Basics of PVE Fleet Composition

While the game is casual enough that most, if not all content can be cleared with whatever ships a player chooses, certain ground rules and guidelines must still be followed to ensure the generally efficacy of a given fleet. Equipment choices are covered in another guide. This guide is going to focus on what general types of ships should be chosen and how to organise a fleet for maximum throughput.

Standard Ship Archetypes

In addition to the more clear-cut divisions between hull classifications, there are a number of soft divisions within those classes that are derived from a ship’s general kit.

General Archetypes

Anybody who’s played an MMO or many other single-player RPGs will likely be familiar with these basic roles

• Tank – Tanks are ships with high effective hitpoints (eHP), which is an aggregate based on their HP, evasion, luck, and skill effects, including any boosts from equipment. As Azur Lane lacks any sort of enmity tools, there are no explicit tanks, but the lead ship in the vanguard and the flagship in the main fleet tend to take more damage than other ships in their respective halves of your fleet. A subset of tank would be the ‘zombie’ ships: units who have self-heals that trigger when their HP reaches a certain threshold.
• Support – Ships with buff-type skills. This includes offensive buffs, defensive buffs, and healing. Ships with offensive buffs will also buff themselves, unless explicitly stated otherwise, meaning many ships who support the fleet with offensive buffs are also going to be capable damage dealers in their own right, even when run solo.
• Damage Dealer – Ships focused on dealing damage. While all ships will deal damage, not every ship is designed to deal damage, and this role is meant more for ships that are good at doing so. No ship is capable of being a strong damage dealer without the assistance of their skills.
• Trash – While the game is built such that you can clear content with any given ship, there are a handful of ships that are so worthless they don’t fall into either of the above three categories, such as Omaha. Using these ships is an act of love, and if one of these ships is your waifu, be prepared to put in far more effort to make them work than you would for another ship.

Battleships (BB) and Adjacent Classes^† (BC/BM/BBV)

Battleships are generally tankier than aircraft carriers and have superior focused, single-target damage. While support-based battleships exist, most of them provide offensive support, with a very small selection of battleships, such as Arizona, that provide purely defensive support.

• 3x Sheller – This is the most generic battleship archetype and covers every battleship that gains +2 main gun mounts from limit breaks, for a total of three, hence 3x shelling. Generally considered the weakest archetype for direct damage dealing, 3x shelling BBs need especially strong skills, either personally or in the form of buffs or other utility, to be considered strong. Standout battleships in this category include North Carolina and Tirpitz.
• 2x Sheller – If 3x shelling BBs have three gun mounts, then logically 2x shelling BBs only have two. Battleships who fall in this category tend to have higher main gun efficiency to compensate. What this does is frontload the battleship’s damage, which can cause more damage overall due to the way aiming AI works. In short, the first round of shelling will always prioritise boss and elite enemies, with following rounds of shelling having increasingly reduced boss priority. Additionally, having especially high main gun efficiency increases the potency of burn DOTs. This category includes ships like all current French battleships and Georgia.
• Barrager – Battleships for whom a barrage skill constitutes the bulk of her throughput. This includes ships like Hood and all three monitors. Not every battleship with a barrage is going to be a barrage battleship. For many of them, their barrage is going to serve more as an auxiliary damage source, rather than a primary one, such as the aimed shelling-esque barrages of Warspite, Duke of York, and Scharnhorst, and weaker frontal barrages like Bismarck’s.

^{† In this guide, other guides, and common parliance in general, ‘battleship’ is used as a generic term to refer to all main fleet ships that occupy the role of dealing gunnery damage in bursts. While battleships and battlecruisers specifically are functionally identical in practical applications, monitors and battleship-carriers function slightly differently, but while still providing the same fundamental functionality.}

Aircraft Carriers

Where battleships are generally geared towards selfish, single-target damage, carriers are geared more towards support and aoe damage. Support focused carriers such as Unicorn, Shouhou, and Illustrious exist, but every carrier provides some degree of support with the fact that airstrikes clear the screen of enemy projectiles. Additionally, support skills can be found even on offensive carriers like Shoukaku, Souryuu, and Centaur.

