Premium Ship Review: Daisen

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Daisen, the tier IX premium Japanese Battleship  (I personally think it's a battlecruiser, but whatever).  I was given access to this ship by Wargaming; I did not have to pay to play-test this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.12.3  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Another dockyard event, another Japanese battleship.

I had been on track to get this review out within the first round of the dockyard missions being available.  I had recently joined the wiki-team and through it, I got access to Daisen early without having to grind it out.  Awesome!  I threw myself into play test games!  I crunched the data!  I started the graphics!  I filled out my template!  I went to the hospital!   Yeah, my health and doctor said "Very no" and I had to scale production waaay back.  The dockyard event came and went and I missed the boat (literally).  This sat on the back burner, being poked at every so often.  I ended up losing a big chunk of it to a save error which was disheartening, so I put it down and focused on West Virginia '44 instead.  With WeeVee '44 out of the way, it didn't take too long to push this through to the end.

Sorry it's late, but I'm pretty proud of the quality of this one.  I very much wanted to share it, even if the boat is no longer available.

Please enjoy!

Quick Summary:  A fast Japanese battleship with eight, accurate, quick-firing 410mm guns, accurate secondaries and torpedoes.  She has a special Spotter Aircraft consumable.

PROS

• Excellent torpedo protection with a 53% torpedo damage reduction
• Quick firing main battery guns with a 27 second reload
• High sigma on main battery of 2.1
• Secondaries with improved range and accuracy
• Massive torpedo armament for a battleship with 4x4 launchers (!)
• High top speed for a battleship of 35 knots
• Very long active time and shorter reset timer on her Spotter Aircraft consumable

CONS

• Small hit point pool for a tier IX battleship and only 3 charges of her Repair Party
• Long, exposed citadel with a relatively thin armoured belt
• Soft skinned, highly vulnerable to HE and SAP
• Small main battery of only eight guns
• Secondaries have low HE penetration
• Horrible turning circle radius of 1100m

Overview

Skill Floor:  Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult
Skill Ceiling:  Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme

A quick aside: I think it's important to touch base on what it means to be a 'brawling battleship'.  Brawling is going to come up often.  Daisen has improved secondaries.  Daisen has a lot of torpedoes.  Daisen is fast!  Ergo, she's a brawler, right?  Well, it's complicated.  This deserves it's own long winded essay or three, but I'll try and keep it short for this review.

When evaluating whether or not a ship makes a good brawler, there are traits you want to look for, with some weighted more important than others.  The most important are:

• Competitive speed
• Good durability
• Powerful, long-range secondaries
• Good damage dealing

A fast brawler can control engagement distances, dictating when these fights will happen.  A tough brawler can survive the damage it will take as it closes, and is better suited it is to trade body blows.  You want secondaries that open up early and keep the attrition going with direct damage, fires and critical hits.  Finally, you want a knock out punch, being able to deliver a brutal broadside as ships pass one another.  This last one can come from overmatching guns that can punch into an enemy even when angled, torpedoes or just a high volume of fire between main and secondary batteries that tears your opponent apart before the joust occurs.

Tirpitz is probably one of the most recognizable purpose-built brawlers in the game.  She has a top speed over 30 knots.  She is nigh-immune to citadel hits and her dispersed armour scheme shrugs off a ton of HE.  Fully upgraded, her secondaries can reach out to nearly 11.5km, with great accuracy and high HE penetration.  Lastly, she has a broadside of four torpedoes, perfect for ending a joust dramatically.

Spoiler warning:  Daisen does not tick all four boxes.

So you can already guess:  Daisen is a bad ship for inexperienced players.  She's going to bait them into playing the ship in a way it's not meant to be played and it will punish them hard for it.  Similarly, if all you do is stay back then you lose out on the potential this ship offers.  Veterans can make this flexible style work and use it to great effect.

Daisen ambushing a beached Jean Bart, the Japanese battleship having used a headland to conceal her approach.  By the time the Jean Part recognized the threat, it was too late to escape.

Options

Daisen is a high-tier ship with six upgrade slots, a weird consumable and brawling potential, so this section is going to be CHONKY.

