IJN Shinano, the indisputable floof queen (yes Kaga, you heard that right 🤣). Coming straight from the Sakura Empire and probably the most desired ship for most of us on the hunt for a solid backline Carrier with a huge (perhaps the biggest) health bar.

Let’s get started:

• Shinano Stats Critique
• Shinano Best Gear

Shinano's Stats her stats

To kick this off, let's start with a little overview of her stats... by the way I got access to all this data thanks to the Shinano wiki at koumakan.jp

Look at that health 🙌

Shinano's gets a health base stat of  1462 HP right from the get-go (at level 0, 0 affection, and no enhancements at all) pretty promising, huh?.

You just can’t overlook Shinano's health stats, I mean 7558 HP at level 100 that's just something you don’t see too often on a backline ship.

You can reach a whopping 8616 HP at level 120 which is pretty impressive.

Needless to say with Shinano on your fleet, rest assured you'll have plenty of health to endure the toughest fight as long as you need to.

Heavy armor FTW! 💪

Shinano's armor is not the usual medium armor you'll see in most carriers, instead she's rocking the full-fledged heavy armor.

Heavy armor makes Shinano considerably tankier and more capable of handling AP shots than the usual medium armor carriers are able to. Add this to our previous stat (health) and we're well on the way to having a rock-solid ship to hold our backline.

Not the most evasive

As you should expect from a heavily armored and tanky ship like Shinano, her evasion stats aren’t quite the best.

Shinano starts with an evasion of 11 at level 0 (0 affection and no enhancements).

Later on she'll get 29 evasion at level 100 which is good but not great, just don’t expect her to dodge that much.

Once you reach level 120 she'll have and evasion of 49 evasion at level 120

Decent Anti-Air Power 🚀

In this category, my personal opinion is that she's in the middle of the road, OK to keep up with the task but you can easily find carriers from the Sakura Empire with more anti-air power to offer. However, when you consider how much health she brings to the fight, this ends up just being fine.

Shinano's Anti-Air starts at 60 at level 0 (0 affection and no enhancements).

Grind with her a while and you'll see her Anti-Air grow to 280 at level 100, again is not that impressive but still great for a carrier with such a generous health pool.

Once she reaches level 120 her Anti-Air stat will be at 317 at level 120.

Planes Away!

The aviation stats of Shinano may not look crazy impressive but you have to see her in action, she does wonders. Shinano outperforms most of her SR equivalents without a doubt, she is definitely capable of infringing a considerable amount of damage to put you on the head of the battle and get you that WIN super fast.

Starting at 84 at level 0 (0 affection and no enhancements) seems ok but trust me it scales pretty good as she grows on levels.

At level 100 she'll be at 395 aviation, which is enough to stand out already but consider there are still 20 levels to scale even more.

Finally, she'll reach a whopping 437 at level 120, pretty impressive, at this point you won’t have problems blowing up enemies with such big aviation damage output coming straight from your backline.

The Cherry on Top... Her Reload Speed 🙌

If you aren't blown away by what we've seen so far, I'm pretty sure Shinano's rate of fire will definitely get you there. What is so impressive about Azur Lane Shinano's reload stat is that as we've previously seen she's indeed a heavy armor carrier but with a reload on easily comparable and probable better than many of her medium armor girlfriends (and no so friends 🤣).

Starting at 46 at level 0 (0 affection and no enhancements) pretty promising already.

Scaling to 109 at level 100.

Ending with 126 at max level (120) making her a solid choice based only on reload, capable of making a mess of her enemies on the naval battlefield.

Shinano Gear Guide best gear

Here I have prepared a briefly explained Gear Guide, in this Azur Lane Shinano best gear build I recommend all my favorite Shinano equipment to use on each slot, this build did wonders for me, hope you like it too 🤩.

• Aircraft Slot Slot 1
• Dive Bomber Slot slot 2
• Torpedo Bomber Slot slot 3
• Auxiliary Slots auxiliary 1 auxiliary 2

Starting with Slot Number 1 slot 1

Here on Shinano's Aircraft slot , you'll be able to equip one of the following planes types:

• A Fighter,
• A Dive Bomber (LB1),
• Or a Torpedo Bomber (LB1).

