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.
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
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):
