I’m hesistant to try out the plane in Air RB.
7.0 seems really high, even for a superprop. If I do, what should I do to avoid getting destroyed, how does one play the Mk24?
It has been a while since I played it, but iirc you are more maneuverable than most other aircraft at the BR and most jets are still very slow and accelerate and climb very badly.
Great plane, gaijin could do more for it. Try it, you never know otherwise. WT wiki has lots of info for it.
Basically you are there to support jets and attack slow moving ones
Well… I tried my first game, and this is how it went. (0 Modifications)
Spawn in, start trying to climb. Everyone who tries to climb, does so faster on my team (and on enemy team).
Well before I’m at the midpoint of the map, an enemy F-89B spots me, he’s a bit higher than me 7km away. He forces a headon on a friendly Spitfire, still higher than me, then turns to me and forces a headon.
Shoot a bit far off, but try to doge. My 20mm hispanos spark him. My dodge was useless, and he got a solid hit on me, nearly tearing off my left Aileron and fuselage, plane is still flyable though, but barely.
The F-89 Torpedoes past me, 2.5km before I even begin a turn, he’s still higher, and I dive in a desperate attempt for speed.
He dives on me, closing the distance way too fast, forcing a second headon. I don’t bother trying to dodge, and hold down the trigger. He shoots off completely my left aileron (somehow the plane is now flying better?).
He then makes another 2-3KM of seperation. An enemy F-84 and a friendly jet have a headon, some 2km away from me, they miss eachother, and the enemy F84, also higher than me, tries to head on me, but he’s going too fast and I dodge him. Friendly jet finishes him off.
No one’s near me, so time to RTB. Make it to base, belly land. Repair and take off.
Climb as fast as I can. An enemy F-89 (same as before), spots me from several KM away, he’s a bit higher, we’re quite far from eachother, and he starts climbing. He rockets into the sky, vastly outclimbing me, and in a short time is directly above me.
For some reason he tries to headon me, rather than just diving, and I am able to dodge, since he telegraphed his weird tactic.
Before I’m able to turn around he’s already 3KM away and climbs all the way back up. He forces another head on. I can’t dodge, and hold down the trigger. My hispanos spark him. He kills my engine and wing roots. Rockets past me, again some 3KM, then turns around and and rockets towards me on my tail as I dive for speed. Too late, he catches up.
“It’s all over”. I try a basic dodge without engine power, somehow works. He continues to dive at full speed, and forces a turn.
He rips off his wings, lmfao. Score my first kill.
Glide back to base. Repair and take off again, trying to climb.
Try to climb, doesn’t matter, MiG-9 higher than me. F2H-2 below me pitches up, forces a headon. Hispano Spark, but he sparks too.
MiG-9 dives on me, for the first time, not trying to head on, just diving on my tail like a normal human being. One short burst, and my wing is ripped off. It’s over.
Does everyone in this BR just headon? Everyone seems to outclimb me lol, maybe that’ll change with modifications, it just seems like a terrible experience overall.
That is a good question as I also see mostly that. I never head on unless forced to it. Head on is 50:50 chance and I like my chances higher.
Its the way gaijin are going. Compacting everything. Its rubbish
Your learning what gaijin have done to the game
Yeah, pretty much. With 16v16 and the state of the BR range, and with little incentive to learn to play properly because your plane is balanced by towards stats of bad play (see how The Heck the F-89 went to 7.0 and how the Su-11 spent so much time at 7.0 and is still only 7.7, yet the Vampire is 8.0), not many people actually bother to learn to use their planes effectively.
The Spitfire is at 7.0 despite being more-or-less competitive with the P-51H because it turns. That’s it. It turns, has pretty good guns, and you will get muppets in Su-11s and F-89s and F-84s who’ll try to turn with you, and predictably lose. This is the same reason the Vampire is at 8.0, despite having a pitiful engine - it turns well, and everybody turns.
The moment someone decides to use the absurd speed advantage all jets have over props, it’s over. You can’t do anything to a jet without them letting you. Most jets will outclimb you - especially the F-89 which has by far the best climb rate in that BR range.
Planes like the Spitfire Mk24 are buggered until Gaijin bothers to balance the planes in the 7.x BR range by their actual capabilities, rather than how well a level 10-30 player who only just unlocked their first jet, or (more likely) just bought their first premium jet, can utilise it and understand concepts like energy and BFM.
