cursed azur lane thoughts

Bungo

Bungo is funny.

She's an upscaled Amagi hull with 457mm guns (no clue why they aren't 460mm). Her gimmick is accuracy. Yamato is already well known as a very accurate battleship, but Bungo takes it to a whole another level. She's so accurate that, assuming you aim perfectly; you will most likely encounter aiming bugs that no other ship really experiences (because WoWs is built on a mountain of spaghetti code)

As a special consumable, Bungo gets access to a 'High-Precision Spotter Plane' that further reduces her dispersion by -20% for a minute and five seconds. You can get two whole salvos out very comfortably, due to her 26.4s reload.

Honestly, if you miss with Bungo, it is your fault. Easy DR material.

Adatara

Adatara is the predecessor of Bungo in the tech tree. She's Tier 9, her spotter plane reduces her dispersion by -10% instead of -20%, and has one less turret. Her reload is longer, too, at 30s.

If Bungo is DR material, Adatara is PR material.

Tsurugi

As much as I love Tsurugi, I see a lot of people compare her to Georgia, which is just innacurate.

Both ships enjoy 3 double 457mm gun turrets with short reloads and remarkable accuracy, but Georgia has American Super-Heavy AP that does devastating damage, and Tsurugi's AP shells do a pitiful 13.5k damage - Georgia's AP shells do almost 18k damage each.

Also, Georgia has very fun secondary guns. And can tank damage, since she's an Iowa hull variation. And is superbly fast. Tsurugi has none of those things.

Tsurugi has 15km-range deep water torpedoes (that can only hit battleships and aircraft carriers), as well as a 'Torpedo Reload Booster' consumable that reduces the 150s reload down to just 10s. Also, while not enjoying Georgia's 46+ knots speed, Tsurugi can easily do almost 37 knots, which is faster than a lot of cruiser.

Sadly, Tsurugi also suffers from pathetically weak armor.

Tsurugi could be a very fun PR battlecruiser in AL, however.

Iwami

Iwami is a variation of the Izumo design. Much like Izumo, she has fairly accurate 410mm main guns. Much unlike Izumo, her overall gun layout makes sense, with 2 frontal dual turrets and two back dual turrets, much like a Nagato.

Iwami has two gimmicks of particular interest: Two sets of torpedoes, one per side, which are taken straight out of Shimakaze (4 20km torpedos per launcher) that also deal devastating damage, but can be seen from orbit (relatively speaking - their detectability range is 2.5km. Normal hydroacoustic search detects torpedoes at 3.5km)

The second gimmick of Iwami is access to a surprisingly strong secondary gun array.

Iwami could be a PR battleship with a support role.

Shikishima

As I said last year, Shikishima is "The USS Georgia of the Yamato-class."

Her main armament consists of 3 dual 510mm turrets boasting of improved accuracy compared to the Yamato-class, as well as a 27s reload. She shares all the flaws of Yamato and Musashi, mainly having incredibly weak armor and a glacial turret traverse of a whole entire minute to turn 180º, but she's a fun ship that can do insane damage. She relies a lot on sheer overmatch, being the second ship to have 510mm guns - Satsuma is basically an upscaled Shikishima, and HMS Incomparable "only" has 508mm guns.

Also, for some reason, Shikishima also has a very nice secondary gun layout, guns that also have improved accuracy and reload times; meaning you can run a full secondary gun Shikishima build without losing much main gun accuracy.

Due to being a Yamato hull, she'd be DR.

Yoshino

Hey, wouldn't it be funny if Azuma had even more torpedoes than Shimakaze?

Yoshino is just that, a bigger Azuma with a total of 16 torpedoes. She gets a choice between the 'suicide' 12km torpedoes of Shimakaze, which deal almost 27k damage each; or the same torpedoes that Iwami has, 20km range.

She's different enough from Azuma to be somewhat likely, but she's also not really that much different than Azuma. She'd be DR, for sure.

Hayate

A unique (for Japan's standards) destroyer that has both good guns and good torpedoes. They normally excell only at guns (Kitakaze) or only at torpedoes (Shimakaze) - Hayate is good with both.

Past me summarized her pretty well. She's a decent mix between Shimakaze and Harugumo - Harugumo being Kitakaze's bigger sister.

PR rarity for sure.

Yamagiri

Ok, but what if you wanted a pretty good mix of Shimakaze and Harugumo, instead of a decent mix?

Yamagiri is an upscaled Hayate that mixes the two lines of destroyers. She gets access to the same amount of torpedoes Shimakaze has, while having access to some formidable main gun armament as well.

While Hayate is a PR, Yamagiri would be a DR. However, there's one main issue with Yamagiri as a PR7 choice: