The F-4EJs are bad.
They are extremely tough to play in general these days due to the meta. Up-tiers mean certain death and little to no kills as well as rough time bombing bases. Often they are out sped in such situations making one of their few advantages null and void. This is doubly so for the Japanese versions due to their lack of the Dogfight version of the Sparrow E when comparing it to the American version which just adds on to the hopelessness that these aircraft face in Air RB.
Another complaint is that without PD radar, the Sparrows are dead weight. I often never use them along with my friends. Due to the radar on these Phantoms being easily confused by chaff it often leads to them missing about 9/10. I often celebrate in surprise if I ever get a sparrow kill with these aircraft on the off chance that I do bring them.
In a down-tier the F-4EJs are a bit more useful. They can be strong in niche scenarios however can be overwhelmed easily and still require a decent amount of skill to play effectively. Often F-5Cs are able to swarm you to lower your airspeed and then can dictate the fight how they want it.
Another bad aspect of the EJs is that their ground capability is worse than the American F-4E, the American version gets Mavericks and GBUs while Japan gets nothing of the sort. This can be frustrating in ground battles when using the EJs due to lack of stand off range given by the Mavericks.
To put into perspective my claim, the MiG-21bis is the same BR as the mentioned vehicles and is not only far easier to play in my opinion but are also much more well armed with 6 R-60Ms!!! Another example, the MiG-23 also has a far more fierce arsenal with its R-60Ms.
In all, these aircraft are most importantly not fun to play. And I think that is the most important thing.
Lastly, what do you think? I want to hear other people’s opinions. Am I just bad or is there some merit to this? If you don’t think there is a problem, how else can these problems be worked around. Please be civil, and thank you for reading!
The EJ would be a bit powerful at 10.7 due to bringing a sparrow kit that can fire an undodgeable radar missile - if you get a Aim-7E slung at the right range it will hit you through chaff and is difficult to evade.
With the BRs raised the EJ wouldn’t have to fight insanely powerful vehicles like MiG-29, Mirage 2K and F-14 in uptiers.
Decompression is definitely the culprit, however I don’t believe this is in the playbook for the foreseeable future. However, decompressing would help.
When it comes to the right range thing, this is exactly what I mean, its very finnicky to use and when a lot of 9.7s have countermeasures these days (harriers and such) I don’t think its an issue. From my and my friend whos is also reading this personal experiences have rarely seen the sparrows go through chaff. Additionally, the 9.7s that don’t have these countermeasures I rarely see (Hunter F.6, G.91YS, etc) which is a whole other issue. In my post I talk how comparatively to other 11.0s these aircraft perform worse and are harder to play well.
In my opinion this isn’t an issue.
The F-4F is more of a ground strike aircraft due to it 2 Mavericks, I talked about in my post about how the EJs do not have such armaments.
Personally I would this it would be fine at 10.3 if you believe it shouldn’t be the same BR as the EJs. It would play like a 104 at that BR and I don’t that’s too bad. Especially when looking at competitors at that BR.
However, I don’t play the F-4F but I know its bad. So you should make a post about how it should be improved!
F4F early is a premium, F-1 is Japanese rank VI, doomed to be skipped. Mirage IIIC has great 1-turn and Magic, J-35D is gaijin skill issue, they should get Draken G instead.
So what’s the problem? I’ve already said that little to no one uses the Sparrows on the EJ, so it would perform just like the F-4F. Even if people do its not like its going to take over games like the Aim-7F and R-27ER does at top tier.
My response to the 10.3 problem is that well stuff like the F-1 were just recently down tiered to 10.3 bc of issues due 11.3 premium spam which it still has to face, just not as much. The F-1 is also a case I will probably make a post about on its own bc of the host of issues it has. The Mirage IIIE is the same BR as the C and has magics and countermeasures which I would say are more effective than bases Sparrow Es will ever be. The J35D has its maneuverability to rely on to the point where it can barrel roll out of the way of sparrows which I’ve done against standard Aim-7Es in much less maneuverable aircraft.
The F-4F early is an event vehicle and I haven’t played it unlike all the other aircraft I’m mentioning so I don’t have an opinion on that.
A decent missile against a flareless jet is literally just an “I win” button and an aircraft without CM and an aircraft with decent flight performance and decent AAM, CM shouldn’t be in the same BR.
If it is 1vs1 between flareless jets, they can be balanced to some extent by each other’s positioning and dueling skill, but flareless jets vs has jets with CMs is just unfair and they should not have the same BR.
Community players being fractured over these issues is why we can’t put pressure on gaijin for decompression. Instead of all hammering gaijin over this like we did with the review bombing, people want their favorite vehicle downtiered.
The vehicle’s underperformance is not the problem! Gaijin’s choice to compress the BRs is the problem.
Unfortunately, planes never lose their missiles unless it wasn’t historical such as R-13s for MiG-19PT.
You can see what happend in old forums when Harreir GR.1 was implemented in the game and people asked about removing SRAAMs.
This ain’t any one of us’ favorite vehicles its just one of the few vehicles that can grind the F-15J/F-16 for Japan. Having it in this state is deplorable and isn’t something that should have happened in the first place.
F-5C should not be the same BR as F-4F early
F-8E should not be the same BR as F-1
A-10 Late should not be the same BR as the Mirage 5F
However they are.
This argument is kinda bad imo.
We have jets at 9.3 with R-60s, A-10 with Aim-9L all aspect missiles at 10.0, so why should the EJ or any other aircraft be stuck at 11.0 with no such weapons.
Yes correct, but its not just decompression, which I agreed (the compression issue) is part of the issue if you read the first comment on this post.
However here, I’m focusing on EJs and not the decompression issue as a whole.
10.7 is a good fit if they aren’t going to implement any decompression here for the foreseeable future.
Saying decompression is the solution is kind of of a: “Yeah duh” moment imo.