User blog comment:Hayashi H/Max-efficiency Map-clear Formations/@comment-24689097-20151231051012

I've found these 4-5 fleet compositions to be extremely unreliable with my lv80~86 CAs. They get easily chuuha'd/taiha'd during the very first node (even with a double line formation) and I've found myself sparkling them to avoid aborting sorties (and to avoid increased bucket use). I don't know if sparkling is something you expect us to do and if you do it would be better to outright say it... now, of course it's obvious that sparkle helps immensely but after pulling my hair out in the past three months I have come to the conclusion that if you're using non-married CAs then sparkling is completely required.

Also, the CAV often ends up being useless for the sub node since it barely manages to hit the subs for scratch damage, while if a single sub does even scratch damage on your ship it's an instant D (due to HP difference); now I still use my CAV because I often find my Tone sparkled by the time I get to 4-5, but think it avoids getting D-rank only half the time and that might not actually be worth using a ship that doesn't have as much firepower as a regular CA.

Finally, the suggested last dance formation simply doesn't work for me even with with sparkled ships, the CAs get chuuha'd/taiha'd way too fast on the boss node so they end up not killing that much during day battle, and end up not hitting wanko during yasen. For last dance I've found it much better to opt for FBBs instead of CAs (Bisko, Kongou-class, plus 3 high firepower CVs as recommended) since they can actually shoot stuff down on their own during the day even with ammo-depletion nerfs in place, unlike the CAs. Yasen route also helps since less fuel is used thus the ships can evade better at the boss node and shoot stuff down before they get crippled by damage.