Vehicle: J-22M1A
Gamemode: Ground Realistic
BR Change: 11.0 —> 10.7 (stay at 10.7)
Reason: Compared to the A-10 Late, it has less munitions, no AAM, and the seekers on the Kosava are worse.
Using the Kosavas with MITL makes them less fire-and-forget than the mavericks, and it only carries 4. It takes much longer to get kills with these compared to true fire and forget missiles, since MITL can only control a single missile at a time. And the J-22 has so few munitions, and they each need to be launched separately, so they can very easily be intercepted by SPAA. And while controlling MITL, control is lost on the plane, so it is very easy to kill.
Moving it to 11.0 will make it face more SPAA systems that can intercept it’s missiles, and even the plane itself, which is slow. This will force J-22 players to stay far away (>10km) from the battlefield, which means they will be lucky to even get a single missile on target before the match ends, since the Kosavas are not very fast.
This is already the case in 10.7, the matches are short and the SP cost of the plane is high (800 SP). The plane is spawned, takes a minute or 2 to get into position, then launch 1 Kosava, switch to MITL and guide it to target, takes 1 minute, then launch another one. Repeat. It’s taken the J-22M1A 5-6 minutes to launch 4 missiles. While the A-10 can fly to the battlefield, quickly launch all 6 mavericks, and disengage, that’s 3 minutes to launch 6 missiles. The A-10 can overwhelm SPAA and distract them with the aircraft, while the J-22 with Kosavas cannot do this.
The plane without MITL would be 10.3 or even 10.0, since the Kosavas are equivalent to early TV mavericks. Having MITL doesn’t make the Kosavas better, it makes them usable at this high BR. Considering the drawbacks of MITL, it shouldn’t justify 11.0.
At 10.7 the J-22 had a line-up, now at 11.0 it’s going to be hard to justify up-BR’ing the 10.7 line up just for this plane, considering the points above. Additionally this plane is rank 6, a 11.0 plane has no place at rank 6.
There is also the economical view, this premium plane was just released at a low rank, and now it’s going up to a BR that has never been seen in that rank. This will make me rethink pre-ordering vehicles in the future, if it is inevitable they get “nerfed” shortly after release.
I would like to hear the justification on the BR increase.