The DD is the fastest and stealthiest class in the game, with the capability to deliver a devastating alpha salvo and significant additional damage with its artillery array.
It is important to note that Russian DDs like the Kiew and Tashkent behave a bit more like cruisers than they do destroyers – particularly the Tashkent. They have embarrassingly large spotting distance, and because of this need to use terrain a lot more than the other DDs. Depending on the flavor of the game at hand, you may be pressed into a role more suited for a cruiser, and this is fine. Just be aware of the limitations – and advantages – that this imposes on you.
Since I first started writing this, a new development has arisen that is of particular note to Destroyers, and will be extremely impactful on your gameplay:
Radar.
Tier 8 cruisers of the Russian and US lines have been given a consumable, radar, which grants them 10km +/- perfect visibility of anything floating on or flying above the water – which means you, DD captain. It can see through smoke, it can see through ships, it can see through islands. So a cruiser can light you up completely with no risk to itself whatsoever if it has range on you. The Soviet model has a duration of something like 20s, and the American can go as high as 40s (I don’t have those figures handy right now, so make sure you check out the Chapayev and New Orleans to be sure). This is a lot like a CV having fighters over your head, but without the option to shoot them down or hide in a smoke cloud.
And that means you need terrain to block line-of-fire, or you need to dodge like a superhero. It makes the early-warning skill immensely more valuable to you, since without it you may never know that you’ve been spotted until the first salvo comes down and detonates you.
I still recommend that your first priority remains getting caps secured – but if you get lit up by enemy radar, you need to move your ass out of there. A live DD is worth a lot more than a few extra seconds of capping.
Early game roles for the DD are to be scouts, spotting the enemy heavies and fencing with the enemy DDs. You will be the first to arrive on cap points and it will be your responsibility to interdict those points from the enemy while securing them for your team. Most importantly though, early in the game it is vital that you STAY ALIVE. Your ship is worth more points than a few seconds on cap, and you can always contest the cap or light up the enemy for your heavies to decap with artillery fire. If you are up against a team with significantly more DD strength than yours, and you realize the cap is being contested, get out with your skin and return to light up the enemy for your team after a torp salvo or two.
In the case of the IJN models, these should avoid direct contact with all enemy ships, and salvo torps from stealth. That may mean hiding in your own smoke, or simply relying on your ship’s inherent stealthiness. Three-turret versions do have significant firepower when needed, so long as the guns are already pointed the right way and you won’t be circling at close range. If Russian, you have to make the judgment call on distance and firepower, whether you can tackle any opposition you run into – and whether their backup will sink you during the fight. US DDs will dominate a direct one-on-one, but of course the enemy heavies in the back make that feeling of superiority vanish rather quickly.
Never engage in a fair fight.
Mid-game, it’s likely that both teams have a cap at this point, and the remainder of the fleet is peppering the other side. As a DD your role has now changed a bit – if there’s a third cap, it’s time to fight for it between the two teams, and that means tactics very similar to the early game. If your team has a lead and both sides are gaining points equally or yours has an advantage, then the enemy has to come to your caps or kill your fleet from long range to knock your lead away. With this in mind, you should be monitoring approaches to your fleet’s most vulnerable cap and sending torps to intercept enemies that get too close. Your weapons in this case serve two functions: one to kill ships as they come too close, and the other to force them to turn off – costing them time, and more importantly forcing them to show weak side armor to your fleet. Note also that dropping a smoke cloud on an approach is intimidating enough that most players won’t approach it – so you can dump smoke and go cover a different approach so long as you don’t get spotted.
If the enemy has the lead, your job is to highlight lone-wolf cruisers or DDs to enable your team to dispatch them and even the score. If they have one or more caps, you can pick the lesser-defended one and either steal it or paralyze it temporarily by driving through it. If there are more than one of you, wolfpack the weaker cap and do your best to catch defender(s) in the torpedo crossfire while the rest of your fleet follows you in.
End-game, if your team has a significant advantage and the enemy will be forced to attack you. In this case, get to the cap(s) you already hold and keep them. The enemy has to step on-cap to stop you from winning, or kill all your ships. Drop smoke and sit elsewhere on the cap – the smoke will attract artillery/torpedo salvos and focus enemy attention while you act from another location. If there are planes in the air, save your smoke for when you are about to be, or are, detected – and pop it then to make targeting you harder. Don’t be afraid to maneuver outside of the cap to get a better shot; if you kill the interloper or re-enter the cap before it is completely taken you will halt their capture attempt and when the intruder leaves the cap or dies it will revert to your team’s full ownership.
If you are on the losing side during the end-game, at this point you’re already in deep trouble (no pun intended). First priority is to stop the enemy from gaining more points – and that means inhibiting or stealing all of their caps. If you leave even one ticking, you are only about 100 ticks from a loss. As a DD, you are in the most fragile ship in the game and you are now stuck with the worst situation – you have to take defended territory from the enemy. I won’t sugar-coat this, if you are the last ship(s) on the board, the game is probably lost at this point.
In the case of IJN ships with their long-range torpedoes, if the enemy has very few ships holding their cap you can set up a ‘strategic bombardment’ of the cap by first firing at long range with your torps and then chasing them in – this creates hazardous moving terrain ahead of you that your enemy might not see until too late once they spot you (they may focus on your ship, while missing out on the fact that there are torps just ahead of you). Using speed boost to keep up with your torps helps, and as soon as you are spotted start jinking plus blow smoke to try to avoid being blown out of the water. Even if the enemy dodges your salvo (likely), they may assume you just launched them, which sets up a surprise move you can pull by launching your next salvo when they aren’t expecting it. They may actually charge your smoke thinking that you are still in reload mode. If so, let them have it.
Russians and US DDs have a bit of a harder time with this, as their torpedoes are shorter-ranged, but their speed and maneuverability give them a dodging advantage here. It’s not much, but it’s a chance – on open ocean there’s not much hope. On a tight island cap however, they can arrange to approach without giving the enemy too many opportunities to fire at them before they can unload. Throwing down smoke as you emerge from an island in this case is the best method of avoiding retaliatory fire. If your enemy has no torpedoes, you can halt in the smoke and continue to fire if the enemy remains spotted, or wait for the enemy to approach and torp from within it at point-blank range. I don’t want to inspire any false hopes here, if you’re in this situation then chances are high that your game is already lost. But still, some small chance is better than none.
