The BEST, MOST LOVED destroyers. (also, the most hated is Fen Yang)

[Ducky_shot]

I sent a survey to a bunch of the top clans in NA and EU and asked this question:

If you could only have 4 DD's in each tier for all game modes, which would they be?

I did limit the number of premium ships they could pick in each tier to 2 which affected the results to some degree. I wasn't terribly surprised by the results but here they are:

I asked them to provide their DD win rate and DD PR. I got 122 responses with an average WR of 61.80% and median win rate of 61% (Low:49, High:75). The average PR was 2084 and the median was 2065 (Low:1120 High:3859)

To no one's surprise in T6, T-61 was the clear winner with Farragut as a clear runner up and then a closely bunched group of Aigle, Shinonome, Icarus, Fubuki and Guepard. Semi newish premiums Leone and Jurua definitely suffering here as Jurua was one of only 2 dd's not receiving a single vote.

T6 DD's

As strong as Haida is, I did not expect it to get top billing by this much in T7, but it easily topped the T7 list with a clearcut top 4 rouned out by Jervis, GM and Mahan. Leningrad gets the #5 spot and Shira, Z-39 and Sims get honorable mentions. Skane, Maass, Yudachi and Z-31 would not find their way into many people's ports.

T7 DD's

in T8 the choices were so clear for the top 5 as to no one's surprise, Akizuki claimed top spot and tied the T-61 for overall picks. Rounding out the top 5 were the Cossack, Kidd, Lightning and LF. Here is where the 2 premium limit was really felt as the LF finished atop the LT which is somewhat unexpected but its because the Cossack and Kidd are so well liked that most players could not select the LT (and to some extent the LY and Harekaze) and picked the LF as the T8 French DD's are strong and most players would want to keep at least 1 of them in their port. What happens when you take several powerful concepts and pair them all together while nerfing most of them? You get Fen Yang, nuf said.

T8 DD's

I found T9 to be one of the hardest to pick personally and it shows as there are really no huge dropoffs from ship to ship after you get throguh the top 3 of Kitakaze, Mogador and Black. I mean no one liked Schultz or Z-44, but that wasn't a surprise.

T9 DD's

Unfortunately for newer players, the clearcut #1 Smaland is not available outside of tossing copious amounts of money at WG and crossing your fingers. Rounding out a clear top 5 was not hard as the Daring, Marceau, Kleber and Halland were the favorites. Surprisingly the perceived OP Vampire II languished in the bottom with the routinely nerfed Khabarovsk and the Hayate. Basically, if a DD can't provide good utility to their team, they aren't going to be as useful to these players.

T10 DD's

 

And this is where my methods and madness will probably get me in trouble with the player base, but I have ranked the tech tree lines by their median picks. Averages could be heavily skewed by 1 strong ship and hard to gauge with partial lines. The UK line faired very well as all of its DD's placed top 6 or better, with only the Jutland dropping to #6. France's early DD's were not that well liked, but the 8-10 definitely propped the line up to #2. Aki and Kita propelled the IJN gunboats to a solid #3 and the USN dd's were not overwhelmingly liked, but maintained a high enough place in most players ports for a solid #4.

Tech tree line strength

FAQ

Q. Could you have done this better?

A. Yes

Q. Why are the question so bad?

A. Because making the survey large, complicated and cumbersome would have cut back on number of meaningful replies. I decided the suspect method of this survey would still give adequate results for newer up and coming players to decide what ships they should probably go for.

Q. I am one of the best DD players alive, why didn't you ask me to fill out the survey?

A. I was intimidated by your prowess and didn't feel comfortable approaching you. In Reality: Basically I pinged about 8-10 clans on each server and asked if they would post it for their members. Obviously I got more response on NA as I knew who to ping and am more well known and people were more likely to oblige. With the EU clans, they probably wondered who this weirdo was on discord and promptly blocked me.

Q. Can I have the raw data because I don't trust your conclusions and want to discredit your survy?

A. Absolutely!! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15WJcWQD1SriGHa6eeaA4_P9ZiiabZwPoM-HitZ5UyQk/edit?usp=sharing

Q. Why only the NA and EU servers?

A. Because I am a poor uneducated scrub from Saskatchewan who only knows English and has no knowledge of things in the CIS and SEA servers.

 

Please post in the comments how I can make this type of survey better or what you want to see in upcoming Cruiser, BB and CV surveys

[ArIskandir]

Hey, nice study TY. No surprises there but glad to see them somewhat confirmed. 

