Yak 38 fits fine in battle rating of 9.0

Again, respectfully, play the plane before complaining how OP it is. It’s a one trick pony that preys on dumb players, that’s it.

Uh-huh.

Like others have said, issue is the faster planes ruining 9.3 BR bracket. At 9.3 the Yak-38 is actually fine. Here is why:

R60s are slow. High transsonics like MiG-19 have no issue getting away from medium-range R60 launches due to how much speed the R60 loses taking a singular turn. F-104s basically treat regular R60s as a joke. You will not be killing an aware supersonic player with them.

You will also not be killing aware subsonic players with them, because at lower altitudes subsonics can outrun R60 from 2km easily, and they have smaller heat signatures so the missile loses track if they turn into it in time. Hell, Sabres can even dodge R60M by turning engine off in headon, let alone normal R60. Lower BR subsonics are also much more nimble than the Yak, so goodbye to any chance of Yak-38 getting dead six of aware subsonic player unless he’s already in a fight with more than 1 other guy.

As @thefoxiscunning noted, it is a one trick pony that preys on newbies and bad players. The only thing it’s legitimately good at is third-partying more than one person at once, which is a very niche application.

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Neither the MiG-19 nor the F-104 should be at 9.3. The problem isn’t for those particular planes, it’s for the sabres and MiG-15s and Venoms and Mysteres and so on. Subsonics without flares that’re expected to deal with a jet with four R-60s that outspeeds them and vastly outclimbs them.

The yak 38 can run down subsonics. The yak 38 just needs to get a lock, which it can do from further out than 2km, and wait until it’s in range. If the subsonic is already engaged by someone else, they’re screwed. If they don’t look up, they’re screwed. If the subsonic is already overloaded with information from the other fifteen enemies in the match and the yak makes some attempt to stay out of sight, they aren’t spotting that Yak.

We have 16v16 teams, players are bombarded with huge amounts of information and now they also need to defend against a yak coming in from the heavens with four R-60s while they’re already occupied with multiple other players. It isn’t fair whatsoever.

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R-60s don’t belong south of 9.3, they hardly belong at 9.3. Source: Yak-38 enjoyer.

Pretty much this tbh. I’m not saying the Yak 38 is OP, I’ll admit my phrasing has been a bit hyperbole, but the point is that anything having four R-60s at 9.3 is just plain unfair. It’s like how Su-25s at 9.7 were unfair. They only had 2 missiles, same FM as the R-60 just all aspect, and you could counter them with rockets, shooting missiles at them, stuff like that, but it still wasn’t fair, ignoring the vehicles that didn’t have any suspended ordnance being SoL

I agree that they are unfair, but you are being too black and white.

What would happen if the Ariete had 4 R60s? It would be completely OP and deserve 10.0 instantly. Now, what has happened since the Yak-38’s introduction? There has always been a 9.3 one because the premium version dropped at that BR. More people complain about that vehicle than play it, because getting good missile shots is extremely hard. You cannot force an R60 shot with the Yak-38 if the enemy player is not already engaged to the point where you would stand a fair chance of being able to kill him with a regular old guns-only plane.

The better your performance the better your missile shots and the Yak-38’s ability to put nose on target just ain’t it. And that’s in downtiers. At 9.3 the R60 from the Yak-38 is actually not that OP as a weapons platform. If it were to get uptiered, it would suddenly be sitting at the BR of planes that outclass it, like the Hunter F.58 with flares and better nose authority. It can already face 10.0-10.3s that have flares that make it completely and utterly useless. The MiG-19 is far more useful in an uptier than the Yak-38 ever will be.

So until the BR gets decompressed, the Yak-38 doesn’t need to go anywhere.

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the yak is fine where it is, even if the f104 is better youre comparing it to the most busted plane in that br, it is comparable to the others 9.3.

I played it, it does its trick well enough to easily collect kills with no room to counter it in downtiers. It fits 9.3 and after decompression it should go up.

This skill issue thread should have stayed dead.

Respectfully, in 523 games you’re averaging 1 kill a game with a 1.3 kill to death ratio. I’m assuming this may be a blend of 9.7 and 9.3 matches?

My faithful controller and I are not far off at 1.4 a game / 2 kills to death. I only started playing it at 9.3.

To me, that feels like it’s the epitome of properly tiered.

The only reason you think this is because you have been conditioned by gaijin to be very unaware of how shit the game actually is nowadays. When the Yak-38/harriers were introduced they were just farming people because the matchmaker was entirely different with much more decompression than what we currently have.

