Vehicle balance from a top 0,1% player’s perspective
1) Jets
Vehicles in this game have been weaker than their Battlefield 4 counterparts, maybe the only exception to this was the Nightbird, which exchanged some minigun DPS for rockets that made it easier to use. Everything else has a lot less overall potency, this is especially true for jets, which went from the strongest vehicles in BF4 to one of the weakest in this game in terms of how much you can get out of them. Jets are solely used to counter other vehicles, so outside of denying something on your opponent’s side, you really don’t get much out of them. Jets need to be able to contribute to a match in a meaningful way, they need to be able to perform strafe runs on infantry which is currently not possible with the 30mm cannon and barely possible with the 25mm cannon, which can not hit armored vehicles and is therefore not even being used often. People playing infantry do not realize or do not care how terrible the 30mm cannon is in this game is, not only does it literally spray a circle around any targets smaller than a car, but the damage to infantry is reduced to a point, where even if you manage to hit people, any hit will deal less damage than a hit by any handheld weapon in the game. This is a complete joke in every regard, they are only being used so you can finish armored targets, that will be left at minimal HP after laser guided missile hits. Back when infantry weapons were vastly inconsistent and inaccurate, people were all over the place about buffing accuracy, but once a vehicle is concerned by the same level of nonsense, most casual players just don’t care anymore, because they will never even try to use those vehicles and learn them properly.
AND YES jets need a category of their own.
2) Helicopters
The level of hate helicopters in 2042 get is crazy, especially considering how most people hating on them can’t even fly them properly themselves, yet they will proudly exclaim how little skill they take and how OP they are, while the opposite is actually true. Attack helicopters are a notable downgrade compared to BF4, not only is their arsenal incomplete, but pretty much every kind of weapon is weaker. For pilots the recent 127mm buff was a step in the right direction here, the changes to the gun for the copilot were not. 2042 attack helis already featured a significantly slower gunner cannon, you immediately notice the difference when you compare it to the Portal mode version of attack helis. The overheat has reached a point where it is more restrictive than BF4’s ammo mechanic, so you don’t just have a weaker, slower gun, but also one that can shoot less overall. Despite all this, people still cry a lot about helicopters, now you may say, that the attack heli is not the OP one, but in truth I would disagree, as it is currently the strongest option. It can 2 shot kill the nerfed stealth helis, both with heatseekers and 127mm rockets, the same is true for scouts. While Nightbirds are a more difficult, smaller target, they can’t really win a ranged fight against attack helis. It can be concluded that attack helis therefore provide the largest advantage to a team, despite not even being particularly good, they will also allow both the pilot and the gunner to get a decent amount of kills, but it does require perfect piloting, as any and all misjudgements on the pilot’s part will result in immediate disaster. This is not very beginner friendly to say the least. One single attack helicopter going up against a team of 60+ people has so many adversaries to take care of, managing all of those at the same time is honestly a nightmare and often overwhelming even for veteran pilots, especially now with Lis and Rao becoming more popular. A few of those two particular specialists can already completely shut down a vehicle. Rao takes away your ability to return fire or protect the helicopter from incoming missiles, while Lis forces you to evade TV missiles until they eventually get you anyway or you have moved to the edge of the map where you are useless. TV missiles were one of the strongest weapons of attack helicopters in BF4, words cannot describe how ridiculous a once very much limited type of weapon becomes, when a group of infantry players can just spam it from the ground without much restriction at all. This is already frustrating for attack helis which take two TV missiles to destroy, it is beyond restrictive for stealth helis that go down in a single hit and are just as large. Only the Nightbird has some chance of survival against Lis spam due to its small size, but it will also be left pointless and useless for the majority of the game and scouts contribute very little to vehicle fights. While Rao may be a necessary defensive tool, Lis is offensive, has enormous range and is incredibly oppressive against pretty much any type of vehicle, even from a safe distance and certainly for both tank and heli alike. The only exception here are jets, those can outrun TV missiles, but jets are hard to take down by definition, as they can outrun most things.
The continued nerfs to stealth helis have crippled them significantly, HP was never the problem with them, it was the explosive cannon, which was to date the only type of vehicle armament that reached BF4 levels of power. It is now significantly nerfed, so why did the HP reduction happen? It leaves the stealth heli so much weaker not only to itself (making heli on heli combat unfun), but also other types of vehicles and Lis rockets of course. The last part alone tends to be a complete dealbreaker as previously explained, because once Lis spam begins, you might as well be stuck high-altitude bombing for the rest of the game or just give up flying.
