yourwaifuisship/azur-lane-guides

The one and only Azur Lane EN/JP Tierless Guides, as curated by Your Waifu Is Ship. If on mobile, tap View Code to show them. (Like what I do? Buy me a https://ko-fi.com/J3J6WRI2 !)

Welcome to Your Waifu is SHIP's highly opinionated and extra-biased Guides!

=== CURRENT NEWS ===
I am on vacation! Don't expect updates for a while, 'cause they ain't coming.
=== CURRENT NEWS ===

If you've landed here because someone linked the Tier Guides to you or happened to read a pin about them, chances are you already know what these are all about and why the insistence on them being called 'Tier Guides'; on the off chance you don't, here's the long and short of it.

The Tier Guides are less of a tierlist and more of a compendium of all the relevant units in the game: they are meant to tell you who's good at what, why is it good at that and how good it is, not who you should be using (as that is a very subjective thing and different players value different characteristics differently).
They are called 'Tier Guides' to tell them apart from tierlists and their typical way of handling things (ie. small portraits with a tier and no explanation of how and why the tier has been decided that way); indeed, one of the reasons tierlists are rather poorly regarded by the less casual members of the playerbase is precisely that lack of information and perceived arbitrariety, both issues the Guides seek to remedy by way of in-depth descriptions and details for each unit and publically visible tiering criteria.

If all this sounds interesting to you, hop in and have a read; in the future I'll be adding more Guide content too, so look forward to it~
If you happen to have questions for me, want to discuss tierings or would like to show new information you feel may influence some tierings, poke me on Discord over at the Azur Lane English Community server (Kawaii Five-O#2305); you can use the Issues thing here if you wish, but I don't check those very often so don't be surprised if you don't receive an answer!

Featured news and Changelog

[27/03/2022]
It's been one whole year (and some months) without anything major breaking down? Really?

[20/01/2021]
Cleanup mostly done. Only the recent Muses and DoAs are still missing, and they will be added with the RM rerun units. Currently debating whether to keep the gear recommendations or link to handy flowcharts like this one: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/770435752080310342/800743671842603038/BB_gun_selection_guide.png

[06/01/2021]
WELCOME TO THE TIERLESS GUIDES! We're back in action and slowly working our way through the backlog of stuff. The recent KMS event's units are all in and the modified skills have been updated where opportune.

[20/07/2020]
Added a couple usage notes on Zuikaku and Shoukaku. Also, we know PR3 have been released - and just like the others, we're waiting for people to start actually using them before passing definitive judgement. Have patience, it's not like you'll get any of these in a working state anytime soon anyway~

[08/06/2020]
THAT WAS A MISTAKE. All bookmarks broke, name has been restored. The experimentation goes on though.

[07/06/2020]
Tier Guide updated and temporarily renamed to Experimental Tier Guide. We're doing this live, folks.

[26/05/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATES, NOW WITH JUST A LITTLE LESS TIERS!
Okay it's just for the new additions, really, but it's the thought that counts! And the thought is, "I want to gauge the reactions to this approach", so do let me know how good or bad is this.

[08/05/2020]
Nagato is now fixed. 

[04/05/2020]
So this isn't exactly related to the Guide itself, but there is a relevant bit of news - IJN Nagato's currently broken and her IJN-boosting passive only applies to herself. The coqup apparently happened two weeks ago, with the last patch, and applies to every single region (CN/JP/EN/KR/TW).
This is most assuredly a bug, but there's no telling when - or if - it will be fixed.

[26/04/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED.

[08/04/2020]
Minor fixes all over the place, nothing big.

[01/04/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
Experimenting with the 'role' field in the new entries; depending on how well or poorly received it is, it may become a permament feature or be removed entirely.

[01/03/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
Also a correction; our wiki made a mess and had the new units cost 1 more than they actually do, their prices are in line with everyone else. This does not affect the tierings in any way, for the record.

[27/01/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED

[15/01/2020]
Created the AL Common Compbuilding Coqups Compilation to steer new Commanders away from typical early mistakes and the Early Recommendations Guide for pretty much the same reason.  
The JP Tier Guide has been merged with the EN Tier Guide for good, as the various regions have now pretty much the same units and the same retrofits; if something is still missing from EN point it out and I will appropriately mark it in the Guide.
PSA: Alliteration is fun.

[30/12/2019]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
Swirling Cherry Blossoms units have been added, a few tierings have been revised, the images are now all fine!

[11/12/2019]
OH BOY THERE'S A LOT OF NEW STUFF TO TALK ABOUT HOLY MEATBALLS
So you'll have noticed by now most of the images are currently suffering from a bad case of "link broken"; that is because the wiki has disabled hotlinking, which means I'll have to grab every single icon and chibi out there and personally rehost it on my GitHub in order to have them show. It's not hard, but it's long and tedious, so I'll fix one hull class per day.
It's not all bad news, though; I took the opportunity to improve the Repository a fair bit, firstly by having a real readme now (which will show its contents on the landing page) and moving some of the stuff that was in the Guides there, like the credits or the donation link; this'll keep things cleaner and straight-er to the point, I hope.
I've also figured out how to use Issues! A few too many months too late for the poor fellows who actually contacted me there unfortunately, so I just closed them, but I did go through them and implemented what changes needed to be - including an Untier Guide!

[11/12/2019]
> We have a Readme now! Hello world!
> We also have an AL Untier Guide, for all your whys amd hows your unit of choice happens not to be on the Tier Guides proper!

Credits:

• This guide is far from a solo effort: while the writing is mine, the tierings are researched and approved collegially with Gurosebe#4054, Enbayft#2527, Dami🐈chan🐇#2228, Bluerendar#2640 and the #helpful fellows over at the Azur Lane English Community server, while the coding framework that makes this possible was provided by Enbayft#2527 and improved upon by Boz#5174; the gifs have been provided by Halfminute#6110 and the CN wiki; lastly, kudos to Kopfjäger for providing the original framework for the guide you're now reading.
  Without these people, the Tier Guide would never be as comprehensive, accurate or good-looking as it is, and it is to them that I extend my sincere gratitude. Oh, and one last thing...

Want to buy me a coffee?

• Curating, maintaining and researching for this Guide is something I've been doing for over two years now, ever since a few months after the first CN servers were opened to the public. It's a time-consuming endeavour, to be sure, but one I gladly do. If you find what I do here and/or on the Discords #helpful and would like to show me your gratitude in a slightly more tangible way, feel free to click here and buy me a coffee - thanks! (https://ko-fi.com/J3J6WRI2)

azur-lane-guides's Issues

Description for San Juan's skill is wrong

Your current version lacks the important 'Eagle Union' requirement for the buff. You have two descriptions for her that point to the USS, but not in the skill that makes it matter.

Your wording: "Upon firing AA guns, 25% chance to grant +30% AA to ALL units in the fleet for 5s; also, every 13 main gun shots hits, gain a stack of +8% FP (max. 3 stacks)"

Wiki's wording: "When firing Anti-Air guns: 25% chance to increase Anti-Air for all Eagle Union ships by 15% (30%) for 5 seconds. When main gun shots hit 13 times: increases own Firepower by 3.5% (8%), effect can stack up to 3 times. "

Formidable loadout question

When you gear Formidable for a BOSS fleet, wouldn’t it make sense to put a divebomber in the first slot?

I see it makes her reload longer, but more damaging. Maybe even a BTD-1 instead of a Helldiver?

Azuma hasn't been updated to reflect her Fate Sim 5

At FS3, Mizuho's Intuition upgrades to Mizuho's Intuition+ which is "Every 20s: 50% (100%) chance to increase own Evasion by 15% (25%) and Accuracy by 20% (50%), and decreases this ship's torpedo DMG taken by 5% (15%) for 12s." So compared to the original, +30% activation rate, +5% evade, and the torpedo damage down effect is new.

At FS5, Special Gunnery Training gets upgraded to Special Gunnery Training+ (the same effect, but you can use any large-caliber gun now)

Missing Ship

I'm by no means a fact checker but I did find myself reading through and noticed you were updating again to at least the last event (Tragicomedy). Noticed all the muse ships were added (I think) but Taihou muse appears to not have made the cut, probably by mistake since you have ships added that were released after her and the others from that event. As I said, not checking for completion, I just personally noticed her missing because I was actually looking for her. Double confirmed with good ol "Find in Page"

Keep up the good work

Man, are you okay?

