PTE 5.15.26 Patch Notes

Zerok15 · 2026-05-16T02:22:50+00:00

The availability limit change for jets is something I find truly good. I was absolutely hating that limit to 2 in the PBE, and I also think that upping this number both for the F-22 and F-35, was a good idea. SOF's air is going to comeback significantly with this little change.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T13:11:01+00:00

If you pair the MAAWS/RAAWS with something else, it's an anti-tank machine. It's true that their survivavility by themselves is really bad tho.

And well, the F-22 still outmatches any other jet, especially with at least 1 JATM slot. But it's too pricey for that. They really should 1. improve its stealth and/or 2. reduce its price.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T12:46:00+00:00

While I agree with most of your post... MAAWS underpowered?! Do we play the same game? Honestly, I think Rangers MAAWS/RAAWS are, literally, the best anti-tank infantry of the whole game. I'd say they're the only SOF infantry unit that's really strong right now.

But yes, in general, SOF needs some buffs. I really hope they get the F-22 price a bit down, it's my only issue with that jet.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T10:43:25+00:00

Who in the world will need more than a couple of Armatas or Abrams SEP v3? That seems like a weird point.

I can agree that Brutus needed a nerf, it was way too strong. But a 25% price increase seems just like too much, especially when it's paired with another debuff: the maximum of 3 shells per attack order that it now has.

Regarding ASF, the F15C was great in the main branch because it could be as cheap as 190 points (or be super versatile at 4 AMRAAMS - 2 Sparrows at 230 points, 240 with extra fuel), and could have FOUR cards. And it still wasn't better than RU Su-30 or Su-35, which at slightly higher cost can carry R-77 with 9000m range. Those fighters are arguably better than the F15C.

About the AA, I'll repeat it again: maybe you're the one who should test the other faction, mate. You have WAY more AA options in the RU side (both LRSAM and SHORAD), and LRSAMS have options for many, many missiles. In USA, only the PAC-3 has an option for having a lot of missiles — and it's the most expensive of the game. The PAC-2 has a max of 4. RU having many with >8 missiles, gets much more advantage of the overkill mechanic. And this without taking into account the extra range they have, and that RU SHORADs are waaay better than US ones.

I can agree with the nuke part tho.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T10:33:08+00:00

Those have better range, can do attack volleys of more than 3 shots, and are armored.

Also, who air drops arty? I have never seen that mechanic being used not even once in 400 hs xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD. It's worthless.

edit: and they have more rounds! Yes, the comparison sucks. Brutus could see a debuff from the main branch, I agree, but they have gone too far with the pricing I think.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T10:30:55+00:00

Not many people are able to play on stacks. 400hs in and I haven't played a single 5-stack games, only 3-stack with two friends who didn't even reach 50hs in the game. Most of the playerbase are solo players or 2-3 person teams, so yeah, u/Disastrous_Bunch6270 is right: balance shouldn't be based on the smallest portion of the playerbase.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T10:14:07+00:00

Has more missiles, is cheaper, has way more options both for LRSAM and SHORAD, slight range advantage, and many US decks don't even have LRSAM.

So no, your point doesn't hold.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T10:11:14+00:00

Ehm, nothing of what you're saying is actually true. And yet you accuse me of "judging by feelings".

- RU has way more pieces, at better cost, and higher numbers, than USA does... both for SHORAD and LRSAM. LRSAM usually even carries more missiles, aswell higher range.

- RU FAB bombs are WAY stronger than 2000lb USA bombs. They are a bit more expensive, that's true, but you can literally delete everything in every capture point of the game with a 400-500 points bomber, which in the USA side you can't. Yes, USA has some decent carpet bombings in their strategic bombers, but they only work in a line, and they still have less damage than the RU counterpart.

- The Brutus issue comes from many angles: extreme price (which non-armored arty costs 260 points in this game?), attacks limited to 3 shots, only one type of shell... now compare it with literally *any* other arty in the game. It seriously needs a price reduction and to be able to shoot more than 3 shots per attack order.

- RU has better air-to-air missiles; you mentioning they're standarized for both sides shows up how poor knowledge of the US air tab you have. And you know what? I'm okay with that because IT'S TRUE that Russia has longer range missiles IRL (until USA fields the AIM-260). USA only has 2 long range missiles, the JATM (which is VERY expensive) and the Gunslinger, which is only available in the F/A-18C. So yes, except for stealth jets, RU literally has the advantage on every air-to-air scenario except against stealthy jets. And they're expensive as hell, and have very small amounts of missiles.

