Azur Lane PvP/Autocombat Goat
A series of observations and loose-fitting guidelines I built during my time playing Azur Lane. It is focused largely on autocombat and pvp. It's not a tier list in that it isn't an arbitrary ranking system based on feelsgood. And, unlike reddit spew, it's something I have actual experience with and am not basing on incomprehensible foreign youtube videos.
I'm only listing the ones I have A.) used and B.) consider actually worth using. There's many I've used that I didn't bother using again either because they weren't interesting enough or they weren't good enough to use over other choices.
Leveling/Clearing
I always use full groups since I hit Clevel 50-60 unless I really, really want to feed a ship MVP on a very specific high level map it can largely solo. Else a single good BB/BC overleveling the enemy ships by about 20, with a gunship frontline or something with reliable damage, is sufficient to handle trash fights in content on auto up to chapter 7-8 or so. Since oil is never a concern even with all-day play, I never even look at costs anymore (most fights take an average of 70 oil and I still hit soft cap most days). I'm not so big on mindlessly grinding after I got Sendai, though, but you pay for your exp in oil due to the way exp scales with content and fleet size so it's not like it makes a difference when your goal is a PR ship.
PvP
PvP is just autocombat duels with an extreme advantage to the attacker. Basically any composition can defeat meta groups with good gear. The problem is many people gear defensively and don't understand accuracy, so you can easily defeat even fully oathed teams that outlevel you with suboptimal groups and a low level ship they are carrying. If RNG doesn't favor you, you can simply leave the fight and try again. Ranking is basically all RNG and luck and offers nothing. The entire system is broken as hell and needs to be redesigned. Until then, I use PvP primarily to level ships and test out various theories on compositions to see what works and what doesn't on average and why.
I don't reference guides other than Ayase's because otherwise the only people who publish anything based on experience and not vague guesswork don't publish their content in English.
BC/BB
Amagi -
tl;dr - Use her for everything. I'm not sure if there's actually a BB in the game for EN that is straight up comparable to Amagi at the time of this writing. She's a dimension of her own with the sole exception that Nagato offers IJN damage buffs. But you stack Amagi and Nagato, they aren't exclusive, and Amagi benefits non-IJN ships. She's insanely good in any situation, Nagato and her are simply synergistic by extent of being IJN. Because of EN's masterfully planned release schedule, Amagi's power creep seems to outclass 95% of the new ships we got after her, especially when coupled with her barrage.
Long version -
When I look at shelling ships I look first and foremost at Barrage and then Gun Efficiency. Since 99% of the time you'll be using an HE gun your modifiers will never change from the standard fare until you hit the actual gun efficiency. Except most of the top BB's have fairly mediocre gun efficiency at around 130-135%. The biggest difference is going to be Hyuuga Kai whom gets a wacky 175% to make up for the loss of her gun mount, making her shells the heaviest hitting pre-Jean Bart that I've yet to see, and not by a small margin (900 vs 1300-1500 depending on the target).
That means that Amagi's shelling damage on the 381 is never going to be quite that amazing, but when comparing to other ships using barrage guns it's not like shelling damage is ever amazing anyways. Of course, she's going to care much more about her barrage instead.
What makes Amagi's damage output so stupid is that A.) much of her barrage reaches the backline as an Attacker, unlike many other decent BB's and B.) it clusters heavily in a long piss-like stream.
As a flagship, Amagi will puke her barrage directly into the vanguard and hose it down like a disobedient dog. For some reason as a defender the barrage behaves different and all of the AP shells fan out and fall short of the back line, probably just was never tested. But as an Attacker it's the highest concentrated damage obtainable at the time of this writing, and most importantly it's reliable.
While syncing with Sendai flares really isn't going to happen in auto, it isn't necessary since you'll be putting the HFFC on her in addition to an SG Radar (at least prior to shells). The Radar coupled with her defensive skills makes her retardedly tanky in PvP, especially if she's a support versus a flagship (usually nagato). The support role hurts her ability to nuke the vanguard since her barrage is mostly fixed forward, but her damage never seems to suffer from that.
