oh true I forgot to take that into account, thanks for pointing that out.
ah yeah, now I see it and that makes a lot more sense. I removed my bottom bit and added an update for the reason.
Survivability of the Skink is a pro compared to the Wirbelwind. The Skink has a fully enclosed turret and actual armour protection. The hulls are similar however.
Though survivability is basically the only thing the Skink outperforms the Wirbelwind in.
Even if the Skink went back down to 4.7, it’s still 1.0 higher than the Wirbelwind. Not saying the Skink should go lower, but I’m just using that for comparison sake.
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Yes, it’s as you say. Survivability is nice but as Polsten guns that Skink has have quite low shell velocity it’s quite hard to hit any plane that is not flying fairly close to you and also limits how high can you shoot, making shooting down bomber that is flying in 3-5 km pretty much impossible for you, while Wirbel thanks to having better shell velocity is capable of shooting planes with much more ease and can reach to higher flying targets, only thing that Skinks survivability brings to table is that when some arrogant or unexperinced flyer tryes to strafe you, you can shoot them down while not really suffering much damage (if they dont have bomb). Survalibity is nice but in my opinion it does’t justify it being moved from 4.7 when ti was added to 5.0 and later 5.3. in my opinion it should have stayed at 4.7, not really because it was better but because there was no real reason to move it to 5.3.
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It is because the AA is unkillable by MGs and most MKs
The Wirbelwind is NOT more survivable. Any plane with 7.62mm MGs can kill it.
Also the Skink is ripping planes to shreds if played right. If you don’t play it right it is a You-Problem. Also known as “Skill Issue”.
This thread is 4 months old and “git gud” goes both ways man. The Wirbelwind objectively should be “ripping planes to shreds” even more than the Skink can, but despite that it is allowed to see easier opponents despite having a better ability to put down planes. On paper that’s fine because the Skink is more survivable but it overlooks the key issue for all SPAA currently in game.A plane can’t roof snipe or bomb you if they are dead which is why every one of us bastards that actually plays Britain 5.3 overwhelmingly choose the Bosvark… because despite all it’s flaws (open side, large dead zone, poor traverse) it can slaughter every aircraft it can see before they can do a suicide dive, unlike the Skink. While not being vulnerable to some I-15 spraying rifle caliber rounds at you is nice, at the end of the day, being able to kill that I-15 in the first place is always going to be a stronger way to “survive” than being able to tank a 50kg bomb if it lands more than 10 meters away from you.
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BR barely matters for SPAA. I take out my Ostwind out at 6.7 all the time after my Ostwind II dies.
Having full protection is also invaluable for an SPAA. It means your gunner doesn’t get sniped from 1000m and they have to waste a bomb to kill you. It also has a fantastic turret rotation speed, better than the Wirbelwind. It’s a great SPAA that is well suited for defending your spawn from multiple planes.
It is not about Bombs.
I kill most AAs with my MGs. If I am in an AA most of the time I get killed by MGs/MKs.
The fact that you must expend a bomb in the first place to kill the Skink is the reason why it is at a higher BR than vehicles with about the same firepower or even better firepower that don’t need to be bombed.
Many planes, especially nimble ones, at these lower BRs can only carry 1-3 Bombs, so needing to kill the AA and wasting a bomb for that is a massive advantage for the team with the Skink. Because that bomb goes to kill the Skink which costs somewhat around 70 Spawnpoints instead of killing a Tank that cost more than 100SP and interfering with whatever the tank was doing (i.e. Capping, Killing another Tank).
Even if the Plane Bombs the Skink, it has averted at least one bomb from its team, which is better than the 0 bombs that get averted when the Wirbelwind gets gunned down by MGs/MKs.
If you can’t see this then you either don’t play AA&Planes that often, or you play them bad or you just don’t pay attention.
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Yes, because most SPAA are open tops. But I guarantee you unless they are being inattentive, you are not getting away unscathed and probably at best going to have to limp away to the airfield and at worst will screw up your shot placements and crash into the earth, knocking out only the loader of that milk truck you’re trying to get a “free kill” on.
In both scenarios as the SPAA, I have accomplished my goal of denying the airspace and have therefore “won” by forcing you to RTB, or just die outright. The main (only) strength of the Skink is that it automatically wins these suicide dives, if you’re paying attention, and ties if you aren’t (you don’t get guns on in time). In every other context though…
I don’t think the enemy having completely uncontested airspace is ever a “massive” advantage but you do you. At all BRs, how effective an SPAA is, is determined by how much CAS cannot ignore it. I’ll get back to this in a minute but just keep in mind for now that you don’t even need to bomb a Skink to defeat it.
I just want to pause and mention your math here though. Are you really comparing a full uptier SPAA spawn cost to, at best a partial uptier light/medium spawn cost. I think I’m being charitable here too, you’re almost certainly trying to compare it to the partial and full downtier 130 and 150 spawn costs which his highly dishonest. The range 70 - 110 and 100 - 150 respectively, that’s not that big of a discrepancy and considering one of these types of vehicles is disproportionately worse at it’s role when in a full uptier than the other, a 70 SP cost would be highway robbery if not for the prevalence of “it’s just an IFV but cheaper to spawn” vehicles filling the SPAA lines.
