Premium Ship Review: Ignis Purgatio & Ragnarok

[LittleWhiteMouse]

The following is a review of Ignis Purgatio & Ragnarok, the twin tier VIII Japanese premium battleships for the Warhammer 40,000 crossover.  These ships have been provided to me by Wargaming at no cost to myself.  To the best of my knowledge the statistics discussed in this review are accurate as of patch 0.9.5.  Please be aware their performance (and their spelling) may change in the future.

For those unaware, I have a long history of fandom with Games Workshop's Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 settings.

My older brother was a huge influence on me when I was little.  Everything he did was immediately fascinating.  Despite the years between us, I did my utmost to try and keep up.  The source books were among the many edgy things my older brother collected, including Dungeons & Dragons, alternative comics and weird figurines.  As the starry eyed, overly enthusiastic and horribly destructive younger sister, I was of course banned from having access to this stuff which was squirreled away in his room.  Oh, I would get to see him reading it from time to time, but sibling territoriality ensured I never got within six feet of those books, which only drove my curiousity further.

That was until he went off on some school trip for a weekend.  My ever industrious mother decided to take the opportunity to deep-clean the dungeon in which he slept.  All of that stuff (along with most of his furniture) just-so happened to get moved to the front hallway while she tried to delaminate the layers of accumulated boy-stink from the walls.  You can guess what happened next -- I snuck off with as many books as I could carry.

Grandfather Nurgle always looks so jolly.

This is how I got to sit down with the seminal works Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988) and it's sequel Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990).  There was also this super dorky book called Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader  (1987) that made less of an impression, but this Emperor-guy was pretty cool for desiccated corpse.  It was the former two, especially The Lost and the Damned which had a lasting influence upon me.  It kindled a love of the over-the-top gothic horror that defined a lot of Games Workshop's earlier works.  I soon got into collecting books, magazines and miniatures myself.  That interest has carried on to this day. One of my Warlord Titans from Adeptus Titanicus (2019) sits upon my computer desk and I have a Lord of Change with resplendent rainbow plumage attended by some wiggly Horrors on my book shelf.

So you can kinda guess that the collaboration between Wargaming and Games Workshop has me making happier noises than a daemonette playing with a chainsword.  The elements of this crossover relevant to this article are a pair of clones based upon the tier VIII Japanese tech-tree battleship Amagi; the Imperium of Man's Ignis Purgatio and the Primordial Annihilator's Ragnarok.

Quick Summary:  A pair of identical Amagi-class battleships with improved dispersion but reduced rate of fire over the tech-tree ship.

PROS

• Trollish citadel protection, with surprisingly thick armour.
• Massive ten 410mm gun broadside with enormous alpha-strike potential.
• Good dispersion with 1.9 sigma.
• Excellent AP penetration.
• Good HE damage.
• Super accurate secondaries.

CONS

• Weak belt armour, prone to taking penetration hits.
• 33s reload on main battery.
• Secondaries have a maximum of a 7.56km range.
• Poor agility with a large, 870m turning circle radius and pedestrian 4º/s rate of turn.
• Horrible AA firepower.
• Horrible concealment.

Ignis Purgatio, resplendent in spite of her hidden typo.

Ragnarok, without any spelling errors, which makes her clearly superior, you Imperial lapdogs.

Versus Amagi

Contrary to Wargaming's 0.9.5 patch notes, Ignis Purgatio and Ragnarok are not exact copies of Amagi.  They're close -- very close, even.  They mirror the tech-tree ship in almost every regard.  The amount of overlap is so prevalent that I won't cover everything about these ships, just merely some interesting highlights.  However, there are two things which set these ships apart.  When playing these ships, one of these elements is immediately noticeable.  The other is not.

1. Amagi has 1.8 sigma on her main battery guns.  The new ships have 1.9 sigma.
2. Amagi has a 30 second reload on her main battery guns.  The new ships have 33 seconds.

Head-faked with a Sigma Buff

A difference of 0.1 sigma is a bit of a booby prize, I'm afraid.  Consider these two dispersion fields:

Standard dispersion tests. This is 180 AP shells fired at a stationary Fuso bot without camouflage sitting 15km away. Both Amagi and Ragnarok were using the Aiming System Modification 1 upgrade. Shots came in from right to left -- the Fuso is effectively bow-tanking.

