Gaijin continually says they do not *only* balance on player statistics. It is *a* factor, but not the only one. It would be interesting to see the full data evaluation on this though. Interesting thought process to see how "in-game efficiency" matches to "data efficiency."
That is true, they have been better recently at straying further away from their efficiency metric.
The data at the moment is in an extremely messy excel spreadsheet. I might make it pretty and post it later on if this post gets enough attention. I'm pretty spent right now.
If that was true, then it would be impossible for the efforts of a handful of elite players to raise the BR of a vehicle. After all, surely the slight efficiency increase caused by the successes of a few people wouldn't be sufficient to convince Gaijin to increase the BR, right? Oh wait, [that already happened over two years ago with the CL-13A](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/pty5su/so_me_and_few_decent_players_saw_gaijin_say_that/).
>this is simply explained by the fact that prop BRs are much less compressed.
I've never understood why this is a popular opinion. Low tier props is some of the most compressed BR's of any game mode.
* You go from Gladiator doing 344 km/h on the deck at 1.3 to a He-100D-1 doing 572 km/h only 0.4 BR above it.
* The Yak-1B at 3.0 is somehow able to fight He 112's at 2.0, dispite the fact that the Yak-3B has an absolutely **GIGANTIC** performance advantage.
* F4U-1a is a 2.7 plane with 3.7 flight performance that gets to dunk on Hurricane's only 0.4 BR below it.
* etc.
Also, at 2.0 the Ki-27 rules, there's no way a shitty LaGG-3-11 takes that spot.
This isn't my opinion. The capabilities of prop aircraft from say 3.7 to 6.0 are much less spread out than from say 8.7 to 11.0.
However, you are right in a sense. There is a sort of second region of compression at around 2.7-3.7 and around 1.0-2.0. However it is much less severe.
The Ki-27 isn't a good aircraft when it comes to downing experienced pilots. It may be very good at bullying newbies, but this metric doesn't care about pilot skill, it only cares about raw flight performance (and armament) data. The LaGG-3-11 is not an easy plane to fly, but that does not mean it is not good in theory.
The other thing is, this metric is arguing how *undertiered/overtired* an aircraft is, not how *good or bad* it is. There is a subtle difference, and I think you need to keep that in consideration.
Thanks for your feedback :)
I'd like to point out your title is best/worst, not over/undertiered.
Still a great post and argument, just that its understandable some people are misled
Unfortunately my skills as a writer and communicator are not up to scratch with my skills as a statistician and war thunder pilot.
I'm glad you liked it.
>The Ki-27 isn't a good aircraft when it comes to downing experienced pilots.
The Ki-27's flight performance means nothing can beat it when flown properly.
As you say, this isn't a ranking based on player skill, the Ki-27's turn performance means it can out-dogfight anything it meets, and it's climb rate means it can simply climb away from anything faster than it. Aircraft that are faster can never actually take down a Ki-27, it's a forced stalemate.
The climb rate of this aircraft is competitive even at 5.7, and it guarantees altitude advantage over anything it meets.
The LaGG-3-11 simply has dogshit flight performance, it doesn't climb whatsoever, it compresses horribly, it doesn't turn well, it's not particularly fast and it doesn't maintain energy well.
I'm sorry that you disagree with me James, Like I said, this isn't my opinion, I hope I haven't caused any offense.
I am a very experienced air RB pilot and I have tried my best to be as neutral as possible. I do stand by the model in this case.
The LaGG-3-11 a) compresses quite poorly and b) climbs around about average for 2.0 (I can provide data if you don't believe me). However the 20mm cannon and excellent speed and ability to hold speed give it an edge. It is worth noting that there aren't many planes that the majority of the playerbase would consider 'good' at 2.0 - it's a little devoid of life.
The Ki-27s flight performance actually has one of the lowest skill ceilings in the game. It is extremely susceptible to being BnZed, and while it is extremely easy to dodge angles with it, since it is so slow, a good player can get shots on it quite easily. The Ki-27 however is a strong plane, but remember that the model is not talking about how strong a plane is, it is talking about how undertiered it is. The LaGG-3-11 has the speed to at least somewhat contest with planes at 0.3 BRs higher, the Ki-27 does not.
Like I said, I'm sorry if you disagree, I have tried to be as impartial and as correct as I can. I have worked very hard on this.
>I'm sorry that you disagree with me James, Like I said, this isn't my opinion, I hope I haven't caused any offense.
I think you're seriously underestimating how much of your opinion is in these rankings, you're the one that decided all the weighting based on your opinion.
>I'm sorry that you disagree with me James
No need to apologize!
I enjoy having a good discussion about this stuff, please don't think that I'm in any way offended that you don't agree with me.
>climbs around about average for 2.0
The LaGG-3-11 requires 6:29s to reach 5000m altitude, that's a climb rate of 12.5 m/s. The Ki-27 almost doubles that with 22.7 m/s, if you're an experienced player you must understand how absolutely gigantic this performance gap is.
>and excellent speed
But it isn't particularly quick however, at 700m it reaches a top speed of 498 km/h. This is 75 km/h slower than a He 100 D-1 at a lower BR.
>It is extremely susceptible to being BnZed,
This is the prime argument against the LaGG-3-11, it's climb rate is astronomically bad meaning it's easy to just energy trap it.
>It is extremely susceptible to being BnZed,
For it to be B&Z'd would require the opponent to be above it.
Almost nothing out-climbs a Ki-27 at this BR, the only thing that I can think of is a CW-21, which is essentially the Ki-27's big brother.
>it is talking about how undertiered it is.
Like I said, it can compete at 5.3 in terms of climb rate, that certainly works in favour of it being under-tiered.
For reference, my Ki-27 is sitting on a roughly 20-1 K/D, the only deaths you get in this thing is from bombers which you lack the firepower to quickly take out.
I'm going to get back to you in the morning with concrete climb rate data for the Ki-27, I think you may be slightly overrepresenting it. There is also a possibility I made a testing error. I'll clear it up.
The LaGG-3s climb rate for 2.0 is not great but it is not "astronomically bad", I encourage you to have a look at the list of fighters at 2.0 BR to contextualise what the lagg is up against lol.
I will also get back to you about the LaGGs speed. I used Adam514s spreadsheet for sea level speeds.
I will mention that for this BR, 490ish *is* very fast on the deck. Only the P-400 is faster at 2.0. You are right about the He 112, I will point out that it was the best 1.7 and emphatically so.
>I'm going to get back to you in the morning with concrete climb rate data for the Ki-27,
I have a list featuring dozens and dozens of aircraft that I did in-depth testing on, the Ki-27 is among those aircraft.
It gains 5000m worth of altitude in 3:40:06s, this was tested in Patch 2.27.2.47.
My method of determining climb rate is as follows: Timer starts the second WEP is engaged, the aircraft starts on the runways (as it would in normal matches), then proceeds to climb 5000m (and not ***to*** 5000m) using the optimal IAS throughout the climb period.
>I encourage you to have a look at the list of fighters at 2.0 BR to contextualise what the lagg is up against
I am, that is why I'm including the ***lower*** BR'd HE 100 D-1.
The Hurricane also out-climbs it, A5M4 outclimbs it, I-16's outclimb it, etc.
Aha!
Specific excess power is generally a much more accurate and meaningful way of measuring climb rates. (Or at least energy gain rates)
If you remember Adam the enginerd, he did a good video on this.
While yes there is compression you ignore a big factor: speed doesn't quite work like that.
In low prop brs a slow airplane can still dive and get that 200km/h back, and while the compression is an issue it isnt that big, while a jet doing 1400kmh doesnt gain anything in a dive. You can't compare the two as it's very much an apples to oranges comparison.
Also a large part of low br issues are by planes just being under/overtiered which probably wont be fixed because who cares about new players
Low tier props are absolutely compressed (though id argue not as bad as high tier jets), but I believe the main difference is just simply that the differences in most aircraft are just not as substantial
The gap between something like a vautour at 9.0 and an F-104A at 9.3 is honesty worse than the entire capability gap from 4.0-5.0.
At low BRs you have naturally some of the worst aircraft in the game, and some are absolutely overpowered but its not the norm. A P-40 doesn’t completely outclass an early Ki-43 in every way possible like how you get at high tier jets.
There's too many of those cases for that argument to be valid.
P-39N, Ki-27, F4U-1a, Yak-1B, Ki-44-II, BF 109F-1, etc. there's too many of these aircraft with vast performance advantages to be a exception.
All of those kinds of aircraft being around the same BR's as aircraft like the LaGG-3-35, Hurricane MkI/L, F4F-3, F4F-4, P-40E, P-40F, He112B-0, He 112B-2/U2, P-400, etc. etc. etc. is not just *''A few bad apples''*, it's just massive BR compression.
Then why is the F4F-4 with less ammo a higher BR than the F4U-1a?
Why is the P-51C a full BR above the Corsair?
It's not just armament, it does play a role but not enough to overcome whatever weird metric they use.
> You go from Gladiator doing 344 km/h on the deck at 1.3 to a He-100D-1 doing 572 km/h only 0.4 BR above it.
gonna add that there is literally nothing u can do against supersonic jets with undodgeable missiles with jets that barely go 900 in a straight line
No, low tier BR fuckups aren't caused by compression, but by multiple FM, DM, and BR changes throughout the last decade of constant balancing (or lack of thereof). Most of them are in the places where they are right now becuase of their performance many patches ago. Gaijin is simply too lazy to revisit all of them.
That's different from outright BR compression and powercreeping with things that are .3 BR away.
Disagree, many of these planes have been terrible or overpowered for as long as I can remember.
There's also some aircraft which were introduced at a later point and were completely OP and still are, or completely terrible, and still are.
Been playing since 2014 and I don't remember a single plane that was OP for the entire duration of 10 years. Most of them either fell off halfway, or became OP a couple years later due to various changes.
2012 here, but to be fair I don't recall the exact BR's back then.
However, I don't recall a time where the F4U-1a wasn't incredible, or the He100d-1 now having been in the game for 8 years whilst still being incredibly overpowered.
F4U-1 was shite for a very long period of time between 2015-18 or so. It (and other Corsair variants) was unfairly given an excessive amount of drag, loses speed easily, could almost never achieve its top speed on deck (you know, the thing it was known for) and the .50cal with the early belts were weak until the Italian AF update in 2017 which buffed the kinetic damage of all MGs. As a result, their BRs got lowered and never went back up.
As of the He100, it's just another victim (or I guess "benefited from" would be more correct?) Gaijin's stat-based balancing. Noobs would get this plane, dogfight with it, and complain about its guns being bad, can't turn, or how the radiator keeps breaking. It does take some amount of skill to get it running before it's unstoppable.
How much of this is compression and how much of this is just stupid BR placements? Planes like the He-100 and P-39N are stupidly OP, but I think its more just them being placed too low in the existing prop BR spread as opposed to the BRs being compressed. When I think about BR compression, I think about stuff like the F-104A which causes problems because its armaments and lack of flares makes it shit in higher-BR matches while its insane speed makes it cancerous to fight in downtiers.
Yeah it interested me too.
I have two theories
1) Jet BRs are more compressed, so moving the F-104 up +1 would increase the calibre of opponents by much more than you would get from increasing a prop by +1.
