A Look Through Time: Japanese Cruisers

[The_EURL_Guy]

We're here to tell you about Japanese cruisers, assemble the "Ten," and reward our readers!

Read it on the portal

[lmperial_Japanese_Navy]

These would have been so much more interesting if they have somekind of gimmick like smoke or torpedo reload booster even speed booster. 

 

I mean when you compare them to the pan-American cruisers that gets funny button that magically give you more penetration (why is that even a thing outside of super ships ?) , they get heal since tier 2 because reason, they will have flat shell trajectory, and even improved heal starting from tier 7.

 

 Then you look at the IJN CLs ... They look like they were designed in 2016, nothing interesting and nothing unique. Large ships with massive citadel, slow firing guns without any interesting characteristic like improved penetration or flat trajectory. They also get old conumsables and heal doesn't exist until tier 9, so having to play the Gokase, Omono or Shimanto is incredibly boring as you can not play agressive because you have no armor, no good DPM, no tool to keep you alive like smoke or heal.

 

The only good ship from this branch based on the paper is the Yodo the rest that you will need to grind through are mediocre that really offer  nothing new or better over the already good heavy curiser line.

 

Ironically the Mogami 155 is still the best IJN CL by the way...

 

 

[lmperial_Japanese_Navy]

Another thing that i have to point is the laziness with the permanent camouflages...

What can i even say  ? Literally made in microsoft Paint no more than 2 minute, wow...

 

Compare to the ones weh ave on the right side we have unique camouflage with patterns and different contrast then the ones in the left side is literally just black, seriously ?

And since camos are no longer give extra bonuses so the only reason you use them is to decorate your ships and make them stand out, but how are these black paint interesting ? They should not even cost in doubloon, even if it was up for silver it would still be a waste of money.

 

The Gokase is apparently is the only ship with a decent perma camo but for some reason this doesn't contune with the rest of the branch, fr you could at least painting their bridges with camo patterns and left the rest of the ship in plain color if the developers are so lazy.

[Viridem]

The grey camos are historically accurate. Very few cruisers received anything different from that. It looks like Sasebo blue, which I like a lot.

 

Myoukou did receive a camo, although the one in game is only similar to the real one, for some reason.

Kiso and Tama got a camo for operation AL.

And Atago's is similar to the one Takao received, I think.

Some got white stripes to their funnel, although it might not have been to camouflage the ship...

 

That's it. That's all the camos there were for cruisers.

A couple of other ships received some, like Mutsuki or Haruna, but otherwise almost all capital ships were in a solid shade of grey.

 

I think it's a step in the right direction. Some perma camos, and especially the nation-specific consumables are cringy eyesores.

Good thing we can mod that away from the game.

 

Gokase is extremely fun to play and an effective ship. Going 39 knots feels very nice.

I don't know how you can judge Shimanto and Yodo, as you apparently don't own the ships.

Agano is indeed a disaster, and Omono is very mediocre.

 

I could forgive Agano, as it might not be easy to make a real-life bad design become good in game. I mean they could step away from historical accuracy, but I appreciate that they don't.

There's no excuse for Omono. Notably they had no business nerfing the guns' dpm so hard.

The tier VIII and above look like travesties, notably these main guns, but I prefer to get my hands on them first.

 

At least Tokachi is a very nice premium.

 

I don't mind the lack of gimmick. If anything, that's something expected from a Japanese line.

Sure there's TRB on DDs, but it's only an option on the main line (a bad option for the average player), and the split line might have received a bit too much anyway...

 

I'm disappointed however by the concealment and maneuvrability of these. That's something uncharacteristic. Let me dodge or choose to go dark ! I don't care if the ship has 60k hp, what am I gonna do with that if I can't properly avoid shells anyway ?

Well, I'll see very soon, I guess.

[Fatal_Ramses]

Does the line pick up at any tier?

so far I've experienced

- slow turret rotation

- slow reload

- low hp-pool

- non-existent armor

Sure sounds like a Japanese ships in this game.

Is this line even worth dropping Free-exp to grind that yearly SC + Xmas certificate?

[TakahashiRyosuke]

2 hours ago, Fatal_Ramses said:

Does the line pick up at any tier?

so far I've experienced

- slow turret rotation

- slow reload

- low hp-pool

- non-existent armor

it does pick up, but in the most meaningless way possible.

- turret rotation gets superfast - doesn't really matter, as...

- ...reload remains slow (~13s) up until T10, where you can get it down to ~10-11s

- HP pool gets decent, especially if you use the SE skill - but it doesn't really matter, as...

- ...armor is still non-existent, you eat citadels from any angle

 

but here is the best part:

- starting from T8 (Shimanto), guns are changed to dual purpose 150mm, which have asthmatic alpha damage (~1500, meaning you do ~500dmg per shell if you pen). If you want to ambush a DD hiding in the smoke, you really have to be careful - you can't just blap them (as can 155mm Mogami for example), which means that they have a lot of time to just torp you or in many cases even gun you down, as your armor is paper-thin.

 

Those ships are crap and they promote long range HE spam - yaaay, exactly what the game needs...

 

Is the line worth grinding? Well, may people already said it - it seems WG wants this line to be a free-XP sink, as anything below T9-10 is just pure pain to play.

[Fatal_Ramses]

2 hours ago, TakahashiRyosuke said:

- ...reload remains slow (~13s) up until T10, where you can get it down to ~10-11s

 

but here is the best part:

- starting from T8 (Shimanto), guns are changed to dual purpose 150mm, which have asthmatic alpha damage (~1500, meaning you do ~500dmg per shell if you pen). If you want to ambush a DD hiding in the smoke, you really have to be careful - you can't just blap them (as can 155mm Mogami for example), which means that they have a lot of time to just torp you or in many cases even gun you down, as your armor is paper-thin.

Damn, I had some hopes for this line. It was already going to be hard since IJN didn't really put effort on light cruisers and WG had to invent most of the ship in the techtree.

I am doing Ops with VII Omono and took a peak on the rest and saw that the reload don't really improve. Seems like I'm doing Shimanto in ops too and maybe skip IX with free-exp once we have the next wows-anniversary next autumn.

 

2 hours ago, TakahashiRyosuke said:

Those ships are crap and they promote long range HE spam - yaaay, exactly what the game needs...

Gokases and Omonos shells already feel floaty, those ships would not be my top or even second choice for long range HE spamming.