You counter the ability by not going in the circle. I know its a hard concept for people to understand but Circle = BAD move out of Circle.
The only people who are complaining about this ability are those that have no patience and send their tanks in unsupported. The ability has a role, it does it well and has weaknesses to it. It does not need a change.
Every time an allied player uses the ability against me they are literally just wasting their ammo because it does nothing but force me to move.
If you are having trouble with this ability then you need to start using combined arms more and stop putting yourself into bad situations where it can be used.
This works on some maps; but remember that a lot of the maps, especially in team-games are very 'lane' heavy - this is where the ability is so strong. There are multiple maps where you
can't avoid the circle; your options are to retreat into it, or stay in front of it and fight allied tanks at close range, and both are bad choices. Redball is a great example of this.
As for 'bad situations', that's a massive oversimplification. Axis tanks don't excel close range; you want to keep Panthers, P4s, JP4s, STUGs - and especially ultra-heavies - at max range at all times. Getting any of those tanks into close range fights means getting flanked and losing your armor advantage, as pen increases at close range. As a result, when allied tanks dive on you, especially
on a lane map, you need to reverse; there is no other option.
Are lane maps bad design? Sure, but they're a major part of the game, and we can't remove them all; so abilities need to be balanced around them to some degree.
you can drive throughout the entire duration of ATO if your tank doesn't have engine damage (or is a heavy tank without blitzkrieg) and survive with quite a lot of health. In this scenario, the enemy is clearly forcing a full retreat on your armor, ATO will do no damage if the enemy does not pursue your armor. If they do, then you reverse immediately, ATO has only enough time to hit each tank maybe once, twice, before your tanks get away.
Heavies and engine damaged tanks are going to die to the diving tanks regardless of ATO, there is nothing you can do here.
forum post diagnosis: skill issue
Heavies and engine-damaged tanks
won't die to diving tanks if supported. An Elephant, KT, or JT should never be out by itself, and it usually never is; it's probably supported by P4s, Panthers, or similar.
The problem is, in a dive, those tanks are going to need to reverse; even the ultra-heavies. When reversing, they can still give cover to the heavies which are staying behind, since they only need to stay out of the medium/close range of the diving tanks. However, that range places them
within the ATO, which doesn't work. So that means they need to either retreat more, dropping cover on the ultra-heavy, or stay and fight at close range, where they're at a disadvantage.
The ability to instantly create a massive 'unavoidable damage' area is overpowered; that's why the delay needs to be increased. That way it can't be used to instantly separate retreating units during a dive, but it can still be used defensively (or in dives where the axis player is playing poorly).
I am confused by your statement, are you saying an allied charge when they caught you out of position or they charged your main army. If you are caught out of position you deserve to lose the tanks, its 200 muni plus whatever they threw at you on top of flanking you. If you are talking about your main army you should have snares, mines, shreks, at guns to slow them down. The ability needs sight so even if they call it in behind you it needs sight.
Now in 3v3 or 4v4 where one of them might have recon/flares then there aint much you can do but that is the nature of bigger game modes. If you increase the initial delay you would need to significantly ramp up subsequent drops so DPS stays the same. That would be even worse for a single snared tank or a well timed ram due to the drops focusing on one tank instead of spreading out to all in the circle.
Yes, I should have clarified; it's specifically a problem in 3v3 and 4v4 (and maybe rarely in 2v2). In smaller modes it's actually reasonable. However, I don't think that's an excuse - the game should be balanced for all game modes, and have a "zoned or deleted" ability just isn't good.