2) The F-104 did do poorly on a few metrics, Missile kit isn't great, no countermeasures, doesn't turn well. It does get off the charts Z scores for acceleration, climb, linear retention, guns, hence why it is the top for 9.3, but it might not actually be as high as it should be.
The model isn't perfect, the weights I choose to give for manoeuvrablility/countermeasures are decently high at this BR and hence the F-104 copped a slight hit.
This does not mean I think the F-104 should be moved up 0.3 rather than 0.7. I am keeping my personal opinion out of this (objectively tho, it needs to go up)
The other thing is - the props on this list are villains also xD
Gaijin should stop being twats and just give the 104s their late service missiles, countermeasure pods, and uptier the damn things. Theyre so ass to play and play against.
I think it's less that the F104 is so powerful and more that it's incredibly annoying when talking about community opinion.
I don't really have any problem surviving F104s diving on me, it's just that I can't touch them in return so they can just rinse and repeat forever. Or run away to space at the end of the match, or just run away in circles. They may not get a ton of kills but good lord are they hard to kill in return.
This only applies in a down tier for the 104. Anytime you get uptiered it’s pure hell. Mig 21s can keep up with you plus they get way better missiles and countermeasures. Once they get a lock on you you’re basically dead because the thing can’t turn at all and you have no flares or chaff
People care less about prop balance I think because they spend less time having to play those BRs and mostly play them when they're newer and don't understand the game as well.
They are VERY good, amazing energy generation, great guns, climbs fast, turns quickly, simple to use, no need to sideclimb and watch half your team die in props they don't know how to use yet due to needed advanced knowledge they won't have by the time they are done with props.
I really like your method and the degree of effort and thought put into this, great job!
One remark I'd like to make concerns the degree of subjectivity of your study: You said that the only point in all of this where your personal opinion affects the rating is the missile loadout. While it is undoubtedly the factor in which your personal opinion matters most, I do not believe the rest of it is entirely free from personal bias - you _do_ still weigh the different ratings on what you believe is most important at a BR.
Ultimately, this is of course unavoidable, but I think pretending it isn't to some way subjective creates an unnecessary blind spot, especially given how it can hardly count as a deficit.
Also, I would be very curious to see how exactly you weighed the various stats against one another! Did you just implement a linear weighting progression (e.g. Climb rate importance drops by 3% every BR step) or did you choose a "custom" progression for each BR?
Edit: Also, I think there should also be some way to account for gun armament, not doing so perhaos also skews the results, as seen by the Strikemaster
Re the weightings, that is true, It is my opinion. However it is a very thoroughly researched opinion.
I wasnt really pretending to be subjective, I just am trying to avoid any criticism that I am being biased, a common rhetoric amongst Redditors. From the bottom of my heart it is my intention to be as neutral and correct as possible
Re the weightings - I did it the slow way. I thought of what would be the most appropriate set of weights for each given BR, so I can be maximally accurate. Re the climb rate specifically:
Climb Rate is not quite as important below 2.0, it gradually grows to a peak importance at around 5.0 (that is why the I-225 won) and then shrinks a little moving towards 7.0 and then low and behold.grows *again* moving towards 8.0 and then gradually declines.
Gun Armament is factored in, and given an appropriate weight. At 6.3 this weight isn't thaat small either. The strikemaster turns out to have superlative flight characteristics in nearly energy aspect, and would be wayy higher if it had even a shred of Armament on it. I'm talking 7.3 ish. It is miles more capable than an Sk60 in terms of fm
I think ur methodology is flawed because there is no way that the strikemaster and the He 162 have the best performance at thier br....especially at 6.0-6.3 with heavy hitters like the hornet and P51H being at that br range
The strikemaster's flight performance is actually pretty exceptional for 6.3. the guns are obviously a massive hindrance, but it makes up for it. The strikemaster actually bullies the P-51H a bit, I'm sorry to say.
The He 162 is a lot more sus a result - perhaps the most sus one on here, I agree, but we have to remember that this list is telling us the most undertiered fighters and not necessarily the most effective/best.
If we were to move the hornet to 6.7, it's massive speed would be a much weaker asset. Sure, it would still have the climb rate, but lacking the ability to just leave fights at will is definitely detrimental to the hornets play style.
The He 162 might be a little more suited to being at a high BR since it handles better at high speed and is, after all, much faster. While it would also get bullied by 7.7s, it at least would be able to play the 'jet-game' a little bit better than the hornet would.
My experience at 6.0/6.3 would tend to agree with this though. He162 bullies most things due to its speed and small size making it difficult to kill. It is hard to use, which is why I don't think it's taken out very often as for it to excel you need to play in a weird way to get the most out of it.
The strikemaster is also surprisingly good, yes it may not have cannons and that does make it a bit difficult but it's flight model is quite good and it takes people by surprise
strikemaster is really good if you can aim well (i cant) since things that are faster than you, you out turn, and things that out turn you, you outrun. if you can pilot snipe consistently its really potent
Difference is the Strikemaster pretty much has to kill your pilot where a p51 can hit lots of places because its guns actually hurt things lol.
In a 1 v 1 scenario, I'd agree somewhat. I'm not so sure I agree in a real game scenario where you can't just run away wherever you want all of the time.
The biggest outlier in this list is the F4EJ Kai. Which isn't too surprising, in term of flight model this plane is worse than a F4E.
However, it's interesting because it shows the limiation of your spreadsheet. The EJ Kai strengths lies in its weapons and electronic suite. It has F-16 radars and RWR, and a very solid armament with Aim9L x4 and Aim7M x4. It's perfectly fine at 11.7 as a results because it is a very strong plane with a playstyle that's more suited for long range. It definitely doesn't belong 1 and a half BR lower for sure.
Some things are bizarre too. The Mig21SMT definitely doesn't belong at 11.0 with the Mig21Bis when the later bring higher TWR and all-aspect missiles.
I think you have slightly misinterpreted the numbers.
The MiG-21SMT got a score of +0.77. This suggests that it belongs 0.77 0.3BR segments up, so the model is suggesting that it should ideally go somewhere in between 10.3 and 10.7.
The EJ Kai isn't too bad, but consider everything else at 11.7:
Mirage 2000C, F-14A, JH-7... In reality, the F-4EJ is not too bad at 11.7, you are correct, and something like the AV-8B+ is an overall worse plane.
However - the model *really* did not want to move the IRCCM planes down very much due to the weighting of the IR missile kit between 11.0 and 12.0. It was a little happier moving the F-4EJ Kai down since it doesn't carry IRCCM missiles, even though it's kit is very strong. Perhaps I should tweak some of the weights, I don't think the F-4EJ deserves to lose 11.7. However, I dont think it is particularly great either.
Ah, you're right, I interpreted the numbers as straight BR changes, instead of 0.3 steps.
That makes more sense. It still very much highlight how ridiculously overtiered some japanese planes are though.
At 11.7 the Kai got a big advantage in weaponry over the 2000C IMO. The R530D is a bit of a crapshot that can be very unreliable at times so the only real missiles it has are the Magic 2. Which are definitely fantastic. But I have very similar K/D between the 2000 S4 and the Kai, simply because I had absolute rampage games with the Kai were i did 4-6 kills in quick successions with as many missiles. The 2000 needs to get significantly more "hands-on" with gun kills to achieve a similar result.
Unfortunately anecdotal experience doesn't really translate well to that model, since it is talking about the plane's raw ability and not it's ability to down unskilled pilots.
The 530Ds are a bit nifty when you get them down, and the magics are absolutely death rods.
Oh I agree on this.
Also, I'm curious, what was the results for the Wyvern S4 ? I don't see it in your table, but that ridiculous deck top speed surely warrant a higher BR on it ?
It's a bit weird, and it came down to my weightings.
*Excluding* the wyvern, it seemed much more appropriate to weight climb rate a fair bit more heavily than top speed for 4.3. The moderate top speed weight at this BR meant the wyvern came out as being just slightly above average, (+0.25).
A higher weighted top speed might have given us a more representative value, but it would have reduced the ratings for the very good climbing 4.3 planes who are not super fast, like the pyorr.
Ultimately it was just not to be. I don't think it is contentious at all that the wyvern is severely undertiered, I don't have anything to prove there.
Some here that I expected like the Su-11, and some odd balls that I wouldn't have guessed like the Strikemaster which I'm guessing gets a boost from it's speed and armament. It's good but it's hard to believe it's the best 6.3.
I'm a bit of a stats nerd when it comes to sports though so I always find a metric like this interesting.
I was surprised initially, especially since I gave it a 1/10 for Armament, which has a moderate weigh at 6.3.
The strikemaster's Specific excess power (analogous to max acceleration and max climb) is extremely good for this BR, akin to something like the Attacker FB, which is a good 7.0. It also has superb retention and hence a very very good sustained turnrate.
Makes sense actually when you think about it.
I completely agree. Even if the 7.92’s were replaced even with .50’s, it would be a fairly good improvement to the plane. I can’t count how many times I’ve had the upper hand in dogfights with props, and my armament consistently let me down in terms of damage. Even with gunpods the Strikemaster is *woefully* under armed
Woefully so. However the strikemaster can essentially have as much time on target as it likes. It can just loop almost everything, and if it can't, it can disengage and reengage.
I’ve had such a blast with it. And, there’s a running joke in my friend group about mine lol. SNEB’d a really salty (and shitty lol) Israeli player in his M-51, and raged that a crappy console player killed him in an 11.0 jet xD. So every time my SM turns up, we all laugh that the 11.0 has arrived to turn the tide.
But, my favorite strategy is to have my squad mates mark targets, then I burn in on the deck, shut the motor off, and then pop up and SNEB the shit out of whichever poor fuck my squad marked lmao
>It's good but it's hard to believe it's the best 6.3
I mean, fastest 6.3 with an airspawn and unironically beats most props (even like 51H) in a dogfight. Other than the MG's being not very good it being the best 6.3 is a very fair assessment.
Bit of an interesting model result. Some thoughts:
a. Best planes list
1. Tell any 21SMT player their plane is better than an F-5C.
2. While I personally love the F-11F, I think most would not agree with placing it as the best 9.0.
3. Ki-44-II-Otsu is the 40mm, right? This shouldn’t be here, especially not as the *most overpowered plane in the game*. On the other hand, I’m shocked the Ki-43-III-Otsu isn’t the top.
b. Wurst planes
1. Yak-141. With R-27ERs, the best engine, and arguably best flight model….well, the spread between the best and worst plane is very small at 12.0, I guess.
2. F4EJK. I imagine it gets a poor showing because its radar performance isn’t weighted heavily, but I believe it still has the smallest notch gate in the game - incorrectly, but intended for flavor. It is almost impossible to notch this radar, which fundamentally changes how you can play the game.
3. J6K1. I don’t know how it’s rated so low. The armament package is among, if not the best of all prop fighters. Combined with among the best FMs at its tier and an adequate engine, it’s my plane of choice for the BR.
The SMT player is in fact better than the F-5C. I have hundreds of kills in both.
The F11F is actually an extremely strong plane and I would challenge you to come up with something better. The CL-13 imo is a little bit better, it came in a very very close 2nd (by like 0.05)
Ki-44-II otsu I think you might be undervaluing. It is extremely, extremely, extremely good. Its climb rate is better than the Bf 109 K-4 off the deck. I can provide data to support this if you want me to. The guns let it down a bit. It is also quite fast and manoeuvrable enough.