1 Like
Hey thanks for the reply. You seem knowledgable about this
I’m trying to break into jets, but have been dismayed by the BR quality, tbh. The two trees I’m the closest to getting them are British and German, but I’ve been informed of how miserable both these trees are.
Assuming I actually want to have fun + play the game properly, should I pivot to another tree? If so, which would you recommend.
You wont go wrong with meteor for learning jets
Not the guy but I have both Britain and Germany to the top tier (Britain admitedly I haven’t got the Gripen or Tornado ADV yet).
Germany is undoubtedly the better of the trees and isn’t bad at all. Skip the ME262’s bar maybe the C2B. I don’t like the 163’s but if you wanna fly either the first one has a better BR. Here’s a summary of both trees.
Germany:
Spoiler
For Germany I’d recommend using the TA-152H or the Bf109 K-4 to grind to the Mig-15bis. Don’t use the early jets. Then use the mig to grind into the rank 6.
In rank 6 there you have a few options.
The G.91 R/3 is criminally underrated and maybe my favourite in that rank.
The Lim-5P is good if you can energy fight and aim the horrible but effective guns.
The CL 13 Mk.5 is good but kinda high, the MK.6 is not worth it.
Mig-19S is incredibly effective and you can kill anything you see bar the F-104 because they just run away and BnZ you but they plague that br and should go up.
Hunter F.58 is the best Hunter in the game, don’t neglect it its very good for its BR based on the missiles.
Rank 7: Mig-21’s are both good now that 12.3 is a black hole. Mig-21Bis can better contend the F-5’s that are in that BR.
F-104 and F-4F aren’t worth it in my opinion.
Mig-23MLA is excellent and after the MLD, the best jet at 11.3 IMO, you can fight anything and your kit is quite good, although the R-60M’s start being mostly useless here.
Germany has the 2 best Mig-29’s in-game for rank 8.
Britain:
Spoiler
Much more of a mixed bag overall to start, use the griffon and LF spitfires to easily get yourself the jets as these are some of the best props br for br, though the MK.24 and MK.22 should both go down to 6.7 and 6.3 respectively.
First jet to go for can be the Meteor MK.3 which is really too slow to be effective however they turn phenomenally (you will outturn some props), however the Sea Meteor is much better but rips a lot including in a straight line, IMO get the MK.3 and then go for the MK.4 G.41F as it rips less and has great engines and thrust.
Alternatively go for the Attacker which doesn’t do anything particularly incredibly but does everything decently, its more about knowing your opponent than your jet with that one.
I’d skip the vampire and venoms for now because they don’t have good engine power or speed, so you need to be somewhat experienced to make them work (I can’t usually).
Swift F.1 is pretty good and some key information, both swifts turn really well around 700km/h. F.1 was the plane I went for and it was great, fast, responsive, great armament, hard to rip, good roll, decent turn, decent T/W.
Swift F.7 is utterly excellent, the missiles you can use very very well against F-104’s as your missile hits before their vulcan in a head-on and you can fire from 3KM where they can only fire from 2.5.
The later group of Meteors are all good too.
Skip the Sea Hawk IMO, not worth it at its BR other than for CAS.
Then there’s rank 6, there is absolutely nothing good as a fighter in this bracket.
Hunter F.1 is an obese swift, completely useless at turning (F-104’s can outturn you) not good acceleration, not actually that fast in an uptier, utterly awful fuel choices, 4 mins is waaaaayyy too little, 16 mins is waaaay too much. Putting it in perspective, the Swedish one is a Hunter F.4 airframe with 2 AIM-9B’s, you have no missiles and the Hunter F.4 improved the engine, flight control surfaces and flight performance.
Hunter F.6 is the best flying Hunter, but is too high just because it gets 4 Gimmick missiles, which Gaijin has not modelled properly and they only work within 1KM. At the same br is the Hunter F.58 in the German tree, with 2 better missiles, the same or better flight performance and importantly, flares.
Javelin is obese a delta wing with poor engines, not worth it and its also huge, the missiles are okay though and can be slaved to the radar. One of the better options.
Lightning, like an F-104 but with lower velocity guns, not IMO a good plane and an awful playstyle.
Jaguar GR.1, good missiles but you will always fight F-5C’s and Mig-21’s who both outdogfight you, both have missiles which you can’t really dodge, and you have no flares and are also too slow to run because of your shitty engines.
Harrier GR.3, good for base bombing, okay at fighting if you can use the VTOL, the best option, but not good.
