World of Warships Anshan Review & Guide

World of Warships Anshan Review & Guide by LittleWhiteMouse

Quick Summary:   A Gnevny-class destroyer, often falsely compared to the Gremyashchy.  Unlike the lead ship of her class, she is bumped up a tier.  Has some surprising differences between these ships and shouldn’t be considered the same vessel.

Cost:   Sold in bundles on the online store starting at $19.99 USD

PROs

• Largest caliber of Destroyer guns currently in the game at 130mm, with good AP performance and a max base range of 11.9km
• Guns fire on a flat trajectory with good muzzle velocity.
• Good torpedo armament @ 14,400 alpha strike and the option of faster 4km torpedoes or slightly slower 8km range torpedoes.
• Premium camouflage provides a 100% bonus to free-xp earned per game (!) on top of normal premium camouflage bonuses.

CONs

• Larger surface detection range than the Gnevny and Gremyashchy at 7.2km base (7.0km with camouflage).
• Much larger surface detection range when firing her guns at 12.9km and cannot fire from concealment without Advanced Fire Training.
• Large 610m turning circle and slow 4.4s rudder shift time for a destroyer
• Slow traversing turrets at 6′ per second.
• Poor HE performance with the lowest alpha strike for a DD at her tier at 1600.
• Poor chance to start a fire with her HE shells at 7%.
• AA armament isn’t as good as advertised, lacking dual purpose guns and vulnerable to upcoming patch changes.

The Full Review

The Anshan is not the Gremyashchy — nor is she a clone of the Gnevny class when you look at her closely.  I cannot state this firmly enough.  She shares much in common with these ships, but the niceties which made the Gremyashchy a must-have destroyer are not present in the Anshan.  Let’s review the differences below.

Primary Armament

The Anshan is armed with guns similar to the 130mm B-13 rifles as the other Gnevny-class destroyers (I suspect simply renamed to M1936 shi).  These guns are excellent, with good, flat & fast shell trajectories that make gunnery even at range quite easy.  Positioned in superfiring arrangements with two guns forward and two guns aft, this always allows a minimum of two guns to be brought to bear against any target.  She pays for this with a painfully slow turret rotation speed of 30s for 180’s rotation (6′ per second).  This makes tracking targets up close very difficult and she will easily out turn her turret traverse rates.  Knife fighting with other destroyers becomes a dangerous prospect as a result.  Any form of evasive maneuvers while under fire will also silence the Anshan’s guns as they will be unable to keep locked on target while she steers for her life.

The most pressing concern I have with the Anshan is an undisclosed measure not found in Port.  Her surface detection range while firing is much higher than that of the Gremyashchy.  When the Anshan shoots, she is visible at ranges up to 12.9km (a staggering increase of over 5km as opposed to 3.8km for the Gremyashchy).  This means that without the Advanced Fire Training Captain Skill, the Anshan can and will be spotted on the surface by any enemy vessel she’s targeting.  This is one of the strongest features of the Gremyashchy and it’s very disappointing to see it absent from the Anshan.

The second concern I have with the Anshan is the decreased HE performance of her guns, matching the nerfs that struck the Soviet line a couple of patches ago.  The Gremyashchy avoided these nerfs and retrains a 1900 HE alpha strike while the Gnevny only has 1600.  The Anshan shares the lead-ship of her class’s HE statistics, including this more anemic alpha strike. In addition, she lacks the 9% base fire chance of the Gremyashchy’s guns, having only a 7%.  These values are okay, but a far cry from the 2000 alpha / 8% fire of the IJN guns.  US Destroyers have better alpha at 1800 damage, but worse fire chance at their paltry 5%

Destroyer Name     Tier      AP Damage  HE Damage  Fire Chance   Guns*   Rate of Fire 

Farragut            6          2100       1800         5%          4       15.0 rpm

Mutsuki             6          2000       2000         8%          2       12.1 rpm

Ognevoi             6          2500       1600         7%          4       12.0 rpm

Anshan              6          2500       1600         7%          4       12.0 rpm

Gnevny              5          2500       1600         7%          4       12.0 rpm

Gremyashchy         5          2500       1900         9%          4       12.0 rpm

Blyskawica          7          2200       1700         8%          7        9.2 rpm

Secondary Armament

The Anshan joins the Sims is one of only two Premium vessels with the option of two different torpedo armaments that can be swapped out in the Modules tab in port.  The first set are identical to the upgraded 53-38 torpedoes found on the Gnevny-class Soviet Destroyer.  These are short ranged at 4.0km but fast at 65 knots with a 14,400 alpha strike.  The second set is again (falsely) compared to those of the Gremyashchy.  These have an 8.0km range but move faster at 60 knots (compared to 55 knots) and retain the same alpha damage.  The Anshan can still deliver these from stealth, with a 1km buffer between her surface spotting range and the maximum range of her torpedoes.  Like the IJN Kamikaze-class or Minekaze class, it’s best to get ahead and to one side of a target to help extend the range of the torpedoes by having your target sail into their path.  This will give you more breathing room to ensure you’re not detected.