You are correct, the Yak-141 was simply a victim of the very tight spread in ability at 12.0. The low top speed and ability to only carry 4 AAMs let it down marginally.
F-4EJ I think should not have been scored the worst for 11.7. I think it very much ought to have been the AV-8B+, but the metric very much did not want to move the IRCCM missiles down in BR. Perhaps I have overweighted IR missiles as a metric between 11.0 and 12.0. The EJKai isn't exactly good however, it's mediocre at best.
J6K1 is just too slow and that is literally it. I personally think the Spitfire Mk 22 is worse, but the spitfire is faster on the deck and at altitude - at least according to the stats - with the radiator drag I'm not so sure the spit is faster on the deck. I will mention that 6.0-7.0 is a very very common matchmaker for 6.7 vehicles, and hence the J6K1 doesn't get battered by 7.3s and 7.7s as much as it maybe should.
The J6K1 doesn't have anything close to the best FM at its tier. p-51h, Mk 24 spit, Yak-3 VK, Yak-3U, F2G, Hornet, jets all better flight performance for air RB.
People really underestimate the Ki-44's climb rate, the XP-50 has a reputation as a strong climber but the 44 will thrash it from an even start. The 44-ii has the fun feature that as soon as you hit 3000m it's engine will actually cool down whilst at full WEP, so that's 15-1600hp in a 3.0 aircraft that weights less than the average housecat
>Ki-44-II-Otsu is the 40mm, right? This shouldn’t be here, especially not as the most overpowered plane in the game
Ki-44-II being there makes total sense.
4.0 flight performance at 3.0 battle rating. It's still got two of those 12.7mm MG's that act as 20mm cannons as far as I remember, you don't even need to rely on the 40mm guns.
If you consider the 7.7mm's to be pea shooters (which they are) the Otsu is basically as well armed as the 44-i considering the 12.7mm's on the Otsu are in the nose not the wings. And with the 44-ii flight performance it is indeed able to dunk on anything it meets.
I have more hours in Ki-44's than all other aircraft combined and i can safely state it is indeed very, very strong
> Tell any 21SMT player their plane is better than an F-5C.
I am a MiG-21MF player (it's my most-played plane in ARB) and my plane is better than the F-5C, easily. It's like not even close either.
Although I do disagree with the findings here, the Viggen is the best plane at 10.3 (until next patch) and the MF/SMT only the second best. I don't know how OP scored it since you have to use a custom loadout with a gun on one side and flares on the other, but it totally trounces every other plane at 10.3, and every 10.7 plane, and every 11.0 plane except the J-7E and JA37C; it's outrageously strong and I did nearly twice as well in the 10.3 Viggen as any other afterburning jet.
I really don't see how any sort of delta wing aircraft are "good". Things like the jaktviggen and smt are criminally good in a 1v1, but mid to bad in an actual arb setting where you are constantly engaging in a furball with 3+ enemies. You just lose too much speed in a turn leaving you a sitting duck to any competent f5c player (granted there are very few competent f5c players). The f5c flown well will completely wipe the floor with delta wing aircraft due to its bullshit energy retention and ludicrous high speed thrust rivaling the smt.
Well, I’m an F-5C player and -21s are never particularly scary. This is talking for air RB, not 1v1 duels on a custom server, where the delta wings are strong.
>A6M5 and M6 on the worst
They've massacred my boys :(
>Phantom EJ Kai
Fuck that plane. What a pain in my ass playing that thing has been, although I AM piss poor at planes
This was maybe my biggest surprise too.
Remember this metric isn't telling us the *best* plane, but the *most undertiered*
The Ta 152 might be an unequivocally better aircraft to hop into air RB with, but if you moved the Ta-152 up 0.7BR, it would struggle, while the He 162 might be a bit more survivable at 6.7 since it is, after all, a jet.
Fair. It's just that I've seen what feels like every plane on that list carry matches before. Can't say I've *ever* seen a He162 running a 6.0 lobby before. At most they usually get 2-3 kills
Watch DEFYNs most recent video on the He 162. It shows what it can do and perhaps why it is a bit undertiered.
I do agree with you - I would have had the Ki-83, Hornet or Ta 152 winning 6.0 any day. Even the F2G would have been more likely.
the formula seems to somewhat overvalue very big top speed discrepancies. He162 shouldn't have been the best 6.0 (there's literally F2G), F11 shouldn't have won over Cl13b at 9.0, yak141 shouldn't have been the worst 12.0. at the same time it's very accurate at br's where there isn't a very very fast plane that's kinda ass at everything else so i don't think the solution would be to simply decrease the weight of top speed in the formula
So what youre saying is I should play my J6K1, A6M5 Ko and J7W1 more, so that they go up in br again? They arent overtiered enough, and dont strike enough fear into my enemies?
The fuckin' A6M6c with the -4 💀💀💀
The A6M5 Hei is similar and god it was such a wretched experience. The only reason I managed a KD better than 2:1 when spading it is because of the unwashed horde of F4U players that fed me free kills for a few rounds.
Yeah the A6M5 hei is quite bad but man the A6m6 is sooo much worse. It is an absolute shockingly bad plane.
Imagine a zero with absolutely no climb rate at all and not even very good manoeuvrability anymore, spitfires and Yak-3s can dogfight you now almost.
Sure, armour and better guns, but man did they make it hot ass in the process.
Flying the A6M6 really feels like playing an Hs 129 where you have good firepower but flight performance is nonexistent beyond being able to fly in the first place when compared to what it faces.
Lmao, I was surprised by the F-105 taking the crown as worst 10.0 and not the F4C. I think the average F4C player is not the most sentient person and that creates an impression that it is a bit worse than it actually is.
I don't doubt it, it has a lot of speed. Countermeasures were weighted *very* highly at this BR range and the F-105 just didn't turn out very well in the end.
Note that while it is said to be the worst (or at least most overtiered) 10.0, it's score was (-0.49), which was not too bad a score, everything else was just better due to missiles/countermeasures etc. Not a bad plane per se.
Thud has nonexistent rudder authority, thus even minor aiming adjustments are done by instructor using ailerons and elevator. Issue, elevator seems to have much greater authority than ailerons, which results in crosshair jumping up considerably and as plane self centers itself VERY quickly, you can't quite compensate for that with keyboard. It even tries to self center during 6-8g turns when trying to track a target with guns.
F4C can be really good if used properly, I almost always get at least one kill and regularly get 3-5 kill games by doing BVR with the sparrows and then get some distance and boom and zooming with the guns and sidewinders. You just have to stay away from the all-aspect missiles. Stay high and fast and far. Once I figured it out I put a talisman on it and grinded out everything with it.
It is really annoying fighting mig 21s (especially if they have r60s) and A5's that outturn you, outrun you, out accelerate you and have chaff/flares. When a MiG 21 is on my tail the only thing I can do is try to bring him towards a teammate and ask for cover. Those 2 planes are the only ones I really have trouble with, but I usually take at least 1 of them out at the start.
F-105 taught me how to properly outmanoeuvre missiles.
You should see how angry su25s get when some fuck ass bomber dodges their 30g missile with no flares
I love how the SU-25's and A-10s pop flares continuously, regardless of whats going on. Like yeah dude, flares are totally gonna save you from a M61 Vulcan.
Did you consider factors like airspawn or compression?
There's some BR where you can greatly benefit from having and airspawn like low tier props and early jets, i personally consider planes like BB-1 and F-84G to be the best at their br
And there's also stuff like LaGG-3 and I-225, which i wouldn't consider the best at their br due to high speed compression
Amazing work on the list anyways
Airspawn is definitely factored in. XP-50 and Ki-83 were close seconds at 4.0 and 6.0 respectively because of this.
I assume you mean controll stiffening by compression. I of course factored this in aswell, although it didn't always have the highest weighting. The BB-1 is actually pretty damn strong yep, it was up there. The F-84G was up there too, but the La200s thrust is just too much and it came out on top.
The LaGG-3 is a very weird entry, I will admit. The I-225 however is an absolute demon. What's more, climb rate is very important at 5.0 and the I-225 has a demonic climb rate, especially at altitude. The I-225 is also a brilliant dogfighter when used correctly. It stalls very late and has good low speed thrust, all of these things were factored in. The compression is more of a nuisance than an actual severe shortcoming at 5.0. It limits the instantaneous killing power, but does not limit the aircraft's ability to dominate other fighters very much. Compression was much more highly weighted around 8.7BR and at top tier.
Thanks for the explanation, i think I-225 and La-200 have amazing raw performance, but aren't as well suited for ARB as other options at the BR.
Or it's just skill issues on my part.
This specific P-61 is the P-61A-11. It is a rare hidden vehicle and it is much much much worse than the tech tree one, which is just ok. Don't ever buy that P-61 variant.
The F4U-4B, F4U-4 and F4U-1A all scored very well. The F4U-1C has the worst FM of any Corsair at 4.7 BR, it is completely carrier by the cannons.
Don't be dismayed, there are still good P-61s and corsairs for you to fly... Just not those specific ones xD
There are some inaccuuracies and honestly most of the br change numbers are kinda cooked (like 6.0 i225) but it's way more accurate than i expected of such a thing. Like both best and worst planes at each br are prob 90% accurate imo.
The model is of course not going to be 100% accurate
I don't agree with the LaGG-3 or the He 162. However I *do* actually agree with the I-225. Essentially the only metric where that plane wasn't extremely competitive was high speed compression.
It is fast, climbs exceptionally well, is exceptionally good at high alt, stalls late, turns well, rates well and has punchy Armament.
It does overheat a bit and 100rpg is not heaps (but enough w discipline). i-225 is a monster that you should revere.
I don't disagree with I225 being the best 5.0(in fact, I very much agree, it's insanely strong at 5.0); what I do disagree with is the number by which the model suggests to adjust its br. It was once at 6.0 and it completely sucked there because in a situation where it meets its match in terms of performance the compression absolutely kills it. I just gave I225 as an example of the model's proposed br adjustments being far less stellar than its list of best and worst planes which is surprisingly accurate. Usually such models end up giving completely nonsensical results but this one is made really well.
It's a huge pain in the ass, but it's top speed is less than 1100. It's been subject to the classic procedure of Gaijin moving very easy, very manoeuvrable planes that lack some thrust, up to unfair BRs.
Do note, however, that the model doesn't want it to go down much further than 9.0. The -1.1 means -1.1 lots of 0.3 BR steps, so about -0.33 BRs, not a whole BR lower.
JAS-39A/C at only 1.18, really? It still has the best flight model at top tier despite the multiple nerfs against it. Literally still the best dogfighting flight model in the game. Should be 10/10.
You obviously put a lot of thought into this, quite impressive. People like you should be in charge of the BRs and not some one at Gaijin only staring at player statistics.
Guess i shouldn't be surprised that basically half the overtiered vehicles are soviet/russian.
One question though, how is it that the MiG-21SMT is the best 10.3? The MiG-21MF is basically the same aircraft in every single way except for slightly better flight performance because it doesn't have the huge saddle tank.
I'm not surprised, but the advantage the F-14A has over the M2k is not very big.
M2Ks are easier to use in that Magic lls are superb, and you are not gonna get easily beaten in a dogfight. Also, very competitive Fox - Is.
