HaachamaShipping

I like to extent benefit of the doubt and believe in the positive potential of other people. Why else would I click "Battle" over and over again?

Well, to be fair to OP, you don't need to play the ship to pose a question. Might be they want info before purchasing the ship. It gets all the consumables, which are Damage Control (every ship gets that and it's inbetween the cruiser damecon and BB damecon, so no quick reload), Repair Party (less charges than a full on BB and not cruiser repair, so citadel damage really hurts), defAA or hydro (like all cruisers, though hydro is German hydro) and a spotter plane or fighter (like the other cruisers). It basically gets one more consumable than a typical German cruiser. Compare that to a Leander, who gets what? Repair, smoke and hydro?

I skip IJN DD range upgrades and I tell you, I do not miss the extra range at all. 8.4 km range is more than enough for a Kagero. Torpedoes of any kind are bloody useful on a ship. For a cruiser, 10 km range is pure luxury. That's IJN levels of range. But it's not like you need that kind of range to get results...

Graf Spee is well-armoured compared to other T6 cruisers, yes. But being better armoured than mostly paper armour ships isn't hard. Graf Spee still hardly bounces BB caliber shells, Graf Spee is a larger target, Graf Spee takes tons of HE damage. The entire survivability edge of the ship is basically down to it having tons of hp and a heal. The guns also might look nicer than they are. 6 guns, every 20 seconds means you can devastate cruisers... maybe. You can potentially citadel BBs. But unless you land those shots in their sides, the GS is just a ship with bad dpm, especially if it ever tries to use HE, where it just outright sucks. This thing is practically the polar opposite of Nürnberg, all survivability, not that much sustained damage output. RN cruisers have better damage output than Graf Spee. Especially against something like DDs. Also, they get smoke... Lastly, Graf Spee has like 28 knots speed. Many BBs in its MM spread are faster than the GS. The ship is decent, but far from OP and it needs that heal to not outright suck with its gun RNG and being fat and slow. It's at its strongest against cruisers, where it can tank AP and where it can hope for citadels and heal after withering the hail of likely HE fired at it. But if you look at MM these days, where only CVs are more sparse than cruisers, I'd rather play the Nürnberg. Ship isn't bad, just at times frustrating. Graf Spee is very fun for operations though.

Both cannot overmatch 32 mm of bow armour. You can park a Bismarck (or pretty much any T8+ BB) bow-on to an enemy BB that isn't called Yamato/Musashi and bounce shells for days. The sole thing that you can pen from the front is the superstructure and that's pretty much it. From the side, yes, you can pen a lot, but Bismarck can do that too. You won't get as many devastating salvos, but you can still get solid results and the reload is pretty decent.

