Commanders · From in-game data
Azur Lane Commanders in WoWs Legends: Trait Values and Ten Builds
Seven waves of the Azur Lane collaboration have put thirty-seven commanders in the game, and the per-rank values for every one of them sit in the game's data. Here is what each trait is worth at max level, which commanders are outclassed by another doing the same job for more, what players are currently building with them, and ten builds worth copying.
What each base trait is worth
Values at commander level 20, read from the game's per-rank data. An inspiration contributes this and nothing more.
A commander can be strong in one slot and unremarkable in the other. AL Tallinn has the best cruiser gunnery trait in the group, which makes her a first-choice inspiration, but as a primary she is good rather than exceptional.
Cruiser inspirations
| Commander | Trait | At max | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| AL Tallinn | Memorial of Ice and Iron | -7% cruiser dispersion and +7% grouping, accumulated 1% at a time per consumable use | Top pick |
| AL Cheshire | Grin and Fire! | -3% cruiser main battery reload, -7% incoming citadel damage | Top pick |
| AL Ägir | Abyssal Banquet | +3% cruiser grouping, -4% incoming damage | Strong |
| AL Zara | Audacious Challenger | +5% cruiser SAP damage | Strong on SAP ships |
| AL Harbin | Dragon Power | +2% cruiser fire chance, +40% cruiser torpedo flooding chance | Big but narrow |
| AL Avrora | Flexible Threat | -20% shell switching time when fully loaded | Only if you swap shells |
| AL Richelieu | Flagbearer | +3% grouping, +3% incoming fire dispersion | Outclassed by Tallinn |
| AL Hipper | Firewall | -10% fire damage to your ship | Narrow |
| AL Graf Spee | Pocket Battleship | +6% Repair Party HP per second | Needs a Repair Party |
Battleship inspirations
| Commander | Trait | At max | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| AL Bismarck | Unwavering Strength | -4.5% secondary reload, -7.5% secondary dispersion | Top pick, secondaries |
| AL Colorado | Focused Assault | -3.5% battleship reload, +3.5% grouping | Top pick, gunnery |
| AL Vittorio Veneto | The Eternal Flagship | +4% secondary SAP damage, -5% secondary dispersion | Strong |
| AL Nelson | Like a Rock | -6% incoming damage to your battleship | Solid on any battleship |
| AL Dunkerque | Floodgate | -20% flooding damage | Big but situational |
| AL Massachusetts | Big Mamie | +10% secondary damage beyond 5 km | Needs secondary range |
| AL Q. Elizabeth | Queen's Orders | -2% reload, +2% AP damage, +2% grouping | Outclassed by Colorado |
| AL Littorio | Rosa Bombardamento | -10% module repair, fire and flooding duration | Narrow |
| AL Fusou | Cover Fire | +3% battleship HE fire chance | Wrong shell type |
The weakest traits
Three of the weak traits are not merely small. They do the same job as a stronger trait elsewhere in the group.
- Queen Elizabeth and Colorado both give battleship reload and shell grouping. Colorado gives 3.5% of each. Queen Elizabeth gives 2% of each, plus 2% AP damage. On any ship, Colorado's is the same trait with bigger numbers.
- Richelieu gives +3% cruiser grouping. Tallinn gives up to +7% grouping and -7% dispersion. Both are cruiser gunnery traits, and Tallinn's is more than double on grouping before the dispersion is counted.
- Fusou gives +3% fire chance on battleship HE. Most battleship targets worth shooting take AP, so the trait applies to the ammunition you fire least.
Hipper's -10% fire damage, Littorio's -10% recovery timers and Graf Spee's +6% heal rate are accurate but narrow. Graf Spee's does nothing at all on a ship without a Repair Party.
What people actually build
Of the 103 player-made builds saved on the site, leaving out the ones we seeded ourselves, 43 use at least one Azur Lane commander. Twenty-three of the thirty-seven turn up somewhere. The other fourteen appear in none of them.
Those 23 fill 29 primary slots and 19 inspiration slots. That is backwards from what the slots alone would predict, because every build has one primary and two inspirations, so there are twice as many inspiration slots going spare. People are buying these commanders to lead ships.
By commander the split is sharp: 12 are only ever used as primaries, 6 only as inspirations, and 5 turn up in both roles.
| Commander | As primary | As inspiration | Used as |
|---|---|---|---|
| AL Cheshire | 4 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Colorado | 1 | 3 | Both |
| AL New Jersey | 3 | 1 | Both |
| AL Scharnhorst | 0 | 4 | Inspiration only |
| AL Nelson | 3 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Sov. Rossiya | 2 | 1 | Both |
| AL Yukikaze | 0 | 3 | Inspiration only |
| AL Z24 | 2 | 1 | Both |
| AL Atago | 2 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Baltimore | 2 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Bismarck | 1 | 1 | Both |
| AL Tallinn | 0 | 2 | Inspiration only |
| AL Vittorio Veneto | 2 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Asashio | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Avrora | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Chapayev | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Dunkerque | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Harbin | 0 | 1 | Inspiration only |
| AL Hipper | 0 | 1 | Inspiration only |
| AL Montpelier | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Prinz Heinrich | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Saint Louis | 1 | 0 | Primary only |
| AL Zara | 0 | 1 | Inspiration only |
The inspiration-only six are AL Harbin, AL Hipper, AL Scharnhorst, AL Tallinn, AL Yukikaze and AL Zara. For Tallinn and Zara that matches the trait tables above: two of the strongest cruiser traits in the collaboration, being used for exactly that and nothing else.