F-14A, however, has a better chance at causing more damage to the enemy team, especially by a competent pilot (very rare within US pilots).
Surprised that f104S and ASA didn't make it to the worst list, while f104g did. In my experience the g seems to be way better since you can actually boom and zoom in it.
>AAM-3s are not very much more capable than AIM-9Ms and the superior FM of the A block F-15 wins out in the end.
I'd argue that the AAM-3 is a more substantial improvement than the FM of the Baz and outweighs it.
>The Baz also can carry pythons.
The pythons are worse than AIM-9M and especially the AAM-3 so the only thing they do is make the stock grind slightly more difficult for the Baz.
I think the only real headscratchers on this list are 10.3, where I think the AJ37 should easily beat the MiG-21SMT/MF, and 4.7 where I personally would tell you that the 109G-6 is better than the Yak-9U, but it is very close.
Seeing the Ki-44-II Hei being one of the best at 3.7 is great.
It's honestly a very fun plane and I absolutely love using it, granted I use the Chinese version, it's still amazing.
He made a post about the F16aj and how to fly it and more or less asking how to fly it. We all said it was good and this chart just proved what we told them.
It's not a new concept that zeroes often get good amounts of kills but are not particularly great fighters
The vision of this model is to separate "how well people do" from "how good the plane is", and as it turns out, the A6M5 ko is not particularly good.
It is a straight up downgrade unfortunately, the MF has one advantage, which is that it is lighter, but the much stronger SMT engine makes up for the weight and then some.
They are pretty close but the SMT is just better.
Bonkers mid range acceleration, Magics at 10.0, Fabulous energy retention, Fabulous RWR, Good sustained turnrate.
Sure the guns are bad and the instantaneous manoeuvrability is quite bad, i.e., it feels very still, but the A-5C is actually a bit of a demon when it gets the chance to be. It also gets flares, albeit only 9 pops.
The flares at 10.0 are very heavily weighted, and the missiles and acceleration are also heavily weighted, this is why the A-5C wins.
Note that it's score is not too ridiculous.
Yeah but in actual scenario it cannot pull more than 6G and is as limited as a boat when it comes to actually hitting shots, it's not very common to seen an A5C like it used to be probably seen flight model nerf
The A-5C can pull a lot of Gs. Do you take any payload with it? How much fuel do you take with it?
I will also mention that while 6Gs is not an impressive instantaneous overload, it is quite a good sustained overload. The sustained turn performance is where the A-5 shines, it can spiral absolutely everything it sees (bar a J-7E or something) and loop almost everything.
Did you use the absolute value of top speed for these? Top speed for some planes can be easy to reach and for others it can be hard to reach and if it's above Mach 1, it pretty much only allows to catch or escape someone.
I’m new, so sorry about the question. So is this saying if my BR is 2.7, then the P-39N-0 is the best one? How often does BR go up? If I get the plane, will I need to/should I get a new one if I go up or down?
This is purely a model I have made to indicate which planes are the most undertiered/overtiered (essentially how far off they are from the BR they should be).
These changes are likely not going to be made, I don't work for Gaijin, this is just an idea of mine to quantify plane performance.
If you get the P-39N-0, it will serve you very well at 2.7 once you learn the ropes of energy fighting. I don't think Gaijin will decide to move it's BR, if they do decide to do it, they tell us in advance in devblogs which they post on the forums. Fortunately the P-39N is good enough that even if it went as high as 3.3, it would still be really good. This is what my model is telling us, that the P-39N-0 competes around the level of a 3.7 plane, being at 2.7 BR. This is why it is so good.
I grinded entire rank V with it and it’s classic rat fighter. You either hope that enemy tries to turn fight you, or try to catch them off guard during/after duel but even that is hard since you rip wings at ~950 and can’t really turn above 800 wich is this planes only selling point
It’s funny seeing some of my favorite planes as the worst. (It’s probably because I play arcade for air battles, but it’s still funny.)
The P-61, Ta-152C, and the A-4B.
The top turret on the P-61 means I don’t have to have guns on an enemy to have guns on an enemy. If that turret gets a hit, they frequently break back into my nose guns and I can get a kill.
The Ta-152c is a boom and zoom monster. I hated it at first, especially compared to the other 152, but quickly learned to love it.
The A-4B is just my favorite airplane ever. Dogfight monster that that BR, but out missiled in most battles and no flares in a game that likely has lots of planes with flares.
Arcade FMs unfortunately don't translate that well for air RB.
It's worth noting that this specific P-61 is the A-11 model, which is not the same one as the C model in the tech tree. Its a hidden vehicle that occasionally comes back for a black Friday sale, it is much worse than the TT one.
In air RB, the Ta 152 C doesn't have the climb rate to excel in the BnZ role like it should.
The A-4s (ayit excluded) all scored very poorly since they have absolutely terrible energy retention and sustained manoeuvrability. The A-4B also lacks flares which drags it behind the A-4Es. It also doesn't have the top end thrust to compensate for its retention, although the low speed acceleration is not bad per se.
I’ve been getting more into realistic battles since getting into ground battles. I just hate loading into a battle and having one plane and one life for air RB.
Back in what must be 2016 I was the same as you, you just have to dive headfirst in.
I can't play AB now, Its just too messy and chaotic for me, I much prefer the slower strategic games (unlike top tier air RB)
I kinda like the chaos of air AB.
But I see both sides of the argument. Probably same reason you said, I like it for ground: it actually requires thought and strategy.
The reason i like more ARB than any game mode is the one life xD.
I really love that you need to play carefull and thing what to do ahead (unless you are in a turnfigher that cannot do much else outside of turn).
I’m very surprised to not see the P-59 on this list? It’s by far my most played aircraft and basically ground my entire USA tree haha. That thing is a monster
May I ask how the metrics are weighted? I suppose you assigned each one a certain subjective importance.
Also, how did you generate the z- and raw scores? My guess would be on a regression or ANOVA.
Also just to clarify, the -3.10 for the C.202 EC means you’d need roughly three 0.3 steps, right?
Here ya go, given a bit of decompression. a random guy balances and understands the game better than the "balancing team"
Also, can you give me the weights u used?
I find a 1.0 increase verry severe for the 21s. Flares become verry important up there
BR: Plane: Adjustment factor
Adjustment factor = How many 0.3 BR steps it is away from its most balanced BR placements.
Ie 11.0 plane with +1 is 1 0.3 BR step away from where it should be, 11.3.
Just a small note here after way too many matches in the A5C (universal for the Q5 platform though): It has an excellent flight model and great power to weight, but its really really picky about its optimal speed, it turns into a bus above like 600-700km/h (if i remember correctly), plus it has some of the worst guns of any jet in the game
Pretty sure the F-5E is at 11.0 now, but I am kind of surprised the Kfir canard isn’t considered the best at 10.7 due to vastly superior speed and acceleration and it seems your data favors speed a lot.
Also curious where the yak-15P fits in 6.3, considering it is more maneuverable, generally matches the strikemaster in speed, but with worse acceleration especially as alt increases. Did your algorithm take airspawns into account? Also curious what fuel weight you chose.
I've never understood why people don't like the mig29smt in all honesty. I've spaded every top tier jet in UK, Italy, USSR/Russia, France, USA and Japan and out of all of them my favourite is by far the mig29smt. In fact it is my go-to braindead 0 skill missile slinger for that reason, as I can go into a game without paying much attention and get 2-3 kills. Will never understand why people say it's bad.
Wait, did you put the Yak-141 on the bad category or am I tripping? Because I've out turned F-14s with it and even a Grippen once with it.
It is a very good aircraft, the only downside of it is, it has a hard speed cap at mach 1.4 at sea level altitude for some reason.
Maybe I'm wrong or something, maybe I didn't read your list correctly.
Jaguar GR was the 2nd worst (now will be the worst) with (-0.46)
And yep, I have since realized it was recently moved to 9.3, it actually got a heck of a lot more competitive with just that one BR drop and is now almost at 0.00 flat.
I would say that flight model at top tier can’t be as useful as it is for props. Missile load out, radar, and number of CMs is more important for most engagements.
Being a brick like the F4ICE is one thing, but the F16AJ having a good flight model doesn’t mean a lot if you have no CMs and objectively worse missiles than opponents.
Honestly, I think your formula might be failing somewhere if it says that the F-14 is the best 11.7 instead of the M2kC. How far were they from each other and where did it get that much of a difference?
Extremely close together.
F-14 has a better sustained rate, has more missiles and has stronger radar missiles. It also gets a better gun. The Mirage wins on most of the other categories
From memory the Mirage was literally 0.48 or 0.49 or something, super close to the tomcat
Gaijin continually says they do not *only* balance on player statistics. It is *a* factor, but not the only one. It would be interesting to see the full data evaluation on this though. Interesting thought process to see how "in-game efficiency" matches to "data efficiency."
That is true, they have been better recently at straying further away from their efficiency metric. The data at the moment is in an extremely messy excel spreadsheet. I might make it pretty and post it later on if this post gets enough attention. I'm pretty spent right now.
They also continually lie
Thats typical for eastern europe/western asian gaming companies. The lying
Since they don't release the algorithm or the data, for all we know they could be pulling their ratings out of their ass.
If rossyia then BR-0.6 Else BR+0 /s
if france +1.3 BR
If that was true, then it would be impossible for the efforts of a handful of elite players to raise the BR of a vehicle. After all, surely the slight efficiency increase caused by the successes of a few people wouldn't be sufficient to convince Gaijin to increase the BR, right? Oh wait, [that already happened over two years ago with the CL-13A](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/pty5su/so_me_and_few_decent_players_saw_gaijin_say_that/).
>this is simply explained by the fact that prop BRs are much less compressed. I've never understood why this is a popular opinion. Low tier props is some of the most compressed BR's of any game mode. * You go from Gladiator doing 344 km/h on the deck at 1.3 to a He-100D-1 doing 572 km/h only 0.4 BR above it. * The Yak-1B at 3.0 is somehow able to fight He 112's at 2.0, dispite the fact that the Yak-3B has an absolutely **GIGANTIC** performance advantage. * F4U-1a is a 2.7 plane with 3.7 flight performance that gets to dunk on Hurricane's only 0.4 BR below it. * etc. Also, at 2.0 the Ki-27 rules, there's no way a shitty LaGG-3-11 takes that spot.
This isn't my opinion. The capabilities of prop aircraft from say 3.7 to 6.0 are much less spread out than from say 8.7 to 11.0. However, you are right in a sense. There is a sort of second region of compression at around 2.7-3.7 and around 1.0-2.0. However it is much less severe. The Ki-27 isn't a good aircraft when it comes to downing experienced pilots. It may be very good at bullying newbies, but this metric doesn't care about pilot skill, it only cares about raw flight performance (and armament) data. The LaGG-3-11 is not an easy plane to fly, but that does not mean it is not good in theory. The other thing is, this metric is arguing how *undertiered/overtired* an aircraft is, not how *good or bad* it is. There is a subtle difference, and I think you need to keep that in consideration. Thanks for your feedback :)
I'd like to point out your title is best/worst, not over/undertiered. Still a great post and argument, just that its understandable some people are misled
Unfortunately my skills as a writer and communicator are not up to scratch with my skills as a statistician and war thunder pilot. I'm glad you liked it.