I’ll reiterate what I said, if you’re getting gunned down in a Wirbelwind maybe that’s on you. Not being able to track and kill 4.7s and 4.3s? Sure, I can understand that, full uptiers are always brutal, regardless of what vehicle it is… but 4.0s? 3.7s? The ultra ultra early 2.7 monoplanes that wish they had half the payload of the biplanes they’re replacing? Uh uh, that’s on you man. Also really think about it, the aircraft you most struggle with in the Wirbelwind (4.3s and 4.7s) are the weakest aircraft the Skink can see while, once again, having worse armaments to take them out of the sky at all.
Now I’ll finally get to the heart of the issue and the real discrepancy between our arguments though. You are evaluating the Skink based on it’s innate characteristics (mobility, armor, and firepower), while I’m evaluating the Skink on it’s ability to do it’s job (can it kill planes). Looking at from your view, the Skink being 5.3 makes sense! Sure it’s only 3.7 Sherman armor, but it’s in the top 10 of the most well armored SPAA in the entire game, and it’s certainly the most armored SPAA in the game relative to it’s BR (your M247 hull isn’t doing shit against DM23). But therein lies the problem, it has become so good on paper with it’s armor that it can’t actually do it’s role! The 20mm Oerlikons are adequate at best at 3.x and here they are again at 5.3, where they are now anemic in a downtier and hopeless in an uptier.
The Wiesel has a similar problem. Phenomenal mobility, extremely small profile, HVAP and APDS, gen 3 thermals giving it the best and quietest acquisition of any SPAA until the outlier 8.3 PGZ09 (which, even then, only has gen 2)? Yeah it doesn’t have tracking but why the hell is this below the M163 when it’s arguably far better in every other regard! Is it because it has a 45 degree maximum elevation, the absolute worst of any gun SPAA that’s 2.0 or above? Yeah that’s it that’s the reason why even though the Wiesel is a spectacular vehicle it completely and totally fails at being an SPAA. If it was worse (strip the thermals, make the profile bigger, ditch the APDS) then the awful elevation could be at least somewhat stomached and it could kill some aircraft. We know this because I just described the R3 (though even that gets 60 degrees of elevation) but because it’s so good as a budget IFV (to the point that it really should be removed from the SPAA line) and all those features won’t be removed by Gaijin, of those that even can be removed, it’s totally hopeless and CAS just quietly ignores it while they slaughter the Leo 1s and M48s they’re supposed to be acting as defense for. They don’t have have to do any crazy dives to be above it’s elevation and roof snipe, they don’t have to bomb it, they don’t have to do any aggressive maneuvers to avoid the line of fire, they simply have to ignore it. Just like how every 4.3 and 5.3 and 6.3 aircraft just ignores the Skink and bombs whatever they feel like, because they know the Skink is absolutely no threat to them.
They key difference though, is that the Wiesel and the R3 are still amazing rats which people overwhelmingly use them as. The Skink… is a 3.7 Sherman… with 3.3 guns… at 5.3… but since a P-40 in a 10 degree dive can’t disintegrate it with a half second burst it will continue to languish at that BR with the Bosvark, a vehicle that can put more lead, heavier lead, and faster lead downrange than the Skink can.
tl;dr
If an SPAA fails at the basic ability to shoot down aircraft it is a bad or overtiered SPAA, and the Wierbelwind is better at shooting down it’s toughest opponents than the Skink is at shooting down it’s weakest. Skink at 5.3 in RB is too high.
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“Getting killed by MG in a Wirbelwind is on you”
Say that again when you play these lowtier matches where you often have to defend your Wirbelwind against 2 or 3 planes.
If 3 Planes are up and none of them have bombs, the Skink is invincible.
If the 3 Planes are up and none of them have bombs, the Wirbelwind is pretty much dead, if the planes are not brain-rotten.
The Wirbelwind is just objectively worse.
And if you speak of the Wiesel, it is mainly because you can kill it, too, without any bombs.
Yes it is because of the ability to shoot down aircraft too.
Look, I get that you want to rank AAs at how good they are at shooting a plane down, but you just can’t put an SPAA that is completely invincible to any Guns below 37mm at a low BR.
Thing is, I don’t even have to argue it, as Gaijin just did it. It currently sits, appropriately, at 5.3
So good luck changing Gaijins mind on something they are right on - It is hard enough to do when they are actually wrong at something ;)
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The fact that you must expend a bomb in the first place to kill the Skink is the reason why it is at a higher BR than vehicles with about the same firepower or even better firepower that don’t need to be bombed.
And even if the Skink went back down to 4.7 it would still be a higher BR than the Wirbelwind. I fail to see your point, it’s still paying for that survivability.
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Skinks are free kills and I love to hunt them.
And what is a Skink supposed to do when all 3 of those planes… just ignore it?