Ten builds
Figures are the difference between the bare ship at top modules and the same ship carrying the commander, skills and inspirations listed. Traits that build up over a battle are counted at their full value, not at zero: Tallinn's accumulates a percent per consumable use and caps at 7%, so a cruiser holds all of it from mid-match onward, which is when the trades it decides tend to happen. Any of them can be rebuilt in the build tool.
Cruisers
Bounce and burn
With 42,500 HP and 234 mm guns, Cheshire wants to shoot from range rather than trade up close, and Beyond Range buys her about 1.5 km to do it from. Bounce Right Back is the one skill here we cannot put a number on, since incoming ricochet angle appears on no stat card. It shifts the auto-bounce angle 7 degrees in your favour on shells hitting your citadel.
Ice and iron
Fixated turns up on several cruiser commanders at 5%. Tallinn's is 13%, same name and same grid position, which is why the shell spread at 15 km falls from 136 m to 120 m, and most of the reason she holds up as a primary and not only as an inspiration. If you would rather lean on her consumable theme, Bulwark of Rime replaces Fixated with up to 20% consumable cooldown reduction earned through main battery hits.
SAP metronome
In Arduis Intrepida pays out on shots fired within five seconds of a reload finishing, so the build is arranged to bring that window round more often. Zara's trait adds 5% SAP damage, and SAP is largely indifferent to how the target is angled.
Secondary battery brawler
Wargaming introduced Ägir as a commander "designed to improve the effectiveness of your secondary guns and reduce incoming damage", and the grid matches. Jöttun's Jaws adds up to 14% secondary damage for ten seconds after every main battery shot, which is why Refill Station is here on a secondary build: faster main guns keep that bonus up more of the time.
Shell-swap light cruiser
Avrora's trait cuts shell switching time, so the build pays for both ammunition types. Hammering Strikes costs 5% sigma and Fixated gives 5% back, so the accuracy comes out level. She is not tied to Chapayev; any Soviet cruiser that switches ammunition often will do.
Battleships
Slow guns, long reach
This build costs you speed and fire resistance: 21.0 kn down to 19.5, and 30% down to 21%. Will to Rebuild more than doubles the heal, which covers most of the fire cost. If a knot and a half matters more to you on an already slow ship, take Crisscross instead of Gyrating Drillbits and give up the 8% AP damage.
Big Seven
Brawler gives up 1.28 km of range to cut the reload, and Big Seven adds 16% damage to both shell types while taking 15% penetration off both. The extra damage is worth having against a broadside and the lost penetration hurts against anything bow-in, so this build rewards picking targets over firing on cooldown.
Secondary brawler
Wargaming describe Bismarck as a commander whose "primary strength lies in operating the secondary battery", and halving secondary dispersion is what that comes to in practice. Firefighter is doing real work here rather than filling a row. A battleship fighting at 8 km catches fire constantly, and 26% fire resistance alongside a doubled heal is what lets you stay there.
SAP secondaries
AL Vittorio Veneto on Vittorio Veneto
The same secondary treatment as the Bismarck build, on SAP shells that largely ignore angling. Banner of Splendor tends to get dropped from secondary builds, which is a mistake: it adds a Smoke Generator charge, extends the duration, and gives up to 20% speed while smoke is active. Wargaming introduced her for "SAP shell efficiency and Smoke Generator-based gameplay", and the ship's faster-reloading Exhaust Smoke Generator matches.
All forward guns
Brawler and Megalomania both cut reload, and commander modifiers add rather than compound, so the two come to 25% off. Megalomania charges 5% of your health for its share. Her unique skill, Frontal Fire, is the alternative: up to 95% off shell switching time for a flat 5% shell damage. We can price the cost but not the benefit, so that one depends on how often you actually swap ammunition.
Reading a commander yourself
- Check the class scope before anything else. "Cruiser main battery reload" does nothing on a battleship, and roughly a third of the skills in any grid are scoped away from the ship in front of you.
- Two traits that touch the same stat can be compared directly. A dispersion trait and a flooding trait cannot, and a ranking that puts those in order is expressing a preference rather than a measurement.
- Some effects appear on no stat card, ours included: incoming ricochet angles, AP penetration multipliers, shell switching time. They still work in game. Bounce Right Back and Frontal Fire are both recommended here despite being unmeasurable on our side.
- Commander skills and inspirations add together and apply once rather than compounding, so two 10% reload skills give 20% and not 19%. Worth knowing before stacking two of the same effect.
Trait and skill values are read from in-game data at commander level 20, and cross-checked against Wargaming's Azur Lane wave announcements, which are also where the quoted design intent and the Kaga, American cruiser, cruiser-leading and Z-23 pairings come from. Build results come from the engine behind the build tool, comparing each ship at top modules with no commander against the same ship with the build listed. Skills whose effects have no corresponding stat, such as incoming ricochet angle and shell switching time, are described but not quantified. Published 2026-08-11.