Premium Ship Review: Wujing

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Wujing, the tier IX premium Pan Asian Alsace-class battleship.  This ship has kindly been provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes -- I did not have to spend money to get access to this ship.  To the best of my knowledge, the performance statistics discussed in this review are accurate as of patch 0.10.2.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Look, this one is pretty simple:

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Wujing is a Pan Asian, premium version of the fully-upgraded French tier IX tech-tree battleship, Alsace.
She clones Alsace's performance in every respect barring economy where Wujing earns more and comes with free premium camouflage.

If you want to try her out for "free" (barring the time to accomplish the grind), unlock Alsace, play a few rounds in it and imagine yourself earning more credits because, y'know, Wujing is a premium.  Bam, there you go; that's Wujing.  For posterity's sake, I'll record her stats as she appeared at the time of this article's publishing but I'm not going to do a deep-dive into her performance.

Quick Summary:  Wujing is a Pan Asian Alsace.  Seriously, we just went over this.  If I have to explain everything twice, this is going to take forever.

PROS

• Good citadel protection with stacked layers of armour amounting to 482mm of straight-line protection.
• Large main battery of twelve guns.
• Heavy secondary battery with good fire setting abilities.
• Decent agility with her Engine Boost assisting with her flexibility.
• Good AA firepower when it comes to supporting allies with much of her DPS focused in long-range batteries & flak.

CONS

• Only 32mm of structural steel on the entirety of the ship, making her very vulnerable to cruiser HE spam.
• Her 380mm AP shells are incapable of overmatching a lot of the structural armour on cruisers she faces.
• Long, 32 second base reload.
• Unfortunate 1.6 sigma makes her guns fire like a shotgun spread.
• Her secondaries look much more capable than they actually are, having accuracy and penetration problems which keeps them from pulling their weight, even with a deep-specialization.
• Enormous turning circle radius of 910m.

I'm not a fan of Wujing, not because she doesn't perform well (though I could go on a small rant about the nerfs made to Alsace in order to make room for Bourgogne), but because she's simply a clone.  As nice as the skin looks, she feels very low-effort.  Bajie is a much more interesting choice, given that Wargaming at least massaged her stats a little.  It's a bit of an aside but with Yukon on the horizon, I feel like we dodged a bit of a bullet that she's at least getting the Bajie treatment instead of a simple copy-paste performance job like Wujing.

Overall?  Skip this one unless you really (REALLY) love your Alsace and want a premium version of her.  Alternatively, you could just toss the money into a premium, perma camo for Alsace.  The economy gains won't come close but it's the principle of the thing.

Stats Dump:

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Options

Consumables

• Her Damage Control Party is standard for a battleship with a 15 second active period, an 80 second reset timer and unlimited charges.
• Her Repair Party is also standard for a battleship.  It heals back 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage and 100% of everything else.  Each charge heals back 14% of her starting hit points over 28 seconds and she starts with four charges.  It has an 80 second reset timer.
• Wujing's Catapult Fighter deploys four fighters which orbit on station for 60 seconds.  She starts with three charges and they have a 90 second reset timer.
• Wujing's Engine Boost provides an 8% boost in speed for 180 seconds.  It comes with three charges and has a 120 second reset timer. 

Upgrades

• Start with Main Armaments Modification 1
• You'll want the special upgrade Engine Boost Modification 1 from the Armory for the price of 17,000.  If you can't afford that, default to Damage Control System Modification 1.
• Aiming System Modification 1 is best in slow three.  If you're primarily a PVE player and want to buff her secondaries instead, you can go with Secondary Armament Modification 1.  Just keep in mind that this works reasonably well in Co-Op but secondary builds for French battleships is very disadvantages in PVP currently under the new skill system.
• Damage Control System Modification 2 is the only choice worth considering in slot four.
• Similarly, Concealment System Modification 1 is still too good to pick anything but in slot five.
• And you have your choice between increased rate of fire with Main Battery Modification 3, dropping her reload from 32 seconds down to 28.16 seconds.  Alternatively, you can go with increased range with Gun Fire Control System Modification 2.  This buffs her reach from 20.3km to 23.55km.