In PvP at 100-110 she consistently takes MvP in either fox or BB comps and usually holds 20-25k damage. I give her the 381 for maximum proc chance and the HFFC stacks with her first shot cooldown, allowing her to fire only a few seconds into the fight. With akaga this almost guarantees a kill on nearly any frontline in the game by the first airstrike. As a secondary ship it mostly puts damage on her opposing backline and gets burn damage rolling. Worst case she fails to proc twice in a row, but this is very rare.
Regardless of equipment the only dangerous thing in chapter 10 was burn damage. Since she was released after I got Jintsuu I can say she would have made ch10 a lot easier, given I was able to autocombat most of ch11 upon its release without even breaking a sweat. So long as burn damage remains dangerous she'll remain relevant, but things that could push her out of meta would require equally reliable, higher-damage barrages (Or anti-air focus in W13+).
The main issue with her in PvE is overkill. I don't use her for clearing trash usually because it just isn't necessary to do that much damage in one spot. By the time Chapter 8 hard mode got released my groups were so strong I never had to be worried about backlines at all.
The wording on her abilities suggests that you lose her buffs when she dies, unlike Nagato. This means that Nagato's release actually made Amagi even stronger, since the ideal composition moved from Amagi/Akaga to Nagato/Amagi/Hiryuu, and Nagato' being flagship, tends to take the most damage in PvP and her death appears to be largely irrelevant for buff considerations, unlike Amagi, whose loss hurt the survivability of Akaga significantly.
On top of it, Amagi nerfs enemy stats, which is important since Attackers get a huge attack buff. Any way you can reduce that attack buff or attack their stats in other ways is an extremely effective utility expression as a Defender since that buff effectively guarantees Attacker victory even with suboptimal compositions. This is in part what makes Hiryuu so stupid - any way you can delay damage to present a situation where it's Hiryuu and double airstrikes vs a backline you stand a good chance of forcing a reset or even baiting them into risking a timing defeat (Mutual destruction is always a defeat even if you killed them seconds in advance). Amagi delays by attacking both stats and burn damage both of which are more significant when considered in terms of time scaling. The attacker gets a 20% bonus and she nerfs their stats by 9%. I have no idea if that's total stats (120%) or base stats (100%) since the former would make it even stronger overall.
Her evasion buff is more like a participation award versus anyone who gears aggressively but against sustain comps it can make a CL frontline nigh unkillable given RNG.
In PvE I've never actually seen her die yet, but some other ships will steal MvP due to the short battle lengths typical of 8-4 Hard and CH10-11.
I think in PvE you can use a triple barrel gun for extra clearing spread and not really give a shit.
Nagato -
IJN Elizabeth that actually does damage. The problem with Nagato is her low barrage chance. Her power curve is behind Amagi's since for the source content she was released much earlier and not much later. Her stat bonus is easily forgotten in that context, which is silly since she grants a 20% aviation buff and Accuracy which is the single most important stat for PvP. The only problem is these buffs require her to be flagship so you can't stack her with Mikasa (which still don't have because lol EN).
A Washington re-run would give us a second high function fire control to give Nagato preferably. This would help offset the unreliability of her barrage. It's easy to see why the trend of Asian Nagato meta was dependent on Barrage procs, since hers has much more reliable collision than Amagi's and is equally good as a defender. Her barrage is also better for PvE since it covers more terrain and overkills less as a result. She's equally good for bosses and trash with her buffs, but unlike Amagi she is selfish about who she buffs so you can't mix and match her.
So long as Nagato's Accuracy, Reload and Firepower buffs support the BB-dominant meta of pvp and pve she will remain very relevant. I think mechanics like the Aviation buffs in CH-13 will be the only time she gets pushed out until power creep pushes us into rainbow PR ships and equivalents with higher reliability alpha damage.
Hood -
Hood was my first heavy ship I used consistently. I got Prince of Wales when I started but the quad gun I was stuck with for a long time made her ineffective outside of low level pvp. Once I got foxes I pulled Hood from exchange and used her all the way until 10-3.
Hood is most effective in boss fights where her buff can accelerate a battle that is risky. I used her to fight the boss in 10-3 which was by far the most difficult of the bosses for me due to the burn damage turning it into a DPS race. Here, a triple BB comp with Hyuuga/Hood/South Dakota was effective. Otherwise her barrage is alright for clearing trash, but the 410/381 are less effective for trash clearing and she doesn't hold heavier AUX guns so she got phased out entirely by Amagi and even Kaga BB in my comps.
