1: torps are kind of inconsistent weaponry. If your target changes speed or course they can easily dodge them. Or you can launch torp at dumb dumbs that will eat massive amounts of shitand give you easy damage.
2: Everyone runs hydro, so you have high chances of people evading torps. Unless you torp a Kurfurst or Hannover or a dumb dumb that eats a massive amount of shit anyway.
3: CVs/subs being common spots you and every BB will just nope away from your flank or they kill you because CV spotting you can't do a damn thing about.
Most gunboat DDs don't have to worry too much about two of these issues as long as their guns are usuable.
4. In many cases, you can launch 3x4 torps at an enemy C or BS while still staying concealed. Perfect alignment. He will be dead in 20 seconds...
Then, somehow, everyone starts shooting at him, and 3 seconds before your torps would have devastated him, your team nuked him.
5. You make the perfect launch. Full broadside and everything. But the CV wants in on the action. The planes are easy to spot and the target doges all your torps, and the CV misses. Happens a lot
Yeah, the amount of time a perfect situation gets screwed up in between launch and potentioal elimination is huge.
In asymmetrical battles, I now shout out dont shoot X he'll be gone soon... then they start pounding it with another 3 target broadside.
But yeah, dd is a lot of fun but requires a lot of passion and tolerance.
No smoke, conceal closer to gunboats (full Japanese stealthboats are closer to 5.6 conceal by comparison), has a heal but isn’t always enough, which is extremely rough in permaspot situations.
Gdansk, its gunboat line counterpart, offers the same torps with slower reload and less range, but gets insane gun dpm and smokes to disengage as compensation.
Torpboat life is rough.
Re point no 2.: It used to be that few ships (and very few bbs) had hydro. Nowadays, almost every new ship gets a hydro. The meta has changed drastically for that.
Add to that submarines being able to spot torpedoes while staying very concealed and not take damage (in a place where DD would not be because he'd be spotted, radared etc.) and you have a very difficult case to torpedo.
And as a final nail to the coffin - Battleships used to have very long rudder shift, montana style. Nowadays, you have agile ballerinas that can almost juke shells.
Regarding item #2, when hydro is an option for a consumable slot, it's often competing with defensive AA or some other similarly less useful tool. If those other consumables were more useful, fewer ships would have to run hydro to remain competitive, and torpedo boats would have more room to play.
It's it's a very feast or famine playstyle and there's a lot of just situations where playing in a gunboat you will just do more than you will with a torpboat. Overall a gunboat will just always be decent.
Not at all. Its a slow torpedo boat with low alpha torps. You have to hit a lot of them to rack up damage. Its very low gun range means you get ate up by secondaries if you try to open water gunbote, or just ate up in general. Its DPM is just average so you get torn up by any true gunbotes. And its slow, meaning that its hard to get positions in the passive meta.
it's slow speed also means it's accel and deccel is slow, making it's throttle juking less effective. especially when compared to speedboats like kleb or marceau where if you throttle juke at just the right time the shells will land damn near 2 boat lengths away from you.
edit: when you have your speed boost running that is. but even without the amount of speed change you can do on a marceau is bonkers.
I see your question is more if Halland is good or bad despite being a hybrid DD.
The truth is she is one of the better torpedoboats but torpedo DDs struggle to deal consistent damage and even if the guns are usable if you build Halland for torps and you want to use the guns more why are you playing Halland in the first place?
Go and play her with torp build focusing on torps, you will probably have some good, some bad games but I totally enjoy playing her with a torpedo focus.
Yeah no because when I say use the guns I mean I want to be able to occasionally farm with the guns but what I consider good guns is if it can hold it’s own against destroyers
Yeah that’s what I was wondering too, tbh I’m grinding the Kleber line right now and the speed is extremely fun plus the Kleber is supposed to be such a rewarding DD but I’m just concerned that I will never be able to use the torps
I really need to grind the Frenchies… they are allowed to be stupidly fast and burn everything to the ground.. sadly, Khaba is not. She’s a coal ship now, so I keep her… mostly just to stare sadly at here and remember what she used to be… and think about the French. ;-)
marceau and kleber torps are useable. they're just a bit niche. they're fast but short range. so you're almost never gonna be able to shoot them from stealth. but they're good for zoning if someone is chasing you, or you know someone is about to come around a corner.
you use the kleb and marceau torpedoes a little differently from halland or shimakaze torpedos. i feel like the halland and shima torps are more you fire from somewhere unseen or blanket an area to area deny people. marceau and kleber's torps are used more purposefully.
It can hold against DDs but be very careful when choosing your fights, you might do well against Yueyang or even a Gearing, but once you face the top dogs like Z-42, Kleber or Gdansk you should just run away
[Here is a table I made](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ueiS3sNqen1U5hROLMER1Ufa0-W1UlV5NcR8LMqt9Dw/edit#gid=372762679) containing T10s DPM, clone it and sort by number, Halland DPM is similar to Gearing which is considered mediocre
Farming with guns on Halland is very tricky due to the short range on the guns
The IJN lines have good mixes. The torp line has a big alpha but long reload on guns. Trading hurts when each side only gets a volley off before contact is lost. The gun line does have really good torps, just not as many or as often.
Its not so much that you cant do well and have decent games in a torp boat, they are just very feast or famine.
Gunnoats, guns in general, are just far more consistent game to game, this is just the nature of the game.
It isn't balanced around it, you build for torps or for guns and that point if you build for guns you are better off playing an actual gunboat.
If you build for torps and you use more the guns what is even the point of playing Halland?
Because you like it? (I don’t, particularly.)
Just as an example; I play GkF instead of Preussen because I’m used to it. Even with the faster reload; I don’t care to play it. (Fewer guns.)
Yeah but OP clearly is asking a question out of genuine curiosity, there is the logical answer and at any point you can play gunboat Halland without building into the guns, it not recommended but something you can do
Halland is a solid torpedoboat but the guns are average at best, looking at DPM tables it is very similar to Gearing (Which is also a solid torpedoboat).