Consumables

• Daisen's Damage Control Party is standard for a Japanese battleship.  This has a shortened active time of 10 seconds instead of the usual 15 seconds for most other battleships (20 for American battleships).  It comes with unlimited charges and it has an 80 second reset timer.
• Daisen's Repair Party has one fewer charge than normal versions of the consumable, starting with three instead of four.  It queues up to 10% of citadel damage, 100% from fires, flooding and collisions and 50% of everything else.  Each charge heals up to 14% of the ship's health over 28 seconds.  It has an 80 second reset timer.

In slot three, you have a choice:

• Her Spotter Aircraft is * * * S  P  E  C  I  A  L * * * !  It has a longer active period than normal; 240 seconds (!) instead of the usual 100 seconds. It increases Daisen's range by 20%, from 20.57km to 24.68km.  If her range is upgraded with Gun Fire Control System Modification 2, then this boosts from 23.83km to 28.59km.  It starts with three charges.  It's reset timer is only 90 seconds instead of the usual 240 seconds.
• Her Catapult Fighter launches 3 aircraft  which stay on station, orbiting the ship at a range of 3km for 60s.  It comes with three charges and has a 90s reset timer.

Personally, I'd go for her spotter.

Upgrades

In slot #1, you've got two choices.

• It's exceedingly rare for me to recommend this consumable, but the special upgrade, Spotter Aircraft Modification 1 is worth investing for Daisen.  You can buy this for 17,000 Coal   in the Armory.  This increases the action time of her consumable from 240 seconds to 312 seconds (a 72 second gain! You gotta love percentage-based gains on already big numbers!).
• The alternative is to take Main Armaments Modification 1.

In slot #2, the only upgrade worth considering is Damage Control System Modification 1.

In slot #3, it's time to make the decision if you want to play the sniper or if you want to focus on making her a better brawler.

• Main battery gunnery will always be optimal over brawling, so Aiming System Modification 1 is the better choice.
• However, brawling is awesome and sniping is for nerds, so taking Secondary Battery Modification 1 automatically makes you cool.  It also increases your secondary range from 6.95km to 8.34km.  Paired with the commander skill, Long Range Secondary Battery Shells and the Mike Yankee Soxisix, you can get Daisen's secondaries out to a range of 10.51km.

In slot #4, you've again got a choice.

• Damage Control System Modification 2 is optimal, reducing the burn time of fires and wetness time of floods.  (Wetness time of floods?  Really, Mouse?  You know what? I'm not editing that.  I'm leaving that in there so you can think about what you did).  It helps take the strain off your Repair Party consumable which we already know is of reduced quality on Daisen.
• The alternative is to take Steering Gears Modification 1.  I'm not recommending this to help you avoid damage -- Daisen ability to Just Dodge™ at anything but stupidly long-ranges is about as effective as Arkansas Beta's triple A.  This is purely a quality of life improvement to make her handling feel more comfortable; a bandaid and kiss on the forehead for a sucking chest-wound as it were.

In slot #5, things get interesting again.

• Concealment System Modification 1 is optimal.  Daisen's surface detection is terrible and this upgrade isn't going to fix that.  However, this upgrade also comes with that tasty 5% dispersion increase to incoming shellfire and this tips the scales for me when combined with the concealment gains.
• The alternative is Ship Consumables Modification 1.  This combines with other consumable duration boosting shenanigans.  For Daisen, this most importantly buffs her heals (allowing you to flirt with the upper maximum of 20.328% of her hit points healed per charge if you boost it with signals and commander skills) and increases her Spotter Aircraft's active time yet again up to a theoretical maximum of 343.2 seconds if you also boosted it with Spotter Aircraft Modification 1.

And finally, we have slot #6.

• In theory, Main Battery Modification 3 is best.  The faster reload just opens up more opportunities to do damage.  Damage wins games.
• You could swap this out for more range.  Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 ups her 20.54km reach to 23.83km which is much more comfortable at this tier, just keep in mind that Daisen is already hurting on the DPM front and giving up reload time for range may not be optimal.  You do you, though.
• Finally, for the memes (and not for any reasons of efficiency), you could go all in on secondaries with Auxiliary Armaments Modification 2.  This makes your secondaries reload faster and it comes with the added bonus of padding her mediocre AA values.

