.50 cals are so vastly overpowered that is laughable
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They deal less damage per second, and especially per shot than German 20mm HE.
Doesn’t matter when they are 3 x more powerful then irl
As a mostly jet player I forgot Gaijin un-.50’d the .50s, you’re right
They’re actually quite abit weaker. They don’t deal nearly as much part damage as irl reports and footage shows, the API shots don’t function correctly, and every other 12.7mm has some strange high explosive incendiary which deal 3-5x more damage, or in the case of Soviet 12.7mm, will flat out 1-shot wings and tails as if they’re 20mm.
Also, all weapons in Warthunder deal more damage to planes than IRL, with the exception of .50cals.
F4U-4/B, P-51C (I use cannonstang more, but fight enough Cs when flying my 109s to feel confident it meeting my expectations in the cannonstang and exceeding it), P-51/Mustang MK Ia, F6F-5 (I suck with it, but I see plenty of people do amazing with it), P63A5.
Just off top of my head based on personal experience.
If I include reported experience,
P38 variants for flap fighting, P39 for general undertiered monster. P51H, F8F.
yet are better guns
P-63A and P-39 is the only vehicle in that list that’s undertiered, but that’s because it’s also a Russian and American premium.
The F4U-4s are pretty good (especially the 4B) but still easy to counter.
the Mustangs are all pretty overhyped.
F8F-1 is ok but even my Fw-190D-9 can outturn it.
F6F and P-38 are a joke.
This is wrong, by a lot.
I recommend watching some IdahoBookworm videos in that case. He loves the Hellcat, and brings it into plenty of dogfights against german aircraft with great success. Same for the P38. The two planes do require directly contradictory approaches though - F6F being about energy, instantaneous turn and one circle, P38 being about curves, rate and flaps.
And I love my cannonstang, and the C-stang is better all around outside of bomber hunting so I’m confident in its capabilities.
F8F I havn’t used in forever, but it’s got everything the hellcat can do and do it better on paper.
Yes, cause a guy who’s spent tens of thousands of hours mastering a vehicle is definitely the best way to tell if it’s good or not.
I mean, yes?
I suck at flying spitfires. I have no right to claim they suck because I spend more time trying not to die than actually thinking about how to win the fight I’m caught in - cognitive load and all that.
Citing people who have a passion to learn the flaws and strengths of a given aircraft and use it in both a dynamic and sterile environment with good results on the other hand does provide an accurate representation.
Now, you could argue that a vehicle is difficult to learn or easy to learn as a metric of “Is it a good first plane to fly?” or “Is it a good plane to learn X aspects of combat flying?” (As a rule of thumb, learning in a plane that’s not trying to kill you is more fruitful due to the whole cognitive load thing).
“X is a difficult plane to learn to do well with, but once it clicks you can get great results” equals a good to very good plane in my book.
As a non-warthunder example,
Just because the average player sucks at using Meepo in Dota 2 doesn’t change the fact that Meepo, back when I actively played (6.86ish era), was considered a top tier pick. Idk current day meta.
You could try and claim that ANY plane is good by having som1 with 5k hours in ARB play it. You could make the B-57A look good. Citing som1 with thousands of hours in a single vehicle isn’t a good way to tell if that vehicle is good or not cause it will always look good.
Fw190s, even with passion and love, won’t become good aircraft.
Hellcats do.
Fw-190s are already extremely good
IMO, the thing is, most Russian and Japanese planes are beginner-friendly. The I-15/16/185 have all really good maneuverability, and the ShKas have the fastest ROF in any WW2 machine gun. Japanese, you have 12.7mm and GOD maneuverability. Germans require a bit more skills tho.
I mean it’s not just ROF or manoeuvrability cause like certain German planes are really nice as well like 190 at 3.0, or 109B at 1.7. But IDK why they just get worse from there.
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Answer:
YaK-9K with god accuracy 45mm canon
YaK-3 with a UFO engine and proxy fuse shells that rip your wing no matter if it hit or not
Stupid event Japanese (and US) SB2Cs with cannons and GP.
Everything outclimbing you (Ki-44) when altitude is your only advantage.
Tbf fixing MG 151s would do a lot for German props. Just being able to actually dismantle things without having to constantly outplay and outperform others would be great. Other than that I think most 190s and 109s are well adjusted for things they fight, aside from maybe the mid-tier 190s (could go down 0.3 BR each).
No offense, but the fact that you might be unable to use certain aircraft properly does not mean that your observations and experiences are valid for others too. Certain US aircraft severely outperform German contemporary counterparts whilst being at lower BRs.
But:
Technically seen i would argue that you are actually correct from the perspective of the average user of US props. Their lack of climb rate does not fit into the wt meta - and their players are kids looking for instant gratification without investing time in learning anything.
So the combination of non-meta and rookie pilots drag US planes way too low as gaijin tries to equalize these 2 factors with lowering BRs. If we consider that in this thread mainly (often highly) experienced pilots expressed their concerns about overtiered GER (plus Italy) prop fighters and added concerns about way too low (some US) and generally too low (USSR with ShVak) fighters the problem is clear:
If you fly vs a experienced US pilot (same experience / skill like you) the performance gap caused by too low BRs vs US planes is simply too large. You have to wait for mistakes otherwise you are neutralized at best.
Some years ago German prop matches were flooded with good pilots - smart enough to swarm certain op vehicles like LF Mk IXs or similar threats. These days the BRs of "enemy"aircraft are way lower whilst experienced GER prop players are very rare (at least between 3.3 and 5.7).
I can’t remember having lost a single 1 vs 1 vs a 109 or 190 in the P-47 D-28 - same as with the Hellcat. And not because i suffer from Alzheimer or they were rookies - the GER pilots are handicapped by way too high BRs in the same manner as USSR players benefit from (way) too low BRs.
I mean their highest 109 is the K-4 at BR 5.7 - you beat them with the 4.7 P-47 D-28 on equal energy states. U turn better and you are faster, their main strength (energy fighting and stall fighting) does not really work if you can prophang behind & below them.
This is nonsense from 2 perspectives:
- Burst mass & damage output are only relevant if you are able to hit a target.
- Somehow the US was aware of the lower damage output and bundled multiple 0.50 cals together.
So the inability of the USAAF to develop a 20 mm cannon (or to make their own version of the HS 404 work) is not really gaijins fault. If you consider that actual combat ranges were far lower irl and the point of a cannon was to deliver maximum damage in the usually very small firing windows you might agree that 1 cannon or 6-8 0.50 cals is actually not really an issue.
As stated in another thread:
The AN/M2 0.50 cal is a great weapon in Air RB.
I have flown in the last 6 months mainly the UK P-47 and the US P-47 D-28 and the Hellcat:
- On average i need just 2 hits on a fighter and max 4-6 on a bomber
- AP-IT works great, especially at long ranges, easy to aim
The only drawback i see is a rather high inconsistency (imho dynamically adjusted RNG) of the damage output - so sometimes you score 4-5 hits and nothing happens - usually in those matches where you need to kill the enemy or you lose by tickets.
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