pyantoryng, on 07 January 2018 - 12:37 PM, said:
In other words...WG has successfully nerfed the very concept of energy, where the American (and MiG)'s strength lies.
They had been extremely dominant pre-2.0...and WG now stomped them as hard as they did US carriers in WoWS...only the damage is done all at once rather than over time.
Energy fighting isn't useless, but as a dominant game winning tactic, it's definitely not. The issue primarily comes down to time though. In order to successfully energy fight, you need to do a significant chunk of damage on a pass, which is difficult without a lead indicator (don't bring it back, the game's better without it) especially for planes like the P-51 or 109 line. The Yak multirole line has its own problems, but I digress. Being able to cut in, shoot something for half its life, and run away doesn't actually win you games. So you need to basically take every energy fighter, do shorter cuts, turn before you're "safe" (if nothing's on you) and immediately cut right back in, and just use high speed to afford you some level of survivability while doing it, as well as relying on your speed to dive and deny kills in the cap circle if at all possible.
Now obviously this is a problem because you need to be effective at killing things quickly and efficiently to flip caps, and if you don't have the correct target then your plane is useless. Sometimes you run into awkward scenarios where "slow" planes are fast enough to keep up with energy fighters for long enough (such as a Spitfire 14 easily equalizing speed with a P-51H) or where a plane cannot be caught, but they're not exactly doing anything either (Me 262 booming past and not killing anything and being untouchable). Nowhere is this more obvious than watching the J8M. It's super fast, and it's awful at doing its job. So you simultaneously can't catch it, and it's not a real threat to you.
The Corsairs get around this problem because they turn well enough and do enough damage far enough away that they can be very effective at short passes, quick turns, and playing a poor man's heavy. The 190 and P-47 line is less fortunate because they turn too slowly to pull off this playstyle, and heavies have it slightly worse than that because, though they're fast, they turn even worse and their firepower often isn't threatening for their speed. The notable exceptions are the likes of the XF5U, XP-75, or VB 10, the 13.5s heavies.
Identifying the issues, it's painfully obvious that the Spitfire is standing out as ridiculously strong. I don't believe it's "overpowered" by the time tier 8 rolls around (it certainly is at tier 5), and it feels in a good place for where light fighters should be. However, it's also the absolute best specimen amongst light fighters, and every other light is varying degrees of "awful" compared to it, so either most lights by tier 8 are hilariously underpowered, or the spitfire is overpowered. I'd edge more that the shift in game renders most lights underpowered, though the tier 5 Spitfire 1 is definitely overpowered due to how the game plays then.
So what do planes need?
As a general rule, boom and zoom planes need better turn times. No LF should be worse than about 10, no MR worse than about 11-12, no heavy worse than about 14. Every plane needs to be able to turn, there just should be clear winners. Planes across the board need DPS buffs. The Spitfire LF line is a good bar for where many LFs should be approximately. Cannon burst times should be buffed across the board for planes such as the XF5U (lowest DPS heavy, LF cannon burst time, makes sense. Though the XF5U really stands out as a bizarre choice and should probably be swapped out with the P-82), Ki-43 line, too many USSR to count, etc. Boost should be the primary way to exaggerate slow turn and burn planes from faster boom and zoom ones. Boost should recharge based on a percentage instead of a fixed rate (say, something like 5-10%/s instead of 0.5/second flat). And then primarily define the differences between planes with what works better at higher alts, what at lower, how they deliver their damage, and what types of bomb loads and how strong are those bombs. As well as how easy they can turn fight other planes or run away. You'd need some across the board buffs to many planes doing these changes, but if a plane cannot reasonably stay with another plane and kill it quickly, it effectively can't defend or attack caps efficiently, and that's what's killing boom and zoomers right now.
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