I know, there are multiple threads already on this ship and I posted in quite a few of them already, but I thought I'd start a new one. Not to whine about how this ship is OP or how it needs a buff. I just wanted to express my experiences so far in encountering the Asashio in battle and preferably, what I think of the ship and its supposed concept based on that and maybe someone can actually tell me afterwards what to do. First off, I never played Asashio. So, I cannot tell how fun it is. I can only judge from my experience of IJN DD gameplay... I am not too keen on purchasing one just to try it out. The ship is a Kagero in all aspects other than its torpedo armament and well, there is a lot to be critiqued about the Kagero, from its lack of gun dpm, to its not too high hp, to the pretty poor AA suite and the rather low speed. It has good concealment though, which is nice, but other than that and the torpedoes, the ship certainly is not going to shine. And the torpedo armament. Well, yes, it will likely have pretty consistent results vs BBs, but at the cost of being unable to torpedo cruisers and DDs? Not worth 35 Euro to me, so, well. Others might think differently, but I for myself don't see the fun to be worth that much. What I do know of though, is how it is to play with and against this ship. And oh boy, I hate it. Of all the poor decisions WG ever made with this game, I rank Asashio as the poorest in regards to a single ship. As most people know (though it still seems unknown to quite a few Asashio players), the armament of the thing is extremely lop-sided, focused on killing one target and one target only - BBs (with rare CV kill mixed in). Asashio can kill BBs far easier than any other DD if it is allowed to do so. Even if I do not quake in fear when I see an Asashio on the enemy lineup while taking out Bismarck or Amagi, I certainly acknowledge, no other DD is as good at killing BBs. PA DDs have deep water torpedoes too, but they don't do potentially 72 knots with over 20k damage and stand-off range, nor do they have a second set of torpedoes ready in case they need to get a second chance. And torpedoes are the best weapons a DD has to kill a BB. Unless you are something like a Khabarovsk with torpedo ranges too short and guns up to the task. But for most DDs, killing BBs is done with torpedoes and these torpedoes are fast enough that even if I was on my Bismarck with hydro, if the Asashio is good and rushes me, I'm likely dead. I so far ate one single torpedo from an Asashio, but I sure as hell don't want to try fight this thing on my own in a BB. Against anything else... Asashio is pretty much just an easy kill. Some might argue "But I killed x with the guns", but frankly, short of another IJN DD, most destroyers handily outperform this ship and any cruiser eats it alive. It is not impossible to get kills on cruisers and dDs, but typically by having backup, in which case, most cruisers will happily ignore this ship and deal with whatever seems more threatening to them. In which case, typically an Asashio gunning down a cruiser is less the asashio's dpm being worthwhile, it is a cruiser caught out of position and about to die anyway and any other DD would have accomplished this task too, if not faster. So, basically, unless the enemy is utter potato or already so low any ship could finish them off, Asashio is not going to win such a fight. What this means, is that this DD is often hailed as the ship that enforces teamplay. "Now the BBs need to move up else they die alone" and "Cruisers/DDs can act as a screen to protect them easily and shut down the Asashio". And admittedly, the ship itself certainly benefits from teamplay, as it requires the rest of your team to kill all the targets you can't kill, or at least to lower them to an hp range where you can go for it with the guns. They need to keep DDs/cruisers off you and hopefully shoot at whatever you try to keep spotted with your good concealment. So, is this the new teamplay DD? Is this the DD that will make the miracle happen? Yeah, of course not. It's goddamn random. Not only is Asashio's design enabling and promoting a certain selfishness, compared to say, USN DDs, which are great team-player DDs, Asashio also has two more flaws that prevent her from revamping the meta. First off, the ship is one premium that comes up every once in a while and way too often gets little done, so, why would you change gamestyle? Even more, people who know how to support effectively in BBs did so before and will deem that the best approach to countering this ship. People who camped before will feel vindicated in their believe that 20 km gun range is to be used at 20 km, because why else would the devs have given BB such ranges if not to snipe from halfway into the next map? You don't change psychology with one single ship. Just like few German BB and cruiser players are going to invest drastically into their AA just because a Zeppelin might show up, nor will there not be potatoes who'll get caught completely out of position and be oneshot. Which actually is the second point... the playerbase will not magically grow smarter. Already before, teamwork could win games. Cooperation was extremely powerful if pulled off effectively and could win games. So, why would people who'd have an incentive to cooperate before and did not do it, why would they do it now? If they even know what an Asashio is. I originally thought I'd hate seeing Asashio on my team, but frankly, I hate seeing it on either team. On my team, they sometimes are pretty decent, in which case, fine, but often they are pretty dumb and just manage to suicide, in which case, well... But the real frustration is an Asashio on the enemy team. Not so much if I'm a BB. As a BB, I just try to position myself in ways that allow me to matter while being somewhat secure. But damn is this thing an annoyance if I'm a DD or a cruiser. It isn't really going to kill me, no, but when I see an Asashio in the enemy line-up, I basically am now presented with a choice. Play as usual, do my thing. Try to have a positive impact and do my best to win the game, while trusting the rest of the team to keep a lookout for Asashio and the BBs to act intelligently? Or do I try to make sure BBs survive by playing torpedo picket? Well, as a cruiser, this choice is often made for you, concealment says I don't necessarily want to be between the BBs and the enemy without some