How to play well with Japanese battleships?

[Raul508]

Hey guys, I'm new to the game.

I have a few questions.
about Japanese battleships, how do you play them? I know the pros and cons, I know you have to play at a distance, but... how many kilometers?
At each level if possible.

What skills do I put in?

A big hug guys!!! I would like to be expert on world of warships.

[Ace42]

Don't overthink ship specifics - they're flavours, not something that typically overrides a class's core functionality or duties.

All battleships have only one goal in this game: Establish and maintain a crossfire with teammates, and thus map control.
That means putting your ship somewhere that forces the enemy to choose between showing broadside to either you or your teammates.

All battleships survive through a combination of angling their main armour belt (big orangey red strip down the length of the ship in the armour viewer), and through range management.

A plate angled at 30 degrees (tighter for improved ricochet angle AP[wiki.wargaming.net] or SAP) will autobounce all AP shells that do not overmatch[wiki.wargaming.net] that plate, and there's pretty much no overmatch in the game for BB main armour belts.

Optimal range for a battleship is "as close to the enemy as possible without: Showing more than 30 degrees of main armour belt to incoming dangerous AP; without getting so close to torpedo boats that you eat more than one when trying to slip between them; without entering HE spam from ships you cannot see, and thus cannot shoot back at".

Any further away from the enemy than that, and you're making them safer from your guns without gaining appreciable safety for yourself.

That's pretty much it for all battleships: Concentrate on maintaining those crossfires; concentrate on deleting citadels with your AP; concentrate on range management so you're not exposing your broadside to AP or torps and not hiding so far back that you make your guns useless.

Once you're comfortably doing that - which is enough to get an above average winrate - you can start thinking about stuff like learning your overmatch match-ups; stuff with citadel protection; or less obvious playstyles like secondary spec, etc.

As for builds - you cannot go wrong following the ones found on the following document.
There's some room for customisation or going in a slightly different direction for personal preference or comfort, but there's not a "bad" build in the document AFAIK:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XfsIIbyORQAxgOE-ao_nVSP8_fpa1igg0t48pXZFIu0/preview?tab=t.0

Fire Prevention skill is mandatory on nearly all battleships, because it limits the fire-zones on the BB to 3 instead of 4. If you are maintaining a good angle, your ship's turrets and superstructure will cover at least one extremity (either bow or stern depending on if you're pushing or kiting) from incoming shells, further reducing maximum fires to an easy-to-manage 2.