The design of vehicle unlocks is so defeating in war thunder honestly. Grind for so long to a get a vehicle (tanks esp) then, once you get it, instead of excitement its the dread of stock, slow planes with no missiles and wonky guns. Wonky guns at higher tiers should just be removed when people have missiles. Also in tanks you are sluggish with terrible firepower and unable to really actively react to situations. Its comically bad design. (but good design for $$$) Don't even get me started on stock helis.

The change to the stock grind is much appreciated, rank VIII jets were insufferable stock with Fox-3s flying everywhere.

My strat for stock grinding against fox 3s are sit on the runway for 5 min, then sneak a base in while everyones busy

Bro finally activated windows.

the av8b+ sock grind was by far the most painful experience ive ever had in war thunder

I recently unlocked AIM-120s on the F-4F ICE, no premium. My KD was 14 kills to 59 deaths when i purchased the AMRAAM mod.

I kept getting slammed by amraams stock grinding the f15c so I got chaff pretty much purely from just taking off it was actually painful

0:38 This splash is absurd, the AIM-120 has 23 kg of explosives and flies at a speed of more than Mach 1, it is unrealistic that a fragments from a warhead can tear off a wing

MiG-29 stock is cancer. You get two R-60Ms, to research basic R-60s. The ones from 9.3.

Something I did for RP when unlocking very early modifications for the F-15C was flying very, very far to the left below Mach 1 and basically completely give any early game activities up to, you know, not get instantly banished to the shadow by by 3 ARH-missiles simultaneously. Then I'd kill bots and artillery units for pity RP, since (in my experience anyway) very few people bother killing ground units at top tier. Though do be aware that killing bots is a different story and they usually start getting killed after the initial exchanges, so if you are aiming for bots you have to be quick, while avoiding the enemy team like the plague. You could just rush at the bots but I'd advise against that if you don't want to trade your death for one or two bot kills (provided you live long enough to get any, which is the main issue). In short, there is no "actually good way" to stock grind, there is only pain.

Personally, i blame the "we want DCS but in warthunder" crowd. Multipath needs to be reverted back to 100m, and team sizes 12.7+ need to be fixed at AT MOST 8v8

Yeah you should try this with the AV8B+. Basically the same problems but 10x worse because ur subsonic and u can't even make it to a base before the match is already over and u get clapped every game with 0 points.

So the issue we’re faced with now post-change is they changed the multi-path height so that radar missiles aren’t useless, but without stock chaff then they’re way too strong. They need to add stock chaff

I went from a spaded gripen to a stock tornado, life is fun.. 2Ls and 32 flares baby

I stock grinded the av8b, subsonic with 2 9ls. Reminded me of the no stock flare days. Omg i got fucked for 50 matches

Lately I've been using my stock planes in sim. The longer match + respawn makes it less grindy. You even get full use of your boosters.

Well tthere is one option for me to grind exp for modules, literally you have to wait until a lot players fall, and then go for ground targets if you don't have bombs, missles. Good spot for is to flank then when there is "clear" sky enter the battle and it is important to fly along a straight line of fortifications because then we will be able to destroy the most ground targets. Also no one took a word if there is a plane or tank we ussualy can't max upgrade it to enjoy playing it. If you ask me, grinding planes at 9.3 and up, I couldn't upgrade them completely and I already had a new machine to play

I haven't played top tier since the 1st day of FOX 3 update, the update coming this week giving stock FOX 3's should help a lot. That F-15C stock grind was pure suffering.

Fox 2 only jets shouldn't be able to fly against fox 3 jets

I went through it with the 27SM and 15J(M). Felt a bit better with the SM but it can be argued I got lucky with the games I had. Not having basic countermeasures is criminal. It was criminal over a year ago when flares still had to be researched, it still is now with Chaff needing to be researched. A basic set of countermeasures should be a no brainer. BOL pods and the like: I can understand that being researched. It takes a lot of time just to research one of these planes. You finally get there, and now you're faced with the awful stock grind you have to go through to be able to actually enjoy the plane you just spent all that time looking forward to and working towards. I'm glad it's being addressed somewhat with new stock loadouts... but we're still ignoring lack of Chaff as a default for what is now inherently the radar missile era.

In the most recent major update they did give the F-16C and a number of other planes IRCCM Fox-2s stock. That doesn't change very much though considering it's only two close range missiles that can be pretty easily flared. What's really nice is that we're now getting those IRCCM missiles alongside stock Fox-3s, so the stock grind should be much less painful. It would be nice if they also gave us stock chaff, but if I had to pick between stock Fox-3s and stock chaff I'd be choosing the Fox-3s any day of the week.