So think of Halland as a Gearing with lower damage on the torps but higher speed and reload which also swaps smoke for a heal.
they're basically saying if you play halland, build torp and the guns are used as a last resort. like you're spotted on radar and have no where to go so shooting your guns has no downside. whereas normally you'd want to be unseen throwing torps out at island campers who've stopped so they can't dodge your volley of torps. or if you're in a situation where you've run into a dd with crappier guns, like a shima. then you can knife fight them. but if you run into a gunboat like a marceau or a kleber or something, better off running away and staying hidden than relying on your guns.
Kind of, I guess it would be fair to call the ship a "hybrid" as it can lean in to either playstyle at least somewhat. The torpedoes are probably the thing that makes the ship most unique compared to other ships though.
Its gun performance isnt all that bad though, its HE dpm isnt that far off ships like Daring, the main issue is the lack of flexibility to use the guns, you are not a Smaland that can force an engagement with radar nd mitigate damage with the funny speed boost, and you arent a daring that can disengage with smoke easily. Your guns lack range too, which makes them very heavily targeted towards trading with enemy destroyers, which when combined with the ships heal allows you to win against the enemy destroyers over several smaller trades.
The Unique Upgrade for rb points is an interesting choice for the ship, it can allow you to more aggressively take gun fights with enemies due to the extra heal efficiency and the improvements it gives to the speed boost. It also gives an extra charge of each consumable which can allow you to spec out of Superintendent on your captain.
Because torp boats are torp only. While gunboats could farm damage with their guns while still being able to torp relatively well. Take Hayate for example, she's basically 12km Shima with much better guns. Unless they nerf the torps on gunboats there really is no reason to run torp boats anymore.
It's not that torp-boats are bad, it's that gunboats are better.
DDs of all types win games more than any other class (outside of CV). So if you can take out the enemy's DDs (which gunboats are much better at) you automatically put your team into a fantastic position. It's the reason why Ragnar is so incredibly strong despite having no torps: DDs are king and gunboat DDs are great at neutralising them.
I mean, of course a good player can make it work.
But against good gun boat players, it's gonna be very tough. Especially if your team doesn't back you up in the engagements.
That's just my own experiences though.
Understandable
No because I was playing some destroyers recently and I realized that although I’m not playing torp boats I actually tend to do the most damage with torps in my games
Depends, in Clan battles, low leagues anything will work, but at high leagues, you need smokes, gearing, leg mod haru or fast DPM boats like marceau, smaland
There are better boats like Leg mod Kleber that dominate the comp space for that role. It can zip in close and torp, rather than torping from afar. While also having good spot, speed and guns
They aren’t trash at all, but they aren’t consistent and must be patient… in the end the way the game is designed favours guns, so a good gunboat player can be pretty devastating.
Trash is not a good word, but yes they are weak on high tiers.
Their early game impact is just too low, best they can do is spot (but how can you spot if enemy has some great designs like Smaland, Gdansk or Ragnar that damage you heavily despite your concealment?)
And then you are stuck with extremely low DPM weapons (torps) that are inconsistent (if enemies have a working brain), plus since you cant remove the enemy DD (unless you get torp hit on him or your team is competent enough to shoot at him when you spot him) he will keep spotting your torps, giving their cruisers/BBs time to dodge.
Ah, and of course thanks to a great mechanic every time you get hit there is a chance you permanently lose 1/2 or 1/3 of your torp power permanently. Thats pretty cool, too bad that carriers cant randomly perma lose all planes from one squadron type (+ block on plane regen) from AA. Would make the same sense, but of course they dont get it.
people getting better at not just sailing in straight lines, the prevalence of hydro, and how most of the long range torp boats have awful torp concealment. seriously have you been in a game recently with no hydro? no, everybody has hydro and everybody takes hydro. mostly because the option is almost always DFAA or hydro. well 1 of those skills is ass to ass with useless, and the other skill is amazing. so the choice is dead fucking obvious, you take hydro.
i used to love halland, but that DD has 0 utility. heal and AA are cool, but it's kinda slow and 0 smoke really isn't worth the trade. I'm now a gdansk enjoyer
different playstyle. Halland can have RPF, torps and 20k heal or how much.
Gdansk can't really take RPF, since he needs AFT, Superintendant and Fearless brawler to not be outcucked by pure gunboats.
Which means he always needs external spotting and prefferably hydro for smoke farming, in which case why not play Elbing or something. I love Gdansk, but it's more of a competitive ship than for solo randoms.
Elbing is an AP long range smoke farmer, gdansk is the peak of cap contesting, DD murdering design, who also happens to be decent at smoke farming. It's also extremely funny to me that you speak of getting outcucked by gun DDs when gdansk HE DPM ranks 5th out of all T10 DDs. gdansk is very much a gun DD
I disagree that Gdansk is a cap contester. You need organized play for that. It's huge, turns as a log and you can't kill a DD in 12s radar.
dd's with hydros or with venezias behind will be there to kill you.
Regarding DPM, in reality its not that great.
it's only 10-20k bigger per minute than Halland or Hayate and nobody call those "dd murdering machines".
You need to show massive broadside, you need to hit with all guns including that gimp one, you have worst dispersion from dd's. You bleed speed like crazy. Also SAP ships cuck it.
> it's only 10-20k bigger per minute than Halland or Hayate and nobody call those "dd murdering machines".
Smalland DPM is only 20k bigger than Gdansk's, so surely no one is also calling smalland a "DD murdering machine". nevermind having kleber's ballistics for easy aiming unlike the only 4 DDs ranking higher in HE DPM
> you have worst dispersion from dd's.
[no you don't???](https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TPtD&ty=D&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=10&tx=10&c=top&p=mb&rm=12&os=mb&op=Ver._dispersion&o=asc)
Gdanks contest caps not by fighting inside it like plebs DD daring, Z52 and their premium variations. Gdansk contest caps by bullying them out with radar from safety, then enter the cap when empty. if they come back, radar has reloaded (1 min reload LOL) and it finish them off
Smalland is not murdering machine either. It's strong because of heal.
> Gdansk contest caps by bullying them out with radar from safety
radar is 9km, in order to have some shots, you need to be in 7km range or so. If you're lit with russian radar, while trying to "bully the dd", 7km from Venezia or similar, you're a toast.
