Final Review: Commonwealth Tier X Freemium Destroyer Vampire II

Arriving a bit late to the party with my review but yes, Vampire II is now available in the Research Bureau for 55 000 Research Points.

Normally, if you checked the channels of people knowing what they are talking about, you understood that the Vampire is disgustingly good. If I had to compare her to an “actual” vampire, I could almost say Alucard from Hellsing Ultimate (the most recent adaptation of the. That’s how busted she is.

P.S.: I heavily recommend you to watch that anime, it’s pure amazeballs. It even manages to have a decent English dub. Also, I don’t want to hear anything about Dio from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure).

Historical background

HMAS Vampire was the third Daring-class destroyer serving in the Royal Australian Navy. She was built in Australia, laid down in July 1953, launched in October 1956 and commissioned in June 1959.

The ship had a fairly active career, being regularly deployed to South East Asia.

She was attached to the Far East Strategic Reserve on five occasions, including during the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, and escorted the troop transport HMAS Sydney on six of the latter’s twenty-five transport voyages to Vietnam. In 1977, the destroyer was assigned to escort the Royal Yacht Britannia during Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s visit to Australia. In 1980, Vampire was reclassified as a training ship.

She remained in service until she was decommissioned in 1986 and presented to the Australian National Maritime Museum for preservation as a museum ship; the largest museum-owned object on display in Australia. You can still visit the Vampire today, in Sydney.

If you want to learn more about the Daring-class, here is a video from Drachinifel about it:

In World of Warships, we are getting Vampire as initially built. Thus, this means she’ll have her quintuple torpedo tubes, as well as a Limbo anti-submarine mortar, the successor to the Squid that was initially visible in-game on Daring and Kléber (don’t ask me why they removed them).

The Good and the Bad

The Good

• Amazing DPM
• High fire chances for such low caliber guns
• Improved AP ricochet angles
• Improved AP arming threshold
• Short AP fuse timer
• Turrets able to turn at 360 degree
• Combination of Crawling Smoke and 5 km Hydroacoustic Search
• High torpedo damage
• Relatively fast torpedo reload time
• 12 km torpedo range
• Single firing torpedoes
• Tight turning radius
• Improved acceleration
• Good concealment (can go down to 5.8 km spotting range by sea)

The Bad

• Poor ballistics
• Only 5 torpedoes
• Terrible torpedo firing angles
• Low speed
• No Repair Party compared to Daring
• Fairly long downtime between the availability of smokes
• The usual vulnerability to carriers due to weak anti-air
• The ship stands high on the water, making it an easy target to hit

The camouflage

The permanent camouflage of the Vampire II provides the classic bonuses for tier X ships:

• -3% to surface detectability range
• +4% to maximum dispersion of shells fired by the enemy at your ship
• -50% to the cost of ship’s post-battle service
• +20% credits earned in the battle.
• +100% to experience earned in the battle

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery	Torpedoes
Vampire II	Propulsion: 54 000 hp	Mk X mod. 1	113 mm/45 RP 41 Mk VI	533 mm Mk IXM

General Characteristics and playstyle

Consumables
Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4
Damage Control Party Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 40 s	Crawling Smoke Generator Number of charges: 3 Work time: 90 s Cooldown: 120 s Smoke radius: 450 m Smoke duration: 10 s	Hydroacoustic Search Number of charges: 3 Work time: 120 s Cooldown: 120 s Torpedo spotting range: 3.5 km Ship spotting range: 5.0 km	Engine Boost Number of charges: 3 Work time: 120 s Cooldown: 120 s Bonus: +8% speed

The Vampire II is following the same kind of design as the Haida at tier VII but boosted on steroids. She gets the amazing combination of Crawling Smoke and Hydroacoustic Search which are exceptionally effective to secure capture points, catch enemy destroyers pants down or simply, in the case of the Crawling Smoke, to freely melt stuff while not being left in the dust if they run away. Of course, radars and German Hydroacoustic Search will still represent a threat that needs to be considered.

The Crawling Smoke, as great of a tool as it is, will still require a clever usage of the different charges, more so than with other smoke types as the downtime between each smoke will be much higher.

Another thing to keep in mind with the Vampire II is that, compared to Daring, she doesn’t have a Repair Party. Any loss of HP is permanent and, as such, while your firepower is amazing, you need to mind your engagements while not using the smoke. With her lack of speed that greatly removes her capacity to disengage quickly and the fact that she is a very tall ship, she somewhat tends to take a lot of damage, at least in my experience.

Main Battery

3 x 2 113 mm/45 RP 41 Mk VI All Turrets can turn at 360°
Maximum Firing Range	12.780 km
Reloading Time	2.5 s
180 Degree Turn Time	7.2 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	27°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	35°
Sigma	2.00 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	111 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 113 mm HE 5crh
Alpha Damage	1 700 HP
Damage	470 HP
Penetration capacity	19 mm
Explosion size	0.38
Fire chance	8 %
Projectile Speed	746 m/s
Air Drag	0.329
Projectile Mass	24.95 kg
Type of Projectile	AP – 113 mm SAP 55 lb
Alpha Damage	2 100 HP
Projectile Speed	746 m/s
Air Drag	0.33
Projectile Mass	25 kg
Projectile Krupp	1 600
Projectile Detonator	0.01 s
Detonator threshold	19 mm
Ricochet Angles	60° – 67.5°

With a reload that can go down to 2.1s (without counting Adrenaline Rush), the Vampire II is an angry DPM machine that will cheese whatever gets in her gun range. With the combined fast reload and high fire chances, she is especially effective at starting fires.

Other than her great HE, when dealing with things like the German Spähkreuzers, Khabarovsk, etc. against which your HE would shatter, you can always rely on the AP shells. They are the exact same as those of the Daring which means that they have improved penetration angles, shorter fuse time and smaller arming threshold making it easier for them to get penetrations on target.

The fact that her turrets can turn at 360 degrees on top of already having a high rotation speed offers a lot of freedom of movement when fighting while actively maneuvering.

If I had to really criticize the main battery of the Vampire II for something, it would be for the ballistics. With the combined low initial velocity and high air drag, it can be a bit of a pain to land these shells at long range or on French destroyers and the likes.

Torpedo Armament

Her torpedo launcher is a really nice side dish. You only have 5 of these but they reload relatively fast, they hit like trucks, they have high flooding chances and, the cherry on top, you can launch them individually if needed. The best part with them is when you crawl from behind an island on a bow tanking battleship and you happily drop torps on them at close range without risking taking damage yourself.

Anti-air Armament

Well… don’t rely much on her anti-air. She will deal with fighters and somewhat with attack aircraft but the DPS is just nowhere near high enough for anything else.

The Armor

The Vampire II presents the traditional armor protection of a tier X destroyer.

Final Opinion

Should you spend 55 000 Research Point on Vampire II? HELL YES!

With her amazing firepower and the Crawling Smoke/Hydroacoustic Search combination as well as her great concealment, the Vampire II is basically the best ship available in the Bureau.

Recommended build

During the testing of the Vampire II, I was running the following build:

• Preventive Maintenance
• Last Stand
• Survivability Expert
• Concealment Expert
• Consumable Enhancements
• Adrenaline Rush
• Main Battery and AA Specialist
• Pyrotechnician
• Liquidator

Alternatively, you can swap Main Battery and AA Specialist and Liquidator for Radio Location.

Fearless brawler is not recommended as most of the time, you will be firing from your smoke.

This concludes my review of the Vampire II. Thank you for reading this article!

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Have a good one and see you soon!

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Yuzorah

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