@Man_iLoveFishingWell that's a new one to add to the list of dumb stuff brought up for why the Wildcat loses fights... spotting doesn't magically grant you more damage. Guy sees the average WC vs AH fight and talks about red flags. Wow.
Which yes, you've just proved my point. In most scenarios the AH will have the upper hand. Then, if you watched it in slow motion, you'd also notice that the AH absolutely didn't use it's flares--even when it was locked onto and everything. The seeker literally decided to just not track..., which is extraordinarily funny because you can see it in your screenshot just flying off into the distance because it wanted the forbidden heat signature--then you say that he wasted potential. Which it wouldn't have changed the outcome of that fight at all anyways. That's not wasted potential lol. You're just complaining about bugs and now you've seen the same thing happen to a WC and you brushed it right off.
Then, you want to know why their health was instantly at 50%, because they got double whammied by a TOW (that does 50% damage--that the AH had TWO of off the bat) then by rockets. Even if the WC hit every bullet, it still wouldn't have saved him.
For the flak at 4m? It MAY have gotten him, but it really wouldn't have changed that outcome at all. The flak does a whopping 18 damage a shot with a second reload time, so in the two seconds he saw him for, he may have gotten an extra 36 damage in, which would leave the AH with ~>20 health. It wouldn't save him from a TOR, which was my other point about playing a ground vehicle vs an air vehicle. I don't know where you get this super inflated idea of how destructive the flak actually is and how it's this be-all end-all weapon when it comes to the WC's balance.
Then based upon everything you've said thusfar, why do WC players have to play like absolute scum in order to even attempt being on an even playing field with an AH? Did you miss everything @Lady_One has said about that? You guys always go "Oh--just use APS," or "Camp spawn and don't move the entire game because the terrain is going to mess you up when you do actually have to shoot something." Then complain when players resort to those tactics when it's the only better option they have.
Why do you have to camp a riverbed surrounded by APS with three-two people in the WC, and probably an extra person just to repair for exaggeration, to fight a single helicopter.
EDIT: Which, placeable APS protecting vehicles was a problem in BF4, but you want to know HOW they balanced that especially considering that the AA's was a one seater? You had to play support WITHOUT a repair tool and there was no instant repair (you can maybe say that the Fire Extinguisher worked as one, but it was circumstance based and no-one ran it since there was the integrated APS). Which, the integrated APS had a huge delay and, since it couldn't instant repair, you could actually dwindle down vehicles health between APS charges or kill the driver if they got out to repair. Do you want to know what you don't need in 2042? A repair tool, because vehicles can just repair themselves. Do you want to know what you don't need to do in a vehicle in 2042? Play engineer or leave your vehicle--ever.... You guys have no-one to blame but yourselves when it comes to that. (I'll reference the instant repair and disabled vehicles + health decay later too, remember this for that.)
Especially when most 128 maps now have TWO AH and TWO jets, plus transports, when you're probably only going to get ONE WC. Maybe two on maps like Exposure, then most WC players don't even equip the 30/35 and just run AT kits. You can't even guarantee that a WC can be an AA, so two people picking AT kits can unintentionally and absolutely bone an entire team of 62 other people.
You've already said you only squad up with an AH , NB and jet or something like that, which alone can shut down an entire team. Three people, that's all it takes to ruin 64 other people's days. I don't know how much other BF titles you've played, but this has been a growing problem that's only gotten worse over the past few games. DICE bows to air assets the instant they complain about a single thing. Just like the jet afterburner nerf. Jets suddenly were dying because they couldn't just yeet themselves into the stratosphere at the first sign of trouble. WITHIN 24 HOURS, it was buffed substantially.
Just like when the WC was actually good at it's job, AH pilots complained so hard that they nerfed it vastly in the next update while buffing the AH a ton (mainly considering the gunner and the WC/flak damage nerf) without looking back at how the AH changes affected the WC. You guys were scared of LATVs for crying out loud, and now all of them are just an annoyance that you look at and blow up since they don't do nearly enough damage to discourage air vehicles from just shooting back at the LATV because the air vehicle will win the majority of times, regardless of other factors.
But wait! We're not done... don't forget about the WC gunner! If you actually watched it in slow-mo (and had a ground players game sense--which is obviously lacking, considering the things you're bringing up) the gunner has barrage missiles and NEVER fired them at the AH at any point. There was no "tagging" to be had.
Hell--adding onto all of this, we can even look at the Rorsch's history against vehicles to see this trend of DICE bowing to vehicle players. It did barely any damage (like 4 hit points a shot MAX). It was no threat, it rarely ever killed vehicles outright--no matter what DICE says about that. You only ever got a kill if you stole it from a teamate or dedicated ten minutes of your time focusing a single vehicle, but they--or someone else--would usually kill you at that point or they'd find a place to hide. It was an annoyance. That's all it was and that's all it ever should've been. Guess who all complained so hard that DICE nerfed it substantially, so it did a lot less damage "to assist in the destruction of vehicles instead of outright killing them."
But remember--these are vehicle players were talking about, that little amount of damage disrupted your auto repair (which vehicles shouldn't have in the first place, please DICE, bring back disabled vehicles and health decay!). Sooooo~ guess what the vehicle players did next? They cried so hard that DICE shadow nerfed it within a day or two for it to not do any damage to certain vehicles. Never said a word about it, but the infantry players noticed... they had to appease the whining vehicle players somehow. They cried so hard, they made DICE go against their own word about the purpose of the gun they designed. Most vehicle players didn't even bat an eye at how they destroyed it, because they could farm infantry in peace without being plinked away.
Which this was arguably an extremely good lockdown method against vehicles. The longer they stayed somewhere, the more damage they'd take and lo and behold, DICE removed it so vehicles can run rampant, undisturbed.
The same thing is happening and has happened to the Wildcat.