In low level pvp with low gear, high skill on her barrage let her obliterate backlines consistently. It's like a budget version of Amagi's barrage but arcs somewhat. At high level/gear groups other than IJN are just free exp for carries. If Hood gets a retrofit she stands to be exceptional again, especially if it enforces a HMS composition and synergizes with the other buffers like KGV.
Hyuuga -
Hyuuga Kai has insane shelling damage but loses a gun. This means she becomes worse for trash clearing as a sheller and better for bosses since her damage universally goes up. But Melee Artillery is surprisingly decent and can fling shells all the way to the enemy backline in PvP. The bigger issue is that seaplanes are garbage. If a gold seaplane gets added with an effect like a slow debuff it will make her extremely strong. Otherwise, Hyuuga remains an great slot filler for most PvE situations I have run into. I run her with Kaga BB and Amagi for harvesting bosses for PR experience or for bombing dailies.
I ran Hyuuga Kai in pvp for some time and tried to measure out the reliability of her damage and different guns with her. I tried the Bismarck Gun, the 410, and the 406 as well as the 381. Ultimately, the guns didn't do much to change her final damage since so much of her damage comes from her efficiency. I wanted to compare her throughput damage to Kaga BB and her 50% barrage. It turns out that Hyuuga would inch ahead, especially if I hung the camera to the left so melee artillery went off, but Kaga BB would swing far ahead if even a single barrage went off. If a gold reloader existed it would help Hyuuga quite a bit, but as it was she was outclassed in PvP simply because of the short length of the fights, especially when compared to Akaga who usually crippled an enemy in the first airstrike.
Curiously, Hyuuga's damage buffs did not result in major swings for Nagato or Amagi. This is probably due to some mixture of diminishing returns and the type of guns I was using.
My conclusion was that Hyuuga Kai benefits the most from the 406 and excels for PvE support in groups without Akashi. Furthermore, her most important trait in PvP is instantly killing any frontline that somehow gets hit by that huge modifier on top of HE, and the 406 has the highest chance of making that happen.
Washington -
Washington is one of the best BB's currently in the game for PvE. The main reason beyond stats is her off-gun timed barrage. Typically you must hold a shot for well-placing your barrage to get the most out of it. Washington fires on a timer and frees up the gun for targets of opportunity instead. This means that Washington can effectively serve as two BB's during trash clearing.
I struggled with 10-3 when it came out due to using a DD-only frontline supported by Akashi. I typically had to clear groups without ammo and it was troublesome. I initially invested into South Dakota since the burn damage from 3 star cruiser fleets was murdering my backline. But South Dakota's damage was not that good, and I would often be pressed against the left side holding my cooldowns relying exclusively on DD barrage damage. Switching the two around (Washington was doing bosses originally) and putting the main group to triple BB made 10-3 trivial, and it all comes down to Washington's barrage.
As a flagship her barrage will hit much of the screen, and her stats ensure her main gun stays relevant for when you need it.
In PvP, Washington was a serious nuisance when coupled with South Dakota and Enterprise prior to Jintsuu. Hood/Akaga groups struggled with frontlines that were damage oriented since the invulnerability and double BB backline would shred most surviving vanguards if they ever reached them. Such groups were more about sustaining and relying on Enterprise for damage, but South Dakota being in the center ensured that your first two air strikes from Akaga were largely useless anyways. Jintsuu's damage and buffs helped give IJN groups the damage they needed to kill HMS/Eagles vanguards without any problems, but Amagi completely sealed their grave. I doubt you'll see Washington in PvP again unless some major American-only Nagato equivalent shows up. Since her barrage has fixed attack points it lacks reliability in PvP that it enjoys in PvE due to tighter confines and more easily accessed targets of world maps don't exist in an arena where no one besides people handing out free wins use CAs and the backline is far back. She'll gnaw at an opposing target, but not nearly with the same efficiency that Amagi has, and you never want to use her as a flagship over South Dakota since her dying prior to the other completely kills the comp as you'll lose most of your direct damage too early.
Furthermore, Washington is pretty single-focus on her kit which is barrage damage. Once you take SD out of the picture she has virtually nothing besides the timed barrage, while competitors like KGV and Amagi have huge buffs to help out the rest of the group. This means in an ideal comp that Washington is the one getting the buffs, but Eagles lack a competitor to Nagato/Amagi at this time in buffs much less barrage damage on top of it.