cover. But no torpedo path goes through islands and such, so if I sit behind islands, likely I'm not going to pick up anything. But if I position my cruiser out in the open between an Asashio and my BBs, I'm likely about to die to enemy BBs. If I take out Harekaze though, likely one of the most well-suited asashio-counters in the game, thanks to never getting outspotted, it now seemingly adds to the many tasks I should do, from capping, spotting and getting damage on the enemy, I now also should try to cover the BBs from torpedo salvos. Which can be pretty unpleasant, if you have some BBs that have no idea of what they are doing. Just two days ago, I for example had a game on Trident, enemy has an Asashio. Great. Gonna scout, try to see where the BBs go, try to spot torpedoes. Most went towards where normally A is, I get picked up by RPF, which seems like a valid skill to take on an Asashio. running in front of the BBs, there's now a fight between the BBs there, when suddenly our Derpitz decides, they are German, they got torps, they must go on the offensive and brawl or something against the enemy North of A, including at least one Chapayev, so, well, I tell them to get back, because if they do that, they likely eat torpedoes and die and I try my best to still go out there, likely more risky than I should have played, trying to always have the option to run for cover if that 20 second radar kicks in. I did consider ditching the Tirpitz and likely would have if they had not returned on their own, but it is a hard call to make, because, well, it's a top tier BB. Even if they aren't unicum, you do not want your BBs to just get farmed, because then you likely lose. Later that game, Asashio was spotted, it was on the other flank, trying to torpedo cruisers. Because you know... Is anyone really surprised? sadly, I felt kind of betrayed, because had I known that (enemy told us in all chat that their Asashio was being useless), I would've been able to be of much more use than covering for that suicidal Tirpitz, but one can never be sure. It could've been some unicum, that goes to wreck all of our BBs. Thanks to how hard it is to get a spot on Asashio and how dangerous the ship is to one single type of target, it's just brutal how much potential threat exists. and I would think "well-played to that Asashio for locking me down", but it wasn't well-played at all. It was just their existence alone, while they themselves were about as useless as could be. And so, is this ship OP? No, I still don't think so. as long as it cannot carry matches on its own, it isn't. It certainly is not totally useless, but it is limited. I already said elsewhere in all these Asashio topics, Asashio is a ship that performs best on a potato team vs a potato team. Namely on a team that is unable to kill the enemy BBs without Asashio, but where the enemy BBs also are dumb enough to die to Asashio. I stand by that. this ship doesn't just thrive on 5 BB per side matches, it thrives on the average skill level of the player base being low. To me, this ship is a mistake, not because of its power ceiling, but because of its floor. This ship, basically, has a skill floor that is about as low as it gets. It basically caters to the lowest common denominator of torpedo play. If you have just about any idea of how to use torpedoes and stay alive in IJN DDs, you'll likely get some numbers out of this ship. Just, it also has a pretty hard skill ceiling. In a way, people having better stats in this ship than in other DDs seems less indicative of the ship being good. It just is more foolproof than most other DDs. If you take a Kagero or a Harekaze and yolo into a cap like a moron, you die and get nothing done. If you torp all game long, avoiding caps, you are maybe going to land a couple fish, but you won't get far. In Asashio, torpedoes are so much easier to deploy against the intented target, that farming damage would likely become easier, just if no BBs are around any longer, what then? So, as a summary, I dislike this ship because: The ship is way too easy to get something done, while being near impossible to get anything done beyond a certain point. Thus enabling potatoes to do far more than their skill level would typically allow them to do, while it shits all over more skilled play. This ship requires from both teams more teamplay than one could reliably find in random battles, making it very frustrating to have it in the match. Even for people who are practically immune to the ship, because other people in the team get so hard-countered. Despite the requirement for teamplay, this ship design does not promote it, but instead promotes being basically just another damage farmer, not a scout or cap contester, jobs DDs actually should do, as every other ship can damage farm too. Apart from that, I will also adress one more concern, which is what I heard during the development phase, when some CCs (afaik LWM for example suggested it) brought up that this DD might be indicating potential changes to the IJN DD main line and WG might use Asashio to test the viability, in which case, please no. By all that is good, please don't. I know, it is rumours, but I really cannot express enough how utterly terrible it'd get if IJN DDs as a general were brought on Asashio's level. Already now, it is one of the less common picks to take a Kagero into ranked, for good reason, but if Kagero had DWTs, yeah, no. I do think IJN torpedoes have been overnerfed, and with ships like the PA DDs being introduced there sometimes is this feeling of "Is torpedo boat destroyer now less a specialisation than just an indication of what the ships are limited to?", but please no more deep water torpedoes on IJN DDs. Especially if you cannot hit cruisers. Already on the PA DDs, you cannot hit DDs, but typically, most of the time you do not torpedo DDs and for all non-DD threats, especially cruisers, deepwater torpedoes are an immense threat, while IJN torpedoes are a more moderate one. If IJN is to stay a torpedo-focused line, then do not nerf the utility of the one weapon system that is actually decent on the ships and don't make them asashio-levels of super-situational. I almost want my IJN DDs to be left as is, because I also once wanted an Asashio premium and now it's this toxic pile of garbage. So, what do people think and how do you think I should handle this as a DD? And a small weeb bonus for all those who read this far.

