Part 4 of the collab story. Mikari feels a little “inadequate” and then they run into Cowpens

Source to floof wife

Hi, i don’t know what flair to use. Its just my version and design. If you can help me or correct the flair will be nice.

Working overtime again, are you? As your care provider, I'm responsible for your health. Would you mind coming in and staying for some tests? You'll be in capable hands.
https://x.com/AzurLane_EN/status/2122011754746020152

Commander, go ahead and describe your symptoms for me, if you would. It's okay, I'll examine you thoroughly. Nothing about you will escape my notice.

USS New Orleans is changing into her new Dynamic attire. She will grace your dock in the near future, Commander.
https://x.com/AzurLane_EN/status/2121996652697587800

Finally had time to figure out blender so i could have a great passenger

also got a custom tachometer working

(game is assetto corsa)

https://x.com/ropisan_jp/status/2121802270350229657

Four to six months ago, I made a post praising Valparaíso around Dev 17/18 because her self-sustain looked promising on paper. Now that I finally finished the blueprint grind to Dev 30 and tested her in World 16-4, the reality is a massive letdown. She plays identically to how she did at Dev 18. Nobody could have predicted how severely powerhouses like Max Immelmann and Götz von Berlichingen would warp the DPS meta, yet their arrival completely exposed Valparaíso's identity crisis. When your carries already output monstrous damage, the remaining backline slot needs to either bring top-tier utility or keep pace in raw damage. Valparaíso does neither.

To rule out bad RNG, I ran a direct comparison in 16-4 using the exact same setup: Max Immelmann and Fritz Rumey anchoring the main fleet alongside either Valparaíso or Raffaello, backed by a defensive vanguard of Shimanto, Takahashi, and Eldridge. With Eldridge granting 10 seconds of frontline immunity every 20 seconds (give or take), and Shimanto and Takahashi covering heals, AA, and slows, the vanguard already has elite survival tools. They just need a third main-fleet ship that can help weather the storm or end the fight faster.

As a support, Valparaíso is purely selfish. Firing her secondary guns 20 times triggers a 3% Max HP self-heal, turning her into an unkillable cockroach in the backline. Unlike Musashi, who sits in the permanent pool and actively absorbs damage for your Main Fleet as long as she stays above 50% HP, Valparaíso offers zero damage redirection. Pairing her with a dedicated primary healer makes no tactical sense either, since you sacrifice a carry slot and tank your overall DPS without gaining any real protection in return.

Her actual team healing is gated behind mechanics that fail in modern high-difficulty maps. Her 8% heal to the lowest-HP ship only triggers every two activations of her secondary skill, requiring 40 volleys for a single trickle of sustain. Worse still, her yellow skill (Crystalline Hearth of Homecoming) only activates after 30 secondary shots or 20 seconds into the fight, extending her secondary range to a measly 105. Because her base range cannot reach enemy battleships spawning at the back edge of the map, she rarely stacks those shots early. You are effectively forced to wait 20 seconds for her kit to wake up, by which point your vanguard has already eaten the worst of the initial wave pressure. Even after the buff kicks in, a 105 range is laughable compared to the 150–200 range needed to pressure distant threats.

Since she fails as a support, she needs to justify her Decisive rarity through raw damage, and falls short there too. Having 140% Main Gun efficiency across three mounts at Dev 30 (compared to Raffaello's 150%) alongside a random-targeting barrage puts a hard ceiling on her output. Against the 16-4 boss, both setups topped out at the exact same best clear time of 2:08 remaining on the timer, meaning there is zero DPS gain to justify the DR blueprint sink. The real kicker happened during my third test run with Raffaello, when her holistic sustain kept the entire squad alive to clear the 16-4 boss completely out of ammo under the 50% damage penalty. Valparaíso couldn't even keep the frontline standing with full ammo.

Valparaíso tries to straddle the line between DPS and support and ends up accomplishing neither. Has anyone else pushed her to Dev 30 only to watch their vanguard collapse while she sits comfortably at full health?