/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Finally E5 cleared! It definitely went a lot easier than E4 did.

Main Fleet:
Haruna - 46cm red, 41cm red, Sanshiki, Type21 Radar
Hiei - Two 41cm reds, Sanshiki, E.Repair
Aoba - Three 15.5cm yellows, 12cm30 green; eventually swapped one yellow for an E.Repair
Shimakaze - Two 10cm greens, E.Repair; used up an E.Repair in the 2nd to last run and forgot to put anything into her third slot for when I actually sank the boss.
Kita/Ooi - 10cm green, 15.5cm yellow, midget sub; started with two 15.5cms but I started getting wrecked in the initial air raid at the boss so swapped in the greens

Support Fleet:
Kongou - Three 41cm reds, Type21 Radar
Nagato - Three 41cm reds, AP Round
Hibiki/Samidare - Two 10cm greens, 12.7cm red
Kaga/Zuikaku - 2 Suiseis, 2 Tenzans

Initially got a pretty early sink and things were looking pretty nice from there. I decided to take a break and AFK at the boss introduction screen to prevent any regen and went to sleep. Initially started with Kongou and Maya, but after seeing no results from either of them, I swapped both out for Hiei and Shimakaze. Had some fairly decent runs afterwards and got the boss within the sink range after about 5 hours of leisurely playing. Sparkled fleet almost every time and used support expedition a couple times at the start but went through most of E5 without one. Once I needed support for the sink, it became apparent that they were useless and just huge resource sinks with no payoff so I stopped using them.

The difference between a sparkling fleet and a non-sparkling fleet were huge; I swear the targeting became smarter when they were sparkled and I believe it was the difference between whether or not the BB node would cut-in for critical hits to send ships into the red or just laughing off 3 damage and moving onto the boss. Started with around 125ish buckets and finished with 35 to spare. Ships in orange never sank and ships that went into night battle in the red were also safe. Overall time was roughly 8.5 hours.