Howitzers

while I understand the recent Patch adressing howitzers, increasing their cooldown (becouse they would basically fire all the time). I feel like thier not worth it now becouse

1. Popcap Howitzers eat up 15 pop cap of you army making you able to fieldless units and having less game impakt(due to higher reload)#

2. Hardcounters by commanders .. recon plus stuka or mortar flare + bombing hardcounter those staic emplacements.

3. The lack of heavy tanks, you basically sacrifice other tools in order to have a howitzer so a direct comparison to non doc arty is misleading( becouse one can have tiger/is2 and kata/ werfer)

4. Some bugs which still havent been fixed ( like the 0sec cooldown). This seems to be a problem with vet also vet 1 priest barrage also seems broken.

I would suggest reducing the pop cap of the unit to 10/11/12, in order to make it possible to field some extra units. Its not the howitzer is cheap and if you have 15 pop sitting there doing nothing/ waiting for the hardcounter, while you have less units to coutner a heavy threat it seems unatracktive to even go that commander in the first place

I feel like if you know your opponent hasn't got an instant offmap like IL-2, dive bomb, or a mobile howitzer like the priest then they're very much worth building. The attrition they deal to your opponent is honestly unmatched. I think the only faction that would really suffer from doing this is typically OST becaause of the lack of a 60 range TD, but theoredically you could select the 43 and LeFH in the same doctrine and this could be handled somewhat.

But yes I do feel that they're nullified by commander combos to easily, however I do not believe they should be buffed. I think they have a niche role that really can be devastating if you're unwary of your commander choices. Unfortunately this does heavily reduces the "viable" commander choices.

do you agree with the recent nerfs then increasing CD after max barrage or do you thin kthey were fine before the patch. I personally loved them pre patch

do you agree with the recent nerfs then increasing CD after max barrage or do you thin kthey were fine before the patch. I personally loved them pre patch

I think nonstop bombardment is pretty ridiculous, so i'm happy with the current state of them. I don't use them ever so it's probably not the most accurate or worthy statement about howitzers though.

The last nerf to them made no sense to me and still doesn't to this day.

I would suggest reducing the pop cap of the unit to 10/11/12, in order to make it possible to field some extra units

This makes sense to me. I think the recent nerfs were justified, but seems like it would be too

Maybe allow them to be built in base sectors again? They're easy to take out compared to the impact that have. You need to organize half your army to defend the thing against dives, and no matter how organized you are, you can't stop a recon plane + off map if they've got it.

Its good change, less arty spam in leine forest.

I think nonstop bombardment is pretty ridiculous, so i'm happy with the current state of them. I don't use them ever so it's probably not the most accurate or worthy statement about howitzers though.

If you didn't use them before then you will never want to. They're simply not worth the risk of not having a heavy. I dunno if that's a problem specifically with heavies though. I think a lower popcap so buying two is what you'll need to achieve their prior rate of fire without taking 30 popcap would work.

Maybe allow them to be built in base sectors again? They're easy to take out compared to the impact that have. You need to organize half your army to defend the thing against dives, and no matter how organized you are, you can't stop a recon plane + off map if they've got it.

You can't drop offmaps into base which would make them immune to anything less than a medium tank.

Still ml20 performs worse than lefh. Better get a katusha than ml20

Just give them little more utility:

1. Add ability to shoot tanks like B4 have
2. Add smoke barrages
3. Add flares
4. Add Ability to shoot in row, like wstuka, with special rounds - lower range, but create green cover hole after hit. It could help to move closer your troops to enemy frontline in-secure, like it was in real war.

This was changed exclusively for 3v3 and 4v4 because howitzers were OP in the big team games according to the balance team. I am struggling to believe that there are many 3v3s or 4v4s without at least one guy having a suitable off map to delete ML20 or Lefh but whatever. They cost way too much pop cap now to be effective. Just a big ressource sink that doesn't pay off in 80-90% of games.

Howitzers spend too much time firing at a single target. Halve their barrage shells and cooldown so they can be more flexible with their targetting.

This was changed exclusively for 3v3 and 4v4 because howitzers were OP in the big team games according to the balance team. I am struggling to believe that there are many 3v3s or 4v4s without at least one guy having a suitable off map to delete ML20 or Lefh but whatever. They cost way too much pop cap now to be effective. Just a big ressource sink that doesn't pay off in 80-90% of games.

Yea it was PURE CANCER in 3 v 3 and 4 v 4. I would not change ANYTHING right now especially when every game we see arty spam. Allot of players usually go nuts and build 2 -3 arty.

Maybe allow them to be built in base sectors again? They're easy to take out compared to the impact that have. You need to organize half your army to defend the thing against dives, and no matter how organized you are, you can't stop a recon plane + off map if they've got it.

If they did this, I'd play nothing but Overwatch in 2v2's, veto all of the large maps, and camp one side until the attrition is too much for the other team.

The LEFH is still pretty good if it isn't countered. I've tried a ML20 a couple times and hated it. It's a lot less useful than a Katy and doesn't seem equal to the LEFH. Also, a B4 in a base would be terrible to play against. A couple good RNG hits would decide a game. Also, when a B4 hits vet 3, it seems pretty good regardless of RNG.

It would be worth looking at the changes that Storm suggested.

Howitzers spend too much time firing at a single target. Halve their barrage shells and cooldown so they can be more flexible with their targetting.

If you stop the barrage after a couple of shot they CD will start immediately making the weapon available for the next barrage earlier.

If you stop the barrage after a couple of shot they CD will start immediately making the weapon available for the next barrage earlier.

Wasn’t that the nerf they gave it? That the cooldown starts in the background after you start and no matter if you cancel it the next one will be available at the same time?

no the nerf they gave it is that if you dont cancel the barrage and do the full one it takes longer to shoot again then beforehand (by a significant amount espacially with vet)

but doing near the full barrage is the selling point of howitzers, becouse the lack of instant effect non doc rocket arty has (which is non doc and arty sacrifices heavy tanks for example). Doing full barrage and area denial; stationary target barrage; is kind of the selling point of howis. Otherwise they are just inferior to rocket arty in evry perspective which cant be dropped by certain commanders by just clicking button.

(Not that i have a problem with it, but that is another reason that makes them unnatraktive)