Yahagi ... maybe not quite garbage?

[Rina_Pon]

I had my first "good" (aka better than terrible) game in Yahagi yesterday. Instead of using my Zao captain, I put my Yugumo captain in there, which gave me torpedo reload acceleration and last stand instead of expert marksman and demolition expert. I don't think the captain skill loadout is especially important though, getting Yahagi to just-about-work is more about holding a position on the back lines, and being in a particular kind of open water battle where the enemy is mainly air-spotted and pushing up toward you. The key point though is actively avoiding engagements with enemy cruisers, instead choosing to shoot at BBs and hunting down enemy DDs that have strayed to far into your end-zone.

Yahagi's guns are famously bad, but the oddball shells with their high velocity, high drag become usefully accurate at closer ranges. Ideal for sniping DDs from 8-9 km away. Consider that your concealment is just 9 km, you can see why that makes the ship a very nasty encounter for enemy DDs. At long range they are very floaty, but still good enough to hit BBs with. There's enough fire chance to make yourself very annoying to enemy BBs, and at the range you can hit them, you are practically impossible to hit.

The torps are "speculative". They are not designed for YOLO runs, but rather to be aimed from afar at potential choke points. There's no problem launching from broadside, since you are never firing from outside of stealth. And you can be in stealth pretty much whenever you want. Even planes aren't a threat since Yahagi has a seriously nasty AA suite for T5. So much so I'm wondering if a AA specific build would be the way to go if I was to train a dedicated captain, but even stock you can put up good resistance against T6 CVs.

Realistically though, Furutaka is still far and away the better ship, because it's so much more useful. It can do everything Yahagi can, and a whole bunch of things Yahagi can't, like destroy light and heavy cruisers, bow tank BBs, and do yolo torps runs. It lacks the AA and the concealment, but 90% of the time that doesn't matter.

The buff I want on the Yahagi is the one I asked for before in a previous discussion: the torp reload could be shorter. They never hit anyway except for blind luck, it would be nice to be able to send them out more often.