Friesland: A Tier 7 WoWs Legends Review

HNLMS Friesland (D812)

• Extreme DPM
• Excellent AA
• 360*^(o)* Turrets
• Cap Monster

Rating Matrix

• [BAD, WEAK, AVERAGE, GOOD, GREAT]
• {LOW, MODERATE, HIGH, EXTREME}

Scope:

Finally, Destroyer Captains can rejoice, a Tier 7 Premium Destroyer that's actually worth crowing about.

Friesland represents one half of the Element of Choice Campaign in v 3.7. Friesland is the first tier 7 ship available for the Pan-European National Tree, joining Orkan, Blyskawica as the only available ships so far. Conceptually, Friesland sort of resembles a more gunnery specific mindset than her European counterparts. Captains will certainly feel the absence of torpedoes, though will be enchanted by her gunnery. Friesland is similar to Orkan, in the sense that her playstyle is quite polarized while she is not very forgiving and is somewhat well gated by a skill wall. Friesland is a GREAT ship, with a HIGH skill floor and an EXTREME skill ceiling.

History:

Named after a northern province in the Netherlands and class namesake, Friesland was the fourteenth ship of the name. Laid down in 1951 at Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij [NDSM] in Amsterdam, and commissioned in 1956. The ship served until 1979 when it was broken up for scrap. The design featured use of a pair of twin dual-purpose Bofors 120mm Naval Guns one fore and one aft. The gun first entered service in 1956 and is still in service today. Friesland was the only ship of her class that was not sold to the Peruvian Navy.

Pros:

• Excellent DPM
• Crazy Gun Reload
• Excellent AA
• Great Escort
• Team Player
• Cap Controller

Cons:

• No Torpedoes
• Average Hydro
• Mediocre HP
• No Heal
• No Defensive AA
• Poor HE pen

The Basics:

Friesland represents the one of the most modernized and contemporary destroyer builds so far. Though she is torpedo-less, and this takes a massive step away from the norm of her class, Friesland can be one of the most downright scary ships in the game, period. Tricky to use is an understatement, this ship requires hefty knowledge of positioning, tactics, ballistics, penetration and armor values, and excellent situational awareness. In short, Friesland looks like she has a significant amount of shortcomings, but in practice this is an excellent ship bound brilliantly by the skill of the captain. This is not per say an easy ship to use, and is not particularly forgiving; though may be one of the more influential and rewarding ships to play.

Offense:

• GOOD

Friesland is all offense. In a sense, Friesland relies so heavily on her exceptional gunnery that she is almost a one trick pony. Not unlike the likes of polarized Yudachi or Kagero, on the opposing side of the spectrum where the likes of Yudachi or Kagero represent dramatic torpedo-focused ships, and Friesland focuses so heavily on her gunnery. Friesland sings a lullaby of consistency and reliability with her main battery. Unlocking the massive DPM advantages that Friesland presents is quite a task, and one with a swing so significant she can control the flow of battle. Base with a 1.8s reload which can be buffed down to 1.4s, Friesland pushes north of 300k DPM, AP or HE.

Friesland trades raw alpha potential for potential damage per minute.

The key to this is knowing positioning as well as what and where to penetrate, how, and in forcing odd exchanges. What I mean by this, Friesland is a glass cannon that needs uneven engagements to let her vicious DPM chew down her targets HP. However, the caveat to this playstyle is that Friesland herself can ill afford to take such hits and will fall prey rather quickly when detected and out of position. I did mention that this ship is not forgiving to play, right? That being said let’s take a look at the HE DPM chart.

There's an old rule: When the fight becomes fair, it's now time to disengage.

HE DPM of Tier 7 Destroyers

• Friesland: 300,000
• Fletcher: 219,230
• Akizuki: 192,000
• Lo Yang: 162,857
• Lightning: 153,000
• Tashkent: 144,572
• ZF-6: 140,322
• Z-23 12.8cm: 116,129
• Z-23 15cm: 113,793
• Udaloi: 112,131
• Le Fantasque: 104,500
• Yudachi: 97,610
• Paolo Emilio: 87,476
• Kagero: 86,400

This looks great, right?

HE Base Penetration

• ZF-6: 32
• Z-23 15cm: 25
• Le Fantasque: 23
• Paolo Emilio: 22
• Yudachi: 21
• Fletcher: 21
• Z-23 12.8cm: 21
• Tashkent: 21
• Udaloi: 21
• Lo Yang: 21
• Kagero: 21
• Akizuki: 20
• Lightning: 20
• Friesland: 20

This is the caveat. Friesland has a pale 19mm of HE punch through power which will only get you into the most armor of most destroyers and most superstructures but little else. I won’t say that this is particularly hampering, however, as Friesland also sports an 8% fire chance, and with her absurd DPM, becomes one of the more promiscuous fire starters in the game. With a 1.4s reload Friesland has the ability to put up over 170 shells in less than a minute. Utilizing proper positioning and angle of engagements gives Friesland the opportunity to bury her opponents under her DPM. With AP, captains, you can reliably put up 2k-4k salvos every second and a half.

