The Most Fun Ranks To Play In War Thunder Tier List 

I bet all 7 naval players appreciate being included

Just gonna say off the bat, I think Rank 2 ground is best, fun but not super sealclubby, encounter some great vehicles, but not limited to T34s shermans, yet.

While I understand that Naval isn´t widely played anyway, I'd have liked to see Rank I Coastal in a seperate tier from Rank I Bluewater. It's a completely different feel, to zip around in tiny speedboats. Especially when there's no big destroyer looming on the horizon, ready to one-tap you out of existance from a range you can't even fire at. That said, great video. Thanks for putting in the effort to aid newer players in finding their footing.

Rank III, IV and maybe some at rank V like IS-3, M103, T-44-100 are the best rank for Ground. Tanks at that BR have unique identity and play style. But at Rank VI and VII, all of them are like "wow, fast moving box with stabilizer and high pen APFSDS and laser range finder, hit this rank finder button and click mouse"

Despite playing since release, I spend 90% of my time in 2.3/3.0 matches. I always wanted Operation Barbarossa era combat anyway

My favourite is Rank 2 ground, its like rank 1 but has more strategy in it, rank 1 is all over the place while rank 2 is a bit more strategic and tactical in its approach while still being fast paced and fun.

Rank V in the T-54 is just pure pain right now. Gaijin thought removing a second off its reload time would make up against ERA, Stabilizers, APFSDS and at some moments, even Thermals. Its just pure absolute pain. Fought an XM1 in it once, felt like throwing sticks at an extremely mobile house. All I could do was cower as it did circles around me with a turret turn thrice as fast as mine. It also didn't need to stop to shoot me.

Rank v is kinda chaotic for me since i just keep getting uptiered and face tanks with stabilizer, era, apfsds, and some with thermals in my former 7.3 soviet lineup now become 8.0 lineup. Every time i get a downtier i always consider it as an miracle 😂

Rank 2 and 3. Your crew can repair during the night for the following day. The higher ranks it seems that repair skills of the crews don't matter because it still takes days or weeks

Nice video! Would be nice to see a breakdown of which nations are strongest at different BRs and go through some lineups for them etc.

I really like rank 6-7 air very much because it is a mix of missile and gunfighting, but for ground I think rank 2 is the best as it has iconic vehicles which are also fun to play and you don't have to worry about sl or grinding so much, rank 3 is a transitioning to rank 4 and 5 which start to be less fun for ground.

As far as Ground goes BR 10.3 is where its at. There's no point moving on after it, because BR 11.7 battle results depend on which team can deploy the most top tier MBTs. Most people either have only 1 suplemented by lower tiers, or don't have the SL to buy/take out others. BR 10.3 is far more balanced, vehicle loadout selection is a lot bigger, it is cheaper to deploy tanks. So games last a longer because people usually actually try to win. Unless we are speaking about 10.3 games where teams are 90% made up of premiums, then they leave after 1 death no matter what. Another brilliant idea to release top tier premium by Gaijin.

BVR isn't a problem in top tier air because everyone has sort of figured out at this point that to survive BVR you have to hug the ground, and this causes all current radar missiles to faceplant. The meta is to ground hug and just dogfight anyway and I think it's a lot of fun because it's extremely fast paced and you have some seriously near-modern aircraft in play. I rarely see people getting knocked out by Phoenixes or AIM-7s or the like

As a naval main who does play other modes, (hypothesizing that the bots don’t exist) I’m gonna put rank 1 naval at C tier, rank 2, 4 and 5 naval at B tier, rank 3 naval at A tier, and rank 5 naval in naval EC at S tier. With the air and ground tiers being more or less the same as you. Naval is just way too underrated imo. Most people judge it without learning about it seriously. And Helena is rank 4 btw. And most 6.0s as well as every single capital ship is at rank 5. Also you shouldn’t have more than one damage control process active at one time in naval, like you’re doing at 9:50. It really slows down all the processes. And finally, rank 5 naval repair costs did go down a lot and the SL multipliers went up a lot as well after the last economy patch, so that might not be as much of an issue these days, you should really try playing it again.

Setting up this type of tier list is very difficult, but I honestly think this is an accurate ranking. My only notable specific deviation would be 6.3 USSR groundRB, which is S tier for me.