Commander Skills

There are (generally) two ways to build Wujing -- for improved main battery performance with fire resistance on the side or for secondary performance.  The latter is really only good for PVE modes given the poor penetration performance of her secondaries and bad Damage Control Party management of bots.  The fire-setting ability of Wujin's secondaries will roast bots up good -- especially enemy battleships.

The best choice, really.

For PVE modes where brawls are guaranteed.  Take IFHE if you want your large number of 100mm secondary batteries to be able to directly damage lower-tiered cruisers and high-tier destroyers.

Camouflage

Wujing has the single camouflage (which is only visible if you enable Lunar New Year camo in port), Sha Wujing - Wujing.  This confers the usual tier IX premium ship bonuses of:

• -3% surface detection
• +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells.
• -20% to post-battle service costs.
• +100% to experience gains. 

The default Pan Asian camouflage looks really good on Alsace's hull and appears if you disable the Lunar New Year camo in port.

Firepower

Main Battery: Twelve 380mm guns in 3x4 turrets in an A-B-X superfiring configuration.
Secondary Battery: Nine 152mm guns in 3x3 turrets on the centreline (one forward, two superfiring aft) and twenty four 100mm guns in 12x2 turrets with six turrets per side along the superstructure.

Here are her gun performance stats:

• Range:  20.3km
• Reload Time: 32 seconds
• Rotation Rate:  5º/s
• Muzzle Velocity:  830m/s
• Horizontal Dispersion Type:  French ([Range in km x 9.8) + 66m]
• Sigma: 1.6 (boo)

AP Shell Performance:

• Maximum Damage: 11,900
• Auto Ricochet Angles:  45º to 60º (standard)
• Armour Overmatch:  26mm
• Fuse Arming Threshold:  63mm
• Detonation Timer:  0.033s
• Krupp: 2,347

HE Shell Performance

• Maximum Damage: 5,400
• HE Penetration: 63mm
• IFHE Penetration: 78mm
• Module Damage Blast:  34.2m
• Fire Chance: 36%

There's something ducky going on with the Alsace-class forward turrets with one of the two forward gun mounts having an asymmetrical bias towards one side.  With the exception of A-turret, Wujing's fire angels aren't very good:  A-Turret: 310º (25º off stern), B-Turret: 296º (32º off stern),X-Turret: 284º (38º off bow)

Her 380mm guns may be a small calibre for tier IX but her reload isn't horribly punitive, so her damage output looks decent.

This doesn't quite carry over to her HE performance.  This is mostly owing to the improved damage that Royal Navy and Japanese HE shells do rather than a flaw on Wujing's part.  French battleship shells only deal "average" amounts of damage.

Durability

Hit Points: 74,700
Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck:  32mm / 19mm / 32mm / 32mm
Maximum Citadel Protection: 32mm anti-torpedo bulge + 350mm belt + 50mm turtleback + 50mm citadel wall.
Torpedo Damage Reduction:  44%

Wujing's effective hit point pool is nothing great.  It's not terrible either, mind you.

This is Bourgogne, one of the other premium Alsace-class battleships in the game right now (there's now three!).  She shares Wujing's armour layout, so I'm borrowing this graphic.  While Wujing's hit points are decidedly average, her protection isn't.  Her soft external skin makes her quite vulnerable to HE spam.  Her citadel protection is decent, however.  Still, don't flash your sides.  She can still take citadel hits.

Agility

Top Speed:  32knots
Turning Radius:  910m
7Rudder Shift Time: 16.6 seconds
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn:  4.1º/s at 24.1 knots

Wujing's agility is pretty average for a tier IX battleship, mostly owing to her chunktacular turning radius.  Her speed boost is nice, though.

Anti-Aircraft Defence

Flak Bursts: 6+3  explosions for 1,470 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km.
Long Ranged (up to 5.8km):  234.5dps at 75% accuracy
Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 241.5dps at 75% accuracy
Short Ranged (up to 2.5km): 122.5dps at 70% accuracy

The Alsace-class offers pretty good support AA DPS, with so much of their firepower concentrated in their large-calibre AA guns.  They also throw out a ton of flak bursts.

Vision Control

Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 16.74km / 13.15km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 12.07km / 9.78km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 15.42km
Maximum Firing Range:  20.3km