The state of air rb top tier right now in War Thunder is in an interesting place. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s horrendous, as playing at altitude does allow for more options and positioning skills involved. But one of the main issues that many people find with it is the lack of reward or skillful gameplay. It is very easy to get a kill in top tier air rb, but the main problem is to be consistent by getting kills every game. The ways people play to get kills usually fall under two categories: Going high, and going low. Majority of players choose to play on the deck, I genuinely don’t know how people enjoy rushing in like this, the RWR warnings are always pinging you on the ground, and multipathing is not always consistent. I usually only use multi path when I can see the missile and know it’s most likely gonna hit the ground. For the players that do go high, it’s more dynamic, you can better position yourself at various locations on the map, at various altitudes. The only problem is, it takes a lot more experience and know-how to get the positions right, which also depends on the plane being played.
What are your guys’s thoughts on the state of top tier air rb as of May 2025?
For me going high is far more boring than going low flying through terrain is very fun, unless youre on denmark, smolensk, moscow or sinai which are terribles maps as they are completely flat and boring. When you fly low most of the missiles that show up on RWR are probably not going for you and chaff can work pretty well while bobbing up and down out of multipathing.
But the real trick to going low is to play in a way where nobody even thinks about firing a missile at you till its too late, gripen, kfirc10 (in14.0 games) and jf17 work well at this, not being top tiers makes people less likely to target you, and with their good nose authority lets them turn onto targets very quickly from behind obstacles and other things, if someone knows where you are and is chasing you run to your team, and hope they get killed, otherwise attack anyone who is even slightly preoccupied
Fair point. I used to play the deck so much I kinda just got really sick of it. Thats why I like to go high. I also hate having to push through rwr warnings from long range shots on the deck, it seems too inconsistent
Fair, i got the eurofighter and found I couldnt consistently get kills while playing bvr plus id sometimes get games where I did nothing except use all my chaff for 15m, so I went back to playing like a rat, best way to dodge missiles is to never have one fired at you after all
I just feel as though the number of players in a given match needs to be reduced dramatically. The amount of missiles in the air at any given time is just a bit ridiculous.
It’s often complete sensory/information overload. Gameplay feels nothing more than just two sides throwing enough poop at the wall and seeing how much of it sticks.
As much as love a good bit of Betty/Rita/RWR ASMR, 16v16 gotta go. 8v8 should be the max imo.
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I generally enjoy 8v8 matches when I do rarely get them (most often on SA server ironically) but sometimes they finish too quickly,
I feel if air RB EC is ever added it should be at least 16v16 if not more but ARB EC should not replace what we currently have and then the current airrb can be made into max 12v12 games and have the option for either gamemode
I think top tier is fine. Bvr is actually an option, as is rat rocketing. It allows for more playstyles as a result without one thing being super dominant rn. its actually kinda nice at the moment as far as balance goes. it sucks getting sucked into 14.0 games because they’re just so much stronger generally than 13.7/13.3/13.0 aircraft. But the 14.0s are all relatively balanced with each other. the F18 late should probably be 13.7 though. Its fine at 14.0 currently but its definitely the weakest 14.0.
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I try doing high alt bvr sometimes but it is never fun.
I am a huge target for everyone and i can only maybe notch missiles 5% of the time.
Plus my missiles hardly ever hit since i have to fire them from 30km+ out if i want a chance to fire them before an undodgable missile gets fired at me.
I just find that going low and coming in from the side to be the only way to avoid getting slammed by missiles and sneak up within my missle’s effective range.
Top tier air has been an utterly garbage experience for years. So much could be done to make it tolerable yet Gaijin continues to sit on their fat slav arse and do F-All but continue to try to distract the playerbase with shiny new toys instead of meaningful and positive changes to the game.
Still so many broken vehicles that need fixing.
Spaghetti code needs fixing.
Maps and modes are garbage and need full overhauls.
But Gaijin just decides to continue to jingle keys like we’re all braindead idiots that just care about shiny new toys and unfortunately, most of the playerbase at large is that simple…
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