Ostheer sux ass

Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 14:26 PMT.R. Stormjäger

Ostheer absolutely has a higher skill ceiling than other factions. The issue is most players have gotten used to abusing the completely broken 5man Grens and Osttruppen and now have to play the faction properly and their delusions about their own skill have been completely shattered. They need to inhale a lot of copium and quickly.

Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 06:13 AMporkloin

As always I will state that my complaint with OST is that grens are trash that need to specialize in durability, or firepower, and not the middleground solution we have now. As is they're mostly worthless, particularly against the WFA as rifleman can win any 1 on 1 engagement by charging them, even in green cover, and sections blow them out in any match-up except for close up early game fights.

Allied armies are being balanced against volks which are just better grens for the most part, so it shouldn't be a surprise that grens are underpreforming, and 5 men or some other infantry is the only viable open for OST.

90% of OST's issues can be fixed by changing gren RA to 1, and increasing their damage, particularly long range, to compensate. If this makes them too fragile in the late game a little bit of damage reduction can be added to vet3, or preferably to one of the later battlephases. This change gives grens a role distinct from 'worse volksgren' that gives better flavor to the faction. With higher long range damage they can actually exert map control since it doesn't take 5 minutes to win a favorable engagement, and the higher RA emphasizes good MG play to limit losses.

Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 03:30 AMDoomlord52

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Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 22:29 PMPip

Sure, if you GET a vet 5 PiV or Panther, but we both know that getting a veterancy 5 vehicle like that isnt a sure thing, and that vet 4/5 generally aren't the most impactful bonuses. I'm still saying that the Ostwind, StuG, and Brummbar especially make up for the lack of vet 4/5.

The Jp4 is nice, also, though it's primarily an "anti-td" TD.

Also: the Stuka and Pwerfer have rather different roles, It's hard to say which of the two is "better", as they do different things, but I'd probably rather have a Werfer in a 1v1 rather than a Stuka.

Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 17:28 PMLeo251

Please, lets be honest, the only thing the was keeping Ost playable before the last patch was the Infantry Doctrine 5men Gren upgrade.

In this last patch the "brillant" balance team decided to nerf it (dont know why), setting Ost again in an horrible balance position.

Also decided to nerf another important units of Ost roster like Brumm Armor and sniper LOS.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 01:04 AMLMAO

It's time to move on and don't play ostheer, why play a faction who got suck mainline infantry on a game meant to spam mainline infantry

Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 08:45 AMVipper

I agree with most of the analysis I do not agree identifying the problem.

The problem imo was that when WFA armies where introduced it was the Ostheer/Soviet that ended be adjusted to them and not the other way around.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 02:05 AMDoomlord52

Right, that's sort of what I was getting at - maybe just not in enough detail.

The problem is, in CoH2, it's a lot easier to tweak an "aggressive squishy/cheap" faction than it is to tweak a "defensive tanky/expensive" faction. That, combined with the requirement to keep "faction flavor" is what I think we're seeing here.

Making a squishy/cheap/close-range faction better is pretty simple; increase the DPS to keep up with higher HP units, but keep the HP pool low while keeping cost down. If it's too squishy, adjust the HP up a little. There's really not too much of a limit to this, either. Cost can go down to zero, HP can get close to zero, and only DPS has an upper limit (at some point you hit "instant-melting" levels). However, as the price of units is generally low, you don't expect "instant-melting" DPS from them.

Adjusting a tanky/expensive/long-range faction has way more limits. Defensive stats can't go up infinitely as eventually the unit is indestructible and becomes an "I win" button. Price also can't go up infinitely, as it becomes non-viable to float the resources required to build it. Additionally, DPS needs to be reflective of the price; an expensive unit can't do low amounts damage (near-zero), as then it can be safely ignored - so DPS is somewhat tied to price.

This is what I think we're seeing with ost; we're hitting two of the limits. We can't make the mainline units tankier (i.e. stock 5-man 2-slot grens), because they'd stay in the field too long doing high DPS. We can't make the tanks tankier, as it forces the allied factions into more and more niche AT roles. We also can't make the units more expensive, as OST already struggles with MP bleed. Essentially, we've hit the point where OST is a caricature of what it once was, and it's because of the expansion factions.