As much as I like to meme about brawling battleships, Daisen is best equipped as a long-range sniper. 

Commander Skills

Oh boy!  I get to recycle commander skill graphics again!  You're presented with the choice of whether or not to try and make a brawling build for Daisen or not.  While it may seem a waste to squander the long-range potential of her secondaries, a survivability build focused on artillery and mitigating damage is always going to be better.

You can build for survivability (which is generally optimal).  It's boring, but it works.

 
Or you can build for awesome, buffing her secondaries.  As much as I joke about brawling builds being cool, this build isn't the best choice.  It's fun, but it's definitely prompts some volatile and inconsistent results.

Camouflage

There are two permanent camouflages for Daisen.  The first is the default version with an alternate palette swap (booger green or Strong Sad grey).  The second is a Dockyard "War Paint" camouflage which we're used to seeing that includes nice little in-port details such as crew on deck, signal pennants hung from the rigging, etc. 

Daisen's default camouflage in green.  You can unlock the grey and beige version by completing the appropriate section of the Yamamoto collection.

Take Daisen out to sea in her War Paint camouflage, and she loses all of the flags you see in port.

Firepower
Main Battery:  Eight 410mm/50 guns in 4x2 turrets in an A-B-X-Y gun layout.
Secondary Battery: Sixteen 140mm/50 guns in single-mount casemates along the hull, with six forward firing and two rearward firing per side.  She then has twenty 127mm/40 guns in 10x2  turrets mounted on deck and in the superstructure, with five per side.
Torpedoes: Sixteen torpedoes in 4x4 launchers mounted into the hull between the rear funnel and rear superstructure.

Izumo (bis)

Imagine Izumo.  No, not the 2016-era Izumo.  The present-day one.  The good one.   The one with the REALLY nice 410mm guns, with their improved penetration, good accuracy and ballistics.  THAT ONE, yeah!  Her guns are sweet.  Their only flaw is that they're "only" 410mm in calibre, so you don't hit that 30mm overmatch threshold for abusing high-tier heavy cruiser upper hull and deck plating.  But that's alright.  Izumo's guns are great.  Daisen gets Izumo's guns, ergo Daisen's guns are great.

This isn't like Hizen or Iwami, where they look like the same guns until you do a deep dive and find out their AP isn't quite as good.  These are the Real McCoy.  Daisen clones Izumo's shell performance to the letter, so you know exactly what you're in for without any soft-numbers weirdness, like different drag or penetration or what have you (this has been a TERRIBLE year for that kind of nonsense).

Now, it's not a one to one pairing of Izumo's guns on a different hull.  There are some differences, notably:

• Daisen has eight guns instead of nine.
• Daisen reloads in 27 seconds instead of 30.
• Daisen has 2.1 sigma instead of 2.0
• Daisen's guns have a range of around 20.6km instead of Izumo's 21.7km.
• Daisen has that amazing Spotter Aircraft active time.

So let's talk about these differences and how they affect Daisen's gameplay.

 
Hey, look, I found a solution for graphics bloat.  Just double the number of graphs to cover a singular topic.  This is AP DPM for all of the tier IX battleships, with the first graph(with muh closed peepers) being the top performers and the second (with the big red arrow pointing at Daisen) being the bottom half.  Daisen's small main battery armament is very nicely propped up by her quick reload.  So good job there, Wargaming.  Her potential damage output is nice and average, but only if you take full advantage of her reload time.

 
Same deal, but with HE shells: two graphs to show all of the tier IX battleships.  This was a lot of work.  Back in the day, I would have lumped HE and AP together on a single graph.  Now I've four of the damn things.

Daisen's AP peformance is just god-tier for a 406mm/410mm and it puts the other 16-inch guns at tier IX to shame.