My strategy when i started the stock grind was to sneak up on targets with 9Ms its not even worth using SAR against fox 3s

Yep, got 150k rp left on F-15C this stock grind is going to kill me

Having to research chaff is so fucking stupid. None of the planes that fit it would be going into combat WITHOUT IT. I can understand unlocking more weapons, but a basic defensive measure like fucking chaff? Christ.

was stock grinding the new belgian f16a yesterday, got up to 9Ms but it was fucking painful

The stock missile on the f16c is now the 9m, not the L like you had. It doesnt help with closing the range, but if you do get a chance it means you can actually do something with it. Still so glad that theyre giving medium range missiles to everything soon though. Just the fact that stock planes will now have 4 aam instead of 2 is a big help.

Bro I played this game 2700hours basically unlocking every top tier jets but still died like 25times trying to unlock the level 3 modification on f15c

When I first unlocked the F15A, it was the most horrible experience since that aircraft without the boosters mod was just not flyable

8:12 100% agree with what you say here, gaijin has really been stepping up how fast they're taking out higher and higher gen jets I think they might be pushing it too fast, i mean we will guaranteed get 4.5 gens next year max with how quick they're going

FOX3s have made top tier really unpleasant for everybody who doesn't have them. Even with a fully spaded, regular Su27, its not difficult to acquire a lock, but good luck maintaining it post-launch while you have 5+ missiles flying at you from every direction and you're trying to evade. You can't even get close to an enemy without them throwing these things in your face the second you get within 5km (within the MAR, so you're truly screwed no matter what). It quite literally feels like bringing a knife to a gunfight. On top of it all, people are just treating these like AIM54s on steroids. Seriously, the first ~3 minutes of each match, you can barely move because everyone climbs, dumps their FOX-3 payload, and then turns around to RTB, leaving you dodging and desperately trying to notch every missile at once.😂

This update has been the most discouraging update I've ever been a part of. I just want to get my Sea Harrier and Harrier 2 but the best I have for Britain is a half stock Phantom that I bought the day of the update being live. A week in, I stopped playing Britain entirely because every match is an uptier to Harrier 2 world where I have to dodge amraams from across the map and even if I get through that, the wall of F-16s is next. The worst part is that the community is basically saying that it's my fault that I'm dying when I'm just trying to play the game

I think they wouldn't have hurt the gameplay experience as much when they added fox 3's if they wouldn't have lowered the multipathing height. We have been hugging the ground for so long that we got used to it being the answer for all radar missiles, now that things changed everyone is having to learn to adapt. It will all get nerfed into oblivion eventually just like when they added 9l's, 9m's r27er's, and mig 29's insane flight model when added.

The only way to get out of stock now is arcade mode, you spawn near the enemy spawn where you can shoot your ir rockets in dogfight

I stopped playing war thunder after hearing that most existing top tier jets did not get ARH and that you had to grind more jets to get them. I really hope they do more updates to fix the stock grind because the gameplay looks so disgusting now. This is paired with the fact that they didn’t reduce the player cap but made it as an "opt-in" that makes it difficult to get lucky with.. I'm just not going to play top tier anymore until they decide to fix it all-together.

I gave up the idea of playing the Improved Baz (Israel F15) on Air RB, I learned to play simulator battles to be able to upgraded this plane.

I agree with you Seek. I have been playing since beta and very much enjoyed air realistic battles and sim for over 10 years. After this last missile change I uninstalled. I don't feel like spending more money on this game than I already have to get the active radar homing missile and I don't want to waste my time getting pulled up into matches with them as a stock jet or a jet that that will never get them. The gaming experience right now sucks. I am relaxing and playing other games where the company actually thinks about the impact of their decisions before they subject the player base to it. I have heard there will be changes, but after so many stupid decisions from gaijin I have had enough. I am glad you were honest about your evaluation and didn't pull a defyn "get good loser" on your viewers.

I kinda do enjoy the fox 3 meta but straight up agree. The stock grind was ridiculously poor. There was a lack of thinking at all considering with the addition of fox-3 the extreme increase in fighting at range. It should have at least put in their minds that stock IR had a severly limited range against radar missiles but even more so now that you no longer have to maintain a lock heading towards the other guy. If you were there at the begining of the update with or nearly having the jets with the new toys it was grindable as not everyone had it but now, its a literal pity rp grind.

I can’t beleive gaijin made an actually good change giving us more stock loadouts!

Tree height man why are the trees 200m tall? Also why do the missle still track when you are behind cover lol, i spent a minute behind a mountain and when I finally came out i ate a aim120 that had just been floating in the air waiting for me

During the last month they've probably been making BANK off people using GE to buy modifications in order to end the pain. I do think most content creators take that for granted, and this update just really emphasized it to a huge degree.