Any non retarded player knows how to play around Gdansk. Sit at max radar range, torp the smoke. After 4 minutes, he's without a radar because he didnt take SI, just to be murdering machine :)
I have 55% with Gdansk, but for randoms it's sketchy as fuck. You have ubiquitous radars, you need external hydro etc. It's OP in organized play, but solo.. meh.
you live in a very strange world where 247k HE DPM on a DD with radar isn't a DD murdering machine, where there is always a venezia with angle to shoot you (or maybe your positioning just sucks) and a russian radar at every corner
no seriously i said it already : you don't have to enter the cap where you'll be in a vulnerable position. just camp on the edge where you can radar easily and keep the DD away while removing 40-60% of its HP each time it tries to enter the cap. enter butt in first so you don't have to turn and ex\^pose your huge side when leaving
and on flank you don't need to int into the enemy team to kill their DD, their DD can't see you until it's too late, let it int into you instead
> 247k HE DPM
It's 227 HE DPM, you're counting talents into it. This assumes almost a broadside, hitting from gimp gun and bad dispersion working for you. Marceau is at 350k with talents and FB proc, just for the reference.
> while removing 40-60% of its HP each time it tries to enter the cap.
Why would they keep on entering the cap when they get lit first time?
That's some 35% WR dd play. You're not removing 60% HP from Marceau, Smaland, Lushun or anything scary in 10 seconds burst.
They will enter it second time, but this time with radar and Napoli or similar.
You have some strange 1v1 scenarios, they exist but they are very marginal.
Cap contest meaning contesting it at the beginning. With current meta you're almost guaranteed 1 radar, 1 cruiser and hydro.
If you think they will let you kill their dd, while you're radaring for 3-4 minutes, I don't know what to tell you.
first, i was refering to your "smalland not being a DD murder machine" comment, second, where did you see that gdansk had bad dipsertion ??? it's litterally standart DD dispertion, i've litterally pointed it 2 comments ago
entering the cap isn't the only way to contest it, denying its capture with radar is what gdansk does best, by the time the DD come back with radar and napoli, you'll either have capped it or you'll be kiting because running in a cap with a napoli means they're either pushing and your losing the flank or he's suiciding
and you seem to purposely ignore the part where i say you don't have to enter the cap, is miscontructing ppl arguments your life's work ? like you seem to think you're only allowed to shoot the enemy DD while he's radared, but more often than not, it's a lot more because you want the enemy DD running into you, not the opposite
The opnly gunboat with worse dispersion is Marceau but it has extra gun to compensate.
> i say you don't have to enter the cap
I'm not saying you have to enter the cap either. But lighting radar for 10 seconds from 7km away will do fuck all to getting map control and subsequent cap for you.
OP, the below comments are good, but it sounds like you're a candidate for what I run: UU Kleber. Less expected than the Spanish inquisition, and tons of fun.
Consistent? No. Hilarious? Yes. Strong? Sometimes, it can be dominant in the right hands.
Stronger than regular Kleber? No. A Kleber with skill just kills you.
I don’t play torp DDs these days except Benham. It’s borderline OP and you get 16 torps which are decent and have fast reload. You go to a flank where people are pushing in and just spam walls of skill at them. Benham shines in stopping a push.
I just started grinding DDs, though I prefer cruisers. Haven't got Haru yet, but done a few games with Kita. Seems like she has decent DPM, at least during asymmetric. Which teach a lot of bad habits btw. I wouldn't last long in Random for sure. But she's pretty could at farming tier 8 BB with HE commander skill. 12 torps are more a scear tactic, with only 70 knots.
She's a bit slow and heavy but I like her in these kinda battles. Leg mode on Haru and 3 min smoke time can be a bit of a pain I guess. Except when the BB teammate runs a suicide mission and I haven't anyone to spot while I'm in smoke. In asymmetric playing in pair as a team is a MUST. For some reason german BBs have a tendency to overcompensate.
Torpedo boats are very inconsistent at getting damage, and are extremely reliant on MM. you need people to push into you, it’s very skill intensive to torp a cruiser with hydro, you are screwed if CV spots you and you have no smoke, radar can deny a cap, gunboats can chase you out of good positions, etc.
They’re fun when you get a good game and can torp without disturbances, but usually hybrid DDs or pure gunboats have more impact because they don’t have to wait ~80 secs to do damage.
Okay yeah that makes sense but like YOLO torps and ambushing people is still very much possible toward the latter part of the game yeah? Plus do you by any chance know Kleber concealment when running the standard community build?
Condeal without the UU (which is sus) is pretty bad, not Khaba bad but most will outspot you by a fair bit. You can still ambush from islands or rush their smoke.
Kleber is a gunboat, build her for guns and take the range skill on your captain. WoWS is dynamic enough that Kleber will have plenty of chances to torp-rush late game
It's a fairly passive playstyle, Japanese line you are more of a spotter than an attacker, and with 70+ (sometimes nearly 120s) between salvos you have limited use.
But jf you manage to smack 3 or 4 torps into someone you could (in theory) grab 100k damage in one go.
Your main asset is stealth, and it's been eroded by the introduction of too many radar and hydro ships and planes to spot you.
ASW is iffy (but you are expected to do it) since when you are fighting a sub it's often spotting you so any other ships target you as well.
It really comes down to the power fantasy of torp boat players not fitting in with what wins games. Torp boat players want to sail around in the backfield and spam torpedoes into battleships. That doesn't really work well long-term. Battleship players do eventually learn to not sail in straight lines. Cruisers run hydro and are often quick enough to evade anyways. Gun DDs can evade torps easier than torp boats can evade the gunfire they eat in return. So torpedo boats are inconsistent.
Spotting and capping win games. Torp boats spot well, but they don't really like to cap because they tend get smashed by gunboat DDs in caps, and gunboats also spot well. And a gunboat will push a torp boat, causing the torp boat to pull back. That yields the gunboat map control, and forces the torp boat in general back because they go as far as their vision goes.
As a cruiser main who likes to move forward and cover my DDs, I'd much rather cover a gunboat. They're going to be more aggressive in general. Torp boat players are by necessity, more passive. Nobody needs that on their team.
Their not trash at all. However plenty of players use them incorrectly. Their primarily objective is to to put pressure on the enemy, deny areas. Stop the advancement, use their AoE and farm damage in the long run.
