My thoughts are primarily from 3v3/4v4 AT experience. If something is not mentioned, then I think it's acceptable.
It WILL 1 shot 4 man grens at 70 range if they're in yellowgreen clumped, and you don't even need to switch to HE rounds. That needs to go. (Thanks SweetRollNextDoor for posting about it too. I went in and tested against green after you said it could do that and yes, it does it consistantly.)
Et tu Brute?
Nah, it is kinda dumb, albiet hysterical that it erases infantry in green cover like its nothing. Imo, it should be an activated ability that functions like the Jagdtiger's or 17 pounders ability. with its anti infantry potential nerfed so it cant just thanos snap vet 5 obers having the audacity to use green cover. Just reducing its anti infantry ability just turns it into the worst of both worlds, bad vs infantry and bad vs tanks.
Forgot about the ISU concrete round. Iv used it many times wiping infantry in green cover, it defiantly shouldn't anymore expecially now that its more potent against tanks and cost. Its easier to use than the pershings ap round which is still bounceable and cost about the same only effective against armor (I got the price wrong its 50muni).
Wehraboos wont rest till the soviets are unplayable...
The soviets changes get the most post obviously. I do like most of them.
But the t70 triple nerf and the utter nutering of ram without any noticable buff to speak off makes the t34 76 quite usseles imo.
Both penals and cons being focused into a role of durability wont help penals. Penals need a bit more umpf in at or ai to be viable late game. Durability is tge role of cons.
I also like this one, giving the M3 much needed utility.
Maxim
I gotta test this, but from reading the patch nodes, this should be good. I never quite understood a use case for the sustained fire ability though.
ZiS-3 Field Gun
yeah this is a good change
Special Rifle Command
good change
Penal Battalion
Hm, I appreciate the change but this doesn't change the fact that penals scale quite badly against upgraded volks or 5men Grens. Especially not for their cost of 300MP. T1 openings take quite a heavy toll on your manpower (especially since healing costs 250 MP for some reason). I'd suggest lowering the penal cost to 280 mp to better reflect their combat performance on top of the changes above. A tommy squad is at 270 and with the global 5th man upgrade I'd rather have that squad instead of a penal any time.
M5 Half-Track
Gotta see how this plays out, if it becomes too much of a dice roll to take down a plane,
SU76
my biggest issue with the Su76 is that it is extremely sluggish and unresponsive and has poor accuracy (e.g. hitting the ground multiple times) and penetration making it easy prey for PUMA or PIVs. The changes are nice, but won't change anything in that regard.
I think it's important to make Soviet T3 more worthwhile since the T70 is all that holds soviet mid game together, and that is getting nerfed now.
T70
Quite a hefty nerf for a unit that basically carries soviet mid game.
T34/76 and T34/85 Ram Ability
So what does the ram do now? just damage? Locked behind vet 1 seems like a bad choice in my opinion.
Katyusha
yeah if this is kept consistent with all other rocket arty this should be fine
SU85
I guess that's fair, it's still really good
ISU-152
alright
Summary
I can't really tell if this patch does the soviets more harm than good. T1 Changes are good over all (except penals maybe). T3 changes are not optimal. By nerfing the t70 I feel like there needs to be a compensation by making the SU76 more reliable and a good tank hunter for medium tanks (or better with vet). As a result, Soviets would be less dependent on rushing for the t70 and instead go for T1 with SU76 backup. This opens up more ways to play with them. I'd also suggest lowering the cost of base healing in at least manpower regards and/Or adding fuel or muni cost instead. Just food for thought.
We also have to see if that horrible early game around enemy osttruppen/Flame HT is gone now. A 4 Minute Flame HT for soviets is incredibly hard to deal with the core components (e.g. without baby at gun). I hope this patch will make T1 a viable strat again, bringing more variety to the games.
EDIT:
After playing the mod I can confirm that osttruppen will still dominate the soviet early game, light vehicle timing + pgrens is too powerful. Since soviets have to go for M42 at guns every game in order to deal with that, I don't see any change in the meta, regardless of the ostheer changes. T1 is not feasable, because 222 arrives at the 4/5 min mark. The Penal vs Osttruppen combat, considering it's a 100 mp difference is really weak.
Also snipers can't deal with MGs now without sacrificing a valuable supporting squad in front of it, which makes it vulnerable to flanks. I don't like the sight change at all, especially since sniper were rarely seen in the patch previously anyway.
The soviets changes get the most post obviously. I do like most of them.
Yes because the soviets are already the weakest faction in the game and this retarded patch nerfs their last few good units... the su85 t70 zis3 all got nerfs...
Might aswell remove the faction from the game at this point since the balance team is under the delusion that the soviets are a good faction... you know ignoring automatch winrates pickrates and tourney results...
ALSO people call ram+off map cheese but... Like how else exactly is Soviet supposed to kill an Elefant or JT since their only TDs are casemate and will flat out lose against these big beasts...
my biggest issue with the Su76 is that it is extremely sluggish and unresponsive and has poor accuracy (e.g. hitting the ground multiple times) and penetration making it easy prey for PUMA or PIVs. The changes are nice, but won't change anything in that regard.
Su-76 probably feels "sluggish" because of the cone of fire that is begin fixed it mobility is inline and its rotation superior to other casemates.
I will test a bit more.
Imo making KV-8 a call in unit without requiring T4 might create more reason to use this unit.