Played it during Space battles. Felt solid. Main improvements imo: You not just get 50% more guns, you also finally get 6 fast-loading rifles in the front. Bow camping puts you no longer at a great firepower disadvantage, except against Yamato/Musashi. With FdG, you basically have to either make do with 4 guns or find a second target to your side. The secondaries actually get improved. While not ideal, I'd say this ship gets far more out of a secondary spec than the FdG. Bismarck secondaries mostly are decent for T8 and hurt a lot at lower tiers. FdG has worse MM and cannot use them as much. GK finally gets an array of 128 mm guns to throw in with IFHE. Bow plating gets improved. This ship is the least likely to get overmatched. I just cannot see me play FdG enough to get a GK anytime soon.

I mean, the qualities of the ship, the low skill ceiling and low skill floor are pretty obvious. The fact it is easy as all hell to land torps with it, yet the fact you can't do much if pitted againd DDs or god forbid cruisers is also known and Asashio basically has to make an impact early on to allow the team to follow up and kill the little ships. These are things that you could already get from most reviews on the ship (with a good few already calling it toxic and not good for gameplay back then). Which is basically why this ship is not OP, but why certain people really dislike it still, because while anyone can play this ship, the ones who will gravitate towards this ship most and get the most out of this ship are people who have difficulties with normal IJN DDs (or any DDs) and wouldn't get any great damage done with normal torps. And I don't own an Asashio, I'm pretty sure if I did, I'd have better stats in it than many of my other IJN DDs, because I'm not some unicum player, but I find it preferable if people (including me) actually have to learn the game, not get handed some ship that needs even less skill and reduces any incentive to get better, while it gives other players a greater headache vastly out of proportion to the Asashio player's skill level. It's why the ship is such a bad design and why the great majority of reviews was very skeptical of the ship being a valuable addition to the game.

Bismarck in TX matches isn't really in all that bad a place. I for my part prefer Bismarck over FdG in these situations for sure. Bismarck has better concealment, better maneuverability and is smaller, so less of a target. Bismarck shells bounce off other BBs bows, but that is true for all T8+ BBs that are not Yamato/Musashi or fire HE. Bismarck still can do ok against cruisers and DDs though and has decent armour. Many of the things that are dangerous to FdG and GK (mostly crap like British BB HE and Hindenburg long-range HE spam) are also what poses the greatest threat to you, but as a smaller less visible ship you are better off. That is not to say Bismarck beats GK, but Bismarck is T8. GK is T10. And as long as you don't mind getting also thrown into T10 matches, having a decent chance to fight T6 and T7 makes it very enjoyable and tier for tier, Bismarck as top tier has a much easier time walking over lower tiered opposition than GK. Nürnberg's only real issue is the lack of armour, that is universal at T6. Other than that, it's a good cruiser with monstrous RoF, pretty good range, free IFHE and while the turrets are mostly placed in the rear, they turn 360°, making it far less problematic than other designs with turrets mostly in the rear. The turret configuration also makes for decent kiting qualities.