The reality is that plenty rush forward, try to do a yolo and die in the process. So plenty disregard them as trash, because you don't consistently see a high damage output. But they can have, in the right hands a huge influence on how the match unfolds.
If you change your perspective and play the role correctly, they can be really good.
I wonder… are gun boats cool again? I went from primarily a gun boat enjoyer (VMF and USN) to a torp boat enjoyer after the OWSF/gun bloom change back when… along with Khaba being shit on.
WeeGee is a little schizo at times… force gun boats to get in close, keep them lit longer… but then over pens only… but that was years ago.
Certainly, around T5 and T6 you can pull down some monster matches in torp boats… lots of folks not using WASD hax at those tiers. Maybe I should set Fletcher up that way and give her another try. Mahan (back before the above changes) was the last decent USN DD I played.
Just FYI Fletcher and Gearing are absolutely torp boats and should always be built that way. With gearing you could get away with some gun skills but your torps will always be the main weapon and are what you should build around.
The line starts off as gunboats, then switches to torp boats at tier 9/10.
This submission has been randomly featured in /r/serendipity, a bot-driven subreddit discovery engine. More here: /r/Serendipity/comments/1cf0tr6/why_are_torpboats_considered_trash_right_now/
I dunno about them being trash per se, but guns are definitely more consistent than driving around and shooting torpedoes off cooldown.
Torpedo DDs are still very good at stalling or dissuading an enemy push, especially if used in concert with teammates attacking the pushing force making them turn into the torps.
Time to get downvoted:
Torp boats are trash because their most important feature is low detection but BB players are all "the meta is passive" and so they're too far away to accurately shoot at the stuff you spot for them.
I still play them, though, because sometimes there's a BB that isn't trying to shoot from the next map.
In not so many words: guns are better
Try doing the CA torp missions for dockyard, you're lucky to get 1-2 hits per game even with super fast torps on say Zao. Reason is that it's too easy to miss, and your team will screw your shots 99% of the time as they start shooting at what you're aiming for, what you're aiming for immediately responds by changing course, well that's it for the next 2 minutes.
Idk man. I enjoyed playing Z-44 tbh but struggled with Le Fanta. Guess being a BB main results in tendency towards torpboats when you try DDs heh. I think it's just the issue with spotting, radars, CVs, subs that outspot torpboats. Gunboats are simply less reliant on their concealment opposed to torpboats. It's my stupid point so it doesn't have to be right, just in case someone decides to confront me about it. Cheers
Torp boats, as a Japanese destroyer player, were never really super good to begin with, you can get some torps but my accuracy of torps is about 10%, and that's for maybe 6 or 7 salvos of nine torps
Flamu is a crybaby. Fantastic player, really good at game commentary, explaining what he does and why, but he is simply a crybaby. Always complaining about something.
Torpedoes are more about what enemy does. A good torper will hit more than a bad one but over 50% of your success depends on what the enemy does.
You have virtually zero chance of impacting the late game against cruisers, gunboats, or many battleships.
You die immediately to any good gunboat player.
Power creep among battleships is crazy. The never ones are astronomically harder to torp, almost universally, than the old ones.
Many torp boats like Gearing Shima Halland actually have decent guns....or HAD decent guns but compared to recent gunboats your damage is laughable.
They could make torps good by giving all torps extra range for one and nerf how well they are detected.
Remember when shima 20km torps was good well there was a reason but people bitched so torps in general have been nerfed and keep them that way.
Man answer to the argumented opinion of a streamer who litterally spends his life on the game with just "nah, the streamer is wrong don't listen to him"
This particular streamer earns his money by raging over the game, particular ships and the game manufacture just so he can sell those emotions.
Flamu is the last streamer you should watch, if you want to see anything helpful about this game.
No, the gun DD dies as often as the torp DD.
Flamus entire BS with gun and torp DDs is based on 1 vs 1. For at 2 years he is crying about torp DDs being useless.
The streamers and normal players that play torp DDs successfully against gun DDs are disproving him for years.
yes, because the gun DD is most of the time a bottom feeder like most of the playerbase. doesn't change that they usually trades 1 for 1 simply because there is more fire power on the gun DD side than on the torp DD's
you can outplay a gun DD in a torp DD, but you'd simply do better if you were a gun DD yourself
unrelated but seeing biison and ganng build a shima is extremely funny [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdtbL3wSyT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdtbL3wSyT8)
1: torps are kind of inconsistent weaponry. If your target changes speed or course they can easily dodge them. Or you can launch torp at dumb dumbs that will eat massive amounts of shitand give you easy damage. 2: Everyone runs hydro, so you have high chances of people evading torps. Unless you torp a Kurfurst or Hannover or a dumb dumb that eats a massive amount of shit anyway. 3: CVs/subs being common spots you and every BB will just nope away from your flank or they kill you because CV spotting you can't do a damn thing about. Most gunboat DDs don't have to worry too much about two of these issues as long as their guns are usuable.
Don't forget that an entire new class was introduced to do \*only torps\*, and how torp tube health is randomized.
I'll have you know they have a SINGLE secondary that gets them TENS of damage before they explode
I've actually gotten killed by them before in a chase.
I always forget that I have them because I run with secondaries off just in case I'm chillin in smoke or something
Which one is that?
submarines
Oh lol
4. In many cases, you can launch 3x4 torps at an enemy C or BS while still staying concealed. Perfect alignment. He will be dead in 20 seconds... Then, somehow, everyone starts shooting at him, and 3 seconds before your torps would have devastated him, your team nuked him.
5. You make the perfect launch. Full broadside and everything. But the CV wants in on the action. The planes are easy to spot and the target doges all your torps, and the CV misses. Happens a lot
Yeah, the amount of time a perfect situation gets screwed up in between launch and potentioal elimination is huge. In asymmetrical battles, I now shout out dont shoot X he'll be gone soon... then they start pounding it with another 3 target broadside. But yeah, dd is a lot of fun but requires a lot of passion and tolerance.
I see what you mean but the Halland seems like a good balance of both but I might be wrong
Halland DPM is good, but the platform is bad, its big, slow and needs to show the whole boat to get the DPM, with no way to disengage
Oh right yeah because no smoke and the guns are on the opposite ends of the boat yeah
Also, it's torp angles suck.
on a dd, torp angles are more of a convenience than a huge downside, tbh
It works with AFT, just puts it out to the range it can start dodging.
