Furutaka...poor girl, please adjust ANY of its stats, preferrably positively this time ;)

[4venger]

Hello,

So in CBT the Aoba was my very favourite ship from the lineup i played (which was IJN DDs, US + IJN Cruisers(up to tier8) and IJN BBs, with some occasional lowtier carrier play). So i was excited about this ship, i heard the frightening rumours but most IJN cruisers have that. Oh, Godess be gracious this time it hit the spot. Where do i start...

 

 - So, the ship is a heavy cruiser, alas the 203mm armament, which ends up in a very long reload. 20 seconds. Yes, thats only abuot 10 seconds short from a Battleship. And im gonna compare it to those a lot because it has all the typical BB sicknesses.
 - Very slow turret rotation: in themselves, they are not horribly slow, but the fact that they cant keep up with a full rudder has a huge negative impact on it often disorienting the guns for a noticeable amount of time.

 - Weak torpedo loadout. They have less range than on the Kuma, they come in triple tubes with only 1 on each side, however these have a rather convinient angle compared to the later ships. But still, the next note makes them useless..

 - Citadel hits. Yes, they are all over the ship. Hits from stern to bow seem to do full AP damage, and that makes you keep a very safe distance away from even lower tiered cruisers. Heck even when i see one i load Ap for guaranteed thousands of damage. Now ofc the following Aoba gets citadel hits if not careful aswell, but when i played it you could actually do something about it by turning your port/starboard parts away from the enemy as angled as you can.

- ...and the range doesnt make up for it either. The stock range is 11.8 km, which i immideately upgraded to the "top" 13.0 km range since i judged it unusable. And Phoenix classes outrange you along with some others with 6-inch guns that can and will do 3.1k dmg to you with every single Ap penetration, and they have lots of that since they fire about 3 or 4 times by the time you in your Furutaka load your second salvo. And i still did not count the Battleships which will most definitely wreck you like they should, except this time you cant really do much about it, due to the heavy cruiser's sluggishness. And AP incoming from Bow tends to penetrate too, which is quite awkward unlike broadside pens which should happen.

 - Very poor AA/AAA armament. Well, lets be honest the Kuma or the Aoba doesnt have much either, so thats not that big of a deal, just worth noting for when you see incoming fighters and often taking no casualties. Also, no defensive AA perk...i guess its not suitable in tier 5, whatever thats fine. For some reason the 120mm tripleA just doesnt shoot planes at distances more than 1.5-2 km for me which i find rather weird. (tooltip says 4km) o_O

 

Just a thought: the Ap damage feels very underwhelming for the reload, but i can see its there to not kill any lower tiers too fast (i dont wuite understand why tho, it really should be 5000 in my opinion, then again, i dont know all the details)

So thats all that i could set up in the first go, now lets see some positives:

 

- it looks wonderful, hands down.

- It has 6 guns, all 8-inch. No secondaries worth mentioning, they are 80mm(like wtf, those are AA-range of caliber seriously haha )

- It has torpedoes, with longer range than muricans. While this range is mediocre, its still a positive thing even if its only a mere 0.5km.

- It turns alright after you finally get the rudder to reach the desired position. The rudder is rather slow.

- Its an IJN Cruiser! \o/

 

It just feels like the Type59 syndrome all over again. Devs implement a new vehicle that is made out of a prety strong one, make a wonderful working thing and then bat its stats to the ground in fear of making something OP. In case you didnt get the reference, its the T-34-3 that was made as a tier8 chinese prem, and while being pretty usable, has been very carefully "adjusted" to not become OP in even the smallest of details.

 

CONCLUSION!

 

In my humblest of opinions, the ship has nothing going for her. Nothing. It inhabited the bad features from battleships, along with the bad features of cruisers, and somehow didnt manage to get anything good for compensation. I'd enjoy a 15 second reload with a turning speed just fast enough to keep up with a full rudder, since the ships turning speed isnt insane at all. I was thinking about the torpedoes but 1km isnt that big of a deal, 6 can be still useful i guess.

 

In the meantime, i encourage anyone to leave their (preferrably productive) comments about it. (yeah im dreamin, i know )

[Deckeru_Maiku]

Play her like a very fragile BB.

 

Guns loaded with AP can blow a Phoenix or Omaha out of the water...

Guns loaded with HE will squish DDs like overripe tomatoes.

Turret turnrate is bad, but the ship turns not that bad and it's quite fast - so you can use speed and turnrate to do nasty things to BBs with HE ammo.