Fewer Guns But More Accurate & Faster Firing

Eight guns is right on the cusp of what I consider a "small main battery" for battleships.  This might seem odd given the glut of eight-gun armed dreadnoughts  but World of Warships is packed with battleships with nine, ten, twelve and greater armaments.  The average broadside for this type of ship is 9.4 guns (and yes, I'm an idiot and I counted all 1600+ barrels out there back in patch 0.12.3), so yeah, Daisen's slightly behind the average (especially at higher tiers). 

I feel there's three general effects that result from smaller main battery salvos:

1. You feel every single shell that misses, so wonky dispersion is much more obvious than it would be in a larger salvo.  Every shell counts and it's easy to notice AND get frustrated by individual shells straying.
2. The difference in alpha strike is very apparent.  Outright deleting (or gutting) a given target from a single volley is harder.  It's unfortunate when you see a cruiser limp away from a "perfect shot", or a battleship survive slamming home citadels in a joust.
3. There's no "accuracy by volume" crutch.  If your lead is slightly off on larger salvos, there's always a chance for one or more stray shells to still net you some damage.  That's much less likely to happen with fewer shells being thrown.

This is one of my standard dispersion tests:  180 AP shells fired at a stationary target at a range of 15km.  Daisen was equipped with Aiming System Modification 1.  Shots are coming in from right to left (the Fuso bot is bow tanking).  You can really see how the 2.1 sigma likes to centre-cluster the shell fall.

In short: It feels like RNG matters more with smaller broadsides. Despite Daisen having 2.1 sigma, her dispersion can still feel painfully troll at times.  So, if you're a pessimist:  Beware.  Still, her guns are accurate.  She will put most of her shells where you aim and you're still capable of putting out the hurt on exposed targets.

Daisen makes up for her smaller main battery with a 27 second reload.  After the last couple of years, seeing any battleship get added to the game with less than a 30 second reload just feels weird, like there's something wrong with Wargaming.  They have been addicted to greater-than-30-second reloads for so long, I balk whenever I see one now.  Anyway,  Daisen's quicker reload doesn't quite make up the DPM gap between herself and ships with larger main batteries.  Still, she gets close; so close in fact that it's not an area of concern -- at least when she's throwing AP shells.  Japanese battleship HE is less competitive, especially when it comes to setting fires, but that's not a problem unique to Daisen.

Overall, these are good guns.  The faster reload means they're more likely to be available when there's a choice target of opportunity that needs a paddlin'.  While larger calibre would have been nice to overmatch 30mm cruiser hull sections, these will do.

Home, home on the range... ♫

Finally, we can't talk about Daisen's main armament without talking about their reach.

Right out of the box, these aren't especially long-ranged guns, especially when compared to the other tier IX battleships.  Even among Japanese tier IX battleships, she doesn't come out too well, with her 20.57km base range outstripped by Izumo (21.68km), Musashi (26.5km) and Iwami (22.3km).  She's just barely ahead of the trash-heap that is Hizen (20.33km).  But her design and gun performance is just begging for you to extend their reach.  Embracing the sniper build on Daisen greatly increases her flexibility.  She can take a position within the center of the map, just outside of her friendly deployment area and yeet shells to where they'll do the most good.  Between her speed and reach, she can move back and forth to where she's needed.  And if you're feeling really saucy, you can even snipe carriers this way which is always popular with your team mates.

Daisen's special Spotter Aircraft consumable is a gimmicky way of giving this ship the equivalent of a 24.68km base range.  The 90 second reset timer is JUST long enough to make you aware of the discomfort of not having that reach anymore.  So this creates a sense player agency and control.  I mean, it would be better if Daisen just had a 24km and change base range, but I can't say that I actively dislike the use of this special consumable. 

Daisen's gun firing angles are almost great and her gun traverse is nice at over 5º/s.

Kii Redux

Daisen's torpedo armament is ridiculous.  SIXTEEN torpedo tubes on a battleship?  That looked soooo exciting until I actually started playing the ship.

