War Thunder

[Dusty Lens]

I used to play a fair bit of War Thunder.

If you're rolling in Arcade, which I presume is the case, you'll find that British planes are fairly good to go in the middle lower tier, with the delight level going into near carnal pleasures around the Beaufighter VI tier, and then becoming shockingly grindy as you attempt to build up a fleet of viable spitfires later on. If you're not a subscriber they can be damned hard to make competitive without a lot of time logged.

America is generally meh on Arcade. They have some shockingly good planes but the time invested to procure them is horrific. They excel in Historic and other modes where their flight model, dependability and ammo reserves eclipse those of other nations.

Russia is stronk. Russia is love. Russia has a dizzying number of planes that are "good enough" with few that are terribad. I really feel that Russia's lineup is the way to go when you're first getting into War Thunder. There's enough planes to make sure that your bar is always full and they generally perform well enough that you can be competitive within a number of different playstyles. They'll hurt when your pilot is low level, I would strongly suggest spreading the points around to jump up to expert rather than dropping points into things like reload speed first. Base reload + 20s = 40 second reload time = Q_Q.

The IL2 is love. The IL2 is life.

Lower tier German planes are nyeh. Higher tier German planes are so overgunned that they feel like a Discovery mod pet submission that you know someone bought in by promising to contribute a model that some clown with influence desperately wanted for his faction. Good planes. Very solid. Hilariously robust firepower. Not insanely grindy.

Japan = Enjoy flying your shit tier planes until you finally unlock the good ones at upper tiers. Nothing outturns a Japanese plane, everything outruns a Japanese plane. They're scary as hell but it's not a good tier to follow if you're just getting started.

So. In short. My unsolicited advice.

Good ultra new nations: British/Russian
Good experienced nations: Russian/German

High tier British, American and Japanese have very good planes, but they're very expensive in research points and, I feel, generally better reserved for when you have a lot of fun backup planes from other nations that you enjoy flying.

My goodness what a tirade.

Oh yeah. Bombers. I think that Bombers are nice and all. America has bombers that are generally intended to fly up and stay up and if you're a dedicated bomber you can get a lot of bombers per mission to try again after someone one shots your wing with a hilarity cannon. Japan has one tremendously good bomber that has no issues flying to the moon. I don't know anything about German bombers. The Lancaster for the British is okish.

The YER line for Russia is life and love. You don't fly up, you turn on your smoke and dive towards the enemy lines to bomb everything while your allies in B-17s are still trying to fruitlessly climb away from German and Russian wundercannons.

But that's just me. I don't bomb a lot. Bombing at lower tiers is terrible and a sure way to be stuck in grind hell forever.