HaachamaShipping

These unbiased poll options...

More than IJN, we needed a French captain, as no collab ever gave us these. I bet Yorktown bundle comes with 25 or so missions... for 300% exp. Sorry to burst your bubble, but unless they ever put Yorktown into a second CV line (which isn't too unlikely after Ranger got down-tiered and something has to fill in for T8), any Yorktown premium is certainly not going to be free except for random SC drop. As for KC collab, those dreams can likely be buried too. Gotta live with Atago-oneesan from AL.

There's a seperate topic for the excitement already.

It's not "Pan-Asian" smoke, as only Huanghe of all PA ships has the creeping smoke. If anything, it's Commonwealth smoke, given it's on Haida and Perth, two out of three Commonwealth ships. Mostly this, though feel free to rush the smoke if the DD has launched all its torps and isn't an Asashio.

To me, the ship was a surprisingly fun experience. As @BlackYeti stated, the ship has a good combination of concealment, HE and dpm and these are, imo, her greatest strengths. That is not to say it's an HE spammer, the AP is very workable, basically like Bismarck shells if they were short-fuze. People say the guns aren't very accurate, but they do have pretty average BB accuracy, so, it's not too bad, just not NC levels of accurate (but you at least get some shell speed). The HE comes handy when fighting DDs or when you have to deal wth targets that angle against you, allowing you to win most bow-in contests. Overall, the ship is maybe one of the least tanky T8 BBs, but when top tier it still is fine and when in T10, you still are one of the best support units, due to how many shells you can throw out and how close you can get to ambush cruisers at times. Almost 100% agree with this. Not sure if 406s alone would do the trick, but yeah. Imo, QE mostly just frustrates you more than Warspite if you have it, due to turret traverse.

WG has ships, if you have Euro.

Other cruisers also take citadel hits from the side, but Stalingrad combines this with utterly garbage concealment and turning qualities. If you compare it to a Zao, a Zao from the side also gets wrecked (though it actually is way less citadel target than Stalingrad), but as a Zao player, you have far more options due to how fast you can turn while enemies might be reloading or due to just going stealth to do your turn. Stalingrad can do neither. With a 1130 m turning circle radius that only gets overshadowed by high tier CVs, this ship takes an eternity to turn from angled bow in to an angled kiting position and likely gets murdered inbetween. Even compared to Moskva, Moskva has similar issues, but not as bad. Though, for CB, it typically is not uncommon to see people replace their Moskvas with Stalingrads, though for random battles, where you cannot trust as much in your team mates to keep your flanks save, I'd argue that Moskva is a more independent ship. Also, for what its worth, Moskva only burns 30 s base, can take hydro (very fun dodging torps in a Stalingrad) and has more 50 mm bow armour coverage. Stalingrad actually can take unlucky cits through the 25 mm section if you deal with slow shells like those from NC that just go through and plunge onto the citadel.

Sims-Hammann. As sad as it sounds, I'd buy a second one if it comes with captain.

Frankly, while I expect unwieldy bundles and such, I do feel extremely happy about this. First Azur Lane collab seemed a bit lackluster on our side and I wondered why they didn't use commanders for ships like Dunkerque or Prinz Eugen that can boost sales of actually pretty lackluster ships, while Atago obviously would be a good option too (though not as lackluster of a ship really). I see that WG finally found out how to capitalise on the opportunities. Also, collab ships, while I still have my doubts about those F3s, are nice to see (though, I guess T8 IJN torp boat premiums will forever be collab ships and ultra DWT memes) and while the first batch of camos imo seemed a bit questionable at times, these two do look quite nice. I'm also positively surprised to see Neptune as a captain, given I kind of wished she'd get in there to make the ship more playable and maybe I rebuy the ship just for Nep. I definitely won't buy an Azuma though just for the Azuma captain, unless WG actually go and make the ship not an absolute citadel fiesta with little redeeming qualities. But hey, she can go on the Yoshino, I guess. Ships I would have liked to see would be Monarch (another ship that could benefit from the popularity of its AL counterpart maybe), Alaska and Mikasa, but well. New port is absolute topkek though.

I'd not even say it's just the armour scheme. When you get an extra repair party, fires are basically the only thing that kind of justifies that repair party, as you run out of recoverable hp when fires are just a small fraction of the damage and most of the damage is full pens (and potentially cits).

