20mm shVAK cannons need to get nerfed

[AverageWehraboo]

@Real_K_Soze

I encourage you to spend more time at BR 3.0 - 5.0 in RB.

I do spend quite some time there and all of them have meta counterparts in other trees. Furthermore none of the extremely good sealclubbers (between 3.0-5.0) are in the soviet tree.

@Real_K_Soze

3.0 - Yak-1B - i bought the German premium, very oppressive

Worse than the P-39N (2.7) and not even close to the Ki-44 II Otsu (3.0)

@Real_K_Soze

3.7 - Yak-9M - rare but moderate oppressive

Nothing special about this Yak-9 and is worse than most fighters it encounters

@Real_K_Soze

4.3 - Yak-3(e) - common, oppressive even in full uptiers
4.7 - Yak-3 - a pain in the ass, you have to kill them whatever it takes

Both get shit on by the Pyörremyrsky and F8F-1

@Real_K_Soze

The issues of ShVaks is exactly the issue of being nose mounted - it kills the convergence issues of wing mounted cannons.

It’s an advantage for sure but there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s like complaing US aircraft have too much ammo. It’s the way it was chosen to be during the war and that’s the way it stays in game.

@Real_K_Soze

Besides that: There is an ultra-long and highly detailed thread called “Cannons do too much damage” in which the ShVak was mentioned countless times. You might check this thread in order to understand why a lot of players (including me) see the ShVaks as over-performing - and that gaijin ignores this for 3 years…

Cannons overperforming is a good thing and the weak should be raised to the standard of the current meta guns. I want the game to actually punish mistakes instead of having every garbage player be invincible because all fighters turn into bullet sponges.

[Real_K_Soze]

Seeing your reply as a whole it looks like we talk about different things:

You see it from the perspective of an experienced player able to deal with threats - i see it from the perspective of the average impact of ShVaks in classic Air RB matches when average skilled pilots meet each other and how they influence the outcome.

So alone the exchange about “oppressive” made this clear - it is not about individual strengths or weaknesses of aircraft in direct comparison, it is about their general impact when average players fight each other.

And here the 20mm ShVak allow way too easy kills for plain average users as they are easy to use (see ballistics and placement) and support plain stupid play styles like head-ons in infinite loops beginning at BR 2.0 in Air RB - exactly due to the too high damage output in relation to their BR.

I addressed this topic in a previous BR adjustment round:

@Real_K_Soze

Vehicle: All aircraft with 20 mm ShVak armaments
Game Mode: Air RB / Air Realistic
BR change: All aircraft gets a BR increase of +0.3
Reasoning: Gaijin buffed the (historically correct) low damage output of the 20 mm ShVak with RS 3.0. Together with the ballistic update the weapon became extremely easy to use whilst their damage output raised exponentially without any BR increase.

Soviet aircraft suffered always from the combination of low ammo count (usually 120-150 rounds) and low damage output. As a direct result these aircraft were positioned lower in their BR than their flight performance would justify.

With the damage output buff it is no rare occasion to see even absolute rookies racking up 4-5 kills in any Sowjet fighters with one ammo load as the favorable ballistics and way too high damage output encourages them to enforce head-ons in infinite loops with a high chance to get a kill.

This is based on the fact that their main counterparts have either wing mounted cannons (=convergence issues) and/or ballistic issues combined with low damage output (like MG 151/20s).

Fighting more nimble fighters with easy to use cannons at rather too low BRs like 2.0 (LaGG) or 2.3 (Yak-1) up to 4.7 / 5.0 is no fun - that’s why they need an increase. Gaijin can easily verify this by comparing the top 20% of players of any fighter with ShVaks with their stats 18 months ago.

Edit:
As evidence for superior flight performance of a Yak (here Yak-3 in a full downtier) and the capabilities of getting 4 kills with one ammo load whilst playing 1 vs 7 for more than 10 minutes: Watch this replay: Link .

The flight performance in combination with the power of the 20 mm cannon allowed the imho decent player way too easy kills. Resetting the fight by running back to his airfield is also a classical Yak move. And, ofc, this"stalinum" air frame tanked 2 Hispano rounds (air targets) from my 3.3 Firefly very late game without any effect on his flight performance.