• Plane Type Focus – Nearly every carrier is going to have an affinity for one type of plane to the detriment of the others, which impacts use-case. Fighters are primarily used for aerial defence, with the best fighters dropping bombs, while both types of bombers are focused more on dealing damage. Torpedo bombers are further divided into aimed and parallel TBs, see the equipment guide for more information. Efficiencies and limit break perks are very important here. While Illustrious and Centaur both have two fighter slots and one torpedo bomber slot, Illustrious has higher efficiency on her fighters, and launches 6 of them to 2 torp. bombers. Centaur, meanwhile, has lower efficiency on her fighters and only launches 4 of them to 4 torp. bombers. This means Illustrious is a fighter-focused carrier while Centaur is a torpedo bomber-focused carrier.
• Paired Carriers – At the time of writing this guide, there are only three strict sets of paired carriers: the Japanese Ikkousen, Nikkousen, and Gokkousen. All of them gain massive boosts to their statline when used together in the same fleet, which impacts their respective use-cases.
• High and Low Reload – For the most part, reload stat correlates with a carrier being a light carrier or standard carrier, however some exceptions exist, such as Ranger. High reload carriers generally deal less damage than their slower counterparts, but their faster reload speed assists in the support role all carriers fill, and provides benefits with regards to reducing overkill when used in trash clearing fleets.
• Armoured Carrier – At the time of writing this guide, there are only three armoured carriers: Illustrious, Victorious, and Taihou. Armoured carriers will generally deal less damage than standard carriers, compounded by also having low reload stats, but have heavy armour. Their thick armour and, in the case of Taihou and Victorious, strong defensive skills give them niche potential in select situations where you might run a carrier as your flagship, but also need them to be tanky. More on that below.

Cruisers

Cruisers are the core of your vanguard. Light cruisers, while generally considered the weakest vanguard class in terms of damage, are capable of putting out reliable, consistent damage on auto, and tend to be tankier and have better AA than other vanguard classes. Many light cruisers also have decent support skills, and most support skills found on cruisers will buff light and heavy cruisers both. Heavy cruisers, meanwhile, are very capable bruisers, equipped with heavier guns, if slightly more unwieldy guns than other vanguard classes.

• Torpedo Cruiser – The most common type of cruiser, equipped with a single main gun and torpedoes. Torpedoes in general will struggle to perform at maximum potential when playing on auto, but are capable of dealing large amounts of damage on manual. Heavy torpedo cruisers tend to struggle as a result of this compounding on the incredibly low volume of fire from their main gun. Light torpedo cruisers will run into fewer issues with their gunnery, but generally lack damage potential compared to other classes.
• Gunboat – The most common type of cruiser amongst USN ships, and relatively rare amongst other nations. These cruisers are equipped with main and auxiliary guns. In most cases, they receive main gun mount +1 and are equipped with destroyer auxiliary guns, but some exceptions exist. Yat Sen lacks a bonus main gun mount, but has two slots for main guns and no auxiliary gun. Seattle’s auxiliary slot can support either an AA gun or light cruiser gun, but not a destroyer gun. London Kai’s auxiliary slot can support either torpedoes or a destroyer gun, but she doesn’t gain main gun mount +1. Gunboats will typically have lower potential output than torpedo cruisers, but their gunnery focus makes them superior on auto, and auxiliary guns shore up many of the weaknesses of heavy cruisers allowing gunboat heavy cruisers to perform more consistently as solo vanguard units than their torpedo-equipped peers.
• Hybrid Cruiser – A rare subclass of cruisers, equipped with the main gun mount +1 of a gunboat, while still retaining their torpedoes. They tend to have the strongest damage potential, and, as most of them are gunnery focused, are still capable of pumping out large amounts of damage even on auto, though they do carry over the same caveat as traditional torpedo cruisers in that torpedoes are inherently unreliable on auto.
• AA Cruiser – As the name would imply, AA cruisers are purpose-built to deal anti-air damage. Historically, they were equipped with dual-purpose guns, which is reflected in-game by their ability to equip destroyer guns (dual-purpose refers to light-caliber guns intended for both surface damage and anti-air roles, most of which fall under the in-game destroyer gun classification). Aside from their ability to equip destroyer guns, most AA cruisers are also equipped with torpedoes. Seattle is a special exception. While her kit is more in-line with those of a typical gunboat and she cannot equip destroyer guns at all, even in her auxiliary slot, her statline and skills are very explicitly geared towards being purpose-built to deal anti-air damage. Additionally, her historical gun is, despite being a light cruiser gun in-game, a dual-purpose gun, and even provides a small boost to anti-air.

Destroyers

Due to the general lack of variety in destroyer loadouts, there aren’t any particularly apparent subclasses. Destroyers can be either torpedo focused or gunnery focused in a similar manner to torpedo and gunboat cruisers, but every gunnery focused destroyer still has her torpedoes, and many destroyers have a more balanced statline. Similar to with cruisers, gunnery focused destroyers will be somewhat more reliable and consistent on auto than torpedo focused destroyers. However, destroyers as a class are typically at their strongest when used on manual play. Torpedo-focused destroyers, while capable of dealing massive amounts of burst damage to take out bosses or elite enemies, lack the same gunnery output to fall back on when their torps are on cooldown, and are prone to being swamped by small enemies.

