The Yak-30 is just a MiG-15 but slightly more manouevrable and can get nose on easier. armament however is worse and it feels alot slower - much slower than the aforementioned 8.0 MiG-15, hell, half the time it feels like you’re at the speeds of a La-15. Energy retention and generation is also slightly lower.
You will never break 0.8~ mach in a match unless in a dive, which is problematic, alot of 8.7s do this in a straight line easily, which makes uptiers and even fighting at your own tier extremely rough.
It feels like a slightly better (in some aspects) MiG-15, more or less a sidegrade.
I think it should go down to 8.3. Moving things down usually isn’t a great idea but this thing is abysmally slow and it really is just a turnier Mig-15 (and the mig-15 should go back to 8.3 anyway, same with the A-5 sabre and the rest that were changed last year, but this is good as an interim change)