yeah the us 8.7 wheelchair lineup can be hard to beat (t58, xm800, xm246). While I cannot argue about the german teams, my experience playing ~9.0 uk has been 2-3 uk players max per team. This can make individual games more dependent on the team composition you get matched with. That being said, uk seems to have about a 3-6% higher win rate overall, so you should still average better over the long run.
You particularly seem to be struggling with the Chieftains. If you are not already play them slow, find a good hill and use your gun depression and turret armor and a lot more rounds will bounce off you. The chief’s really benefit from doing so as well as using your binoculars to range before poking out and firing.
You cant fix the teams but you can fix your k/d and win rate with the tanks
I personally don’t have trouble with the chieftains. Thank you for the pointers though.
I am a US main, but I am working through german, french, and british trees.
The brits have a lot of 35mm spaa’s between 8.3 and 8.7.
The xm800 is annoying and ratty - which is how a good player should play it. I find germans usually die to it by trying to push a corner against it when they shouldn’t. … same as everyone else.
The t58 is the most annoying - but the barrel is easy to break as is the elevation drive if you shoot above the breach. Is it obnoxious to fight? Yes. I die to them marginally more than anything else that gets me when I rush and over extend.
The xm246… kind of annoying. Slow, and tall as a house - no less annoying than the swedish leopard 2/35mm spaa.
All in all, the brits have the tools and armor to deal with it the US “dream line up”.
That said, french 8.0 is by far the most fun - even in uptiers. Their guns are fantastic.
Also, I have been at british 8.7 to finish off a few vehicles for their research bonus as I push into 10.0. Waiting to buy those until they’re on sale and I have a full line up though.
I bought my way into their 8.0 with the amx 30 and the one weird turret with 20mm light tank. (After I got to 7.0). Those two tanks are stupid fun - almost got the tt 8.0 AMX unlocked too.
Their very early game has some tough learning curves due to iffy ammo options. Once you get to 2.7/3.0 its a blend of britain/us which have fun gameplay options.
They have some banger SPAA options. The 40mm premium one is awesome (anti tank but still useful agains slower planes). Tons of fun, but once you hit past I think 5.7 you start getting into more domestic stuff that switches to more solid shot.
… I need to finish a lot of upgrades for the research bonuses - rushed through the tree before that was a thing.
UK in this video games is very bad. The concept in real life works well but in game until you are able to get a tank with APFSDS the entire grind in tree is awful and will develop your patience. Once you lose solid shot at you progress you can just kiss any fun goodbye as you will be agitated with the amount of crews per tank and shots needed to take out a tank.
So to answer your questions:
No, not at all unless you’re bored.
Not very good at anything sniper wise as other nations do that just fine.
US all the way there’s really not a lot of compare and contrast the video game dynamics just makes playing anything outside of powerful nations a side quest if you don’t value your sanity.
They are well worth grinding, if simply for the huge bombers and spitfires. AP isn’t the best but APDS and APFSDS at top tier does plenty of damage, so I wouldn’t disqualify it that quickly. UK actually snipes really well in my experience, they have a lot of destroyers and things specifically meant for ranged fights, and due to smaller caliber guns they have good reloads allowing for easy ranging. They don’t have a lot of advantages, mostly just that stuff like the Churchill VII can tank A LOT of hits and some stuff has phenomenal armor, but I wouldn’t say US is that good in some aspects either. I mained Germany for 1800 hours and ground to 10.7, and going to us vehicles with no armor and such finicky guns is literal pain. Before you say the super pershings have great armor, it’s good, but has a lot of easy weakspots. I can hit the mg port within 2 shots at 2 klicks with the tiger 2 and one tap a T26E5. and all the stuff like the T26E1-1 and T32 and T32E1 gets badly uptiered where the gun can’t perform, and even the base T26E5 has the 90 mil that first pops up at 6.0. The best thing about US is CAS. Only two kills and you can spawn a plane with 9 bombs or more, rockets, and cannons with a turn rate able to compete with other CAS easily. Essentially, Britain gets a lot of undeserved hate and is frankly comparable to US in overall strength.
Its still the weakest shell at 12.7, and second weakest at 11.7+ though.
That is ontop of artificial nerfs such as the tiny ready rack.
Post-pen damage is directly porportional to pen. Just because a low pen shell can still pen. Doesnt mean it will actually do much if it pens.
There is a reason why the lack of firepower on the CR2s is mentioned a lot. It should be stronger than it is currently. That is ontop of a host of other issues plaguing the CR2s, that also make it an overall pretty weak tank (slow, low survivability, etc)
AP rounds (Solid Shot and APDS) need post-pen damage buffs, or they need to nerf APHE. It was unfair to hold AP to “realistic” standards and then put APHE to a community vote where they then denied making it realistic.
Chieftains and Chally 1s are fine. Got bugs / issues that need fixing, but they are fine. Their respective lineups are mostly fine too. A few annoying things here or there that Gaijin doesnt seem interested in fixing (like the state of the Stormer HVM) but otherwise solid
Chally 2s are so artificially nerfed that they just arent worth the effort imo. Especially when you then factor in the lack of a decent lineup ontop of that too. ADATS is a bit meh, Sky Sabre is a buggy mess that barely works, best top tier AFV is the Ajax at 10.3 or CRV at 10.7. CAS is nerfed to hell. etc etc.
The hate for Britain top tier ground is well justified imo.
Air is a different story. Gaijin really needs to stop artificially nerfing the Tornado, Harrier and Typhoon, but otherwise its okay. The biggest issue is not necessarily the aircraft themselves though, but the gamemodes and compression. Like for example, Buc S2B is genuinely useless in ARB, total waste of time. But has been a very solid aircraft for NE.
They’re not. 90% of the issues they deal with in-game are Gaijins doing, not IRL issues.
Its FM is actually underperforming.
ITR should be higher
STR should be higher except for high speed and very high alt, that is marginally overperforming (though if they fixed the instructor at the same time, we’d probably still end up with better STR at high alt, even with an STR nerf)
Both have reported and accepted bug reports for
It probably also has way too much post supersonic drag, meaning it accelerates too slowly at higher speeds.
Then factor in its artificially nerfed CM strenght, missing ESM, massively nerfeed CAS loadout, etc etc, and it should be far far stronger than it currently is.
2 PGM2000s, 2 ALARM, 2 AIM-9M and you still have as many munitions you want on the underside. I use it in top tier and the Tornado is perfectly fit for the job - I find it preferable to the Typhoon in basically every scenario even with the lack of significant standoff munitions
I rarely have PGM-2000s make it to target when fired from the GR1 in a downtier due to being itnercepted, Let alone in an uptier. I dont understand how they ever make it to target at 12.7
2x ALARM, again, I fired 4 at a SM-SV and all 4 got intercepted.
I tend to start locking with them when I hit about 10km. Probably fires around ~8-9km whenever I’m supersonic. SM-SV either intercepts them and eats the PW4, or intercepts the PW4 and the ALARM is already outside of its FOV. Just got to fly low and fast enough and use terrain cover properly.
Just checked for the sake of it, my main CAS loadout on the GR4 is 3x ALARM, 3x PW4 and 2x PGM2000s. Generally nets me a positive KD pretty easily even discounting AA kills.
If the challys get their spall liners and an actual first stage, they would mop top tier, but rn black night is just great and chally 2e is justa speed flex if anything