At 7:15 I had a weird huh moment where you were talking about Colbert's legmod torp build? It took me a second to realize you were saying Kleber. I was tricked by the in-game Colbert you were facing 🤣
Zao legandary module used to have a critical buff that was removed for no good reason ... the rudder speed boost. You were able to dodge while kiting at big range in open waters. It was a very skill intensive gameplay. Its a joke it was removed ... but deck armor remained so thin that even Ibuki gets better armor. Never understood why so much hate from WG for a ship that it was never extremely OP. It was good, but required skills to use it.
yeah, I didn't understand why the removed that feature completely, while keeping some other "must have" LMs untouched or just slightly changed. Esp. given the fact that WG then later tries to rebalance Zao by giving her HP back they removed ages ago, despite the "meta issue" for zao being too many BBs nowadays with 30mm pen, making any additional HP way less valuable than a better rudder shift.
It was removed because it was overpowered compared to other options. Given the state of this ship, a good idea is to baseline that rudder shift buff. Alternative buff is to buff deck armor to 32mm and makes it a flavor of the whole line. Myoko already has 32mm at T7.
Incredible how times change. I remember that when I started playing this game 6 years ago, people said that the Zao was one of the best and most feared cruisers in the game. Now I see hear people call it ¨sad¨ or like you called it PQ, ¨an OK tier 10.¨ WG should ready show this ship some love and buff it a bit.
You're supposed to treat it like a DD. Dodge incoming, throw fire. You're already getting DD level dispersion even without the legendary mod. Build into range and camp islands. I'm not a very good World of Warships player, but I do like my Zao
@@matthewpowell9743 you're absolutely correct. I just keep forgetting to go dark lol. 9.9 concealment it's amazing when done right. I don't do right very much LOL.
I’ve found that the current strongest build for Zao utilizes the UU and forgoes the slot 3 accuracy mod and concealment for the turret traverse mod, and acceleration plus the second rudder mod. Combine this with the spotter plane captain skill and you now have a Zao that can actively maneuver and keep its guns on target without sacrificing any of its usual accuracy. It’s an absolute game changer compared to normal Zao.
@@EvoraGT430 outnumbered is 4 points, so i think it's too big of an investment. my captain skills are almost similar to PQ's except that I use PT over DE.
Tested that and I would still go with Steering Gears Mod 1 in Slot 4 and Concealment System Mod in Slot 5. 6.1s rudder shift time already allows you to dodge pretty easily and you really need that 9.9km detectability (instead of 11.1) to disengage more easily...
I have a feeling that we'll be seeing more T10 ships that lag behind the competition being given super powerful Legendary mods bring them up to the standard of other T10's, instead of just buffing them like any other company would.
@@cookiecraze1310 think of it this way. Wargamming can easily add a legmod without messing with the code lol. Every time they try buffing things it creates errors in the game. Like aiming bugs and f key bugs. Also leg mods bring in more money. U no people speed up the grind.
I love supporting DDs with the ZAO, stay 6-7km behind your friendly DD and when he spots the enemy DD start turning to run and let it rip... I have had salvo's with 10 HE shells landing on the DD with the Legendary.....
I've deleted a radar Mino doing exactly this trick. Followed my Gearing up to the cap, he smoked up, and a wild Mino appears to try and kill him. I had time to switch to AP just as he went full broadside, and bingo, instant dev strike.
The one thing that Zao has going for as a Heavy Cruiser is its trollish armor. I dont know how many times I myself have managed to bounce Yamato AP off the ship but Yammy never gets a Cit from me. The legendary module does give you slightly better range and a ton of dispersion but I would forgo the legendary upgrade and go with range mod. The Zao already has great dispersion without the mod and having more range to have maximum standoff distance is really nice. The Zao is my most played ship and most played cruiser. It was my first tier X unlock for sure over the DM. long before Henry IV showed up in the game, The Zao was the true Firestarter in the game. Now that goes to the Thunderer (63% fire chance) followed by the Henry IV. The Zao has been power crept and she is due for some rework. however, Zao will always be the underdog and is still capable of sending ships to the bottom of the seas
I miss when zao had the rudder shift on it though, it was great when it had that, you could dodge incoming stuff and protect your citadel much more easily, really wish they'd bring that back and the desmoines acceleration buff. Wish they'd buff her armour up to 35mm similar to Atago too...