The F-15A stock grind made me almost totally stop playing the game only two days after the plane came out. I still don’t have the AIM-9M

imagine playing against top tier in current 12.0 which will not ever get even stock sarh

Air RB above 10.7 is dead to me, and not just because of ARH, you still have the Kfir with 36 countermeasures facing The F-4S spam and Mig29s

No TY, I’ve payed for AV8b mods then grinded the f15 mrpppr X I don’t know. Took it for 3 games and went back to my AV8B

Essentially its playing tens of games for scraps to get your plane playable.

I finished the grind on the su 27 sm and half an hour later the stock amrams were added

Yeah I have been trying to grind the JAS39C with the JAS39A and it such a struggle, I’m not dieing I’m just barely getting kills now due to engagements happening at long range of 10km+

Fox3 be like: nuh uh yeah aint grinding with this one 🗣️🗣️🗣️🙌🏽🧏🏽‍♂️

a tactic i use it being able to get off the runway land at the second base in front so ur behind all the spam rams and just kinda halfterburner so everyone wastes the amramms the big ass snowball forms and than u can go in with ir or go to base as long as ur good i would stay like 5ish miles away from tm behind at least like 8km i think thats what i did to grind the f16am the c all the f15s and the su27sm and yeah rn best strat i came up with edit: if u wanna play it safe air ai is honestly not that bad for rp so u can gun some down ir some and than rtb or if the game is gonna end dont slack out on ground ai and air ai

I did my stock grind for the Av8B, now im suffering in the 16C, then the 15C.

My biggest rant with the current update is the Tomcat (especially the F-14A), which is way too strong. You get downtiered pretty much every single game and you get missiles that don’t even trigger a lot of RWRs of planes you see (I‘m looking at you Phantoms, Mirage F-1 Family, MiG-23). Yes, I know, Skill Issue but hear me out: I‘m a Tomcat Driver myself. Sure it is fun to kill noobs in premium jets (at least for a while) and 4 kills for 6 Phoenixes are not uncommon but is it also fun for them or for me in the long run ? Probably not. Sure, they can be dodged, but for that you have to be able to see them first which many people don’t and even when you dodge them by multipathing you are still most likely gonna die thanks to that massive Warhead. Have you tried to grind with a 12.0 premium after the BR decompression ? It‘s absolutely not fun right now.

the netz is an absolute nightmare to play now they should just give it AIM-7Fs at least I know it was never the best but the only reason for it not having radar missiles is why not

I unlocked su27sm f15c and mig29 smt and I don’t plan on spading a single one until stock fox 3s

I cant do it anymore I get matched in a Stock Mig 23 MLA against F16's like wtf should I do

Personally didnt find it problem at all, took like 1-2 days to spaded. Ofc we could remove the whole system and have all planes come out completed instantly, heck why not give all planes instantly as well since people always complain about the grind. Imo grind IS the game, harder something is to achieve the happier i am when i finally unlock new goal.

Wouldn’t it work if they had separate battle ratings from stock and spaded jets so the stock grind is more bearable

I had 80% WR and 3-1 kd with both the su27 and gripen. F15c I am struggling to keep it close to 1-1 stock grinding. Would be better if BR adjusted based on loadout.

The changes on BR are welcome, but they're not well focused at all. Top tier remains literally the same, the BR difference between Fox-3 carriers and non-fox-3-carriers remains unchanged. Would be fun if the new aircraft with the new missiles could only face each other.. even with the R-27ER being so powerful, having inly Fox-1s and Fox-2s was more fun.

try stock grinding the French F-16AM at top tier with no hmd mode for its radar. along with the usual tier 4 AMRAAM mods its actually suffering

I don’t have prem account and stock grinded 2 F-15’s (C and JM, that wasn’t that hard since their second modification is 7M’s) and the Su-27SM and even though that was painful (Su grind for instance was just the worst thing ever cause it gets its first radar missiles right before 77’s so it took forever to grind 100k+ RP to get R-27’s and it didn’t even worth it cause even with all mods this plane is nearly useless and can compete only with F-4’s (at closer ranges), other Su-27’s and with “not-the-smartest” players) I still think that 60m MP was the best change/addition since first jets were added and had to be implemented a long time ago and I personally would love to see 20m or less MP but it won’t happen cause it requires bigger maps with less players (gjn’s servers can’t handle these changes, at least rn)

This video aged like milk instantly They literally just added stock SARH / ARH ( Fox-1 / Fox-3 ) missiles

Honestly people will definitely disagree with me but i find current 13.0 stock grinds pretty easy, both the F-15C and JAS39C get AIM-9Ms stock and an HMD which make the grind a cakewalk to me. in the F-15C i didn't drop a single bomb and had a positive K/D the entire time while stock grinding. I didn't even get chaff until after the AIM-120s

Gaijin as a company should all be locked in a basement and made to play WT for a few months straight so that they can understand how absolutely terrible their game has become.