Without labels, they're difficult to tell apart -- and let's keep in mind that this is as sterile a comparison as can be made under perfect conditions against a static target.  Taken into the chaos of a live match, these differences all but disappear.  The best players in the game are unable to tell the difference between battleships with 1.8 sigma and 2.0 sigma on a per-game basis -- the average player has no hope in Hell of being able to find value in the 1.9 sigma boasted by Ignis Purgatio and Ragnarok over Amagi's 1.8.  This is the sort of change that will show up over the long-term performance of the ships -- it's a Spreadsheet™ statistic.  You won't be able to tell on a per-game basis, never mind a per-shot basis.

In short:  on a per-game basis, Ignis Purgatio and Ragnarok have functionally the same accuracy as Amagi.  Let me be clear:  Ignis Purgatio and Ragnarok DO have better dispersion but it's not significant enough for you to ever be able to notice its influence.

Sucker-punched with a Reload Nerf

What players will notice (and notice right away) is the three seconds lost every time these new battleships fire.  This is pretty harsh though their ten-gun broadsides still keep them as contenders for some of the best damage out-put at tier VIII with their AP shells.  So the three seconds lost is more awkward than damning.

Ten guns is a rarity at tier VIII. Even sixteen-inch guns aren't standard so it's pretty easy for Ragnarok and Ignis Purgatio to stand apart from their contemporaries.

Approximate penetration values for IJN 410mm AP shells.  These ships are hella dangerous at all ranges with their AP shells able to land reliable damage to battleship targets even at a distance.

Japanese HE shells have a meaty chunk of damage tied to them.

But their fire chance is kinda crappy.

Amagi is Better

From a pure performance point of view, Amagi is the original and best.  If you want to try these ships out for yourself, play Amagi and each time you fire, count to three before you pull the trigger.  Bam, there you go.  You're experiencing Ragnarok and Ignis Purgatio.

Miscellaneous Points of Interest

Other than her guns, there are three elements about the Amagi-class I find interesting.  First off, there's her citadel protection:

Compiled from GameModels3D.com showing the different thickness of Amagi's turtleback armour. It's 102mm thick over the magazines and 95mm over the machine spaces.

Amagi is notoriously difficult to citadel, especially at close ranges.  This isn't because of her turtleback but rather her submersed citadel.  Short of dunking shells into the water just before the ship's hull, you're not going to land citadel hits against her up close.  At a distance, she's more vulnerable, but only if your shells have a lot of penetration combined with a noticeable shell fall angle.  Despite having turtleback geometry to her citadel, this isn't a separate plate the way it is with German battleships.  Furthermore, the sloping of this part of the citadel is too shallow to prompt any kind of ricochet check.  Thus Amagi tends to be more vulnerable to citadel hits from long range from high-penetration guns.

The net effect here is that while Amagi can take citadel hits, her armour is notoriously troll for resisting them.  You can have her dead to rights with a near perfect broadside and only get penetrations rather than devastating hits to her machine spaces.  For ships with more exposed citadels taking Amagi on in a joust, this will often be their last mistake.

Speaking of jousting and brawls, did you know that Amagi has "Massachusetts" secondaries?  It's more accurate to say that Massachusetts has Amagi secondaries. All of the large-caliber secondary guns have improved dispersion.  Were it not for Amagi's horrible secondary range of 5km (7.56km when fully upgraded) they might be worth investing into.

Reference Mahan (104m) for scale. Amagi has the same dispersion as Massachusetts with her 140mm secondaries.  They will shred a destroyer in short order, but only if you get them inside of suicidal (for you) ranges.  You don't have the agility to dodge the inevitable walls of fish unless they derp massively.

Finally, it's worth addressing just how butts her agility is.  While she has decent straight line speed, her rate of turn and turning circle radius is flirting with Russian mayonnaise.  There's a reason these things tend to fight from a distance.

At the time of publishing, Azur Lane's Littorio and Champagne are still works in progress and subject to change.

Final Evaluation

These two ships aren't very compelling in terms of a design choice when you have free and premium alternatives.  These Warhammer 40,000 ships are really only worthwhile for their cosmetic value, not their game play performance.  If it's optimized Amagi game play you're looking for, get Ashitaka -- nearly the same Amagi performance but a whole tier lower.  If you want gimmicky Amagi performance, get Kii.   Alternatively, if Amagi is really your jam, you could just take the same cash-value and glue a premium camouflage onto Amagi herself if that's more your speed.

There's nothing wrong with Ignis Purgatio and Ragnarok.  But let's not kid ourselves that they offer anything compelling in terms of game play that you can't already get for free with Amagi.  They're a downgrade but with some very cool skins.  I don't think much more needs be said than that.

Do try and surive the hype-train.

Lookit what I found.

Yeah, I recognized Chaos rune-script and took the time to translate it. Get on my level, nerds.

[Wolfswetpaws]