[Slimeball91]

15 minutes ago, Ducky_shot said:

As strong as Haida is, I did not expect it to get top billing by this much in T7

If there hadn't just been the T7 ranked Haida probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention.

[eviltane]

Huh cool. You can definitely see that boats which are strong knife fighters while still having enough gun power to do serious work against larger ships get picked the most.

Not too surprising that pure torpedo boats are as low as they are.  

 Am somewhat surprised that Somers and Harugumo beat out shima. As usually you see more shimas then either of the other 2. But then I guess this survey is about what you would like to see not what you actually see. 

[Ducky_shot]

1 minute ago, eviltane said:

Huh cool. You can definitely see that boats which are strong knife fighters while still having enough gun power to do serious work against larger ships get picked the most.

Not too surprising that pure torpedo boats are as low as they are.  

 Am somewhat surprised that Somers and Harugumo beat out shima. As usually you see more shimas then either of the other 2. But then I guess this survey is about what you would like to see not what you actually see. 

Somers gets torps and good smoke, shima doesn't. Harugumo is a fun spammy boat and leg mod Haru finds a niche in comp.

[Lynx7386]

I love my jurua but it is definitely in need of buffs.  Its like wg couldn't decide whether it was supposed to be a torpedo boat or a gunship and failed on making it either.

The lack of hydro hurts it against dds/cls, the guns aren't strong enough to win a knife fight with another destroyer, it didn't get a special smoke, and it's torpedo and concealment ranges make it difficult to use effectively as a torpedo boat.

I think if it got better torp range (maybe 9k instead of 8k) it might be ok

[Sabene]

As a DD main with a few battles...I love this seemingly unbiased analysis.

That said, I disagree quite a bit with my peers in their selections, and I have most of those ships.  Too many gunboats rated too highly but that speaks to how folks play the game.

Give me that Vamp2, that Blys, my trusty Fletcher, etc.  Heck, I even like the Fen Yang, but it is a touchy thing.

 

~Sab

[S16_Hunter]

i was a bit surprised by the T9 selections actually. Though i must admit i guess i missed the advantage the Black has.. Radar i guess is the selling point, but i've never found it to be that good a ship... 

Nice survey,  interesting to see the Top at T10... 

Interesting.. 

[rallybackmonkey]

Interesting that this survey seems to think the only useful ship in the Euro line is the Halland.  I see the other ships in the line used quite a bit in randoms, so that surprises me, but I haven’t done much with DD’s yet, so not speaking from personal experience.

[lloyd1701]

5 minutes ago, rallybackmonkey said:

Interesting that this survey seems to think the only useful ship in the Euro line is the Halland.  I see the other ships in the line used quite a bit in randoms, so that surprises me, but I haven’t done much with DD’s yet, so not speaking from personal experience.

Ikea DD's are solid, but aside from the Halland's utility, none are as 'immediately' oppressively overpowering in the right hands as the top ships.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

2 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

Semi newish premiums Leone and Jurua definitely suffering here as Jurua was one of only 2 dd's not receiving a single vote.

Leone has no DD tech tree to mesh with, and both she and the ability to cross-train non-DD commanders into premium DDs are relatively new. She is also relatively unconventional. No surprise she does poorly here.

Jurua is also very new, with no tech tree in her nation AT ALL. This might account for the discrepancy (though it's not by much in raw terms) between her and Gallant, which has had a full tech tree of destroyers and their commanders to work with for the better part of three years.

 

2 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

As strong as Haida is, I did not expect it to get top billing by this much in T7, but it easily topped the T7 list with a clearcut top 4 rounded out by Jervis, GM and Mahan.

You polled strong players, and strong players really know how to make Haida sing. All three of the others are strong, especially since Mahan was comprehensively buffed a while back. 

 

2 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

in T8 the choices were so clear for the top 5 as to no one's surprise, Akizuki claimed top spot and tied the T-61 for overall picks. Rounding out the top 5 were the Cossack, Kidd, Lightning and LF. Here is where the 2 premium limit was really felt

It would be interesting to see what happened if you removed this condition.

2 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

I found T9 to be one of the hardest to pick personally and it shows as there are really no huge dropoffs from ship to ship after you get through the top 3 of Kitakaze, Mogador and Black. I mean no one liked Schultz or Z-44, but that wasn't a surprise.

IMHO Schultz and ZF-6 should have been made non-options, as they are too recent and getting Schultz in particular right at this moment potentially involves shelling out inappropriate numbers of doubloons. Yes, it was possible to have had ZF-6 for two months, but that too involved spending far more than the ship is really worth if she were a T9 premium in the shop.

I find it interesting (and healthy) that the top two ships at Tier 9 are tech-tree. Players that you polled with access to Black have likely had her either since she was first in the game or shortly after she became available for steel. Since she hasn't yet returned for coal, the figures aren't going to be skewed by people who got her in the last few months. Benham is affected by the short space of time for which she was available to win or purchase outright, but Friesland is a surprise to me given her lack of torpedoes.

2 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

Unfortunately for newer players, the clearcut #1 Smaland is not available outside of tossing copious amounts of money at WG and crossing your fingers. Rounding out a clear top 5 was not hard as the Daring, Marceau, Kleber and Halland were the favorites. Surprisingly the perceived OP Vampire II languished in the bottom with the routinely nerfed Khabarovsk and the Hayate.

I suspect Vampire 2's position near the bottom is related to the means of her acquisition; people who want her haven't got her yet because she's still very recent or they spent their research points on other things (such as getting the Emilio first, and/or using FXP for Smaland at the eleventh hour instead of reset-spamming for Vampire).

(Hayate is Yugumo's thicc and brutal big sister, and while I think she does the thing I got her for well enough, I accept that's not the thing for which 60% WR players in competitive clans want to spend 2 million FXP.)

 

Your survey is skewed in that the sort of clans and players you polled aren't likely to consider Co-op as one of their preferred modes and pick their ships accordingly; they will all be more interested in Random, Ranked and Clan Battles in whatever order meets their tastes. I'm fine with that and I can accept it as a consequence of the population you polled.

That being said, it's one of those fine-print things which would be interesting from an intellectual and curiosity standpoint to see addressed - if only to see how the preferences change for a population which primarily spends its time killing bots.

[Helstrem]

2 hours ago, Ducky_shot said:

Unfortunately for newer players, the clearcut #1 Smaland is not available outside of tossing copious amounts of money at WG and crossing your fingers.

Tier Xs have never been in crates.  At this time Smaland is impossible to get if you don't have it and there is no sign that will change.

[tcbaker777]

im surprised Fletcher wasnt higher in its tier graph, though the Black is a Fletcher with Radar and smoke and mini nukes as torpedoes so i guess i can understand that

btw, when is Black returning WG, i need my Hellhound DD

[Estimated_Prophet]

You only did T6 and up?

Would be at least mildly interested in what were favorites in lower tiers, even if they can’t be used competitively.

(-)

I have T-61, but apparently didn’t impress me enough to play it much, (5 PVP, 15 PVE.)

Would have probably picked Farragut, though I’ve liked some of the others.

Hardly play Haida; don’t really have a favorite T7.

Akizuki; if nothing else, it’s my most played T8 DD. Of the others, next fave likely Kidd. Cossack, to me, is as ‘meh’ as Haida and Lightning.

Fletcher and Friesland, though Tashkent was surprisingly enjoyable. Either don’t have, or don’t care for the rest.

Gozovoi. Though despite my derisively calling them ‘worthless, smokeless, IKEA botes, Smaland was enjoyable.

Haven’t enjoyed Daring, and won’t touch the ribbit botes.

[Ducky_shot]

28 minutes ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

You only did T6 and up?

Yep, these are the only tiers that have been selected for clan battles or ranked that people might be wanting to know about. 

Also, higher skilled players do not play much below that and for questions about grinding lines, there is a miniscule amount of xp in tiers 2-5 compared to t6-t10 and a player is not out a significant amount of time by grinding tier 2-5. 

[rallybackmonkey]

56 minutes ago, Ducky_shot said:

Yep, these are the only tiers that have been selected for clan battles or ranked that people might be wanting to know about. 

Also, higher skilled players do not play much below that and for questions about grinding lines, there is a miniscule amount of xp in tiers 2-5 compared to t6-t10 and a player is not out a significant amount of time by grinding tier 2-5. 

Will you also be doing Cruisers and BBs?

[Ducky_shot]

4 minutes ago, rallybackmonkey said:

Will you also be doing Cruisers and BBs?

