German AA line have a lot of WW2 vehicles strech up to br 6.7 for no reason. Gaijing is just lazy to add more cold war vehicles so they stretch old ww2 equipment up to 6.7 to fight with jets and cold war machines.
Lets take Kugelblitz as an example.
Kugelblitz is old slow PZ IV ww2 vehicle which can be killed by .50 cal from a side or Russian 14.5 heavy machinegun from front turret armor. It have 77 pen with best belt AP/HE/HE which makes 150 shots/min of AP ammo.
11 years ago Kugelblitz was a monster with 90+ pen killing T-44 from a front with two little autocannons. But since then game changed a lot, there are many vehicles with a lot more powerfull autocannons even more powerfull than Kugelblitz had originaly and yet all of them have lower BR and Kugelblitz was stuck in 6.7
Lets do little comparsion if Kugelblitz was added today as a new vehicle.
br 3.3 ZSU-37 is end of ww2/early cold war vehicle with with 87mm pen + full AP belt, this makes 160 shots/min of AP ammo (better than Kugelblitz ) . ZSU-37 is faster vehicle, both have weak armor will get killed across map by reserve vehicle such as BT-5 or any .50 cal plane. The ZSU-37 have significantly better penetrations and yet its for years in 3.3 meanwhile Kugelblitz was 7.0 (now 6.7)
Just to show how ridiculous high br Kugelblitz have at 6.7, here are more comparisons of vehicles with better pen in lower BR:
br 6.3 cold war M53/59 with 91 pen + full AP belt + faster vehicle
br 5.0 cold war AMX-13 DCA 40 with 94 + AP belt + faster vehicle
br 4.0 cold war M42 with 72 pen + full ap belt + faster vehicle
br 6.0 cold war Leopard 40/70 with 93mm pen + faster vehicle
br 4.0 cold war M42 with 72mm pen + full AP belt + faster vehicle
br 3.3 ww2 L-62 ANTI II with 79 pen + faster behicle
And so on… This is of course not problem only for Kugelblitz, like i said at begin, whole line was stretch with ww2 because gaijin is lazy.
Here is how to fix it. Recommended BR:
Kugelblitz is comperable to ZSU-37 but with have worse pen. So its in 3.0 .
Ostwind II and Ostwind I are again comperable to L-62 ANTI II but with significately worse pen and slower vehicle. Ostwind have 49pen APHE meanwhile L-62 ANTI II much better 68 APHE. Ostwind II should be then below Kugelblitz at 2.7 and Ostwind I in same or 2.3.
Wirbelwind and Sd.Kfz.251/21 are both around 49mm pen with high fire rate, this si comperable to Pbv 301 with 42mm pen and long ammo belt so they both sit in 2.3
All other nations start to have COLD WAR vehicles since 4.0 So to fill the gap between 3.0 and 7.0 we need to more Wiesel 1A4 to 5.3 which have same performance as japan SUB-I-II in 5.3
and then for 5.7 - 6.0 we need to add more Vehicles for example Flakpanzer 341 which was removed.
Gaijin totaly fucked up Historical matchmaking and ww2 gameplay. The game is full of experimental vehicles, stuff which never existed sich as Ho-ri production and cold war vehicles killing with heat panters and tigers across whole map. At this point Flakpanzer 341 can be back without any problem to boost german AA line and make the game atleas fun again when historical accuracy is long dead.
Is there someting you dont understand? Here is explanation:
ZSU-37 --------> 160 shots/min with 87 pen at 3.3 br
Kugelblitz ----> 150 shots/min with 77 pen at 3.0 br (counting only AP shots because of no AP belt)
And
L-62 ANTI II -----> 120 shots/min with 68 APHE pen at 3.3 br
Ostwind II --------> 250 shots/min with 49 APHE pen at 2.7 br
Did you smoke something before posting this? Like actually what am I reading? Move the wiesel with gen 3 thermals to 5.3??? The kugelblitz with a fully armored ball turret is “worse” than the ZSU-37??? Seriously did you even think before you posted this?
Of course they are AA and not TDs.
This is how Gaijins is ranking BR. Based on penetration and speed and armor.
I would love to use Kugelblitz agance LA-5 or LA-7. But because its 6.7 i am forced to play agance jets
Why? because it has 77 penetration, that is why. Which is the same reason why it was in 7.0 for 9 years, but back then. there was no jets and pen was 90+ mm. Now there is no excuse anymore keeping Kugelblitz as 6.7 with tons of faster vehicles having better pen and yet fighting much slower planes and tanks in low BR.
historical matchmaking is a mess That is another reason why we should keep ww2 equipment together and not throwing them in front of HEATFS and jets from 70s
No, Gaijin is balancing vehicles by their earnings, which pretty much correlates to total performance.
