The F-14A is severely over-tiered at 12.7

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my thoughts on the current state of the F-14A in Air RB, especially regarding its BR placement at 12.7. Right now, the F-14A feels significantly outclassed compared to other jets at the same or even lower BRs, most notably the F-16A.

While the F-16A sits at 12.3, it offers superior overall performance: it has better flight characteristics, more advanced avionics, and it can carry up to 6 AIM-9Ls. In contrast, the F-14A is stuck with only 4 AIM-9Hs, which are significantly worse in terms of flare resistance and overall effectiveness.

Yes, the F-14A has access to the AIM-54 Phoenix, but let’s be honest—those missiles are no longer as impactful as they once were. Most players at this BR already know how to evade them, and they rarely result in kills against competent opponents. The Phoenixes are large, slow to guide, and can be evaded easily when players understand how to counter them.

What we’re left with is a jet that doesn’t excel in close combat, is outmatched in energy fights, and whose primary long-range advantage is increasingly irrelevant in the current meta. It just doesn’t feel fun or effective to fly anymore, especially when you’re consistently up against F-16s, MiG-29s, and other modern jets with better tools.

I strongly believe the F-14A deserves a BR reduction to at least 12.3 to reflect its actual performance and give it a fighting chance in today’s matchmaking environment.

I used to really enjoy flying the F-14A — it was one of the most fun and iconic jets in the game for me. But nowadays, it feels almost unplayable. What was once a powerful and exciting aircraft is now constantly outperformed and overshadowed by more modern jets, making it frustrating to fly and difficult to succeed with.

What do you all think?

EDIT: A decompression from the BR 12.0 to 14.0 could solve the problems especially in this BR bracket.

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forums be like

“new TIGER_TANK_1 just dropped”

Anyway, I think, the main selling point of F-14A is multipath resistant missiles, which means lower BR planes, which relies on multipathing a lot, will suffer greatly

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No offence, but I am really surprised that you are aware that you make many silly posts.

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It’s fine enough where it is, AIM-54’s may not be impactful, but they’re still Fox-3’s. Anyone who’s dumb enough to not listen to their RWR no matter how bad or fly high will get smited by it pretty easily. Plus, I don’t think it has bad dogfighting performance? It can hang with pretty much any plane that isnt the F16A or something, and it get shafted easily by IR missiles.

Now that you mention it, I did beat an F14 with the 29, but I forced him to loop with me, if he denied me and just went with the flat 2 scissors — he could’ve won. And I do remember beating a 29 too with the F14 IRIAF.

Edit: Above was before maneuvering mode was added

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Sending the F-14A down because of superior jets is a dumb move as long as we have similar experiences when Gaijin sent the F-86 and MiG-15/17 down because of supersonic jets like the F-104.

It will create nothing but another compression.

Sending superior jets higher with decompression which EFT/F-15E to 14.3+ is better solution

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I agree on that. I think we could need a decompression from 12.0 to 14.0

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I’m aware of the responses I get, it’s just I don’t care much.

Also im a devil advocate, just my thing.

Finally, English isn’t my first language, so my way of writing can confuse people, especially when it comes to specific details/order (im a software developer, I know how many important specifics are)

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Whenever I get a air task that requires a multi kill streak it is still my go to because as long as premium jets exist you will continue to have napalmers charging full speed at bases ignoring their RWR bleeping away at them.

And with manual wing control you can hold your own in most fights after.

It’s not slightly overtiered and certainly not severely.

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Aim-54s will always make placing the F-14 tricky. If it was Aim-9H and Aim-7F, it would easily be 12.3. But the existance of Aim-54 makes that rather hard because they will always give a notable advantage in a BVR fight and ARB is inherrently just perfectly designed for Spamming them off. Especially with premium players that have no idea how to defend.

I think 12.7 is as low as it can go for now, but definetly needs some buffs, especially with the Aim-54s

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a lot of these jets doesn’t even have RWR on top of the planes which is where f 14 fires. Also I think the RWR can’t detect Phenoix but I’m not sure about the bands.

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he’s not annoyingly contrarian like Alvis.

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Well, at least he knows what he’s talking about.

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multipath WHAT?!

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splash radius

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Well kids believe in Santa Claus too.

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i wish that was the case

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All I’m reading is an F-14 player lamenting that he can no longer club 11.0s with 50km range missiles like it did on release and completely and utterly dominated the meta.

The F-14A is perfectly fine at 12.7. Yes you no longer get 6 kills at the start of the game and then instantly land, that’s a good thing. It still has a good kit with its only drawback being the RWR. Even the flight performance is good. Also, the way you completely glossed over the fact that it can carry 6 (SIX) AIM-7Fs shows how much you used to rely on the Phoenix back when it was utterly busted.

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Im actually impressed that

A) Didnt hit

and

B) that the splash damage didnt do massive damage

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the splash damage didn’t do anything at all and it happens most of the time.
i need to test this more

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Was the target dropping chaff?

If so, it might have been spoofed at the last second and then rather than impacting below it impacted just far enough behind