Trash Clearing versus Boss Killing Fleets

In order to fight a boss, you’ll typically need to clear through 5~7 trash fleets first. When fighting at 0 ammo, your fleet will deal half damage, and when fighting at 4+ ammo, your fleet will deal 10% more damage. This encourages utilising multiple fleets; one to kill the boss, and one to fight enemies until the boss spawns.

Clearing Fleets Value:

• Tankiness and sustain. As you fight far more trash fleets than bosses, your ships need to have sufficient eHP to stay alive across every fight. Healers and zombie ships are invaluable here, and otherwise generally tanky vanguard units are preferred.
• Smooth damage curves. Enemies in trash fights tend to have relatively low HP and are prone to being overkilled. Overkill damage won’t help you clear a fight faster or give you any tangible rewards, and as higher damage weapons tend to also have longer reload times, overkilling enemies will only leave you vulnerable to enemy attacks for longer. This is why trash clearing fleets will often get better results from getting less damage out faster, rather than dealing more damage slower. This is also why light carriers tend to have an advantage over standard carriers for trash fleets. Coincidentally, the two most effective healers in the game are both CVLs.
• Low-cost units and/or fewer units. Again, as you fight more trash fleets than bosses, a higher portion of your oil expenditure on a given map will be on your trash fleet. Units of lower rarities will cost less to field than units of higher rarities. Additionally, using fewer units will also have a large impact on oil expenditure. Two common destroyers will cost 7 fuel each, for a total cost of 14 fuel per fight, while a super rare heavy cruiser will only cost 12 fuel. Despite being high rarity, if that CA is capable of clearing a map as a solo vanguard unit, they’ll be more efficient than running the two DDs.

Boss Fleets Value:

• Bare minimum eHP. While you don’t want your ships to die outright, you also don’t want to go overboard on defensiveness. If your ships can get away with running offensive auxiliary gear, you should equip them as such. Additionally, high-damage but low-bulk ships will generally prefer to be used in boss killing fleets.
• Burst damage focus. As you cannot meaningfully overkill bosses, fleets should be equipped around dealing the maximum amount of damage possible, nearly all of the time. Boss fleets will often want to run ships that are capable of providing windows of increased damage, and then lining up as many sources of burst damage as possible within that window
• Boss fleets do not value low-cost. As the obverse to trash clearing fleets looking to run fewer and/or cheaper units due to the relative number of trash fights as opposed to boss fights, boss killing fleets usually encourage running more full fleets, and trying to keep costs down in a boss fight is often a fool’s errand.

Main Fleet Composition

Positioning in the main fleet is typically far more strict than positioning in the vanguard due to a few factors. The most important factor being the ships’ skills. Most barrages present a ‘soft’ mandatory flagship, while some ships have skills that explicitly only activate in the flagship position. With very few exceptions, barrages are centered on the ship that fire them, and a barrage-focused battleship in a flanking position will lose value on their barrage due to this. The other primary concern is auxiliary gun coverage. As backline aux guns are vital in protecting the main fleet against certain threats, primarily suicide boats, but rarely production types, having a good coverage pattern assists in interception. Given these statements, when running a single backline ship, battleships are the most logical choice.

The Solo Battleship. As stated earlier, the advantages afforded by battleships makes them the natural choice for a solo backliner in most situations. When looking to build a cheap farming fleet, running a singular battleship is nearly always ideal. A cheap battleship can be used to keep costs especially low, or a more expensive battleship can be added in for the sake of superior shelling and/or a barrage skill. Alternatively, if circumstances allow as such, monitors provide the highest power to fuel expenditure ratio.

When to run a solo carrier? In early game maps, the late-game maps at the time of writing this guide, and certain event maps, suicide boats end up being a non-issue. This reduces the strain on the backline and almost eliminates the need for auxiliary guns. In those late-game maps especially, there’s a strong enemy air presence, and by bringing a carrier, you’re bringing superior anti-air potential than most battleships can provide, on top of the generally superior utility of carriers.

Given the nature of hardmode locks, there are going to be times where you’re forced to run a carrier. Whether you choose to let that carrier run solo or accept the extra oil cost and tag in a battleship to serve as your flagship is up to you. Additionally, having a high volume of fire coming from your vanguard can go a long way towards protecting an otherwise vulnerable carrier from suicide boats. Gunboat light cruisers are ideal for this purpose.

There’s also a certain carrier who can equip auxiliary guns, has an actual firepower stat to bolster that gun’s damage, and has a self-centered shelling barrage: Zeppy. While more of a cute gimmick than a necessarily good choice, the chibified Graf Zeppelin is capable of performing as a solo backline unit where other carriers cannot.