Kaga BB -
Why the fuck is her Barrage only 50%? Yes, the torpedoes are junk, but they travel fast, unlike Tirpitz, whose torpedoes are worthless, and she does actual damage, unlike Tirpitz, but only when the barrage procs. The barrage is her entire reason for existing. It's effectively the same thing as Washington's barrage, except it's a proc per the usual. And it's 50%, versus Washington. Washington is effectively the same thing but better in both damage, proc chance, proc rate, and kit. The only saving grace of Kaga BB on paper is Nagato who pushes her high stats into a silly spot.
The nice thing about Kaga BB is her torpedoes are guaranteed and off-cooldown which allows her to finish off Hiryuu in some cases. Her barrage will angle a little bit and does good damage when it actually goes off. But since it's so unreliable and she has no buffs to compensate for that like Nagato does she'll never fit into PvP.
For PvE you can still use her because she's Kaga and PvE is easy, but there's better choices even outside of the IJN pool for a Nagato group and certainly for a mixed group.
A retrofit would be nice. She needs some kind of third skill. So painful to see that FP stat be on so awkward a ship.
Duke of York -
I want to test her with Amagi/Nagato but I haven't had a chance. The idea is her slow effect makes other shells have an easier time hitting the vanguard, but the problem is DoY wants big guns and the other two want fast guns. In theory her slow effect might make a AP-heavy CL vanguard with magnetics extremely lethal once ee han timing is obtained. Her one barrage is on a timer, like Washington's, and her other has a strong alpha strike, like Bart's. Even at a low skill level she proves she is very useful in PvE, but mixing her outside of a HMS group seems wasteful. I'll comment more when my skills are high enough to make an HMS shelling team for PvE (KGV, York, Warspite Kai or QE seems plausible). In such comps, though, you get pushed into QE for stats and Warspite Kai is probably better overall for direct damage. We shall see.
Mikasa -
By the time we get her on EN we'll probably have moved on to WW3 ships.
Jean Bart
If her alpha strike is as good as everything seems to indicate, she could allow some RNG ee han timing victories on a first timer versus a second one for Nagato and Amagi. She'll certainly be better than Kaga BB on average despite not taking Nagato's buff.
So far the most worrying thing is her forced gun. Ships like KGV and Wales all build kits around a specific gun and Jean Bart is no different. The issue, of course, is these quad guns are slow as all fuck. Jean Bart is hyperfocused onto the first attack. In an ideal world this results in a strong Vanguard hit that allows a guaranteed second torpedo wave into the backline for a quick cleanup. However, Jean Bart's gun fires in pairs in a very focused pattern. It seems unlikely to hit the vanguard, but I need her level and skill to be higher to be sure.
Jean Bart again got outclassed by Amagi who has a alpha strike that's nearly as fast without needing a preload and thus her power budget all goes to those crazy buffs instead. That pushes you to wanting either a carrier (Hiryuu) for the Aviation buff or another reliable barrage spammer (Eventually being Gross from PR2). Only time will tell since she just came out and no one has her at high enough skill or level to try her on EN yet.
CV
I'm going to be honest. I've never used light carriers after I got Akaga. I never felt the need to invest into support and I used foxes to trivialize 10-4 and everything similar. If there was ever a time Foxes weren't suitable, either because of space constraints or whatnot, I used enterprise or cranes instead.
Akaga -
Kaga and Akagi are probably still the top tier damage for PvP at this moment. What makes Hiryuu stronger is the aforementioned interaction of nerfs + Nagato's aviation buff making the airstrike + final strike attack extremely hard hitting. Also, 15 second invulnerability in pvp may as well be 15 hours. But before Hiryuu took off Akaga/Amagi were flat out uncontested in pvp, epecially as an attacker. This is because of all of the shredding you do in the group and the timing you obtain with Sendai's flare and the two carriers. I always consistently ended a fight against all manners of opponents by the second Amagi barrage or second air strike. Even if torpedo spread was bad or RNG failed pathing, the shredding and ambient damage from the foxes was so high it just didn't matter.