My personal favorite ground is rank 6, so many unique vehicles that are super fun to play, and most nations don’t suffer from a lack of support options there. Low tier ground and air are also enjoyable. I will say RB top tier is terrible, but Sim top tier is actually enjoyable, the maps are big enough to facilitate movement from MBTs while the gun handling and laser rangefinders make it not feel like a chore to fight.

10.3-11.3 Air RB is a LOT of fun. Plenty of great and interesting planes like the F-8E, F-5E, MiG-21s, MiG-23s, J-7E, Mirages, Drakens, and you have your Phantoms. It's a really diverse BR to play at, and you don't suffer the constant RWR ping and BVR missiles of top tier-so you can actually play at a decent altitude.

5.3 and lower are fun sometimes higher can be kinda fun (for ground) here lately air rb at any br just feels meh

rank 4 in groudn rb is straight up painful and something I wish I'd never have to go through again, as a ussr player you always get matched against germany, and at this br against germany when the best gun you have is 85mm, i'ts pure pain, it would've deserved the C

Rank IV became SIGNIFICANTLY more fun with the recent BR changes.

i had 2200 games on the horton 229 on my old acc (hacked) and 230 on me 163 B , these are my faves and i love this battle rank im currently lvl up a new acc that is hopefully secure enough to get my babys back if it comes to tanks i love the brummbär and the rank around it is fine too

3.7-5.3 is the sweet spot for me, both in ground and air RB.

For me specifically, the Tiger 2s are the best. You can 1 tap almost everything and you can easily bounce almost everything.

Imo ground around 3rd rank is the most fun. Most diverse, many historical tanks, not so sluggish like 1rank and not as easy as rank 6. Rank 5 is also fun, cold war vehicles are very diverse. On rank 7 Ground there are only 3 types if vehicles: russian tank, NATO tank and CAS. Any tank of the same type plays exactly the same. But it doesn't matter really, as most of the time you get sniped by heli 10kilometers away right as you spawn.

The Ju-288C makes rank 4 Air RB unplayable. With entire teams dominated by that thing, the individual games are incredibly unfun

My favorite ship is WoWS ever is tier´s 7 Pepsicola because you deleted cruisers. And in WoWS deleting from 20-30k health to none does not happen so often. But I found the same feeling in WT first ranks in tanks. I would say that you get deleted in WT lower ranks as easily as playing Koenigsberg and Nurnberg in WoWS. Cruisers life!

70% of playerbase is BR7 or under for a reason, which is why it frustrates me when you get streams of 'changes/additions' in the bracket above this, instead of fixing the abysmal Ground and Naval map lineup. It's for wallet warriors, not for the players. Rank 1-2 ground is best by far. AB is hectic chaos and RB is insane too. Low rank coastal is amazing and far better than bluewater, the maps with lots of tiny islands are a blast. Coastal AB is where it's at, there are much more players. RB is so similar just without the markers.

I personally would put Rank 1 air into S tier, because Arcade is just an absolute Biplane clusterf*ck and it’s great

Rank 7 ground RB sucks simply because it’s a playground for Russian players to use 21st century vehicles like the T-80BVM which was adopted in *2017* while other major countries like the U.S. are stuck with tanks like the M1A2 SEP which was adopted in *1999*. It gets even worse when you factor in Gaijin adding things like the pantsir into the game to ensure other countries can’t even dream of at least having an advantage in the air

Germany at 3.7 is the most fun imo. you get Dicker max excellent zoom and pen. Panzer 4h, wirblewind, and bv-155 for air. great tank great tank destroyer great anti air and amazing plane.

My favourite rank is Rank3, playing the classic WW2 vehicles. Stuff like the M4A2, the Sherman Firefly, the Churchill Mk7 Crocodile.

As someone who's been playing USA coastal, it's actually surprisingly fun if dont require non-stop constant action. Altho the german ships are so over powerd.

Thanks for the list. My preferred ranks for aviation are 4 and 5. P-51H and F-86A-5 are my favourite machines.

I agree with your rankings on ground aside from rank 7, as I have not played 7 yet. Rank 3 and even some of rank 4 is some of the most fun I have had in War Thunder.