Kugelblitz has plethora of advantages when compared to ZSU-37.
You seems to need much deeper explanation. But that is why i am here, don’t worry.
Kugelblitz was build in ww2 to fight agance Alied aircraft like la-5 or spirfire. Currently its fighting agance jets and guided missiles.
Gaijin will more vehicles up or down based on average kill ration. If there is someting too OP like TERMINATOR if will get up tiered in next patch.
Kugelblitz got uptiered over last 11 years many times thanks to light vehicles. With more light vehicles players with Kugelblitz had more kills and this resulted in higher BR again and again.
So now Kugelblitz cannot kill any plane anymore, its facing cold war monsters and its origfinal purpos to kill la-5 is gone.
Meanwhile, there were added much stronger vehicles with better autocannons.
So yes Kugelblitz is better platform to kill planes than ZSU-37. But NO, that is not why gaijing is moving BR up and donw in ground battles. its usualy because of pen and number of kills.
Gaijin was started on WW2, then switched to cold war and now primarly working on modern stuff. Now we have lot of pay to wins vehicles specialy at Russia tech tree.
Kugelblitz has advanaged to kill planes, ZSU-37 has advanaged to kill everything else.
There is no reason to have BR difference of 3.3 vs 6.7 with pretty similiar vehicles from ww2.
yes, look at this
Kugelblitz --------> 150 shots/min with 77 pen at 3.0 br
L-62 ANTI II -----> 120 shots/min with 79 pen as 3.3 br
ZSU-37 ------------> 160 shots/min with 87 pen at 3.3 br
They are pretty similiar in speed, useless armor (you will be killed by any planes with .50) and amount of of AP rounds per second with 77 mm of pen. If this is not similiar then tell what is that ultimate significant differerence that makes Kugelblitz fight jets.
IF you want to talk about vehicles amazing for killing planes, much better than ww2 Kugelblitz and yet still lower BR then how do you explaing this
br 6.0 BTR-ZD 800 shots/min with 51mm pen
br 5.3 SUB-I-II 1,030 shots/min with 66mm pen
br 5.7 ZSD63/PG87 600 shots/min with 63mm of pen
br 6.0 R3 T20 FA-HS 996 shots/min with 57mm of pen
and more
All of them are better than Kugelblitz in speed, turret rotation, stabilizers, incredible fire rate, long belts and not just 100 rounds. And yet, not even one is close to 6.7 BR where Kugelblitz is.
Lol PBV got nerfed to 38mm pen this patch should probs update that
As for your post overall I agree with some points but I honestly think you miss 90% of the rest (seriously kugel to 3.0 LOL), in most of your comparisons you skip the fact that a lot of these vehicles are just useless SPAA only good at TD or are mid at TD and SPAA but hold a legacy BR pre nerf.
I do think you could make a solid argument but imo I feel this post needs to be redone in a lot of your comparisons where they feel like more of a long rant/tangent post of someone who’s very hot headed and is just looking at bare stats without playing them.
Thanks for response. I played of course all of the mentioned vehicles. My favorited is R3 T20 FA-HS… the lenght of ammo belt, turret rotation, stabilizer is just amazing not only for planes but also for anything lightly armored.
This is why i started this post, its incredible how inbalanced Kugelblitz is and when i started thinking about this. Whole german ww2 AA is wrong. How can one nation have someting incredible as SUB-I-II and another nation Ostwind II as same br 5.3.
IF you want to help remake the post i will be happy, i dont really have experience with posting stuff. Showing raw stats as a comparsion was my best idea to show how inbalance system is and i know from past that usualy gaijin will move vehicle because it has too much pen to different BR, so i choosed pen as a main marker.
Definitely more armor, much better gun handling, almost 3x more fire rate, isn’t open top…
You’re focusing way too much on pen and it shows.
40, 50, 100 and 120 rounds per belt is far from those “long belts” you’re talking about.
SUB and R3 only have one 20mm cannon and don’t really have better gun handling than Kugelblitz.
i Agree with you.
Poor Ostwind II will get killed by anything and anti air performance and kinda meh due to slow fire rate… Stuff like M42 br 4.0 is similiar idea but better in everything both agance planes and agance tanks, thanks to much lower BR.
I think that’s something you should mention in your post because you don’t mention it.
Hypothetically let’s say Swedish had the Ostwind but it used the L/60 Bofors vs the duster with its 40mm.
Give them identical fire rate and ammo amount per mag.
I wouldn’t touch the Swedish L/60 because they have the worst velocity of all 40mm guns in warthunder. They simply aren’t good for AA and only serve to work as a TD.
IE not worth playing
Velocity for ammo is a huge factor in a vehicles performance