World of Warships Final Review: Pan-European Superdestroyer Dalarna

Ladies and Gentlemen, after Patrie and Edgar, it is time for two new superships to make their way into the game. Clausewitz and Dalarna will become available as separate lots in a new Auction starting on the 29th of September at 12:00 UTC and lasting until the 3rd of October at 12:00. Just like the last time, the minimum bid will be at 100 000 000 credits and in total, it will be 500 of each which will be available for all servers COMBINED.

After that, the ships will become fully available with the release of Update 0.11.11. Which should be in early December.

Is Dalarna a proper upgrade over Halland? Is her larger hull packing anything worth all those credits? Here is my opinion.

Historical background

Dalarna is a fictional design meant as an upgrade to the Halland-class destroyer. The ship has a real-world inspiration in the form of the ARC 7 de Agosto and ARC 20 De Julio. These ships were initially Halland-class destroyers ordered for the Colombian Navy but they received major modifications in their design. The most notable alteration was that the 57 mm AA turret was replaced with a third 120 mm twin turret for a total broadside of 6 guns. The ships also had one of the torpedo launchers removed and the remaining one was a quadruple instead of a quintuple launcher.

In World of Warships, Dalarna stays with that idea of having three turrets but on a stretched hull compared to the Halland. She remains smaller than Ragnar though.

Dalarna does not have an alternative fire mode. However, she gets, just like Yamagiri, the capacity to switch between two types of torpedoes during battles:

• Classic Pan-European torpedoes with high speed and low damage
• Slower torpedoes (still 70 knots though) and with shorter range but with higher damage

It takes 5 seconds to switch between each torpedo type.

Ship’s preview

The camouflages

The permanent camouflage of Dalarna comes with the standard permanent superships economic bonuses:

• +200% XP
• +200% Commander XP
• +100% Free XP

The Good and the Bad

The Good

• Amazing firing angles
• High main battery DPM
• Fast turret traverse
• Base torpedoes with amazing speed and range
• Fast torpedo reload
• Tight torpedo spread
• Able to switch to a second type of torpedoes that are slower but deal more damage
• Great anti-air
• Access to a Repair Party consumable

The Bad

• Base torpedoes dealing low damage and have low flooding chances
• Alternative torpedoes with short range
• Fairly large ship for a destroyer
• Low maximum speed
• Meh turning radius
• Anti-air relying on a small number of AA mounts
• No Smoke Generator

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery	Torpedoes
Dalarna	Propulsion: 63 400 HP	SUO Mk 11 Mod. 1	120 mm/50 Model 1950 in a turret	‎Torped M1947 mod 1

General Characteristics and Playstyle

Consumables
Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4
Damage Control Party Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 40 s	Engine Boost Number of charges: 3 Work time: 120 s Cooldown: 120 s Speed bonus: +8%	Repair Party Number of charges: 3 Work time: 14 s Cooldown: 80 s HP regeneration speed: +1.0%/s Casemate damage regeneration: 50%	Defensive AA Fire Number of charges: 3 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 80 s Damage from continuous DPS: +50% Damage from flak explosions: +300%

Dalarna is a bit of an interesting case. On the one hand, if you want to play her like previous ships as a torpedo boat, don’t worry, she will work perfectly. She has the same base torpedoes as Halland but with an even shorter reload time to fully embrace the Swedish torpedo soup approach.
On the other hand, she ends up being quite a solid gunboat platform. While she still doesn’t reach the DPM of Smaland, she isn’t that far from it and at least, she has the alpha damage per salvo as an advantage. Honestly, if you prefer building her like a gunboat, you will get good results as well.

Dalarna really is, in my opinion, a successful design as a supership. She takes the previous ship and presents a logical progression with the only real drawback being the increase in size but well… it’s basically the case all the time when you pass to the next tier. Other than that, everything is better and she doesn’t have to work with some stupid gimmick like the alternative firing mode. Technically, she has the ability to switch between two types of torpedoes but it’s at least a healthy additional mechanic that offers interesting gameplay perspectives.

