If you've landed here because someone linked the Tier Guides to you or happened to read a pin about them, chances are you already know what these are all about and why the insistence on them being called 'Tier Guides'; on the off chance you don't, here's the long and short of it.
The Tier Guides are less of a tierlist and more of a compendium of all the relevant units in the game: they are meant to tell you who's good at what, why is it good at that and how good it is, not who you should be using (as that is a very subjective thing and different players value different characteristics differently).
They are called 'Tier Guides' to tell them apart from tierlists and their typical way of handling things (ie. small portraits with a tier and no explanation of how and why the tier has been decided that way); indeed, one of the reasons tierlists are rather poorly regarded by the less casual members of the playerbase is precisely that lack of information and perceived arbitrariety, both issues the Guides seek to remedy by way of in-depth descriptions and details for each unit and publically visible tiering criteria.
If all this sounds interesting to you, hop in and have a read; in the future I'll be adding more Guide content too, so look forward to it~
If you happen to have questions for me, want to discuss tierings or would like to show new information you feel may influence some tierings, poke me on Discord over at the Azur Lane English Community server (Kawaii Five-O#2305); you can use the Issues thing here if you wish, but I don't check those very often so don't be surprised if you don't receive an answer!
[08/06/2020]
THAT WAS A MISTAKE. All bookmarks broke, name has been restored. The experimentation goes on though.
[07/06/2020]
Tier Guide updated and temporarily renamed to Experimental Tier Guide. We're doing this live, folks.
[26/05/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATES, NOW WITH JUST A LITTLE LESS TIERS!
Okay it's just for the new additions, really, but it's the thought that counts! And the thought is, "I want to gauge the reactions to this approach", so do let me know how good or bad is this.
[08/05/2020]
Nagato is now fixed.
[04/05/2020]
So this isn't exactly related to the Guide itself, but there is a relevant bit of news - IJN Nagato's currently broken and her IJN-boosting passive only applies to herself. The coqup apparently happened two weeks ago, with the last patch, and applies to every single region (CN/JP/EN/KR/TW).
This is most assuredly a bug, but there's no telling when - or if - it will be fixed.
[26/04/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED.
[08/04/2020]
Minor fixes all over the place, nothing big.
[01/04/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
Experimenting with the 'role' field in the new entries; depending on how well or poorly received it is, it may become a permament feature or be removed entirely.
[01/03/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
Also a correction; our wiki made a mess and had the new units cost 1 more than they actually do, their prices are in line with everyone else. This does not affect the tierings in any way, for the record.
[27/01/2020]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
[15/01/2020]
Created the AL Common Compbuilding Coqups Compilation to steer new Commanders away from typical early mistakes and the Early Recommendations Guide for pretty much the same reason.
The JP Tier Guide has been merged with the EN Tier Guide for good, as the various regions have now pretty much the same units and the same retrofits; if something is still missing from EN point it out and I will appropriately mark it in the Guide.
PSA: Alliteration is fun.
[30/12/2019]
TIER GUIDE UPDATED
Swirling Cherry Blossoms units have been added, a few tierings have been revised, the images are now all fine!
[11/12/2019]
OH BOY THERE'S A LOT OF NEW STUFF TO TALK ABOUT HOLY MEATBALLS
So you'll have noticed by now most of the images are currently suffering from a bad case of "link broken"; that is because the wiki has disabled hotlinking, which means I'll have to grab every single icon and chibi out there and personally rehost it on my GitHub in order to have them show. It's not hard, but it's long and tedious, so I'll fix one hull class per day.
It's not all bad news, though; I took the opportunity to improve the Repository a fair bit, firstly by having a real readme now (which will show its contents on the landing page) and moving some of the stuff that was in the Guides there, like the credits or the donation link; this'll keep things cleaner and straight-er to the point, I hope.
I've also figured out how to use Issues! A few too many months too late for the poor fellows who actually contacted me there unfortunately, so I just closed them, but I did go through them and implemented what changes needed to be - including an Untier Guide!
[11/12/2019]
> We have a Readme now! Hello world!
> We also have an AL Untier Guide, for all your whys amd hows your unit of choice happens not to be on the Tier Guides proper!
- This guide is far from a solo effort: while the writing is mine, the tierings are researched and approved collegially with Gurosebe#4054, Enbayft#2527, Dami🐈chan🐇#2228, Bluerendar#2640 and the #helpful fellows over at the Azur Lane English Community server, while the coding framework that makes this possible was provided by Enbayft#2527 and improved upon by Boz#5174; the gifs have been provided by Halfminute#6110 and the CN wiki; lastly, kudos to Kopfjäger for providing the original framework for the guide you're now reading.
Without these people, the Tier Guide would never be as comprehensive, accurate or good-looking as it is, and it is to them that I extend my sincere gratitude. Oh, and one last thing...
- Curating, maintaining and researching for this Guide is something I've been doing for over two years now, ever since a few months after the first CN servers were opened to the public. It's a time-consuming endeavour, to be sure, but one I gladly do. If you find what I do here and/or on the Discords #helpful and would like to show me your gratitude in a slightly more tangible way, feel free to click here and buy me a coffee - thanks! (https://ko-fi.com/J3J6WRI2)