We’re talking best vs best.
Not in the way I meant.
I meant that you still would have to dodge their barrage of 30mm, which can throw off you aim.
Sure, but it doesn’t mean that they cannot hit them.
Even the best pilots can succumb to the sheer mass of lead coming their way.
Sure, I can understand that. Unfortunately it shouldn’t really go any higher, nor should the SPAA get any better at that BR.
Heli-specific SPAA, like the Roland 1 and Lvrbv 701, can deal with them fairly well, at least from what I can remember.
Problem with that is that you can’t use radar to find enemies behind obstacles, like hills / mountains.
SPAA can often be found via radar ping, MTI, or friendly drones. They also are found quite commonly in spawns. And if it is hidden, the Kamov can just attack the tanks instead and wait for MAW to alert them of any missile launches by the SPAA. You cannot kill the Kamov in that case.
Sure, although you don’t strictly need hills for this to work (it’s much more difficult, though). Using trees or any cover (given enough range), you can pre-fire Vikhirs towards the SPAA and then peak over the last obstacle where the SPAA is found.
This isn’t just theory, this works in practice and is utilized by many top players.
Most players in this game are casual - and thus you can rarely find them.
If you play squadron battles, you’ll see many, especially against top squadrons, like AVR.
in that case the kamov parries every missile that gets sent against him and “bashes multiple heat warheads into the spaa”. or just forces the spaa to retreat into cover, and the process repeats after they reload or get third party’d
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Once the Kamov forces the SPAA to take cover, it’s over for it.
The Kamov can keep spamming missiles until the SPAA gets killed by splash damage, have their cover gets destroyed, or have their cover stop working (like a simple rock after the helicopter balloons to higher altitudes).
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and the hidden method: scout rocket xD
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not on maps like sweden, and most spaa gets tanky at top tier so splash isn’t that reliable. also the radar tanking tandem heat incident
Some maps it definitely becomes less effective, like Sweden, but so does it hamper most CAS - even the SPAA itself sometimes.
Dodging those is just A-D spam, it’s so basic that isn’t not even worth mentioning.
Their guns will overheat after some time and most don’t have thousands of rounds to throw just to suppress a single helicopter.
They can, but those are found only in 20% of nations.
Fair, but still gives you ample time to hide.
Getting a radar ping means they have your position as well.
Friendly drones can also look for helicopters.
Not a single helicopter played correctly with MAWs can be killed, their efficiency can be neutered in some cases.
That’s the catch.
FnF helis can just ignore AAs as they barely even affect their efficiency.
Again, that can get you less focused on hitting the vehicle (especially if they frantically move around) and more on making sure you don’t move into one of their bursts. They can also just hide behind cover, too.
Yeah their guns can overheat. However, now all SPAA have twice as much ammo.
Maybe Gaijin could add more, but I am not sure what they could add.
Hiding means you are less likely to be able to help your team against them.
Only if you peak over and allow yourself to have that happen.
Yes, that is true. However, the Kamovs and F&Fs in particular can kill targets more easily due to the nature of their weapons.
Sure, but that’s the only thing they can really do well, especially the ones with only 8 missiles (unlike the Israeli AH-60). The SPAA can also intercept them if needed, or tell ground to smoke up or have them get into cover (even accidentally). F&F missiles also rarely do any reliable damage, so you end up having to shoot a couple or even three against one single enemy.
Here’s some great examples of what I mean:
You move based on their bursts.
They can hide behind cover, but focusing them at all isn’t even necessary.
That’s true but reloading takes a long while. You also have to leave some for personal protection against tanks.
Yeah I’m also not well versed in that field as well.
Drawing fire on yourself and wasting their missiles should count as some help, as they won’t be able to engage others when they’re focusing on you.
Yeah that’s why I said RWR pings work for both sides.
Agreed, helicopters with Hellfires are bottom of the barrel.
Most AAs would need to spend 50% of their ammo to intercept a single volley of FnF, where helicopters are much easier and faster to reload.
I think it was yesterday that I watched a Spike related video and most (if not all) hits did substantial damage or OHK’d.
They can be funky though.
I got an aneurism watching those shaky replays lol.
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah reloading can take a bit, although it’s definitely workable.
I don’t think you need much ammo to deal with tanks (let’s say around 150).
You shouldn’t really be dealing with tanks in the first place (unless you are asking for it by going into the front lines), as it’s up to your team to help you help them against their air.
Most of the time, you will not be able to intercept missiles that aren’t coming directly towards you(especially missiles like Vikhirs, which go 600m/s).
Wasting your own missiles for them also means that they are at an advantage, as they can simply rearm on their helipad whereas you can only rearm one more time (with the ammo crate). The only exception to this are in maps where your side has a capture point.
SPAAs with only 8 missiles for their ready-rack also means that you cannot afford to miss a single missile slung from a F&F heli (apart from the Israeli AH-60), and it also means that you cannot intercept every missile from the Kamov (which has 12 in total).
RWR pings for helicopters are generally more useful than RWR pings for the SPAA.
It’s much easier to change position with a helicopter than an SPAA, and the SPAA may not even bother changing positions at all - especially if there’s not many places elsewhere to go.
This is true.