The situation only got dumber when I was informed about Kamikaze damage on Barracudas. Previously I had been using Converge torpedoes, which are ideal for nuking the frontline. But between Sendai and Jintsuu I already nuke the frontline extremely hard in most RNG. Barracudes push damage onto the backline by collision damage and nothing has anywhere near enough AA to put a dent in Akaga's airstrikes. Regardless of frontline, including Cleveland/Belfast/Sandy combos, the airstrikes always murdered them. But spreading the damage out meant that the backline would die faster, which was important when Hiryuu started to take off since you want her air strikes to hit the vanguard and not the backline before her ability is forced out.
Converge torpedoes are still ideal for PvE on this duo, however. The alpha strike is much less valuable and foxes only have the aviation buff to their name, so I've ultimately used them less and less in favor of barrage-based BB's or goofy combos like Hyuuga/Kaga BB. But being able to murder Jintsuu in 10-4 without having to risk having her shave your balls off because Converge tears through her every few seconds was a nice break from the hellish DPS races of 10-3.
I used Enterprise for trash groups instead, since Lucky E with Barracudas was better for generic clearing duty and she only takes 1 slot as opposed to foxes needing 2. But in some cases I had a free slot I wanted a carrier in and ultimately used 1 fox, only to be pleasantly surprised she could still do enough damage to take MVP consistently without the sister buff. Suboptimal, but it worked.
I switched out of using Akaga/Amagi in PvP exclusively because I hadn't needed to reset a fight for months. I wanted to try new stuff and see how effective they could be. That lead to the BB comps which seemed able to annihilate Fox defense teams. I feel like most people who play AL have no idea how accuracy and evasion works, since I've yet to run into a dedicated shredding team and only two Sendais in my entire time playing. Foxes depend on that comp to succeed against sustain comps and previously Washington groups were an utter nightmare if you lacked a lot of shred.
I've never tried Nagato/Akaga, though. The 20% buff sounds nice, but I feel like Amagi is still overall better due to her personal damage being more reliable and being more tanky.
Cranes -
I feel like CH-13 might make cranes relevant finally. Else they're useless in PvP since they scale upwards as opposed to flatly over time (Stacking buff vs shredding) and PvE is even shorter on average. The vanguard buff isn't worth it vs other choices. I hope they one day become viable since their aesthetic is neat but it seems unlikely unless the game adds raid bosses.
Enterprise -
Lucky E will always be extremely silly in both PvE and PvP but I feel like in my current state the reliability of barrage comps on short cooldowns of 381's outscales her. She probably makes for good boss killing using converge though. I tried to use her in PvP but I never quite liked triple CV comps and didn't have a suitable composition to build around her otherwise.
Hiryuu -
Expecting to see an invulnerability piercer at some point in the game's lifespan... because who thought a 15 second invulnerability was a good idea?
Akashi
Anything idiocracy satire services like Twitch or Reddit have to say about repair ships is best reserved for a Monty Python skit. These goofballs judge by untranslated youtube videos and don't seem to actually understand how Akashi works.
Akashi heals by a % of her HP. This means that low max health targets, like Destroyers, gain massive effective health. If it wasn't for Akashi I would have been unable to clear chapter 10 without leveling up a dozen other ships and totally changing my compositions. But since 1 HP is more valuable for a Destroyer thanks to Evasion than it is to Akashi, stacking HP on Akashi means that even a low-level heal skill causes low-health units to jump considerably. I drew out trash fights to fully heal my triple destroyer vanguard which was tedious but effective since 1 torpedo or bullet could strip half their HP.
Vanguard
I group all the various types of Vanguard ships into one collection since their roles are much more confined and homogenous than the backline.
Jintsuu -
Jintsuu is broken. If Amagi doesn't take MvP, she does every time. Even if her torpedoes miss, the tabaco gun makes her PvP damage extremely high. A 180% Torpedo efficiency with a rainbow dildo and rainbow dildo rack means she perforates nearly as hard as Ayanami especially given Ayanami is unlikely to proc her torpedo buff in the first and most important volley. Furthermore, Jintsuu is tanky, unlike many IJN frontline ships, and often outlives Yukikaze in my current composition. That means she can survive some air damage. That said, she is not good as a main tank and gearing her for tanking is a waste. The effective HP she gets from her ability only makes her comparable to other faction CL's, so you're only meeting the average for a stat IJN historically is trash at, not becoming exceptional.
