I hate getting CAS’d as much as anybody else, but we have to agree that Gepards and similar are simply too strong. They currently make flying out helicopters in this BR range nothing but pain.
The issue with them is that they aren’t actually too strong against air vehicles, but rather against ground vehicles. 1/4th of each team first spawns an SPAA to fight tanks, while obviously retaining the ability to shoot down air vehicles. Because of this and people spawning in them later on, there are always multiple SPAA scattered across the battlefield with all of them having the ability to lock down at least 3km of air space.
You shouldn’t be able to shoot tanks with your heli uncontested, that is not what I’m asking, but it’s time to finally nerf Oerliken and similar’s APHE to disincentivize first spawning SPAA and indirectly lower the number on the battlefield at all times.
Not only does this help helis, but also light vehicles and in general the kind of annoying yolo gameplay.
10 Likes
Thats why they are impossible to balance. If you move them up they become useless at their job which futher pushed people into anti tank roles. If you keep it as is it just demolishes both helis and tanks
3 Likes
They shouldn’t be moved anywhere, but they should finally get their APHE nerfed. It’s been stronger than it should for years now.
They should simply be moved to 9.0
Tank APHE is overperforming, but I dont think the smaller 30-35mm APHE rounds are. Though you are the first to complain about them and not the APDS.
As for the post itself. Its fine. CAS could do with a few tweaks here or there. Low BR helis are pretty much universally weak, but fixed wing is okay for the most part. Its a tricky BR where you have jets with good performance but the bombing tech is still the same as WW2 (which is accurate)
I dont think there is much that can actually be done to tweak the balance either way.
6 Likes
I dont think even that is necessary. Perhaps with a proper decompression they would face more appropriate aircraft. But SPAAGs arent exactly all that hard to deal with either.
1 Like
9.0 fits the Gepard and its clones quite well. They will primarily be facing sub sonics with ballistic computers, and s couple of planes (namely Hunter F.58 and A-4E) with early AGMs that are extremely easy to counter.
8.3 is simply too low as they primarily face 1940s and 50s jets.
1 Like
The issue is that it would just make the SPAAG situation even worse for many nations. If the Gepard moved up. So would the Chieftain Marksman and ZA-35 for Britain for example. This would mean the only SPAAG between the 5.3 Skink and the now 9.0 Chieftain Marksman is the 8.3 Falcon, which is fairly middling as an SPAAG (for AA) for its BR.
I also wouldnt want to try and take on 9.0-10.0 aircraft in the Cheiftain marksman. (as we have nothing again until 9.7 with the tracked Rapier. I have done this with my 9.0 line-up and it sucked)
Again, this is just a compression issue imo. The entire 7.0-9.0 BR range for aircraft is a total and complete mess even without looking at GRB. Though I personally dont consider the Canberra Mk2 vs Gepard as an unfair fight. If anything, I hold most of those cards in the Canberra.
6 Likes
I think minor nations are just eternally doomed to have major gaps as long as Gajin is running things.
I don’t think Britain should be an excuse for every other nation with a Gepard clone to stay overpowered.
You are right that compression is the problem, but moving the Gepard up would be decompressing.
let them have full apds and move them up. A buff to make the BR more suitable for ground combat, and a buff to make the AAA capabilities to a higher level and avoid harming lower br CAP and CAS
They don’t even APDS. Side penning will be just as easy as 9.0, heck maybe even easier since no more heavy tanks.
and let me guess, you think vulcan is good despite how you perform with it.
8 Likes
It’s certainly not good at killing tanks, I have plenty of experience to say that.
Holy copium batman, SPAA exists to counter CAS and prevents planes and helicopters from flying around uncontested. If it disincentivizes people spawning in planes than its kinda working as it should. That is its purpose, to combat planes and helicopters. If you first spawn a helicopter with rockets and then die to a gepard thats quite literally the purpose of the vehicle being done right lol.
Just because the gepard can be used against tanks doesnt mean its optimal at it. The 35mm is great and does shred from side, but so does quite literally any light tank with faster firing gun than 200RPM at that BR. Survivability wise its basically a light tank with a radar attached to it.
I love flying helis so dealing with SPAAs first spawned or not is one way or another something you just gotta get used to and play around. Helicopters have the benefit of not needing you to play them to progress through the TT since you can just pool RP from ground vehicles into helis which is quicker and more effective so you dont really have to use something thats really not good. (like for example the swedish HKP3C with 85m/s missiles.)
8 Likes
plus the other options for any SPAA for germany are laughably shit.
Kugelblitz against jets even early ones is mid, wiesel cant even look up that high with vertical guidance maxing up at 45 degs , luchs going to 69 (nice!) degrees. Both with horrible horizontal slew rates and incase of wiesel not even 360 degree slew capability.
With sweden youre forced to use either ZSU-57-2 which is more a TD than an SPAA or VEAK40 which after losing the proxy round has muzzle velocity so slow that you could probably outrun it.
And japan the only other SPAA option is a SUB-I-II which is a 5.3 shitbox.
Oh yea and USA has PIVADS as the only other option, which is just a vulcan with track radar
3 Likes
All Helicopters on 8.3 have guided missiles with a range of 3-4 km. Which is right at the edge of the effective range of a Gepard. I would argue the Gepard is best at ranges from 200m up to 2km.
The munition takes about 5 seconds to travel 3km. So you should have pleanty of time to evade and dodge. Not even mentioning the tracers that clearly show that you are being shot at (and also reveal the position of the Gepard).
Of course, when you just hover in you heli, you are way easier to be hit than when you actively dodge the incoming rounds.
And heli-rushing is also not advised, since all (and not only the SPAAs) will shoot at you.
As for normal planes: lots of players bring their totally undertiered CAS with them into battle. I don’t wanna know how many propeller aircraft I have shot down with my Gepard. I cannot even see a propeller aircraft in a full downtier. Of course those will be easily shot down.
Also sont fly in a straight line.
5 Likes
Gepard matches 9.0-9.7 CAS quite well. 7.3-9.3 has no undertiered CAS aside from maybe the Su-11
let me rephrase, since you dont seem to have read the rest:
planes that are totally uptiered, like a F-4U Corsair
You realize undertiered and uptiered are complete opposite, right?
The aircrafts are too low a BR for the BR they are played at: undertiered
they are being used at a higher BR that they are: uptiered