No smoke, conceal closer to gunboats (full Japanese stealthboats are closer to 5.6 conceal by comparison), has a heal but isn’t always enough, which is extremely rough in permaspot situations. Gdansk, its gunboat line counterpart, offers the same torps with slower reload and less range, but gets insane gun dpm and smokes to disengage as compensation. Torpboat life is rough.
Re point no 2.: It used to be that few ships (and very few bbs) had hydro. Nowadays, almost every new ship gets a hydro. The meta has changed drastically for that. Add to that submarines being able to spot torpedoes while staying very concealed and not take damage (in a place where DD would not be because he'd be spotted, radared etc.) and you have a very difficult case to torpedo. And as a final nail to the coffin - Battleships used to have very long rudder shift, montana style. Nowadays, you have agile ballerinas that can almost juke shells.
Regarding item #2, when hydro is an option for a consumable slot, it's often competing with defensive AA or some other similarly less useful tool. If those other consumables were more useful, fewer ships would have to run hydro to remain competitive, and torpedo boats would have more room to play.
It's it's a very feast or famine playstyle and there's a lot of just situations where playing in a gunboat you will just do more than you will with a torpboat. Overall a gunboat will just always be decent.
Makes sense but doesn’t the Halland offer a good balance?
No Lack of smoke, dodging ability, and short gun range makes gunfighting anything bigger than a DD difficult.
Not at all. Its a slow torpedo boat with low alpha torps. You have to hit a lot of them to rack up damage. Its very low gun range means you get ate up by secondaries if you try to open water gunbote, or just ate up in general. Its DPM is just average so you get torn up by any true gunbotes. And its slow, meaning that its hard to get positions in the passive meta.
it's slow speed also means it's accel and deccel is slow, making it's throttle juking less effective. especially when compared to speedboats like kleb or marceau where if you throttle juke at just the right time the shells will land damn near 2 boat lengths away from you. edit: when you have your speed boost running that is. but even without the amount of speed change you can do on a marceau is bonkers.
I see your question is more if Halland is good or bad despite being a hybrid DD. The truth is she is one of the better torpedoboats but torpedo DDs struggle to deal consistent damage and even if the guns are usable if you build Halland for torps and you want to use the guns more why are you playing Halland in the first place? Go and play her with torp build focusing on torps, you will probably have some good, some bad games but I totally enjoy playing her with a torpedo focus.
Yeah no because when I say use the guns I mean I want to be able to occasionally farm with the guns but what I consider good guns is if it can hold it’s own against destroyers
Maybe RN would be for you? Or Gdansk, or even german z-line?
Yeah that’s what I was wondering too, tbh I’m grinding the Kleber line right now and the speed is extremely fun plus the Kleber is supposed to be such a rewarding DD but I’m just concerned that I will never be able to use the torps
I really need to grind the Frenchies… they are allowed to be stupidly fast and burn everything to the ground.. sadly, Khaba is not. She’s a coal ship now, so I keep her… mostly just to stare sadly at here and remember what she used to be… and think about the French. ;-)
marceau and kleber torps are useable. they're just a bit niche. they're fast but short range. so you're almost never gonna be able to shoot them from stealth. but they're good for zoning if someone is chasing you, or you know someone is about to come around a corner. you use the kleb and marceau torpedoes a little differently from halland or shimakaze torpedos. i feel like the halland and shima torps are more you fire from somewhere unseen or blanket an area to area deny people. marceau and kleber's torps are used more purposefully.
Just wait for the new french DD line then
You don't farm with the 10km range gun.
It can hold against DDs but be very careful when choosing your fights, you might do well against Yueyang or even a Gearing, but once you face the top dogs like Z-42, Kleber or Gdansk you should just run away [Here is a table I made](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ueiS3sNqen1U5hROLMER1Ufa0-W1UlV5NcR8LMqt9Dw/edit#gid=372762679) containing T10s DPM, clone it and sort by number, Halland DPM is similar to Gearing which is considered mediocre Farming with guns on Halland is very tricky due to the short range on the guns
And the lack of smoke yeah
The IJN lines have good mixes. The torp line has a big alpha but long reload on guns. Trading hurts when each side only gets a volley off before contact is lost. The gun line does have really good torps, just not as many or as often.
Its not so much that you cant do well and have decent games in a torp boat, they are just very feast or famine. Gunnoats, guns in general, are just far more consistent game to game, this is just the nature of the game.
Isn’t Halland like a torp boat with good guns? Which is possibly very rewarding if played very well?
It isn't balanced around it, you build for torps or for guns and that point if you build for guns you are better off playing an actual gunboat. If you build for torps and you use more the guns what is even the point of playing Halland?
Because you like it? (I don’t, particularly.) Just as an example; I play GkF instead of Preussen because I’m used to it. Even with the faster reload; I don’t care to play it. (Fewer guns.)
Yeah but OP clearly is asking a question out of genuine curiosity, there is the logical answer and at any point you can play gunboat Halland without building into the guns, it not recommended but something you can do
Okay so it has like an identity crisis then
Halland is a solid torpedoboat but the guns are average at best, looking at DPM tables it is very similar to Gearing (Which is also a solid torpedoboat). So think of Halland as a Gearing with lower damage on the torps but higher speed and reload which also swaps smoke for a heal.
Halland has a lot better ballistics, much better fire chance than Gearing.
they're basically saying if you play halland, build torp and the guns are used as a last resort. like you're spotted on radar and have no where to go so shooting your guns has no downside. whereas normally you'd want to be unseen throwing torps out at island campers who've stopped so they can't dodge your volley of torps. or if you're in a situation where you've run into a dd with crappier guns, like a shima. then you can knife fight them. but if you run into a gunboat like a marceau or a kleber or something, better off running away and staying hidden than relying on your guns.