Jintsuu and everything like her need damage. I give her a rainbow dildo and an SG radar. It's the most powerful setup that I've managed thus far. She can easily do 20-30k damage in PvP. Her damage in PvE is a little less significant with this gear since the rainbow torpedo launcher is kind of slow and magnetics deal less damage than general, but she's hyper reliable and makes for a decent tank. I can't see replacing her for an extremely long time.
Jintsuu helps Ayanami deal ridiculous damage, but you need Ayanami's buff to see her really push the envelope further than Jintsuu on average. In many cases, Ayanami would deal the least damage of my Jintsuu/Sendai/Ayanami comps, convincing me to try Yukikaze and others. Preferable another good IJN CL would exist that benefits from Jintsuu and could also run an AP gun, but it doesn't seem to exist yet.
A lot like Amagi, Jintsuu is nice enough to extend her buff to non-weebs. But once she keels over those buffs are gone, so don't rely too heavily on her tanking for your vanguard in PvP or she'll die before she can make the meters. I run her in the middle of the pack so she stays alive long enough to give her buff to the others to the full extent of their power budget.
Sendai -
You use Sendai if you're using Jintsuu. Their buffs stack and they'll push Sendai to doing damage just shy of Jintsuu. Gearing is the same. Since we only have 1 rainbow dildo rack she's using a quad. However, she's using the Beaver badge as opposed to an SG radar at the moment, but keeps the rainbow dildo for extra damage and Taco gun. Sendai will almost always be above 9k-10k damage in PvP which is a breakpoint by which I judged frontline ship damage for viability.
But without Jintsuu you lose most of the reasons why you'd be using Sendai to begin with. You lose the damage, you lose the alpha strike composition, and you lose the fluffy ears.
Sendai's flare is critical for Akaga comps since it stacks with Aurora. The two will shred the evasion of enemy Vanguards and make your bombs massively more effective. You don't want to try to get away with only one shred. Use either Aurora or Sirius if you're running Sendai and Akaga.
Aurora -
While her damage buffs versus Vanguard seems useful on paper, Aurora's defining trait is the wacky fucking shred she gets. She helps Sendai turn your carriers into murder machines. Without the composition I don't see much of a reason to use her. I've heard Sirius is overall more effective than her for carriers, especially since Aurora's shred is vs specific ships (admittedly the only ones that truly matter for evasion shredding). I haven't used her for much PvE, but she has helped BB comps hit some pesky DD bosses.
Her damage was fairly respectable with an AP gun in PvP given their double efficiency (hitting the back target all the time). This made saturated attacks with carriers even more efficient, especially against sustain comps that ran bulges to try to thwart converge torpedoes.
Belfast
The anti-air cloud is overrated. Her damage is consistent though, which is good. She makes a decent PvE support for that reason and for the evasion buff. I used her in PvP with Sendai and Jintsuu until I had Aurora, but Aurora outperformed her in every way and the smoke screen didn't seem to help enemies or help me very much. Akaga's damage and Lucky E's damage are both just way too high for her to handle. That said, it's a buff that could greatly assist a tanking-oriented HMS frontline since it pads their effective stats, which would be ideal for a shelling HMS backline due to their slower speed and tendency to use heavy guns.
Ayanami
To be honest, I don't notice Ayanami approaching much less competing with Jintsuu in PvP damage in hundreds of fights. There's times she gets a good spread and spike hard, but she relies on a buff to get a chunk of her damage and she exchanges a lot for that. Dimishing returns on evasion mean that she's astonishingly squishy against even one or two shreds. Her other buff being on a timer painfully long for a DD in PvP means her success is pure luck.
IJN DD's have absolutely awful gun efficiency, so Ayanami will be relying on the 100mm for barrage procs and hoping the non-guided torpedoes hit things. It works well in PvE even with no ammo, but in PvP it's just more unreliable RNG.
This only got worse after level 100 because DD health just doesn't scale well.
Yuudachi
Reasonable barrage damage on a DD coupled with a statblock that was relevant right up until Ayanami Kai came out, which thus rendered her entirely irrelevant in all parts of the game. She desparately needs a retrofit to be any usable now, especially when compared to other torpedo choices and especially when you account for CL's.