There are two problems with Daisen's torpedoes:

1. The first is Daisen's durability that makes using them incredibly difficult.
2. They only have a 10km range.

Daisen isn't Iwami.  You can't yeet these fish at targets halfway across the map and net a hit or two every few games or so. They're limited to brawls or maybe catching a lurking stealth-bote by surprise.  And outside of PVE modes, Daisen really struggles to make use of these torpedoes with any regularity.  A lot of this has to do with her fragility and you'll see what I'm talking about more in the Durability section.  For now just know that Daisen's torpedo armament goes contrary to her nominal gameplay which is best done at longer ranges. This also damns her secondaries, which is unfortunate.  While she has a lot of secondaries with a high volume of fire and improved (German) levels of accuracy, they do little good if Daisen has to surrender huge chunks of health to make use of them.

Her torpedoes and secondaries feel like a trap, the same way they baited others to try out brawling builds on Kii.  They look good until you cross-reference the hull they're mounted on.  These end up being a waste of upgrades and commander skills to attempt something that will work out so seldom.  In theory, if Daisen can survive into end-game as one of the few remaining ships alive?  Then yeah, a fully upgraded brawler version will be her best self and give her the best chance of winning.  But high tier gameplay so rarely allows for successful brawls, not without sacrifice.  And as we'll see below, Daisen cannot afford to trade.

Like all brawlers, though, it's SO much easier to instigate close-range fights when the ship is top tier.  Those poor tier VIIs don't stand a chance.

Daisen's secondary firing arcs, with 140mm casemates in red and her 127mm twins in blue.   Her forward firing angles are pretty good, though you need to show a complete broadside (47º) to get all thirteen mounts firing.  Her rearward firing angles are pretty terrible.  These troublesome firing angles will only exaggerate her durability issues.

VERDICT:  Great main battery guns, though they'd be nicer if they were a larger calibre or if she had more of them.  Awesome potential in her secondaries and torpedoes but nigh impossible to realize them except in VERY specific (and rarely occurring) scenarios.

Durability
Hit Points: 69,300
Bow & stern / superstructure / upper-hull / amidships-deck:  32mm / 19mm / 32mm / 32mm
Maximum Citadel Protection: 305mm belt armour + 76mm turtleback + 76mm citadel wall
Torpedo Damage Reduction:  53%

Daisen has a small hit point pool, only three heals and structural armour that gets no thicker than 32mm.  Yet she's allegedly a brawler.  That's a yikes.

Daisen reminds me of Kii in this regard, where whatever potential there may have been between secondaries and torpedoes is undone by a protection scheme that will see you punished (and punished hard) if you try and play the ship like her armaments suggest.   Kii and Daisen share some similar failings, but Daisen is the better protected between the two, with better (but not good) citadel protection and fantastic anti-torpedo defence. 

So despite her apparent brawling lustre, Daisen will quickly disabuse her captains of leading the charge. Brawling is only something she can do in a crisis and she should not be thrown forward aggressively unless you have every advantage (and maybe someone to tank the hits for you).

I usually do these graphics from the front, but Daisen has more complex armour values towards the rear of the ship, including an extended waterline belt and a massive section of 19mm deck plating amidships.

Daisen's forward citadel's transverse bulkhead is thicker than her rear one.  Note how her turtelback is part of the forward citadel geometry but not the rear.

Soft Skinned and Stonkin' Huge

Daisen be long, yo.

She's an enormous target.  Long-long boat is also soft and chewy (just like Long Sakeru Gummy!).  None of her structural armour (upper hull, bow, stern or deck) gets thicker than 32mm.  In addition, she has a large section of 19mm deck plating over her torpedoes that counts as part of her superstructure (just where you'd want the thinnest armour -- overtop of the oxygen fuelled water-missiles with giant explody warheads).  She is incredibly vulnerable to cruiser calibre HE and SAP rounds, with no protection against these shells if they don't strike her belt.  In addition, this also makes her vulnerable to overmatching from AP shells 460mm calibre or greater.