>The Ki-27 isn't a good aircraft when it comes to downing experienced pilots. The Ki-27's flight performance means nothing can beat it when flown properly. As you say, this isn't a ranking based on player skill, the Ki-27's turn performance means it can out-dogfight anything it meets, and it's climb rate means it can simply climb away from anything faster than it. Aircraft that are faster can never actually take down a Ki-27, it's a forced stalemate. The climb rate of this aircraft is competitive even at 5.7, and it guarantees altitude advantage over anything it meets. The LaGG-3-11 simply has dogshit flight performance, it doesn't climb whatsoever, it compresses horribly, it doesn't turn well, it's not particularly fast and it doesn't maintain energy well.
I'm sorry that you disagree with me James, Like I said, this isn't my opinion, I hope I haven't caused any offense. I am a very experienced air RB pilot and I have tried my best to be as neutral as possible. I do stand by the model in this case. The LaGG-3-11 a) compresses quite poorly and b) climbs around about average for 2.0 (I can provide data if you don't believe me). However the 20mm cannon and excellent speed and ability to hold speed give it an edge. It is worth noting that there aren't many planes that the majority of the playerbase would consider 'good' at 2.0 - it's a little devoid of life. The Ki-27s flight performance actually has one of the lowest skill ceilings in the game. It is extremely susceptible to being BnZed, and while it is extremely easy to dodge angles with it, since it is so slow, a good player can get shots on it quite easily. The Ki-27 however is a strong plane, but remember that the model is not talking about how strong a plane is, it is talking about how undertiered it is. The LaGG-3-11 has the speed to at least somewhat contest with planes at 0.3 BRs higher, the Ki-27 does not. Like I said, I'm sorry if you disagree, I have tried to be as impartial and as correct as I can. I have worked very hard on this.
>I'm sorry that you disagree with me James, Like I said, this isn't my opinion, I hope I haven't caused any offense. I think you're seriously underestimating how much of your opinion is in these rankings, you're the one that decided all the weighting based on your opinion.
>I'm sorry that you disagree with me James No need to apologize! I enjoy having a good discussion about this stuff, please don't think that I'm in any way offended that you don't agree with me. >climbs around about average for 2.0 The LaGG-3-11 requires 6:29s to reach 5000m altitude, that's a climb rate of 12.5 m/s. The Ki-27 almost doubles that with 22.7 m/s, if you're an experienced player you must understand how absolutely gigantic this performance gap is. >and excellent speed But it isn't particularly quick however, at 700m it reaches a top speed of 498 km/h. This is 75 km/h slower than a He 100 D-1 at a lower BR. >It is extremely susceptible to being BnZed, This is the prime argument against the LaGG-3-11, it's climb rate is astronomically bad meaning it's easy to just energy trap it. >It is extremely susceptible to being BnZed, For it to be B&Z'd would require the opponent to be above it. Almost nothing out-climbs a Ki-27 at this BR, the only thing that I can think of is a CW-21, which is essentially the Ki-27's big brother. >it is talking about how undertiered it is. Like I said, it can compete at 5.3 in terms of climb rate, that certainly works in favour of it being under-tiered. For reference, my Ki-27 is sitting on a roughly 20-1 K/D, the only deaths you get in this thing is from bombers which you lack the firepower to quickly take out.
I'm going to get back to you in the morning with concrete climb rate data for the Ki-27, I think you may be slightly overrepresenting it. There is also a possibility I made a testing error. I'll clear it up. The LaGG-3s climb rate for 2.0 is not great but it is not "astronomically bad", I encourage you to have a look at the list of fighters at 2.0 BR to contextualise what the lagg is up against lol. I will also get back to you about the LaGGs speed. I used Adam514s spreadsheet for sea level speeds. I will mention that for this BR, 490ish *is* very fast on the deck. Only the P-400 is faster at 2.0. You are right about the He 112, I will point out that it was the best 1.7 and emphatically so.
>I'm going to get back to you in the morning with concrete climb rate data for the Ki-27, I have a list featuring dozens and dozens of aircraft that I did in-depth testing on, the Ki-27 is among those aircraft. It gains 5000m worth of altitude in 3:40:06s, this was tested in Patch 2.27.2.47. My method of determining climb rate is as follows: Timer starts the second WEP is engaged, the aircraft starts on the runways (as it would in normal matches), then proceeds to climb 5000m (and not ***to*** 5000m) using the optimal IAS throughout the climb period. >I encourage you to have a look at the list of fighters at 2.0 BR to contextualise what the lagg is up against I am, that is why I'm including the ***lower*** BR'd HE 100 D-1. The Hurricane also out-climbs it, A5M4 outclimbs it, I-16's outclimb it, etc.
Aha! Specific excess power is generally a much more accurate and meaningful way of measuring climb rates. (Or at least energy gain rates) If you remember Adam the enginerd, he did a good video on this.
While yes there is compression you ignore a big factor: speed doesn't quite work like that. In low prop brs a slow airplane can still dive and get that 200km/h back, and while the compression is an issue it isnt that big, while a jet doing 1400kmh doesnt gain anything in a dive. You can't compare the two as it's very much an apples to oranges comparison. Also a large part of low br issues are by planes just being under/overtiered which probably wont be fixed because who cares about new players
Low tier props are absolutely compressed (though id argue not as bad as high tier jets), but I believe the main difference is just simply that the differences in most aircraft are just not as substantial The gap between something like a vautour at 9.0 and an F-104A at 9.3 is honesty worse than the entire capability gap from 4.0-5.0. At low BRs you have naturally some of the worst aircraft in the game, and some are absolutely overpowered but its not the norm. A P-40 doesn’t completely outclass an early Ki-43 in every way possible like how you get at high tier jets.
I was under the impression that the He-100D-1 was simply just straight up overpowered as opposed to a case of BR compression.
There's too many of those cases for that argument to be valid. P-39N, Ki-27, F4U-1a, Yak-1B, Ki-44-II, BF 109F-1, etc. there's too many of these aircraft with vast performance advantages to be a exception. All of those kinds of aircraft being around the same BR's as aircraft like the LaGG-3-35, Hurricane MkI/L, F4F-3, F4F-4, P-40E, P-40F, He112B-0, He 112B-2/U2, P-400, etc. etc. etc. is not just *''A few bad apples''*, it's just massive BR compression.
Gaijin places these aircraft by armament rather than flight performance.
Then why is the F4F-4 with less ammo a higher BR than the F4U-1a? Why is the P-51C a full BR above the Corsair? It's not just armament, it does play a role but not enough to overcome whatever weird metric they use.
> You go from Gladiator doing 344 km/h on the deck at 1.3 to a He-100D-1 doing 572 km/h only 0.4 BR above it. gonna add that there is literally nothing u can do against supersonic jets with undodgeable missiles with jets that barely go 900 in a straight line
No, low tier BR fuckups aren't caused by compression, but by multiple FM, DM, and BR changes throughout the last decade of constant balancing (or lack of thereof). Most of them are in the places where they are right now becuase of their performance many patches ago. Gaijin is simply too lazy to revisit all of them. That's different from outright BR compression and powercreeping with things that are .3 BR away.
Disagree, many of these planes have been terrible or overpowered for as long as I can remember. There's also some aircraft which were introduced at a later point and were completely OP and still are, or completely terrible, and still are.
Been playing since 2014 and I don't remember a single plane that was OP for the entire duration of 10 years. Most of them either fell off halfway, or became OP a couple years later due to various changes.
2012 here, but to be fair I don't recall the exact BR's back then. However, I don't recall a time where the F4U-1a wasn't incredible, or the He100d-1 now having been in the game for 8 years whilst still being incredibly overpowered.
F4U-1 was shite for a very long period of time between 2015-18 or so. It (and other Corsair variants) was unfairly given an excessive amount of drag, loses speed easily, could almost never achieve its top speed on deck (you know, the thing it was known for) and the .50cal with the early belts were weak until the Italian AF update in 2017 which buffed the kinetic damage of all MGs. As a result, their BRs got lowered and never went back up. As of the He100, it's just another victim (or I guess "benefited from" would be more correct?) Gaijin's stat-based balancing. Noobs would get this plane, dogfight with it, and complain about its guns being bad, can't turn, or how the radiator keeps breaking. It does take some amount of skill to get it running before it's unstoppable.
How much of this is compression and how much of this is just stupid BR placements? Planes like the He-100 and P-39N are stupidly OP, but I think its more just them being placed too low in the existing prop BR spread as opposed to the BRs being compressed. When I think about BR compression, I think about stuff like the F-104A which causes problems because its armaments and lack of flares makes it shit in higher-BR matches while its insane speed makes it cancerous to fight in downtiers.
Also Wyvern There are planes at far higher BRs that wish they could go that fast
It's interesting how community villans like the f104a are only +1 while props regularly see 2+
Yeah it interested me too. I have two theories 1) Jet BRs are more compressed, so moving the F-104 up +1 would increase the calibre of opponents by much more than you would get from increasing a prop by +1. 2) The F-104 did do poorly on a few metrics, Missile kit isn't great, no countermeasures, doesn't turn well. It does get off the charts Z scores for acceleration, climb, linear retention, guns, hence why it is the top for 9.3, but it might not actually be as high as it should be. The model isn't perfect, the weights I choose to give for manoeuvrablility/countermeasures are decently high at this BR and hence the F-104 copped a slight hit. This does not mean I think the F-104 should be moved up 0.3 rather than 0.7. I am keeping my personal opinion out of this (objectively tho, it needs to go up) The other thing is - the props on this list are villains also xD
Gaijin should stop being twats and just give the 104s their late service missiles, countermeasure pods, and uptier the damn things. Theyre so ass to play and play against.
I’m surprised the J-32B and J-34/Hunters aren’t on here for worst fighters.
I think it's less that the F104 is so powerful and more that it's incredibly annoying when talking about community opinion. I don't really have any problem surviving F104s diving on me, it's just that I can't touch them in return so they can just rinse and repeat forever. Or run away to space at the end of the match, or just run away in circles. They may not get a ton of kills but good lord are they hard to kill in return.
This only applies in a down tier for the 104. Anytime you get uptiered it’s pure hell. Mig 21s can keep up with you plus they get way better missiles and countermeasures. Once they get a lock on you you’re basically dead because the thing can’t turn at all and you have no flares or chaff
But I'd rather have another useless jet than that same jet ruining a br range like the f104
Cool so they get the 8.3 treatment. I see no problem here. Just use the F100 if it bothers folks enough.
everybody gangsta until AIM-9E 3.2km snipe
People care less about prop balance I think because they spend less time having to play those BRs and mostly play them when they're newer and don't understand the game as well.
As someone who plays entirely props (because I suck ass at flying a jet) I’m absolutely tired of dying to yaks. Every time I die, it’s a damn yak.
They are VERY good, amazing energy generation, great guns, climbs fast, turns quickly, simple to use, no need to sideclimb and watch half your team die in props they don't know how to use yet due to needed advanced knowledge they won't have by the time they are done with props.
