Basically, what are the best br’s to play the different game mode’s that are mostly balanced, and scratches that itch we get from said game mode’s.
(Let’s start off with most balanced for every nation, then we’ll eventually talk about specific’s for each nation)
I’ll start off as an example.
For Air, the best br’s would probably be 2.3-4.0 as there aren’t to many premium’s that rule the br.
For ground, Probably 3.7-5.7. Usually able to play your vehicles to their strength’s
And naval. Probably 3.3-4.3 for blue water and most of costal. Haven’t played lower br in awhile tho.
Recently I’ve been really liking the 10.7-11.7 bracket in air sim. It’s just around the era where good missiles start to come into play but not good enough to take a lot of the challenge away. The plane sensors are also kind of bad, with a few exceptions, which also add to the challenge.
I honestly love Naval at all BRs, but, hmm, destroyer BRs are very fun, Japanese heavy cruisers with their torpedoes are fun, and 2.x Coastal with stuff like the flak barges is also quite fun.
Air and Ground are both great in the 2.0-5.0 sort of range.
Even acknowledging that balancing is highly subjective - the BR setting policy of gaijin based on plain average performance of players and not of the aircraft performance is actually killing balance.
Together with the fact that the big 3 are highly popular, the game play there is marked by steamrolls, totally unbalanced availability of fighters with airspawn and way too large performance gaps.
In addition your wording “ruling a BR” would imply that some premium aircraft would be severely undertiered - i see this mainly for the USSR P-39 & all prem P-51 C-10s - and ofc the new 4.0 Yak-3 and the “old” 4.0 XP-50. I see the P-63s at 3.3 also rather critical, but they are TT planes.
On top of that:
Real shatter 3.0 made the 20 mm ShVak a highly effective weapon - so the rather too low BRs of USSR planes with this weapon (starting at BR 2.3!!!) were somehow justified due to the low damage output - but now they are in this BR range basically the top dog. MG 151/20s are available in single engine fighters just at 4.0 - whilst US and UK boys have just the cannon P-51 and Spits with wing mounted Hispanos and rather low ammo count.
I mean a 3.7 plane with center mounted 560 20mm rounds like the I-185 is not really balanced…
Under the old BR system 10.3 Air was really fun. You would almost never see full uptiers, it’d usually be about 10.7 max, 10.0 min. The F-5s, F-8s, MiG-21MF/SMT, Mirage 3E, Prem Kfir, A-5C, J35XS, and then 3-5 A-10s and Su-25s rolling around underneath. There were some planes that were pretty dominant but felt like most things could compete pretty well. I kinda miss it.
The new 10.0 and 11.0 feel pretty good right now too, for middle-of-the-cold-war stuff. The MiG-21Bis is a lot more fun when you don’t run into F-16s and MiG-29s every game.
I’d say it would be ground 4.7, this is probably a BR i see the most downtiers in and you have a metric tone of very good lineups around there, like british or russian one.
Ground 7.0 is also a similar case, although here you sometimes end up with jet spawns on your early jet/late prop CAS which kinda makes it a bit underwhelming.
Other than that, imo it all depends on the vehicle you use. Some vehicles are just more fun to use than others
I’m a big fan of 8.0-11.0 air RB, I fly a ton of stuff at that range. I love the mix of gunfighters, early/mid tier missiles, and basic avionics (radar/RWR)
I would say early rank 1-3 aircraft in arcade was the most fun I had when I started. Classic aircraft we probably came to warthunder for. Fun, simple and forgiving. Rank II American aviation was me personal favorite.
I cannot find a single thread about Air realistic being fun at any br so I can’t say much about it.
Totally! I’ve been having a ton of fun stock grinding the F-8E(FN), even tho it gets AIM-9Bs for a while it feels like even in uptiers I am competitive. It also never feels too unbalanced in downtiers. Great BR if you love jets but hate IRCCM and hard to dodge radar missiles.
Personally, the most fun BR I’d say is top-tier, the absolutley highest you can go (I.e 11.7 Ground 13.7 Air).
Call me a masochist all you want but you can’t deny that it’s the most balanced BR atm. You don’t have to worry about up tiers with vehicles that will shit on you, and down tiers are rare.
Everyone has somewhat decent tanks, and all planes are about equally matched with some performing slightly better or slightly worse. Nothing will ever be perfect, but I believe this is the closest we can get to an actual well-balanced BR in Warthunder!
(And you get to play with all the modern, top-notch shit. Who doesn’t like that?)
Air sim between 3.3 and 4.3 are the most fun, for me… I’m personally looking forward to “Aces of Thunder” for this very reason. (I already play VR which is a factor in why I find SB the most fun).