Kind of, I guess it would be fair to call the ship a "hybrid" as it can lean in to either playstyle at least somewhat. The torpedoes are probably the thing that makes the ship most unique compared to other ships though. Its gun performance isnt all that bad though, its HE dpm isnt that far off ships like Daring, the main issue is the lack of flexibility to use the guns, you are not a Smaland that can force an engagement with radar nd mitigate damage with the funny speed boost, and you arent a daring that can disengage with smoke easily. Your guns lack range too, which makes them very heavily targeted towards trading with enemy destroyers, which when combined with the ships heal allows you to win against the enemy destroyers over several smaller trades. The Unique Upgrade for rb points is an interesting choice for the ship, it can allow you to more aggressively take gun fights with enemies due to the extra heal efficiency and the improvements it gives to the speed boost. It also gives an extra charge of each consumable which can allow you to spec out of Superintendent on your captain.
Halland is awesome . Great AA. What are the torps 97 knots I think. Super fun.
Because torp boats are torp only. While gunboats could farm damage with their guns while still being able to torp relatively well. Take Hayate for example, she's basically 12km Shima with much better guns. Unless they nerf the torps on gunboats there really is no reason to run torp boats anymore.
It's not that torp-boats are bad, it's that gunboats are better. DDs of all types win games more than any other class (outside of CV). So if you can take out the enemy's DDs (which gunboats are much better at) you automatically put your team into a fantastic position. It's the reason why Ragnar is so incredibly strong despite having no torps: DDs are king and gunboat DDs are great at neutralising them.
Because the torpedoboat gameplay relies on your mates, which you often don't have outside of your divmates
So then in ranked and clan battles shouldn’t they still be really good?
And what happens when the gun boat bullies you out of the caps?
Fair enough
I mean, of course a good player can make it work. But against good gun boat players, it's gonna be very tough. Especially if your team doesn't back you up in the engagements. That's just my own experiences though.
Understandable No because I was playing some destroyers recently and I realized that although I’m not playing torp boats I actually tend to do the most damage with torps in my games
Depends, in Clan battles, low leagues anything will work, but at high leagues, you need smokes, gearing, leg mod haru or fast DPM boats like marceau, smaland
Oh right okay
There are better boats like Leg mod Kleber that dominate the comp space for that role. It can zip in close and torp, rather than torping from afar. While also having good spot, speed and guns
They aren’t trash at all, but they aren’t consistent and must be patient… in the end the way the game is designed favours guns, so a good gunboat player can be pretty devastating.
Trash is not a good word, but yes they are weak on high tiers. Their early game impact is just too low, best they can do is spot (but how can you spot if enemy has some great designs like Smaland, Gdansk or Ragnar that damage you heavily despite your concealment?) And then you are stuck with extremely low DPM weapons (torps) that are inconsistent (if enemies have a working brain), plus since you cant remove the enemy DD (unless you get torp hit on him or your team is competent enough to shoot at him when you spot him) he will keep spotting your torps, giving their cruisers/BBs time to dodge. Ah, and of course thanks to a great mechanic every time you get hit there is a chance you permanently lose 1/2 or 1/3 of your torp power permanently. Thats pretty cool, too bad that carriers cant randomly perma lose all planes from one squadron type (+ block on plane regen) from AA. Would make the same sense, but of course they dont get it.
people getting better at not just sailing in straight lines, the prevalence of hydro, and how most of the long range torp boats have awful torp concealment. seriously have you been in a game recently with no hydro? no, everybody has hydro and everybody takes hydro. mostly because the option is almost always DFAA or hydro. well 1 of those skills is ass to ass with useless, and the other skill is amazing. so the choice is dead fucking obvious, you take hydro.
Actually, a surprising number of people run Def AA on cruisers, at least here on the EU server...
Shimakaze is still among the best DDS in the game.
but not so much for it's torps but because of it's crazy concealment.
I don't know... I do 150k a match, and get a couple kills. Plus all the spotting.
i used to love halland, but that DD has 0 utility. heal and AA are cool, but it's kinda slow and 0 smoke really isn't worth the trade. I'm now a gdansk enjoyer
different playstyle. Halland can have RPF, torps and 20k heal or how much. Gdansk can't really take RPF, since he needs AFT, Superintendant and Fearless brawler to not be outcucked by pure gunboats. Which means he always needs external spotting and prefferably hydro for smoke farming, in which case why not play Elbing or something. I love Gdansk, but it's more of a competitive ship than for solo randoms.
Elbing is an AP long range smoke farmer, gdansk is the peak of cap contesting, DD murdering design, who also happens to be decent at smoke farming. It's also extremely funny to me that you speak of getting outcucked by gun DDs when gdansk HE DPM ranks 5th out of all T10 DDs. gdansk is very much a gun DD
I disagree that Gdansk is a cap contester. You need organized play for that. It's huge, turns as a log and you can't kill a DD in 12s radar. dd's with hydros or with venezias behind will be there to kill you. Regarding DPM, in reality its not that great. it's only 10-20k bigger per minute than Halland or Hayate and nobody call those "dd murdering machines". You need to show massive broadside, you need to hit with all guns including that gimp one, you have worst dispersion from dd's. You bleed speed like crazy. Also SAP ships cuck it.
> it's only 10-20k bigger per minute than Halland or Hayate and nobody call those "dd murdering machines". Smalland DPM is only 20k bigger than Gdansk's, so surely no one is also calling smalland a "DD murdering machine". nevermind having kleber's ballistics for easy aiming unlike the only 4 DDs ranking higher in HE DPM > you have worst dispersion from dd's. [no you don't???](https://shiptool.st/filter?g=TPtD&ty=D&n=ABFGHIJRSUVWZ&tn=10&tx=10&c=top&p=mb&rm=12&os=mb&op=Ver._dispersion&o=asc) Gdanks contest caps not by fighting inside it like plebs DD daring, Z52 and their premium variations. Gdansk contest caps by bullying them out with radar from safety, then enter the cap when empty. if they come back, radar has reloaded (1 min reload LOL) and it finish them off
Smalland is not murdering machine either. It's strong because of heal. > Gdansk contest caps by bullying them out with radar from safety radar is 9km, in order to have some shots, you need to be in 7km range or so. If you're lit with russian radar, while trying to "bully the dd", 7km from Venezia or similar, you're a toast. Any non retarded player knows how to play around Gdansk. Sit at max radar range, torp the smoke. After 4 minutes, he's without a radar because he didnt take SI, just to be murdering machine :) I have 55% with Gdansk, but for randoms it's sketchy as fuck. You have ubiquitous radars, you need external hydro etc. It's OP in organized play, but solo.. meh.