You are totally correct with this. Its these the same people will say its a skill issue and get good. Its the same for F14 players who are now the biggest rats in the game. It is totally the worst gameplay I have played in any game. If any other game was this obnoxious I would stop playing like COD with its EOMM, Engagement Optimised Match Making. I stopped because there were other variants, which you cannot say about this game. We have all given soooo much to this game and they continually do this to us. Imagine they played it themselves? Imagine they went through any of what we have instead of just milking us like cows who drop cash... Im sick of playing a business model

Hey Seek, is there any chance you can go back and revisit the J7D now that it's staying at 11.0 while everything around it went up. I think it might be one of the best rank VII premiums now!

How's it going to work with jets like the GR.7, which has no radar missiles being moved up to face those that do?

I got the 120's on the 15c msip before getting chaff ya im crazy ya I tend to stock grind that way, i just notch ALOT

Arcade can make the stock grind a bit easier. Especially since now everything's gets 2 decent ir/fox 3s. Just wait out the first wave of aim120 spam then farm out the rest of the jets

Oh I’m getting me that decal next update

Fortunately rank 8 jets will be getting stock radar missiles some time this week (accompanying the BR decompression), so it's not all bad. I certainly won't be stock grinding the F-15J(M) until that update rolls around.

Real issue is 16 v 16 when it should be like 6v6 or less

Su-27SM has any radar missiles on 4th modification rank, even R-27R, which is worser than AIM-7F/M... At 13.0 "Russian bias", ofc

The game would certainly benefit from a number of re-evaluations. Personally I don't think players should lose money from a match unless they've committed friendly fire but in the same breath with the way some missiles work I think it should be the default to forgive a tk and require a button press to punish. Further to the above I think progress needs looking at and the game would greatly benefit from splitting WW1 - WW2 and Cold War Era.

Multipath is shit it doesnt exist no more i can be 1 m above ground and throw chaff notch still get hit

You should just get chaf/all weapons right off the back in high tier... just make the jest cost more w more rp

Fox 3 was a bad idea. everyone with a bit expiriance knew that. it makes the game passive. you have to be defencive. and if u comit and youre too close youre dead becahuse you cant evade fast enough.

2 poorly timed videos in a row is so incredibly unlucky

We love your video being almost completely outdated one day after you upload it 😇😇 still need stock chaff but at least it’s better now

Grinded the Israeli F15 out from stock to unlock aim 120's and my god... there was just no fun found. I have 2 more top tier planes waiting for the update to drop as there is aint no way im doing it again.

Ranked 5vs5 that would make the game great

F-15A stock with only 2 9Ls made me quit playing top tier air.

Stock grinding the su27sm rn hehe

Where can I read that changes? I didn't see that on the forum. Can anyone please link that?

I think the game would be much healthier if modifications just werent a thing but gaijin needs their shekels

What about the lower br f16 that have stock aim9ps

pretty sure the 16C gets 9Ms stock

6:40 exactly 🤣

Windows activated 🎉

Maybe I missed u saying it, but don't forget stock doesn't get chaff either....

Truest title ever ... then you get ripped for being negative K/D lmao... its a joke!

We're about to get Fox 1's and Fox 3's stock any day now. Chaff is the literal first modification you get, only around 8k RP at top-tier. Tree heights was mostly fixed, and devs are still actively working on it. We're getting tons of BR decompression specifically at top-tier. What's even the point of this video now after these changes were announced lol.

What is a stock grind?

Call me gay or lazy but I just bought my way to the AIM-120 I’ll stock grind anything below 11.0 but above 11.0 it’s just painful if u don’t have the better stuff at top tier

Thankfully top tier jets get better stock loadouts soon😅

The AV8B plus stock gring is worse, you are sub sonic

When is the free fox-3 update dropping again?

Use different tactics … embrace the suck lol

Honestly, (this is with premium, who on earth at top tier doesnt have it) stock grind isnt terrible, on average for the 11.7-13.0 jets stock has been extremely easy, 1-2 games for you extra missiles, another 2-3 games for boosters, and tadaa, your jet is at like 90% performance and you're chilling.

Stop. it's not that bad. Just get caff first. Got the 120s with the f16c on unlock in a half day.

Guys stop complaining, every one got this jets spaded it was always this way. Want speed it up, buy GE.