Discussion: AzimuthZero's “I fixed War Thunder's BR system” - Loadout-Adjusted Battle Ratings

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AzimuthZero. (2026, August 18). I fixed War Thunder’s BR system [Video]. YouTube.

I recently came across AzimuthZero’s video “I fixed War Thunder’s BR system”, published on 18 August 2026. The video proposes Loadout-Adjusted Battle Ratings (LABR), where a vehicle’s effective BR changes depending on the upgrades or ordnance it has equipped.

Interestingly, this isn’t a new concept on the forum. There is already a suggestion from about a year ago proposing a similar fundamental idea:

Dynamic Battle Rating based on aircraft loadouts

Context on Dynamic Battle Rating based on aircraft loadouts

The original suggestion specifically aimed to address aircraft whose weapons are significantly more capable than the aircraft itself, using examples such as the A-10 and Su-25. The proposal was that aircraft equipped with their more effective air-to-air or ground-attack weapons would retain their normal BR, while removing those weapons could lower the aircraft by up to 1.0 BR. It also suggested that this could reduce the need for “filler” aircraft whose primary purpose is to separate different weapon configurations into different vehicles.

AzimuthZero’s proposal takes the same basic concept further. Rather than simply lowering the BR when powerful weapons are removed, LABR would assign individual BR values to ordnance or upgrade modules, with the highest applicable value determining the vehicle’s BR. This could potentially extend beyond aircraft to things such as tank ammunition, APS and radar upgrades.

I think this is an interesting concept that is worth discussing, although I would be somewhat cautious about how such a system could be implemented and potentially exploited. There are several questions that would need to be addressed before determining whether it would actually improve matchmaking.

For example, how should the BR value of individual weapons or upgrades be determined? Would an AIM-120 have the same modifier on every aircraft, or would its effect depend on the platform carrying it? How would combinations of weapons be handled? Could players deliberately select unusual configurations to obtain a lower BR while retaining most of the vehicle’s effectiveness? And would this create too many different configurations for matchmaking to reasonably handle?

The video also argues that LABR could help with stock grinding, since a stock vehicle could potentially remain at a lower BR until more powerful upgrades are unlocked. Whether this would actually improve the progression experience is another interesting point for discussion.

I’m personally not particularly for or against the concept at this point, but I think it is worth discussing both its potential benefits and the ways it could potentially be misused.

Feel free to discuss:

  • Should War Thunder move towards loadout-dependent BRs, or would the additional complexity outweigh the benefits?
  • How could such a system be implemented without creating an unmanageable number of BR combinations?
  • What safeguards would be necessary to prevent players from deliberately exploiting the system?
  • Would you prefer the more limited approach from the original suggestion, or AzimuthZero’s more comprehensive LABR approach?

And don’t forget to give your opinion on the original suggestion as well.

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“I fixed Warthunder BR system”

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Beside obvious joke of “it cant be fixed”, it is very obviously a clickbait tittle.

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All this will do is add another rather annoying meta to the game by making minmaxxed planes that slot into a BR that gets more downtiers the tryhards vehicle of choice. Basically sandbagging a vehicle to get super downtiers is not a good way forward.

I’ve played games where sandbagging was the only meta and man it genuinely isn’t fun, it gets optimised really quickly for minimum fun

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As I said in the suggestion this will really help the stock grind of so many vehicles like the Tornado F.3 late, Buccaneer S.2B and all of the Phantoms but also being able to add in multiple vehicles onto the same platform making grinding easier.

Take the aforementioned F.3, the difference between the early and late is the AIM-120B’s and Hindenburg tanks. Of course there’s also the countermeasure dispensers but you get 30 instead of 32 large flare/chaff which isn’t that big of a different especially when you have 320 BOL cartridges.
This would allow these two aircraft to get folded into one while also allowing for the later FSP with AIM-120C-5’s and the ASRAAM which came with the original CSP.
What you would get is an F.3 that has 3 different configurations (Pre-CSP, AOP and FSP) along with the option to customise your loadout and BR with Skyflash TEMP, SuperTEMP, AIM-9G, AIM-9L, AIM-9M, ASRAAM, and AIM-120B and C-5

For the Phantoms, especially the Naval and British ones, at 12.0 stock you have two AIM-9D’s which are caged and in a partial uptier you get to face MiG-29’s, the Yak-141, F-4EJ Kai, and F-16A’s all of which have either long range SARH missiles or IRCCM (Or both in the Yak’s case). If given LABR the stock Phantoms would have a BR roughly higher than the F8U-2 so 10.7 from the better performance and radar. Once you unlock 9G’s then you have SEAM which allows you to actually use your HMD on the J thus giving it a BR of 11.0 or so. Going further and unlocking 7E’s that brings you slightly better than the F-4E so giving the F-4J a BR of 11.7 then you get AIM-7F’s bringing you back to 12.0 again.

