Untanking

[Rina_Pon]

Played a Zao game last night. The stars aligned and I found myself in a Random battle with mostly T8-9 ships. T8 CV. 1 DD per side.

Zao (eyes glowing red): "I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

2 kills, 14 fires, 3 torpedo hits, 9 citadels, 1 cap assist, witherer, high cal, and confederate medals and 241000 dmg later ... my team just managed to scrape by with the win.

I got 2400 base xp. The friendly Mogami working the other flank took second place with 2300 bxp.

The game hammered home a few things for me.

1. IJN cruisers can sometimes be gifted "golden games" where by luck and skill you are largely left alone. Against T8 and T9 ships, though, Zao is especially effective since the fire starting chances scale with the tier difference and - with the spotter active - you outrange pretty much everything on the map.

2. Cruisers contribute most in long, drawn out, closely fought battles of attrition.

3. Late game is when Zao becomes especially lethal, when you can (and should) close to duelling range. Those torps pack enough to take out the biggest BB

The biggest lesson I learnt here though was that, unpleasant as it may be morally speaking, in Zao you need to take advantage of what I call "ablative armor", i.e. use your teammates as human shields. I can even suggest a technical term for this: untanking.

I did as well as I did, and contributed towards winning as much as I did, because by plan or by luck there were always ships in front of me taking damage instead of me. All of them died before I did, but you have to be cold blooded about this fact - better them than you. Some were BBs, but a couple were cruisers. Since I out-tiered them and could do more damage than they could, however, it was better for my team that I should survive.

Untanking is the opposite of tanking. Of course no cruiser goes out to deliberately take damage, but untanking takes it a step further and can be considered as a form of negative potential damage. You actively position in such a way to ensure that teammates take damage instead of you. Sounds rotten, but look at it in the sense that those ships would have been targeted - even if you weren't there. You are just making their sacrifice more useful.

[Plymouth_MyWife_PrPr]

I find when playing Yoshino untanking is important, but taking fire from 1-2 ships is not so much of a problem, as your range and continuously changing engine speed is enough to tank BBs, even if they overmatch you.

[Reinhard_of_Avercland]

I think Yuro explained it at least twice on his guides.

The IJN ships clearly show their strengths only when no one focus on them. The problem is; a lot of players have already known the weakness of these ships. Especially on this server, where the players will exploit the game's environment as much as possible.

Ironically, the same can be said on most BBs in particular.

Spoiler

 

 

[dejiko_nyo]

*scribbles* shoot untanking ships first eventhough they are so far away.

[Storm_Khan]

2 hours ago, Rina_Pon said:

The biggest lesson I learnt here though was that, unpleasant as it may be morally speaking, in Zao you need to take advantage of what I call "ablative armor", i.e. use your teammates as human shields. I can even suggest a technical term for this: untanking.

I believe the term you are trying to think of is "meat shield".

Zao Captain to helmsman: "Steer us behind our allied BB. Their sailors and ship will be our *meat* shield!"

[Grygus_Triss]

6 hours ago, Storm_Khan said:

I believe the term you are trying to think of is "meat shield".

Zao Captain to helmsman: "Steer us behind our allied BB. Their sailors and ship will be our *meat* shield!"

Correct. Classic TTRPG tactic. Squishy casters stay as far back as they can and let the melee classes, the meat shields, take all the damage.

You are not meant to take damage. You are not meant to tank. You are not meant to draw enemy fire away from team mates.

You are meant to rain death and destruction down on enemies until they are dead.

You do not save your allies by drawing fire away from them. You save allies by killing the enemy.

You do that best when you are not worried about being hit and dying.

[Sharr_Dextera]

Agreed. I've learned that way, since hard grind on Aoba (or even since Furutaka? I forgot). Stay close to the "meat-shield". And when they dying, move away from 'em.

Playing IJN cruisers are just like Hyena, not cheetah, tiger, or lion.