User blog comment:Arbington/The Next Cycle/@comment-5267262-20120803203730/@comment-5267262-20120803213009

The only times we see a destroyer getting killed: they are not paying much attention to what kills them. Tuchanka: killed when turning around, paying no heed to the side that the maw ultimately came from. Rannoch: killed when shooting at Shepard on the ground, the reason no quarians died from it was simply that it did not shoot at them. Required a whole fleet to bombard it and lets not forget that the quarians packed several times the number of dreadnought strength guns in the fleet than you could usually find. Earth: I suspect that ounting a hades cannon requires weakening shields or something because dying from a single hit with a cain goes completely against the fight on Rannoch. Why have mass accelerator cannons when cains are smaller cheaper, mountable on just about anything and one hit kill reapers? The other one was tearing through hammer when it was shot, I can only assume that hammer weakened its shields too or that rockets' constant propulsion can break into a kinetic barrier.

In a battle where the destroyer is returning fire, expect some significant casualties too your fleet, and with shear numbers and a slight shift in strategy (attacking in vast numbers like in an invasion rather than an occupation) destoyers will tear through fleets very rapidly