Posts: 3260
You are trying to tackle too many issue at once.
Posts: 13496 | Subs: 1
I think it's very simple.
The Panther is a cost-effective counter to heavy tanks.
It's specifically the IS-2 it can't handle, and that's because the IS-2 can take an extra hit.
Bring the IS-2 and Tiger in line with the Pershing and you fix that without making them unviable units.
Unless anyone wants to claim the Pershing is bad?
Posts: 3260
The ostheer T4 (Panther)/Tiger choice is separate issue of diversity and not balance.
Posts: 13496 | Subs: 1
The heavy tank meta is a strategic diversity problem.
Posts: 3260
Not really. It is balance issue because Super heavies simply become op after they got buffed.
T4/Tiger diversity is an internal Ostheer problem firstly and balance issue secondly.
Posts: 320
The Panther is a cost-effective counter to heavy tanks.
It's specifically the IS-2 it can't handle, and that's because the IS-2 can take an extra hit.
Bring the IS-2 and Tiger in line with the Pershing and you fix that without making them unviable units.
Unless anyone wants to claim the Pershing is bad?
Posts: 4183 | Subs: 4
Except it does function as a heavy counter at the moment. It beats the Comet and has a slight edge over the Pershing.
It's the IS-2 specifically that beats the Panther, and that's why the IS-2's been a problem child since GCS 2.
What I'm suggesting is bumping down its health to make it equal to the new Pershing. Same with the Tiger.
Posts: 3260
Go a bit further. Increase the close pen of all mediums to 180 and increase the reload of everything that isn't medium tank by 1s. This way the heavy tanks don't suffer too low TTK from TDs and other heavies and mediums can actually pen when they should. I just watched a game in which M4A3 AP round sherman bounced point blank 3 shots vs panther with destroyed engine when it was 1 shot from death. Sherman died and Panther survived. No shit people spam TDs in everything that is 2v2 and up.
Posts: 3260
I wouldn't call it a heavy counter currently. Beating a pershing isn't really warranting the "heavy counter" title. It's the lightest of all heavies in the game. As you said the IS2 is currently superior, and I agree. The panther struggles vs many other heavies currently though. Churchill variants, KV-2, ISU-152. And it's not that it can't pen them most of the time, it's that their HP pools are just so massive that the panther cannot deal with them without being in range of super TDs or AT walls. Its current design is more of a brawler tank that loses to things that outrange or outlast it.
Personally I'd say the best heavy counter would be one that could 1v1 a churchill and win within a timely manner. The way the churchill is currently though, nothing can kill it in a timely manner
Posts: 320
I made a thread suggesting doing just that (giving all vehicles a penetration spike at point blank range), but it's a far-reaching change unlikely to get tested in a patch.
Knocking 160 HP off two heavy tanks is a much more minor edit that's very easy to implement.
Posts: 3260
I know, I really liked your vehicle point-blank idea. I still think that by changing only the heaviest tanks HP, the main reason of vehicle balance problem isn't touched, which is the Medium-Panther-TD dynamic. Medium tanks are so bad against Panthers, that TDs have to be too good to compensate for what medium tanks lack. Instead of simply supporting tanks in AT fights, TDs take the bulk of the fight. Changing this dynamic and making TDs less frustrating to fight against while maintaining the game balance would require changes that are probably too severe at this stage of the game life.
Posts: 13496 | Subs: 1
If you define 'balance' as faction against faction (which you seem to be doing) then it isn't a balance issue. Every faction but UKF got one of those heavy tanks.
It's a balance issue within factions. The problem isn't the game being unfair, it's it being dull due to a single strategy dominating.
Posts: 3260
Balance is about Faction vs Faction yes.
Diversity has to do with in faction stuff yes.
Posts: 13496 | Subs: 1
Then this thread is about the strategic diversity problem. If you want to discuss tank destroyer balance in a broader context, I'd make a separate thread for it.
Posts: 8154 | Subs: 2
You can really talk about that Super heavies without mentioning how easy to counter them.
When Relic tried to solve the maxim spam problem that was diversity issue, they decided to buff Penal. They end up solving them maxim spam issue but crated to more in the process. The penal spam issue and balance issue where Soviet dominated the game.
This is a similar situation. Ostheer Tiger is what keep the faction from completely sinking, neft it and the faction will collapse.
Posts: 13496 | Subs: 1
On teamgames. Not in 1v1. They tried to shoehorn them to be viable for a majority of the playerbase who plays mostly 4v4 when they were historically not as viable due to unit volume and super heavy TD (Tiger/IS are not super, IB4 changelog, there are contradictions in it).
Not that i necessarily agree with OP idea, but at least the faction is receiving multiple buffs while the others ones are getting nerfed.
Posts: 8154 | Subs: 2
Yes that is what I said. They tried to make Super heavies (or what ever you want to call them)
more viable in team games. But the problem was not the Super heavies themselves but the effectiveness of mass vetted TDs. So buffing the Super heavies was a step in the wrong direction, nerfing the vet performances of TDs would probably had brought better result.
Especially with nerf to Ele and JT.
In 1vs1 they tried to fix the "super heavy" stalling (stockpiling resources and waiting for the CP) but instead the make it worse because the "super heavy" become available around time one would actually have fuel for it.
We will have to simply see where the balance will falls after the patch.
My point is that reducing the HP Tiger to 960 will make it ever weaker vs TDs especially in team games. It might help with diversity issues but it will create balance issue.
Posts: 378
All the heavy tanks are good, but the Tiger and IS-2 are the two that really entrench the heavy tank meta. The Pershing is just as powerful (if not more so) on paper, but it's had nowhere near the same impact on the meta.
I think that's because of the matchup with the Panther.
The Panther beats the Comet (800 HP), can take on the Pershing (960 HP), and generally loses to the IS-2 (1040 HP).
This makes the IS-2 the most impactful heavy tank on the meta despite not being that much stronger than the Pershing on paper. If the opponent wants to counter it without going heavy tanks themselves they need a Panther and something else. They need to expend more resources on AT units than the generalist IS-2 costs.
Viewed that way, it's easy to see why the IS-2 is such a popular pick in 1v1: it doesn't have a nondoctrinal counter.
Then we have the Tiger. The Tiger has 1040 HP, making it better in a heavy tank slugging match than the Panther. This makes it a better pick than the Panther even against the Pershing: anything the Panther can do, the Tiger can do better.
In summary, we have these two problems:
- The Panther cannot deal with the IS-2.
- The Tiger is a better anti-heavy unit than the Panther.
What if we changed that?
Reduce the Tiger's HP to 960. Adjust cost or buff as necessary.
Reduce the IS-2's HP to 960, or rework it into a more expensive tank in the vein of the King Tiger.
What if we cut the IS-2 and Tiger to 960 HP, same as the Panther and Pershing? The Panther can then take on the IS-2 in a one-on-one battle, and the Tiger stops being a better pick than it.
Now that the IS-2 can be countered nondoctrinally, there's less incentive to go IS-2 every game.
Now that the Tiger isn't a better heavy counter than the Panther, there's less incentive to go Tiger every game.
Thoughts?
Posts: 13496 | Subs: 1
Performance of TDs is not directly tied to viability of heavies. We had weaker TDs with lower pen and heavies didn't dominate teamgames at all. It's tied to unit volume more than anything else.
It might cause issues on 2v2 but i don't think it will bring any issues to 3v3/4v4 balance at all where i think that Ele > Tiger doctrines nowadays.
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