Things don't get much better when you look at her belt and citadel. First, it's huge.  Second, it sits just over the waterline, making it an easy target.  Third, it doesn't have a lot of armour, at least not by high-tier standards.  Her outer belt is only 305mm thick.  The lower belt runs underneath it at only 127mm thick (this gets obscured in part by her 32mm anti-torpedo bulge).  Behind her belt, she has a 76mm turtleback and then a 76mm citadel wall which SOUNDS good on paper, but in practice, this only affects the rear half of the citadel.  The forward half INCLUDES the turtleback as part of the citadel, effectively meaning that AP shells need only contend with the 305mm belt then the 76mm turtleback in order to land a citadel hit.  That's not a very big ask for the enormous amounts of penetration being thrown around at higher tiers.

On the plus side, angling protects Daisen's citadel much better than other high-tier Japanese ships.  There's none of that weird octagonal geometry or rounded off edges going on.  A hidden horizontal plate in her bow also prevents her squishier, lower transverse bulkhead from being an easy 'in' for long-range shells. For a battleship, Daisen barely earns a passing grade in terms of armour protection.  She might be soft and squishy, but she's not like, British battleship or battlecruiser levels of squish.

 
On the left is a better shot of Daisen's weird citadel geometry, with the turtelback counting as part of the citadel for the forward half but not the rear. Thus it's the rear half the ship which is better protected as the hidden turtleback must be bested before contesting the citadel beneath. One of the weird quirks of this half-included, half-not turtleback-as-citadel scheme is that there's two small, triangular 19mm 'voids'.  While this is a possible weak spot for incoming battleship shells, in practice I don't think it's relevant.  It's too small of a target and you'd never know if you took a hit through there anyway as any hits through her turtleback are likely going to be citadel hits anyway.  On the right, you can see these two sections of armour that are hidden or difficult-to-see from in port.  These come via gamemodels3d.com which is an invaluable resource tool for people interested in learning more about what makes World of Warships tick.  The top picture shows the missing 76mm turtleback which covers the rear-half of Daisen's citadel.  This presents the most protected part of the ship.  The bottom image shows a hidden 76mm horizontal plate that protects the 32mm transverse bulkhead of her citadel from shells overmatching her bows.  Any penetrating rounds plunging through her bows will hit this plate and deflect off, meaning that in order to land citadel hits, the shells must contend with the upper 330mm citadel bulkhead.

Health and Hit Points

Daisen's hit point pool of 69,300 health is on the low side for a tier IX battleship.  That might be okay on it's own, but Daisen pairs this with a crappy Repair Party consumable, neutered with one fewer charges than normal.  The end result is that this creates an extreme deficit of potential health she has to play with over the course of a match. This becomes an absolute nightmare when under concerted attack from cruiser spam.  I had a VERY unfortunate encounter with a happy-go-lucky Cleveland backed by a Seattle that made me melt in very short order. Her lack of armour means everything hurts.  Her small hit point pool doesn't give her a lot of time to extract herself when under fire and her lacklustre heals means she doesn't claw back as much health as her contemporaries.

 
If you're looking for Daisen, look to the right.  The ones on the left are the fourteen tier IX battleships with the highest potential health.  She's over on the right, second from the bottom.

About Those Torpedoes...

Daisen's anti-torpedo protection is spectacular with a 53%  damage reduction for hits along her bulges.  This also provides significant flooding protection

As cool as Daisen's quad-launchers are, they break.  Often.  Chronically even.  If decide to upgrade her Spotter Aircraft with it's special upgrade (17,000  in the Armory, it's one of the few times I can actually recommend this in good conscience!), then it'll happen even more often.  If you want to brawl, you need to look at trying to keep these alive somehow, but at best you're only going to delay the inevitable.  They are not well protected.  Like all torpedo tubes, loud noises in their general vicinity will break them and there's a lot of loud noises thrown Daisen's way.  Outside of a few test games in Co-Op, I don't think I ever reached for Daisen's torpedoes and found all four launchers intact -- there was always at least one permanently disabled.  This should be yet another word of caution about trying to close prematurely with this ship.

 

Random hit point assignments are random.  Every time you hit "Battle", each of your torpedo launchers get assigned a value between 300 and 2100 hit points.  Good luck.

VERDICT:  Too squish to be up front.  This is a second line battleship until things thin out.  Her durability really makes her feel like an up-armoured battlecruiser rather than a true battleship.