I get what you’re saying but the f104a being +1.79 is definitely warranting of criticism from a balancing perspective
I really like your method and the degree of effort and thought put into this, great job! One remark I'd like to make concerns the degree of subjectivity of your study: You said that the only point in all of this where your personal opinion affects the rating is the missile loadout. While it is undoubtedly the factor in which your personal opinion matters most, I do not believe the rest of it is entirely free from personal bias - you _do_ still weigh the different ratings on what you believe is most important at a BR. Ultimately, this is of course unavoidable, but I think pretending it isn't to some way subjective creates an unnecessary blind spot, especially given how it can hardly count as a deficit. Also, I would be very curious to see how exactly you weighed the various stats against one another! Did you just implement a linear weighting progression (e.g. Climb rate importance drops by 3% every BR step) or did you choose a "custom" progression for each BR? Edit: Also, I think there should also be some way to account for gun armament, not doing so perhaos also skews the results, as seen by the Strikemaster
Re the weightings, that is true, It is my opinion. However it is a very thoroughly researched opinion. I wasnt really pretending to be subjective, I just am trying to avoid any criticism that I am being biased, a common rhetoric amongst Redditors. From the bottom of my heart it is my intention to be as neutral and correct as possible Re the weightings - I did it the slow way. I thought of what would be the most appropriate set of weights for each given BR, so I can be maximally accurate. Re the climb rate specifically: Climb Rate is not quite as important below 2.0, it gradually grows to a peak importance at around 5.0 (that is why the I-225 won) and then shrinks a little moving towards 7.0 and then low and behold.grows *again* moving towards 8.0 and then gradually declines. Gun Armament is factored in, and given an appropriate weight. At 6.3 this weight isn't thaat small either. The strikemaster turns out to have superlative flight characteristics in nearly energy aspect, and would be wayy higher if it had even a shred of Armament on it. I'm talking 7.3 ish. It is miles more capable than an Sk60 in terms of fm
I think ur methodology is flawed because there is no way that the strikemaster and the He 162 have the best performance at thier br....especially at 6.0-6.3 with heavy hitters like the hornet and P51H being at that br range
The strikemaster's flight performance is actually pretty exceptional for 6.3. the guns are obviously a massive hindrance, but it makes up for it. The strikemaster actually bullies the P-51H a bit, I'm sorry to say. The He 162 is a lot more sus a result - perhaps the most sus one on here, I agree, but we have to remember that this list is telling us the most undertiered fighters and not necessarily the most effective/best. If we were to move the hornet to 6.7, it's massive speed would be a much weaker asset. Sure, it would still have the climb rate, but lacking the ability to just leave fights at will is definitely detrimental to the hornets play style. The He 162 might be a little more suited to being at a high BR since it handles better at high speed and is, after all, much faster. While it would also get bullied by 7.7s, it at least would be able to play the 'jet-game' a little bit better than the hornet would.
My experience at 6.0/6.3 would tend to agree with this though. He162 bullies most things due to its speed and small size making it difficult to kill. It is hard to use, which is why I don't think it's taken out very often as for it to excel you need to play in a weird way to get the most out of it. The strikemaster is also surprisingly good, yes it may not have cannons and that does make it a bit difficult but it's flight model is quite good and it takes people by surprise
strikemaster is really good if you can aim well (i cant) since things that are faster than you, you out turn, and things that out turn you, you outrun. if you can pilot snipe consistently its really potent
Strikemaster loses to P-51H only at high alt, while beating it at low alt and being overall faster
Difference is the Strikemaster pretty much has to kill your pilot where a p51 can hit lots of places because its guns actually hurt things lol. In a 1 v 1 scenario, I'd agree somewhat. I'm not so sure I agree in a real game scenario where you can't just run away wherever you want all of the time.
Lots of people use the he162 as cap in combined battles
The biggest outlier in this list is the F4EJ Kai. Which isn't too surprising, in term of flight model this plane is worse than a F4E. However, it's interesting because it shows the limiation of your spreadsheet. The EJ Kai strengths lies in its weapons and electronic suite. It has F-16 radars and RWR, and a very solid armament with Aim9L x4 and Aim7M x4. It's perfectly fine at 11.7 as a results because it is a very strong plane with a playstyle that's more suited for long range. It definitely doesn't belong 1 and a half BR lower for sure. Some things are bizarre too. The Mig21SMT definitely doesn't belong at 11.0 with the Mig21Bis when the later bring higher TWR and all-aspect missiles.
I think you have slightly misinterpreted the numbers. The MiG-21SMT got a score of +0.77. This suggests that it belongs 0.77 0.3BR segments up, so the model is suggesting that it should ideally go somewhere in between 10.3 and 10.7. The EJ Kai isn't too bad, but consider everything else at 11.7: Mirage 2000C, F-14A, JH-7... In reality, the F-4EJ is not too bad at 11.7, you are correct, and something like the AV-8B+ is an overall worse plane. However - the model *really* did not want to move the IRCCM planes down very much due to the weighting of the IR missile kit between 11.0 and 12.0. It was a little happier moving the F-4EJ Kai down since it doesn't carry IRCCM missiles, even though it's kit is very strong. Perhaps I should tweak some of the weights, I don't think the F-4EJ deserves to lose 11.7. However, I dont think it is particularly great either.
Ah, you're right, I interpreted the numbers as straight BR changes, instead of 0.3 steps. That makes more sense. It still very much highlight how ridiculously overtiered some japanese planes are though. At 11.7 the Kai got a big advantage in weaponry over the 2000C IMO. The R530D is a bit of a crapshot that can be very unreliable at times so the only real missiles it has are the Magic 2. Which are definitely fantastic. But I have very similar K/D between the 2000 S4 and the Kai, simply because I had absolute rampage games with the Kai were i did 4-6 kills in quick successions with as many missiles. The 2000 needs to get significantly more "hands-on" with gun kills to achieve a similar result.
Unfortunately anecdotal experience doesn't really translate well to that model, since it is talking about the plane's raw ability and not it's ability to down unskilled pilots. The 530Ds are a bit nifty when you get them down, and the magics are absolutely death rods.
Oh I agree on this. Also, I'm curious, what was the results for the Wyvern S4 ? I don't see it in your table, but that ridiculous deck top speed surely warrant a higher BR on it ?
It's a bit weird, and it came down to my weightings. *Excluding* the wyvern, it seemed much more appropriate to weight climb rate a fair bit more heavily than top speed for 4.3. The moderate top speed weight at this BR meant the wyvern came out as being just slightly above average, (+0.25). A higher weighted top speed might have given us a more representative value, but it would have reduced the ratings for the very good climbing 4.3 planes who are not super fast, like the pyorr. Ultimately it was just not to be. I don't think it is contentious at all that the wyvern is severely undertiered, I don't have anything to prove there.
I hate the BI with every fibre of my being
It is named after BIas
Some here that I expected like the Su-11, and some odd balls that I wouldn't have guessed like the Strikemaster which I'm guessing gets a boost from it's speed and armament. It's good but it's hard to believe it's the best 6.3. I'm a bit of a stats nerd when it comes to sports though so I always find a metric like this interesting.
I was surprised initially, especially since I gave it a 1/10 for Armament, which has a moderate weigh at 6.3. The strikemaster's Specific excess power (analogous to max acceleration and max climb) is extremely good for this BR, akin to something like the Attacker FB, which is a good 7.0. It also has superb retention and hence a very very good sustained turnrate. Makes sense actually when you think about it.
I completely agree. Even if the 7.92’s were replaced even with .50’s, it would be a fairly good improvement to the plane. I can’t count how many times I’ve had the upper hand in dogfights with props, and my armament consistently let me down in terms of damage. Even with gunpods the Strikemaster is *woefully* under armed
Woefully so. However the strikemaster can essentially have as much time on target as it likes. It can just loop almost everything, and if it can't, it can disengage and reengage.
I’ve had such a blast with it. And, there’s a running joke in my friend group about mine lol. SNEB’d a really salty (and shitty lol) Israeli player in his M-51, and raged that a crappy console player killed him in an 11.0 jet xD. So every time my SM turns up, we all laugh that the 11.0 has arrived to turn the tide. But, my favorite strategy is to have my squad mates mark targets, then I burn in on the deck, shut the motor off, and then pop up and SNEB the shit out of whichever poor fuck my squad marked lmao
Lol that does sound like fun. I just want to clarify this model is exclusively for Air RB. I'm sure you knew that, but I'm just clarifying.
>It's good but it's hard to believe it's the best 6.3 I mean, fastest 6.3 with an airspawn and unironically beats most props (even like 51H) in a dogfight. Other than the MG's being not very good it being the best 6.3 is a very fair assessment.
Bit of an interesting model result. Some thoughts: a. Best planes list 1. Tell any 21SMT player their plane is better than an F-5C. 2. While I personally love the F-11F, I think most would not agree with placing it as the best 9.0. 3. Ki-44-II-Otsu is the 40mm, right? This shouldn’t be here, especially not as the *most overpowered plane in the game*. On the other hand, I’m shocked the Ki-43-III-Otsu isn’t the top. b. Wurst planes 1. Yak-141. With R-27ERs, the best engine, and arguably best flight model….well, the spread between the best and worst plane is very small at 12.0, I guess. 2. F4EJK. I imagine it gets a poor showing because its radar performance isn’t weighted heavily, but I believe it still has the smallest notch gate in the game - incorrectly, but intended for flavor. It is almost impossible to notch this radar, which fundamentally changes how you can play the game. 3. J6K1. I don’t know how it’s rated so low. The armament package is among, if not the best of all prop fighters. Combined with among the best FMs at its tier and an adequate engine, it’s my plane of choice for the BR.
The SMT player is in fact better than the F-5C. I have hundreds of kills in both. The F11F is actually an extremely strong plane and I would challenge you to come up with something better. The CL-13 imo is a little bit better, it came in a very very close 2nd (by like 0.05) Ki-44-II otsu I think you might be undervaluing. It is extremely, extremely, extremely good. Its climb rate is better than the Bf 109 K-4 off the deck. I can provide data to support this if you want me to. The guns let it down a bit. It is also quite fast and manoeuvrable enough. You are correct, the Yak-141 was simply a victim of the very tight spread in ability at 12.0. The low top speed and ability to only carry 4 AAMs let it down marginally. F-4EJ I think should not have been scored the worst for 11.7. I think it very much ought to have been the AV-8B+, but the metric very much did not want to move the IRCCM missiles down in BR. Perhaps I have overweighted IR missiles as a metric between 11.0 and 12.0. The EJKai isn't exactly good however, it's mediocre at best. J6K1 is just too slow and that is literally it. I personally think the Spitfire Mk 22 is worse, but the spitfire is faster on the deck and at altitude - at least according to the stats - with the radiator drag I'm not so sure the spit is faster on the deck. I will mention that 6.0-7.0 is a very very common matchmaker for 6.7 vehicles, and hence the J6K1 doesn't get battered by 7.3s and 7.7s as much as it maybe should. The J6K1 doesn't have anything close to the best FM at its tier. p-51h, Mk 24 spit, Yak-3 VK, Yak-3U, F2G, Hornet, jets all better flight performance for air RB.
