The changes to the IJN Destroyer line are long overdue. While it’s possible to make ships like the Hatsuharu perform, data tracking sites have long shown that the mid to high tier IJN Destroyers have been lagging behind their American and Soviet counterparts. This comes with the reliance on their torpedoes to inflict the lion’s share of their damage with their guns being a mere afterthought. A lot of their damage potential seems to hinge on the incompetence of the enemy. The higher up in tiers you go, the more players seem to have figured out how to use the WASD keys and the success rate of IJN Destroyers wanes as the effectiveness of their torpedoes drops. The early victories that players enjoy in the Isokaze and Minekaze seem to diminish quickly at tiers 6+. While it’s still possible to rack up some impressive games, consistency is ever elusive.

The changes coming to the Japanese destroyer tech tree are pretty extensive and seem to be working towards normalizing these results. A fork appears at tier 4, branching off from the Isokaze and leading to two separate lines. The Mutsuki leads one branch and the Minekaze the other. One is being called the “torpedo” branch and the other the “gunship” branch by the community. After playing them, I couldn’t decide which was which or keep them straight in my head. Both trees are getting signifcant improvements to their guns. In addition, one branch gets access to a faster torpedo reload consumable, allowing them to fire their tubes twice in 5s. The other line has more torpedoes and reloads much faster overall. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make sense — you now see why I got confused. Add to this complication, I didn’t have access to the modified versions of the Mutsuki, Kagero, Fubuki and Hatsuharu initially which are all being down tiered and reshuffled between the two lines. So evaluating the two branches from the four new ships, Akatsuki, Yugumo, Akizuki and Shiratsuyu didn’t really work.

In short? I figured I wouldn’t bother and instead focus on a single tier where two new ships replace an old workhorse. The Hatsuharu as we presently know her will be dropping down to tier 6. In her place, the Shiratsuyu and Akatsuki emerge. Tier 7 is a very interesting tier and these new ships are going up against the likes of some very respectable and well appreciated destroyers like the Mahan, Sims, Kiev and Leningrad. Let’s take a look at how they compare.

Big Changes to the IJN 127mm Rifles

One of the most significant changes to the entire line is the evolution of the IJN 127mm/50 3rd Year Type naval rifle. On the Old Hatsuharu, this is a high velocity weapon with hard hitting AP and HE shells with a high chance to start fires. It’s crippled by a very low rate of fire and poor range — scarcely ever reaching up to 10km on the entire IJN line. This weapon doubled as a dual-purpose AA mount, providing some long range flak against enemy aircraft. While individual volleys from these guns could be very effective, they were forever crippled by their short range, the small number of guns on the Old Hatsuharu and their low rate of fire. Still, some IJN destroyer Captains enjoyed success with these rifles, especially when downgrading the hull of their destroyers to take advantage of the larger number of gun mounts on the A and B Hulls of certain ships.

Here’s how the guns differ between the Old Hatsuharu and the two new Destroyers.

No longer dual purposed as an AA mount.

HE Shell Damage: Reduced from 2,100 to 1,800

Fire Chance: Reduced from 9% to 7%

Turret Rotation: Reduced from 7′ per second to 6′ per second.

Rate of Fire: Increased from 6.67rpm to 8rpm.

Range: Increased by at least 1.1km.

Armament: The four guns of the Hatsuharu are increased to 5 and 6 guns on the Shiratsuyu and Akatsuki respectively.

The new guns give up HE alpha strike, fire chance, AA power and turret rotation speed for a 20% rate of fire increase, an additional rifle (or two) and an additional 1km range. While this ends up being a significant increase over the Hatsuharu’s DPM, this is not enough for the new tier 7 destroyers to make up anything more than last place on the new charts. The Akatsuki comes close to the Leningrad in raw HE damage but not enough to challenge even that low DPM destroyer. So if either of these two ships are intended to be “gunships”, then they’re really falling short of the mark. While the new destroyers retain the “comfortable” gunnery of the Hatsuharu, including flat shell arcs and decent potential stealth-firing windows, they’re not really to write home about. Enemy destroyers should respect the fire coming off these ships — the Akatsuki in particular, but they are not decisive weapons.



* This is the concealment window from which these ships can fire from open water without being detected. The distance listed here is the difference between the ship’s maximum range and their surface detection range when firing their guns. This assumes the ship is equipped with concealment camouflage and the captain is using Advanced Fire Training and Concealment Expert skills.



Gunships vs Torpedo Ships

Fully upgraded, the Akatsuki and Shiratsuyu retain the Hatsuharu’s Type 90 torpedo. This was one of the first features I looked at on both ships, expecting the “gunship” to stand out based on a poor torpedo armament, but lo and behold, both were still sporting a fearsome number of fish. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised base on their gun performance, but there it is. Now here’s where things get even more funny. The six-gun Akatsuki has three triple launchers while the five-gun Shiratsuyu has two quadruple launchers. In addition, the Akatsuki has a 76s reload on her tubes while the Shiratsuyu lags behind with a 101s reload. Colour me confused.

In terms of damage potential over 10 minutes, the three ships work out to the following: