OKW best beginner faction?

Was wondering what faction to recommend to a new/starting player and I think OKW is the most beginner friendly/least punishing faction.

*They have the safest bases that prevent infantry and light vehicle base-rushes.
*No-tech AT guns so you never get rushed with vehicles without an answer
*AT gun with retreat - much less likely to lose them if you missmacro
*No weapon drops for mainline inf so you are not feeding the enemy your weapons if you lose squads
*Free-ish weapon and nade unlocks (baked into tech and cheaper overall)
*Strong nondoc elite inf lategame that can replace volks losses (less punishing to lose inf)
*Extra support and protection if you build shwere outside of base sector
*Nondoc super heavy tank that can be build even if you lose strutures

Is there a faction that is better or similarly good for a new player?

I'd say Soviet T2 build is similarly easy to learn. Late game vehicles are surely easier to use as OKW though, especially in team games.

ostheer

Was wondering what faction to recommend to a new/starting player and I think OKW is the most beginner friendly/least punishing faction.

*They have the safest bases that prevent infantry and light vehicle base-rushes.
*No-tech AT guns so you never get rushed with vehicles without an answer
*AT gun with retreat - much less likely to lose them if you missmacro
*No weapon drops for mainline inf so you are not feeding the enemy your weapons if you lose squads
*Free-ish weapon and nade unlocks (baked into tech and cheaper overall)
*Strong nondoc elite inf lategame that can replace volks losses (less punishing to lose inf)
*Extra support and protection if you build shwere outside of base sector
*Nondoc super heavy tank that can be build even if you lose strutures

Is there a faction that is better or similarly good for a new player?

As a long standing OKW player who also had the gauntlet of coming back after 5 yrs and getting rolled by the changes over time - I would actually recommend OKW last.

It teaches you a lot of bad habits

• Poor AT gun micro leading to A-moving, which will punish you hard for non-retreatable AT guns. Nvm rocket arty. You'll cluster up your AT and overextend constantly.
  
• Schwerer can be placed extremely aggressively in low ranks but you'll cost yourself the match vs decent ppl.
  
• You learn nothing about the timing of grenades + weapon unlocks and the choice of the fuel allocation. Incendiary nade burns a lot but has little direct killing power unless they're truly asleep at the wheel
  
• Pz IV ausf J is little more than an overpriced Pz IV at low ranks, easy to expose it to serious danger
  
• Your healing is mostly locked in T2, med crates are not cheap.
  
• Blobbing. This is bad by risking your entire army to even a clumsy Katyusha shot.
  
• KT stall; speaks for itself
  
• T2: Flak HT has an extremely high skill threshold
  
• T3: Luchs is easily beaten by the most common Allied LVs - AEC, T70, Stuart, Show Spoiler
  . Puma is a deceptively difficult vehicle to master, esp with its pathfinding. Stuka rush is extremely powerful vs weak players but again another bad habit - > a LV dive and you're in trouble.
  

Volks scale extremely poorly into the late game (read: not at all) and thus encourage a 'disposable' mentality knowing that you can just get Obers. You can't do this for the other factions (except maybe for Paratroopers) and your unit preservation suffers. COH2 is extremely focused on keeping units alive to gain veterancy.

I would recommend SOV T2 as well (don't maxim spam) as it gives you all the tools you need until you get to a very very high skill bracket. Maybe slot in doctrines with Guards which are overall a direct upgrade from Cons. The combined arms of cons with your weapon teams teaches you some solid fundamentals of the game.

OST or OKW are the easiest factions. With OST being a little bit easier than OKW because of lacking side techs, getting powerful units much sooner and cheaper than other factions.

From my POV, generally speaking the difficulty of factions from easiest to hardest at the moment are:

OST
OKW
SOVIETS
USF
UKF

Athough Soviets and OKW I think are pretty comparable, I give the edge to OKW because they get much better infantry units with certain commanders and have better late game armor.

This is all from a 1v1 perspective mostly. Things change some going to 3v3 and 4v4 but I play less of that. I think the tweaks made to OST and OKW to make them more competitive in larger games has made them a bit more powerful than they should be at the 1v1 level reletive to USF and UKF at least.

This is all from a 1v1 perspective mostly. Things change some going to 3v3 and 4v4 but I play less of that.

^ This

OKW sucks balls in 4v4 for new players. Unless you like headbutting MGs. And although all stats indicate that all OKW teams are rare, I seem to get them all the time. Insta-loss against any MG players with functioning grey matter. Not to mention they can make caches and out fuel you later where you are supposed to be strong.

OST and Sov. I had a friend of mine play coh2 for the first time and he didn't even understand how to tech with trucks and all the side techs lol

Yeah well OKW is my favorite, so my answer will be biased.

It is, for me, the most flexible and forgiving if you know what you are doing. Granted, it is an "all or nothing" faction meaning that if you make a serious mistake in placing your trucks it's pretty much gg.

What I like about them is that their inf can pretty much decimate any enemy up to 10min mark and after that it scales great as supporting.

Schwere can lock down cutoff to avoid supply shortages. Be careful in putting it too far, one mortar and one at will shred it.

They have by far the best late game arsenal in terms of armor and elite inf (SS Stormtroopers, aka Obers).

Almost all of their commanders are top tier.

HOWEVER, they have some major downfalls that make or break your game.

No T0 MG, meaning that you cannot secure a fuel point from the start. Also, one mass retreat means you lose all your flank in the span of 10 secs due to the absence of any forces protecting it.

Their teching system is very messy. If you want healing, you are limited to MG and Mortar. If you want aggressive play and rush Luchs, you cannot heal units unless you can micro crates or have the fire commander.

So to sum it up, OKW is the best noob faction and that is solely by the fact that most Level games end by someone having superiority in light infantry forces which OKW excels at. Other than that, play with any decent human and you can see for yourself the areas that OKW is shitty at.

Depends on the game mode. In 4vs4 OKW is pretty good and easy to execute. In other modes i wouldnt recommend them. SOV and OST are better for beginners, cause they have a solution for almost everything. Stock arty, strong medium tank, potent infantry, good at gun, sniper, good mg and good lategame scaling. So you either dont rely on your teammate or you dont get cucked by some cheese like sniper, teamweapon spam or better lategame.

So you either dont rely on your teammate or you dont get cucked by some cheese like sniper, teamweapon spam or better lategame.

Thank you. Fuck anyone who plays like this.

Was wondering what faction to recommend to a new/starting player and I think OKW is the most beginner friendly/least punishing faction.

*They have the safest bases that prevent infantry and light vehicle base-rushes.
*No-tech AT guns so you never get rushed with vehicles without an answer
*AT gun with retreat - much less likely to lose them if you missmacro
*No weapon drops for mainline inf so you are not feeding the enemy your weapons if you lose squads
*Free-ish weapon and nade unlocks (baked into tech and cheaper overall)
*Strong nondoc elite inf lategame that can replace volks losses (less punishing to lose inf)
*Extra support and protection if you build shwere outside of base sector
*Nondoc super heavy tank that can be build even if you lose strutures

Is there a faction that is better or similarly good for a new player?

I'd say OKW is generally the most straight forward for beginners but Lady Xen makes good points below if your goal is to improve at the game. OKW's more crutch-y features that make it beginner friendly only take you so far.

Soviets would be my close second vote. Tier 2 support weapons and T70 as a mid-game light vehicle gives you all the tools you need to get good at fundamentals of game. The only thing that might be more difficult compared to OKW is Conscript-only strategies can be frustrating as they take *some* skill to get the most out of since your don't get non-doctrinal weapon upgrades or elite infantry. I'd say Soviets are somewhat more reliant on commander choice but it's not too bad to find commanders that fit your playstyle while you get more game experience if you need a commander with elite infantry/heavy tanks etc.

I'd say OKW is generally the most straight forward for beginners but Lady Xen makes good points below if your goal is to improve at the game. OKW's more crutch-y features that make it beginner friendly only take you so far.

Soviets would be my close second vote. Tier 2 support weapons and T70 as a mid-game light vehicle gives you all the tools you need to get good at fundamentals of game. The only thing that might be more difficult compared to OKW is Conscript-only strategies can be frustrating as they take *some* skill to get the most out of since your don't get non-doctrinal weapon upgrades or elite infantry. I'd say Soviets are somewhat more reliant on commander choice but it's not too bad to find commanders that fit your playstyle while you get more game experience if you need a commander with elite infantry/heavy tanks etc.

Also the most forgiving imho.

Lose Volks in the middle of the game? No worries, schwere is coming with obers and muni they become killing machines.

I would say OST and SOV are easiest to play no matter skill-level, they have all the tools you need stock, or through doctrines.

With the low player count and my CELO rankings from 82 to 3171, there are lots of times I play against players who are beginners. Based on those observations, I wouldn't recommend OKW as a beginner faction at all.

OKW is better than average only in 4v4's. Even then, it is only because of map shape and a couple units. The LEFH, Sturmtiger, and Walking Stuka are what make them good in 4's, but mostly in maps like Port of Hamburg where the LEFH will eventually range everywhere and the other team has to funnel into the middle from a few points so you can just bombard those areas (assuming that the other side doesn't know how to counter LEFH's). Those map shapes are also good for the Walking Stuka. The Sturmtiger is still good on a few maps, but not as much of a go-to as before.

Other than that, OKW doesn't seem that great right now. I play most games as Soviets and they always have counters for OKW. When I'm playing as axis, OST feels the same as Soviets. Both of them are easy to pick commanders that counter what the other team does, whether it's Storm or Guard Rifle Combined Arms, Spearhead or Guard Motor, etc, etc. OKW's weakness is that it doesn't always have counters, particularly when playing with randoms.

USF is best beginneer faction, OKW is second
the point is: USF, OKW would provide a good early game, basic MG,ATG, indirect fire and helpful tank right on the timming.
As newbie, they tend to A move alot so let them A move. Exp through combat and advices improve them later.

USF is best beginneer faction, OKW is second
the point is: USF, OKW would provide a good early game, basic MG,ATG, indirect fire and helpful tank right on the timming.
As newbie, they tend to A move alot so let them A move. Exp through combat and advices improve them later.

playing usf and expecting to nowadays win by a-move is a complete disaster because riflemen all die up when even mere grenadiers get their lmg

USF is best beginneer faction, OKW is second
the point is: USF, OKW would provide a good early game, basic MG,ATG, indirect fire and helpful tank right on the timming.
As newbie, they tend to A move alot so let them A move. Exp through combat and advices improve them later.

Lmao happy 2017 mate I hope you are doing good.

same thought here, for pretty much the same reasons you give.
I even recommend playing OKW when exhausted/tired. No need to synergize PAKs with MGs and have this harmony.
You can get to mid ranks with volks and raketen retreats and big tanks like KT and Sturmtiger. All of those units are hard to lose.

-->good faction to start and have early successes

usf 1v1 4v4 56percent win rate
okw 1v1 45percent win rate and 4v4 55win rate
so u know choose which

usf 1v1 4v4 56percent win rate
okw 1v1 45percent win rate and 4v4 55win rate
so u know choose which

Completely misses the point but ok.