The rest is cool and all, but it'll be great to know how u doing, and do you plan to return at all

The links in the Table of contents (that link to DD, CL, CA, etc.) don't work in Waterfox Classic 2020.09 64-bit

Clicking on e.g. DD appends "#dd--1" to the URL in the address bar, but it doesn't jump to the DD section.
Links also don't work in Pale Moon 28.14.2
Links work in Chromium Version 85.0.4156.0 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Links work in Waterfox Classic for https://github.com/YourWaifuIsShip/Azur-Lane-Guides/blob/52d736d1a82556ce6d45bac3ca5552a437b2df71/AL%20Tier%20Guide.md

wrong data and possibly assesment of Akagi muse

when her barrage is max level, it launches 6 planes not 3 as stated, for both DB and TB. also the torpedo bombers are equivalent to:
2 x Sakura Aerial T3 at +10 (240 base damage) x 6 planes (seemingly they are Nakajima B5N Type 97, even though as a gear they can only reach up to +7) at 100% efficiency and modified by 100% of Aviation stat.
only the dive bomber barrage get modified by 80% aviation stat, as all dive bombers do

Tierless guide opinion

I do understand that trying to condense a ships “worth” on a single value can be difficult. Especially when people only look at the value without reading the description and wonder why things aren’t working out.

On the other hand I believe that there must be some kind of bar so we can gauge how far above or below a ship performs said bar. And in the end this is what many people seek, some metric(s) to compare ships an their qualities.

This might become problematic when you keep “inventing” roles. Not that it’s wrong to point out a ship’s advantages, but when you stick to the role system you would need to take things form the other end.

What roles do we need to beat 13/4, 10/4 hard or an Event’s SP stage? And what ships fit those? And how well do they perform in this roles? (Just3c made a video on late game fleet building not to long ago. He made some good remarks there)

There might of course be other roles, with some ships excelling in it, but is should be clear then that those roles do turn obsolete with progressing difficulty.

Maybe, instead of starting from scratch, it might be better to simply split up the single tier into a couple of values? For example:

a DPS ranking, how much damage a ship can do independently.
a SUPPORT ranking, how much a ship can increase the performance of the rest of the fleet.
a SURVIVABILITY ranking, how long can a ship keep herself and other fleetmates alive.
And, out of necessity, an AA ranking, how well they can handle plane hells.

This could help people understand why for example Unicorn ranks so high although her damage is only so so or why Eugen is on the brink of Untier although she can tank so much damage.

That’s what I think.

North Carolina AA Meme mode

I was reading up on the exact way that the gold 410 mounted (confetti gun) and realized that its shell can and do effect aircraft.

Equiping NC with dual PR radar, stag and twin 100MM AA.

Even with NC at Lvl 108, I end up with ~600 FP before cats and around 700 AA.

since each shell splits into 22 units, and each unit deals he to planes (which are all light armour IIRC) we end up with each shell doing 201.451.30*1.10+FP(600), so ~650 per sub shell. since it fires 2 main shell, we then have 44 sub shells. (not to mention it fires 3 times with MGMT=3)

I've found that in boss nodes, it's enough to compensate for switching out a centaur(great with 4 fighter) for a ranger (who has no fighters). It also has the added bonus of adding a USS ship to help activate the Essex 4 USS skill.

Will continue to try, but so far can full auto any 3* in 13-2 and 13-3 so long as you aren't on 0 ammo

Tierless feedback

I've been following your guide for over a year and really look forward to your assessments as new characters come out. I have to say the tier system helps me figure out which characters to invest in or not waste any resources on. If a character is at a higher tier I'll read your notes on it and see how it fits into my fleet. If a character is a lower tier I'll still read the notes and then consider whether to keep them for their speciality or use as fodder. To sum it up, I rely on your tier score quite a bit. I imagine it would be more difficult to assess a ship's value without it. I wouldn't be opposed to an alternate scoring system as another person posted. But having the numeric score helps to gauge value quickly.

