Shinano

• Shinano specialized farming broadside ships with AP skip bombs, supporting allies with smoke, all while having accurate secondaries and a study hull for the occasional close fight

• Shinano’s build leans into her AP bombs and smoke gimmick

  • Shinano’s base secondaries are sufficient for DD self defense in randoms. If you want to invest into secondaries, trade Bomber Flight Control for Defensive Fire Expert, and Slot 3 smoke upgrade for secondary range. You can get up to 14.4km range with manual aim (9km with auto).
  • It doesn’t stop cruisers and BBs from melting you, so have smoke ready

• Suzuki is useful for the improved SE. Yamamoto can prove extremely powerful if you get Kraken Unleashed, though this usually happens by the time the battle is over

• Quick guide to using Shinano’s AP bombs. Bombs hitting the 1st and 2nd line will pen 658mm armor, and hitting the farthest line is 296mm

• Smoke is invaluable for survival if you get caught by surface ships, or intend on duking it out with secondaries

• The torpedo protection reduction skill is NOT mandatory and depends a lot on how much you use the torpedoes. Do keep in mind that even if you don't use them often, the 10% increase is pretty significant. You can swap this out for whatever you like better (for example the flak reduction if you are not as confident in dodging flak)

• Whether you use speed or HP in upgrade slot 6 is up to you.

• Using the legendary upgrade (slot 6) puts extra emphasis on your already incredibly powerful DBs at the cost of making other plane types slightly weaker, which is quite good in practice because Midway DBs are effective against all surface combat ships.

• Ovechkin is highly recommended because of his improved SE. See here for a ship priority list for this captain.

• Applies to Langley, Ranger, Lexington, Saipan, Sanzang, Enterprise and Midway.