It requires the patience of a saint to do ok with it. But passive playstyle is very much un-meta and often just results in you being alone vs many, or winning because of your team without doing much, if anything.
It was actually pretty good before they reduced the rocket pods damage to bases. I grinded all of Rank VI and Rank VII using it.
The single biggest problem with the F-4C is that everyone knows it’s flareless. So as soon as someone spots you everyone on the map with decent missiles bee lines for you for the free kill (and why wouldn’t they). Because for some reason, unlike most other jets, Phantoms display their variant designation on the nameplate no matter the range. If they made it so it just said F-4 for all the variants it would reduce a lot of the pressure. But as it stands, playing the F-4C is like playing on nightmare difficulty - you’re everyone’s priority target.
Otherwise it’s a moderately decent aircraft. Granted, your success with it is entirely reliant on whether or not the enemy sees your 10km+ sparrow. I’ve had some success with it and it can be quite fun doing BVR at 10.0 but, due to everyone targeting you most games will be just you vs the entire world’s missile armament and the result will be misery.
I spaded it :)