HaachamaShipping

Cruisers with smoke are fulfilling their role. DDs with smokes are often not. Just because others play retarded doesn't mean you should play retarded. Just because half the people cannot figure out how to angle a battleship doesn't mean I have to broadside all day.

You get full bonus at T7. Overall, I've never been sold on secondary survivability investments on BBs. Just like I never was sold on the all in builds. For the likes of Bismarck and Gneisenau, where it's still possible to get away with secondary focus and lack of concealment, I'd invest 6 points into BoS and SI, instead of BFT, to keep the ship alive rather than just have a meager 11% dpm boost. GK for example I run BoS and CE, might switch back to IFHE, but I'd still never take BFT. In general, I have the feeling overinvesting into secondaries puts too many resources into a backup armament and then continuing to continue into survivability to improve the survivability of the secondaries just makes it worse. I'd rather go for skills that preserve the versatility and survivability of the ship, like PT or DCCA, because in the end, a floating ship with one secondary turret remaining alive is still more dangerous than a dead ship that only got knocked out half. Not that I ever experienced massive loss of secondary turrets on Germans.

A friggin Cleveland behind an island is playing its goddamn role as a dpm machine and if positioned properly as an area control asset with radar threat. If you spot for them, they can apply their vastly superior dpm. You going for selfish application of your abysmal gun dpm output is utterly throwing away the role you have. The only DD players that should do it are those like Akizuki that can throw out raw damage on cruiser levels.

For competitive, you don't run into a team full of Moskva/Stalingrad either most of the time. And even then, it's not like other cruisers are hopeless against them. I wouldn't discount the effects of Zao's accuracy and Henri can boost dpm with MBRB. Anyway, as said earlier, the HE dpm isn't terrible, but you just shouldn't expect too much. The Hindenburg is the sole high tier cruiser of the Germans that actually manages to achieve this though. Hipper dpm is a joke, Prinz Eugen even more of one and the Roon even with MBM3 does not outperform others except vs targets where 50 mm pen counts (which in a T9 competitive format is only Iowa and Missouri). So, Roon certainly should not be overestimated either.

I'm not new here... but thanks.