Basically, if we (well, the balance team) wants/needs to keep the current faction flavors, OST and to a lesser extent, Sov, need to become the limits of "offensive" and "defensive", with every other faction in between. As long as they're not, they can't fill the design roles they're supposed to.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 02:29 AMmrgame2

imo a little tweaks to ost vet levels should help.
presently ost combined arms are not good enough to handle allies

mg42 just need to pack up faster on vet 2.
pak gets some vision on vet 2
pio get more repair speed at vet 2 sweeper

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 02:47 AMMMX

they do already get repair speed with vet/sweeper

Jump back to quoted post23 Mar 2021, 14:26 PMT.R. Stormjäger

It's exactly the opposite. Volks are pure garbage lategame and need a lategame buff ASAP. LMG Grens are very competent and become very powerful with camouflage/sprint if you pick the right doctrine. Ostheer is however a fragile faction for a variety of reasons. LMG Grens are long range specialists, MG42 is slow and if flanked and caught out of position it probably has to retreat, exposing your entire front. Big dependence on support teams (42, pak40, sniper) leads to fragility compared to OKW/USF builds that focus on numerous infantry. Ostheer doesn't have LV dominance because of the 222's fragility so it suffers from the dominant allied LVs (T70, Quad, AAHT, Stuart, Valentine) if it spreads out.

Ostheer absolutely has a higher skill ceiling than other factions. The issue is most players have gotten used to abusing the completely broken 5man Grens and Osttruppen and now have to play the faction properly and their delusions about their own skill have been completely shattered. They need to inhale a lot of copium and quickly.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 03:05 AMMMX

this is probably the most accurrate assessment in this thread so far. ost is still strong in 1v1 if played correctly, but at the same time the least forgiving faction in terms of errors, misplays or simply bad rng rolls that can be incredibly difficult to recover from.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 02:05 AMDoomlord52

Right, that's sort of what I was getting at - maybe just not in enough detail.

The problem is, in CoH2, it's a lot easier to tweak an "aggressive squishy/cheap" faction than it is to tweak a "defensive tanky/expensive" faction. That, combined with the requirement to keep "faction flavor" is what I think we're seeing here.

Making a squishy/cheap/close-range faction better is pretty simple; increase the DPS to keep up with higher HP units, but keep the HP pool low while keeping cost down. If it's too squishy, adjust the HP up a little. There's really not too much of a limit to this, either. Cost can go down to zero, HP can get close to zero, and only DPS has an upper limit (at some point you hit "instant-melting" levels). However, as the price of units is generally low, you don't expect "instant-melting" DPS from them.

Adjusting a tanky/expensive/long-range faction has way more limits. Defensive stats can't go up infinitely as eventually the unit is indestructible and becomes an "I win" button. Price also can't go up infinitely, as it becomes non-viable to float the resources required to build it. Additionally, DPS needs to be reflective of the price; an expensive unit can't do low amounts damage (near-zero), as then it can be safely ignored - so DPS is somewhat tied to price.

This is what I think we're seeing with ost; we're hitting two of the limits. We can't make the mainline units tankier (i.e. stock 5-man 2-slot grens), because they'd stay in the field too long doing high DPS. We can't make the tanks tankier, as it forces the allied factions into more and more niche AT roles. We also can't make the units more expensive, as OST already struggles with MP bleed. Essentially, we've hit the point where OST is a caricature of what it once was, and it's because of the expansion factions.

Basically, if we (well, the balance team) wants/needs to keep the current faction flavors, OST and to a lesser extent, Sov, need to become the limits of "offensive" and "defensive", with every other faction in between. As long as they're not, they can't fill the design roles they're supposed to.

Jump back to quoted post24 Mar 2021, 03:05 AMMMX

this is probably the most accurrate assessment in this thread so far. ost is still strong in 1v1 if played correctly, but at the same time the least forgiving faction in terms of errors, misplays or simply bad rng rolls that can be incredibly difficult to recover from.

Jump back to quoted post25 Mar 2021, 05:01 AMKiwiBirb

...

Jump back to quoted post25 Mar 2021, 07:23 AMVipper

The answer does not lay in further buffing Ostheer but nerf the opposition.

Jump back to quoted post25 Mar 2021, 07:36 AMKiwiBirb

What do you propose then?

I don’t see how changing the other factions will help that the 222 has a hard time scaling or that losing your MG42 is comparatively more punishing.