The abhorrent state of Heli EC PvE and the poor implementation of Heli EC PvP

Dude honestly. in ground RB, there’s almost nothing you can do to counter SPAA. Don’t even get me started on the 2S38. Flares don’t work because most of the SPAA is Radar based, they can track you THROUGH TREES AND HOUSES, and SPAA is pretty much watching you the second you take off and you can’t even see them because they’re sitting in the back of their spawn like a rat. I’ve had Spike missiles kill my AFTER I’ve already landed on the helipad. SPAA was bad enough for helis already. Now we can’t even get close enough to do anything. The only helicopters that needed a nerf was the KA-50 and KA-52 but now every helicopter suffers. Even if you manage to grind and finally get the best helicopters in the game all you can do is:

  • Sit above your helipad and shoot ATGMs before getting absolutely obliterated
  • Sit above your helipad and shoot AA missiles before getting absolutely obliterated
  • Sit above the enemy helipad and spawn kill getting absolutely obliterated
  • Damage an enemy with rockets before getting absolutely obliterated
  • Tickle the enemy with guns before getting absolutely obliterated

Trust me I’ve tried every tactic in the book, and they all have the same end result.
I just played a game where I took off and a 2S38 immediately shot me down like 100m away from the helipad. Like you can’t make this stuff up.

Me when I get to the SPAA

2 Likes

On this part, I don’t really mind if SPAA swats us helicopters like flies, that’s the nature of helicopter CAS since day 1 (except for the 7.7-8.7 ATGM carriers)

I just can’t bear the grind, it’s horrible

Thats a big part of what makes the grind suck so bad though. We can barely get kills and when we manage to finally get one, the rewards are little to nothing. Getting swatted out of the sky almost instantly makes it 100x worse.

1 Like

Sorry for the one-year late reply (ba-dum-tss)

I thought you were referring to the ground RB situation, but alas I was wrong.

Yes, I do agree that in a lot of situation, AI SPAA are too strong. One example is in the map “Rocky Canyons” where M42 dusters and M60A1/M113’s commander .50 would snipe you out of the air in 1 milisecond the moment you reach their 2km death zone. Add to the fact that ground units are always glitched (due to map desync/server desync), early helicopters wouldn’t be able to hit SPAA properly and with pinpoint accuracy.

The only thing that could fight these SPAAs effectively, are helicopters with autotracker, which can’t be found under 10.3 BR

1 Like

They really need to just buff the amount of targets / payout for targets / a match.

Thus for individual, and overall rewards they’re at least 30% higher.

The problem isn’t / wasn’t solely on the KA-50, people need to stop blaming it as the scape goat. The Tiger UHT in heli PVP was also heavily spammed.

Nor should the KA-50 go up in br, lacking any thermals, (it should have gen 1 since it has the night vision upgrade package irl and in game) and being 11.3 for 12 good ATGMs is a bit silly. 11.0 would’ve been fine, 11.3 is tough but do-able.

Nor do Heli Pve brs apply the same way. It goes 7.7-8.7, 8.7-10.0 10.0–12.0 last I checked.

Heli pve sucks, as you have to fight tooth and nail against other players for good rewards. It should be team spirit.

Generally helicopters are a mess in game. They’re played less than planes, and are the minority.

2 Likes

The way PvE BR bracketing works, as far as I remember, is this

7.7-9.0
9.3+

Yes, I’ve seen non-squad Mi-24Ps in my Ka-52s.

I actually believe that the way Heli PvE bracketing works is by rank instead of BR

On the UHT/HAD/HAP case, yes, I do agree that they were a problem and they were spammed to the brink of death when PARS and Mistrals were actually useful (with their pre-nerf 20G+ maneuver). That, until Ka-50 is on sale.

I do agree with the individual and overall rewards, amount of targets and rewards per targets, and the fact that PvE sucks because of the competition.

While I do agree that helicopters are the minority, I would like to argue that helicopters are a major incentive booster for Gaijin’s economy if they reworked the supporting game mode.

1 Like

They’re needs to be more heli pve brackets. 9.3s should never mix with 10.7s or higher. You may be right with the br placement, it’s been awhile since I’ve played it.

Also I brought up a similar topic, but I mentioned modifications cost etc.

If I might make an suggestion, we should try to combine posts.

1 Like

Oh shoot, I’m down for that, just reply to this thread if you made a suggestion post

I haven’t yet. I want to get people thoughts before doing a suggestion post.

The only time heli PvP was good was before EC was implemented, because the game was balanced. Sure, Mi-4AV wasn’t able to go toe-to-toe against a Viper, but they didn’t have to. The complexity of maps like Rice Terraces made sure helis could sneak around and win by objectives. At the end of the day the Hound has 96 rockets and 4 Falangas, it could cause its fair share of damage to AI. And the Huey vs. Hind dogfights with cannon pods were surprisingly fun. There weren’t air-to-air missiles, fire-and-forget or proxy-fuzed ATGMs. Even the first AAMs were almost balanced by IRCM, flares and HIRSS. It sucked to be on a heli without flares, but as long as you had them an R-60 or AIM-9L could be flared off if you paid attention.

But now? After Gaijin powercreeped everything to hell and back and raced to the bottom to find the worst starter heli for each subsequent nation? No. Playing a PvP mode with that Swedish Huey is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And high tiers, where helis have AAMs with IRCCM? Hard pass for me.

It would be the simplest, most straightforward improvement. Rewards are already soft capped by the useful actions system, so it’s not like people hogging kills would get to grind faster, it would instead mean more targets for everyone else.

1 Like

Oh man, I wished I experienced playing War Thunder back when the Heli PvP mode was still a pseudo-air arcade game…

well, there’s a certain demographic from a certain part of the world, (that also happens to cheat a lot), that buys the KA-50 as it’s truly the best helicopter to spam for rewards, and they fly it in, and wipe everything, thus nobody gets rewards.

The useful actions should be a bonus for teamwork or “useful actions” I’m sick of playing for a long time constantly to get shafted by gaijin.

Like I can spend 3 hrs in a sim match, with premium time, and barely get 1.25 modifications for a vehicle if I’m lucky and am at the top of the team. Meanwhile, it should be 2 modifications at the least and somewhere between 400-600k silver for being 1st on the team with a win (if in a premium heli / premium time) and trickle down from there. Which is what it first was, gaijin saw a surge in the mode being played and blamed it on the rewards, then they tanked. I think now you’ll get about 325k at max, which makes it worthless.
I could play ground and average between 86-136k silver a match or naval being 100-168k a match.