I'd say no and will explain my opinion in this post, but I felt like formulating the topic title as a question to open this thread up to discussion from people who might have a different opinion. I do not question that buffs for Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen were required, I'm questioning whether they actually made these ships worth playing. I consider both to be the most irrelevant cruisers at T8 still and a chore to play, which is sad for Hipper, but utterly disastrous for Prinz Eugen, which costs money after all. Mainly, I think this comes down to two things: Lack of effective dpm. Highly situational armour scheme. What do I mean by that? Well, Hipper, like most things German in this game, has HE that has high pen and low damage and fire chance and AP that has high damage and pretty low penetration. Which in practice means, unless you have broadsides to wreck, the ship basically relies on spamming HE, which has as its sole ray of light that it can pen 50 mm of armour. Hipper has of all T8 cruisers the least amount of guns, has a very average reload time and the HE shells have a staggering 2,500 damage potential. Just to put this into perspective, Charles Martel and Baltimore as average heavy cruisers have 2,800 damage potential per shell, Atago and Mogami (203) have 3,300, Mogami (155) has 2600, Cleveland and Chapayev have 2,200 and Kagero has 2,150. Due to getting this combination of lackluster RoF, low amount of guns and unreliable or low damage shells, it can very much happen that you are stuck with basically the lowest effective dpm at T8 among tech line cruisers when playing Hipper, or lowest overall in Prinz Eugen. CAs in this game generally have lower dpm than CLs, but Hipper takes it to new extremes by also having low fire chance at 11% per shell. Cleveland has 12%. Kagero has 9% (and due to higher RoF, Kagero is actually about as good a fire starter as Hipper, which is sad). Just to make it even worse, HE dpm-wise, Hipper is actually a downgrade from the Yorck which has barely slower reload, but a significantly better HE shell and 12% fire chance. Prinz Eugen naturally is even worse, due to lower RoF than Hipper. Now, some may say, this is horrible HE performance is justified by the high AP dpm. But I'd disagree. At anything but broadside, you won't get pens and as soon as a ship angles, you are back to requiring HE to get anything done. Thus, I'm going to say that "AP dpm" might actually be a faulty concept, as frankly, you need someone willing to ignore you "spamming" (is this term even applicable with that RoF?) AP into their side. Baltimore and Edinburgh are slightly more forgiving, as they get improved pen angles and thus can make more generous AP plays, but Hipper cannot. And thus, I find the greatest impact value AP has for a cruiser is the ability to surprise blap an enemy cruiser in 1-2 salvos. And guess what, that's about the only thing Hipper could do best... except it doesn't. Hipper/Eugen seem best in damage potential per single AP salvo, with 47,200 potential damage from 8 AP cits. However, all CLs are more capable of firing a follow-on salvo before the target angled, as can Charles Martel (reload booster!), Baltimore is more forgiving for a follow-up salvo with super-heavy AP (and 45,000 damage potential per salvo) and the Mogami (203) and Atago have barely less AP damage potential per broadside (47,000) but have the accuracy to much more reliably snipe a citadel. Mogami (155) lacks that accuracy but has the actualy highest aP per broadside, at 49,500. Thus, in that role, you basically aren't terrible... but noone else is really worse. And others do have actual HE. The second point I stated was situational armour. Hipper has 27 mm everywhere, except the waterline belt, where it is more. This allows it to tank 38 cm shells. Hipper and Prinz Eugen have the potential to be up against a full lineup of T6-8 BBs that can be tanked and brawled to death with torps. Too bad MM throws you against T9s and T10s most of the time, where 38 cm is exceedingly rare. Not that at T6 and T7 there are no big guns capable of hurting you and frankly, any non-overmatching BB that is somewhat competent can just load the HE and stay outside torp range. They'll outlast you easily. Fuso has better HE dpm than Hipper. So, you basically can go try brawl people who have no idea how to deal with your armour and mostly BBs. Against cruisers, 27 mm at T8 gets penned by everyone (except those stuck without IFHE for whatever reason) and DDs fall into three categories mostly: DDs without IFHE that can at best pen Edinburgh and maybe Cleveland. They won't pen any other cruiser, because already 25 mm shuts them down. DDs with IFHE, which allows them to pen every T8 cruiser, because 127 mm IFHE can pen up to including 27 mm. And Cossack/Lightning, which are the two T8 BBs with guns you can tank if they have IFHE that others need to be bothered about. Vs DDs, what matters more than Hipper's armour is that Hipper's poor dpm makes Hipper and Eugen the absolute worst DD killers at the tier. DDs like IJN 10 cm DDs can smoke up and farm you for significant amount of hp, or if they have to, all except Harekaze can pick an open water gunfight and win a 1v1, because Akizuki may only have half Hipper's hp pool, but has double the dpm and will torch you far more efficiently. If you look at other cruisers, they either don't rely on armour to the same degree or they have flat out more useful armour. The latter basically is Atago, which is 25 mm everywhere, except belt and a 41 mm deck. This means that, yes, 38 cm BBs might penetrate where on Hipper they'd bounce, but this armour scheme is actually reliable in what it does from T6 to T10. Shells that land on the deck bounce, regardless of whether it was a Bayern or a Yamato firing at you. This deck plating actually has consistent value. It even holds off most HE. This is what efficient plating looks like. Not 27 mm all over that might as well be nothing as soon as you encounter a West Virginia or Mutsu or almost anything at T9/10. So, where does that leave Hipper/Eugen in my books? Basically, both ships lack impact. They seem geared most of all to deal with BBs, as smaller ships will frankly take them apart with dpm. Hipper's dpm is basically on par with a Kagero but with 17+ km range and 50 mm HE pen, but for actually removing DDs, this is utterly inadequate (because the range and pen don't matter and Kagero is the least threatening T8 DD a DD can run into, with the exception of Asashio). This means that at T8, Hipper most of all threatens Bismarck/Tirpitz, but Amagi and NC will crap on it just like they do on any other cruiser... well, Charles Martel might speed dodge, Cleveland has a small citadel and Atago can tank it on the deck. 38 cm Monarch and Richelieu might get frustrated by the Hipper, but their extensive 32 mm plating means that a well-positioned Cleveland, Chapayev or Mogami (155) are far more dangerous, as are most other CAs. Against T9/10, the proliferation of 406+ mm guns obviously means that the Hipper basically only gets to shine against heavily armoured ships as quasi-can opener, in the hope that it does more HE damage than others get with fires. But even if Hipper/Prinz Eugen were actually able to kill BBs, that would still leave them with lackluster impact, compared to ships like Atago or Mogami, which can play effective surprise attacks (blasting DDs and cruisers with heavy HE and AP broadsides), stealth torpedo attacks or the ships that have dpm and radar. But as is, Hipper/Prinz Eugen can't even do that. So, can WG please go and get these ships a proper role and something meaningful to be good at that isn't utterly negated by the majority of ships it runs into? Or am I overlooking something in my analysis? Also, just to touch upon something that might impact these ships too: WG stated in their latest Waterline video that CAs will receive armour amidships to tank BBs and will no longer get easily penned by CLs. While I have no clue how they plan to do this, it would obviously mean Hipper/Eugen might get buffed. The question however is, if basically all CAs get this, what is the point of these two? If a Charles Martel or Mogami (which after all is a CA hull) can tank BBs, what's the point of Hipper/Eugen?