The only map where I saw Lemmings work occasionally is Two Brothers, because the map design basically prevents both sides from supporting each other and if you get one side to push and the other to successfully stall, you can get results. But I'd not recommend believing in the Lemming. If you find yourself in one, either split up, or try your best to push the train forward and avoid it ever grinding to a halt.

I don't have a Shino (because I'm lazy and haven't bothered with missions), but is there a reason it is "bad"? I mean, from what I see, it's a Fubuki with its third turret and a bit shorter ranged torpedoes and less AA. Given Bucky isn't some AA goddess anyway (pretty much no IJN DD can defend itself properly against a same-tier CV), I always considered Shinonome a pretty nice ship I would like to have some day, when I can be bothered to continue that campaign. If top tier, it might even be a genuine hybrid boat.

Some of the funniest matches I had in the Shchors were me getting reduced to double or triple digit hp values in the first few minutes, then sitting behind islands, using the insane dpm to burn down BBs that couldn't see me.

Well, cruisers also still exist... A rare species these days, but still...

FP doesn't reduce the time fires tick, that is BoS, Damage Control Mod 2 or the flag. Damage Control Mod 1 and the FP skill reduce the fire chance, so it is harder for the ship to catch on fire in the first place. On this, please do not use the repair party to counteract a single fire if you specced into full survivability. Fires actually will deal less damage than your repair party gets back (especially with repair flag) and you'll basically waste recovery potential. I'd recommend letting the single fire or even a double fire burn (at full anti-fire spec, together they deal slightly more than one fire deals normally) and only popping repair party once you lost about a third or so of your hp and you get your full potential out of repair party. Typically, a BB has enough hp to still not be an instant kill, if you don't show broadside and if you have Adrenaline Rush, you can enjoy that. Use damage control to put out fires only if you are no longer being HE spammed and can expect to not eat a torpedo or more HE spam for a minute. It's not really a hard rule to say extinguish at x fires, because if you get spammed by three HE flinging cruisers and a RN BB, putting out even 3 fires is just going to save you until the next salvos come in. At that point, it is better to just try to bail as fast as possible and extinguish only once out or if hp runs critically low. If you died there, damage control discipline wouldn't save you, learning to not overextend does.

Depends. If you hit a DD that sat still in their smoke broadside on, yeah, that is dumb and shouldn't have happened with skilled people. If you manage to nuke that other DD by properly anticipating its movement though and catching them off-guard, that happens. Especially to the more sluggish DDs like an Akizuki. Maybe not with Shima 20 km torpedoes, but with any torpedoes that have a decent speed and concealment. It takes far more stupidity than that for a Gearing to lose a gunfight though against the second worst gunboat it could meet and as ShinGetsu stated, pretty much any DD with decent guns would have killed that Gearing.

But muh 15 cm secondaries on Graf Spee!

I sadly only ever got to meet an Asashio in a gun battle with my Harekaze twice. But these encounters were pretty much what made me post this thread. That's about what you can expect when these two DDs meet and both know how to use guns. Thing is, I had to sail there from the other flank to do this, because noone on that flank seemed able to and the Asashio sank 1 BB, two more would flood to death. Which is why I said, Asashio with its low skill floor and low skill ceiling enables potatoes to have far more influence than they should have (this guy was obviously not potato), as merely by being alive, the Asashio is a potential threat that is hard to ignore for anyone who wants their team to win.

That's a different ship though. The Großer Kurfürst actually seems to have a volume of fire befitting of T10 and its secondaries are decent enough for people to pull off IFHE secondaries, thanks to the 128 mm guns. I experimented with that stuff during the space battle event, to see how well such would work and it certainly felt different from FdG.

Also, some BB decks. Something like Amagi and Izumo have pretty much 32 mm plating all over.

Usually, at most, my Yuubari gets attacked once, regardless of where I am. CV won't try again.

