I CAN understand early Fw 190s being bad planes, because they’re. The Anton variants are just underpowered mainly for the reason that they just overheat incredibly quick with WEP and even MEC can’t mitigate that. I still don’t know why Gaijin has such a hate boner for them that they literally nerfed them based on a “I just feel they should be overheating more” report. They’re still one of the best GRB planes to include in your lineups due to their top speed, acceleration and armaments.
The Doras tho? They’re literal powerhouses. You get some mad P/W ratio, you have several very hard-hitting guns with tons of ammo, the plane is perhaps the most armored fighter when it comes to fighters in general, you can actually maneuver well at altitude without much lock-up (if you use the D-12/D-13), your roll rate is the literal best in the entire game, your energy retention is one of the best, your landing flaps can make you turn like a Spitfire and the dive performance is literally unrivaled by anything you face. It’s an excellent plane, because you can abuse those characteristics that other planes don’t excel at.
You’re being followed? Use your great energy retention and turn rate to literally dodge every single shot. You’re about to headon with another plane? Do it, because your guns will hit MUCH harder and you’ll be able to dodge quicker due to the amazing turn rate. You’re getting dived on? Dive aswell and do a reverse on the guy, use your flaps aswell to abuse the turn rate it gives you.
These are not even all the tactics you can do in the Fw 190 and if you can sideclimb long enough to get up to altitude, the enemy team will literally not be able to do ANYTHING against you until they climb on the same altitude (for which they’ll have to divide up and sideclimb alot), especially because your dive performance also allows you to BnZ better than even American planes. They also can’t simply run away, because your top speed and acceleration is amongst the best.
It takes time and patience to master the Fw 190s and in a way is also dependant on your teams to give you some time to sideclimb at the beginning of the game, but the main reason they’re so damn good is because they have an answer to every single opponent they face, even bombers fear you due to your armaments and ammo capacity. There’s not a single situation when you would just straight up say “damn, I literally can’t win anyhow” and even if you’re not confident, you can still just head-on them and turn their planes to shreds if they get hit even just once or twice while they’re either forced to sparingly use their guns due to low ammo or they only have 50 cals. Even in matches when my team loses in like 5 minutes, I still can sometimes drag out the match by abusing the enemy team’s impatience and most of them having a lower altitude and atleast drag down with me 2-3 players. It’s such a fun and unique plane, quite literally feels like playing an early jet, but as a prop.