Southern Dragon
Beta- Use flanks, island edges, and retreating angles where you can keep guns working while preserving room t…
- Avoid: Do not brawl nose-in or expose broadside to force all guns; Japanese cruisers live by timing, concealme…
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Southern Dragon Community Stats
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Southern Dragon Community Stats
Record History
Playstyle
Overview
Southern Dragon is the Pirate variant of Myōkō: a Tier VI Japanese tech tree cruiser best treated as a Japanese cruiser that excels at kiting, HE pressure, torpedo zoning, and punishing ships that chase too far. Its value comes from choosing safe firing lanes, punishing exposed targets, and using mobility or cover before battleship focus locks on.
Positioning
Use flanks, island edges, and retreating angles where you can keep guns working while preserving room to turn out and disengage. Choose cover, kiting lanes, or flank angles that let the main battery work while torpedoes remain a close-range deterrent rather than the whole plan.
Potato Avoidance
Brawl nose-in or expose broadside to force all guns
Japanese cruisers live by timing, concealment, and clean escape angles. The common throw is overcommitting before the minimap is settled, then losing the ship’s best tools before they can matter late.
Signature Traits
AP arms at 60% of the standard armor threshold (vs 0.9 default). Lets your AP pen broadsiding cruisers that would over-pen a normal CA, citadel hunts the cohort can't pull off, shared by 4/30 T5 CAs.
30.0% fire resistance, best of T5 CAs. HE pressure does less.
3300.0 damage per HE shell, best of T5 CAs. Punishes superstructure and modules harder than peers.
2100.0 max HE alpha per secondary shell, best of T5 CAs. Bigger per-shell damage than peers.
15933.0 damage per torpedo, best of T5 CAs.
1.6 km torpedo detect, worst of T5 CAs. Easy to dodge if targets are looking.
How to get Southern Dragon
Southern Dragon is a Premium ship and not available to unlock in the Tech Tree. Acquisition path: Containers. Container chances are shown as the listed odds of receiving this exact ship, dividing grouped ship-pool odds across the resolved ships and including nested container paths when a crate can drop another crate.
Best listed chance for this ship
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Lunar New Year Crate
3.5%
VI Southern Dragon
Event containers · Lunar New Year Crate
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Lunar New Year '25 Crate
1.5%
Lunar New Year Premium ship
Event containers · Lunar New Year '25 Crate · 1 of 2 ships
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Piñata Chest
0.16%
Tier V or VI Premium ship
Event containers · Piñata Chest · 1 of 25 ships
Official WG availability sources
- Official WoWS Legends container odds Containers Official container drop rows linked below include direct and nested effective ship odds.
Show direct source rows
- Lunar New Year '25 Crate 1.5% · Lunar New Year Premium ship
- Lunar New Year Crate 3.5% · VI Southern Dragon
- Piñata Chest 0.16% · Tier V or VI Premium ship
Builds Beta
AL Atago, AL Azuma, and Arpeggio Haguro are useful Japanese cruiser commander directions. Inspirations usually support accuracy, reload, concealment, agility, or survivability so the ship can keep influencing fights without giving up easy citadels.
Have a build you swear by? Open it in the Build Tool and hit Save build to share it here.
Cohort position
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Where Southern Dragon sits among Tier V CAs (30 ships). Notable standouts are shown first; the rest of the cohort-ranked stats are in the expand below. Acquisition variants (Black Friday, Founders Edition) are counted once with their base ship, not as separate peers.
See 17 mid-pack stats
Not standouts for Southern Dragon -- here's where she sits on every other ranked stat in the cohort. Stats tagged NORM are tied across more than half the cohort, so the value is the cohort default rather than a standout.
Stats & specs
Customize in the Build Tool →Shell ballistics chartƒ
Shell grouping (sigma); shown in-game as Shell Grouping.ƒ
Horizontal dispersion ellipse width at max range, from the verified WoWS dispersion model:ƒ
Vertical dispersion ellipse height at max range:ƒ
50%-hit horizontal radius:ƒ
50%-hit vertical radius:ƒ
180 degrees / 4 deg/s traverse speed = 45 s.ƒ
10 broadside guns x 60 / 14 s base reload = 42.9.HE shells
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34 mm ≈ 203 mm caliber / 6 (standard HE penetration ratio).ƒ
3,300 HE damage x 10 broadside guns = 33,000.ƒ
33,000 HE full-salvo alpha x 60 / 14 s base reload = 141,429.ƒ
10 HE shells x 60 / 14 s reload x 17% fire chance = 7.29.AP shells
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floor(203 mm caliber / 14.3) = 14 mm (AP auto-penetrates plating this thick or less).ƒ
Canonical community AP formula (jcw780/wows_shell), evaluated at muzzle velocity: . Matches the in-game spec card.ƒ
Same formula at the ship's max firing range (18.6 km), where the shell has slowed to 365.5 m/s: .ƒ
4,700 AP damage x 10 broadside guns = 47,000.ƒ
47,000 AP full-salvo alpha x 60 / 14 s base reload = 201,429.ƒ
AP shell over-penetration splash radius; scales with shell mass. Wickes 102mm = 3, standard 152mm CL ~ 20, Iowa 406mm ~ 270, Yamato 460mm = 400, Incomparable 650mm = 550 (max). Larger value = bigger splash damage area when AP over-pens.ƒ
Estimate of WG's in-game value; matches the in-game port screen within ±5%. Saturation: most targets only intersect one hull section, so the sim transfers ~1/3 of the warhead alpha (2/3 when the warhead blast >= 5000 and the burst reaches a second section). For this ship: .ƒ
Time to rotate the launchers 180 deg: .ƒ
One side firing, all torpedoes hitting: per-side tubes x per-torpedo simulated damage = 6 x 15,933 = 95,598.ƒ
Sum across every AA aura on this ship of (aura.continuous_damage x 3.5 x aura.hit_probability). Here: (64×3.5×0.9) + (16×3.5×0.9) = 252. Covers AA-only mounts plus dual-purpose secondaries (Bismarck 105mm, USN 5"/38 cruiser secondaries) and dual-purpose main batteries (Sumner-class 5"/38, Akizuki-line 100mm). Formula validated against in-game captures on California, Sumner, Manfred von Richthofen, Dante Alighieri (exact) and within +/-17% on the remaining verified ships.ƒ
Longest-reaching aura across AA-only + dual-purpose auras.ƒ
Includes 16 continuous AA damage from dual-purpose secondaries firing as AA in this range band.ƒ
Far 16 + Medium 64 = 80ƒ
Max dispersion = range (km) × 57 + 30. Each dispersion type sets its own slope; this is not a percentage applied to a standard baseline.ƒ
4.5 km × 57 + 30 = 286.5 m.ƒ
Time to accelerate from 0 kt to 90% of top speed (31.5 kt of 35). Numerical integration of the WoWS engine model with the inputs decoded for this ship: ; ; piecewise acceleration ; the engine ramps over . Euler step until . The 0.42 exponent, quadratic drag and the TimeScale 2.61 are the calibrated game constants (New York's 60/2.61 = 23.0 s spool-up matches in-game); no closed form.ƒ
Time to accelerate from 0 kt to 99% of top speed (34.6 kt of 35). Same integration as the 0-90% row, read where . 99% (not 100%) because exact top speed is asymptotic - thrust equals drag at , so the last fraction of a knot is never quite gained.ƒ
How many degrees the turret can swing for each degree the hull turns. Turn rate , so . Below 5 the turrets drag in a turning fight; 25+ keeps up with any rudder.ƒ
max(base sea detectability, gun-firing bloom range). Firing never pulls your detection closer than base concealment.
Damage Control Party∞ charges · 60 s reload · 5 s active
Sonar2 charges · 180 s reload · 94 s active · 4.67 km ship detect · 3.3 km torpedo detect
Defensive AA Fire3 charges · 140 s reload · 25 s active · +100% flak burst boost
Catapult Fighter3 charges · 70 s reload · 55 s active · 5.56 km patrol radius · 1 squadron size
See all derived stats
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All values are ship base stats with modifications and upgrade changes denoted inline.
Numbers the spec table cannot show directly: alpha-strike math, DPM, dispersion, AP penetration. Click the formula chip on any row to reveal how it is calculated.