So, given this ship got buffed, I cannot say how it was before, but currently, it feels quite comfortable. It's not some insane dpm monster, but with 13.7 s reload, 10 pinpoint accurate guns and good concealment, I find it a solid cruiser and I'm a bit sad that I likely will sell the Ibuki for Zao. Given Flamu's recent commentary, I took reload mod on the ship instead of range mod, which reduces the reload to 12.1 s, which I feel gives it actually pretty decent firepower, to the point where I have the feeling that if people consider Roon a T9 cruiser worth something, Ibuki now should be solid. Also, 16.5 km range can be worked with. I had prior experience with Atago getting uptiered all the time and that ship has less range and no spotter plane (Neither had I so far, as I only just unlocked B hull, but even with A hull, it wasn't too hard aside from cyclones). Compared to Mogami one tier lower, you lose a good bit of dpm, but the ship is a bit more durable due to repair party and the accuracy allows some pretty brutal shots where Mogami would scatter much more, so it does feel like a decent progression, especially as Zao also is not a dpm cruiser. Ibuki certainly gets my approval.

Met him once in his Taiho on the enemy team. It was a quite short experience, as someone got like 5-6 kills and at least one cap. Our CV wasn't complete crap, but well...

The main part pissing me off is sitting in a smoke for a full 90 seconds and firing to fire at stuff. I typically consider this questionable when I'm in a Harekaze, a DD that can actually go through cruisers at an appreciable rate, because it means we are down a scout. But in an Asashio, selfish use of smokes like this is basically just terrible. I'm pretty sure against the right targets with right ammo choice, you can do decent damage (even if it can get hard when the opponent actively counters you), but sitting there and firing at cruisers from ranges where AFT kick in...Like, there's using these guns in DD vs DD fights and kiting the enemy to death or providing supporting fire to allied DDs, which is very efficient use of the guns. Then comes selfish firesetting on BBs that blew damage control on a torp hit, which is not exactly a great usage of a DDs time, but can have value. And then there is trying to set fires on a cruiser, because their armour shatter shells anyway, bonus points if it's a T9 or T10 cruiser with a repair party. The only way to top that imo is by just parking behind an island and derping shells into the landscape. And depending on what you are shooting, the difference in effective results between shooting cruiser or island might be minimal.

You mean as long as there's plenty of people who can't figure out how to react to the presence of an Asashio in battle and few can be bothered to coordinate? Because apart from being basically a potato harvesting device, I'd still call it unreliable if it utterly falls apart as soon as my enemy has some brain. Also, please think about how your posts embolden people who think this is a legit approach: Do you just have about any idea how to play a DD effectively? I would guess not, stemming from such "qualified" remarks. This is basically what I mean that this is a "special" DD for "special" players, because it basically is a ship that is easy mode in one area that is easy and an uphill battle in so many of the more challenging aspects of DD play that you'd likely end up with two kinds of players: Those who know how to play DDs effectively and go out of their way to bother with all the important stuff still while making sure they can get their impact. Sadly they go on and call this DD "skilled" just because the skill ceiling is too low and one running into it feels like it requires so much skill to transcend it (often utterly misunderstanding the concept behind "skill ceiling") and a teamplay DD, because this ship forces teamplay to be successful, more than any others (though for any good WR in any DD, teamplay is essential). Or they just like to sink a few BBs for easy stress relief and don't care about the DD being a silly concept. Those who have basically no idea how to play a normal DD, get great results from a DD that at least holds their hands in one area, which is more than they'd ever achieve in any other DD where even the most basic stuff requires effort and who then think this is a good DD, because suddenly they get something done. Nevermind any of the more important aspects, this kind of player wouldn't be able to get much out of the ship, so that'd be wasted on them. And honestly, one part of why this ship utterly disgusts me is that it basically encourages people of the second group to continue their brainless behaviour with way more "success" than they deserve. If someone who cannot figure out how to play the game derps around in a normal DD, they at least quickly become a nonfactor in the match and while bad for the team they are on, the other team doesn't have to care much. As to why your post is just a great example of crappy Asashio play, I'm too tired to explain that at 6 am without heavy usage of expletives, but I think anyone with half a brain can tell you why sitting in a smoke for 90 seconds to use your IJN peashooters on a bunch of cruisers 13+ km away is just utterly terrible.

