There seems to be a standard developer system of keeping the militant CAS fan base happy by keeping mid tier SPAA sub standard.
Take the Skink, the British and US mid tier option for dealing with everything from jets to dive bombers.
Give it a decent amount of ammo, some armour and acceptable turret rotation, then ruin its offensive capabilities by giving it small ammo clips and an ultra fast overheat timer.
Same with the M19Ai and its pointless clone version. Give it powerful guns that are slow firing, hard to aim and ineffective against jets. Also make the crew extremely exposed.
Then give the British the Bosvark, equip it with a powerful gun but neutralize its capabilities by limiting the ammo, the clip size and a 14 second reload, also prevent it from rotating 360 and make it ultra vulnerable to a pistol.
I just feel for every single positive a SPAA has its given a huge negative to counter it, yet planes don’t have this problem and the only viable defence against CAS is for players to go fighters which few do as its often low reward once the CAS threat dies or leaves the area.
Also SPAA seem to be a huge plane attractant and not a deterrent. CAS at the moment are running amuck and frankly wrecking the gameplay for everyone thats trying to engage in tank combat.
SPAA are usually open tops and/or poorly protected, AND are the only thing that can really put planes at risk. So of course even those playing fighters with the goal of shooting down CAS (I do this very often) will of course target SPAA. No worse feeling than almost shooting down some bomb truck when you suddenly explode from a random SPAA.
Cannon spaa are overtiered because people use them as tds.
Biggest example is probably the zsu57-2. Imagine how much lower in br it would be if its AP was taken away and it had to be balanced based on its anti-air abilities.
If you believe there is a realism problem with a vehicle’s parameters in game, you can make a bug report. In general, I don’t think there is a large problem with mid tier SPAA. It’s just the influence of skill and aim ability which is important to play them correctly.
I searched your player name; it appears that you are still level 42, which is a bit low. Correct me if I got the wrong player. In any case, aiming correctly is a skill which takes a long time to master; perhaps you lack some of this skill due to you still being relatively new to the game.
Hey, now! The poor ol’ Brit mains got one nice thing once upon a time and then it keeps getting BR increases because the players are doing what the game allows them to do. Kinda funny, too, since the higher it gets BR’d, the more likely the Falcon is to encounter more lightly armored tanks. Maybe if Gaijin lowered it’s BR again it would be more likely to regularly face heavies? I dunno.
Non radsr SPAA is very hard to use, at least Id say for the average player, leading shots is something that takes a lot of time to get the hang of, and is something you have to relearn for spaa with different ammo velocities.
Lower teir spaa options are often better in the spaa role than what you might have access to at your given br, and players will often choose a subpar spaa out of ignorance, or have to choose something worse to have a better time vs tanks.
Maps are incredibly small, and some offer very poor options for hiding, not only from CAS, but also enemy tanks. Sitting in spawn is just waiting to die to an inevitable spawn camper, and is the first place CAS looks for targets in many cases. CAS has access to a map they can easily find the spawns via ui elements, on top of hit markers, scouting etc. And also SPAA basically just announces their exact location not only to CAS but also enemy tanks anytime they fire a million tracers into the air.
People love to complain about top tier CAS, and I feel these players havent visited WW2 GRB in years, because CAS is 10x worse there. There are always planes in the air in lower BRs due to more players hsving access to planes worth spawning on average. And CAP and CAS has to get within 2km to even have a dream of shooting them down vs missile spaa/CAP so they survive longer as it is much safer to play here. So often times playing SPAA at lower tiers you will find yourself in 1vX situations as SPAA and good CAS knows the time to swat SPAA is when they are shooting another plane.
And then you got the problem of awful SPAA players on your own team making you job 10x harder by shooting at planes 5km away keeping them on their toes instead of waiting for them to go into a dive / attack run within 2km and going for a realistic kill shot they cant react to. It just sucks when im trying to play spaa and see this crap because it makes my job significantly harder.
isn’t every SPAA handicapped in WT? Most times SPAAs are only easy freekills for CAS and Spawncampers. The major problem I see with SPAAs is that can’t move anywhere to hide. You have the map limit for ground vehicles in your back and enemy tanks in your front. Therefore you are basicly trapped in your spawn and can’t get out. CAS has the advantage of having a larger area to move and can fly at low altitudes to avoid SPAAs and can attack on them from all angles with little to no counterplay since SPAAs are not fast enough to dodge CAS attacks.
I think SPAAs should be invulnerable in the spawnarea, to solve this problem. CAS can still avoid SPAAs as mentioned earlier and CAS could focus more on attacking and defending capture points.