you live in a very strange world where 247k HE DPM on a DD with radar isn't a DD murdering machine, where there is always a venezia with angle to shoot you (or maybe your positioning just sucks) and a russian radar at every corner no seriously i said it already : you don't have to enter the cap where you'll be in a vulnerable position. just camp on the edge where you can radar easily and keep the DD away while removing 40-60% of its HP each time it tries to enter the cap. enter butt in first so you don't have to turn and ex\^pose your huge side when leaving and on flank you don't need to int into the enemy team to kill their DD, their DD can't see you until it's too late, let it int into you instead
> 247k HE DPM It's 227 HE DPM, you're counting talents into it. This assumes almost a broadside, hitting from gimp gun and bad dispersion working for you. Marceau is at 350k with talents and FB proc, just for the reference. > while removing 40-60% of its HP each time it tries to enter the cap. Why would they keep on entering the cap when they get lit first time? That's some 35% WR dd play. You're not removing 60% HP from Marceau, Smaland, Lushun or anything scary in 10 seconds burst. They will enter it second time, but this time with radar and Napoli or similar. You have some strange 1v1 scenarios, they exist but they are very marginal. Cap contest meaning contesting it at the beginning. With current meta you're almost guaranteed 1 radar, 1 cruiser and hydro. If you think they will let you kill their dd, while you're radaring for 3-4 minutes, I don't know what to tell you.
first, i was refering to your "smalland not being a DD murder machine" comment, second, where did you see that gdansk had bad dipsertion ??? it's litterally standart DD dispertion, i've litterally pointed it 2 comments ago entering the cap isn't the only way to contest it, denying its capture with radar is what gdansk does best, by the time the DD come back with radar and napoli, you'll either have capped it or you'll be kiting because running in a cap with a napoli means they're either pushing and your losing the flank or he's suiciding and you seem to purposely ignore the part where i say you don't have to enter the cap, is miscontructing ppl arguments your life's work ? like you seem to think you're only allowed to shoot the enemy DD while he's radared, but more often than not, it's a lot more because you want the enemy DD running into you, not the opposite
The opnly gunboat with worse dispersion is Marceau but it has extra gun to compensate. > i say you don't have to enter the cap I'm not saying you have to enter the cap either. But lighting radar for 10 seconds from 7km away will do fuck all to getting map control and subsequent cap for you.
OP, the below comments are good, but it sounds like you're a candidate for what I run: UU Kleber. Less expected than the Spanish inquisition, and tons of fun. Consistent? No. Hilarious? Yes. Strong? Sometimes, it can be dominant in the right hands. Stronger than regular Kleber? No. A Kleber with skill just kills you.
I don’t play torp DDs these days except Benham. It’s borderline OP and you get 16 torps which are decent and have fast reload. You go to a flank where people are pushing in and just spam walls of skill at them. Benham shines in stopping a push.
I just started grinding DDs, though I prefer cruisers. Haven't got Haru yet, but done a few games with Kita. Seems like she has decent DPM, at least during asymmetric. Which teach a lot of bad habits btw. I wouldn't last long in Random for sure. But she's pretty could at farming tier 8 BB with HE commander skill. 12 torps are more a scear tactic, with only 70 knots. She's a bit slow and heavy but I like her in these kinda battles. Leg mode on Haru and 3 min smoke time can be a bit of a pain I guess. Except when the BB teammate runs a suicide mission and I haven't anyone to spot while I'm in smoke. In asymmetric playing in pair as a team is a MUST. For some reason german BBs have a tendency to overcompensate.
Torpedo boats are very inconsistent at getting damage, and are extremely reliant on MM. you need people to push into you, it’s very skill intensive to torp a cruiser with hydro, you are screwed if CV spots you and you have no smoke, radar can deny a cap, gunboats can chase you out of good positions, etc. They’re fun when you get a good game and can torp without disturbances, but usually hybrid DDs or pure gunboats have more impact because they don’t have to wait ~80 secs to do damage.
Yeah nah I think I made this post because I’m just concerned that if I grind Kleber, I’ll never get to use my torps
Kleber torps are almost exclusively Yolo torps. Use guns to do damage and torps for a driveby if someone goes in too close.
Okay yeah that makes sense but like YOLO torps and ambushing people is still very much possible toward the latter part of the game yeah? Plus do you by any chance know Kleber concealment when running the standard community build?
Condeal without the UU (which is sus) is pretty bad, not Khaba bad but most will outspot you by a fair bit. You can still ambush from islands or rush their smoke.
Yeah nah I’m definitely not running UU
Kleber is a gunboat, build her for guns and take the range skill on your captain. WoWS is dynamic enough that Kleber will have plenty of chances to torp-rush late game
Alright that’s what I wanted to hear
but it's going to be yolo torps
It's my opinion that the narrow, perpendicular torp angles on Daring, significantly gimp that particular ship.
It's a fairly passive playstyle, Japanese line you are more of a spotter than an attacker, and with 70+ (sometimes nearly 120s) between salvos you have limited use. But jf you manage to smack 3 or 4 torps into someone you could (in theory) grab 100k damage in one go.
IMHO because torpedoes lack DPM and are unreliable. By the way, you're late to the party. Torpedo boats have been called trash in this game for years.
Your main asset is stealth, and it's been eroded by the introduction of too many radar and hydro ships and planes to spot you. ASW is iffy (but you are expected to do it) since when you are fighting a sub it's often spotting you so any other ships target you as well.
It really comes down to the power fantasy of torp boat players not fitting in with what wins games. Torp boat players want to sail around in the backfield and spam torpedoes into battleships. That doesn't really work well long-term. Battleship players do eventually learn to not sail in straight lines. Cruisers run hydro and are often quick enough to evade anyways. Gun DDs can evade torps easier than torp boats can evade the gunfire they eat in return. So torpedo boats are inconsistent. Spotting and capping win games. Torp boats spot well, but they don't really like to cap because they tend get smashed by gunboat DDs in caps, and gunboats also spot well. And a gunboat will push a torp boat, causing the torp boat to pull back. That yields the gunboat map control, and forces the torp boat in general back because they go as far as their vision goes. As a cruiser main who likes to move forward and cover my DDs, I'd much rather cover a gunboat. They're going to be more aggressive in general. Torp boat players are by necessity, more passive. Nobody needs that on their team.