The regular stealth heli machine guns indeed also feature a longer time to kill than BF4 scout miniguns, take practice to use and can’t hit armored vehicles at all, the same can be said for the copilot machine gun. I think it is safe to assume that those things are certainly not OP. That leaves stealth mode in general and the bombs, stealth mode is a necessary offensive tool, in order to actually play a large helicopter aggressively in a 128 player match, as it is the only tool available to actually approach and fight through large groups of people. Stealth helis feature a shorter engagement range than attack helis, therefore they need to get closer to a target, just like scouts. Stealth mode is still being countered by Rao and will also be disabled once sufficient part damage has been caused. Dropping bombs while in stealth mode is arguably the only advantage the stealth heli truly provides over attack helicopters and it is indeed a potent source of multi-kills, so this should have been where the nerf goes, if another one besides the explosive cannons is deemed necessary, not the HP stat. Aside from rewarding and encouraging Lis spam, the current HP level only leads to cheap kills in air combat, due to stealth helis going down in 2 hits by all kind of things, rather than 3 like the attack heli.
Rebuff the HP stat and nerf bombs instead, reduce their splash damage radius in order to encourage accurate hits, this increases the skill gap of stealth helis, while also maintaining a fair fighting chance between stealth helis and other vehicles like wildcats or attack helis. Most importantly, it actually encourages accurate usage of the non-explosive machine guns for anti-infantry purposes and therefore creates a more appropriate balance between stealth and attack mode.
3) Tanks
Tanks are in a bad state right now. They are impacted by specialist gimmicks and their past counters in really significant ways. Sundance or Mackay C5 is pretty much a death sentence for every tank daring to get close to the action. Tanks can not push the objective properly like they used to. The solution for both issues is surprisingly easy, they need APS (Active Protection System) like the new EBLC-RAM has and they need it as soon as possible. Only with APS and a Crew of 2-3 people, can tanks match their power in BF4 or BFV. Previously mentioned Lis spam is also extremely devastating for tanks, as they will be outranged and can be attacked from a safe position without any risk at all. Again, I can not understand how Lis in this current state is allowed to exist, solo tank players have no way of defending themselves against that, the best you can hope for is a turret gunner that bothers to shoot down incoming missiles. When Lis was able to properly kill infantry, this was seen as a significant issue and warranted a nerf, Lis being beyond oppressive for most types of vehicles is then again somehow fine? Vehicle balance has been a very important factor for Battlefield in the past and vehicle on vehicle combat is at the core of that, now you can’t have satisfying vehicle fights when infantry is a more potent counter to a vehicle than another vehicle. That turns using a vehicle, in particular a tank, into a fight for survival, where you are mostly concerned with fighting off hostile infantry that typically actively seeks you out to wreck you, because they very well know how vulnerable tanks are in this game. It also encourages the exact opposite behavior you would want to see from your tanks in objective based gamemodes, rather than pushing objectives and getting close the action, you instead encourage people to camp at a distance, knowing that this is the safest way to play a tank and stay alive.
4) Wildcat
What I just said is about tanks is pretty much also true for the Wildcat, with one big difference. The recent buff to the AA version of playing a Wildcat allows you to hang back even further, right at your spawn and still be fairly oppressive against most types of aircraft. One of the major criticisms in regards to BF4 was base-camping in AA tanks and this is exactly the type of behavior encouraged now. While using a Wildcat as LAV is highly dangerous without APS, adding APS to a base-camping Wildcat will make it pretty much impossible to kill. All in all the Wildcat remains a tough call in terms of the correct way to balance it. My personal solution would be to allow APS on it, but reintroduce damage dropoff to the 30mm cannons, that way you would at least have to leave your base to fully take advantage of those.
5) Bolte
While the Bolte was obviously the strongest vehicle choice in the light category and couldn’t really remain there, it is clearly the weakest choice in terms of tanks. Rebuffing the Bolte to its release state would be one way of fixing this. The other would be to make it available at one per team in a category of its own, or possibly shared with the new EBLC-RAM.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If you are a Dice employee, please consider this for future balance updates. Past balance changes were overwhelmingly in favor of infantry players with little regard for vehicles, you can't and will not ever get a good Battlefield without also focusing on its vehicle balance and vehicle on vehicle combat. Major parts of the Battlefield community and in particular those that stick around for years, chose Battlefield for its unique vehicle sandbox and multi-layered gameplay experience, where learning each vehicle opens up new possibilities to experience the game. This will not hold true in a game where learning vehicles is somewhat discouraged by the sheer power of infantry masses using broken gimmicks. Yes, talking about Lis right there.