For those questioning why 19-20mm of pen, Legends does not have a greater than pen rule, meaning 20mm will shatter but 19 will pen and these numbers are not rounded up.

Furthermore, Captains, you will be able to AP punch into destroyers in your own tier depending on the range, and armor decimating their HP in mere seconds. Friesland sports the typical AP characteristics of ships in her class with 120-130mm main battery (there are exceptions!!). Friesland’s ballistics closely mimic those found on relatives Lightning, Orkan and Jervis, with slightly better initial muzzle velocity. This makes this situationally trickier than the other ships, but is still possible. Originally in testing I’d suspected that there was some funky fuse timer changes here, only to confirm it not so and be proven wrong. That’s how effective Friesland can be. Friesland's AP shells have a knack for finding their way into full penetrations whether these be from penetrating accessory or deck armor. In this instance, Friesland seems to like to dig into thicker armor then her other 120mm compatriots; which is more than welcome to aid in dealing with larger obstacles. The trick is simple, aim for accessory plating; and if you can, sink your teeth into some juicy freeboard.

Mastery of this ship relies heavily on the concept of unlocking her damage potential, which rests very heartily among the CA/CL's of the tier rather than in her own class. Limited by poor penetration values and less than 20k HP, Friesland is a ship that lives on the cusp of being able to land hits without taking them. For captains who tend to be more efficient with their gunnery than torpedoes, Friesland is generally a winner if the captain is comfortable forgoing torpedo armament altogether. Consider, actual practical in game damage values see Friesland shelling out near 60k AP DPM in the 30s that most Battleships reload.

Defense:

• GREAT

Lets start with the simple facts and then work our way up to the argument of why this ship has a great defensive rating; and how to utilize this. Lets start with the ever present base-HP chart.

Base HP of Tier 7 Destroyers

• Paolo Emilio: 24,400
• Tashkent: 21,500
• Akizuki: 20,400
• Z-23: 19,500
• Udaloi: 18,800
• Le Fantasque: 18,500
• Friesland: 17,600
• ZF-6: 17,000
• Fletcher: 16,700
• Lo Yang: 16,100
• Lightning: 15,900
• Kagero: 15,100
• Yudachi: 13,200

This on its own would lend most captains to assume superficially that in terms of defense Friesland is mediocre at best with an average base HP pool. The truth is far more deceiving in the sense that Friesland is well equipped to deal with most issues that plague earlier destroyers. Its worth noting, Swirski comes with a base inspiration slot that includes concealment, meaning, Captains will have an open inspirational slot to enhance the ship and still hold onto that effervescent concealment meta. Generally, I use Will Sims here, but we'll touch up more on that later. This will add around another 2.5k HP and pushes Friesland up to 19-20k+ base HP. That's quite a lovely bump from average to good.

Like the vast majority of most destroyers, Friesland is covered in 19mm of plating and there is very generally nothing out of the ordinary worth pointing out here.

Friesland has access to both smoke generator and hydro-acoustic search in separate slots. This allows for near disengagement at will. In terms of limiting damage, this is strong. Not many ships have access to both of these consumables, in fact, just Z-23, Lightning, Lo Yang and now Friesland are the ships of the class that do. Half of those ships are new premiums in this campaign.

Finally, as you'll observe shortly, Friesland sports the best AA-Aura in her class and tier spread. Defensively, this is a very nice double whammy: it serves to protect Friesland from both CV spotting and CV strikes.

All in all, Friesland is much better equipped than most destroyers to deal with threats and is generally only considered weak to longer range radar ships. For these reasons, she leans into a GREAT rating. It's quite close, and if Friesland sported either separately slotted Defensive AA or Repair Party would easily nudge this ship into being one of the best defensive destroyers in the game, both in terms of damage mitigation and defensive playstyles such as area control and area denial.

Anti-Air Suite:

• BEST

Just take a quick look below.

AA DPS of Tier 7 Destroyers

• Friesland: 286
• Akizuki: 218
• Fletcher: 135
• ZF-6: 110
• Udaloi: 102
• Tashkent: 86
• Lo Yang: 80
• Lightning: 79
• Z-23: 73
• Le Fantasque: 68
• Paolo Emilio: 63
• Kagero: 36
• Yudachi: 11

Those are stock numbers. Akizuki tends to run more of an AA build, like Friesland, mostly for survival. Both of these ships are fairly comparable, in the sense that they are "AA-Focused" Destroyers with silly HE DPM due to small caliber HE spam. Both of these ships tend to run more AA focused builds than the other destroyers for differing reasons. Akizuki is much more vulnerable to airborne strikes in the sense that Aki has a lower AA rating, despite better HP and comparable handling, is a larger ship (like a full third of her length longer!!) and thus an easier target. Aki builds into AA for survival, and is generally successful. Friesland builds into AA and becomes a aircraft exclusion zone.