Maneuverability

The Anshan retains the agility features of the Gnevny-class which are (again) worse than those of the Gremyashchy.  She has a 610m turning circle and a 4.4s rudder shift time.  For a destroyer of her tier, these are far from ideal, putting her far behind the agility of the Mutsuki and Farragut which will limit her ability to knife fight considerably.  The good news is that she has a decent top speed of 38 knots — one of the rare occasions where she outshines her infamous tier 5 premium brother.  This speed will not put her as a front runner for top speeds in her matchmaking spread, with ships like the Minekaze, Blyskawica, Sims and high-tier Soviet destroyers all being able to outpace her.

It is important to appreciate, however, that the Anshan does get access to the 4th upgrade slot.  This can be used to boost her rudder shift time from 4.4s down to 3.5s — something the Gnevny cannot do.

Durability & Defense

The lifeblood of a destroyer’s survivability is her ability to not be spotted and here the Anshan isn’t the best equipped to do this.  Her overall durability is much more closely compared to the Soviet Ognevoi-class destroyer with slightly less HP (14,400 vs 15,500).  The Ognevoi-class isn’t known for it’s concealment or agility and the Anshan shares in these traits with a larger surface detection range.  Sshe shares the spiked surface detection range while firing of the Ognevoi-class and Gnevny-class, having an identical increase of 5.9km on top of her normal spotting range whenever her guns are fired, being unable to escape the nerf that afflicted to Soviet destroyer line.

Stock, this means that the Anshan is visible from 13.1km without camouflage or Captain Skills.  This far exceeds her basic gun range of 11.9km, making Advanced Fire Training and/or Concealment  absolute must-have Captain Skill to open up the firing-from concealment meta.

The lauded AA armament of the Anshan is rather lackluster all things told and shouldn’t be considered an advantage of the ship.  She is armed with four twin-mounted 37mm guns, providing 36dpm at a range of 3.5km.  This value just isn’t sufficient to give the Anshan any real teeth against incoming planes.  In addition, she lacks the dual purpose guns found on the US Destroyers which, if upcoming patch notes indicate, will form the core of high AA values in the future.  Shooting down same-tier or higher planes will be incidental rather than something you can deliberately count on happening.  As ever in a destroyer, when you see planes in the air, steer clear of them.

How to Kill It

The Anshan shares the vulnerabilities of most of the mid-tier Soviet Destroyers with the one exception being her torpedo range.  Whenever you engage her, you must consider that she will be armed with 8km torpedoes that will fire from concealment.  Otherwise, the normal tactics used to flush out Soviet DDs apply.

•  Destroyers should play to their own advantages.  US Destroyers can outgun and out knife-fight an Anshan.  Though you need to be respectful of her gun performance, if you can land your shots, you will easily out perform her HE shots.  You can out maneuver her easily though she will likely be faster in a straight line.  Make her swerve and she’ll struggle to keep her guns trained on you. IJN destroyers have the advantage of better concealment and agility values but will lose out on a DPM race.  They should endeavour to strike only from a position of strength, ambushing the Anshan when her guns are turned away and use their torpedoes to force the Anshan to turn.
•  Cruisers should be wary of being at close range with the Anshan.  Her torpedoes are good, but there’s also the risk of her popping smoke at medium to close ranges and stacking citadel shots against your exposed broadsides.  Treat the Anshan the same way you might a torpedo armed cruiser.  Don’t expose your sides, keep angled and punish her with HE shots.
•  Battleships need to be concerned about an Anshan opening up the distance and firing on them from concealment.  Though only possible with a well trained Captain, the Anshan is more than capable of stacking damage over time from stealth with near impunity.  Stay close to your cruisers.
•  Carriers should use their standard anti-destroyer tactics.  Though the Anshan has better AA values on paper, they’re not nearly as effective as advertised.

Overall Impressions

The Anshan does not live up to my Gremyashchy expectations.  And this is perhaps unfair of me to colour this review through that lens.  However, after hearing the MightyJingles refer to the Anshan as a tier 6 Gremyashchy, I bought into the hype myself and was horrified to see that it wasn’t the same vessel, simply uptiered.  If anyone has spent their money hoping to get a Gremyashchy, you have my condolences.  I’ve been in a mad rush to get this review out to correct what I see as a potential nightmare for some players.