Maybe. I do remember my friends still complain about them being unreliable, but that may have changed considering Gaijin did change some aspects of them a little while back.
Hah.
Though, I do think you understand what I mean?
Kamovs don’t really suffer against SPAA, at least not to the degree of laser-guided AGM helicopters, and even F&Fs.
Kamovs can guide the vikhirs in behind cover (so that the SPAA cannot see them) until last second (so that they hit). Example of this is especially the 2nd video I posted.
They tend to be much more oppressive than F&Fs.
The F&F helicopters would first have had to expose themselves (whether it be their entire helicopter or their camera), and then shoot their missiles one by one before going back down. Sure, you may not be able to get killed by doing that, but you are also having to rely purely on the enemy to not get into cover, or smoke up, or intercept the extremely slow PARS / Spikes (which go 309 m/s and 180m/s respectively) before they reach their target.
Here’s an example:
At 7km (assuming the Vikhir, Spike, and PARS all go their maximum speed from start to finish), the Vikhir would reach their target in 11.7s (excluding the fact that the helicopter (and sometimes even the missiles) will only be seen until much later on (when there’s only ~4s left in some cases like the second example video)), while the Spike and PARS would reach their target in 38.9s, and 22.7s respectively.
The only other helicopter that is nearly as good (if not better) at taking out SPAA is the British Apache, which can use Starstreaks from up to 7km away.
It takes them around 6.2s to reach that target, but it only gets 4 and the damage against SPAA are quite unreliable.
The British Apache also only gets hellfires, which generally are much worse than Vikhirs at doing anything, and you have agreed with me that they are worse here:
Ammo boxes are indeed nice addition, but they make some players go nuts on their ammo consumption as it gives them false sense of “security” they’re gonna have enough.
AAs going after tanks is a really complicated topic, as you can spawn the vehicle and get absolutely no air contacts so you’ll either die of boredom waiting for something or try to do AT plays. Enemy tanks can also push your spot if you aren’t 24/7 glued to spawn.
I don’t even think of intercepting the missiles, just the fact Kamov is firing on you should count as some help to your team, at least in my opinion.
That’s one of the reasons I think helicopters are too strong.
They are relatively close to their helipad, can reload infinite times and can even do the reload process in 10 seconds with Ace crew.
Agreed, although on some maps helicopter movement can be also pretty limited.
Small ground maps also play a role in all of this.
He said (JustinPlays) that he noticed Spikes worked better when you’re playing outside peak-hours, so their performance might be related to server load. I think this theory is worth investigating if someone’s has the time to do it.
Yeah, I was just laughing at how bad replays can look.
Blindly guiding Vikhrs until there’s like 3-4 seconds left before impact will lower your efficiency as you don’t have much time to decide who you’re end up shooting.
Yeah no one can deny Hellfire slingers are meh at best.
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Yeah. This is also why I oppose the removal of AP / APDS belts on SPAA.
The problem is that you may just hide and the Kamov would not go for you then.
And by the time you realize that, some of your team is dead and the Kamov player can just go for you once you start peaking, or go back to cover once you start opening fire.
Yes.
Yeah, probably worth checking that out.
I see xD
The thing is that it’s not necessarily blind guiding.
If you know that an SPAA is almost 100% going to be around the area you’re about to go over (object permanence), at least one out of the 4 you shoot (for example) must hit, which should be fairly managable. This is especially true with clueless SPAAs sitting in their spawn.
Not only that, squad pings / drone ping also can help with that.
Unfortunately some do, especially on this forum.
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AAs are pretty hurting at the moment.
They are often times boring as vehicle type they’re made to counter doesn’t even need to spawn once during the game.
Not only that, when they spawn there’s a big chance you won’t be able to counter it reliably.
It’s like worst of both lol.
I think that just making his life miserable and annoying him with MAW alerts is something to take into consideration.
If you fire, he has abort guiding his missiles at someone and hide.
As you said, Vikhrs need ~12s to travel 7kms and let’s say you blind guide it for 8 of those seconds. A lot can change in that time frame and you have no visual confirmation of what’s happening.
Drones are kind of busted in full squads.
I believe those are mostly rage baiters, which are common around here lol.
Yeah.
He could guide his missiles towards close targets and then switch to the SPAA, but I agree that in other cases they would be forced to get back into cover and relocate / use the tactic against the SPAA like I’ve shown you before.
Sure, although I really doubt 8 seconds is enough to completely leave the area in something as large and slow as the Pantsir.
Agreed.
I’m not quite sure. There’s some people I think that actually believe this.
ha. that’s what I do - “oh you are hiding from me? well, I am just going to kill your friends, one by one” usually the sense of guilt or something takes over and they go after me.
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Yeah I’m mostly trying to say FnFs can more or less ignore AAs and focus on spamming other ground units.
I’m not necessarily only talking about AAs, but other ground units as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised anyways, it’s WT forum lol.
I guess, but it often sacrifices the reliability and quick response of the Vikhirs.
Well, you don’t need to do that tactic for ground vehicles, just against SPAA.
Yeah.
That is true, they throw blows considering if there’s an AA present or not.
Yeah, but against someone smart in AA you might not be allowed to just hover and guide the missiles through their full flight, nor you would be able to easily dispose of them.
That’s the annoyance part I’m talking about.