Kawakaze
If her torpedo damage modifier skill had an extra 50% on it, she'd be decent against light ships. As it is, she's basically a buffer for DD's only, and only versus Cruisers, and therefore effectively useless. If she buffed CL's she'd make a decent support for IJN vanguards but she doesn't. Yuudachi is still better than her at this period, and that's pretty bad.
Yukikaze
Yukikaze's damage void makes her randomly extremely tanky. Her damage, even with a rainbow dildo, never seems to even approach the thresholds of most CL's unless she gets a direct hit. You want to use her for her support abilities rather than her damage as a result. She synergizes with Amagi and helps protect the backline while sometimes enduring for a very long time on the front if she procs her skill on torpedos and bombs. But she's still a DD and will go tits-up the moment a BB shell hits her.
Interestingly, her luck skill - her innate crit - is quite high, but it doesn't seem to be as effective as accuracy stacking. Sadly this stat is largely wasted on a DD since you'll never do great shelling damage regardless of the gun you use due to the awful efficiency.
Z23
As a gun-based DD, Z23 offers a lot of utility perfect for auto combat while also having a high evasion and stats that synergize well with Akashi. I started with Javelin so my time with Z23 isn't very high, but she proved her usefulness when playing on a fresh account for video purposes. Guns will always be more reliable than torpedoes for auto and manual allows you to abuse her barrage more effectively. Sadly, her PvP success is very RNG dependent and not motivating to pull away from IJN compositions, especially Yukikaze.
Javelin
I started with her and pulled her out of the ditch for 10-3 and 10-4 trash clearing on a triple DD frontline. Without even having her kai maxed out she made for an effective evasion tank, swapping her position as needed between fights. Now that we have Yukikaze I can't see needing her again, though.
Minneapolis
CA's weren't really that good for auto and useless for PvP. It's not just that their evasion is awful, it's that auto couldn't point their guns at anything for more than a moment and they waste most of their shots. That said, Minneapolis is there for sustain tanking in PvE, not damage. Her kill buff is already accounted into her kit so it's not like she gets pushed to insane levels or anything, but she's top of the pack and great for hard mode when you get forced to use CA's and really need that extra firepower to clear safely.
The PR HE gun made a big difference for CA's, though. Its firing patterns makes auto fire at new targets between shots and it spreads its damage out more consistently, resulting in far better numbers for Minneapolis. I haven't tested it with anyone else, but I've been told Saint Louis is very good with it.
Atago
I got Atago early into the game and she was surprisingly good in low level pvp. Especially since evasion stats tend to be low and her HE will always murder light armor, a couple lucky shots would land hundreds of damage onto ships with very small health pools. I haven't tried her with the PR HE gun which so far seems to change a lot for CA's.
Most disappointing with ships like Atago is the torpedo slot is effectively a waste. If you gear for it you lose out on what makes her any feesible to begin with but if you gear for shelling it's mostly a button you just press for the exstacy of pressing a button.
Takao
Waiting for PR guns to try her again. A good gun with a good proc chance could have some nice PvE implications especially with a boss. But using AP guns is just depressing on CA's when you could be torpedo bombing shit instead.
Witchita
Ditto. She's got a good skill line so she's probably interchangable with Minneapolis. I used her for tanking events when I wanted a flagship to take MVP consistently, so I definitely haven't put her to the test yet.
PvP Guide
PvP is pretty simple before you think about compositions. In a nutshell, a PvP matchup breakdown looks like this.
This guide is true for any Akaga composition with shred and any Amagi/Nagato composition with Jintsuu and Sendai even if you're carrying lowbies.
tl;dr
Are they a group other than Nagato or Amagi with Akaga or Nagato/Amagi/Hiryuu? Free win.
Is their frontline for the above something other than an EVA shred or Sirius to buff carriers? Free win.
Sendai or Aurora without the other? Free win.
DD frontline other than Yukikaze? Free win.
Do they have a CA? Free win.
Do they have Hiryuu? Don't use a backline lowbie unless you have a level advantage or don't want to reset once or twice. You can always match her position with Amagi to try to make sure her invul gets popped early. If it comes down to Hiryuu airstriking and then procing your backline (e.g. both vanguards or yours die) you may as well just reset. The exception is if they're dumb enough to put her in the middle; a lot like Enterprise or Washington in SD groups. Carrying is hard against Hiryuu since she gets stronger the longer the battle goes without her death strike being popped. In such a case you find yourself unable to win it just comes down to Nagato proccing so you can put vanguard on Hiryuu. Yes, it's going to be a lot worse when she has Kai and does more serious damage.