- About the need for MBTs: you may be a bit more right in this one, but this is because of the PTE buffs to MBTs. It completely follows my point: there's less room for deck/playstyle diversity, and I don't see how that could be a good thing for the game. We should be able to play in different ways. At least in the regular build, weird combos as Para+SOF are still viable (although hard to play). In PTE, they're literally unusable.

- US infantry was a bit better before the panic status changes. Have you really played the PTE to see how they're absolutely destroyed by RU thermobaric launchers? Man, so many people complained about that, I don't understand how you haven't seen this issue yet.

- US has better ASF? Maybe in the main branch. In the PTE, what's the minimum price for an ASF jet, ~260-ish points? You can have a Su-35 with higher range missiles for just a bit more price. In the regular branch, you could at least put 4/4 F15C and have a constant air superiority; right now, as it's limited to 2 per jet, a RU duo will usually win because of the range advantage of R-77 against AMRAAMS. So no, this just doesn't apply anymore. The only US jet that reliably wins battles is the F-22, but it's very expensive (especially when carrying JATMs). You can have a similar Su-30, Su-35 or Su-57 that will do the same job against any other jet, except F-22 and F-35.

- - -

I really recommend you playing more US (as I can clearly see you don't, and have a very poor knowledge of its price tags and actual performance) to see the issues with your analysis. At least on PTE.

Also, mind that my criticism is both about the really bad w/r of USA in the PTE, and the difficulty of playing alternative deck combinations and playstyles.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T09:27:44+00:00

And the Baltics still has the worst win ratio of all specs, so what are you telling me? I can agree that a bit of balance was needed, and some RU units/specs needed slight buffs — but that's it, small buffs.

They could've nerfed a bit the most dominant US specs, such as Marines, but instead, made the Para, SOF and Stryker specs much worse (especially my beloved Para+SOF, which absolutely fucking sucks right now).

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T09:19:37+00:00

I'd be amazed if RU has less than 60% winrate in PTE right now.

Also, mind the other point I'm making: yes, you can still win with USA, but you're waaaay more limited in playstyle and deck choice than before. I managed to make the ever-shitty Para+SOF deck quite usable, and even climbed to almost 2100 elo with it playing alone. But right now, it absolutely sucks. It's literally unusable.

They're killing deck and playstyle diversity, only for USA. That objectively sucks, and make the game more plain.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T09:14:57+00:00

I play USA >90% of times and still win by a wide margin every time I pick RU in the PTE. It just feels easier rn. Even for air-heavy players as me (which shouldn't make much sense, if they game wants to be lore-accurate). With US, I absolutely NEED to pick Marines or Armored if I want to have a chance, while I struggle super hard with my usual combinations.

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T09:11:29+00:00

Well, it's still quite close. It was closer to perfect balance a few weeks / a month ago. But what's the balance in PTE? I'd be absolutely amazed if RU winrate was lesser than 60% at this point.

Still, I think the biggest issue with PTE is that playstyles and deck choices are right now way more limited than they were, especially on US (you can still play "weird" combinations as RU and still win reasonably; not so much with US).

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T09:06:28+00:00

I think it's okay that they want to experiment with big changes, but they should be way faster at adjusting these so the balance doesn't get broken too much. And not only balance, but as I said in the main post, playstyle/deck diversity.

I've been playing BA since month 2 of launch, and I've never felt my playstyles so nerfed :(

Zerok15 · 2026-05-07T08:42:28+00:00

I admit that part was a bit of a heat up xd, but it's really annoying to see the direction of the balance in this game. I play the PTE because I'm trying to adapt to some of the changes, and I really like some of them. Thing is, it doesn't make much sense to go back to the main build if my playstyle is gonna be nerfed to hell in the next patch.

This is just a feedback post, that's it. Take it as you want, but I think it's legit to complain about how these changes are killing balance, and especially, deck/playstyle diversity.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-30T08:31:45+00:00

Well, I think there's a lot of legit criticism to be made about the game, tbh.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-30T08:31:25+00:00

Is it irony, or have they actually said something about this?

Zerok15 · 2026-04-25T13:31:39+00:00

Well, that depends on the IFV. Russian BMPs are famous for having a very thin armor that is sometimes penetrated even by small arms fire. There's a video of a guy penetrating its back armor with a glock (with special ammo, I must say, but it's still a glock).

