Destroyers are poor fire starters beyond mid tiers. Ships have an innate hidden fire resistance that scales generally upward with tier, by high tier this basic hidden fire resistance is rather large even before modules or captain skills are added. This is to keep the much more heavily armed ships, mostly cruisers, at high tiers from starting inordinate amounts of fires. A side effect though is that higher tier DDs which tend to have only a handful more barrels and little if any increase in fire chance compared to lower tiers are quite bad at setting fires on high tier ships.
Essentially none of them, not even the Russians, can consistently keep multiple fires lit unless a target is just completely ignoring them at a close enough range so they can land truly huge numbers of shells. The fact many of the shells will be shattering against a BB and even cruisers and the superstructure will quickly saturate largely reducing you to chip damage is another strike. Gun DDs are actually rather shit against higher tier BBs and more armored cruisers since shatters eat large numbers of shells and they set fairly few fires, the entirety of which can be repaired off. It's the very definition of trash damage, you're pretty much broadcasting your location to everyone and contributing very little.
High tier cruisers slinging HE can be really dangerous to BBs, DD not so much. The exception is the ducks, since they can directly penetrate 32mm plating with IFHE they're actually dangerous to a degree.
Destroyers are poor fire starters beyond mid tiers. Ships have an innate hidden fire resistance that scales generally upward with tier, by high tier this basic hidden fire resistance is rather large even before modules or captain skills are added.
Specifically, it's 50% at tier 10; 57.2% taking into account the module and fire prevention skill. By comparison, the base coefficient is 23.3% at tier 6, 34.4% with the module and captain skill.
Essentially none of them, not even the Russians, can consistently keep multiple fires lit unless a target is just completely ignoring them at a close enough range so they can land truly huge numbers of shells.
Taking for example Gearing, the original gunboat DD;
Base fire chance: 5% Demolition Expert: +2% Victor Lima flag: +0.5% India X-Ray flag: +0.5% Total: 8%
After applying the 57.2% fire reduction at tier 10, that leaves 3.42% fire chance per shell. Gearing fires 6 shells, so that's a combined 19% chance of at least one fire, per salvo. Considering the Gearing has a 3 second reload (or 2.6 with the reload module), that's nearly 15 seconds to get a fire on average. I'd hardly consider a ship that can set two fires by the time a battleship can reload not a threat. Plus, if they are at risk of getting killed, they can simply smoke or stop firing.
And the Gearing is only the fifth best fire starting DD, after the Daring, Harugumo, Khabarovsk and Grozovoi.
What about the mighty duck? I remember she got those super quick 100mm guns, I mean even if her fire starting rate is abysmal, the sheer amount of fire rate is what give her the edge right?
Specifically, it's 50% at tier 10; 57.2% taking into account the module and fire prevention skill. By comparison, the base coefficient is 23.3% at tier 6, 34.4% with the module and captain skill.
Taking for example Gearing, the original gunboat DD;
Base fire chance: 5% Demolition Expert: +2% Victor Lima flag: +0.5% India X-Ray flag: +0.5% Total: 8%
After applying the 57.2% fire reduction at tier 10, that leaves 3.42% fire chance per shell. Gearing fires 6 shells, so that's a combined 19% chance of at least one fire, per salvo. Considering the Gearing has a 3 second reload (or 2.6 with the reload module), that's nearly 15 seconds to get a fire on average. I'd hardly consider a ship that can set two fires by the time a battleship can reload not a threat. Plus, if they are at risk of getting killed, they can simply smoke or stop firing.
And the Gearing is only the fifth best fire starting DD, after the Daring, Harugumo, Khabarovsk and Grozovoi.
That is an obscenely overgenerous estimation. You are considering a 100% hit rate when the hit rate of most ships hovers around 30%. You are also assuming that all of those shells fall on the main ship body instead of hitting a secondary battery, AA battery, main battery, or any one of the other components that entirely resists fires. It also assumes that you are also optimizing the hit perfectly and never 'wasting' any of those shells on components already on fire. You are also a destroyer. The moment when you are at risk of being killed is the moment you're spotted and every gun on the battlefield turns on you.
Destroyers are poor fire starters beyond mid tiers. Ships have an innate hidden fire resistance that scales generally upward with tier, by high tier this basic hidden fire resistance is rather large even before modules or captain skills are added. This is to keep the much more heavily armed ships, mostly cruisers, at high tiers from starting inordinate amounts of fires. A side effect though is that higher tier DDs which tend to have only a handful more barrels and little if any increase in fire chance compared to lower tiers are quite bad at setting fires on high tier ships.
Essentially none of them, not even the Russians, can consistently keep multiple fires lit unless a target is just completely ignoring them at a close enough range so they can land truly huge numbers of shells. The fact many of the shells will be shattering against a BB and even cruisers and the superstructure will quickly saturate largely reducing you to chip damage is another strike. Gun DDs are actually rather shit against higher tier BBs and more armored cruisers since shatters eat large numbers of shells and they set fairly few fires, the entirety of which can be repaired off. It's the very definition of trash damage, you're pretty much broadcasting your location to everyone and contributing very little.
High tier cruisers slinging HE can be really dangerous to BBs, DD not so much. The exception is the ducks, since they can directly penetrate 32mm plating with IFHE they're actually dangerous to a degree.
I remember having the Ishizuchi which is absolutely stupid with HE so I set fires all days until matchmaking made it impossible.