Agility
Top Speed: 35 knots
Turning Radius: 1100m
Rudder Shift Time: 16.0 seconds
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 3.7º/s at 26.2 knots
Main Battery Traverse Rate:  5.14º/s

Daisen does the whole 'go in straight line' thing good.  She does not do the 'go in a bendy line' thing good. 
This ship is fast.  She is NOT agile.  She needs a LOT of room to manoeuvre.

Her high top speed is definitely an advantage.  It helps (somewhat) with keeping her safe at very long ranges.  It's harder to lead her accurately when she's stretching her legs.  Though it's worth keeping in mind, that's only going to save you against less-than-expert players. She also doesn't quite get up towards 40+ knots where lead times really become a challenge.  Sadly, she doesn't have the wiggle necessary to pair this speed with some good turning ability.  Her rudder shift time isn't terrible, but it's definitely not good.  Her turning radius is so large that it nullifies any bonus her high speed might have given her to her rate of turn.  Had she only a 920m turning radius like Iowa, her rate of turn would have been an impressive 4.5º/s, that's how badly her large turning radius screws her.

While her speed is wonderful for brawling -- allowing her to control engagement distances against most battleships she faces, her poor handling is a setback.  For brawling, a good rudder shift time or rate of turn can help with angling and protecting your citadel in a joust.  It can also help with close range torpedo drops.  But frankly, her agility woes are the least of her worries when it comes to qualifying as a brawler, in my opinion.

This isDaisen has one of the largest turning circle in the game.

VERDICT:  Fast but HELLA clumsy.

Anti-Aircraft Defence
Flak Bursts: 5 + 1 explosions for 1,540 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8 km.
Long Ranged (up to 5.8km):  119 dps at 75% accuracy (89dps)
Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 297.5dps at 75% accuracy (223dps) 
Short Ranged (up to 2.5km): 231dps at 85% accuracy (196dps)

Colour me surprised (she said sarcastically):  Daisen's AA power is mostly irrelevant.  I say "mostly" because I did have a game where a Lexington kept losing all of his aircraft, but that was an example of someone not knowing how to dodge flak, so...

In terms of effective sustained AA DPS in a self-defence scenario, Daisen puts out comparable damage to Friedrich der Große, Alsace or Marlborough, though she doesn't throw out as much flak as the French bote.  You're not likely to be rocking her Catapult Fighter, so this is all you're going to have to contribute to punishing enterprising carriers.  It's just not enough to see to her own defence outside of anecdotes like I listed above.

VERDICT:  Stick with friends.  Pray you're not the most delicious target out there.

Kaga completing a drop against an isolated Daisen.  She lost two planes; one immediately after the torpedoes were dropped and another as the rest of the squadron tried to fly out of her AA bubble.

Vision Control
Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 16.5km / 13.37m
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 11.51km / 9.32km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke:  16.6km
Maximum Firing Range:  Between 20.52km and 28.59km

Daisen has a big ol' surface detection range.  Japanese battleships tend to fare poorly in regards to surface concealment, with some of the worst surface detection values around.  It's no surprise then that she's in the bottom third of her tier and that largely carries through with most of her matchmaking.  Taking at leasto ne concealment upgrade should be considered mandatory (and thankfully, none of the other 5th upgrade slots are worth taking, so you're safe there) and both makes your life much easier.  You may have to give up the advantage of her fast reload in order to better manage her concealment.  This makes her smaller gun battery and lower salvo weight hurt quite a bit more which probably explains some of the trials and tribulations I had with this ship.  Still, if you're sititng way back, stealth shouldn't be too much of an issue, at least until the carrier starts swinging at you or a lolibote or sub breaks through.

VERDICT:  Japanese-battleship-bad.