Rank 7:
Jaguar GR.1A slightly improved the GR.1’s engines, you get guided bombs if thats your thing and importantly flares. The only relevant part for AIR RB is the flares, not worth it at all you get shit on by everything.
Sea Harrier FRS.1E, shouldn’t even be split from the other one firstly, secondly sure its just a harrier GR.3 but with AIM-9L’s. Its probably okay I guess, but the Squadron one is more worth it br for br. Both ain’t great.
The FG(R) Phantom’s. Utter dogshit planes, they’re too high, they get an awful grind, AIM-9D’s at 11.3 is humiliating, the gunpod is wierd to aim, you don’t get anything all aspect until your last modification rank with the SKYFLASH(SKYSLUG) missiles, absolutely awful. You don’t get the agile eagle upgrades of the other 11.0+ phantoms so you really aren’t good. The UK never even used AIM-9D’s we used AIM-9L’s but Gaijin refuse to put them down or give them AIM-9L’s. They’re the worst phantoms in game. They do accelerate well though.
Rank 8:
Gripen is new but amazing.
Tornado ADV is good compared to the British Phantom however its flight model is underperforming as it should be better than the FGR phantom in every way and just isn’t. However you get all aspect missiles and SKYFLASH SUPERTemp’s which are much better.
Harrier GR.7, Harrier 2 so its okay, you get the lethal 25mm ADEN’s which are as fast as vulcan guns but with better explosive filler and you get AIM-9M’s, however you are still a harrier.
I’m primarily a Brit main so it pains me that our tree is so crap and Britain has A LOT of aircraft to be added to bring us to the level of Germany, Gaijin just chose some of our shittest kit to add.
If you desperately want to switch tree, the US usually has good or the best options at all br’s and top tier. Russia always will be competitive too. China has good options everywhere too and in the future will be better than Russia. France has a tricky grind but lots of unique options.
I’d recommend China or the US for both variety and having good options.
Any questions i’m happy to answer.
MK.24 should be 6.7 based on the P-51H its just that US players are on average worse than British players (see the US winrate despite the Abrams being infinitely better than the Challenger 2). Mk.22 should be 6.3. But alas they aren’t.
My recommendation is to take stealth belts and climb to 5KM, no.1 because early jet engines lose effectiveness with altitude above like 4km or something. But you don’t wanna dogfight here unless you are both slow then you will win. But they will probably be fast.
What you want to do is cruise around here, until you see a furball at low altitude, then just dive on people, you can turn fight, hold speed kinda okay, prophang them if they go vertical and are less than 100km/h faster than you. You can absolutely rule the furball here and if your aim is good pick up 2-3 kills consistently.
If you are against other props, be warned your engine power is phenomenal but you won’t turn the best, however you compress less at all speeds and are very responsive. Be wary of P-51H’s I can’t describe how they are better than you but they just are. (Not very useful I know).
You still climb great and go fast.
Jets is kinda a mess of BR compression across all of it, so if you want to play jets properly you’re gonna have to hop into Air Sim, which is surprisingly well balanced and dogfights are really fun, but the rewards aren’t as good, and obviously you’re locked into sim controls. 16v16 doesn’t let you play more patiently or exploit things like energy as much, it just encourages huge furballs and turnfighting.
Britain and Germany are fairly well off all things considered for jets, it’s just the nature of the gamemode’s current state which is a turnoff regardless of the nation you play.
If you go Britain, I’d heavily recommend getting the meteor, sea hawk, and swifts. The 8.7 swift uptiers most of the time but is one of the most capable 8.7s IMO, the sea hawk was very good at 7.7 and I haven’t played it since but the German one at 8.0 fares pretty well, and the meteors have a nice mix of turn and high Thrust/Weight ratios. The later meteors are more prone to ripping, avoid turning and rolling at the same time above 550kph and try not to exceed 10Gs or you’ll probably rip. The Meteor mk3’s engine power is less than the Sea Meteor, but it still climbs well, is lighter and far less prone to ripping. The German MiGs are great, and the Me-163 is a menace in the right hands.
Rileyy’s advice is better than mine, but I do disagree about the Sea Hawk. It’s my baby and is similar to the F-80C, just with better guns and absolutely absurd flaps (rip at 800kph, can’t nose down until you drop below 250kph. You will float above anything)
Good luck. I’m probably being overly pessimistic TBH, there’s still fun to be found in Air RB, but it’s just not it for me anymore VS what it was back when I first unlocked the meteor mk3.