Once again I will give my thoughts on all of the changes for Air RB. This month’s BR changes seem to be a bit of a step back - the last time they came around they weren’t too bad (apart from overtiering all the prop turnfighters).
Undoubtedly people will complain about the F-14A IRIAF going to 13.7, but it is a good change. The avionics, IR missiles and even to a degree the flight performance are not 13.7 material, sure, but when balancing an aircraft every single aspect has to be balanced and not just the package as a whole. The Fakour-90s are simply far too pervasive to exist much lower than this. The strength of these missiles alone is what is justifying this battle rating. It’s the same thing as the A-10A not being fair at 9.7 on release - the plane on average was 9.7 material, but the AIM-9Ls were not, and so there was no justification for the plane to be at that BR.
The MiG-21 2000 going down is fine, the Python 3s are, after all, non IRCCM IR missiles that are easily flared. Being an entire BR above the MiG-21bis because two R-60s are swapped for Python 3s was not justifiable. The Python 3 is better than the R-60M, obviously, but at the end of the day they are both IR missiles that are easily defeated by flares.
The A-7K going down is also completely fine. The flight performance is non-existent. Just make sure not to put it down too much further since it will be facing a lot of flareless planes with its AIM-9Ls now.
The Ayit and Hunter F.6 are simply missile slingers. SRAAMs and AIM-9Ds have no business facing flareless subsonics and so these two going up is completely fine. Sure, the FMs are not great, and sure the missiles are not all aspect, but just as in the case with the F-14A IRIAF, everything about the vehicle needs to be balanced, and if the missiles are not, the best thing to do is move the vehicles up in BR.
The G.91 Y going up in BR saddens me, because I loved flying it at 9.0, but its probably reasonable. The flight performance, especially in terms of the energy generation, is way too strong to be facing 8.0, or even 8.3, vehicles. The difference between the AA-20 Nords on the G.91 Y and the AIM-9Bs on the G.91 YS is also not large enough to justify being a different BR, especially given how compressed this BR range is.
The HF-24 going down in BR is great. The energy generation, airspawn and guns are all very strong, but the manouevrability and the retention are just nowhere near strong enough to exist at 9.0. I might even pick this plane up if it goes down.
The Buccaneer S.1 going down is fine, I guess. It has no guns. Just make sure it doesn’t eventually end up being so low in BR because of this that it is untouchably fast (cough cough Yak-28)
The various Vautour species going down is also a great change. These vautour variants have strong energy generation and guns, but are way too stiff to be surviving at 9.0 in its current state. They are a little stronger than the interceptor version at 8.3 with its gimped elevators, and they might be somewhat playable now.
The MB-326K goes up in BR ONCE AGAIN! It isn’t surprising tbh, the FM is extremely manoeuvrable AND extremely ergonomic, it gets an airspawn and the guns are great. It absolutely excels at killing all the mouth breathers who try and dogfight you, but it actually is not all that strong. It isnt fast, whatsoever and the top end acceleration is not there despite the strong low speed acceleration. This is yet again another example of the fact that stat based balancing leads to bad decisions. Sure, the average player will do very very well in it due to the aforementioned reasons - the skill floor is extremely low, but being easy doesn’t make it good. You need to consider its actual strenghts and weaknesses and compare it to that of the enemy, compare how well it does when facing opponents who dont make mistakes, and where the skill ceiling is.
The Me 262 A-1/U4 going to 6.0 is absolutely egregious. Yes, the 50mm greatly limits the aircraft. Yes, it won’t be getting the most kills per game out of the BR bracket, but it will simply be unkillable. What BR would you put this vehicle at if it had no guns at all? 5.3? 4.7? 4.0? where do you draw the line and say “the vehicle must be able to be killed if the pilot decides they want to play passively all game”. What’s more, the 50mm is not as limiting as you might think it is in the hands of an experienced player. The velocity is good, and you have such an excess of speed that you can disengage and re-engage all you want until you eventually get a good shot. The He 162 is already enough of a problem at 6.0 - but at least the He 162 doesn’t have the best energy retention so it can be caught slow if the pilot makes a mistake. The 262 airframe will simply always be quick enough to disengage.
The A6M5 Ko, A6M5 Otsu, A6M6c, A6M3 Mod.22, Ki-100, A6M3 and the Spitfire Mk IIa are all simply too slow to justify being higher than where they currently are. The argument is basically the same as the one for the MB-326K. The same can partially be said about the Spitfire F Mk IX and the A7M1, but at least these two have a little bit more speed to work with, and strong climb rates. Yes, these planes do well, but is this because they are actually undertiered, or because they have low skill floors?
The Ki-87, Narval, Ju 388 J and the La-11 all are in the category of vehicles with very mediocre all around flight performance which are overtiered due to strong guns. Once again, strong guns is really only a factor to lower the skill floor of a vehicle, not to actually make it objectively undertiered. These going down is great.
The Tu-1, Su-8, Su-6 (M-71F), TIS MA, He 219 A-7 and Su-2 TSS-1 are all attack aircraft that were at a relatively high BR due to ground RB ability, so its nice to see them going down in Air RB now we have separated BRs for the various gamemodes.
On the other hand, the Wyvern S.4 going up is completely fine. It’s way too fast and whilst I don’t think guns alone really justify increasing a vehicles BR too much, having 1200 rounds of hispano 20mm and an airspawn is a bit much.
The B7A2 variants going up is VERY welcome. The guns are great, they turn extremely well and the airspawn is enormous. They still need to go up further (especially the Homare 23 version) aswell as having their airspawn reduced.
The Pyorremyrsky is incredibly strong. I always said it was fairly equal with the Yak-3 for the title of best 4.3 vehicle, so it makes sense that it is following the Yak-3 to 4.7. The M.B.157 is also incredibly strong right now with its increased ammo count.
This post is long enough. The rest of the BR changes are kind of eh. Pucara going up makes sense as does the B-230. MiG-3-15 going down does not make sense, Bf 109 C-1 going up does not make sense
