high-level captain on Friesland).
Spend my coal on another premium ship T8+ for training my captains or get legendary captain?
Legendary. I did and have no regrets. Actually getting all Unique Commanders first and then going for ships, unless about to be removed.
So far, i have gone for ships almost every time, though I do have a few special caps. My logic has been centered on this idea: ships, particularly those with unique playstyles, provide more gameplay variety IMHO, plus there are 25% off coupons for ships!
That said, my next buy is a special captain (Lutjens). I've been putting it off because i like boats, and he's pretty expensive - but kingofcastlechaos has a good point about the captains, since there are some really good ones. Keep your eyes on the channel, as I'll be going over all of them in an upcoming video!
At the end of the day, i think it's a balance. If there's a special captain you want for a given line - grab him! If perhaps more than that, you want to get a fun or unique ship that will help with your captain training for a nation where you don't have many (or any) preems - go for it! There are reasons to go both directions.
Can i ask, what was that mean BB, DD, CA, and etc
Hey Roy - yes you can! Those are what are called "Hull Classification Symbols" and each is a code that designates a type of ship.
In WOWS, we really only use five hull classification symbols:
CV - Aircraft Carrier
BB - Battleship
CA - Cruiser (though technically, CA is a heavy cruiser and CL is a light cruiser - so you may see CL as well, but most players just call all cruisers CAs regardless of gun size).
DD - Destroyer
SS - Submarine
Hope this helps! Is your want to read more check out this article on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_classification_symbol
@@ClydePlays thanks for information sir, i'm new at this game
Welcome to WOWS!
So, after grinding to the first 21 points Commander, what should I do next? Continue to grind with the new maxed-out commander or begin a new grind, etc? ( maxed commander + premium ship runs as often as possible, then what to do with those points saved?)
Hey Tonkyo! Once you've got your first 21 point commander - you basically want to continue doing the same thing that earned you the XP to push that captain to 21 points. Once you have a captain maxed, 100% of the XP you earn becomes "Elite Commander XP" (aka free captain XP) which you can use for other commanders.
Its SLIGHTLY more efficient to grind captain XP on a non-21 point commander because you get a bonus 5% in that case - however, if you play your 21 pointer as much now as you did to push them up to 21 points - you'll find that you start seeing Elite Commander XP piling up.
I go over this better in the new version of this video here: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html If you haven't seen the new version, it provides a newer spreadsheet with more powerful tools and a better description of how we want to max our captains. Thanks for watching and hit me up if you have any other questions - either here or on the Clyde Plays Discord (link in the video description).
Will you give access to your Commander spreadsheet to your subscribers?
Awesome video by the way!😀
Hey Jeff! I made a separate video about the spreadsheet where I show you how to use it and provide a link to an example spreadsheet your can copy from Google Docs.
Here's a link to the video: ruclips.net/video/vPI4b8zxdKw/видео.html
@@ClydePlays You Rock!
I use only capitqn ex to reset capitans or retrenis
These are good uses for Elite Commander XP. Once your captains have arrived at the T10 ship and you get your build where you want it, then it becomes time to dump Elite Commander XP on that captain to grind up their level.
I just use my credit to get new commander with 6 skill points, then i resign em with credits to get elite commander xp . Able to quickly trade up enough elite xp to level up my captain fast
That's one way to go. When i made this video, i did the math to see how many credits that method would cost to get to a 21 point captain. I ultimately decided not to include it as it's probably out of reach for most players, that said it's an easy, no-money way to earn elite commander XP. Glad it's working for you!
It goes against your idea of "fewest captains possible", but a few weeks ago their was a 30% sale on 10 pt captains and I picked up a lot of them for 500 dubs each. (I always watch for sales on port slots too.)
Did you know that the new excel spreadsheets can pull data directly from websites? I use that technique to populate my ship spreadsheets, but have not figured out the best way to pull captain info.
New subscriber, thanks for the hard work!
Yeah, I hear ya. I break the "rules" too. I just unlocked the ork captain and I'm going to choose him for my Pan Asian cruisers, even though I already have better, higher level captains.
My issue is, how can I access the reserve?
I'm not sure I understand your question, do you mean to ask where are your captains who are not currently on ships?
You should be able to see them by going to a ship of the nation you want to investigate, clicking on its captain and selecting "change commander."
@@ClydePlays ok, thanks. I remember in the past there was a reserve and you could see all your captains at once without having to go via a ship, but that must be years ago.