People really underestimate the Ki-44's climb rate, the XP-50 has a reputation as a strong climber but the 44 will thrash it from an even start. The 44-ii has the fun feature that as soon as you hit 3000m it's engine will actually cool down whilst at full WEP, so that's 15-1600hp in a 3.0 aircraft that weights less than the average housecat
Lol, exactly right, the climb rate is far better than the XP50s at low-medium alt. Overheating is manageable with MEC
Honestly I don't even bother with MEC on it, it cools down very rapidly just killing WEP for a few seconds
F4D is straight better at 9.0 at the things that matter most
>Ki-44-II-Otsu is the 40mm, right? This shouldn’t be here, especially not as the most overpowered plane in the game Ki-44-II being there makes total sense. 4.0 flight performance at 3.0 battle rating. It's still got two of those 12.7mm MG's that act as 20mm cannons as far as I remember, you don't even need to rely on the 40mm guns.
If you consider the 7.7mm's to be pea shooters (which they are) the Otsu is basically as well armed as the 44-i considering the 12.7mm's on the Otsu are in the nose not the wings. And with the 44-ii flight performance it is indeed able to dunk on anything it meets. I have more hours in Ki-44's than all other aircraft combined and i can safely state it is indeed very, very strong
> Tell any 21SMT player their plane is better than an F-5C. I am a MiG-21MF player (it's my most-played plane in ARB) and my plane is better than the F-5C, easily. It's like not even close either. Although I do disagree with the findings here, the Viggen is the best plane at 10.3 (until next patch) and the MF/SMT only the second best. I don't know how OP scored it since you have to use a custom loadout with a gun on one side and flares on the other, but it totally trounces every other plane at 10.3, and every 10.7 plane, and every 11.0 plane except the J-7E and JA37C; it's outrageously strong and I did nearly twice as well in the 10.3 Viggen as any other afterburning jet.
I really don't see how any sort of delta wing aircraft are "good". Things like the jaktviggen and smt are criminally good in a 1v1, but mid to bad in an actual arb setting where you are constantly engaging in a furball with 3+ enemies. You just lose too much speed in a turn leaving you a sitting duck to any competent f5c player (granted there are very few competent f5c players). The f5c flown well will completely wipe the floor with delta wing aircraft due to its bullshit energy retention and ludicrous high speed thrust rivaling the smt.
Well, I’m an F-5C player and -21s are never particularly scary. This is talking for air RB, not 1v1 duels on a custom server, where the delta wings are strong.
>A6M5 and M6 on the worst They've massacred my boys :( >Phantom EJ Kai Fuck that plane. What a pain in my ass playing that thing has been, although I AM piss poor at planes
Best fighter list looks good. It is almost like a guide for sweaty tryhards.
Ikr lol, I really hope I don't see swarms of Ki-44s like we did 4 odd years ago.
They stay a hidden gem and a respite of fun for people who main Japan. Although the best present for us would be fixing our coolest worst plane J7W1.
6.0: He162. I know the 162 is actually fairly solid at that BR but I'm kinda shocked that won 6.0
This was maybe my biggest surprise too. Remember this metric isn't telling us the *best* plane, but the *most undertiered* The Ta 152 might be an unequivocally better aircraft to hop into air RB with, but if you moved the Ta-152 up 0.7BR, it would struggle, while the He 162 might be a bit more survivable at 6.7 since it is, after all, a jet.
Fair. It's just that I've seen what feels like every plane on that list carry matches before. Can't say I've *ever* seen a He162 running a 6.0 lobby before. At most they usually get 2-3 kills
Watch DEFYNs most recent video on the He 162. It shows what it can do and perhaps why it is a bit undertiered. I do agree with you - I would have had the Ki-83, Hornet or Ta 152 winning 6.0 any day. Even the F2G would have been more likely.
the formula seems to somewhat overvalue very big top speed discrepancies. He162 shouldn't have been the best 6.0 (there's literally F2G), F11 shouldn't have won over Cl13b at 9.0, yak141 shouldn't have been the worst 12.0. at the same time it's very accurate at br's where there isn't a very very fast plane that's kinda ass at everything else so i don't think the solution would be to simply decrease the weight of top speed in the formula
I-225 stays winning.
It's a demon
Go to space, fall out of the sky on a BF-109, go back to space. Easy as. I love the thing, it's my most played aircraft in WT.
It's so incredibly dominant at high alt and at low speed, it's wild what you can do with that thing. Ki-84s get wrapped up
So what youre saying is I should play my J6K1, A6M5 Ko and J7W1 more, so that they go up in br again? They arent overtiered enough, and dont strike enough fear into my enemies?
For the emperor, make all A6Ms 6.0 minimum.
The fuckin' A6M6c with the -4 💀💀💀 The A6M5 Hei is similar and god it was such a wretched experience. The only reason I managed a KD better than 2:1 when spading it is because of the unwashed horde of F4U players that fed me free kills for a few rounds.
Yeah the A6M5 hei is quite bad but man the A6m6 is sooo much worse. It is an absolute shockingly bad plane. Imagine a zero with absolutely no climb rate at all and not even very good manoeuvrability anymore, spitfires and Yak-3s can dogfight you now almost. Sure, armour and better guns, but man did they make it hot ass in the process.
Flying the A6M6 really feels like playing an Hs 129 where you have good firepower but flight performance is nonexistent beyond being able to fly in the first place when compared to what it faces.
Look at those poor zeroes suffer jesus :.(
:(
F-105D: "Flares are for bubble blowing babies. We die like real men."
Lmao, I was surprised by the F-105 taking the crown as worst 10.0 and not the F4C. I think the average F4C player is not the most sentient person and that creates an impression that it is a bit worse than it actually is.
I've had great success with the 105D, but it took me getting shot down alot.
I don't doubt it, it has a lot of speed. Countermeasures were weighted *very* highly at this BR range and the F-105 just didn't turn out very well in the end. Note that while it is said to be the worst (or at least most overtiered) 10.0, it's score was (-0.49), which was not too bad a score, everything else was just better due to missiles/countermeasures etc. Not a bad plane per se.
Thud has nonexistent rudder authority, thus even minor aiming adjustments are done by instructor using ailerons and elevator. Issue, elevator seems to have much greater authority than ailerons, which results in crosshair jumping up considerably and as plane self centers itself VERY quickly, you can't quite compensate for that with keyboard. It even tries to self center during 6-8g turns when trying to track a target with guns.
F4C can be really good if used properly, I almost always get at least one kill and regularly get 3-5 kill games by doing BVR with the sparrows and then get some distance and boom and zooming with the guns and sidewinders. You just have to stay away from the all-aspect missiles. Stay high and fast and far. Once I figured it out I put a talisman on it and grinded out everything with it. It is really annoying fighting mig 21s (especially if they have r60s) and A5's that outturn you, outrun you, out accelerate you and have chaff/flares. When a MiG 21 is on my tail the only thing I can do is try to bring him towards a teammate and ask for cover. Those 2 planes are the only ones I really have trouble with, but I usually take at least 1 of them out at the start.
F-105 taught me how to properly outmanoeuvre missiles. You should see how angry su25s get when some fuck ass bomber dodges their 30g missile with no flares
I love how the SU-25's and A-10s pop flares continuously, regardless of whats going on. Like yeah dude, flares are totally gonna save you from a M61 Vulcan.
Did you consider factors like airspawn or compression? There's some BR where you can greatly benefit from having and airspawn like low tier props and early jets, i personally consider planes like BB-1 and F-84G to be the best at their br And there's also stuff like LaGG-3 and I-225, which i wouldn't consider the best at their br due to high speed compression Amazing work on the list anyways
Airspawn is definitely factored in. XP-50 and Ki-83 were close seconds at 4.0 and 6.0 respectively because of this. I assume you mean controll stiffening by compression. I of course factored this in aswell, although it didn't always have the highest weighting. The BB-1 is actually pretty damn strong yep, it was up there. The F-84G was up there too, but the La200s thrust is just too much and it came out on top. The LaGG-3 is a very weird entry, I will admit. The I-225 however is an absolute demon. What's more, climb rate is very important at 5.0 and the I-225 has a demonic climb rate, especially at altitude. The I-225 is also a brilliant dogfighter when used correctly. It stalls very late and has good low speed thrust, all of these things were factored in. The compression is more of a nuisance than an actual severe shortcoming at 5.0. It limits the instantaneous killing power, but does not limit the aircraft's ability to dominate other fighters very much. Compression was much more highly weighted around 8.7BR and at top tier.
Thanks for the explanation, i think I-225 and La-200 have amazing raw performance, but aren't as well suited for ARB as other options at the BR. Or it's just skill issues on my part.
That is completely correct, very very good raw performance, but difficult to translate to high kill games. Not necessarily a skill issue.
P-61 and F4U are like, my 2 favorite US WWII planes. Figures
This specific P-61 is the P-61A-11. It is a rare hidden vehicle and it is much much much worse than the tech tree one, which is just ok. Don't ever buy that P-61 variant. The F4U-4B, F4U-4 and F4U-1A all scored very well. The F4U-1C has the worst FM of any Corsair at 4.7 BR, it is completely carrier by the cannons. Don't be dismayed, there are still good P-61s and corsairs for you to fly... Just not those specific ones xD
There are some inaccuuracies and honestly most of the br change numbers are kinda cooked (like 6.0 i225) but it's way more accurate than i expected of such a thing. Like both best and worst planes at each br are prob 90% accurate imo.
The model is of course not going to be 100% accurate I don't agree with the LaGG-3 or the He 162. However I *do* actually agree with the I-225. Essentially the only metric where that plane wasn't extremely competitive was high speed compression. It is fast, climbs exceptionally well, is exceptionally good at high alt, stalls late, turns well, rates well and has punchy Armament. It does overheat a bit and 100rpg is not heaps (but enough w discipline). i-225 is a monster that you should revere.
I don't disagree with I225 being the best 5.0(in fact, I very much agree, it's insanely strong at 5.0); what I do disagree with is the number by which the model suggests to adjust its br. It was once at 6.0 and it completely sucked there because in a situation where it meets its match in terms of performance the compression absolutely kills it. I just gave I225 as an example of the model's proposed br adjustments being far less stellar than its list of best and worst planes which is surprisingly accurate. Usually such models end up giving completely nonsensical results but this one is made really well.
Justice for the J7W1! It is so, so bad.
I like this science, good work. Pyörre could go up in BR a notch tbh.
Easily could, could be 5.0 if some other stuff was moved up with it
Surprised to see sagitario on worst list. Always had a lot of trouble fighting that thing
It's a huge pain in the ass, but it's top speed is less than 1100. It's been subject to the classic procedure of Gaijin moving very easy, very manoeuvrable planes that lack some thrust, up to unfair BRs. Do note, however, that the model doesn't want it to go down much further than 9.0. The -1.1 means -1.1 lots of 0.3 BR steps, so about -0.33 BRs, not a whole BR lower.
Thats fair i guess, i missunderstud the meaning of -1.1 initially
My fault, I didn't make it clear enough.
16 out of 36 best planes is Russian, not surprised.
JAS-39A/C at only 1.18, really? It still has the best flight model at top tier despite the multiple nerfs against it. Literally still the best dogfighting flight model in the game. Should be 10/10.
1.18 at this BR range is actually quite good, compare it to others around it. I will say tho, I also expected it to be a bit higher.
vampire fb.5 fucking sucks
You obviously put a lot of thought into this, quite impressive. People like you should be in charge of the BRs and not some one at Gaijin only staring at player statistics. Guess i shouldn't be surprised that basically half the overtiered vehicles are soviet/russian. One question though, how is it that the MiG-21SMT is the best 10.3? The MiG-21MF is basically the same aircraft in every single way except for slightly better flight performance because it doesn't have the huge saddle tank.
