Premium Ship Review: Z-44

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of the German premium destroyer Z-44.  She was provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes at no cost to me.  To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.9.11.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Let's turn back the clock a few years, all the way back to mid 2016.  If you had told me then that Wargaming was adding a German premium destroyer, the kind of ship I would have imagined then is very different from the kind of destroyers we're seeing now.  I wouldn't have imagined improved AP shell performance.  I wouldn't have gone with shorter smoke duration.  I doubt I would even have imagined adding Hydroacoustic Search.   It would have been a bare bones ship with nary a gimmick in sight other than being German.  Z-44 feels like something I would have come up with then. You know, before there was a German destroyer tech-tree line -- where simply being German would have been enough to make her stand out from the crowd. 

In this regard, Z-44 reminds me a lot of Blyskawica's design. At a glance, Z-44 is a hybrid destroyer with a torpedo-bias.  She has nothing special in the way of consumables save that short duration Smoke Generator.  Her gunnery is lacklustre.  Even her hit point pool is modest.  With the near constant string of "more different" design, it seems like Z-44 doesn't have a chance to stand out and capture attention.  Simply being German isn't enough to sell Z-44, not when there's a glut of other German premium destroyers like Z-39, T-61 and her sister-ship, Z-35. 

Yet hidden within this unimaginative veneer, Z-44 has some frightening potential that echoes the terror of Benham.

Quick Summary:  A  Type 1936B-class German destroyer that trades access to a Hydroacoustic Search and main battery DPM for a bigger torpedo armament of longer-ranged, fast-reloading fish.

PROS

• Solid chunk of health with 19,400hp.
• Good AP DPM.
• Excellent HE penetration, allowing her to directly damage up to 32mm hull sections.
• Fast reload on her quintuple torpedo launchers.
• Good range (12km) and speed (64 knots) on her fish.

CONS

• Horrible HE DPM & fire setting.
• Terrible gun handling with bad rearward fire arcs.
• Anemic torpedo warheads that do only 13,700 damage per hit.
• Slow rate of turn.
• Short-ranged AA firepower with no flak.
• She's a German destroyer without Hydroacoustic Search.

Overview

Skill Floor:  Simple / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult
Skill Ceiling:  Low / Moderate / HIGH/ Extreme

Z-44 is ostensibly a torpedo-destroyer.  This does not deviate much from the formula first played at tier II, so even an inexperienced player will find the premise familiar.  Her game play focuses around putting fish in the water and keeping herself from being detected which is pretty bare-bones material for destroyers.  The only reason this doesn't merit a 'simple' evaluation is the added complexity of Surveillance Radar ranges with which she must contend, especially with her fish being incapable of out-ranging Soviet versions of the consumable.

There is a lot of potential for expert players to tease out more performance from this ship.  This includes, but is not limited to: Just Dodging™ (HA!), knowing the spotting ranges of rival lolibotes, knowing which of these destroyers your ship is capable of defeating in a gunfight (and how to do it), how to bait and survive radar, etc.  This, again, should be familiar for any veterans who have put a lot of time into torpedo-destroyers that have only a modest gunship element to their game-play. 

Options

Consumables

What's most interesting about Z-44's consumables is what she lacks.  She does not get access to a Hydroacoustic Search consumable which is found on most German destroyers.  This is a significant drawback.

• Z-44's Damage Control Party is standard for a destroyer.  This has unlimited charges, a 5 second active period and a 40 second reset timer.
• Her Smoke Generator is a slightly improved version for a German destroyer, but still of poorer quality than Smoke Generators of other nations.  It has a 20 second emission time with each cloud of smoke lasting 77 seconds instead of the normal 73 for tier IX German destroyers.  She starts with three charges and it has a 160 second reset timer.
• Finally, she has a standard Engine Boost consumable.  This provides an 8% speed increase for 120 seconds.  It comes with three charges and has a 120 second reset timer.

Upgrades

Ostensibly, you'll want to build Z-44 as a torpedo-destroyer, but you can mix in some gunship elements if that's to your taste.