I'll check your path out, thanks
Yeah, no good way to view them all that I know of. That's why I wound up making my spreadsheet.
A 17 pt commander only being halfway there just kind of blew my mind. My top commander just hit 17 and I was thinking I was getting close. 🤦
Not to worry! You'll get there - but it takes starching damage (XP) on your top commander until you do! After that first one it gets much easier!
Watch the newer version of this video for more tips if you'd like: ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
I have only 1 21 points capitan and 1 20 point and cuple of 19 i got after rework of capitan. I think on 10 points is min on tier 5/7 and 15 is good capitan on tier good for 9/10 tier ansd more is for my rank /clan ships
My highest point captain is a 19 pointer, trained for Hindenburg. But he goes in a lot of my premium German BBs and Cruisers (I’m pretty sure I have have all of them 😅).
Atta way! Just a matter of time before he hits 21!
Didn't even know I could use the free captain xp to level with, thought it was only for retraining. It's not very clear.
I don't even know how to do it.
Did this video help answer that for you, or do you still have this question Strit?
@@ClydePlays I think the only thing I didn't get from the video was how to use the xp to level up with.
But I found out that there was a little plus sigh that I never paid any attention to at all.
Not knowing it was possible I never really clicked it to see.
Gotcha. Glad you've got it sorted out now! Good luck on your 21 point captain grind.
@@ClydePlays thanks mate, super video.
My Yamato captain is named Shigeru Miyamoto
He's clearly on the fast track to 21 points
Tell Miyamoto he's got my support! Go get 'em!
I've been playing for like 7 years (can't remember) and I still don't have a 21 point captain.
Today's the day, Bacon. Today's the day you pick one and make a plan to push them up to 21.
Y'know, if you care about that stuff. No big deal if not. 😄
@@ClydePlays inthink i have 19 pointer who was my us dd commander who spent most of.his life in the sims since i pretty.much played only that ship for a really.long time
You're more than halfway there (by XP)! Good luck on the hunt!
Hi can you share the spreadsheet
Hey Luis! Currently I don't have good instructions or notes on how to use the spreadsheet. I plan to share the spreadsheet soon with a short video that explains how to use it.
@@ClydePlays :(
I'm working on it literally, right now. :D
Hey Luis - video with spreadsheet will be going up a bit later tonight. 😁
ruclips.net/video/vPI4b8zxdKw/видео.html ITS LIVE!
The only way you could dismiss all those captains is that you have 4x as many premiums as tech tree ships.
Yeah - you still have to keep one commander for each tech line ship. What we're looking to avoid is having bonus commanders that are ONLY assigned to premiums. What happens, especially to long-time players, is that they collect commannders over and over and over again from missions or other things - and then they fail to optimize their use and try to level too many of them, so they wind up with 40 seventeen point captains and no 21s.... I explain it better in the new version of this video if you are interested (with a better spreadsheet): ruclips.net/video/y7B_Bankxcs/видео.html
Very confusing, maybe in this case, because you jump from one thing to the other. I saw u video for 10 minutes, and I was the same as I was at minute 1. We need something easy, like taking one of your captains and going into the full process about dismissing him, or sending him to reserve, change commander. and explain the pros and cons of each one of the options. And what to do when you dont have more space in your reserve.
Hey suburban - this video is focused on leveling commanders and is targeting a different audience than the one you're suggesting - so I'm sure it was a bit confusing.
I'm happy to help out with a more detailed description of commander interactions, if you want, come by the twitch stream (I'm streaming tonight at 8pm Pacific/LA Time) or if that doesn't work I've got a stream on Saturdays which is easier for folks on other continents (though I'll miss this week's saturday stream sadly).
If you have specific questions I can answer here, post them up and I'll try to get you an answer.
@@ClydePlays Yeah, I really dont care about commanders and keep track of them, I want to change my Monty 21 pints commander to my new Meine, but at the end, just used XP commander points to get 10 for it, and start playing with 5 addons. Thanks for the help.
Sounds like you got it sorted out - no worries.
I have never seen anyone with so many Dasha captains. I don't have even one and prefer prefer it that way.
Haha, yeah..... I leaned in pretty heavily there for a while, and now they've all leveled up to 21, haha.
The short version:
1. Dont have a million captains.
2. Be rich, use premiums.
Yep. That's basically it. The "Be rich, use premiums" part is kind of lame. Sadly, that doesn't make it any less true. #TaxBreakForTheRich