Mark Izumo as DinHonorable mention- Use to show why she's hot garbage

Magnetic torpedoes

Most sources that give information on endgame (W13 and high tier PvP) advise the use of magnetic torpedoes.

They don’t seem to appear in your guide at all.

Could you tell us something about that?

Double AA gear for Mikasa?

I mean, she can’t even equip an AA gun to begin with.

I don’t get the reason why.

Indianapolis & Portland

I had a question / clarification re the guide.

Portland is listed as T0.5 ship while Indianapolis is listed as a T2. Considering that Indianapolis grants a bonus to Portland it's not entirely clear whether or not Portland's T0.5 listing is dependent on her skill being activated by Indianapolis. It might be worth adding a line to Portland's listing clarifying that.

Confusion about Massachusetts’ first skill.

Both the wiki and the ingame description make it sound like Massachusetts herself is included in the 3 ships needed for maximum stacks.

Though in your list it says she is not included.

Link to Meowrin?

May want to change links in the Composition guide from Guro to Meowrin.

https://github.com/Meowrin/al-guides

About the latest change

Did you intentionally weed out most of the tier 2 CA?

And will you do similar with the other ship types?

Louis‘ gun for Bremerton?

For other CA with a 5 second cooldown ability you noted not to use the Louis gun due to the fast reload.

Shouldn’t the same be true for Bremerton?

PR/PR2 ships not yet updated with Fate Sim 5 ver of skills.

With such things available, they would be rather important to know, perhaps with a Fate Sim priority list at the start of the tierless guide.

Separated changelog

May I suggest splitting the change log into a separate file? That way you can easily look back more historically when a ship got added/removed/moved and why.

Open to other ideas/thoughts!

Missing gun in DD gun spreadsheet?

I don’t know how much saying you have in the creation of the gun spreadsheets.

In my opinion the 138.6mm model 1927 should be added to it.

From my experience it at the very least beats the twin 120mm QF.

It’s not farmable right now, but this goes for guns on that sheet as well.

Tierless

Hey Mate!

I'm sure you'll be getting lots of feedback so I'll keep it brief. If possible I'd prefer to keep the tiers. Something that could work for delineating using the "Role" filed would be2 fields saying:
F1: Mob or Boss
F2: Hard mode, Plane Hells, Events

Most people are typically using the guide to figure out what to invest towards in lategame, anyway, so saying where they line up to towards the end might be useful.

As Always, love your descriptions and analysis,

FCLC

Balance tweak changes

Just a reminder that some ships did get buffs, some enough for a reconsideration for some. Once I get on my PC, I'll put a precise list of changes

Missing Loadouts for Unicorn?

Seems like Unicorn is missing the loadouts, was that on purpose?

USS Indianapolis appears missing

It seems that Indianapolis is missing from the guide.

Appearing twice in Portland's description seems to be the only time I can locate her

The explanation link for Izumo being missing also goes to a 404

Tireless and general feedback

Cheers, been using your and similar guides for almost a year, this game's pretty damn complicated and doesn't really require strong mechanics knowledge, so it's not something everyone has.

I'll be brief. Definitely preferred the tiered approach. It's your own damn fault if you just fill up on high tiers without added thought and do badly. Rather, the number is a purely subjective and arbitrary rank saying if you should invest in a new character. I admittedly find that number useful, as someone who critically lacks a sense of grounded basis when comparing characters due to lack of game knowledge and the fact that there are so damn many.

Of course, the roles info helps remove some of that arbitrary nature by adding context, which is also appreciated. But your guide, you do you. Many thanks.

VF17 versus Hellcat

VF17 has T0 bombs, faster reload and a fleetwide buff.

Has the Hellcat been declassed now?

Where is Victorious?

Tierless Feedback and Discord question

I also much prefer the 0-2 tier system. I have been using this guide since I started Azur Lane, and I use the tier system to build my late game fleets. I would like the tiers to stay. Also, I noticed that on a closed question, you said you prefer using discord as a way to receive feedback, but I do not see a way to contact you there unless I am missing it somewhere. If you accept discord feedback, then maybe make your discord more visible?

Specify what is the Azuma Gun

I think it would be better to be more specific as to what is the "Azuma Gun" as not everyone knows this.