That's right, a destroyer with the coveted aircraft carrier immunity gene. Even minor flexing into this category puts enough pace on Friesland to easily run away from her same tier counterparts.

Maneuverability:

• AVERAGE

This is somewhat of a tough category for Friesland compared to her competition. Friesland is neither so fast nor agile that she tops any of the sub-categories here, and she tends to ride right in the middle of the herd. Average is somewhat of a gift, though she has access to a very average speed boost.

Effective Base Top Speed

• Tashkent: 46.8
• Le Fantasque: 46.6
• Paolo Emilio: 44.8
• Lo Yang: 39.9
• Lightning: 39.3
• Yudachi: 38.2
• Z-23: 38.1
• Udaloi: 38
• Fletcher: 37.6
• Kagero: 37.1
• Friesland: 37.1
• ZF-6: 36
• Akizuki: 35.3

The funny thing to note is that lately I've been toying with speed/concealment builds. There are some noteworthy builds in here that can make some of those sleeper destroyers lower in the pack pop much higher and faster than you might suspect. Udaloi/Gurin can hit 42 knots and Z-23/Blue can push 41.5. Unfortunately, despite having the skills available, Friesland needs her concealment more, as her 5.3 just edges her into a fighting posture in the current meta. We'll save the rest of this argument for the concealment section.

Rudder Shift of Tier 7 Destroyers

• Paolo Emilio: 5.8
• Tashkent: 5.1
• Z-23: 4.9
• Udaloi: 4.8
• Friesland: 4.5
• Le Fantasque: 4.3
• ZF-6: 4.3
• Akizuki: 3.7
• Fletcher: 3.3
• Lightning: 3
• Kagero: 2.7
• Lo Yang: 2.7
• Yudachi: 2.6

Some more of the just slightly below average, but still pretty average. In terms of rudder shift, this is negligible. In terms of turn radius, Friesland is leaning above average.

Turn Radius of Tier 7 Destroyers

• Paolo Emilio: 810
• Akizuki: 730
• Tashkent: 730
• Le Fantasque: 690
• Z-23: 680
• ZF-6: 670
• Kagero: 640
• Friesland: 620
• Udaloi: 610
• Lightning: 590
• Yudachi: 570
• Lo Yang: 570
• Fletcher: 560

All in all, its hard to call Friesland's maneuverability anything beyond or below average, with some traits landing dead in the middle, and others resting just above or below average.

Concealment:

• WEAK

This is an area where Friesland is just going to struggle. 5.3 isn't strong compared to the likes of some of the other destroyers, particularly those few gunboats with both speed boost skill perks and very punchy guns. Small, shifty torpedo focused destroyers will generally laugh at your concealment, but will also be very quick to disengage and run away from you. Most destroyers will very quickly fall prey to your DPM/HP mismatch.

Max Concealment of Tier 7 Destroyers

• Tashkent: 5.6
• Udaloi: 5.6
• Paolo Emilio: 5.5
• La Fanta Cool: 5.5
• Friesland: 5.3
• Fletcher: 5.2
• La Fanta Normal: 5.1
• Lo Yang: 5.1
• Lightning: 5.1
• Z-23: 5.0
• ZF-6: 5.0
• Akizuki: 5.0
• Kagero: 4.8
• Yudachi: 4.8
• Le Fanta Speed: 4.4

Consumables:

• GOOD

GOOD is somewhat deserved here because Friesland has access to the full set of tools unlike most, and shy of a Heal, Radar or Def AA being slotted separately, there's not much to improve on here. Radar would be too strong, a heal too forgiving...but maybe Defensive AA might be a spicy addition.

Damage Control Party:

• With a duration of 5s and a reload of 38s and unlimited charges, this is very much the standard damage control party.

Hydro-acoustic Search:

• Friesland's Hydro-acoustic Search is technically average, near mirroring the one found on Z-23. With a duration of 96s, spotting torpedoes at 3.1km and ships at 4.4km its smack dab in between the short range of the RN, yet shorter range than Lo Yang and the KMS CL/CAs. Comes stock with 2 charges and a reload of 3min.

Speed Boost:

• This speed boost, like so many others in the tier is the same cookie-cutter 8% found on the vast majority. With a duration of 120s, the only notable difference is the cooldown of just 144s, nearly 40s faster than the rest of the pack.

