New Stuka Napalm is too powerful

The new stuka napalm changes is too powerful in team games. One non-doctrine locked OKW player with a stuka is able to lock out all UKF players from building emplacements once it reaches vet 1 with no counter-play is available.

I understand the reasoning behind the new Stuka napalm change and I welcome new change however it has had the un-intended side effect of being too overpowering vs UKF emplacements. I think it is too powerful for team games and I encourage everyone to test for themselves.

One napalm strike is able to take out any UKF emplacement in the game if it does not brace and will take anywhere between 50-75% guaranteed damage if the structure does brace in time. In addition, the structure is locked out of being repaired (because of the fire and brace). Forward assemblies will always die and surrounding units will cook with it if its a retreat enabled assembly as it does not have brace.

I do not see any counter-play available other than not playing emplacements and not playing emplacements in a 4v4 game is restricting the faction to a smaller set of play styles which can be easily countered (brits with no mortar pit will have a harder time countering machine gun emplacements). Any early investment into emplacements can be punished if a stuka shows up.

Killing the stuka is not as easy as it sounds especially in team games where some maps have front lines that are very small (example: whiteball and redball express). The stuka is a shoot and scoot artillery so it has the advantage of only exposing itself to danger when it decides to. Any attempts to kill the stuka can be punished severely and often at the cost of the game.

Overall, non-doctrinal, cheap cost, high accuracy and high damage of the napalm strike has become very powerful and effective way of dealing with emplacements and would be what I would argue to be too powerful. I highly suggest that this ability be reworked in the next balance patch. My suggestions would be: Lowering range/accuracy/damage to buildings, increasing requirement and cost, locking it to the firestorm doctrine (as with other firestorm related abilities) or putting wheels on UKF emplacements.

+ uncounter flares and GG.
Specs ops flares need be switched for recon plane.

I'm biased as shit as a disclaimer.
The stuka is a mess of a unit in general, and either is absolutely smashing or absolute trash(Balance and game dependent).
With the balance patch they made countering turtle play much more convenient to punish and you are not forced to go into a LeFh or Firestorm doc (also having finally a barrage for moving blobs is neat).
While I love the new utility the unit has gotten, the fire barrage works too well IMO. I think More distance depending scatter could maybe help making it less powerful. Especially with vet 4 the stuka has incredible range.

Though balancing the stuka at this state of the game seems problematic nightmarish.
Also (for me at least) the stuka is an absolute crutch unit in 4v4. Its quite uncommon to find opponents who do not somehow play stationary and creep more and more with team weapon spam into you.

Yep stuka just kills team games as always.
This unit should be balanced around cp4, for that timing its super strong.

Still no idea why they keep it current state.

Just imagine caliope in captain tier sounds like fun for Axis.

That unit should be locked behind all trucks.

Just remove/move napalm strike to even higher veterancy if it is REALLY THAT much of a problem in 4v4, which I doubt. I even prefer the vanilla barrage as you can destroy emplacements with many, many methods.

Emplacements is just an option, it is not neccessary to place emplacements in order to win everygame. I don't even see anyone complaining with german emplacements getting destroyed very easily.

Every faction rocket launcher had a gimmick for example,

Calliope who can literally go to frontline and fire very accurate shots,
Landmattress as an area denying tool, the enemy even need to decrew before even had a chance of killing it, while the panzerwerfer,Katyusha and stuka are literal glass cannons.

This things are meant to counter support weapons so if you are having problems, try building less of them, and yes blobbing habits need to go if you are not very good at the game.

Every faction rocket launcher had a gimmick for example,

Calliope who can literally go to frontline and fire very accurate shots,
Landmattress as an area denying tool, the enemy even need to decrew before even had a chance of killing it, while the panzerwerfer,Katyusha and stuka are literal glass cannons.

This things are meant to counter support weapons so if you are having problems, try building less of them, and yes blobbing habits need to go if you are not very good at the game.

You cannot count doctrinal units. Stuka napalm is too powerfull in team games.

You cannot count doctrinal units. Stuka napalm is too powerfull in team games.

What do you use napalm for?
It is just for emplacements right or is it a literal v1 rocket who intakills every infantry in an area?

+ uncounter flares and GG.
Specs ops flares need be switched for recon plane.

For parity, Royal Arty flares need to go too.

Perfect, sounds like it works perfectly.

no counter available? activate brace before it hits.

Napalm strike sole purpose is to counter static structures.

Well honestly, considering how mortar pits perform right now and how they are performing with heavy barrage, I would say that napalm is in a right place. And it doesn't mean its balanced.

Also speaking of 4v4 and 3v3. Well yes, its limits the playstyle, but you have you allies to back you up to begin with. And lets not bring "but if team is full of brits", because we will go down the rabit hole of OKW not having caches and so on.

Landmattress as an area denying tool, the enemy even need to decrew before even had a chance of killing it.

Actually, it can be killed without decrewing, matters take damage just like howis do.

I really really doubt balance team will respond to this thread either.

They nerfed almost all indirect fire units on allies rosters like m8 and pak howie because it was two strong killing two models at a time on a weapons team that never moves. Seriously, almost every IDF unit was nerfed.

For some stranger reason, and Sturmpanther and Sanders93, decided they should BUFF the most cancerous IDF unit in the game.