Yes. Probably CVS as well, but that will be a more narrow poll 

[Estimated_Prophet]

1 hour ago, Ducky_shot said:

Yep, these are the only tiers that have been selected for clan battles or ranked that people might be wanting to know about. 

Also, higher skilled players do not play much below that and for questions about grinding lines, there is a miniscule amount of xp in tiers 2-5 compared to t6-t10 and a player is not out a significant amount of time by grinding tier 2-5. 

Totally as a matter of my personal perspective; the limits of competitive gameplay, (CB, Ranked, etc...) some of which are self-imposed, along with what often seems like cookie cutter teams, are why I find (it) exceedingly boring.

I may understand the reasons for (Clans) picking the ships they do, but, whatever; they are them, and I am me, and I doubt the two will ever meet in terms of the 'enjoyment/fun' of competitive gameplay.

Most was just curious was top clans/players might have considered favorites from lower tiers.

[AmgenTTV]

Having taken part in the poll, my only surprise is Udaloi is only in the middle. Why people... why.....

[SirPent13]

5 hours ago, Sabene said:

As a DD main with a few battles...I love this seemingly unbiased analysis.

That said, I disagree quite a bit with my peers in their selections, and I have most of those ships.  Too many gunboats rated too highly but that speaks to how folks play the game.

Give me that Vamp2, that Blys, my trusty Fletcher, etc.  Heck, I even like the Fen Yang, but it is a touchy thing.

 

~Sab

Gunboats are rated highly because they are much more consistent when it comes to game impact than a torp boat. Being able to win gunfights against enemy dd's as well as providing more DPM for your team is going to win you more games compared to a torp dd that generally requires more luck to do well. 

[Yoshiblue]

I was surprised Gallant scored so low when its more or the same as Icarus. Then i remembered Gallant lacks hydro and has a 2x4 launcher over the 2x5 Icarus has. 

[LittleWhiteMouse]

7 hours ago, Slimeball91 said:

If there hadn't just been the T7 ranked Haida probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention.

It's surprising to see Haida get so much love at tier VII but Vampire II (which dittos some of, but not all of Haida's tricks) is less loved at tier X. 

[CankedTank]

5 hours ago, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

Your survey is skewed in that the sort of clans and players you polled aren't likely to consider Co-op as one of their preferred modes and pick their ships accordingly; they will all be more interested in Random, Ranked and Clan Battles in whatever order meets their tastes. I'm fine with that and I can accept it as a consequence of the population you polled.

This is very true, but Co-Op rewards very different ships from just about every other mode, and is the mode where skill is the least relevant, no?

 

12 minutes ago, LittleWhiteMouse said:

It's surprising to see Haida get so much love at tier VII but Vampire II (which dittos some of, but not all of Haida's tricks) is less loved at tier X. 

Those tricks are much harder to use at T10, the crawling smoke is almost as much a liability as it is a benefit at times, arguably.  So much more radar and hydro floating around up there.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

11 minutes ago, CankedTank said:

and is the mode where skill is the least relevant, no?

It's a different set of skills, chief of which is having the iron nerve to make YOLO rushes on battleships as a matter of course, because if you fire at anything beyond 4km, chances are the bot will use its cheat WASD hax and dodge them all. Plus, bots always know what type of ammo you have loaded, and if you switch to AP to punish broadside, they will start to angle to you at once. Nor do they miss as often if you are in a fast gunboat DD as humans do. Bots have a habit of setting fires or breaking engines/rudders as soon as you repair them, and conversely they always DCP the first fire or flood while rarely DCP-ing broken modules, so the way you attempt to stack damage is subtly different. Finally, all bots seem to have an inbuilt RPF. Conversely, I have never known them to radar and rarely to hydro, and bot CVs are generally not all that good either at hitting you or dodging AA.

You have to have a more aggressive and adaptive mindset, and be more aware of what can and can't shoot you.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

55 minutes ago, Yoshiblue said:

I was surprised Gallant scored so low when its more or the same as Icarus. Then i remembered Gallant lacks hydro and has a 2x4 launcher over the 2x5 Icarus has. 

OTOH Gallant has speed boost and a different smoke; she's a significantly different animal from Icarus, but that's partly because she significantly predated the line and has marked differences.

32 minutes ago, LittleWhiteMouse said:

It's surprising to see Haida get so much love at tier VII but Vampire II (which dittos some of, but not all of Haida's tricks) is less loved at tier X. 

What has Haida got that Vampire hasn't? Apart from stupid-low detection at tier.