In my opinion ram ability needed to be nerfed. It was incredibly cheesy combined with airstrikes. there was no real counter play to that. Especially considered that a t34 only costs 90 fuel, which is too cheap imo. In lategame you can easily survive with double zis guns and a few t34. Which means you dont need much mapcontrol but still can have huge mappresence lategame.
I think double zis-guns will still be a 2-men army. They need to make them 4 men or remove the barrage ability or at least nerf it heavily (the nerf in the patch notes is not enough)
kv-1 should get a slight armour nerf.
In return Soviet early game is weak. I think one of the reasons is their Healing. It should be buffed. I feel like in the early game you cant get the map back because you lose so much time with healing. Especially vs flametruck from Ostheer they suffer becuase cons (or penals/ guards) take a lot of health damage and then spend a lot of time healing in base.
I also think cons perform slightly too bad in the early game. But buffing them could be dangerous, since they also have oorah, good sandbags, mollys, good vet 3 and atnades.
Same can be said of stuff and two. At least su76 is getting a buff.
The barrage is a qol fix imo. Yes it should be reduce similarly
Not really it more of a fix, the su76 is just getting what every other turret-less tank in the game has plus a new ability replacing the old one.
In regards to the M5, I think its abit too much. Ill try 4%.
Penals even through they come abit earlier, by mid game late game they dont fair well against upgraded infantry in damage or staying power. By late they bleed you (at penals just become dead weight).
I said in the past move some accuracy to their received accuracy, it isnt working. Honestly they are so out of place idk what changes they need.
ALSO people call ram+off map cheese but... Like how else exactly is soviet supposed to kill an elefant or JT since their only TDs are casemate and will flat out lose against these big beasts...
Well honestly you dont need ram to do the offmap, its just easier with it, you can just block them from behind and drop offmap. Thing is if there is a shreck blob running around, aswell as pak walls, then every allied faction will have problems dealing with mentioned units.
I can't really tell if this patch does the soviets more harm than good. T1 Changes are good over all (except penals maybe). T3 changes are not optimal. By nerfing the t70 I feel like there needs to be a compensation by making the SU76 more reliable and a good tank hunter for medium tanks (or better with vet). As a result, Soviets would be less dependent on rushing for the t70 and instead go for T1 with SU76 backup. This opens up more ways to play with them. I'd also suggest lowering the cost of base healing in at least manpower regards and/Or adding fuel or muni cost instead. Just food for thought.
We also have to see if that horrible early game around enemy osttruppen/Flame HT is gone now. A 4 Minute Flame HT for soviets is incredibly hard to deal with the core components (e.g. without baby at gun). I hope this patch will make T1 a viable strat again, bringing more variety to the games.
Thank you for your thoughts, please do the same for the other factions!
I have the same ideas about Soviets as you, mainly the AT options of Soviet T1 (an alternative to the M-42), their very manpower intensive teching and the lack of scaling on the SU-76 and Penals. The T-70 should remain the centerpiece of Soviet build orders, but toning it down gives the opportunity to address some of these things.
What do you think of Soviet lategame, is it fine or is it too strong? If it's the latter, what would you change about it?
After playing the mod I can confirm that osttruppen will still dominate the soviet early game, light vehicle timing + pgrens is too powerful. Since soviets have to go for M42 at guns every game in order to deal with that, I don't see any change in the meta, regardless of the ostheer changes. T1 is not feasable, because 222 arrives at the 4/5 min mark. The Penal vs Osttruppen combat, considering it's a 100 mp difference is really weak.
Do provide the replay(s) as well if you don't mind sharing them.
We want to keep Osttruppen builds viable, keeping it situationally strong like Assault Grenadiers, so any further nerfs shouldn't hit too hard.
How would you go about further delaying their timing? There have been different ideas floating around, so tell me which one of them you like best, if any:
Keep them like in the preview, but add a slight manpower cost.
Short recharge like live, but require T1 to unlock Faust. T2 doesn't give Faust anymore.
Make Osttruppen buildable in HQ, so the Ostheer player has to choose between getting an MG42 or Osttruppen squad first. 25-30 seconds buildtime.
So what does the ram do now? just damage? Locked behind vet 1 seems like a bad choice in my opinion.
It still stuns. It will also still damage the engine if it penetrates, it's just the rare heavy engine damage (think recrewing an abandoned tank) and immobilize crits that got removed.
The reason for moving it to vet 1 is because ram becomes very hard to avoid for the opponent once there are multiple T34s on the field, especially if the opponent has a heavy tank. Right now, Soviet lategame with AT offmaps often revolves around just pumping out as many T34s as possible and waiting for the first mistake from the opponent to delete his tank, there's not much counterplay involved. At vet 1, the combo will still be as potent, but the opponent will have an easier time playing around it.
Another route would be to make ram have less impact but also have less drawbacks, so ram + offmap won't necessarily mean a dead tank for both sides. Ram would slow down the enemy tank's speed and acceleration (like ret mine) and do some damage, while it would overheat the T34's engine (like on failed ram) and disable its gun temporarily (8~ seconds). No stuns, damaged engines or immobilizations anymore.
i wanna point out that ML20 howitzer still has cooldown bug (it says 0 seconds remaining and stays there for a good amount of time) - please fix it in upcoming patch..
All arty pieces that got hit with the recent cooldown nerf have this bug.
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