I just ran 13 matches with a full French lineup at top tier and honestly — it was unplayable.
For context, I usually sit above 60% winrate, yet I lost 10 out of 13 games (23% winrate!).
Here’s what stood out:
The new Mi-28NM brings LMUR — a top-down, fire-and-forget IR missile with a 15 km range. NATO counterparts cap out at 7 km with TRIGAT/PARS 3 or 8 km with Spike ER.
BUK-M3 has now joined the lineup, on top of the already dominant Pantsir.
Ongoing oppression from Kh-38 and Kh-29 strikes.
T-80/T-90 brainless rush remains constant.
And as always, new Russian vehicles are instantly “GE unlocked” on day one, which only widens the gap.
At this point, it feels like Russian teams are steamrolling NATO across the board.
NATO received the AH64E, China also received their equivalents to the MI28NM, so there’s nothing to complain about, constant spam of T80 and T90? What do you mean? If not these two tanks, then which ones would be in the Soviet top tier? The BUK is good but suffers from multipathing. I destroyed some of them today using my Thai Gripen.
Likely also flavor of the month effect. The BUK is a new top tier vehicle for a major nation, people with multiple nations usually switch over to the nation with a new top tier vehicle.
The russian bias believers also did an exceptional job hyping up/overhyping the BUK, so more people want it because they were told it’s incredible.
Everyone and their dog is playing USSR top-tier to grind out the Buk. That’s why so many are queuing up. The sweats will go back to their Leopard 2A7s, etc, once they have the Buk done.
Which part of “It was unplayable” do you not understand?
If that needs spelling out, here’s the recurring pattern across my matches:
Russia steamrolls to NATO spawn
Russian team brings Kh-38, Kh-29 and LMUR into play
Spawn rape until NATO teams run out of points
This happened in 10 out of 13 games. That’s what I call unplayable. Yes, it’s broken — and yes, there’s something to complain about: poor balancing and matchmaking.
And to be clear: none of these vehicles alone would completely break the balance — but their combination does. That’s why focusing on one bullet point in isolation misses the bigger picture. Adding @_Renzo since he missed it.
I mean last update russia had all these things except for the BUK and LMURs and absolutely got their teeth stomped in.
FOTM is a real effect and can come from the smallest things. The Leo 2 PSO and M1A2 SEPv1 slightly after their release increased the US and German winrates by like ~20% respectively, even though these tanks were barely any better than the previous top tier tanks these nations had.
Same is happening with Russia because they just got the BUK, more multi nation players switched to Russia to unlock it. And multi nation players are usually better than the nation mains that are mostly left playing the other nations.
After 6 years Russia (and USA) finally gets a counter to PARS. Sure its better… but SIX YEARS. let them play with it a bit. Now excuse me while I go back to being farmed by the Rafales (that just got ANOTHER buff) in my JF-17.
Never claimed you did, just seemed like a good example of how people overlook all the OP stuff on their side, the PARS being another good example, especially when it was released, there would be 4 or 5 UHTs spamming that thing every game.
But thanks for proving my point, not just in general but as applying to you personally.
They need to straight up remove helicopters from the game… The new spaa doesnt do anything when all they do is launch all they have from their heli pad and re arm, while you just used all you had to defeat the incoming missiles and then left defenceless.
Mi-28NM did not need LMURs, Vikhrs were the strongest heli-to-ground missile with long range and proxy fuse + You can get them with a simple modification
for comparison on the apache, you have to grind a whole heli to get JAGM, going from 114Ks to SAL 179 to IR 179 and it’s not even a known version of the JAGM – The IR or Semi-Active-Laser were never built prototypes, the known JAGM-MR has a tri-mode seeker eith IIR, SAL and mmW homing
Kh-38 are the strongest jet-to-ground missile and they buffed it
And the wierd chinese F&F missiles are meh, HE with little to no damage to MBTs
I can feel the russian rush, their tactic is to hold W and shoot and it’s working
Buk-3 is broken, 25m proxy fuse and enough explosive to wipe a small vilage – hard to notch, will hit from close range, can survive without radar vehicle, etc.
I wouldn’t be as alarmist yet. The LMUR got added to an existing heli contrary to a completely new Apache and tactics against the buk will develop.
But they really have to do something about that magic anti missile field, because that combined with Helis having terrible radar signatures could really become toxic as hell
There are some real issues going on right now. Is Big BS the new top tier? Fire-and-forget helicopter missiles are no joke. Soon, they might even become the downfall of top-tier players.
The problem is that jets can fire ground missiles from over 20 km away, and AA can’t really do much about it. The same goes for helicopters now. Meanwhile, tanks are stuck at 12.0 and haven’t improved much—mainly because there’s nowhere left to improve. Top tier has basically turned into an arcade game, just without the markers.