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It’s only “properly tiered” in the insanely compressed/broken matchmaker that WT currently has.

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I miss SRAAMs before they added All-aspect missiles and CMs were rarer at that BR. I also remember slapping Viggens and Mig23s in the Harrier Gr1 in SB all day long, it was a blast. Now they are just sad to use

I started playing it back when it was 9.7 with 2xR60s and it was my 6th jet of that rank. I remember being below 1KD for a good while. I was and still am using it for ground RB where air kills are scarce. You can believe it or not thats fair.

But apologies I see now we did not understood each other since Im also thinking this plane is currently well placed. Thought you were advocating otherwise.

I am perfectly aware of how much 9.3 sucks. However, the Yak-38 is the least offender of its BR. Plenty of other jets need to go up before it does.

F-104A, MiG-19, Ariete, and Ayit all deserve 9.7 BR ASAP. Once those planes get an uptier we can look at how the Yak-38 performs, but right now we have 4 planes that are hitting above their weight and ruining the matchmaker for everyone who has to fight them.

People were also much less used to dealing with missiles than they are now. At that time the MiG-23M hadn’t even dropped yet, which meant that the highest pulling missile in the game was the R60 at 30G with no all-aspect. Players were used to the Aim-9J with 20, and the naval 18G sidewinders that could be easily dodged because their leading algorithms were not working as intended.

I doubt the Yak-38 will be a big issue at 9.3 even if the other problem vehicles are uptiered.

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100% agree.
However, I don’t believe they are worthy of 9.7, nor do I believe they are worthy of 9.3. The Ariete and MiG-19 are good examples of fighters with excellent flight performance, but can easily be dealt with by 20g+ missiles from a third party. Similarly, the F-104A is the fastest jet at the BR, but as soon as they try boom and zooming an experienced player with 20g+ missiles, they too can just launch them while the F-104 tries to run away.
The A-4N is a very good CAS plane, and has pretty decent flight performance (for such a CAS jet) with Aim-9Ds and Shafrir 2s, and flares, but again, it struggles to cope with 10.3 aircraft already (unlike with experienced MiG-19 and Ariete pilots), so putting it at 9.7 will only make it face more of them more often.

Respectfully, the Ariete absolutely does not deserve 9.7.
While it is absolutely very good at dogfighting, it is ONLY very good at dogfighting. With my experience in the Ariete is very easy to avoid if you just stay away from it and make passes on it. You move the Ariete to 9.7 you make it unplayable in both air and ground.

TL:DR: Ariete doesn’t need to go up since you can just avoid it

By that principle, the A-10 shouldn’t be at 10.0 too, since you can just stay outside of 3 kilometers from it very easily and avoid it.
Of course, this is not what you’re trying to say, but the problem with the ariete is that even if you want to avoid it, it can eventually third-party you if you don’t keep an eye on it, and every boom-and-zoomer can only wish that the ariete is unaware of their surroundings for them to land a hit.
I agree that it shouldn’t be 9.7 (at the BR range’s current state), but it is definitely too good for 9.3.

Ultimately I think it just comes down to the pretty extreme compression that we have from 8.3-10.3. The Ariete is gonna be difficult to balance no matter where you put it. Put it at 9.7 and It’s completely unplayable, keep it at 9.3 and it’ll seal club in downtiers just like the F-100, F-104, MiG-19, etc etc.
Honestly if the snail didn’t make the mistake of adding high-performance missiles at 10.0/3 we wouldn’t have this issue.
Ultimately the AMX, A-10s, Su-25s, all need to go to at least 10.7 or preferably 11.0. I love the AMX, it’s a fun plane, but having 2 “I win” buttons against flareless jets is not fair for them, and I certainly don’t enjoy eating shit to AIM-9Ls in F-104As either.

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Precisely, this wouldn’t be a problem without the high-performance missiles.

I haven’t played the Ariete. However, I have played the MiG-19, which absolutely deserves 9.7. 20G rear-aspect missiles exist because they are necessary to deal with an airframe which has so much flight performance. Planes like the Hunter F58 and AV-8 are helpless to cope with a MiG-19 without their missiles, so moving up the MiG-19 makes total sense.

My reasoning for uptiering the Ariete is that it extends the same Me 163 no-fun zone effect where if you can’t outrun it, you are dead. If the dude knows how to dodge, you have to dogpile an Ariete with about three people before you have a good chance of killing it with guns.

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Anyway back on topic… if people can justify Ariete at 9.3, then there’s no way the Yak-38 ought to get uptiered when the Ariete is a far more uptier proof plane.

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