i used to download NFS 1 cars from a forum and put them on floppy disks and sell them at school. just under 1.5mb fit on a floppy disk and everyone could read them for installing their new cars. edit - 1.5 mb took about half hour to download lol. I used to sell them for like 3 cans of pepsi from the vending machine or $5 or whatever they were able to give. I felt like such a hustler.
which mod is that that gives you the green circle to show how much speed the enemy ship is going at? also was there an option to reduce the ui scale? how come the buttoms on the bottom and the info panels on the bottom left look so small.
i have been working on a mission to get 3 witherers for 3 months now and only have one. so many players use their DC on the first fire, then i can't get a relight them with the next 200 shells. if they do get relit, my team smacks them and kills them before i get any real fire damage going. i have games with 7-10 fires and less than 10k damage from them.
Now that a torp focused French DD line is in the game, should the Kleber UU be reworked into something that's actually logical? Maybe something along the lines of better shell velocity or pen in exchange for concealment?
I like Leg Zao. As per CLR the only one I was interested in, (and got) is Kleber CLR. Why? Because I usually play Kleber Leg, so now I have two and do not have to swap the Leg mode (expensive).
Yes my baby Zao gets the spotlight With leg mod and some dd spotting, she can surprise nuke every dd early on However, tier10 these days are filled with aircraft, hybrid and submarine make ninja-esque stealth cruiser almost useless
@FrostBeam009 utility cruisers are great tho. Even with overmatch. That's what islands are for lol. Like des Moines. What a friggin powerhouse of damage and battle impact. Altho if cv in the game I really really struggle to do much at all with it because I can't use the islands anymore lol. I cannot open water des Moines or Wooster at all fr. It's crazy how good pq is at it. If I try, I'm just instantly nuked normally ha. I have to be fighting some noobs to have luck.
what a road to glory: open water cruiser with stealth build after release, with Japanese ballistics, with powerful HE is playing in islands due to poor game balance for years after release.
The leg mod was good before WG nerf the boost of rudder balance speed. Now it s just ok. Zao is one of my favorite cruiser, and I dont understand why WG hate it like that.
Late comment but Zao is a ship from a different time, it's a BBs favorite target, and so, so many BBs overmatch 30mm now. You are constantly spotted by all sorts of planes from carriers and the plethora of hybrids that are now in the game, and its AA isnt the best. It's a beast of a cruiser in certain situations but these days, it feels very hard to play. Which is sad cause it is one of my favorite cruisers :(
Honestly I don't see the point of the legend mod on Zao. Now I've not used it but even just watching this game play it doesn't look all that much more tight compared to the standard DD level dispersion, and you lose out on the 12% reload boost, letting you throw more shit at the wall. So even though it's a few metres less accurate, you are firing 12% faster. The main benefit I could see for the legend mod would be freeing up slot 3 for the torpedo upgrade, and running a more torp kiting focused build that would never work because of the torpedo angles. That's just me though, if people like it, great! I want people to enjoy the things I don't see a point in.
@@Stephen__White builds are personal preference. I think the leg mod is powerful but if it doesn’t fit ur build style then it wouldn’t benefit you. Some people have ridiculous builds that we would never try but it works for them lol
It's not remotely "one of the best." It's a side grade. If you are in a div with a destroyer it's a great legmod as you can push in and hit an extra shell or two on a DD. But in reality you give up 1.5km range for the ability to hit a shell maybe two extra per salvo. Only on small ships. It was definitely a great legmod back when it had extra rudder shift. Now it's pretty much just ok.
swapping concealment mod 1 for steering gears mod 2 gives zao 4.4 seconds rudder shift while still having 11km concealment. you will have DD-level handling at the cost of only 1km of concealment.
@@hagostaeldmann840m turning circle is highly workable. You just don't know how to use the Zao. Although granted I have 14 thousand games with open water cruisers.
I mean Zao is quite a fine ship. But it suffers cause WG delievers BaBies the most overpowered monsters with overmatch, super fast speed, great conceal, amazing accuracy etc. Also Nevski makes Zao irrelevant.
