Talking from an SB perspective the Yak-3’s are superb aircraft (as they should be) but the Shvak damage needs realistically nerfing. The way Russian aircraft can disintegrate planes in front of you is a bit cartoonish considering how weak the round was in reality.
In SB they’re 4.7 (should be 5.0) but like all Yaks in my experience they suffocate up high. If a Yak gets on my tail and I’m in the G-6 I’ve noticed they’re weak in climbing spirals as well no matter the altitude.
With stupid mixed battles rooms the Spitfire F Mk IX is very competitive against them especially when you get chaps that just like to do stick to the balls turns.
Bad aim with not that much ammo, for an experience player 120 round of shvak can get 5 kills but I guess that a inexperienced player would waste them really fast.
And the most obvious: rip speed at 700hp, with such a fast airframe is bound to make even the best player rip if they are not careful.
I’d say the only reason it’s not that spammed is this amazing feature of airfield AA that everyone love and gaijin should absolutely keep in the game as long as possible.
It makes it that if someone meet a yak3 high enough, they can dive above the yak3 rip speed long enough to reach the airfield and start camping.
Barely, the Yak-3U is much better in every aspect. It’s much deserving for it to go to 6.0-6.3 at best. There’s almost no plane in the game that can beat a competent Yak-3U player.
Wherever the Yak-3U goes the VK-107 should follow. However VK-107 requires manual engine control to not turn into a fireball 30s into using WEP, unlike the 3U that can WEP for a generous amount of time on auto controls and be fine. There are some other quirks with auto controls that gimp the VK-107 performance (auto tries to cool for 111C but overheat threshold is 109C, auto radiators mess with top speed leading to lower top speed during WEP vs 100% power).
I get wanting to reward players who dive a little deeper into the game… but I just cannot agree with AEC being hot garbage for so many planes. Sim battles seem like the right medium to force players to optimize their manual engine control for performance gains more so than ARB.
MEC is such a necessity for some planes that I can’t believe Gaijin doesn’t have a YouTube video on it.
And truly, I wish that some planes have set MEC controls when you activate it; or a small “notepad” like button on your screen where you can write down your MEC controls for that specific plane. Adds some kind of immersion in the game.
BR 5.7 is honestly a shitty place to be if you are playing the more fair 5.7 planes (like the K4). Its dominated by the Yak-3U, Spitfire LF Mk9, and F4U-4B. These three specifically make it unbearable and I am guilty of using them as well. F4U-4B forces a stalemate against the other 2 and can only realistically force repeated head ons (which its good at). LF Mk9 wins the full commit dogfight vs the Yak-3U relatively easily but will get endlessly BNZed by it if Yak-3U wants to win. So yeah up to 6.0 to give some breathing room to 5.7 is needed.
Yak-3 may have 4.7 as it’s new BR, Hopefully the group of people who brought the french yak-3 yesterday to abuse it and skip the gems in french TT will not blow up Hungary for it