I'm not sure growth was really that big of a deal to begin with. Kancolle always was a game that basically generated hardly any profit of its own, but would promote sales of merch. For that to happen, you don't even need people to play the game.

It's good at doin the easiest and least influential thing and crap at doing the more difficult and more influential things. It's basically the ship for people who either just want to derp around in randoms for the heck of it or those who have no idea how to play a normal DD and thus need this "special" DD for "special" players.

If it was a fine little DD I'd not be bitter. As it is, it's a severely limited ship that needs less skill to do what it still can do, while being even less able than any other DD to handle other stuff. It's a terrible design and it takes up the name of the Asashio-class. DDs that actually are designed to do their job deserve respect. But a DD that specialises in farming idiot BBs, somethin that basically belongs to the simplest things in the skillset of any decent DD captain, at the cost of some really important other things deserves no respect. Nor do the majority of Asashio players, because when you choose Asashio, you basically are fine with bringing a gimped ship to the match instead of a proper ship. Most people who buy something to get it's capability to do X like to use capability X. Most people who don't like it stay away. I hope that's not rocket science to you...

Is some Benson a T10 DD now? Always glad to shatter the illusions of people who think this DD deserves any respect. Congrats, you can set fires. Not really any better than others (and much worse than some), but I guess that makes the guns decent. Just like being able to spot (while being unable to take out the enemy spotting) makes the whole ship great as a team player or whatever. when will people stop praising this ship for being able to do something that others can do and where Asashio has barely any advantages?

Unless you are 1v1 with a cruiser at the end and can't do anything but die. Then you can be absolute unicum and still get shredded.

No need to turn off AA on Asashio. Your AA range matches aerial detection range. AA guns only open up on aircraft that spot you anyway. And just because it can be turned off doesn't mean AA is pointless. DDs with defAA can avoid getting absolutely murdered by CV, ships with high base AA can at least kill pesky spotter planes. Asashio can neither. Against cruisers and BBs, you'd measure in fires per minute, where these guns aren't special either. And dpm vs cruisers or BBs never is the issue on Asashio, because you can't pen most of them. British DDs have smaller guns, but noone cares, because 120 mm guns are no different in HE pen than 127 mm, except with IFHE. Against larger ships, these guns have better rate of fire and good fire chance, meaning they have a far easier time setting fires. Cossack even has an added gun turret. And British 114 mm DDs at T9 and T10 get British semi-AP which you can use to shred cruisers anyway in manners only the IJN alt-DD line can.

Because basically your post, by your own admission now, is directed at folks who have no clue how to DD, in which case they got better things to do than to play T8 DD. And the rest is you getting data wrong. I have 17 DDs in port (not counting [Shimakaze]) and when I don't know a value, I look it up properly, before making bold claims that just don't hold up. And while concealment is one thing, Asashio having functional AA is a claim that beats everyhing I heard so far and makes one wonder whether you even know what DD you are talking about. Your post got dissected because basically every paragraph had some issues with it.

The only ones were fire chance is decent. Yeah, but heavy plating is the exception, not the rule. And even then, others just burn these to the ground. Yorck I'd give a passing grade. About on par with other heavy cruisers at T7.