Basic Lightweight Backlines. When a solo battleship becomes insufficient, the next step is typically going to be to tag in a carrier. While airstrikes’ ability to clear the screen of enemy projectiles is naturally more useful on manual play, it can provide a massive boon even on auto. For trash clearing fleets, a healer CVL will usually be your go-to in this instance, but if healing is unnecessary, a more damage-focused CVL or even a CV will work just as well.

Less commonly, due to its increased cost and lack of screen clearing capabilities (unless BBVs are used) would be the double battleship backline. This setup will provide increased artillery capabilities, which can often deal with high-threat elite enemies more quickly and efficiently than a carrier could. Additionally, the second battleship can be moved to the flagship position should the initial flagship become too heavily damaged by enemy shelling.

Running Battleships on the Flank. Given the soft flagship restriction of barrage skills and tendency for strong battleships to have barrage skills, you will typically have a battleship as your flagship. However, battleships on the flank will often have superior coverage with their aux guns, which is especially impactful if those battleships are limited to DD-caliber aux guns. If running a full backline with no barrage battleships, it might be worth considering placing your battleships on the flank because of this. However, with a few exceptions, such as the armoured carriers, carriers are less tanky than battleships, and placing one in the flagship position will often leave them more vulnerable to enemy shelling. Use with care.

Running Monitors on the Flank. While frontal barrages lose a lot of value when the firing battleship is placed on the flank, monitors provide such a massive amount of damage potential for a relatively low cost that it can often be worth using them on the flank. Their general vulnerabilities make them less ideal as flagships, especially in later worlds, but when paired with a strong battleship to provide them with more protection, monitors can serve as a decent way to spike the power of your fleet for a minimal increase in fuel expenditure. This setup has the same issues as any other fleet that lacks a carrier. Alternatively, you can run monitors on the flank with a carrier or battleship-carrier as your flagship. This loses you a degree of protection from suicide boats, but affords you the advantages of running a carrier otherwise. Use with care.

Repair Ships. Repair ships serve as a bit of an oddity in Azur Lane. Despite their name, they’re generally weaker combat healers than other ships with healing skills, and the increased ammo capacity they provide is an incredibly low-impact perk (the emergency repair kits are fairly useful, however, but are lost if the repair ship sinks before they’re used). Additionally, they are wholly incapable of contributing surface damage, lacking even auxiliary guns for self-defence, all while occupying a slot and costing fuel that could be used for a combat-capable ship instead. So why use them? They’re incredibly competent anti-air ships. Both repair ships have two anti-air slots and anti-air mount +1 from limit breaks, giving them a total of four AA guns on a single ship. While their base AA stat and efficiency is low, they have three auxiliary slots that can be put towards equipping anti-air radars, making them useful in later worlds where anti-air is a primary concern.

A Quick Note About PVP. While these guides are intended to be a resource for PVE, it would be a disservice not to mention the way in which main fleet positioning differs in PVP. As suicide boats don’t exist in PVP, and losing your flagship doesn’t immediately lose you the match, you’re free to experiment with more offensive setups in PVP. Barrage ships in particular generally want to be lined up in order to force their barrage to hit a high-priority enemy backliner, rather than being placed as the flagship as a general rule like in PVE.

Vanguard Composition

The primary concern when it comes to positioning your vanguard ships is that your lead ship (the ship on the bottom/left vanguard slot in fleet formation) will take up the bulk of incoming gunnery damage, with the middle ship taking the least gunnery damage. As such, you’ll want your tankiest ship to take up the lead, with your second tankiest ship taking up the rear.

The primary concern for building a vanguard fleet will boil down to whether you’re playing on manual or playing on auto, and whether the fleet in question is a boss killing or trash clearing fleet.

For boss fleets, heavily torpedo-centric fleets will generally suffer when deployed on auto. The auto AI is incapable of utilising torpedoes effectively, and the auto AI’s tendency to eat unnecessary damage will often prevent you from equiping oxygen torpedoes, further reducing your torpedo damage potential. Meanwhile, fleets that are composed exclusively of gunboats will generally be the most reliable on auto. Hybrid ships who have both decent torpedo and gunnery damage or utility focused support ships will still perform better on manual, but are generally more than reliable enough on auto.

For trash clearing fleets, torpedoes are somewhat more useful on auto. The high density of enemies means torpedoes are generally more likely to at least hit something. However, as stated earlier, trash fleets generally value smooth damage curves, and torpedoes are very squarely burst damage. Especially torpedo-focused ships such as most IJN destroyers will often struggle in trash fights due to their torpedoes being overkill and their guns being too weak to provide much of value while waiting for their torpedoes to reload.