Again I don’t think you fully grasp the issue here. The P-47D-25 is a highly potent and highly common CASmobile, being so good at the role that, if someone didn’t grind the air tree too thoroughly, you can see it as high as 7.x because 2x 1000lb bombs and 8x 12.7mm guns really is that good.
It’s 4.3
Thunderbolt, Corsair, Typhoon Ib, Do 335, the fucking Pe-8 all some of the most lethal CAS in the game for their BR, all 4.3 and the absolute weakest threats that a Skink can see. This is stuff some radar SPAA can struggle with if the aircraft is careful and knows what they’re doing, what the hell are four not-that-fast-firing Oerlikons supposed to do against something even more dangerous like a P-51H? Make it laugh so hard they forget to pull out of their dive?
It’s a real shame there isn’t any precedent we can draw from for a well armored SPAA that is based off of an existing chassis armed with 20mm cannons and then given a full BR increase. So like, if for example, if the original chassis was 3.0 or so this new vehicle would be 4.0, to make sure that the now 20mm armed chassis isn’t capable of being a threat to aircraft and the 2.0 or 2.3 vehicles that couldn’t even threaten the original chassis.
Just some hypothetical, as everyone knows the Skink was purely original and wasn’t based off of some other vehicle or anything so it’s a moot point anyways.
Yeah… which is why for all the time that both have existed, the Skink has sat at a higher BR. What is your point with this? We use the Wirbelwind as a comparison because it and the Skink are x4 20mm SPAAmobiles with similar gun characteristics at that down to how quickly the turret rotates. The guns and only the guns of the Wirbelwind are objectively better (you can’t argue this, faster fire rate, more explosive matter per shell, and higher velocity shells) but as a complete package (i.e. taking into account the Skink’s armor) the only person to state the Wirbelwind is outright better than the Skink in all aspects is thread OP who was immediately dunked on for it, including by me!
The Wiesel is as low as it is because an M41s roof mounted .50 cal has more gun elevation than Wiesel does (way more at that, it’s like 80 degrees or something). Give it 400mm of armor, Relikt all around, 30km perfectly functional IRST, and a tracking radar so advanced that it looks three seconds into the future so you can aim not where they should be if they keep their current speed and heading, but where they will be after accounting for speed changes and maneuvering.
Wouldn’t matter, that 45 degrees kills it, would just let it grief tanks as a budget IFV even harder than it already does at 7.3
Improve the elevation to something like 70 degrees or so (90 more ideally of course) and it’s easily an 8.0 or 8.3 vehicle with how fantastic it is with anti-ground now, and how good it would be at anti-air.
Ah yes, Gaijin is always right if I agree with the changes, and Gaijin is always wrong if I don’t agree with the changes.
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The reason why the Crusader is lower than the skink is because it is, in fact, not well armoured. You can kill the Crusader with most machine cannons. You can’t do that with a Skink. Would the crusader, all being same, be invulnerable to 20mm and 30mm MKs, it would be at least 4.7 if not 5.0
Like, you know, the Flakpanzer 341 that is tiered at 6.3, while the not-invincible variant, the Ostwind II is located at 5.3.
Ah yes, Gaijin is always right if I agree with the changes, and Gaijin is always wrong if I don’t agree with the changes.
looks similar
Then why did the Crusader AA Mk. II also go up in BR? If it being poorly armoured isn’t a problem. It’s got half the guns as the Wirbelwind, and the guns it does have is individually worse than the Wirbelwind.
It’s literally the same turret as the AEC AA, while the armour and mobility are quite similar but now they’re 0.7 apart.
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Who was the suggestion moderator who thought it would be good to throw a load of South African rubbish into the WW2 UK tech Tree? Why do you keep runing the game by doing such things?
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It has 4 20mm’s, the Wirbelwind has 4 20mm’s. ?!? aside that its almost as if having a turret and a chassis of a Sherman and 4 20mm’s becomes a very well armored vehicle.
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Wirbelwind 20mm’s:
- Rate of fire: 480 shots/min, combined 1920
- Vertical guidance: -10° / 90°
- Turret rotation speed: 60 (°/s)
- HE Ammo: Velocity 900m/s, Explosive Mass 10.2g
- AP Ammo: Penetration 45 at 100m
- 20 round magazines
Wirbelwind:
- Top speed: 39 / 8 km/h
- Hull armour: 80/30/30mm
- Turret armour: 16mm
Skink 20mm’s:
- Rate of fire: 450 shots/min, combined 1800
- Vertical guidance: -5° / 80°
- Turret rotation speed: 63 (°/s)
- HE Ammo: Velocity 838m/s, Explosive Mass 6g
- AP Ammo: Penetration 38 at 100m
- 30 round magazines
Skink:
- Top speed: 33 / 5 km/h
- Hull armour: 50/38/38mm
- Turret armour: 57/38/38mm
So in summary. Wirbelwind has far better guns. Mobility is quite similar. Hull armour is similar (when you factor in the Sherman’s front plate angle). Really the only thing the Skink even wins in is that turret armour.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’m not saying the Skink should drop to the Wirbelwind BR. Just that it should go back to 4.7.
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