This. But well i guess that’s been the state of top tier ground rb since. idk…years ago. first it was the mig 27s and similar planes from other nations being able to just position in the radar coverage blindspots above the battlefield before the addition of contrails and absolutely cancerous ka50/mi28 rushes before the nerf of the S-13OF unguided rockets that oneshot everything if your team failed to bring aa at the start of the match. Then to battle that introduce contrails and nerf the s-13OF but nerf sam and missile guidance along with it to a more realistic behaviour (which is fine, guiding 8 vikhrs at once with a laser like 8 pearls on a string was hilarious af). Doesnt help much tho if all planes can pull harder and for much longer than their irl counterparts.
Then it’s immune- from stingers su25s and f16s being so fast its basically impossible to hit them with sams before the launch all their agm56d mavericks doing basically what the su30s and su-34s do today.
Just feels like cas has alwas been one step ahead of anything that was in game to battle it from the ground. And the second it got nerfed or adjusted ground vehicles got nerfs along with it. Combine that with less cover, half the maps in top tier being tiny af (like, not one spawn inside a forest, vegetation mostly gone, either in a bowl or just in plain sight more often than not from enemy spawn or its close proximity) makes for the top tier gameplay we have today.
And while for me, more or less balanced cas always was and should be part of ground rb otherwise it would just be -push 500 m to 1 km into one of the three positions to control the map hull or tank down and deny the wole enemy team access to the map and the objectives- at least on open maps.
that disbalance really puts it off, resulting in the -rush one cap and kill a guy or scout two to then wipe the whole map meta. Which unless you manage to deny that to the enemy team makes half the matches in top tier just pointless to play.
The Pantsir never should’ve been added until equal competitive SPAA for other nations was added. The addition of that abomination completely neutered NATO’s ability to run CAS and CAP at top tier, with the addition of the legitimately not existing IRL KH-38 to be used COMPLETELY UNOPPOSED.
Both additions were not only catastrophic for gameplay balance but completely blatant examples of the ongoing Russian Bias in the game. Neither are defensible by any stretch and Gaijin deserves nothing but the strongest condemnation for what they have done.
Because without the Pantsir it wouldn’t be jsut two steps back to when the f-16s just did what the su-34s and su30s do today?
Certainly doesn’t help in the overall picture that one nation has this combination of strong cas and aa capabilites, I’m certainly not a fan of gaijin introducing the Pantsir which outclasses every other spaa by miles but remove them and you just hand the title and absolute dominance to the next contenders, most likely US and france, unless you remove their long range standoff a2g agms with it. And those actually have this ordinance on strong fighter platforms
What are you gonna do playing top tier japan, israel or gb about two f16s up wiping your whole team?
Right, it’s just gonna be the same situation but different offender
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think Pantsir was OP initially, and it should have never been added in the first place (They literally had the Tor already modelled for CN, why didn’t they just give them that?)
But solely because Pantsir was added, we’ve seen a never ending CAS arms race, entirely justified on the basis of ‘we need X to counter Pantsir’.
Now we find ourselves at a point, where Pantsir is no longer OP. It’s what’s necessary to counter the things that itself caused to be added. It raised the bar, CAS rised to the challenge, and every other AA was left in the dust.
So it’s okay for just one nation to be able to completely lock down the airspace in a match, so that only their team can deploy aircraft? You gotta be taking the piss here. Before the abomination known as Pantsir came in everyone was equally screwed by top tier CAS, at least. Not one nation beforehand could go; " Lol. Lmao even. " and completely take over the airspace.
Was it balanced beforehand? No. but at least EVERYONE got to deploy their CAS and CAP to try and do something. At least back then I could deploy a fighter and try to protect my team’s tanks, let alone deploy CAS, then the Pantsir came in and completely ruined that.
Yet NATO still doesn’t have armaments that can actually counter the Pantsir, and some of what could be used that are in-game are artificially gimped so Gaijin’s precious golden nation doesn’t have too hard time winning their matches.
True. Sry, i edited my post too late to make clear that i certainly dislike the imbalance of top tier spaas for nations especially with the addition of the pantsir.
Just feels like if you would hypothetically remove the Pantsir AND the KH-38s then air dominance would just shift back over to US, since no other nation can bring a combination of such an amount of “numbers of uncontested” ground kills anwhere on the map with some of the best fox 3s on very capable fighter platforms. Except for france.
Not having the SP to spawn a fighter playing japan, israel, gb or italy and you might as well just leave the match or sit on a cap and smoke for the rest of the match. Without the Pantsir you could probably add russia to those nations as well.
These days top tier fighters and their armaments are quite close in competitiveness to eachother, so everyone has equal odds of success running CAP.
Or, they would, if the Pantsir didn’t exist. Because it does, the team that fights Russia in top tier ground combined can’t run CAP, let alone CAS, to try and win their matches. They’re essentially grounded to mostly middlin’ tanks that are poorly modeled and poorly implemented fighting Russian tanks that are overperforming, let alone that oftentimes it’s Russia, Germany and Sweden fighting everyone else. So you got the top 3 best MBTs in the game fighting everyone else coupled with complete airspace dominance thanks to Russia; It’s all just insult to injury and there’s zero point to even playing top tier if you’re not running Russia, Germany or Sweden.
Idk which regions servers you’re plaing on but i can happily inform you that in the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing with or against a lot of US teams that have been absolutely wiping the battlefield. even against Russia/germany or sweden. And I’m playing france without fixed wing cap, german without fixed wing cap or russia without fixed wing cap (simply because i don’t have them researched yet) and solo, not in a squad.
Those players (a lot of them with chinese nicknames) must know something we or you don’t? Or the players playing france with top tier winrates similar to those top 3 nations with the best mbts?
Or they’re cheating. Anyhow it is very important to always have an explanation or reason ready as to why others are seemingly always better. Makes for better reasoning why you’ve been killed again and why the other team (obviously) won again. One thing’s for certain: It’s never your own fault. Big plus is also: Takes away the pressure and the need to improve