For some stupid reason, Zao is a heavy cruiser that's armored like a light cruiser (even worse than some predecessors in the TT), but handles like a superheavy cruiser. And those terrible turret angles that aren't caused by anything other than WG's "because I say so"... It used to be a good counterpart to the other T10 cruiser that was Des Moines, but nowadays she's just too mediocre at everything...
If by "one of the best legendary upgrades in the game," you mean "a legendary upgrade that slightly improves the ship, sometimes, and is on a ship that is borderline not worth playing to begin with," yes...I fully agree.
I have over 700 games on Zao. I got the legendary upgrade with the old quest system. Still managed to get 56% WR on randoms. Is extremelly useful and rewarding.
I play my dm in randoms with reload mod. Talk about lacking range lol. I Def have it built and play for its ideal scenarios. Def don't have a good general build or meta build. I mean with my dm skills I can really only play it well in ideal scenarios anyways. Like I do great in non cv games that aren't super passive. Like really good quite often. Drop me in a cv game where I have to play passive from range and whatnot and I am terrible almost every time. I really have to get lucky and be by good teammates or the cv just not come near me. Basically, no cv game I'm in top 5, cv game I'm in bottom 5 lol
My open water skills in des Moines are basically non existent. I know its far from an open water cruiser but skilled people can do it if they have to. I am not one of those.
nope, in my opinion the zao legmod fell off hard. I much more prefer range mod over the leg mod on zao as she just is not manouvrable enough to reliably dodge shells while using all your guns. I would have much prefered they removed the acc buff and kept the range and manouvrability.
Sorry Zao is still crap in the current game. She is pre 2020. I used to play her all the time. Now she is a death trap. No one plays her. That should say something. They need to buff her health and give it decent turret traverse. I could care less about turret angles and torp angles. She has to have some disadvantages after all.
Any Zao is a liability to the team it is with. That ship that I like very much has been power creeped by too many cruisers and isn't cutting it anymore. It is a ship that support ships that support others. Also, you are extremely lucky to pull 5k+ HE dmg on every salvo, even on saturated part of that Satsuma. Your shells also never riccochet which is very strange.
At 7:15 I had a weird huh moment where you were talking about Colbert's legmod torp build? It took me a second to realize you were saying Kleber. I was tricked by the in-game Colbert you were facing 🤣
Zao legandary module used to have a critical buff that was removed for no good reason ... the rudder speed boost. You were able to dodge while kiting at big range in open waters. It was a very skill intensive gameplay.
Its a joke it was removed ... but deck armor remained so thin that even Ibuki gets better armor.
Never understood why so much hate from WG for a ship that it was never extremely OP. It was good, but required skills to use it.
yeah, I didn't understand why the removed that feature completely, while keeping some other "must have" LMs untouched or just slightly changed. Esp. given the fact that WG then later tries to rebalance Zao by giving her HP back they removed ages ago, despite the "meta issue" for zao being too many BBs nowadays with 30mm pen, making any additional HP way less valuable than a better rudder shift.
It was removed because it was overpowered compared to other options. Given the state of this ship, a good idea is to baseline that rudder shift buff. Alternative buff is to buff deck armor to 32mm and makes it a flavor of the whole line. Myoko already has 32mm at T7.
Incredible how times change. I remember that when I started playing this game 6 years ago, people said that the Zao was one of the best and most feared cruisers in the game. Now I see hear people call it ¨sad¨ or like you called it PQ, ¨an OK tier 10.¨ WG should ready show this ship some love and buff it a bit.
You're supposed to treat it like a DD. Dodge incoming, throw fire. You're already getting DD level dispersion even without the legendary mod. Build into range and camp islands. I'm not a very good World of Warships player, but I do like my Zao
@@venomous2die4 no need to camp Islands. You can just kite away aswell go Dark wait until BB shoot other Targets repeat.
@@matthewpowell9743 you're absolutely correct. I just keep forgetting to go dark lol. 9.9 concealment it's amazing when done right. I don't do right very much LOL.
I’ve found that the current strongest build for Zao utilizes the UU and forgoes the slot 3 accuracy mod and concealment for the turret traverse mod, and acceleration plus the second rudder mod. Combine this with the spotter plane captain skill and you now have a Zao that can actively maneuver and keep its guns on target without sacrificing any of its usual accuracy. It’s an absolute game changer compared to normal Zao.