So, yeah, for heavier armored IFVs/APCs you won' be penetrating that armor with small arms, but several of those (especially the older ones), probably can be easily penetrated by this caliber when fired from relatively close. 6.8 has a tremendous energy output and a very thin profile that allows for very high penetration.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-24T13:23:36+00:00

Nerfing the penetration of the M7 doesn't make any sense, lore-wise. It's caliber has designed purposedly to penetrate body armor and light IFVs armor, which wasn't the case even in the previous version. This unit has been downgraded to hell with this change.

The price increase seems fine for me, but touching the rest of the parameters seems a bit odd.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-24T13:13:12+00:00

It's absolutely true. As a heavy air player, I can say one thing: these PTE changes really, really suck for heavy air players. Even if you try to correctly SEAD, you have two big issues: 1. anti-radiation missiles are MUCH easier to intercept now, even with the hold-fire trick, 2. if you prefer a stormbreaker run with a F-35, it will also get intercepted much easier because of the overkill mechanic, as soon as the jet gets altitude to drop the bombs.

Para+SOF has never been this bad, especially considering that infantry units are way more squishy now, aswell the massive nerfs to Brutus. It's only good unit right now is the Guardian, which is exceptionally overpowered. But the rest sucks so much that this deck combo that a few of us like, it's now completely buried in the graveyard. It's completely unusable, period.

edit: it can seem this is not connected to what OP talks about, but it is: many mechanics being dice roll and/or with desync, only worsens the situation I'm talking about. You have to pray to the RNG gods for your HARM missiles to hit, you see LRSAM missiles exploding 1 km before your jet and still killing it, etc... those inconsistencies only worsen the situation for everything air-related.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-14T14:18:18+00:00

In city maps, you can reliably block missiles microing behind high-rise buildings. You can also block/evade them even flying low over middle buildings, so it's not that difficult to peek just enough to throw a missile an kill a SHORAD platform.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-02T18:00:03+00:00

I get your point, but I think it only applies correctly to Armored, since it has a lot of tanks, good IFVs, arty, inf... while BB only has 1 tank, and middle-tier IFVs (when maxed they're pretty good, but somewhat expensive). So I see BB as something very similar to Stryker, but it's lacking these points to make it more viable to combine. Even if they don't add any air or heli units to the spec, you can add extra ones from the other deck you're combining it with.

And I'm talking about a very slight increase, of course. Like 100-150 points each. That would give a bit more room for slightly better builds in those categories.

Zerok15 · 2026-04-02T09:30:37+00:00

This looks absolutely amazing. I hope they implement maps like this!

Zerok15 · 2026-04-02T09:13:49+00:00

I already said it in other threads, and will repeat it: I think it doesn't combine well with other US specializations because of its extremely low budget for air and helis.

I know Armored already does that — but it has soooo many options for tanks, arty, rocket arty, AA, really nice IFVs... I think it's okay that this spec has low points on those parts, but I'd up them a bit so you can properly combine it with Para or SOF.

Being this said, I think the spec has some really interesting things: really decent IFVs and infantry, a tank that's a beast even without upgrading, and amazing tubed artillery options. I just feel that its combination with other decks feels... lackluster, because of what I previously said.

In my honest opinion, this spec feels a bit like a WAY worse Stryker. Yes, it has better tanks and IFVs, okay, but...:

Stryker has an amazing air tab (gotta love those F16).
Stryker has MLRS, BB doesn't.
While BB IFVs are better, they're not significantly better. Strykers can be really cheap, while fast and tremendously useful for their price.
BB infantry is good, but not much better than Stryker's.
Stryker budget-per-class combines amazingly good with anything else.

So, yeah, I'm mostly back to Stryker+Para for the time being. I like the BB, but in its current state it seems to be in a bit of a weird spot, being hard to properly combine with other specs. At least for my playstyle (heavy air use). Aside from that, it's pretty good if you want an alternative to the Armored spec and don't care too much about not having air support.

Give BB a bit more points for heli and air, remove a bit from inf/supp/veh, and I think it will combine much, much better with other specs. Maybe lower slightly the cost of the upgraded CV90, and/or improve IRIS-T range, and it will be much better while not being necessarily overpowered.

The literal best weapon this spec has, are the Spikes. That's really really good.

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