Can anyone give me a LOGICAL explanation as to why the J-7E and J-8B are at the same BR? The top missile the J-7E gets is PL-5B’s and no SARH. The J-8B starts out with PL-5B’s and can carry two SARH missiles. On top of that the J-7E only gets 60 rounds of ammo for the 30 mm cannon and the J-8B gets 200 rds for the 23 mm cannon. It doesn’t seem right…makes absolutely zero sense.
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J-8B gains the ability to BVR while losing notable dogfight performance.
J-7E is a top 3 dogfighter.
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J-7E is an amazing dogfighter with 4 × 30G missiles(F-5E gets 2 × 20G missiles for comparison at 11.0) the only thing holding back J-7E is like you said the 60 rounds on the gun, the problem is that it can’t go any lower than 11.3 because it will be unfair
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Good question, idk why you’d bother with the J-8 so I never did.
The J-7E is better than every 11.0, but not good enough to be 11.7. The same is true for the J-8B.
I find that both are excellent at 11.3 and neither should move up or down.
These planes are great examples of why comparing 2 planes directly doesn’t always give a good representation of balance.
Also this.
Calling Aspide/PL-11 a BVR missile seems generous to me, not to mention the J-8B has a very basic radar that doesn’t even get ACM
4 PL-5 is probably the most consistent loadout for the thing anyway and the gun on the J-7 is just better; better ballistics, hard hitting and the fire rate of the Gsh-23-2 will give you less trigger time even with 140 more rounds. I can’t imagine why OP would imply the J-8 is the superior plane, there are trade-offs that imo aren’t worth it and both being the same BR is fair.
can’t say it would be ideal for it to face F/A-18s and F-15s every game
Spoiler
though if they had AMRAAMs it would be historically accurate 🙃
I’m not saying it’s better…Just comparing them side by side on “paper” per se. I’m bone stock so I’m just starting to use the J-7E.
Someone hasn’t learned the Temu ACM technique unique to the J-8B:
I actually prefer this radar over some aspects of the F-4E radar because the tiny SRC box eats way less clutter and you can still like find people with it.
Granted its not the best (it’s fixed boresight vs tiltable for F-4 and the lock range is limited), but it is more usable than say MiG-23 radar.
It can’t see F-15s (12.7). F/A-18As are undertiered. When you do see hornets its usually 1-2 of them since the rest are getting mogged by Su-30 uptiers.
It is flat out better than 7E2 at the same BR, while beating 7F/Ms in immediate close-mid range acceleration. It can actually compete with the R-24R slingers in some respect.
You got to remember it is 11.3. The most prolific SARH missiles of its own BR or lower are the R-40RD (on gunless MiG-25 that’s also very vulnerable to your pl-5bs and aspides), the 7E2s and its cousin the Skyflash DF (both have limited range of only 2km rear aspect and maybe 5km side if you don’t change direction).
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This is partially incorrect, as the J-8B has way better engines than the typical delta wings you see at this BR except maybe the kfirs. Think of it as a MiG-21bis except better in almost every way for flight performance. These engines are also better at medium-high alt so you can really feel it once you climb.
Statshark engine comparison between J-8B and MiG-21bis at 100m and 6000m (typical engagement alt of this br):
because the J-7E has a strong FM and the J-8B does not