• In your first slot, Main Armaments Modification 1 is optimal.  However, if the thought of being detonated incenses you (and you do not have a ready stock of Juliet Charlie signals), then you can take Magazine Modification 1.
• The Special Upgrade, Engine Boost Modification 1 is best in slot two if you can afford it.  It will set you back 17,000 from the Armory.  If that's not available to you, default to Engine Room Protection.
• Given her reliance upon her torpedoes, Torpedo Tube Modification 1 is best in slot three.  This combines with Main Armaments Modification 1 to further reduce the chance of your tubes being temporarily disabled and increases her torpedo speed from 64kts to 67.2kts.  If you're looking to make better use of your guns, equipping Main Battery Modification 2 to increase her sluggish turret traverse will go a long way to improving her quality of life.  Otherwise default to Aiming System Modification 1.
• Propulsion System Modification 1 is your best choice in slot four, giving you more acceleration from a dead stop which is helpful when island camping or hiding in smoke.  If you prefer a more open-water style of play, then Steering Gears Modification 1 is better.
• To no one's surprise, Concealment System Modification 1 is still optimal in slot five.  Steering Gears Modification 2 is a poor substitute but it has some (minor) viability when paired with Steering Gears Modification 1.
• And finally, Torpedo Tubes Modification 2 is your best choice in slot six for a torpedo-destroyer role.  This reduces her reload form 85 seconds to 72.25 seconds (or 65.03 seconds when paired with the Torpedo Armament Expertise commander's skill).  Alternatively, for improved gunship performance take, Main Battery Modification 3 to drop her reload from 4.2 seconds to 3.7 seconds (or 3.33 seconds with the Basic Fire Training commander's skill).  Note that this does reduce her gun rotation rate from an already lethargic 8º/s to 7º/s.

Commander Skills

The choice on how to play Z-44 solidifies with her commander skill choices.  I've highlighted some of the better skills for her but you cannot afford them all.

• Start with your choice of tier 1 skills.  I prefer Priority Target but Preventative Maintenance and Incoming Fire Alert are reasonable choices.  If you end up with 1 skill point leftover at the end, do not double up on Priority Target & Incoming Fire Alert -- always pair them with Preventative Maintenance instead.
• Next, grab the three skills highlighted with yellow circles:  Last Stand, Survivability Expert and Concealment Expert.  These are the mandatory destroyer skills that should be present on all of your lolibote commanders.
• If you have elected to play Z-44 as a dedicated torpedo destroyer, then Torpedo Armament Expertise is a must.  If you're leaning more towards playing a traditional German gunship then you can skip that.

After this, pick any of the red-square skills to your taste. In my testing, I favoured two builds after taking Torpedo Armament Expertise.  The first included Adrenaline Rush paired with Radio Location.  The alternative propped  up my gunnery (somewhat) with Basic Fire Training, Expert Marksman and Preventative Maintenance.

This isn't an exhaustive list.  For example, if you can make Torpedo Acceleration work for you with faster, but shorter range torpedoes, go for it.  This merely covers builds from which you'll tend to get the most mileage.

Camouflage

Z-44 comes with Type 10 Camouflage providing 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.

Z-44's default camo (white) is nice and striking.

Firepower

Main Battery:  Five 128mm guns in 5x1 turrets in an A-B-P-X-Y superfiring configuration
Torpedoes:  Ten torpedo tubes in 2x5 launchers mounted ahead and behind the rear funnel.

The Type 1936B Destroyers bear a cursory resemblance to the Fletcher-class.  They're both large destroyers with five (roughly) five-inch guns in single turrets and two torpedo launchers, with Z-44 duplicating the quintuple mounts of the Fletcher-class while Z-35 makes do with quadruple mounts instead.  However their performance is worlds away different from the Fletcher-class, both as gun and torpedo platforms as each over-specializes towards a singular aspect.    Z-44 focuses on her torpedoes.

Guns

There is a statistics that I don't often talk about.  It largely gets lost with all of the noise I make about gun fire arcs, fire setting and DPM.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to talk about all of the rest, but there's an element that conspires against both Z-35 and Z-44 to make them less than ideal gun platforms.  Wargaming defines these terms as Fuse Arming Threshold.

Fuse Arming Threshold is the minimum amount of steel an AP shell needs to hit before the fuse on board arms.  If a shell fails to strike a plate thick enough, it will continue to pass through the ship without exploding.  In game terms this means that you will only see over-penetrations unless the shell hits something thick enough to prime the shell.  This value is normally 1/6th of the shell diameter.  In both Z-35 and Z-44's case, this works out to 21mm.  Now this value is important because most structural steel of destroyers does not exceed 19mm, with tier VI and VII destroyers only having 16mm.  This means that unless an enemy destroyer angles (thus increasing the straight-line thickness of their armour), Z-35 and Z-44's AP shells cannot arm and will only ever over-penetrate in destroyer knife-fights.

