I’ll probably disagree with a lot of people here, but I still prefer the Merkava 4, bugs and all, over my Abrams. What it does well:
Good mobility: 64 km/h forward and backward gets you out of trouble fast. Once you’ve driven 64 km/h in reverse, the Abrams feels sluggish.
Turret protection: the upper turret is surprisingly strong, especially hulldown; the mantlet can even stop APFSDS in the upper arc. And it can still somewhat tank HE shell after the nerf. Merkava 4 hulldown > Abrams, any day.
Optics: Solid. 4×–12× for the gunner and 4×–14× for the commander with Gen-2 thermal.
LWS & smokes: the laser warning system plus plentiful smoke can save you a lot at top tier, particularly versus helos.
Survivability: you stay combat-effective after hits far more often than in an Abrams (Especially since they added the turret basket to the Abrams).
5-second reload, nothing to say there.
APS(If they fix it one day lmao)
Side hits won’t stop you as easily; only a frontal penetration (or busted tracks) truly stops you, whereas other tanks can be disabled by a driver or engine hit, front or back.
And for CAS, the F-16I Sufa outclasses anything in the US tree.
Upper half of the turret is really good, the rest is wonky, hence why I called it a hulldown king.
It really is not. The F-16I is cheap to spawn(~700SP versus 900SP for the F-15E) because its only bombs, not ATGM. The Spice 250 are thermal guided, are more reliable than the Maverick because HE payload, and they glide high up then fall down on the target so they’re usable in city maps. Kind of funny that a glide bomb get a better attack profile than a missile but it is what it is.
And you get 8 of them + 2 Spice 1000(also glide). F-16I gives you the ability to secure 10 kills on moving targets, one shot every time.
Also, it has a MAW and large caliber countermeasures which is super useful to survive IR missiles that can catch you unaware in the F-15E. The only thing the F-15E does better is suppressing the new AA with the spam of 20 GBU-39, that’s it. Anything else, the F-16I does better.
Maveriks are ir guided too and yes they are less reliable but faster making them better at taking down spaas
Also the f15 is better platform with much more power
250 somethimes doesnt 1 shot but fair point they are mitlre reliable then maveriks
This is kinda a big thing lol and again f15 is better platform
Anyway its off topic
The abrams is better then the merkava in 80% of the cenerios
Right back at you. The upper half of the Merkava 4 turret was always strong, mantlet included. And that’s probably the only tank in the game capable of tanking mantlet shots that way. If you find a good hulldown position, the upper half of your turret is pretty much all you need to show. I have thousands of games in the Merkava 4s, I’m not talking out of my *ss.
Point is, F-16I gives you 10 reliable kills on moving targets per sortie, F-15E gives you 6 unreliable moving kills while being a lot more expensive to spawn. All that for a slightly better ability to kill the new AAs.(10 spices do the job more often than not). IF Gaijin adds Spice 250 racks to the F-15I, then yeah, the F-15I can probably overtake the F-16I. But until then, neither the F-15E or I is better than the Sufa.
The Abrams was better before, it really is not anymore. The Merkava snipes better than it, and now brawls better than it because the Abrams damage model is now horrible since detailed interiors. That doesn’t mean the Merkava 4 shouldn’t be fixed but it’s not a bad tank in WT, far from it.
I far prefer the Sufa to the Ra’am, at least for top tier’s sake, and while my ground K/D is worse, I prefer the playstyle of the Sufa as it revolves around terrain more than the F-15, popping up over the enemy spawn to drop SPICE then hugging the deck again feels more satisfying than spamming mavericks and JDAMs at range
I bring that loadout plus a JDAM ER, i bring both in my lineup and play whatever feels appropriate, I’m just staying the Sufa is more enjoyable in my personal experience