The differences between the two ships are as follows (values in brackets are Anshan vs Gremyashchy)

• Anshan is faster (38kts vs 37kts)
• Anshan has faster turret traverse (30s for 180′ turn vs 36s for 180′ turn)
• Anshan has faster 8.0km range torpedoes (60 knots vs 55 knots)
• Anshan has longer ranged AA (3.5km vs 0.9km to 2.0km)
• Anshan earns experience faster (50% camo bonus vs 30% camo bonus)
• Anshan has a free experience bonus (100% vs 0%)
• The Anshan has an extra upgrade slot (4 vs 3)
• Gremyashchy is more maneuverable  (610m vs 510m, 4.4s rudder shift vs 2.7s)
• Gremyashchy has better HE shells (1600 alpha, 7% fire vs 1900 alpha, 9% fire)
• Gremyashchy is more stealthy (7.2km surface detection range vs 7.0km surface detection range)
• Gremyashchy has a smaller surface detection bloom when firing (+5.9km vs +3.8km)
• Gremyashchy has better AA power (36 vs 48)
• Gremyashchy is lower tier (6 vs 5)

It’s not that the Anshan doesn’t have her charms.  Taken on her own merits, she’s a good little ship.  Soviet destroyers are still brilliant, even after being slapped by the nerf-bat.  But for full transparency, my whole review has (fairly or unfairly) been affected by my Gremyashchy bias.  Take anything you’ve read here with an understandable grain of salt.

Would I recommend?   The Premium-camouflage bonus makes her more appealing, I must admit.  With no Pan-Asian tech tree in game or arriving in the near future, her use as a trainer is limited.  The ability to gain 100% more free experience is a definite balancing plus and it would be nice to see it added to other limited-tech trees.  Still, I find recommending her difficult.

She is not the second coming of the Gremyashchy.  She is more sluggish, fatter, with less AA defense.  All of those little charms that made the Gremyashchy a must-have are not present here.  She is a premium version of the Gnevny-class destroyer, with all of the nerfs that struck down that destroyer class from greatness a couple of patches ago to a more modest mediocrity. If you absolutely love your destroyers and are a huge fan of the Gnevny as she exists presently, then the Anshan will give you that gameplay and earn you twice as much free-xp as before.

For me, though?  I’ll pass.  I have the Gremyashchy and the Anshan does not begin to compare to her in any favourable form.

Recommended Modules:  These are a pretty standard set of options for destroyers, particularly one focused on gunnery.

• Your first slot is easy. Main Battery Modification 1 is the only one that makes sense.
• For your second slot, Gun Fire Control Modification 1 should be the only choice worth considering.  It’s not to your advantage to pay for RoF with improved turret traverse from Main Battery Modification 2, so avoid it at all costs.  Your torpedoes, though nice, are a secondary armament compared to the guns of the Anshan.  You might also be tempted to turn the Anshan into an AA boat after hearing some reviews.  Avoid this.  She just doesn’t have enough AA power to make this worthwhile.
• For your third slot, I recommend Propulsion Modification 1.  A destroyer that’s dead in the water is a dead destroyer.
• For your fourth slot, the best choice is Steering Gear Modification 2.  This reduces her rudder shift time down to 3.5s.

Recommended Consumables:   Keep in mind that the Destroyer Damage Control Party is on a 60s cooldown normally and that the premium version drops this down to 40s.  In addition, premium versions of other consumables will provide an additional charge along with reducing their reset timers.  I would strongly suggest going with the premium version of the Damage Control Party.

Recommended Captain Skills:  You’ll be looking to specialize your Anshan towards a mobile gunship, primarily.  To this end, you want to focus on skills that will improve her gunnery while reducing her detection.  Keep in mind that Captain Skills will be changing shortly and if you’re reading this post 0.5.3, the information here may be out of date.

• For tier 1, Situational Awareness is absolutely essential for destroyers.  This should be followed up with Basic Fire Training when you can afford to spend the extra point to increase her rate of fire.
• For tier 2, you have your choice between Expert Marksman for increased turret rotation speed and Torpedo Armament Expertise.  Use the former if you find yourself fighting with the slow traverse of the Anshan’s guns.  Use the latter if you lean heavily on your torpedo armament.
• For tier 3, Superintendent is the best choice, giving you an additional charge of your Speed Boost and Smoke Launcher consumables.
• For tier 4, Advanced Fire Training is absolutely essential, increasing your fire range to 14.28km.  This will allow you to be able to fire from concealment in open water.
• For tier 5, Concealment Expert is the current best choice.  This will open up your fire from concealment range from 12.9km down to at least 12km, giving you a 2.2km window which is much more comfortable.

If you find yourself already comfortable with the 1.3km stealth window Advanced Fire Training provides, you may want to consider Demolish Expert rather than Concealment Expert on your second pass to increase the fire chance of your HE shells.