• In order to fuse against a tier VIII+ destroyer hull, your target has to be angled at 35º towards you.
• In order to fuse against a tier VI or VII destroyer hull, it needs to be angled at 40º towards you.

So unless your opponent is taking an aggressive stance, Z-35 and Z-44's AP shells won't fuse.  This is stupid-important when you begin comparing the damage output of their guns.  Z-44's DPM drops from 70,714 AP DPM (0.33x penetration damage) to 21,287 DPM (0.1x over-penetration damage).  Compare this to the 35,357 DPM (0.33x penetration damage) of her HE shells. 

Why does this matter?  Because Z-44 has absolutely garbage damage output on her HE shells.  This is owing to Z-44's slower-than-expected reload.  Unlike Z-35 which reloads 0.6s faster than expected for a German 128mm gun, Z-44 reloads 0.2 seconds slower.  So not only is she a gun behind Z-46, her guns are individually putting out shells at a reduced rate. 

The two values per bar are for full damage (citadel hits) and penetration damage (0.33x).  Z-44's AP DPM looks very respectable but it would be a mistake to rely upon it in knife fights against other destroyers.  In most circumstances except against angled targets, these shells will over-penetrate, giving her even less effective DPM than her HE rounds which are terrible.  Z-44 is only managing 21,429 DPM with AP when she over-penetrates.  That's worse than Paolo Emilio's HE output.

Z-44 cannot keep pace with the damage output of other destroyers, not when there's a risk of her AP shells over-penetrating.  In knife fights, this is a death sentence unless your opponents fool enough to offer that precious angle where your shells can penetrate but they don't angle so much that it prompts a ricochet check.  These close-range duels are made all the more uncomfortable by Z-44's poor gun handling and awkward fire angles.  You can deep spec into Expert Marksman and Main Battery Modification 2 to make up for her sluggish turret traverse if you wish.

This largely relegates Z-44's gunnery to the role bombarding larger ships such as cruisers and battleships and outright avoiding destroyer on destroyer engagements unless she has the very obvious upper hand.  In this regard, she very much reminds me of Japanese torpedo destroyers. In that role, Z-44 is much better suited.  Not only are her AP shells more likely to find hull sections that will arm them properly, her HE shells can take advantage of their increased penetration.  Z-44 can damage up to 32mm hull sections with her HE rounds without having to resort to using the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells commander skill.  This boosts her admittedly poor fire setting characteristics relative to gunships like Kitakaze, though it's not enough to pull it out of the doldrums.  When fully upgraded, she is no better at setting fires than a Fletcher-class.  Similar to the Fletcher-class, her ballistics are very floaty, so boosting her range is ill-advised as gunnery becomes uncomfortable at anything beyond very modest ranges.

Overall, Z-44 is a poor gunship.  Duels with enemy destroyers are limited to opportunistic strikes at best.  While her AP shells can put out some respectable damage, she's far from a terror when it comes to hammering larger ships from afar.

Z-44's fire arcs are strangely worse than her sister's.  Her arcs are not bad on the attack with four guns able to shoot 25º off her bow, but you'll need to offer up a full broadside to fire with all five.  Rearward, things get pretty terrible.  Her problems here are compounded with her poor 8º/s gun rotation..

Friesland still rules the roost when it comes to fire setting. Z-44's fire setting is pretty bad, but it pays to keep in mind that she's more likely to be hoovering up direct damage from HE hits than other destroyers, so the numbers may end up being closer overall.  Still, it's all kinds of frustrating when a battleship blows their Damage Control Party from a torpedo hit and you can't follow it up with a blaze for that sweet, sweet damage-over-time effect.

Torpedoes

The woes of Z-44's guns are paid back in full with her torpedoes.  She is a torpedo-destroyer after all which is odd because at a glance her torpedoes look crappy.

