I remember that a while ago they announced they’d make depth charges be much more effective when used together with sonars. (Well duh, I thought, sonars alone are pretty powerful anti-sub equipment.) However I missed the part of the announcement that said they’d make depth charges completely useless on their own.

Just now I ran three PVPs against sub fleets with one of my exped fleets to sparkle them. The fleet featured Naka K2 (70), Urakaze (24), Uzuki Kai (25), Akitsumaru (can’t attack subs so irrelevant), with the addition of Ise and Yuubari.

I was lazy to swap sonars off other botes, so I thought I’d just put one 94 depth charge on each of them and I’ll be fine. Dream on!

Even Naka, a maxed-out, relatively high level K2 light cruiser only hit enemy subs for ~2 most of the time, despite being line abreast. For the two low level destroyers the results were even more grave. Lucky that Ise and Yuubari could clean up 4 subs on their own, or even just winning would’ve been at risk let alone getting S victories for sparkling.

Let me mention the perverse imbalance in the game when it comes to anti-sub damag, something that anyone who’s ever rotated 2-3 with subs must know: enemy ships in line ahead/double line, without any ASW equipment trash my level 97 subs on the regular basis – then I get my level 70 CL barely doing scratch damage in line abreast despite being equipped with a depth charge.