I can agree with the Rank V ground cus am playing as Germany and i barely get any kills

I love 6.7 for some reason. I run a Tiger II (P). The one step forward two steps back is so apparent that it forces you to use the tank the way it was meant to be used and take calculated risks without being cheese.

I must approve, rank 3 Air RB and Ground RB is where the game shines the most. The experience in air has been essentially unchanged since 2012 (or 2014 for ground) and that's a good thing. I hate that the garbage which pollutes high tiers is slowly creeping its way into lower tiers though. They really have to put a stricter separation between WW2 and postwar vehicles, some people just want to be immersed in the WW2 environment without post-war light cars, SPAA and now artillery vehicles roaming around...

to me rank 5 ground is the worst because of something called "up tier" where your 122mm APHE cant pen lots of things and while one HEAT take you out. for higher ground br its nightmare when you by a new tank (stock) but after some suffering it become easier but yet planes and helies spamming ruin every thing. using non-WW2 tanks in WW2 tanks br also ruin the play.

Low tier for new players like myself is why new players are not staying with War Thunder. Take last night’s game for example. Enemy team had six level 100 players running around in M8 lac’s. Driving past points to spawn camp our team. And don’t get me started on getting bombed in higher tier. I wish there was rank based match making or at least evening out the teams.

“Rank one planes don’t have enough firepower” Yak-2 KABB wants to know your location

I gotta say rank IV is my favourite, because around 6.0 br you're not getting constant upteirs, and because early jets have poor acceleration and low speed maneuverability, unless they play smart (which they rarely do) you can hold your own against them in a superprop. Everyone loves to hate on Ju-288s, but honestly they're free kills, especially if u have an airspawn, they're always afk 😭.

Rank VII ground is probably the most frustrating and cancerous thing, because at that point many things have Gen 2 or 3 Thermals, if not, Gen 1, so it's mostly just sniping. Brawling is out of the picture, because everything can pen everything if they aim in the right spot.

I gotta agree when it comes to rank 6 air. I love the "intermediate" jets that arent too fast and the missiles are primitive. Every plane is miles different.

I only play sim modes air and ground and I couldn't agree more. Except practicly no experience in naval modes but I'd take your word. You're great dude! Love it rock on!

German Br 6-9 can get rough if uptiered, its nice though that those guns on the big german tanks can compete with cold war tanks, but its a pain when you Maus gets one shot by a small scout tank with a chemical round

5,3 BR in both air and ground used to be my fav until they made 1.7 uptiers a thing

This def feels like a tier list from someone who has been playing the game for forever. The lower ranks are definitely fun coming back to but starting out since you just aren’t as skilled it can be very frustrating.

Coastal is weird, it in such a concentrated br range but the price and research coat just skyrockets, I think it could be fun it was just fast to grind though so you have rat going around cause mayhem

As someone who strictly played rank 7 tank RB for 2 years , i have to agree with u. The maps are way to easy to spawn trap when everyone has LRF, 500mm apfsds, gen2/3 thermals. The 1 live leavers also ruined it for me . before i made the switch back to rank4 and 5 rb i remember CAS becoming a headache at top br

Rank 3 and Rank 4 for ground. I personally like jet combat without extremely strong missiles so 7.3-9.3 are my favorites for air rb. Fast paced and dynamic combat.

I am a top tier enjoyer. Rank 6 and 7 ground and air are the most fun. You get fast vehicles and such, really enjoyable for me

I would say 1-3 brs bellow top tier is best cause u get a high SL/RP multiplier and I enjoy it the most(fast planes and tanks)

In all honesty, I'd say this is pretty accurate for myself. Although I don't like when air starts turning into jets. Being that my highest tier aircraft is the A4E (Israel) I find it extremely jarring. Ground... I'm hit and miss with high tier. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I don't. Playing the Merkava's is awesome, the M1A1 AIM can be a fun tank depending on the matchmaking, high tier Russia just seems talentless. My BMP2M, 2S38 and KA50 alone just dominate everything. My favorite tiers to play in grb have to be around 4.3/5.0 and in air... My Israel spitfire and sakeen are just great fun to play and even from time to time I go back to 1.0/2.0 arb fun the amusement of having weak planes all round and I can do fun maneuvers without my wings tearing off because the planes just simply won't go fast enough. As for ships... Haven't played them so I can't comment but playing in the subs was great fun

Maybe it's worth to make an Update of this List in 2024 because it seems that it has some different direction and dynamics lately when it comes to playerbase.