AA isn't that good, but you get the magical "Slow me down" (or sometimes "kill a whole squad of TBs") catapult plane.

 

Oh, and take a look at it's visibility... The Omaha, even with upgrades, can't shoot further than it's own visbility. It shoots even 1 km or so less than that. The Furutaka's range is longer than her - quite short - visibility. So you can have the first salvo against quite a few opponents. Yes, a small advantage - but an advantage nonetheless.

 

So for me, the Furutaka isn't half as bad as people want to make her. She's just no "normal" cruiser... but a very, very fragile little BB

[wremise]

well she is a CL who wants to be a BB...

 

her shape just look like a "normal" CL, pretty slime waist, she has torpedoes, but well.... she wanted to be a BB. so she got 6 203 guns who are just to heavy for her. she gave up on her strong points of the CL, like speed and moverbility.

well, she doesnt cared, cause she thought, she could turn into a BB, into Furutaka Kai. well... the modernisation wasnt succesful, so she hasnt got any armour or size...

 

well in the end you can say, she is a really poor shipgirl, but you know how you can be kind to her? just play her like a BB, even if its just for show, she will be really happy and you will enjoy the fight, cause she can finally shine a little bit ;)

[Crooq_Lionfang]

I really hated the ship, just couldn't make her work. She's the only one so far where I used the 50% XP flags, and felt like throwing  party the moment I unlocked the Aoba and sold the Furutaka.

 

That said, I do have ideas how to make her better. I think I posted them on the German forum recently, but here's the gist:

when upgrading her give her the historical setup:

- 3x2 203mm main artillery, 2 in the front, one aft

- 2 quad torpedo tubes, one on each side

- 4x2 25mm cannons

 

i think there was also an engine upgrade giving roughly 5% more horse power. She would be much closer to the Aoba (which was supposed to be a Furutaka class ship initially, but got redesigned during construction).

She will and should be weaker than Aoba due to less structure points, main artillery could get something like 17 or 18 secs reload, so slower than Aoba, but better than current Furutaka, with the weak citadel she could use better angles without losing too much firepower, Aoba would have better AA, torp speed and range just as well as rudder shift time can easily be used as balance parameters

[Ghoststalker]

Just bought it, what a difference a heavy cruiser makes versus a light one. Still experimenting with what works or not, but as far as DPS goes, my Kuma seems to be giving it a run for it's money. The shell reload time(too slow!) just seems a bit out of proportion for a cruiser, it feels like I've bought a Battleship not a cruiser. It seems to be fairly decent if it's not the center of attention, and angling does seem to work more than with the kuma, but it still feels super fragile.

[Nechrom]

Bump the turret traverse speed by 25-35% and it's suddenly much better off. All the other "bad stats" I kinda get because it's only tier 5.

She's really resilient for that tier and the guns (once aimed) packs a mean punch. Sure the AA sucks and the reload is bad, but honestly it's pretty balanced for that tier.

[m4inbrain]

I don't really understand where all the hate comes from. Yes, it's not the best ship in the game, but it's not the worst by a long shot. Once you figured out how to play it to its strengths, it's actually quite enjoyable and a dangerous opponent to anyone at her tier.

 

edit: just realised, avg. damage on my furutaka is practically identical to my wyoming (furutaka only 2nd hull researched, not the guns). 40k average, 80odd k max damage is decent for a cruiser on T5. In my books anyway, maybe others have differernt opinions about that.

[Takeda92]

Just one thing you missed, upgrading the guns will give you 17 seconds reload instead of the 21 seconds.

 

Devs know the Furutaka is bad, but they said they don't know what to do with her. It's rather stupid isn't it.. all these suggestions flying around and they say they have no idea..!

[MrB0mbast1c]

The fun starts once she is fully upgraded, and u learn to keep the enemy at long range. The answer of its "underperformance" could be the 1933 modernization... discussed elsewhere... 

 

[MudMonkey]

As I hate playing those boring and sluggish BBs, I hate playing the Furutaka as well. This is just not my playstyle. Imho it is one of the worst ships in this game and certainly the worst I have played so far. My average damage went down since I have started to grind it. Maybe it would be slightly better if the pen on AP would be enhanced. Atm I am saving all my free xp to get past it as fast as possible. If a ship needs a buff its the Furutaka.

[YukiEiriKun]

I got Furutaka yesterday and while her turret traverse is bad, both games I played with her were victories with decent xp. So I was positively surprised by her stock performance.