Same goes for the A-10C. When stock you get two AIM-9L’s making you a slightly better A-10A (Premium) so a BR of 10.3 isn’t bad but since it does have a HMD I think a BR of 10.7 (same as the A Late) would work.
The F-14A IRAF is just an F-14A but at 13.7 instead of 12.7 and with worse IR missiles and then when spaded but not counting the Fakour’s it still doesn’t have the AIM-7F

BR’s are based on the performance of a vehicle but for some the difference between stock and spaded is massive, especially when you get to vehicles that have incredibly horrible performance but have insanely good avionics and/or weapons as seen particularly in aircraft above rank VI and some top tier helicopters. There are literally hundreds of aircraft above rank VI and so many of them suffer from their stock sickness pushing down the winrates and k/d’s causing Gaijin to put them down in BR when in reality when spaded they are leaps and bounds above any other aircraft at the BR they are at.

I’d say the benefits outweigh the complexities involved in such a system and it would bring Gaijin a lot more revenue as the playerbase would be a lot more happy and willing to spend money on this game.

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I personally agree here. The ability to deliberately min-max a loadout around a particular BR would likely introduce another layer of balancing issues on top of the current ones, with players inevitably finding the most effective combinations for farming downtiers, whether that’s planes with extremely good missiles on poor airframes, or very capable airframes deliberately running without their best missiles.

That could easily undermine the intended purpose of the system. Definitely one of the biggest risks and potential problems with this concept.

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Well then for that point you tailor the BR for that aircraft with those weapons. Putting it up if too powerful and down if too weak. If there isn’t a sweet spot for it then we come back to the argument of decompression which we know never will happen.

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dont worry, they dont do well already, look at hawk 200 or any harrier. it will be bad missiles on god tier airframes that outcompete with everyone else, which is the current problem with the su30 and hornet packs but more aggressive

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This has to be implemented in the game.

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Much older idea than that. It was even on the old forum. Or for example also on YouTube, TEC has long talked about setting BRs based on modifications.

Classic example for ground, you have vehicle A and vehicle B which are identical, but vehicle B is at a higher BR because it gets access to a very competitive APFSDS round. Only problem is, that round could very well be a rank IV modification, so the vast majority of the time you spend spading that vehicle, you’ll be playing the same as vehicle A but at a higher BR. Instead what you could do is that once you acquire the better round, you go up to the “new” BR.

I think one possible reason Gaijin avoids doing this is because it might be confusing/counterintuitive without a really well-made UI for less experienced players.

Another reason is that it allows them to add duplicates of vehicles, which flesh out the tree, keep the drip feed going for longer so they can milk a singular platform multiple times, and of course make people grind; which is either going to make them pay up to skip, or it’s going to make them populate lobbies to grind for free.

An additional reason why they don’t do this imho is this thing you cite:

Because for a vehicle, the answer is easy (player stats), but individual modifications or armaments are much trickier to estimate.

This is also a very good point. Giving players more control of the BRs they’re playing at is usually a terrible move.

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I once made this as my own suggestion but it got turned down because I wasn’t original, but I 100% agree. I believe that by separating weapons from the vehicle’s performance as their own BR you solve a massive problem with compresion, the problem of stock vehicles with stock loadouts, AND you are capable of expanding a vehicle’s loadout if it gets uptiered (or you wanna bring it to a higher BR on purpose) by giving it better weapon availability.

The idea was that instead of having the loadout change the BR of a plane directly, the available loadout would require a minimum BR, either uptiered or downtiered, that the BR-bracket of the match has to be in.

If you take an F-4E, and you get uptiered to a bracket that the plane’s missiles allow for it to take AIM-9L, it should be available, if not, the limit would be AIM-9J, and if downtiered, maybe just stick with AIM-9E. The main caveat being that this system would be 100% broken without the ability in-game to modify loadout instead of picking presets. It would be annoying to have your ideal loadout as a default and find out in game that a missile is forbidden, stopping you from flying the loadout, so a real time modular loadout customization would be necessary.

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I do love the “I fixed WT’s BR System” but its literally just the same idea as the suggestion.

Nevermind the fact its also just something discussed in the community from time to time.

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The forum has a search option. At the time you wrote yours, there already was a suggestion for such a thing approved: Dynamic Battle Rating based on aircraft loadouts

Yes, but it’s almost always fragmentary and has only returned to the forefront in recent years, when the capability gaps between a stock and a spaded plane heavily depend on their loadouts. This thread was mostly created to discuss the video creators’ view on it. And to once again shine light on the suggestion thread, which is the principal way to shine light on the idea towards the Devs.

The suggestion in question for othe people, once again: