The wildcat is currently atrociously weak
The 2 non-joke primary weapons make you choose between being able to fight back against (30mm) nightbirds, stealth helicopters and jets that are flying about, or (35mm) attack helicopters, air transp...
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Strongly disagree.
If you're working as a team of 2/3, the wildcat will fairly easily overpower jets and choppers.
Hell, Irish APS pretty much makes ACs and jets useless vs the wildcat.
Two wildcats close to each other will essentially be invincible, especially if they're camping their spawn.
Wildcat players often remain static while engaging their targets and then complain when getting wrecked by ACs and jets.
A jet will only be able to destroy a full health wildcat in a single strafe if 1. All the rocket pods hit the wildcat; 2. jet approaches at specific angle that makes it extremely vulnerable to stuff like lissiles; 3. The wildcat does NOT BUDGE AN INCH while being attacked.
The 30mm cannons are still extremely effective against jets and attack choppers - you can easily get an unsuspecting jet pilot without having to reload. The 30mm cannons have a range of roughly 600 m, which is alright, and the AA missiles have UNLIMITED vertical range (you're pretty much dead if you've ran out of flares).
@Metal_Daryl97You are being highly disingenuous. There is very rarely a 2nd wildcat. This is not a teamwork issue. Experienced players don't play wildcats, or they pick the 40mm + AT rockets. They are too boring to play the intended way. When I'm not in a vehicle, I can easily frequently see that we have only 1 wildcat that is sitting at spawn and isn't even shooting jets, just helicopters.
People can use lizzles and RPGs/M5s and score a kill on a jet (or helicopter) regardless of the wildcat's existence. You know they almost never do, otherwise jets wouldn't strafe so close to the ground and wildcats would be pointless. Even if we ignore this reality, either players land their rockets often enough that the wildcat is unnecessary, or they don't and they don't help the wildcat whatsoever. Jets strafe non-wildcat things.
I'm not in favor of the AA cylinder. However either way, your average aircraft will not run out of flares. Only bad jet players will both run out of flares and not guide the missile to hit a building or something AND be <70HP or loiter long enough for you to get your 2nd missile back.. Transports will frequently run out of flares and get hit, but they can tank it.
If you shot an AA missile at a decent helicopter player, they will flare it and fly away just like they do with a manpad, but now you have completely exposed yourself and need to drive into a house or have an extremely skewed engagement because that helicopter went OOB and you will not see it until it's too late. If it's an attack helicopter, you will die. Helicopters are faster than wildcats, you can't magically reposition to the other side of the map, at best you can go risk yourself to enemy infantry near your own infantry.
APS does not protect you from decent attack helicopters, gunners can easily destroy it and in the extremely rare occasion of no gunner, the pilot can splash them. Nevermind that it's a dumb, boring and kinda scummy strategy that is unfun for everyone involved. Please stop suggesting APS. I'm not going to sit at spawn behind a rock.
In order to shoot with the wildcat, you have to stay still or be on some extremely flat road. We are not in BF4 where you can drive and shake the whole vehicle, which has tracks, but still outaim the shakes. You're going to hit some rock and nearly stop or a bump and massively move your turret. Unless you're suggesting I should just focus on running away and only shoot some 3P potshots? And again, this is a non-issue with the 35mm. I can kill a strafing full health jet on its 1st strafe standing still without dying unless I decently * up and miss a lot. This is only an issue with the 30mm which has massive spread that makes you deal almost no damage to a jet as it's strafing you due to jets' extremely squished profile.
The fact that jets CAN kill a stationary wildcat in a single strafe is issue enough, they can not kill a full health wildcat with 3 lockon missiles (or more?). It is not jets' role to be killing wildcats, stationary or otherwise. The wildcat is not always full health, you will be frequently softened up by some random guy firing an RPG, maybe some lizzles. No one uses the NTW-50 to be damaging air and softening it up for their wildcat. They shoot MANPADS which the air vehicle flares away and then hides from. I generally can't hide from air if I got damaged by ground. Making a getaway from ground enemies is usually doable, but not from air.
Jets currently are supposed to be anti-air vehicles, they should suck against ground. This is literally what DICE has stated. If there's a tank somewhere, there is no way I can outplay it unless it massively screws up. If I'm in a tank and there's an attack helicopter somewhere, there is no way I can outplay it unless it massively screws up.
Finding out where a wildcat is then putting in a small amount of effort to hide from that position, then flying above the wildcat where it can't hit you is a pretty easy way to outplay a wildcat. Or, with the attack helicopters, shooting from a range where the 30mm deals too little damage. Which is probably basically anywhere past ~300-400m.
"Experienced players don't play wildcat's". Then it's a player-related/skill issue rather than a problem with vehicle balance.
"your average aircraft will not run out of flares". The insane AA lockon range forces jet pilots to retreat following a strafe, giving the wildcat more than enough time to recover hp. Also, the unlimited lockon range is far too disruptive to dogfights that happen at high altitudes - you're pretty much dead if you've ran out of flares during a dogfight and a wildcat fires two AA missiles at you.
"APS does not protect you from decent attack helicopters".By the time your gunner destroys the APS, a decent wildcat player would already have dealt significant damage to the chopper.
"Please stop suggesting APS. I'm not going to sit at spawn behind a rock". It's boring but IT WORKS. Also, you can always move closer to the front line after your teammates have captured a bunch of points (safe zones).
"In order to shoot with the wildcat, you have to stay still or be on some extremely flat road". I've encountered a decent number of players who can drive and at the same time deal considerable damage to my jet.
"The fact that jets CAN kill a stationary wildcat in a single strafe is issue enough". Subjective. You can make a parallel claim that the opposite is true here.
But anyway, if you play on Asian, European or South African servers, I'm happy to do some testing (1 v 1)
- @Metal_Daryl97 Experienced players don’t play the wildcat because they immediately garner the entire attention span of every pilots brain and die instantly. Using the wildcat is like using a Rorsch against air targets, half the time it’s nothing but an annoyance and just paints a target on your back.
