So ive been playing a bit of US top tier ground, ive finished germany, russia and japan both air and ground and the only thing left was US ground.
I cant remember a more utterly dogsh*t experience anyone could ever have in this game.
To summarize my last 48-ish hours of US top tier, i think the best word would be disappointment.
The last update (HS) has really just hammered in the already massive problems in the game and made them that much worse.
This might seem as a rant but i genuinely think these are some points that are worth critiquing and are coming from someone who has played all 3 big nations and Japan at 12.0 and 12.7 a fair bit.
So, lets start with…
1.) CAS.
Ill preface this by saying that i do love playing CAS/CAP same as i love playing SPAA, i think they are a worthwhile addition to the game and shouldnt be straight up deleted from the game mode, but theres some pretty big issues…
Now if people want to cry about CAS and how bullshit it is and how it should get deleted from the game, theres plenty of threads for that, however as of right now, some changes have to be made.
The HS update has added another Kh38 carrier into the game, on its own it wouldnt be such a large problem except for the fact that is has none of the negatives of Su34 and doesnt even share SP pool with it, leading to what a lot of people experience as a back to back Kh38 spam.
Now before very vocal minority on these forums comes out and starts saying “but XYZ had mavericks since XXXX” the two missiles are incomparable in performance, to suggest otherwise is just plainly lying.
As of speaking pretty much every single match, playing USA, Germany or Japan, which sees Russia on the opposing team turns into a “how long until half the team dies to one person with 6 telephone poles” followed by 4 other people in the same jet with the same loadout.
This also leads to…
2.) SPAA
I love playing SPAAs, FlaRakRad despite its issues is probably my favourite SPAA from the ones i own to play. But in no circumstance is it comparable to the Pantsir, yet again a russian SPAA that is overperforming in SPAA duty compared to its contemporaries.
The “but SPAA is useless” argument is extremely poor, while yes, a good CAS player can deal even with Pantsirs, it becomes increasingly problematic while doing CAP against Su30/34 onslaught.
No other radar SPAA has such an oppressive presence ingame as the Pantsir, mainly due to the range it offers as well as the radar, being able to pick up munitions dropped or shot by the planes.
The general way of dealing with Pantsirs is to fly low and fire off bombs or missiles from close enough range where they cant intercept them.
The combination of the CAS as well as the best radar SPAA extending protection umbrella for both planes and tank ingame being tied to one nation tends to end up in an extremely uphill battle, be it on the ground or in the air when trying to counter russia.
3.) Maps
What also isnt helping the case is that the maps in Warthunder are extremely small, creating a funnel with limited flanking abilities, something a fair bit of light tanks require to do well.
Noone is necessarily suggesting that we need to have 16x16km maps but the maps should be bigger than they currently are. Off the top of my head, Abandoned Factory, Sweden, Abandoned Town, Hurtgen Forest, Alaska, etc. etc. are all maps that are obnoxiously small.
4.) The new turret basket
This new feature, for both the 10.7 leopards and abrams tanks all the way to 12.0s has been a disaster in general play. Abrams has already had a fair bit of problems with that massive weakspot from the front but this has really just hammered in the problem of getting hit anywhere (which is nearly unavoidable with the small maps) results in instantly crippled tank.
Ive said it during the dev feedback, ive said it during the Devs saying “were reducing the size”, this should have never been added or alternatively we should have been asked if we want it and should we vote yes then it should have been added to ALL TANKS AT ONCE.
Some people will say that “this is for giving russia autoloaders, bla bla bla” but again, those two things are like apples and oranges, you cant compare the two.
5.) Rendering
Weve probably all had this experience, youre looking at an angle, holding ground and then you get shot at from a tank thats not only completely silent but also wasnt visible at all to you.
Keen vision and Awareness as crew stats should just be gone, they are blatanly giving people advantage for something that should be the same for every player.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS:
These are just my suggestions but these could help tackle some of the underlying issues with the problems above.
1.) CAS
One of the best ways to lessen the impact of CAS is to increase the SP cost of A2G munitions. Last minihotfix increased the cost by ~70SP which is laughably nothing.
With how opressive CAS has the ability to be and how easy you can reduce and gain SP (scouting reduces 14% of the current cost per successful scout assist) making the spawn costs for a fully kitted out F15E/Su30/34/Rafale or even the typhoon be above 1000-1400SP (or around the cost that it now is for a backup) would certainly help.
It wouldnt eliminate planes from ground but it would make it that to bring a plane in you would have to do more than get 2 scout kill assists and maybe a cap to bring a full ground striker plane.
Additionaly as for the current problem of Kh38s, theres two easy fixes.
One is removing them from the game until stronger SPAAs on other nations are added that can deal with them, same way as Gaijin took out Grom-1s from the game as it was too game breaking. Option two is to take away their IOG from them. This means that tanks that are paying attention to the sky and smoke can actually survive the missile as it would self detonate, same as mavericks. As of right now, even when smoking the IOG on the missile still has the ability to kill a tank that smoked thanks to the explosive payload.
2.SPAA
The pantsir has an export variant of its missile that has 12km range. Instead of the current one, the export variant could be used until other nations get similar in range SPAAs where 95Ya6 will be comparable.
Ofc the next solution is to add new SPAA for other nations like SPYDER for israel, IRIS-T SL(M) for germany, NASAMS for sweden, Type 11 for japan, etc. etc.
3.) Maps
Expand existing maps, add more objectives than just 3, make sure to add cover. Gaijin has the ability of making an extremely cool mode or map where people can fight for more than just one small village.
4.) Basket
Please just get rid of it. Its quite literally a horrible addition that was added to only few tanks instead of them all, creating an unfair advantage for every other tank in that regard.
5.) Rendering
Make it be the same across the board for everyone, get rid of Keen Vision and Awareness as crew stats.
As of right now, top tier is genuinely probably the worst experience a person can have in this game.
Feel free to discuss your own experience in the comments, tho try to not derail it into insults.