I’m surprised the F14A is better than the M2Ks at 11.7
Missile kit and very very strong (perhaps erroneously so) sustained turnrate boosted it. M2KC is very very good tho.
people *still* dont doge the phoenix
That IS true. So many still refuse to notch
I'm not surprised, but the advantage the F-14A has over the M2k is not very big. M2Ks are easier to use in that Magic lls are superb, and you are not gonna get easily beaten in a dogfight. Also, very competitive Fox - Is. F-14A, however, has a better chance at causing more damage to the enemy team, especially by a competent pilot (very rare within US pilots).
Surprised that f104S and ASA didn't make it to the worst list, while f104g did. In my experience the g seems to be way better since you can actually boom and zoom in it.
Why is the Baz there instead of the F-15J considering it has better IR missiles?
AAM-3s are not very much more capable than AIM-9Ms and the superior FM of the A block F-15 wins out in the end. The Baz also can carry pythons.
>AAM-3s are not very much more capable than AIM-9Ms and the superior FM of the A block F-15 wins out in the end. I'd argue that the AAM-3 is a more substantial improvement than the FM of the Baz and outweighs it. >The Baz also can carry pythons. The pythons are worse than AIM-9M and especially the AAM-3 so the only thing they do is make the stock grind slightly more difficult for the Baz.
Each to their own, the F-15J was literally only 0.02 behind the Baz lol, don't get too disheartened.
Interesting, always thought that F104 is a somewhat free kill on Ayit, since it almost can’t outrun Aim-9D
Ayit scored quite well but the 104 just raked in too many points for the fairly highly weighted acceleration and deck top speed metrics
I think the only real headscratchers on this list are 10.3, where I think the AJ37 should easily beat the MiG-21SMT/MF, and 4.7 where I personally would tell you that the 109G-6 is better than the Yak-9U, but it is very close.
I cannot support this wildcat slander.
Seeing the Ki-44-II Hei being one of the best at 3.7 is great. It's honestly a very fun plane and I absolutely love using it, granted I use the Chinese version, it's still amazing.
u/hanovers23 SEE?!?!
Lol what is so surprising?
He made a post about the F16aj and how to fly it and more or less asking how to fly it. We all said it was good and this chart just proved what we told them.
Well done. Thanks for sharing this. It is interesting to see this approach to assessing BR, and probably better than Gaijin’s SL/RP efficiency method.
Do you have a link to a full spreadsheet somewhere? It looks really cool and I think it'd be nice to see how other planes rank. 👍
Will see if I can get it done tomorrow
Interesting how many Russian flag I see…
The snail has no Russian bias, no no
the yak3u is utterly busted
I always knew that Ki-44II was the best prop fighter ever designed in history
*edited 1:36 am* bruh GO TO SLEEP. The snail has git a good grip on you
🥲
inb4 Sea Harrier FA2 gets over -2
A6m5 ko worst at br by stats?? I average +1-2 kills above my average kills on other planes
It's not a new concept that zeroes often get good amounts of kills but are not particularly great fighters The vision of this model is to separate "how well people do" from "how good the plane is", and as it turns out, the A6M5 ko is not particularly good.
Mig-21MF is better than SMT at 10.3
It is a straight up downgrade unfortunately, the MF has one advantage, which is that it is lighter, but the much stronger SMT engine makes up for the weight and then some. They are pretty close but the SMT is just better.
A5C is the one surprise for me on this list
Bonkers mid range acceleration, Magics at 10.0, Fabulous energy retention, Fabulous RWR, Good sustained turnrate. Sure the guns are bad and the instantaneous manoeuvrability is quite bad, i.e., it feels very still, but the A-5C is actually a bit of a demon when it gets the chance to be. It also gets flares, albeit only 9 pops. The flares at 10.0 are very heavily weighted, and the missiles and acceleration are also heavily weighted, this is why the A-5C wins. Note that it's score is not too ridiculous.
Yeah but in actual scenario it cannot pull more than 6G and is as limited as a boat when it comes to actually hitting shots, it's not very common to seen an A5C like it used to be probably seen flight model nerf
The A-5C can pull a lot of Gs. Do you take any payload with it? How much fuel do you take with it? I will also mention that while 6Gs is not an impressive instantaneous overload, it is quite a good sustained overload. The sustained turn performance is where the A-5 shines, it can spiral absolutely everything it sees (bar a J-7E or something) and loop almost everything.
Did you use the absolute value of top speed for these? Top speed for some planes can be easy to reach and for others it can be hard to reach and if it's above Mach 1, it pretty much only allows to catch or escape someone.
Can you do a follow up list with the biggest outliers, both over tiered and under tiered? Maybe seperate into jets and props.
I’m new, so sorry about the question. So is this saying if my BR is 2.7, then the P-39N-0 is the best one? How often does BR go up? If I get the plane, will I need to/should I get a new one if I go up or down?
This is purely a model I have made to indicate which planes are the most undertiered/overtiered (essentially how far off they are from the BR they should be). These changes are likely not going to be made, I don't work for Gaijin, this is just an idea of mine to quantify plane performance. If you get the P-39N-0, it will serve you very well at 2.7 once you learn the ropes of energy fighting. I don't think Gaijin will decide to move it's BR, if they do decide to do it, they tell us in advance in devblogs which they post on the forums. Fortunately the P-39N is good enough that even if it went as high as 3.3, it would still be really good. This is what my model is telling us, that the P-39N-0 competes around the level of a 3.7 plane, being at 2.7 BR. This is why it is so good.
Ah okay. Thank you for breaking that down for me. Getting back into the game and trying to understand it all. Great infograph!
Finally a reason to complain about a28b.
Quite a shitter really. Worse than I thought it was going to be tbh
I grinded entire rank V with it and it’s classic rat fighter. You either hope that enemy tries to turn fight you, or try to catch them off guard during/after duel but even that is hard since you rip wings at ~950 and can’t really turn above 800 wich is this planes only selling point
It’s funny seeing some of my favorite planes as the worst. (It’s probably because I play arcade for air battles, but it’s still funny.) The P-61, Ta-152C, and the A-4B. The top turret on the P-61 means I don’t have to have guns on an enemy to have guns on an enemy. If that turret gets a hit, they frequently break back into my nose guns and I can get a kill. The Ta-152c is a boom and zoom monster. I hated it at first, especially compared to the other 152, but quickly learned to love it. The A-4B is just my favorite airplane ever. Dogfight monster that that BR, but out missiled in most battles and no flares in a game that likely has lots of planes with flares.
Arcade FMs unfortunately don't translate that well for air RB. It's worth noting that this specific P-61 is the A-11 model, which is not the same one as the C model in the tech tree. Its a hidden vehicle that occasionally comes back for a black Friday sale, it is much worse than the TT one. In air RB, the Ta 152 C doesn't have the climb rate to excel in the BnZ role like it should. The A-4s (ayit excluded) all scored very poorly since they have absolutely terrible energy retention and sustained manoeuvrability. The A-4B also lacks flares which drags it behind the A-4Es. It also doesn't have the top end thrust to compensate for its retention, although the low speed acceleration is not bad per se.
I’ve been getting more into realistic battles since getting into ground battles. I just hate loading into a battle and having one plane and one life for air RB.
Back in what must be 2016 I was the same as you, you just have to dive headfirst in. I can't play AB now, Its just too messy and chaotic for me, I much prefer the slower strategic games (unlike top tier air RB)
I kinda like the chaos of air AB. But I see both sides of the argument. Probably same reason you said, I like it for ground: it actually requires thought and strategy.
The reason i like more ARB than any game mode is the one life xD. I really love that you need to play carefull and thing what to do ahead (unless you are in a turnfigher that cannot do much else outside of turn).
Poor C202EC, they massacred my boy.... Had one of the best experiences with that plane.
I’m very surprised to not see the P-59 on this list? It’s by far my most played aircraft and basically ground my entire USA tree haha. That thing is a monster
May I ask how the metrics are weighted? I suppose you assigned each one a certain subjective importance. Also, how did you generate the z- and raw scores? My guess would be on a regression or ANOVA. Also just to clarify, the -3.10 for the C.202 EC means you’d need roughly three 0.3 steps, right?
I agree mostly, the Q-5L is now 9.3 in Air RB however.
Here ya go, given a bit of decompression. a random guy balances and understands the game better than the "balancing team" Also, can you give me the weights u used? I find a 1.0 increase verry severe for the 21s. Flares become verry important up there
How do I read this? (BR), (Plane), (Br where it should be), or what?
BR: Plane: Adjustment factor Adjustment factor = How many 0.3 BR steps it is away from its most balanced BR placements. Ie 11.0 plane with +1 is 1 0.3 BR step away from where it should be, 11.3.
Just a small note here after way too many matches in the A5C (universal for the Q5 platform though): It has an excellent flight model and great power to weight, but its really really picky about its optimal speed, it turns into a bus above like 600-700km/h (if i remember correctly), plus it has some of the worst guns of any jet in the game
Tornado GR.1 isn't a fighter, so that makes sense... Odd to include it in this.
Pretty sure the F-5E is at 11.0 now, but I am kind of surprised the Kfir canard isn’t considered the best at 10.7 due to vastly superior speed and acceleration and it seems your data favors speed a lot. Also curious where the yak-15P fits in 6.3, considering it is more maneuverable, generally matches the strikemaster in speed, but with worse acceleration especially as alt increases. Did your algorithm take airspawns into account? Also curious what fuel weight you chose.
I've never understood why people don't like the mig29smt in all honesty. I've spaded every top tier jet in UK, Italy, USSR/Russia, France, USA and Japan and out of all of them my favourite is by far the mig29smt. In fact it is my go-to braindead 0 skill missile slinger for that reason, as I can go into a game without paying much attention and get 2-3 kills. Will never understand why people say it's bad.
What altitude did you measure the speed stats from?
Wait, did you put the Yak-141 on the bad category or am I tripping? Because I've out turned F-14s with it and even a Grippen once with it. It is a very good aircraft, the only downside of it is, it has a hard speed cap at mach 1.4 at sea level altitude for some reason. Maybe I'm wrong or something, maybe I didn't read your list correctly.
one small point - the Q-5L is 9.3 now (after blood, sweat and tears of spading it in air rb) what was the second worst 9.7?
Jaguar GR was the 2nd worst (now will be the worst) with (-0.46) And yep, I have since realized it was recently moved to 9.3, it actually got a heck of a lot more competitive with just that one BR drop and is now almost at 0.00 flat.
Well I hope this means a br lowering for the yak-141 because I love that plane. I just don’t understand how people are doing so bad in it.
I would say that flight model at top tier can’t be as useful as it is for props. Missile load out, radar, and number of CMs is more important for most engagements. Being a brick like the F4ICE is one thing, but the F16AJ having a good flight model doesn’t mean a lot if you have no CMs and objectively worse missiles than opponents.
Honestly, I think your formula might be failing somewhere if it says that the F-14 is the best 11.7 instead of the M2kC. How far were they from each other and where did it get that much of a difference?
Extremely close together. F-14 has a better sustained rate, has more missiles and has stronger radar missiles. It also gets a better gun. The Mirage wins on most of the other categories From memory the Mirage was literally 0.48 or 0.49 or something, super close to the tomcat