Thanks for telling us. Also, hell yes.

I play a mix of classes. Most often I get winrates over 50%. Not unicum, but at least decent, I guess. Playing a mix of ships is not bad. It shows you what to watch out for with different classes. For example, knowing how USN guns work helps you survive in a Japanese DD, because you can take advantage of that. But more on that in a bit. With all IJN DDs that are not the Akizuki (not Akatsuki) the primary armament is the torpedo. The only things approaching hybrid territory are the Akatsuki, the Harekaze, the Shinonome and maybe Minekaze and Yuugumo. The rest has guns that you should keep in mind as having, but that you should not play around. One important thing to know in any DD, but especially in the Japanese, is your surface detection range and how it stands in relation to other DDs you encounter. Most Japanese DDs have very competitive detection ranges, meaning they will often have the edge over other nations DDs, because you spot them first. Which doesn't mean you gun them down when you spot them (because they have the better guns and will kill or at least seriously harm you), but you either disengage if you got no support, or you stay in range to spot them, but far enough away that they don't spot you. Your team may shoot them then. Akatsuki is kind of special here, for it has a not too great concealment, especially if it faces ships of higher tiers. 6.4 km with Concealment Expert (a must have skill by this tier) is a joke compared to the Kagero with 5.4 km, but also gets you in trouble against ships like Benson or Akizuki, which have around 5.9-6 km detection range. So, an Akizuki will spot you 500 m before you spot them, until they open up fire and reveal their position and by then you are in trouble. So, Akatsuki needs to be a bit more careful and needs to be aware of where enemy DDs are, how to bail if necessary and how to still be useful despite all this. Which in general are good skills to have as a DD captain, because they make sure your floating tincan with no armour and almost no hp isn't just a bit of free exp. Akatsuki is not a bad ship though, because it actually has guns that are interesting. Not your main armament, but tier-for-tier, among the best any IJN DD will ever get. Previous or later DDs meanwhile can try to make the detection range count, by just trying to spot and plan a route to bail, if an enemy shows up. You don't automatically have to run and/or smoke up, if someone arrives, but you should know where you can run, should you need to. So, for landing torpedoes... At lower tiers, it's frankly quite easy to just spam them at where the game tells you to shoot them. The white indicator tells you where to aim to hit, if the enemy retains its current course and speed. Meaning, if they ever change the direction, they evade all the torps thrown at the indicator. Over the tiers, enemies start to learn the game and start to know that as a cruiser or BB, changing direction every now and then is a good idea to not die to sudden torpedoes. Thus, as a DD player, you will also need to learn how to guess what the enemy might do. Will they continue on their course? Will they evade? What would you do? Is there anything that might force them to turn? For example, are they going to expose broadside to your team mates when going on like this? Are they going to turn to not ground? What level of adjustment is necessary for you to hit them on their new course? This is largely up to feeling, which you should develop over the tiers up to now. In general, you want to get as close as possible to your target before launching torpedoes and you want to be paralel. Don't launch from ahead, you want to have them hit their ship broadside on, with minimal chance to evade. The distance should be about as far that you don't get spotted. Keep in mind, some higher tier enemies have radar, that negates this. At T7, it's only premium cruisers, at T8 and up, it's USN and Russian cruisers. Might be the PA DDs and British CLs run radar, but typically they don't. Anyway, against most ships, stay just far enough away, so for Akatsuki, 7 km or 6.8 is a perfectly fine distance, where you are not spotted and you can launch torpedoes. If the enemy turns away slightly, they won't as easily outrun torpedoes, if they turn in,, turn away yourself to keep the distance up. Also, it reduces the time to target, so the time the target has to make random maneuvers to throw off torpedoes. If the enemy seems to be a straight sailer, which happens not too rarely, with the IJN DDs that have 3 launchers, launch one in front of the middle line of the indicator, one after the middle line, one on the indicator itself. It's spreading your torpedoes out a bit just in case they do maneuver slightly, but if not, they likely catch a few that are concentrated in the