Sounds interesting. Perhaps add Outnumbered too?
Thanks James I will try that..............
@@EvoraGT430 outnumbered is 4 points, so i think it's too big of an investment. my captain skills are almost similar to PQ's except that I use PT over DE.
Tested that and I would still go with Steering Gears Mod 1 in Slot 4 and Concealment System Mod in Slot 5. 6.1s rudder shift time already allows you to dodge pretty easily and you really need that 9.9km detectability (instead of 11.1) to disengage more easily...
I feel like the Zao and Colombu leg mods are basically just desperately needed buffs to sad ships.
colombo is a solid ship before the leg mod😂
@@samcruce5459 keep coping
@@ANIMESLAYER33You must really suck at wows.
@@ANIMESLAYER33Wrong
6% dispersion and 6 % reload won’t turn a bad ship into a great ship
I was just thinking about Zao and coincidentally PQ posted a video about Zao. Thanks ❤❤
Coincidence? I THINK NOT
HE'S IN THE WALLS! HE'S IN THE GOD DAMN WALLS!
My first T10 ship. You never forget your first.
Same here
I have a feeling that we'll be seeing more T10 ships that lag behind the competition being given super powerful Legendary mods bring them up to the standard of other T10's, instead of just buffing them like any other company would.
@@cookiecraze1310 think of it this way. Wargamming can easily add a legmod without messing with the code lol. Every time they try buffing things it creates errors in the game. Like aiming bugs and f key bugs. Also leg mods bring in more money. U no people speed up the grind.
I love supporting DDs with the ZAO, stay 6-7km behind your friendly DD and when he spots the enemy DD start turning to run and let it rip... I have had salvo's with 10 HE shells landing on the DD with the Legendary.....
I've deleted a radar Mino doing exactly this trick. Followed my Gearing up to the cap, he smoked up, and a wild Mino appears to try and kill him. I had time to switch to AP just as he went full broadside, and bingo, instant dev strike.
Zao with outnumbered is a laser guided missile cruiser.
The one thing that Zao has going for as a Heavy Cruiser is its trollish armor. I dont know how many times I myself have managed to bounce Yamato AP off the ship but Yammy never gets a Cit from me. The legendary module does give you slightly better range and a ton of dispersion but I would forgo the legendary upgrade and go with range mod. The Zao already has great dispersion without the mod and having more range to have maximum standoff distance is really nice. The Zao is my most played ship and most played cruiser. It was my first tier X unlock for sure over the DM. long before Henry IV showed up in the game, The Zao was the true Firestarter in the game. Now that goes to the Thunderer (63% fire chance) followed by the Henry IV. The Zao has been power crept and she is due for some rework. however, Zao will always be the underdog and is still capable of sending ships to the bottom of the seas
I miss when zao had the rudder shift on it though, it was great when it had that, you could dodge incoming stuff and protect your citadel much more easily, really wish they'd bring that back and the desmoines acceleration buff. Wish they'd buff her armour up to 35mm similar to Atago too...
Unexpected NFS reference there, nice one.
i used to download NFS 1 cars from a forum and put them on floppy disks and sell them at school. just under 1.5mb fit on a floppy disk and everyone could read them for installing their new cars. edit - 1.5 mb took about half hour to download lol. I used to sell them for like 3 cans of pepsi from the vending machine or $5 or whatever they were able to give. I felt like such a hustler.
which mod is that that gives you the green circle to show how much speed the enemy ship is going at? also was there an option to reduce the ui scale? how come the buttoms on the bottom and the info panels on the bottom left look so small.
We wanna see leg mod halland!!
I was thinking of getting North Carolina Clr one, but I'll wait a bit to see whats coming around the corner. ty PQ, take care.
Would you recommend Zao CLR with the LEG mod over BA Montana with leg mod? I enjoy both cruisers and battleships.
I am addicted to liking😂
Ship request. Id love to see the absolute havoc you could cause on the assashio while laughing maniacally at all those poor BBs.
i have been working on a mission to get 3 witherers for 3 months now and only have one. so many players use their DC on the first fire, then i can't get a relight them with the next 200 shells. if they do get relit, my team smacks them and kills them before i get any real fire damage going. i have games with 7-10 fires and less than 10k damage from them.