PT on BBs isn't there for dodging. At best if you are a Vanguard. But typically it's so you know whether Someone might have a shot on you. E.g. on Estuary at the start, ship gets spotted. If the counter stays up for a bit, it's best to be wary of incoming shells across the mid and look out for any windows in the mountains where this might happen. If it goes away, you likely are fine. How many of the opponents are actually focusing on you. If you aren't the sole ship around, this gives you an indicator of how many enemies at the moment are bothering with you. If it's just 1 and the rest don't bother, you can focus on that one and be a bit more aggressive till it goes up. Without, you'd have to constantly keep check and potentially assume them all to be aiming at you. Whether there are potentially more unspotted enemies around. Spot only 2 targets but 4 are targetting you? Well, likely be more careful when pushing into that. Torpedo alert. One of the most lauded uses of the PT counter. It goes down and up again when people switch to torp tubes. It's possible to avoid counter-change if you stay in torp mode on a DD and never use guns, so you gotta be more careful there, but the more important guns are on a ship, the more reliable it gets. Torpedo-armed cruisers and BBs typically always will switch, because few go in without firing a shot. Given Scharnhorst is a brawler, this is especially useful. Given how often it is useful, compared to how rarely I lose a turret or how little the impact is on torpedo tube survival, PT is definitely my preferred choice. IJN DDs?

The torps are exposed and still are easily hit and incapacitated when running Main Armaments Mod 1. One can guess how much PM helps for that. I'd never switch out of PT for that. PT is just too useful for that. IFA is imo not worth it, as you can't react in time, this is not some Mogami with double rudder that could actually try dodge. Better look at the PT counter. DCCA is best imo if this captainb goes also on tech line ships. Bismarck or such don't use EL much and double the planes mmeans double the spotting and you don't lose the perks of a plane as much if one plane gets shot down. PM is just there to save your torp tubes from getting destroyed as often. It won't make them invulnerable though. EL is great for Scharnhorst-only build, as 10 sec switch time is manageable. Would consider it at the limit though. EL, imo, is best if you need to switch in a timely manner to make use of an opportunity. I use it on my German cruisers for example, because you fire HE, then switch to AP asap as an opportunity to punish heavily arises. Scharnhorst typically uses AP as standard ammo and falls back to HE vs DDs or vs angled targets. Against angled targets, imo, HE is not time critical, against DDs, overpen vs HE pen is sadly not that much difference. 9 overpens with AP are 6.8k, 9 HE pens 9.5k. Unloading the AP now and just loading HE afterwards is imo more useful than switching around and wasting 10 seconds. Given that the alternatives are however equally marginal QoL buffs, for Scharnhorst-only, it can be useful. Would switch BFT for BoS to address that.

I mean, of coudrse you'll find idiots who don't even do that, but the main thing is, people like to claim how you can still spot with Asashio, as if no other DD could do that.

5.4 km. Do you not run camo or what? If I were to torp a BB from 6 km, why would I need an Asashio? At that point a Kagero could delete the BB. Or a Hsienyang if you need DWT. Two twin mounts of 25 mm Type 95 for 10 dps. Tachibana at T2 has her main guns act as AA for 8 dps. T3 DDs outclass the Asashio in AA. As I think @ShinGetsu once said, it's interesting how it needs Asashio for people to discover that DDs can in fact spot and teamplay.

This. If not, DCCA.

Frankly, I would love to take EM on IJN DDs, but I typically find straight up RoF buffs better. As the majority of the time you are kiting anyway, two turrets already have not too hard a time staying on target and I doubt the third will matter, unless you angle in and out, in which case EM isn't that important to begin with. AR to throw out more shells and if you get reduced to low hp, more torpedoes, is a bit more useful imo. As to IFHE, it's not salvaging this DD for me, as it's still piss poor solution, but it is some better solution than nothing. So far, I got killed by an Asashio once in my career, which was as a Prinz Eugen on 600 hp. After the third salvo, the Asashio managed to actually hit the superstructure and do damage. With IFHE, one salvo would have sufficed. Yesterday, I was up vs an Asashio endgame with my Mogami on 3-6k hp or so and that thing had full hp. Had it had IFHE, it would have gunned me down without issues, but it just tried to torp me ( ) then proceeded to shoot me while smoking up. HE did predictably nothing to a 25 mm hull, he switched to AP and did a bit before I angled too sharply. In the end, he tried to go for a ram, but was stopped in his tracks by Mogami's overwhelming firepower. Obviously, if I wasn't this low, the low dpm on an asashio would still not win a gun duel, but it's all about improving the odds. In the end though, if I wanted a DD that I can rely on to be useful no matter what, I wouldn't go with Asashio, as I have better options.

6 km secondaries with -20% dispersion on them with the secondary flag adding 5% more range and a bit more dispersion reduction. That's basically what you'd want at best. And even then, it's sub-par, because apart from DDs and a few cruisers, the secondaries struggle killing anything bigger. Sharp contrast to Gneisenau, where it shreds most things at T7.