Ngl tier 5 and 6 air is one of the best ranks to play on air

Me personally 3.3 to 5.7 in ground RB 3.3 for air AB

"they all have their own identity" while rolling around in an ersatz M10 lol

i would be jaded if i spent multiple thousands of hours on war thunder too...

Rank 6 ground is a very weird spot. You say there’s an issue with some tanks getting thermals, I say there’s a major issue when wheeled vehicles start overpowering tanks by getting to major spots that catch you off guard. Now that isn’t such a problem sometimes but what is, is that this is we’re composite armor starts showing up and where leopard 1s will have to take on abrams or amx-32s taking on t-72. It’s still fun but it’s an extreme challenge for some nations

Rank VI air is the least fun for me as many planes there don’t have missiles or flares at a highly compressed br, but this problem got a little better with the new br changes.

In Britain anything from the Cromwell to earlier then the cent 3 excluding some awesome vehicles (firefly and concept 3) was the most pain non pen insta killed bs I’ve ever had in the game but anything before is fun because low tier just is most the time, and when I got my Enland 90 I became Lego super man “I just died in your arms tonight” meme oh my god that and the cent 3 was moreeeee then enough to easily progress, already got an 8.0 and a half another 8.0 that I’m working on now so much easier to progress

You should do this but with individual nations

Air ab up to 5.0 is so fun. But once everyone has 20mm cannons you just get shredded right away, and because of respawns there's always someone on your 6

I agree with most of the sentiments expressed in this video-though I would probably put rank VII ground and rank VIII air up to A tier, move rank IV naval, rank I ground, and rank V air down to C tier

It really is a shame how much of the player base treats this like WoW, where the endgame is where the fun starts; I've had friends who have started this game on promises of Abrams and modern jets, and have treated the early interwar and early ww2 vehicles like chores to get through, rather than what's often the most fun and vibrant parts of the game. I understand why it is, because it's exactly the type of mindset War Thunder encourages, so that people jump the queue and buy a 40 dollar premium vehicle out of frustration, but the real end game really is the vehicles we played along the way. I just found your videos, but from what I've seen so far, I very much appreciate the emphasis you place on not just focusing on top tier. As far as my favourite ranks go, for ground RB, rank 3 is my favourite, although everything prior to that is also good; I really don't get much enjoyment from rank 5. For air RB, rank 2, rank 3 starts to get saturated with planes like wyverns and ju288s, and even if there is decent dogfighting to be had, the matches themselves are often concluded just by who has the premium fast bomber on their team. Also, notable mention for air arcade rank 1, specifically reserve biplanes. I don't care if I get motion sick, I'm donning my stylish scarf, and shooting out the plane with my pistol.

rank 6 air RB has felt awful for me. it's definitely due to my choice of nation to play but without access to supersonic aircraft you are just a RP/SL pinata for anyone else to come and pop whenever they want. you'll die 60 seconds into the match at worst, and at best you stick a missile or manage to drop some bombs and then get popped on the RTB. maybe i just suck

Personaly Rank 3 ground can either be a dream or a nightmare depending on who you are paired with and the map. Also the introduction of the IS series is in rank 3 and the IS series is a nightmare to fight.

I’ve enjoyed low tier 1-3 RB air and ground. I love the early/mid WWII vehicles and all my buddies enjoy these the most!

My only criticism of Rank 6 jets is the balance gets annoying. You have 8.0-8.7 vehicles which are still subsonic and either do not have missiles or they have bad missiles and there's no countermeasures. When it is just that, it's pretty fantastic. But when you get dragged into matches with supersonic jets or jets with decent missiles or both, sometimes jets with countermeasures too, it quickly goes from fun to frustrating. That being said, Rank 8 is my favorite. It's a bit more intense. Everyone is fast, everyone is maneuverable and everyone has potent weapons. Now that we have basic flares and missiles unlocked by default, it doesn't feel like you're being seal clubbed as much anymore.

imagine they add the next rank and that would be rank IX...imagine having a rank IX vehicle

honestly i think its pretty impossible to do ranks individually, youd have to rank them based off of nations too coz certain nations suck at different BR's

I agree with top tier jets and the missile problem. They need to give us more game modes. That’s the real issue. Why can’t I choose if I want a 6v6 or 12v12.