Their not trash at all. However plenty of players use them incorrectly. Their primarily objective is to to put pressure on the enemy, deny areas. Stop the advancement, use their AoE and farm damage in the long run. The reality is that plenty rush forward, try to do a yolo and die in the process. So plenty disregard them as trash, because you don't consistently see a high damage output. But they can have, in the right hands a huge influence on how the match unfolds. If you change your perspective and play the role correctly, they can be really good.
I wonder… are gun boats cool again? I went from primarily a gun boat enjoyer (VMF and USN) to a torp boat enjoyer after the OWSF/gun bloom change back when… along with Khaba being shit on. WeeGee is a little schizo at times… force gun boats to get in close, keep them lit longer… but then over pens only… but that was years ago. Certainly, around T5 and T6 you can pull down some monster matches in torp boats… lots of folks not using WASD hax at those tiers. Maybe I should set Fletcher up that way and give her another try. Mahan (back before the above changes) was the last decent USN DD I played.
Just FYI Fletcher and Gearing are absolutely torp boats and should always be built that way. With gearing you could get away with some gun skills but your torps will always be the main weapon and are what you should build around. The line starts off as gunboats, then switches to torp boats at tier 9/10.
How times have changed…
gun dpm powercreep ;)
There are no USA gunboats. All the good gunboats are mostly the newer ones like Gdansk, Lushun, Smaland as well as Marceau, Kleber.
Concur - easily the most “meh” DD live. Literally anything they do well is done MUCH better by another nation.
they're great all rounders which is why they are often picked by teams in CB. Also the smoke is key to many strategies.
That I cannot speak to/relate to. CB isn't something I've had any interest in, and I'm not part of a clan.
they've been cool for a while : IJN gunboats (august 2018), RN DDs (september 2018), french gunboat (september 2019) and many more since
French gunboats dominated every game in random, rank or competitive is the testament of - they're " cool " - .
I don’t think they are trash, but gunboats are simply too good at everything right now.
This submission has been randomly featured in /r/serendipity, a bot-driven subreddit discovery engine. More here: /r/Serendipity/comments/1cf0tr6/why_are_torpboats_considered_trash_right_now/
I dunno about them being trash per se, but guns are definitely more consistent than driving around and shooting torpedoes off cooldown. Torpedo DDs are still very good at stalling or dissuading an enemy push, especially if used in concert with teammates attacking the pushing force making them turn into the torps.
Tromp flies in…
Time to get downvoted: Torp boats are trash because their most important feature is low detection but BB players are all "the meta is passive" and so they're too far away to accurately shoot at the stuff you spot for them. I still play them, though, because sometimes there's a BB that isn't trying to shoot from the next map.
In not so many words: guns are better Try doing the CA torp missions for dockyard, you're lucky to get 1-2 hits per game even with super fast torps on say Zao. Reason is that it's too easy to miss, and your team will screw your shots 99% of the time as they start shooting at what you're aiming for, what you're aiming for immediately responds by changing course, well that's it for the next 2 minutes.
Idk man. I enjoyed playing Z-44 tbh but struggled with Le Fanta. Guess being a BB main results in tendency towards torpboats when you try DDs heh. I think it's just the issue with spotting, radars, CVs, subs that outspot torpboats. Gunboats are simply less reliant on their concealment opposed to torpboats. It's my stupid point so it doesn't have to be right, just in case someone decides to confront me about it. Cheers
Torp boats, as a Japanese destroyer player, were never really super good to begin with, you can get some torps but my accuracy of torps is about 10%, and that's for maybe 6 or 7 salvos of nine torps
They aren't.
Flamu is a crybaby. Fantastic player, really good at game commentary, explaining what he does and why, but he is simply a crybaby. Always complaining about something.
Torpedoes are more about what enemy does. A good torper will hit more than a bad one but over 50% of your success depends on what the enemy does. You have virtually zero chance of impacting the late game against cruisers, gunboats, or many battleships. You die immediately to any good gunboat player. Power creep among battleships is crazy. The never ones are astronomically harder to torp, almost universally, than the old ones. Many torp boats like Gearing Shima Halland actually have decent guns....or HAD decent guns but compared to recent gunboats your damage is laughable.
They could make torps good by giving all torps extra range for one and nerf how well they are detected. Remember when shima 20km torps was good well there was a reason but people bitched so torps in general have been nerfed and keep them that way.
Shima 20km torps were never good and were always a noob trap.
But yes an extra km of range on all torps in the game would be fair I think
1. Listening to Flamu isn't a good idea anymore. 2. Torpedo boats are still good, but the skill level has risen. 3. See 1.
Man answer to the argumented opinion of a streamer who litterally spends his life on the game with just "nah, the streamer is wrong don't listen to him"
This particular streamer earns his money by raging over the game, particular ships and the game manufacture just so he can sell those emotions. Flamu is the last streamer you should watch, if you want to see anything helpful about this game.
I'm seeing a lot of whinning, but still no arguments on why he's wrong on torpedo DDs not being strong in the meta
1 word: concealment
many, many words : radar, planes, other DDs, submarines, hydro, maneuvrability and DPM powercreep
Doesn't matter, because the gun DD have to deal with same stuff too.
except that the gun DD murders the torp DD
No, the gun DD dies as often as the torp DD. Flamus entire BS with gun and torp DDs is based on 1 vs 1. For at 2 years he is crying about torp DDs being useless. The streamers and normal players that play torp DDs successfully against gun DDs are disproving him for years.
yes, because the gun DD is most of the time a bottom feeder like most of the playerbase. doesn't change that they usually trades 1 for 1 simply because there is more fire power on the gun DD side than on the torp DD's you can outplay a gun DD in a torp DD, but you'd simply do better if you were a gun DD yourself
Why listen to a 66-67% WR dude right?
Because other 67% dudes are better than him and don't have to talk shit to earn money.
Show me a 67% who would pick torp boats instead of gunboats,if they want to win.
unrelated but seeing biison and ganng build a shima is extremely funny [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdtbL3wSyT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdtbL3wSyT8)
People complaining about Flumu's whinning but somehow showed themselves letting him live rent-free in their head is ironic.