Norma has no secondaries though.

Interpreting your jumbled English, I came to the conclusion that: You think Yoshino is like Stalingrad, but has torps and wonder how such is fair. You ask whether we prefer Yoshino or Stalingrad. Based on this, I respond with: Yoshino gets no radar unlike Stalingrad. Yoshino gets no 50 mm plating unlike Stalingrad, so it isn't anywhere as immune to all kinds of HE shells and Yamato/Republique AP. Yoshino gets less hp. Yoshino doesn't get Stalingrad's insane gun ballistics. It should be kept in mind that Stalingrad is a ship that can citadel BBs at 20 km. Yoshino can't. Yoshino also does not get improved ricochet angles and will need to rely on its HE, which is better than Stalingrad's. Yoshino also should get better concealment than Stalingrad, which is not hard. Stalingrad competes with the likes of Yamato and Kurfürst in concealment. It basically is a different superheavy cruiser concept with its own strengths and weaknesses. I personally prefer Yoshino from what I see. As I own Stalingrad and Alaska, I already prefer playing Alaska, because I find it a more fluid gameplay and a bit more versatile. I expect Yoshino to be more akin to Alaska due to the less insane shells.

You also need to be a good BB player to make the PEF work and you will likely have to put in more effort than someone who just plays an actually good T6 BB. But that doesn't mean I recommend the PEF to people, when there's better options that actually are decent and not retarded. That said, PEF still is way less out there than Asashio. But basically, just because something is difficult doesn't mean it is good and Asashio most of all is a DD that just throws versatility out the window in exchange for an overspecialisation in the most useless thing a DD can be specialised in. Because frankly, spotting anyone can do who has an idea of DD play and isn't in a friggin Khaba or such, while hitting a BB with torps is one of the easiest tasks of an IJN DD and likely one of the least rewarding things, given a BB can eat a torp and still be a credible threat. A cruiser that eats a torp is already losing half its hp, while a DD or low tier cruiser will be basically a oneshot if they don't straight up die. So, why spend up to 40 Euro on a ship that basically gives you crutches to accomplish easy and less important things in exchange for being absolutely f***ed when it comes to dealing with targets that might be more important? It's basically money given to WG to play a ship with far less potential, pad damage stats and to encourage them to implement more such silly ships that just are there so people can rediscover what they can actually do with a normal ship and they can excuse plays that'd be idiotic in most other ships of that type with the fact that they are an Asashio, they just cannot do certain useful things. If you start shooting a Harugumo at 5.5 km and that Harugumo knows what they are doing, you are dead. Basically the sole thing that can keep you alive is overwhelming friendly support, in which case, no, that Harugumo does not know what they are doing if caught out like that (not to mention, if you'd have attentive support, they'd shoot a spotted Harugumo anyway, so adding your lulzy dpm to theirs is likely not necessary unless the Harugumo is about to get away on low hp so you secure the kill). But without good support, you basically get shot by that Harugumo to pieces, given it needs not fear torps and even with your 4k per salvo, Harugumo dpm and hp pool are far beyond your T8 IJN torp boat. Even if you smoke up, the Harugumo basically can do the same if it has to break line of sight and you can't torp the smoke, while if you have not sufficient support, the Harugumo could as well just charge you down in your own smoke or use your smoke for itself if you bail, because what are you going to do? Torp it when it shows up at 2 km and pumps you full with HE/AP? FFS, Asashio can't even outrun a Harugumo due to the low top speed. Basically, what you rely on is the Harugumo being utterly terrible, which, admittedly, such Harugumo players exist. But risking your ship out of the belief that enemies are incompetent is a fast way to get yourself killed. Not to mention, there's literally no reason to be 5.5 km away from a Harugumo, unless you run into it out of chance, in which case Harugumo likely has the guns faster on you than you on her. In every other situation, the IJN 10 cm guns aren't bad in ballistics, but you still would want to fight at a decent range to get the most out of your ballistics IF you pick a gunfight with an IJN gunboat DD. At sub-6 km, any good gunboat DD has a rather easy time taking you apart.