No one has had PR ships up at any reasonable level yet so I don't know much about them. Monarch is supposed to be good, but I don't think she can save non-IJN groups.
Long version -
The battle is largely decided by what happens in the first two seconds of the match. As an Attacker, your torpedoes have only a small chance of hitting the back line, but they'll do far more damage than an opponent of equal ships and gear due to the attacker bonus. In an ideal situation you either fire behind their back line from them moving ahead of you, or they backpedal into the torpedoes. Faceplants usually results in you losing Jintsuu or Sendai which is undesirable even if you kill their frontline.
Magnetics will try to hook targets behind them, which is why many of them will seem to dud out. The problem is the battle is closer to your back line than theirs, so you tend to take more damage than they do - though I've never had a backline ship actually die to torpedoes.
But Amagi and Nagato can both single-handedly carry a bad torpedo spread so the chances of resetting most fights even when carrying a low level backline is pretty insignificant. Nagato is the biggest wild card because she just refuses to proc a lot of the time. This is why the AP gun is nice on Jintsuu and Sendai - it will keep doing consistent damage to the vanguard so torpedoes or stray shells can finish them. The 381 has less killing power than the 410 or 406 but ultimately results in more damage due to the seconds-faster firing rate. Reloaders are a waste, don't bother. If you have a free gear slot use a SG radar since it gives everything you want. The exception is a DD - use health (pearl/toolkit) or a rainbow dildo. Since carriers are dropping out the need for health on destroyers seems less mandatory whereas before you needed it to survive the first airstrike for a second torpedo launch. Since Sendai came out, the ideal comp is full damage, taking evasion where possible, since most people don't use accuracy gear because reddit didn't tell them to. This means you can punish the ignorant EN masses mercilessly and rake in tons of free exp.
Exp in PvP is based on opponent ship levels. You want the highest level opponents possible. This means taking matches you may be suboptimal for and resetting if necessary, since you have limited resources and losing ships has no consequences on happiness. A good MvP on the flagship or similar can take in 3k+ experience and supports will usually see 1k+. That's comparable to level 110-120 bosses. All for a fraction of the time and effort.
"I don't have Amagi or Nagato, and Jintsuu/Sendai are too high for me. What do I do for PvP?"
Get Jintsuu/Sendai ASAP and roll hard for Aurora. Look to set up either Akaga/Enty or Akaga/Hood. Alternatively you can start building an HMS comp since you can still get Monarch and company. Look forward to Sandy Kai and Hiryuu/Souryuu Kai since depending on how hard you farm they are much easier to get than foxes. Akaga and Hood will undoubtedly get retrofits in the distant future. If you have Bismarck, you can try a KMS group with Roon but as defenders they are notoriously frail so I can't speak for their offensive strength vs high-end Hiryuu comps.
"What about PvE?"
Hood, Enty, Belfast/Cleveland/Helena are all good and available choices. Z23 can drop off of nearly everything and is a good focuspoint for autocombat. You'll need the starters anyways for Ayanami who will be your primary nuker. Focus on getting a 410 or 406 and maxing it out since most of the SSR BB's with that gun will clear the entire game up to chapter 10 single-handedly. Work on Akashi asap since she'll be mandatory without the legwork of limited builds to hold your hand in late-game progression. Avoid using CA's for progression until you get the gear for them - namely Beaver badge, SG radars, and guns. Focus on getting Helldivers for your foxes, bunnies or enty.
I have never run support carriers. I ran them on the emu for my videos and even on low level content outleveling it to me they did not seem to outweigh the value of Akashi and standard carriers. But it all depends on the gear you get. Ultimately you can run whatever you like aesthetically because the game values levels and gear over composition in PvE. My groups are all technically suboptimal for PvE but I make them work. Support carriers are great for feeding MvP (and thus EXP/PR EXP) to Vanguards. They don't do much damage but keep them alive so they can survive longer fighters in higher level content without a backline that deals more damage than they do and thus steals their MvP.