The fact that no 11.0 premium in other tree got bad weapon loadout like J-7D just makes me suspicious about Gaijin feeling regarding China. Is the Sino-Soviet split still hurt their feeling?
J-7D is barely competitive at it’s own BR were it not for the Magic and it’s fucky maneuverability. now instead of giving it competitive performance through PL-5C they just leave this stupid overpriced premium not worth 60 let alone 70 USD -hanging without any update? if JH-7 can get 4 all aspect with marginally better flight performance and only sit at 11.3 then why the hell can the J-7D, a MiG-21 F-13 airframe with Magic and some chinese missile that doesn’t see 10.3 - 10.7 because Gaijin is too lazy to make more Indigenous Chinese Plane need to sit in 11.0?
Pure incompetence? lazy? J-7E can have 11.0 because it got the flight performance to support PL-5 slinging and good ACM radar to lock the missile, but not the basic ass J-7D.
Along with Chinese community demand, I also demand that J-7D get PL-5C to keep it competitive at 11.0.
I remember the A-5C spam. Hell, even after being uptiered and marginally powercrept, an afterburning, flare equipped supersonic with Magics at 10.0 is no slouch.
Then of course there’s the CW-21.
Most of the rest is basically copy paste of the big two Air nations, so I’d hardly call it uncompetitive. The only exception is the F-104G being the worst Starfighter in game, but all the late model, non Italian ones are pretty awful, so I’d hardly call it anti-Chinese bias.
The J-7D might be a little mediocre, but I’d still take it over an F-4J UK or ADTW any day. You get massively better flight performance and better IR missiles in exchange for them having nearly usuable RADAR missiles in the current meta.
And if we expand that to all tier 7 premiums, we can also add the the F-4J UK and Kfir Canard. Arguably also the F-104 TAF and J35XS as well. They get more missiles, but the missiles are worse, and with other sizable downsides (F-104 chassis and 6 shots of CMs, respectively).
Outside the outliers, the F-4S and MiG 23 ML, both of which are way stronger than the rest, the J-7D is completely on par with the other premium options other nations get.
As someone who’s ground all the way through the regular EJ to get to the F-16AJ, it pains me to agree
EJ and ADTW are hurt hard by compression, no all-aspects and an absolutely garbage excuse of a radar with non-DF 7Es and no agile eagle slats… At 11.0. At or slightly above the same BR, Russia gets the MiG-23 ML, France gets the F1C-200, and the US gets the F-4S, all of which get better armaments and agility…
The F-104 TAF is also 11.0. And, I forgot to include the new kid on the block, the German Tornado, 2 AIM-9Ls on one of the worst dogfighting platforms of all of top tier.
Also, the current benefits of preferential matchmaking that 10.7 gets over 11.0 will dissapate over time as top tier gets moved higher and more interrim jets get added to 11.7. Once we see 12.7/13.0, a lot of the 12.0s that currently dominate the 11.0 MM bracket will get sucked up and inflict 11.0s on 10.7s a lot more.
At the end of the day, tier for tier, the J-7D is mediocre, but far from being the worst premium options between nations. 4 Magic 1 equivalents on a MiG-21 chassis isn’t bad.
104 S TAF has Aspide and the ability to bomb a whole base clean.
It has fighting chance.
No radar missile? aight, there’s bombsleighing ability.
It has arguably more fighting chance than J-7D and ADTW since ADTW is slower to reach base compared to 104 S TAF. and the IDS WDT is a shitty cashgrab, no need to point that out.
Which never happened and 10.7 is still the best BR to be around as the true compression happened in 11.0 - 12.0 bracket where the performance difference is too great to fight.