Anti-Submarine Warfare

ASW Armament Type:  Airstrike from 0.5km to 10km (plus part of the bomb drop column)
Number of Salvos:  Two
Reload Time:  30 seconds

Aircraft:  One Kawanishi H6K with 2,000hp
Drop Pattern: 2 bombs
Maximum Bomb Damage:  4,200
Fire Chance: 24%
Bomb Blast Radius (1.0x / 0.5x / crit only) : 150m / 300m / 375m

Battleship air strikes are largely standardized now with very few exceptions (mostly older, misbehaving premiums that are nerf-proof, so they get stuck with crappy ASW).  Daisen isn't an exception, so she has the standard tier IX-X airstrike.  Her secondaries can do work, but only if your opponent gets caught out.  It's totally hilarious when they do, though.

Proxy-spotted Salmon at periscope depth gets shredded.

Final Evaluation

I am shocked.  Daisen isn't terrible.  In fact, she's quite respectable.

This all comes down to those gorgeous main battery guns of hers.  Her gunnery is super comfy.  I'm writing this after playing a few more games in Daisen after blitzing through my West Virginia '44 review, and I can't tell you how welcome it was to be able to fire battleship calibre guns with decent ballistic properties again.  But I digress.  Her main battery guns are good.  Even if you don't buff her secondaries, they can be surprisingly effective.  And sometimes you may even get to use your torpedoes.  I must say that her Spotter Aircraft consumable was a refreshing addition to the Box o' Gimmicks.  The extra range on demand (and for a long time) was fun.  I liked that.

What holds Daisen back is that fragility.  Her soft skin and having less healing is a flaw I keenly felt and it dictated the way I played her.  Had she an extra charge on her heals, I KNOW I could have turned one losing game into a win and maybe turned around a couple more.  But even with this, the ship works reasonably well.  All of her other weaknesses are really window dressing to this durability flaw.  Yeah, her handling sucks and I did end up beaching myself a couple of times because of it, but whatever.  Similarly, her mediocre AA and concealment were things I was conscious about, but they didn't dictate the outcome of matches the way that her durability did.

I should end this review with a follow up on the brawling question:  Daisen is a brawler.  She can be quite a fearsome brawler, but only in the late game.  My most dramatic and high scoring games in Daisen all featured brawling.  And though I didn't run a brawling build, she still performed well.  The most dramatic of these involved gunning down a destroyer, then two tier VII battleships, then a submarine, netting three (yes three) Double-Strike medals.  Sadly, we didn't win.  It would have been just shy of a 3k base XP game.  Oh well, it was fun and that's what counts.

I don't think she quite warrants a GUDBOTE evaluation of old, but Daisen is a cozy ship.  I'm still surprised we got a decent dockyard vessel.  I'm so used to them being crap.

Thank you for reading!

[LittleWhiteMouse]

I'm starting to move over some of the reviews from the WGNA forums.  There's still a few teething issues to work out, but I'm working closely with @I_cant_Swim_ so they'll be ironed out in good time.  🙂

[HogHammer]

Looking good!

[FltCaptAlan]

Great start LWM, I look forward to rereading your reviews as they come online over here

[I_cant_Swim_]

Beautiful! Thank you @LittleWhiteMouse

and I think I solved those last problems.

[Sailor_Moon]

41 minutes ago, LittleWhiteMouse said:

I'm starting to move over some of the reviews from the WGNA forums.  There's still a few teething issues to work out, but I'm working closely with @I_cant_Swim_ so they'll be ironed out in good time.  🙂

Fantastic news!!! Consider the Waybacked archive as "backup" files!

[Copperhead550]

17 minutes ago, Sailor_Moon said:

Fantastic news!!! Consider the Waybacked archive as "backup" files!

Well done capt’n moongirl

[Copperhead550]

@LittleWhiteMouseawesome review as always! 
and welcome to the new forums 

[ZeuSueZ1337]

Have an upvote. Like a gazillion!

Indy approves.

[Wolfswetpaws]

3 hours ago, LittleWhiteMouse said:

I'm starting to move over some of the reviews from the WGNA forums.  There's still a few teething issues to work out, but I'm working closely with @I_cant_Swim_ so they'll be ironed out in good time.  🙂

Awesome-sauce!  

[S7CentNickel]

Thanks LWM!

 

[Marmmadog]

Thank you for another awesome review Little White Mouse 🙂