If you want to see the ship in action, here is a commented replay of one of my games:

Main Armament

3 x 2 120 mm/50 Model 1950 in a turret
Maximum Firing Range	11.150 km
Reloading Time	2.8 s
180 Degree Turn Time	7.2 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	20°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	20°
Sigma	2.00 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	108 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 120 mm HE M1950
Alpha Damage	1 750
Penetration capacity	20 mm
Explosion size	0.4
Fire chance	8 %
Projectile Speed	825 m/s
Air Drag	0.322
Projectile Mass	23.5 kg
Type of Projectile	AP – 120 mm AP M1950
Alpha Damage	2 100
Projectile Speed	825 m/s
Air Drag	0.322
Projectile Mass	23.5 kg
Projectile Krupp	2 400
Projectile Detonator	0.01 s
Detonator threshold	20 mm
Ricochet Angles	45° – 60°

The firepower of Dalarna ends up being a bit of a bittersweet result. The problem is that Wargaming allowed us to play when she still had the 2.0s reload time. Needless to say, it was absolutely disgusting and it’s a bit sad to be back to 2.8s. Anything you would come across was getting melted in seconds. As for her current damage output, it’s honestly alright. It isn’t quite what you can achieve with Smaland but it’s not too far from it (225 000 raw HE DPM for Dalarna against 247 059 for Smaland). As I said before, if you wished to do so, you could go with a full gunboat build and would be performing perfectly fine.

One thing that considerably helps Dalarna in that regard is the firing angles of the ship. May it be at the front or the rear, you get 20° firing angles. This is ideal when fighting enemy destroyers as you are far less likely to end up with guns not staying on target while wiggling around to shoot at the enemy. Also, the additional range helps to balance the larger size of the ship if you want to go gunboating.

Torpedo Armament

In a similar way to Yamagiri, Dalarna is able to alternate between two types of torpedoes. The standard torpedoes are the same as those of Halland with their incredible speed but low damage while the other type has a much shorter range and only 70 knots of speed. However, it also deals nearly 7 000 more damage per hit. On top of that, even though the standard torpedoes don’t improve over those of Halland, you still have better reload time, going down to 90 seconds instead of 100.

This is honestly amazing compared to Yamagiri that isn’t really getting anything from her alternative torpedoes. Here, you have a proper option to adapt your armament other than the main battery to various situations. Generally speaking, the standard torpedoes will be those that you use the most frequently but when you have a cruiser or a battleship in close proximity that you are sure to nail, the 8 km torpedoes will be perfect with their higher damage per hit.
It is even better when you consider the Pan-European tight torpedo spread, further rewarding accurate predictions of enemy ships’ movements.

Anti-air Armament

The anti-air of Dalarna is nothing to ignore at all. While the mid-range aura is only generated by seven mounts, the large DPS, especially with Defensive AA will cheese planes quite easily. The long-range aura will also be an effective skill check with the strong flak barrage that should be the bane of the average Joe.

The Armor

Final Opinion

Was it really that hard? Making a proper, undeniable upgrade to a previous ship and without the need for toxic gimmicks? I am personally delighted with the way Dalarna turned out to be. She is presenting a logical successor of Halland while also opening the gates for a wider range of playstyles, may it be with the stronger firepower or the choice of torpedoes while in battle.

If you are a big fan of Halland and you have… let’s say 200 000 000 credits or more to spend, I would safely say that you shall be pleased by Dalarna.

Recommended Build

For the Dalarna, I recommend the following commander build and upgrades if you want to stick to the torpedo boat playstyle:

Otherwise, you can perfectly go for a gunboat build or even a hybrid of the two. For such builds, I recommend you check this document here so that you have a more in-depth presentation of the options available to you.

This concludes my review of Dalarna. Thank you for reading this article!

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Yuzorah

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