Do not let the low damage per fish fool you.  The strength of Z-44 as a weapon platform comes from the combination of her two quintuple torpedo salvos and their wicked-fast reload.  Fully upgraded and specialized to cut down her reload time, Z-44 can drop a full spread of torpedoes every 65 seconds at full health.  Add on the Adrenaline Rush skill, at 50% health, Z-44 is launching torpedoes every 58.5 seconds.  This is faster than a lot of her opponents expect given that it takes a minimum of 49 seconds to run to their full range (9.6km at 72kts with Torpedo Acceleration & Torpedo Tube Modification 1) and upwards of 70 seconds (12km at 64kts).  This means that by the time Z-44's torpedoes are spotted, she's ready to launch another salvo.  For battleships this means that every other shot they take, they have to contend with dodging fish from a concerted attack from Z-44.  This makes closing with Z-44 dangerous for larger ships, especially if they do not have a Hydroacoustic Search consumable ready.  Though her torpedoes do not have improved concealment, the fan of five torpedoes per launcher presents a serious challenge when it comes to dodging.

Z-44's long range with her torpedoes is very welcome, especially in the radar-heavy environment of higher tiers.  She can outstrip British and American cruiser & battleship borne Surveillance Radar entirely though she still needs to be wary of Soviet cruisers and destroyer variants.  She is most comfortable up on a flank, sending constant waves of fish into parked enemies bow tanking the rest of your team.  So long as no other destroyer (or aircraft) comes to spoil the party, Z-44 can rack up a surprising amount of damage in short order.

Of course, this all hinges upon your opponents being idiots.  This is the common lament of any torpedo destroyer as these high alpha weapons are fickle in the extreme.  Some games, you can do no wrong.  On others, you'll be lucky for even a handful of hits.  Though Z-44's reload is fast, it's not like she holds a candle to Benham's ability to make torpedo soup.  Z-44 drops about 25% more torpedoes per minute than Fletcher but her torpedoes only deal 72% of their damage.  If all you're getting is incidental hits, that's not enough to keep pace and you certainly can't rely upon Z-44's guns to make up the difference.  The success of this ship hinges entirely upon getting into an opportune firing position and being able to put sustained pressure on the Reds with multiple reloads worth of torpedoes.  In some matches with aggressive enemy gunships or aircraft, this just isn't possible.

Thus, like most torpedo-destroyers, Z-44 is very inconsistent with her performance.  Being able to fire ten torpedoes every minute is novel.  It's even fun when everything's going well, but it's so easy for the Reds to undo.

VERDICT:  Her guns are worse than they look and relying on them will get you into trouble.  Her torpedoes are amazing and a lot of fun to use.  She's not quite Benham levels of torpedo-trolling but she gets close.

Durability

Hit Points: 19,400
Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck:  19mm / 13mm / 19mm / 19mm

There's not a whole lot to say here. Z-44 is covered with 19mm structural plate from bow to stern with no deviations.  Every HE hit short of the 100mm secondaries off some French ships is going to hurt.  Z-44 has a respectable amount of health, but she's by no means competitive in this area, lacking the truly gargantuan hit point totals of ships like Paolo Emilio or the health regeneration from Repair Party equipped ships like Neustrashimy or Östergötland.  This necessitates picking her gun battles with extreme care.  Her chunktacular hit point total will only allow her to trade with select opponents -- either ones where she commands a considerable health advantage or those with poor gun performance.  Taking her in a heads up fight with another gunship is generally a loser-move without a whole lot of backup.

Z-44 comes in just shy of the magical 20,000hp benchmark.  To be fair, this is a lot of health but at tier IX with the proliferation of the Repair Party consumable, it just doesn't hold up on its own merits.  This means that while she may hold the temporary advantage in a one-off encounter, over the course of a whole match, she doesn't have the endurance of some of the other destroyers she competes with.

VERDICT:  Decent starting health but no heals and no armour makes her no better than average overall.  Spend her hit points wisely.

Agility

Top Speed: 36.5kts
Turning Radius: 670m
Rudder Shift Time: 4.4s
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 7.1º/s at 30.8kts

Z-44 shares identical performance characteristics to her predecessor at tier VIII, Z-35.  While not unprecedented for two sister ships to clone each other's agility, this isn't a hard-fast rule.  One need simply look at the Fletcher-class to see the variety of performance characteristics between the four ships, with Black and Fletcher mirroring one another and Chung Mu and Kidd sharing different characteristics to the lead-ship.  For such a large destroyer, it's perhaps unsurprising that she's a bit of a sluggard.  While her top speed is alright, her larger turning radius makes her come about more slowly than most of her contemporaries.  Z-44 feels closer to a nimble light cruiser than a true destroyer.  This said, if you elect to equip Main Battery Modification 3, she will out-turn her turrets which is incredibly frustrating.  Because of her deficiencies in gunship battles, her Engine Boost tends to be best used for controlling engagement distances.  Use it to get away from fights rather than to navigate from point A to B.