Smoke Generator:

• With a smoke deploy time of 22s and a dissipation time of 99s, Friesland's Smoke Generator is better than most, shy of the coveted 2 full min of USN Smoke. Comes stock with 2 charges and a very standard 240s reload.

Commanders:

• Jerzy Swirski

The only option for any of the Pan-European Tree, Swirski is an ideal commander for destroyers with his skill set and is flexible enough to accomodate drastically differing playstyles such as Orkan, Blyskawica and now Friesland. Unfortunately, each ship requires a different kit and build from him. Fortunately, skills are easy to change.

1. Inspiration of Hide n Seek improves concealment. This is one of the two pretty much necessary inspirations needed to be a destroyer these days. Having one of these slots open frees it up to take on another inspiration; generally, I use Will Sims HP buff for destroyers. The other slot is occupied by Bey, and his destroyer concealment perk.
2. This row is full of skills that pretty much don't help Friesland with the exception of No Fly Zone. Contact is Imminent is literally useless on a ship without torpedoes. In a match without CVs, Observant Rage is a nice buff to your DPM and spotting torpedoes without sonar, but nerfs your handling. No Fly Zone is arguably the best bet, because it will help Friesland rid the world of flying pests.
3. Look At Me Now is the near obvious choice. Mortar is a questionable skill in the current meta and nerfs your already questionable concealment. Is it worth the Alpha? Maybe, but Friesland already has the best DPM, so its not much of an argument either way.
4. Twist N Track or Perceptive are the crucial skill choices here. Either of these skills will allow you to weed out those ships that are out-spotting you.
5. Smoke on the Water is the better of two choices, theoretically. However this is largely up to personal preference. Friesland loves to sit in her smoke more than she loves open-water gunboating.
6. Legendary Skill Unstoppable helps keep the ship sailing and prevents the often fatal Sitting Duck Syndrome.

Upgrades:

• Friesland is a premium ship without any researchable upgrades.

Modifications:

Slot 1:

• AA Guns Mod 1: You could theoretically take Aiming Systems Mod 1, but AA Guns Mod actually works in your favor here, considering Friesland has an excellent AA Aura. adding 20% to that really forces most CV's to consider flying into strike you.

Slot 2:

• Propulsion Mod 2. This is another choice that is relatively up to the individual, I chose Propulsion Mod. Steering Gears Mod isn't wrong, but Friesland falls heavily into that 0-20 speed being more important than how fast you can turn.

Slot 3:

• Concealment Mod 1. A very straightforward argument that will generally be found on most destroyers. Even with a max of 5.3, Friesland can be competitive.

Slot 4:

• Main Battery Reload Mod. DPM is the argument here, by improving either Friesland's main battery DPM or AA. Increasing Friesland's range is somewhat questionable as your AP/HE pen is quite atrocious, and at longer ranges your shell velocity becomes quite slow. This mod will help drop Friesland's reload from 1.8->1.4s. Adding the AA Mod in this slot will push your AA DPS over the 400 mark, which is good, for any class let alone a destroyer.

Research:

• Friesland is brand spanking new. So new, she's not involved in any Research Projects yet...though I would imagine that she will at some point be in one.

Summary:

• GREAT

I know this, inevitably I will be asked which ship I would have chosen?

Probably Friesland. Id given this situation a fair bit of thought. There is an inarguable advantage this ship possesses in her area control dominance, and was often seen as quite competitive in her niche. The other half of this argument (and why I decided to get both) is that Lo Yang is one of the most familiar and represents a fantastic benchmark in a number of competitive and non-competitive areas. This made this decision quite a bit more difficult. Friesland has found her way into a couple of my ports, where as Lo Yang is in all of them.

Unfortunately, that decision has everything to do with familiarity instead of statistical value.

Onto the statistical summary....

Friesland is great. Much like how preceding Orkan is good, only Friesland is more forgiving. She may be in a higher tier and follows a different niche, sort of, Friesland relishes in the opportunity to lay down alot of shells albeit where Friesland has the opportunity to disengage and control more of her encounters. A Friesland with a well studied captain is indeed one of the scariest destroyers in the game, even torpedo-less. The simple math here points to gunnery being far more effective than torpedoes in the guise that once you miss a torpedo salvo you have a long reload to compensate for that high alpha potential. Friesland more than doubles the potential per minute of any destroyer, shy of Akizuki or Fletcher. For a ship that has the best DPM in class and tier, it would be almost tragically difficult to miss excellent ratings.

In a class and tier that is plagued by hybridized, polarized and some straight out funky niches, Friesland drills home a strategy that is built around consistency or utility. How can this ship be versatile without torpedoes? Because, and quite simply, Friesland is more than capable of dishing out lots of damage to any target, and has tools better then many which allow her to defend herself. For this, she easily pushes up from good to great.