middle. With two launchers, it's practically one for the first half, one for the second half. Don't rely on this if the enemy moves around lots, shown by the indicator swinging around a lot. There you either try to predict or if you feel it's useless, give up, go somewhere where you can actually get something done. torp better targets. Now, how to kill DDs... easiest is smoke campers. People like to sit in smokes and just fire out of smokes. Even IJN DDs can use smoke to farm damage like that (Akatsuki is not bad at it). Often, they just stay still in the smoke. If the enemy smokes up and you guess they are still in there (or someone is), torpedo the smoke. Either you launch a broad curtain of torpedoes (not wide-spread, just three launches next to each other with no overlap, all narrow spread, to avoid large gaps), or, if you can pinpoint their location (where the shell tracer originates) and they seem to not move a lot, you actually can try get close and launch three spreads exactly on the place where the tracer originates. If the enemy target does not move, they have no chance to evade that once they spot it. And IJN torpedoes do enough damage to either sink an enemy DD or to reduce them to a few thousand hp and thus an easy kill. Not all DDs sit in smokes though. Sometimes you have run-ins with pesky USN DDs that are annoying as all hell and who think they want to sink you for some easy exp. That's when you do the wise thing. Don't banzai charge and suicide. These are IJN DDs, but the war was not won that way. No, you use tactics to outplay them. You turn around and run off. If you cannot outrun them, shoot them with your guns while making slight wiggling maneuvers. Thing is, Akatsuki can murder overconfident USN DDs with ease if they are same or lower tier. USN guns have terrible ballistics at range. By running away, you open the distance and are way more likely to dodge. Your guns meanwhile, are concentrated at the rear, and you can fire them maybe once for every two times the enemy shoots, but they chase you. Your guns have far less distance to fly and IJN ballistics are very favourable. Soon, the western imperialist DD will notice that the Emperor's guns are not just for show and that your boat can defend itself. Or they keep chasing and die. Don't try this against an Akizuki. Akiguns have ok ballistics and they fire very fast and kill you. You got better speed, run for it. Don't try this against Russians. Russians have better ballistics. But you always see them first, so just don't fight them without support. German DDs are kind of fair game. You can use your guns in smokes or from behind cover to sneakily get some shots at big targets and it is very tempting when you landed a torpedo and got a flooding (because enemy will repair it and any fire afterwards will burn lots). Don't just smoke up though. Only smoke up if you know you can afford to not be too useful elsewhere for your team and if someone else is spotting for you. If you are the one spotting and smoke up, who spots? If you smoke up, do not sit still. Move around and point your stern towards where the enemy is or where you think torpedoes might come from. Else you're an easy torp kill, as shown before. Everyone loves torping smokes. Even carriers. To get moving faster, you can actually use speed boost in smokes. Yes, you aren't going to move far, but you accelerate fast and might pull off maneuvers faster than you would be able to otherwise. And Akatsuki especially has 38 knots speed and can move fast anyway (for IJN). These are some basic things to consider when playing IJN DDs and Akatsuki, from my days of playing her. There are a good few more things you will get a feeling for if you keep playing and try to reflect on mistakes that cost you your ship, but I hope this helps. To me, Akatsuki was the DD I got the most games and kills in before I got the Harekaze and I still like the ship, though I play it less since I acquired the Harekaze (as the Harekaze is a genuine hybrid that I enjoy more and I needed credits). Akatsuki is a good ship though and certainly can get results. Disclaimer: I am not claiming IJN guns are going to win duels against other DDs every time or that they are good. They are better than nothing and when using them, it is best to use them in the right way to get the most out of it. Ships like Minekaze, Shinonome and Akatsuki have decent guns for their tier and that's it. Before the Asashio mafio turns up and tells me again how that ship has guns and thus can get DD kills easy.

What is this black magic? Did you torp the greens? If not, please tell me what you did, maybe I can help you get actual results out of this ship.

Hope you also bought the ship for the ship if you got the money.

But anime is culture and manga is literature! I'll end it here, as it's straying too far off-topic.