Z-44's cumbersome handling compounds the troubles of her poor gun handling and lack of a Hydroacoustic Search consumable.  Torpedoes are more of a danger.  Knife fights are uncomfortable, forcing you to reach for her rudder to track opponents.  While she's still a destroyer and fully capable of Just Dodging™ as much as the next lolibote, it's hard to feel confident at her helm.  Z-44's lack of agility makes every unexpected encounter a potential crisis.  For a destroyer that performs best out on a flank, this is not a good trait to have.

Z-44 has worse agility than Z-46 owing to her slower top speed.

VERDICT:  She has a decent top speed, but that's about it.

Anti-Aircraft Defence
Short Ranged (up to 3.0km): 255.5dps at 95% accuracy (242.7dps)

Just Dodge™.

VERDICT:  Just Dodge™.

Vision Control
Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 7.78km / 6.11km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 3.7km / 3.0km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 3.06km
Maximum Firing Range:  From 11.11km to 15.47km

It's not Z-44's guns nor her torpedoes or health that defines her nearly so much as her Vision Control.

Let's start with her consumable situation. As has already been lamented, Z-44 does not have Hydroacoustic Search.  Were she a destroyer from any other nation but German (or British) it wouldn't even be worth mentioning.  However, German destroyers normally do have a hydro to play with and the fact that Z-44 doesn't is an unfortunate exception.  Given her role, this isn't a terrible handicap however there's no arguing that having said consumable isn't advantageous.  Without it, this further limits what team play this fat destroyer provides.  She's certainly a clumsy forward spotter (and we'll get to that), but with hydro she could occasionally be of some use sniffing out torpedoes and (under very extreme duress given her gun performance) enemy ships hiding in smoke.  On more than a few occasions during play-tests, I found myself noting all of the circumstances where it would have helped (including two close-range gun duels with a Kitakaze and one with a Fletcher through smoke).  Boo-urns, I say.

It's even more unfortunate that Z-44 doesn't conform to the German norms of having Hydroacoustic Search but does conform to having one of the crappier Smoke Generators in the game.  Before I get too headlong into my [edited] here, let me be fair:  Z-44's Smoke Generator is improved over the standard baseline version for a tier IX German destroyer.  Her smoke clouds should only be lasting 73 seconds.  Instead she gets a tier X version and a bonus of a whole four more seconds.  Whoo.  Please note my dripping sarcasm.  Compare this to the 93 seconds enjoyed by Japanese and Soviet destroyers, to say nothing of the 127 seconds enjoyed by those filthy capitalist dogs lolibotes from 'Murica. 

'Murica sez: "Deal with It."

So all of that isn't looking good, but it's made worse by her horribad surface detection.  Her base 7.78km detection radius is ... well, it's not insurmountable but I couldn't blame you for painting a big fat Nope.jpg across this ship and never looking back.  There's a long list of destroyers within her matchmaking that can out-spot her 6.11km surface detection.  Here's the list, with dangerous (to Z-44) gunships highlighted in blue.

• Tier VII:  Haida (5.67km), Shiratsuyu (5.81km) & Z-39 (6.08km)
• Tier VIII:  Kagero, HSF Harekaze, Asashio, AL Yukikaze (5.37km), Cossack (5.48km), Lightning (5.52km), Benson, Kidd, Hsienyang, Loyang (5.8km), Öland (5.83km), Orkan (5.91km), Siliwangi (5.94km), Ognevoi (6.08km), Akizuki (6.1km)
• Tier IX:  Yugumo (5.52km), Neustrashimy (5.56km), Chung Mu (5.66km), Jutland (5.7km), Fletcher, Black (5.8km), Benham, Z-46 (5.94km), Östergötland (5.99km), Kitakaze (6.1km)
• Tier X: Shimakaze (5.59km), Somers (5.8km), Yueyang (5.83km), Gearing (5.94km), Daring (5.97km), Grozovoi, Halland  (5.99km), Hayate, Z-52 (6.08km)