For my top tank it’s the Tiger E. Great armor (when angled), and great gun, and for air battles it’s the German MiG-21MF. I had a surprisingly great time spading the aircraft and had fun with it.

Ngl while probably a lot of people agree with rank 1 air at A in my opinion it is like an F because the bullets do literally no damage

rank 3 Ground is only fun if u are the soviets or germans, for everyone else, it is hell because the panthers and T34’s are just so annoying, because everyone plays them and they are just so broken. they kinda just ruin the whole rank. It it was just the non-meta nations, it would be the best rank

Rank 2 and 3 ground rb is some of the most fun I have in this entire game, but as I am still grinding my first nation of USSR, I feel like I gotta try and get to top tier. Currently I am at rank 5 in ground rb as USSR and holy hell, it sucks complete and utter ass.

play only 7 rank tanks, love it. Some 9.3. And some WW tanks. 6.7-9.0 worst

Do you have all servers enabled? If you do, then bluewater naval rank 1 and 2 queue times won’t be that long compared to air or ground. Please don’t contribute to the myth that the whole of naval is unplayable because of queue times. The only place where queue times are an issue is at rank 1 and 2 coastals.

Personally I love the Bf-110 that has 4 20mm gun pods in the start of rank 3

Honest talk 11.0-11.3 in aviation is pain. You barely get any downtiers and you're basically fighting gen 4 aircraft that only recently went out of service. In your flogger or phantom.

I mostly agree with this list. I would place rank 5 a little higher though.

Yeah, I hate airfield camping, but wow, my F4U4B in Rank 4 is way to much fun!

I really like rank 2/3 air. Then again, the game was kind of made for that from the start

I feel they really just need to do away with up BR and down BR theres enough to just play at your BR.. I'd wait up to 5mins to get in a match at my BR only.

I never even bothered grinding from day 1.

Couldn't agree more me with the rank 8 air! Sooo true!!!

3.3 and 4.0 Shermans are so much fun.

I would love rank 8 bvr but there are so many players on each team it becomes impossible to fight someone

I think i am one of the few people who finds top tier more fun than low tiers, i just cant with how slow tanks are and how bouncy the sights are

Rank IV is overrated, though it can be fun the 288 spam ruins it

it doesnt matter if its rank 1 or 7 in ground rb , if the map allow it , i and everyone else will take advantage of it , you cant say " people are playing annoyingly" , because its a thing within the game itself, so unless gaijin did something about the bad map design , you cant blame the player. gaijing did block some spots in some maps , but those were the spots that look into the midfield , but left the spots that look into the spawn

My favorite is basically anything that doesn't have to fight missiles and helicopters. Call it a skill issue or make fun of me or whatever, but I just don't like using or fighting against aircraft or tanks with missiles, and helicopters are just cancerous because 9 times out of 10 you have some jackass sitting back at or near the helicopter spawn obliterating you from a continent away.

i like 5.7 to 7.7 ground since i’m a heavy tank enjoyer but like top tier jets since those are my favorite kind of planes

i think that air rb 1 should be S tier because most planes are also very fragile and it doesnt require as much skill as any other rank

This some world of tanks stuff wanting a fast arcade experience

for me, I found the Rank 7 the best ARB rank in the game, no missile spamming, fast pace, and there's a skill gap. the lower the rank the slower the game will be which I find it boring. from 9.7-10.7 BR currently the best in the game. for GRB the fun will end above the 7.3, and the 3.7 is the best in this mode. 10.0 in USA used to be fun until they changed the M1 Abrams BR.

Issue with rank 5 air, is THE DAMN SU-11.

I enjoy Rank IV Ground the most. As for the one I least enjoy, is Rank VI Ground.

The most run prop br is either 3.7 or 5.7. Most fun jet br is 8.0-8.7 for sure. And most fun tank rb is 6.7 or 8.7. Im 20.000 games in with everything researched, and can say for sure, top tier is not the most fun br, not even by a stretch to anybody out there grinding for top tier

I think rank 4 ground is fun, at least for me with the USSR because you get T-44-100, IS-6, 2S3M, T-44, M53, ect. For me Rank 4 ground is an S tier.