I bought the Roon and N.Carolina it was almost for free
If you have Zao and Zao CLR do you have to buy the legendary mod twice?
AP ZAO - ASSASSIN OF CRUISERS🎉🎉🎉
14:54 you used one Plane in the second round =D
the old Zao Leg mod had rudder improvement yet WG thought that was bad and removed it
Is the legendary mod on the CLR version by default or do you still have to spend research points on it?
Now that a torp focused French DD line is in the game, should the Kleber UU be reworked into something that's actually logical? Maybe something along the lines of better shell velocity or pen in exchange for concealment?
the kleber legmod is just fine as it is. it offers an alternative playstyle, not a direct upgrade.
6:19 Isn’t superzao already announced ?
I think it’s called senjo.
It's only on the russian (Lesta) version of WoWs.
Ayyy just today I thought about getting back to Zao, maybe I'll get that legmod depending on your opinion
It used to be even better. Unbelievably they nerfed it, removing the 40% better rudder-shift that made it awesome.
@@EvoraGT430 Yeah I know, it sucks to see one of the OGs suffer so much nowadays. Too much overmatch.
I like Leg Zao. As per CLR the only one I was interested in, (and got) is Kleber CLR. Why? Because I usually play Kleber Leg, so now I have two and do not have to swap the Leg mode (expensive).
With Atago , Zao is still one of my Favorite Ships to play.
test ship Zao is still being worked on. WeeGee hasn't quite release Zao from super test
Yes my baby Zao gets the spotlight
With leg mod and some dd spotting, she can surprise nuke every dd early on
However, tier10 these days are filled with aircraft, hybrid and submarine make ninja-esque stealth cruiser almost useless
heavy cruisers are useless in general lol... 9/10 bbs overmatch
@FrostBeam009 utility cruisers are great tho. Even with overmatch. That's what islands are for lol. Like des Moines. What a friggin powerhouse of damage and battle impact. Altho if cv in the game I really really struggle to do much at all with it because I can't use the islands anymore lol. I cannot open water des Moines or Wooster at all fr. It's crazy how good pq is at it. If I try, I'm just instantly nuked normally ha. I have to be fighting some noobs to have luck.
what a road to glory: open water cruiser with stealth build after release, with Japanese ballistics, with powerful HE is playing in islands due to poor game balance for years after release.
The leg mod was good before WG nerf the boost of rudder balance speed.
Now it s just ok.
Zao is one of my favorite cruiser, and I dont understand why WG hate it like that.
Late comment but Zao is a ship from a different time, it's a BBs favorite target, and so, so many BBs overmatch 30mm now. You are constantly spotted by all sorts of planes from carriers and the plethora of hybrids that are now in the game, and its AA isnt the best. It's a beast of a cruiser in certain situations but these days, it feels very hard to play. Which is sad cause it is one of my favorite cruisers :(
Must be nice to get matches where BBs just sit there to be farmed!
I really, really want this cruiser
When is the event ending? Considering I just started (returned to the game) two days ago am I still in time to get Zao clr?
(zao makes me wet)
You are too late for the coupon, however I believe this event goes through the end of the update, which is in September.
6:30 who's gonna tell him...
NFS UNDERGROUND 2 MENTIONED OUTSIDE NORMAL NFS-RELATED SETTING RAAHHH
Honestly I don't see the point of the legend mod on Zao. Now I've not used it but even just watching this game play it doesn't look all that much more tight compared to the standard DD level dispersion, and you lose out on the 12% reload boost, letting you throw more shit at the wall. So even though it's a few metres less accurate, you are firing 12% faster. The main benefit I could see for the legend mod would be freeing up slot 3 for the torpedo upgrade, and running a more torp kiting focused build that would never work because of the torpedo angles.
That's just me though, if people like it, great! I want people to enjoy the things I don't see a point in.
@@Stephen__White builds are personal preference. I think the leg mod is powerful but if it doesn’t fit ur build style then it wouldn’t benefit you. Some people have ridiculous builds that we would never try but it works for them lol
It's not remotely "one of the best." It's a side grade. If you are in a div with a destroyer it's a great legmod as you can push in and hit an extra shell or two on a DD. But in reality you give up 1.5km range for the ability to hit a shell maybe two extra per salvo. Only on small ships. It was definitely a great legmod back when it had extra rudder shift. Now it's pretty much just ok.