This long list (and her lack of a hydro) makes contesting caps a stupidly-dangerous proposition.  Knowledge of this list and paying close attention to the enemy roster and minimap is necessary before she dares stick her nose anywhere near those buoy rings.  This goes double if a carrier is present and operating aircraft anywhere near her.  The best practice for Z-44 is to turn tail whenever she is detected unless you know for certain you can win the ensuing gun-fight.  Odds are, though, you're going to have to contend with your enemy's friends interjecting onto the encounter, so discretion is often the better course.  I tend to reserve her Engine Boost consumable for these times to open up the distance. Her top speed is generally good enough to play keep-away, so that's a blessing. Using Radio Location is a tremendous help in knowing where threats will be coming from and I cannot recommend it enough on this ship, but that's torpedo-destroyer 101.

And so that's the unfortunate situation with Z-44.  She can't out-spot most of her opponents.  She struggles to outfight gunships.  She can't rely on stealth or smoke to keep her safe.  This means keeping her opponents at arm's length and capitalizing on the good range of her fish to see out most encounters.  Had she been more stealthy, she could have at least flirted with scouting, spotting or cap control in a pinch.  But those avenues are largely closed to her until the enemy roster cleans out.

VERDICT:  Poor marks all around which greatly limits the number of classic destroyer-roles she can safely undertake.

Cap circles are dangerous, yo.  Z-44 is poorly equipped to contest them beyond flooding them with fish every minute or so.

Final Evaluation

Cut away all of the nonsense and Z-44 boils down to a single question:

Do you want to play a torpedo-destroyer that can put a lot of fish in the water very quickly BUT her gunnery sucks, her concealment sucks and her torpedoes don't hit very hard?

To that I have to ask: "how many fish" and "how hard are they hitting?".  Those numbers have to be pretty respectable in order to make this ship work..  Honestly, the first number piqued my interest.  Z-44's reload time on her fish is great, especially for quintuple launchers.  It's kind of crazy just how many torpedoes she puts out (7.1 per minute, stock) especially when you compare it to ships like Fletcher (5.7), Neustrashimy (4.8) or Yugumo (4.3 with Type 93 mod 2s without Torpedo Reload Booster). Her  fish may hit like fluffy bunny kisses but that's okay when there are so many of them.  Her torpedoes aren't slow and their range is decent.  She almost holds her own compared to Benham in this regard which pretty damn high praise.

Except she doesn't.

Nothing gets close to Benham's ridiculous 11.3 torpedoes per minute when she's wiggly enough to dump fish off both sides (and she so often is).  Benham's fish hit 1.5k damage harder than Z-44's, they move 1 knot faster at the expense of 1.5km worth of range.  Benham can put out sixteen torpedoes every 85 seconds to Z-44's ten.  So while Z-44 echoes some of Benham's performance, it's definitely not on par.  I suspect Wargaming is more than a little gun-shy of repeating that mistake.  Z-44 puts out a lot of torpedoes and she puts them out quickly -- fast enough to be viable but not so fast as to be immediately compelling.  This is her entire gimmick, like it or lump it.

All of this said, it would be a mistake to underestimate what Z-44 can do.  She is definitely a ship worth keeping an eye on if it appears on the enemy team.  Torpedo spam is not fun to contend with if you're in a battleship.  While Z-44 is an easy mark for destroyer-hunters (be they cruisers, carriers or other lolibotes), left to her own devices she can cause a lot of chaos in a short amount of time.  I will leave it to angrier people than me to declare whether or not Z-44 is good for the game (go check out their YouTube video reviews when you're done here!).  As an investment, I'll give her a pass.  If I'm going to play a vulnerable torpedo destroyer, I'd rather have the ability to sneak around or push a cap.  For novel torpedo action, I'll reach for Asashio.  Z-44's okay, but short of using her to complete "get X number of torpedo hit missions", I'm not likely to want to play her again.

It's been a while since I've let a jpg have the last word so here you go:

     

Conclusion

Thank you all so much for reading.  Thank you very much to my patrons for their continued support.

I had originally planned to review both Z-35 and Z-44 together in the same article in the same manner as my Belfast & Belfast '43 review or that of Siegfried and Ägir.  However, time was not permitting.  It is easier for me to separate the two of them rather than constantly lacing a narrative between the two ships.  This is clearly a case of "if I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter".  If you stumbled upon this review and are looking for her sister ship, you can find the link here.  Go have a read before you pull the trigger on either ship.

 

[Wolfswetpaws]