CoH2.org fucked me up again and deleted my message.
I think this argument is flawed.
I've checked OKW stats from Jan to Sep, during the ST abuse. As expected ST was in top 2 comander picks, while compared to live, OKW had around 3% more W\L across the board.
Now if we look at USF (and we can throw UKF here aswell). We can see that W\L for mentioned factions is increased by around 3-5% now across the board. Path meta was popularised for USF and UKF received buffs for AVRE, Rec.suppers and mobile assault. UKF now has a clear picture of mentioned commanders being top 2 picks in everything but 1v1. At the same time, soviets W\L didn't change almost at all, dispite OP axis stuff being nerfed, all the soviets W\L changes were within a Axis W\L change after the nerfs.
After that we can ask a question. If we consider the fact that Axis in general has an advantage in 3v3\4v4 and we also consider that stock USF\UKF roster didn't receive any major changes and also considered much weaker in teamgames. Does it means that commanders\meta alone is OP, because it can give additional 3-5% W\L for a factions with stock options being weaker?
ST was buffed in June, not January.
I wouldn't compare the situation back then to live regarding win rates, since many other units of other factions have changed as well. But there are some important differences between the ST meta and pathfinders.
1. Elite armor was not as dominant back then as Airborne is today, at least not in 1v1 and 2v2. 1v1 still has Grand Offensive as the by far dominant commander. In 2v2, Elite Armor is first place, but closely followed by a selection of other commanders. In 3v3 and 4v4 it was actually placed #1, unlike today's USF Airborne. Looking at the over commander data, OKW still had a more diverse selection than USF has today. Today's airborne in 4v4 is played almost exclusively (slight hyperbole for clarity) on 3 commanders.
2. ST was at 8 CP back then, which should come around the ~18-20 (?) minute mark at the very earliest. If you build a P4, everything is delayed by another 5-6 min. Looking at game lengths about 30% of games end before that, another 20% within the next 10 minutes. Therefore, the ST can in the best case influence "only" 70% of the games, but likely less, leading to smaller translation into WR (assuming this were the case at all). Combine this with point 1., and the influence of the ST on the overall WR is naturally lower. I am more interested in the WC51 data that Vipper is hopefully going to share, since here we have a much more comparable situation. A great comparison would be the JLI meta back when they were patched, but unfortunately we don't have data.
3. Elite armor is to my knowledge not in the "free" commanders that come with the base game. Top200 players increasingly choosing Elite Armor is therefore no clear indication of the faction needing to rely on the commander. However, loadout rates are fairly high on the "all" data, so maybe contrary to what I assumed more players have access to pay walled commanders and that part of the data indeed doesn't mean anything in the first place.
4. Similar to point 3., commander selection data for OKW was more diverse back then, even with ST meta than the data for USF is today. This >could> indicate that OKW was back then already a more well rounded faction, relying less on specific commanders.
Its not about making game more balanced, mind you. Simply because USF\UKF without commanders still remain at those ~45% W\L (since again stock options are the same), but commander\meta changes pushes them to 48-49% W\L. If the commander\meta can carry as much, with old stock option, it kinda implies that it might be OP, simply because in order to carry as much you have to be way too stronger then you should be.
So yeah, maybe USF win rate will plummet if path meta is nerfed. Sure. But at least it wont cover up the fact that faction need ajustments. Right now you can clearly say that those W\L are not because faction suddenly became balanced more, but because cancerous or OP metas being used, which require more skill to actually beat them, then to win with them. In the end making the game just frustrating to play.
And this is even without considering players who can master mentioned strats and simply dominate with them.
I am fully with you on this one. I'd be more than happy to have another patch that makes USF a better core faction and removes path spam.
The original topic as OP started it was if path spam strategy in 2v2 is OP.
From the data we have - just to stress this: which is cluttered by quite some noise - we have to say: it's not. Heavily scewed commander selection towards Airborne, still ~50% win rate. So Axis seem to have a fair chance at winning.
Is this the case? Hard to tell due to the noise in the data. Only Pagep could provide data on games that are with compared to games that are without airborne, at least in the loadout selection to create a better picture. But we don't have that. I try to remove noise as much as possible, but that's the best I (and probably anyone) can do.
And based on this, I don't think that pathfinder spam is covering it up other USF issues, at least not if you look closely enough. The lack of rocket arty is a long standing and well known issue among quite some others.
But pathfinder spam as a complete package together with USF does not seem OP. Pathfinders themselves? Might very well be. That's what I have said multiple times now.
It might also very well be that this whole discussion around Paths is actually nonsense. We don't know how many people that chose airborne actually spam them.
But what the data suggests is, that USF relies on very few commanders in all modes with Airborne being one of them. In my eyes this means that these commanders likely fix issues, especially considering all the other hard and soft data and experience in the game.
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