When it comes to top tier, respawn points for aircraft equipped with air-to-air weapons should be reduced as a way to counter CAS. Relying only on SPAA to deal with planes and helicopters is extremely difficult.
Many times you die to CAS, and when you respawn in an anti-air vehicle, you barely have time to reposition and engage before getting destroyed again. On top of that, most of the time you don’t even have enough spawn points to come back in a fighter with only air-to-air missiles to properly counter enemy aircraft.
I see a lot of people saying that SPAA should just be buffed to counter planes, but realistically, that won’t solve the problem.
Yes, SPAA did receive some buffs recently, like higher missile speed and radar improvements, but it’s still very hard to consistently counter air targets. You might manage to kill one or two aircraft, but that alone isn’t enough to stop CAS from dominating the match.
Another big issue is map size. Most maps are extremely small, which often doesn’t give you enough time or space to properly position a large SPAA vehicle. On top of that, SPAA is usually always exposed and easily spotted by tanks, making survival even harder.
Because of all this, reducing air-to-air aircraft respawn costs would be a much more effective and realistic way to counter CAS at top tier than endlessly buffing anti-air vehicles.
On top of that, speaking as someone who actually enjoys playing CAS, when I face a combination of SPAA and enemy aircraft, it becomes extremely difficult to do CAS effectively. Having to deal with both at the same time already creates a strong counterbalance.
I also don’t think this would turn ground battles into air-only battles. Lately, endgame matches already feel more like SPAA vs SPAA anyway. Because of that, I don’t believe reducing air-to-air respawn costs would negatively impact tank battles — if anything, it would improve overall balance rather than make things worse.