Still less difference than at T7 with 21 knots vs 32 knots on the fastest. Even the next slowest on T8 is only half a knot away (Monarch), compared to 3 knots to reach the 24 knot Nelson. Though, personally I didn't find Colorado speed so much of an issue. I forgave much when I finally got guns that were accurate and had overmatch. But I can understand people might not enjoy 21 knots much.

No. I'd claim to be at least a "reasonable IJN torp boat player", I got hundreds of games in these ships and I can tell you that I don't have the slightest interest in this piece of trash that is basically the greatest insult to decent IJN torp players that exists, because I don't need my ship to friggin remind me of what it can do due to the things it cannot do. I take a Kagero or Harekaze that can spot all the same and still can hit DDs and cruisers over this. Frankly, I feel insulted, because what that basically implies is that IJN torp boat players, if they are "reasonable" are such unskilled morons that you need these hard limitations to actually get the message that you can do more than just randomly throw torps around. But hey, I saw enough Yugumos who preferred to camp behind my cruiser instead of actually trying to spot or cap and I guess I can't expect everyone to be able to figure out how to RPF torp DDs and cruisers (or just use some intuition at times), some might just need their 20 km retard torps, overspecialised for BB killing to the max, because hitting those giant, slow turning buggers is oh-so-hard.

I wonder which stat might have caused that. i bet it's the sudden increase in AA?

Sometimes. I don't count them. Given I recall at least three in the last two days, not too rarely.

From my latest match: This is basically the result of the combination of PT and having learned when to move my rudder to dodge all the torps, a skill developed from a few thousand battles, a good few of which were in DDs. I'm not even sure if PT really helped much, given that when I approached the Hatsuharu that was rapidly smoking up, I take the 1-0-1 switch to be a confirmation, but even if they stay in the torp view, I don't just lulzily move on in one direction, just alone because once smoked up I get no PT counter anymore (and they might just throw out torps based on prediction). What sure would've been a waste of points is the skill Vigilance, because not just is it far less helpful, for those who really want to invest in skills to hunt DDs, RPF is 1 point more and vastly more useful. Not that I use RPF on my PEF though, because if I wouldn't run SI and BoS, this game would easily have been a loss. And that's not lack of imagination to not run something else (given this is actually a Hipper/Eugen captain, it actually is a comproomise between secondary BB and AA CA), but because while I can make up for Vigilance by just having an idea how torpedo DDs work, no amount of player skill makes me get another repair party or makes fires go out sooner. Also, on the opening post, yes, low tier DDs are at times stealthy. But most low tier BBs are so retardedly well-armoured against HE, if you avoid getting torped, DDs quickly are out of options to kill your ship, so zoning them out or just rushing a DD down if you know the torps aren't up (admittedly, that's easier on a Hatsuharu that has over a minute, compared to a Kamikaze or Isokaze) is quite effective, because while you know they try to frantically torp you, but can't contest your map control, you can just shoot across the low tier map at someone else and stay relevant. And every torp you dodged is a torp that didn't hit your straightlining team mate. Obviously, that needs proper judgement. That Hatsuharu I pushed because their torps swam by and they thus were easy pickings. Earlier that match the Kamikaze I just turned and moved slowly away, to just cede as little map space as possible, while still firing at the ships I could see. Given torping someone who's moving away narrows the torp window drastically, it sure prevented any further torp launches at me to be effective (it then got murdered by an Emile Bertin once the Kamikaze had outrun its support far enough).

Hinden?

IFHE also helps with German, USN and IJN BBs, of which you normally see a ton. also the odd Khaba. Would go IFHE over DE.

How lewd... Also, clan commander told me to change my nickname to this and I got doubloons from a SC, so I did. I may or may not have been having some umeshu to get through CB session. It was Seiranko.

Ah. yeah. I meant without dpm skills or defAA. I do use the AA mod, because accuracy mod on most accurate T10 cruiser feels not as useful for randoms. Should change that actually though for CB. Thanks for reminding.

They are fundamentally broken as long as it pits CV player skill vs automated air defenses with a bare minimum of target player skill input. As long as that persists (and it's unlikely to change), good CV players will be too strong, while the bad ones will just feed planes to AA till they run out. That's at least my position on the issue.

Doesn't AA module make it 8? And given that Shokaku ended up bottom of the enemy team, I'm not above believing they were a bit on the less competent side.

I didn't notice she had none till this announcement. I just never thought they'd take it away for no apparant reason.