Rocket artillery that is non doctrinal THAT LANDS WHERE YOU TELL IT TO. It makes me laugh so hard when people complain about calliope, You have to lock yourself into an average or below average doc for it and wait until 10cp, meanwhile stuka zu fuss just wipes everything it looks at whenever its cooldown finishes. Seriously, at this point I don't know why anyone doesnt realize theyre just pushing their favorite factions forward at this point. They have people spam the forums here for axis complaints and use that as ridiculous justification for their dream buffs and dream nerfs("oh well the community was complaining a lot and clearly they wanted this change!").

Community balance team is a joke, the only people worth anything are the ones that work on maps, art and making sure things dont break when a new patch goes live.

no more implacements you say?

god bless

I really really doubt balance team will respond to this thread either.

They nerfed almost all indirect fire units on allies rosters like m8 and pak howie because it was two strong killing two models at a time on a weapons team that never moves. Seriously, almost every IDF unit was nerfed.

For some stranger reason, and Sturmpanther and Sanders93, decided they should BUFF the most cancerous IDF unit in the game.

Rocket artillery that is non doctrinal THAT LANDS WHERE YOU TELL IT TO. It makes me laugh so hard when people complain about calliope, You have to lock yourself into an average or below average doc for it and wait until 10cp, meanwhile stuka zu fuss just wipes everything it looks at whenever its cooldown finishes. Seriously, at this point I don't know why anyone doesnt realize theyre just pushing their favorite factions forward at this point. They have people spam the forums here for axis complaints and use that as ridiculous justification for their dream buffs and dream nerfs("oh well the community was complaining a lot and clearly they wanted this change!").

Community balance team is a joke, the only people worth anything are the ones that work on maps, art and making sure things dont break when a new patch goes live.

The stuka striking in a defined line is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, you know where the damage is going to land, and can place it fairly precisely. This is a great boon vs team weapons, particularly if they're placed in a line.

On the other, even mild repositioning from your enemy can mean your Stuka Strike will miss entirely, exacerbated by the long travel time of the rockets (And distinctive sound of them being fired). An infantryman will take 30 damage if he is 4 meters away from the centre of a rocket strike, and the OHKO range is even smaller than that despite the theoretical maximum damage of a single rocket being 200. Because of this, the Stuka is not terribly good at fighting infantry in most cases, unless they are EXTREMELY bunched, and are sitting in a nice little line.

The Stuka is good at its job, but it's far from overpowered.



The Calliope is considered overly strong due to its survivability. It is far more difficult to dive than any other rocket artillery piece, and this is a major issue due to diving being pretty much the only way to deal with rocket artillery. If it had relatively equal health/armour when compared to the other Rocket Arty pieces then it would be fine, but because it looks like a tank there's this idea that it needs to have similar survivability to one.

The new stuka napalm changes is too powerful in team games. One non-doctrine locked OKW player with a stuka is able to lock out all UKF players from building emplacements once it reaches vet 1 with no counter-play is available.

leigs melt pretty quick when katy's and other shit start firing on them too. Emplacements shouldn't be able to brace their way out of everything.

I really really doubt balance team will respond to this thread either.

They nerfed almost all indirect fire units on allies rosters like m8 and pak howie because it was two strong killing two models at a time on a weapons team that never moves. Seriously, almost every IDF unit was nerfed.

For some stranger reason, and Sturmpanther and Sanders93, decided they should BUFF the most cancerous IDF unit in the game.

Rocket artillery that is non doctrinal THAT LANDS WHERE YOU TELL IT TO. It makes me laugh so hard when people complain about calliope, You have to lock yourself into an average or below average doc for it and wait until 10cp, meanwhile stuka zu fuss just wipes everything it looks at whenever its cooldown finishes. Seriously, at this point I don't know why anyone doesnt realize theyre just pushing their favorite factions forward at this point. They have people spam the forums here for axis complaints and use that as ridiculous justification for their dream buffs and dream nerfs("oh well the community was complaining a lot and clearly they wanted this change!").

Community balance team is a joke, the only people worth anything are the ones that work on maps, art and making sure things dont break when a new patch goes live.

I don't think its like that. The stuka doesn't really have a place in 1v1's where units move freely, the frontline are wide, flanks happen often and the stuka is super vulnerable even in base. The buff was to make it more viable in 1v1s but it had the unintended effect of being strong in team games.

This game is hard to balance for both 1v1 and team games which is why I hope in the next CoH/DoW will have separate balance patches for 1v1 and team games.

Calling Calliope doctrines average or below average, yikes!

Calling Calliope doctrines average or below average, yikes!

Yes, other than the Calliope the commanders that have them also have other really fantastic abilities. Then again you unironically used "yikes" so I'm not expecting much from you.

Calling Calliope doctrines average or below average, yikes!

I mean are you going to tell me tactical support is a good commander? No, so probably dont need to discuss.

Urban assault is an average to above average doctrine

- Rifle nades nerfed on REs twice now I think, they were a fun little power upgrade for engineers but no fun allowed there anymore but lava nades on rifles are nice so ill call that an average ability

- Smoke is nice to have and its probably usfs best smoke ability - average to above average ability for sure

- Rangers are good but theyre not what they used to be. Use them for a mobile AT squad now mostly. I'll call this ability average as you get a average to good elite inf unit call-in

-Sherman dozer upgrade is the low key great ability this commander has, fantastic upgrade for a good medium tank.

- Calliope is obviously why this commander is picked and is a great unit.

So yeah I'd call the commander average outside of 3v3 and 4v4 where it is a good commander.