De Grasse is very well armed for a tier VI cruiser, with versatile weapons.

French 152mm guns are no slouches. They have comparable shell damage to Soviet 152mm guns while retaining the fire chance of American weapons. Where Krupp, muzzle velocity, shell flight time and penetration are concerned, the French goes round out as being quite average — never at the bottom of the pile, but never on top either. What holds these weapons back on la Galissonnière is their horrible rate of fire at 6.67rpm. De Grasse doesn’t suffer quite this much of a setback, firing at 7.4rpm, though this lags behind ships like Budyonny with 7.5rpm.

Combine this with nine guns, a decent range of 16.2km and excellent gun handling (12º per second gun rotation) and you effectively have one of the better gunships at tier VI in terms of raw potential.

De Grasse is certainly not the best when measured against her peers. However, she doesn’t come out poorly in direct comparisons. She is the third best fire starter at her tier. She comes in the middle of the pack among the 6″ armed light cruisers for AP and HE DPM.



Approximate HE explosion sizes of tier VI Cruisers (and Dunkerque). Reference Mahan (208m in-game length) used for scale. This gives an idea of the radius in which modules can be damaged by HE shells, including AA guns and weapon mounts, but also including things like the magazine and engine.

De Grasse’s HE shells, like those of other 6″ armed cruisers, do not generate a significant blast size and precise aim is necessary to bulls-eye specific modules in order to disable or destroy them.





Budyonny has the best HE shell ballistics among the 6″ armed cruisers, with the shortest shell flight times to range.

De Grasse’s are decidedly average, being closely comparable to German 150mm guns.

De Grasse’s secondaries are largely forgettable. They have decent rates of fire and a good range of 5.0km but she has only six barrels with which to shoot and only four of those will be brought against a target at a time.

For torpedoes, she has two triple launchers with a 90 second reload. These are quite respectable torpedoes, though they’re not the heavy hitters found on British or Japanese cruisers. Still, with their 60 knot top speed and 9km range, they have enough reach to cause enemies issues if they’re not careful. Regrettably, De Grasse cannot launch them from stealth without the use of allied smoke or an island for cover. This relegates them to an opportunistic weapon. They have better rearward firing arcs than forward.

Summary

De Grasse is a cruiser designed to fire from the second line, similar to Budyonny, Molotov or Cleveland. She is not meant to be a frontline scout in the same manner as Duca d’Aosta, Perth or Leander. Her guns are excellent harassing weapons, ideally suited to taking bites out of everything she can lay her sights upon. Combined with Inertial Fuse for HE Shells on her commander she can do significant amounts of direct damage to the extremities of all Battleships she will encounter, greatly increasing her threat to these warships. Demolition Expert can help pad her fire starting numbers back up to 11% which will greatly tax the Damage Control Party of these larger vessels. Remember not to neglect her excellent AP shells, though. Inside of ranges of 12km, De Grasse is quite capable of stacking citadel hits against select enemy cruisers that offer her a broadside.

There are only a couple of drawbacks to De Grasse’s guns. Their range is only a modest 16.2km. This isn’t a serious flaw by any means as her speed can help bring her into range when needed. However, De Grasse lacks any float plane aircraft to further increase this reach which limits some of her versatility. This makes her average engagement range sit in around 14km which is well within medium (and even close range) for some Battleships. Proper use of cover is essential to keep her from suffering the predations of these larger warships if she wants to keep her guns singing. The second is rather poor rearward firing angles. While she can bring all of her guns against targets 36º off her bow, she has to swing out a full 45º off her stern to fire them all to the rear. Be very careful while making fighting retreats.

De Grasse can brawl in a pinch. Her durability and agility do not make her well suited to this role (see below). However, between her fast turning turrets and the sting of her torpedo armament, she can be a dangerous opponent at these ranges.

Fighting at range allows De Grasse to maximize her enormous damage potential while also giving her time enough to dodge return fire.

De Grasse versus la Galissonnière De Grasse uses slightly modified versions of the French 152mm naval rifle. In almost every respect that counts, they identical to the guns of la Galisonnière except in three key areas. De Grasse has 300m more range than her tech tree counterpart. The difference in range isn’t terribly surprising as this is generally evaluated on a per-ship basis. Still, the premium ship has the advantage. De Grasse’s main battery is dual purpose and lends firepower to AA defense. De Grasse uses more modern 152mm, dual-purpose guns circa 1936 versus 1930 for La Galissonnière. De Grasse has a 0.9s faster reload and thus 11% more DPM than la Galissonnière. For secondaries, la Galissonnière has more of them (eight 90mm guns in 4×2 turrets), but De Grasse’s weapons do more damage with the same reload rate. They also start more fires and have 500m more range. Each ship can only bring four guns against a single target, providing la Galissonnière the advantage only if she was ever bracketed on both sides by close range, enemy ships, which would let her fire with all eight to De Grasse’s six. It doesn’t get any better with torpedoes. La Galissonnière can only launch two torpedoes per side to De Grasse’s three. This does give la Galissonniere a 30s advantage on reload. Otherwise the torpedoes are identical in terms of speed, damage, range and detection. So, short of being in a prolonged close-range brawl where torpedo reload decides an engagement, De Grasse outclasses la Galissonnière.

Manoeuvrability Top Speed: 33.5knots

Turning Radius: 690m

Rudder Shift: 8.8s

Maximum Turn Rate: 6.0º per second. De Grasse disappoints in the agility department, at least initially. On the surface, her top speed and turning isn’t bad. She manages 33.5 knots in a straight line. This puts her behind ships like Duca d’Aosta, Molotov, Budyonny and Aoba. Touching her rudder will see her speed bleed down to 26.8 knots which makes chasing destroyers a no-go, especially when you have to avoid incoming fire from her allies. At least she handles reasonably well in the turn, doing as much as 6.0º per second rotation rate, though she only manages about 5.3º per second in the first 90º.

With De Grasse’s Engine Boost consumable, she tops out at 38.5 knots for three full minutes. This is a tremendous advantage when used properly — especially in the closing minutes of a match when it can allow her to run down destroyers she might not otherwise catch or to move from one end of the map to the other to secure objectives. If you have access to it, the Super Upgrade Engine Boost Modification 1 is an excellent choice for De Grasse, extending this time to four and a half minutes per charge. Add a Sierra Mike signal and you’ll see a maximum speed of 40.5 knots. You’ll have the enemy destroyers wetting themselves with terror and enemy battleships and cruisers cursing your ability to control engagement ranges with these velocities.