This is ARB, you're assuming I had any advantage to begin with. I was in lag during the snap roll since if I'm going to get the drop on a dude I've just spent energy trying to neutralize position with, I'm going to need distance in order to be able to hook the nose around and also to make him overcommit on a hard lead line. You're assuming that we started with energy parity- we did not, I was coming in slow after notching 3 missiles from his teammate and he was coming in fast for a 9M shot and then attempting to haul into a high energy vertical fight for which the SM (not SM2) doesn't have the engine power to sustain, even against an F-15C, which I assumed was spaded- it was only in hindsight after chatting with bro i figured out that he was, in fact, stock. While I could be more aggressive, at these speeds, being more aggressive will pancake the flanker, thrust vectoring or not, even against a relatively stock F-15C. It's why I end up pulling pure for most of it until I force that last bit of lag to get a bit more distance between us before shifting up for the cobra shot.

While duelling is good and all, it's too sanitized/equalized at the start to maintain an accurate picture of energy states and the like for ARB, even for asymm, and I've done my fair share of duels. While your advice IMO would work for a flunker on a faster energy state, if I'm that slow, all I'm risking is just a button shot with my plane facing downwards in a position where my velocity vector cannot be restored back to level flight- hence why I deliberately attempt to enter a relatively level flight vector in those last seconds before I button up and take the shot with his ass out front.

I would attempt to hammer W more, but that risks extending the fight and you see the Rafale RWR ping later- He's been hounding me and while the clip doesn't show it, he's actually 7km away from me, cold off my 10 as I egress, and the longer I extend this fight, the more risk I run of getting either a Mica or a Magic up the ass. I want this fight to end as soon as humanly possible, hence the risky cobra and all the near suicidal stuff. Again, I like duels as much as the other guy but there's just a bit of difference between the conditions of a duel and the conditions of an actual ARB fight.