Whatever you decide to equip on the Aircraft slot of Shinano Equipment (Slot 1), will perform with 120% → 125% efficiency.

For Shinano's aircraft slot the overall best pick would be the F4U (VF-17 "Pirate" Squad) which has an awesome skill and a pretty good reload time. One of my favorites 🤭 honestly was the first Aircraft I thought thinking of making this Azur Lane Shinano best gear guide.

The Sea Hornet 👇 also an awesome pick. It offers more damage than the F4U but has just a tiny slower reload time.

The Grumman F7F Tigercat 👇 a solid pick, you might know it as Grumman Tomcat (its previous name).

A perfect fit for those who are here would be our beloved and definitely overpowered SB2C Helldiver 👇 dive bomber.

Moving to Slot Number 2 slot 2

Moving on to Shinano's Slot Number 2, the Dive Bomber Slot you'll be able to equip:

• A Dive Bomber

No matter what you equip on the Dive Bomber slot of Shinano Equipment (Slot 2), will perform with 120% → 130% efficiency.

For Shinano's dive-bomber slot, it’s quite an easy pick since our beloved SB2C Helldiver is such a powerful beast, you simply can’t go wrong with the SB2C. Part of my favorites also for this Azur Lane Shinano best gear build.

You can go also with the Yokosuka Suisei Model 12A. Not as OP as our top pick for the dive bomber spot but does the job.

Equipping Slot Number 3 slot 3

For this one, we have quite a few options that work pretty well on Shinano. In this slot, the Torpedo Bomber Slot of Shinano you'll be able to equip:

• A Torpedo Bomber

The torpedo bomber aircraft that you equip on this slot of Shinano Equipment (Slot 3), will perform with 125% → 140%.

A solid performer, the TBM Avenger (VT-18 Squadron), this might be our favorite torpedo bomber of them all, offers pretty much all the damage you'll need from its role plus providing the super useful Battleship Strikeforce skill.

If for some reason you can't go with the TBM Avenger, go for the Fairey Barracuda, you'll be impressed with its reload time, in some cases it can even outperform the damage inflicted to enemies thanks to its brief reload time.

The Aichi B7A Ryusei will do the job just fine 👍, counts with some pretty scary Sakura torpedos that will blast through the opponent's HP like it’s s nothing. A powerful torpedo bomber for your Shinano... no doubt.

Equipping Auxiliary Slots auxiliary 1 auxiliary 2

Is quite an easy task to fill the auxiliary gear slots on Shinano, we have a few options that will help you improve the stats and outputs considerably.

Bet safe and smart, get a pair of Steam Catapults and see those aviation boosts blow the roof 🚀

Run Two (2) of these, one on each Auxiliary Slot.

In case you don’t have yet the Golden steam catapult you can run a pair of Homing Beacons, one on each Auxiliary slot.

A Homing Beacon will decrease your airstrike loading time by 4%, which is great!... that makes them a pretty good alternative when you ran out of Gold Steam Catapults.

If instead of reducing your airstrikes loading time you prefer to focus on making your planes tougher, try equipping an Aviation Oil Tanks.

This one will increase your aircrafts HP by 120, much needed on a heavy fight 😅.

With that, I kinda conclude my Shinano Azur Lane gear guide (although I'll be updating it every time something better comes out). If you decide to try it please let me know how it felt for you and if you would you like to change something.

And that's pretty much all I have to share about Shinano, sorry if this guide sounded too much like those Azur Lane Shinano Wiki posts out there, it gets a bit technical when you try to talk about Azur Lane builds, Shinano Azur Lane gear guides, and stuff.

Hope you guys have fun out there with our beloved IJN Shinano aka The Floof. Be sure to check out our Azur Lane Shinano Tier List for 2023 ✅. Lastly, I'll be answering here bellow 👇 all the most common questions I found online about Shinano Azur Lane.

Shinano Construction Time faq

Oh, and for you guys who asked about her construction time, the answer is 05:15:00 👈 that's Shinano time.

Gain Affinity Fast on Shinano faq

I recently wrote my favorite and most effective ways to gain affinity fast on Azur Lane make sure to check it out, as it also works for Azur Lane Shinano.