 

Ir it could just been beginners luck like I had with my stock Kongo.

[Santos47]

Historical Furutaka doesn't have more torps? 

[icedlemon]

imho, furutaka suffers the same as Nagato/colorado, which is more guns >>> higher caliber and HE spamm>>>AP.

 

i think overall if WG could just balance out AP vs HE, and make the damage scale with caliber better, Furutaka would become a pretty decent and unique ship without any further buff to the ship itself.

 

 

[Coenraad]

Furutaka is dependant on the enemy being stupid.

If they don't move to much and show their sides it is a great ship. If they show bow or stern, zihzag and shower you with HE you will have a poor game as the HE in the furu just is bad due to the low rof. I liked mine but she recently had to make place for the Omahe wich is just allot better and easier to play.

The Furutaka is super sexy though.

The Aoba is a very nice ship to play though, had over 100k free xp on her in cbt and still love her in obt too.

[mtm78]

Furutaka bad?

 

 

 

It's a pain to play, but it's not that terrible in performance if I look at my stats with her. I did use +exp flags for each and every battle with her just to get Aoba asap... and Aoba is performing much worse for me then Furutaka did. 

[rancidpunk]

It is truly the most powerful Tier 5 IJN Cruiser!

[Takeda92]

It is truly the most powerful Tier 5 IJN Cruiser!

 

It is the most powerful tier 5 IJN cruiser because it is the only tier 5 IJN cruiser

[JapLance]

The transition between Kuma (a destroyer leader) and Aoba (a heavy cruiser) should be a proper light cruiser like the Agano Class. Furutaka should be given the last reconstruction (Aoba-like) stats and be promoted to tier 6 as the start to another cruiser line (they HAVE to make another one to add Tone and Takao classes).

[Del_Mare]

first game with furutaka: I hit nothing, got wrecked immediately when i faced the first enemy CL

second game: I tried going for enemy BB's, got shot to pieces again without doing any dmg

third game: i tried to hunt DD's, they laughed and sunk me

 

ok, then there follows the glorious "this is sparta!!!" episode, when i used the ramming flag and drove straight into enemy BB's. my average dmg improved a lot

 

right now I managed to get some very decent games with that ship, mostly because i was able to shoot at tier 5 cruisers. they are suitable armored to detonate your AP-shells, and citadels started to roll in all over the place. still, the gameplay with this ship is utterly unforgivable, one mistake and you are toast. you have to carefully plan your route, manage your turret alignment, assess your exposure to enemy fire at any time and retreat more often than finishing the enemy vessel.

 

it can be successfully played, but its still no fun imho

[knaveofengland]

by pass the ship use free xp real pain in the arse ship

[caldark]

its a bad ship.. prob the worst in the game..

I tried to play through it but in the end could not stand it so used free xp.

[McCracken666]

Its a real tuff grind, been there a few times by now.

 

I disagree with many others saying play her like "a battleship", "a support battleship" etc etc.

 

My best experience on getting most out of it, its to brawl 100%, up close and personal. Use the 6km torps as much as you can. Drive straight towards CA's and BB's and go for the torp kill. The only good thing about the ship is that it can actually take some beatings, and at tier V, the BB guns are still somewhat inaccurate, use that to ur advantage.

 

So in short: Torps and ram until you get to Aoba. Aoba is a blessing in comparrison and from that and onwards its all good ships.

 

EDIT: And yes, for the love of god, use ANY XP flags, free Xp and what ever possible to get passed it asap. It is THE best ship to use XP flags on

[caldark]

 

 

My best experience on getting most out of it, its to brawl 100%, up close and personal. Use the 6km torps as much as you can. Drive straight towards CA's and BB's and go for the torp kill. The only good thing about the ship is that it can actually take some beatings, and at tier V, the BB guns are still somewhat inaccurate, use that to ur advantage.

 

I would not say she can take a beating at all.. its very very easy to get crit hits on her.. before you know it most of your HP has gone from just a few hits.. The Aoba suffers from this as well.

[McCracken666]

[edited]

[Broevaharo]

The problem with this ship is that it gets wrecked by the Murmansk and the Omaha if those two ships are sailed by an opponent that uses his brain, the ROF of the Furutaka just can't keep up and if they keep a small silhouette the higher damage potential of the 203mm is negated, the same goes for the tier 4 and tier 6 cruisers that it faces in combat.

A possible solution would be to increase the turret rotation so you can sail it more like you sail the Aobe but a better one would be to just scrap it and replace it by a light cruiser.