Main battery formulas
Shell grouping (sigma); shown in-game as Shell Grouping.Horizontal dispersion ellipse width at max range, from the verified WoWS dispersion model: $\sigma_H = \left(\dfrac{R}{30}\cdot\dfrac{\text{idealRadius}-\text{minRadius}}{\text{idealDistance}} + \text{minRadius}\right)\cdot 30$ $= \left(\dfrac{14857}{30}\cdot\dfrac{8-1.1}{1000} + 1.1\right)\cdot 30 = 135.5\,\text{m}$Vertical dispersion ellipse height at max range: $\sigma_V = \sigma_H \cdot \text{radiusOnMax}$ $= 135.5 \cdot 0.6 = 81.3\,\text{m}$50%-hit horizontal radius: $\sigma_{H,50} = \sigma_H \cdot \text{GetHalfHitsRatio}(\sigma)$ $= 135.5 \cdot 0.32\;(\sigma = 2) = 43.3\,\text{m}$50%-hit vertical radius: $\sigma_{V,50} = \sigma_V \cdot \text{GetHalfHitsRatio}(\sigma)$ $= 81.3 \cdot 0.32\;(\sigma = 2) = 26\,\text{m}$Canonical community AP formula (jcw780/wows_shell), evaluated at muzzle velocity: $P = 10^{-7}\cdot K \cdot m^{0.69} \cdot d^{-1.07} \cdot v_0^{1.38}$ $= 10^{-7}\cdot 2468 \cdot 125.85^{0.69} \cdot 0.203^{-1.07} \cdot 840^{1.38} = 414.7\,\text{mm}$. Matches the in-game spec card.Same formula at the ship's max firing range (18.6 km), where the shell has slowed to 365.5 m/s: $P = 10^{-7}\cdot 2468 \cdot 125.85^{0.69} \cdot 0.203^{-1.07} \cdot 365.5^{1.38} = 131.5\,\text{mm}$.34 mm ≈ 203 mm caliber / 6 (standard HE penetration ratio).floor(203 mm caliber / 14.3) = 14 mm (AP auto-penetrates plating this thick or less).AP shell over-penetration splash radius; scales with shell mass. Wickes 102mm = 3, standard 152mm CL ~ 20, Iowa 406mm ~ 270, Yamato 460mm = 400, Incomparable 650mm = 550 (max). Larger value = bigger splash damage area when AP over-pens.All 10 barrels bear on the broadside.180 degrees / 4 deg/s traverse speed = 45 s.3,300 HE damage x 10 broadside guns = 33,000.4,700 AP damage x 10 broadside guns = 47,000.33,000 HE full-salvo alpha x 60 / 14 s base reload = 141,429.47,000 AP full-salvo alpha x 60 / 14 s base reload = 201,429.10 broadside guns x 60 / 14 s base reload = 42.9.10 HE shells x 60 / 14 s reload x 17% fire chance = 7.29.Torpedoes
detectability / (speed kt x 2.6 community game-speed factor).range / (speed kt x 2.6 community game-speed factor).4 launchers x 3 tubes.tube count / 2 (symmetric port/starboard launcher layout; common on cruisers and battleships with deck torpedoes).All tubes hitting one target: tubes x per-torpedo simulated damage = 12 x 15,933 = 191,196.One side firing, all torpedoes hitting: per-side tubes x per-torpedo simulated damage = 6 x 15,933 = 95,598.AA defense
Sum across every AA aura on this ship of (aura.continuous_damage x 3.5 x aura.hit_probability). Here: (64×3.5×0.9) + (16×3.5×0.9) = 252. Covers AA-only mounts plus dual-purpose secondaries (Bismarck 105mm, USN 5"/38 cruiser secondaries) and dual-purpose main batteries (Sumner-class 5"/38, Akizuki-line 100mm). Formula validated against in-game captures on California, Sumner, Manfred von Richthofen, Dante Alighieri (exact) and within +/-17% on the remaining verified ships.Longest-reaching aura across AA-only + dual-purpose auras.SUM over AA auras of (aura DPS x aura range km). A plane crossing the AA bubble is exposed to each aura for a time proportional to that aura's range, so long-reach DPS is worth more than the same DPS in a short bubble. Units: DPS*km; used to rank overall AA threat across the cohort.Secondary battery dispersion
Max dispersion = range (km) × 57 + 30. Each dispersion type sets its own slope; this is not a percentage applied to a standard baseline.4.5 km × 57 + 30 = 286.5 m.Secondary battery firepower
Sum across all secondary families of (per-side barrels × 60 / reload_s × alpha), where per-side barrels = mounts × barrels-per-mount / 2 (the guns that bear on one broadside target). Per-family: 4×2 127 mm (4/side) × 60/7.5 × 2100 = 67,200. Assumes every shell hits (real hit rate is lower; the Brawl matchup tool on the Compare page folds in dispersion + target armor).Maximum HE damage per shell across secondary HE families. Best on this ship: 2100 from the 127 mm family.Maximum per-shell fire chance across secondary HE families (before target fire resistance is applied). Best on this ship: 8% from the 127 mm family.Maximum HE armor penetration across secondary HE families (caliber × 1/6 for most nations; 1/4 for German/UK BBs). Shells whose pen falls under a plate's armor thickness shatter for 0 hull damage though fire chance still applies. Best on this ship: 21 mm from the 127 mm family.Acceleration and Ballistics Chart
Skins & permanent camouflages
Every custom exterior Southern Dragon can equip, from in-game data.
DefaultThe ship’s standard exterior
Primary official WG sources
Filtered to official World of Warships: Legends pages where this ship is a focus, reward, line member, or high-context variant mention.