Kagero paid actor
swapping concealment mod 1 for steering gears mod 2 gives zao 4.4 seconds rudder shift while still having 11km concealment.
you will have DD-level handling at the cost of only 1km of concealment.
you're hard stuck with a bad turning circle which makes you effectively not turn any faster in zao even with double steering
@@hagostaeldmann bruh that proves you don't know how to handle the ship. even SGM2 yodo has the agility to dodge slava shells at mid range.
@@archwaldo are you entirely sure your response to my comment makes logical sense?
@@hagostaeldmann840m turning circle is highly workable. You just don't know how to use the Zao.
Although granted I have 14 thousand games with open water cruisers.
Ship request, T8 Akizuki
They should take away the reload penalties from gearing UU lol
I mean Zao is quite a fine ship.
But it suffers cause WG delievers BaBies the most overpowered monsters with overmatch, super fast speed, great conceal, amazing accuracy etc. Also Nevski makes Zao irrelevant.
For some stupid reason, Zao is a heavy cruiser that's armored like a light cruiser (even worse than some predecessors in the TT), but handles like a superheavy cruiser. And those terrible turret angles that aren't caused by anything other than WG's "because I say so"... It used to be a good counterpart to the other T10 cruiser that was Des Moines, but nowadays she's just too mediocre at everything...
Zao needs hull buff and/or rudder buff, if not, it's a very poor Yoshino, playing behind, or a very clumsy Yolo Emilio at any time.
swap concealment for steering gears mod 2 for 4 second rudder shift.
fourth time asking pq to continue the coal ship series
Zao and best in the same sentence. That's illegal.
he bought it ?
BEST Cruiser, BEST upgrade. For the emperor
If by "one of the best legendary upgrades in the game," you mean "a legendary upgrade that slightly improves the ship, sometimes, and is on a ship that is borderline not worth playing to begin with," yes...I fully agree.
always use the torps
Play Nevsky
I have over 700 games on Zao. I got the legendary upgrade with the old quest system. Still managed to get 56% WR on randoms. Is extremelly useful and rewarding.
Let’s force PQ to admit yodo is a good ship and upvote to make him play it!!!! Hehehehe
@@cal7154 now that’s a ship that needs a buff or 3
It's a shame that Zao is desperately in need of range in the current meta and range mod would be a more viable option in randoms
I play my dm in randoms with reload mod. Talk about lacking range lol. I Def have it built and play for its ideal scenarios. Def don't have a good general build or meta build. I mean with my dm skills I can really only play it well in ideal scenarios anyways. Like I do great in non cv games that aren't super passive. Like really good quite often. Drop me in a cv game where I have to play passive from range and whatnot and I am terrible almost every time. I really have to get lucky and be by good teammates or the cv just not come near me. Basically, no cv game I'm in top 5, cv game I'm in bottom 5 lol
My open water skills in des Moines are basically non existent. I know its far from an open water cruiser but skilled people can do it if they have to. I am not one of those.
No you sacrifice crucial range better take range mod imho.
wow 1,3 mil gold
nope, in my opinion the zao legmod fell off hard. I much more prefer range mod over the leg mod on zao as she just is not manouvrable enough to reliably dodge shells while using all your guns. I would have much prefered they removed the acc buff and kept the range and manouvrability.
INDEED
you think "had".
hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Sorry Zao is still crap in the current game. She is pre 2020. I used to play her all the time. Now she is a death trap. No one plays her. That should say something. They need to buff her health and give it decent turret traverse. I could care less about turret angles and torp angles. She has to have some disadvantages after all.
Any Zao is a liability to the team it is with. That ship that I like very much has been power creeped by too many cruisers and isn't cutting it anymore. It is a ship that support ships that support others. Also, you are extremely lucky to pull 5k+ HE dmg on every salvo, even on saturated part of that Satsuma. Your shells also never riccochet which is very strange.
Shatter looks insanely big on PC...its a fistfight in Legends and my most hated map
Zao is sad, it is so weak. Crappy concealment crappy turrent angles crappy turret traverse crappy maneuverability you get a heal and s*** for DPM