State of the balance according to Imperial Dane

I dont think it is doing danes assessment much good when lolcake agrees with it

Dane is an Honest caster. Yet when i make the same points everyone attacks me. THANKS COH.ORG

The Soviets....

I dont think it is doing danes assessment much good when lolcake agrees with it

Yea, that pretty much makes all his statements invalid by default

I disagree on OKW almost completely. Mostly agree on Americans.


Don't know about Soviet/ Wehr.

Agreed with much of what he says on other 3 factions except OKW which i feel he is slightly biased towards.
On Rifles long range DPS to give grenadiers a chance is good solution as they can upgrade to bars anyway lategame.Their pack howitzer can get price decrease.Vet riflemen doctrine is OP and m15 truck is still OP due to arrival time.

Agree on soviets especially on his su-76 ideas.Maxim nerf..obvious as usual-most glaring soviet issue of all,but i feel penals need a slight buff.Soviet stock inf needs to scale a bit better.If say volks deserve a lategame AI inf upgrade i don't see why penals/cons can't have one.t-34/85 dual call in needs price increase to 140 fuel each.Katyusha need scatter buff.

Disagree with him on OKW.Puma is very cost effective and good ,not average.Jagdpanzer is not utter fail if u support it.Volks i agree with are redundant meatshields,just not sure how to buff them without screwing balance..maybe just decrease price to 220 MP.Panther is overpriced as usual,however he doesn't mention the ober and stuka which are 2 great units for OKW while he justly points out the failings of the luchs which should be moved to early tier.Panzerfusiliers -haven't used them much so can't comment.

Most agreed on wehrmacht this one dimensional crippled faction with huge early game problems to americans especially.Grens losing their reliable status,crappy mg 42,needing a pak early to put further MP pressure along with huge teching costs in manpower.Extinct panzergrenadiers,extinct FHT,paper thin a.car,and one late game tank in tiger.Teching needs to compete with usa to give an early chance.Make mg 42 suppress more reliably ,especially vs blobs and be usable in buildings.Panther needs fix-nerf useless range and penetration and price to 150-155fuel and fix accuracy.Make elefant usebale again by price aroudn 200 fuel to reflect its new highly vulnerable reality.Werfer cooldown reduction.No need to add the situation with the panzergrenadiers..i like the suggestion that they get some armor until they upgrade shrecks..once they do that armor bonus is removed.This will prevent powerful shreck blobs and keep them usable as AI units in this blobbing era.Main problem with pzgren is their DPS is model dependant unlike LMG squads..and with just 4 men and requiring at least mid range after the infantry lethality patch..their DPS on paper doesn't always translate to ingame effectiveness due to quickly losing a model.Even when mixed with grens it doesn't match as grens like engagements at long range where pzgrens are not worth it,so keeping them behind grens is inefficeint..keeping them in front gets them focus fired by a sensible opponent.

OKW is a faction crippled by design. It's a cool faction but when the honeymoon period is over you will start to notice glaring issues that can be exploited. So many cool units you can't build because that will put you behind tech. Panther, while it's a great tank destroyer, it's too weak in general to be a main tank in a faction that has been designed as one tank army.
No reliable crowd control. MG34 is a joke and Kubel is too vulnerable + too unpredictable.
US will blob you to death and Soviets will drive over you with a million of tanks.
And ISU is as stupidly OP as it was. Range reduction does nothing if it can still one shoots infantry.

Dane is a decent player, a great caster but is one of the most blatantly biased players. At some points in alpha testing OKW was ungodly overpowered and he still wanted to buff them. He also thought that the 100 range elefant needed a buff, literally called it useless.

Anyways, as I was saying, I respect dane as a person, player, and caster but his balance opinions are far from objective, nor should most of them be taken seriously.

You stole my words.

I agree with some points which are basically what most less biased people have already agreed here.

Dane is an Honest caster. Yet when i make the same points everyone attacks me. THANKS COH.ORG

well i went to coh.org and if thats where you went to get your strategies, no wonder you have problems.

OSF:

I think Rifles in general need slight adjustment, more so the commander giving vet rifles for the same price. Should probably just put it back to being a unit you build from tier 1 with increased build time. Maybe push it to 1CP? The LMG's need some sort of change as well, though I'm not sure how.

M15, maybe just swap it with the AT gun and put it in T2. Extra fuel for the captain should help delay it a bit, not to mention your AI power is reduced by having no LT.

Jackson and needs its target priority fixed.

OKW:

I think Volks could use a bit of a buff, maybe give them a slight boost without any vet, but don't gain quite as much when they do vet up. Helps with the early game but mid and late game remain unchanged. Imo they are more useful mid and late game compared to conscripts because of shrecks but salvage is also pretty useful.

I think that Obers, Panzerfusiliers and maybe Falls should receive some nerfs with their Vet 5. They just become monsters when they get that. It's not uncommon for me to have a Panzerfusilier squad with 100+ kills at the end of a long game. Early on they can struggle vs rifles (officer helps a lot tho) but there comes a point where they just stomp all over everything, because they do so much damage with G43's.

Kubel doesnt need changing imo, except for the awful pathing but this is something that is an issue with many vehicles in the game.

Jagdpanzer is fine to be honest. When micro'd well it does really nice damage and becomes pretty hard to kill. I much prefer it to the SU-85 by a long way. Had a monster game with one the other day

Click Me: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/chris998/2014-07-17_00008_zps1c2c093a.jpg


Economy wise, I don't have an issue with it. Sure they have reduced resources but they have very strong infantry excluding Volks (which are still ok lategame with shrecks). Being able to swap between Muni and fuel I find very useful. I love salvage, some extra fuel as well as denying your enemy support weapons.

I think the Stuka HT needs to have its rockets behave like the Panzerwerfer, so instead of a straight line it is more scattered. Maybe unlock creeping barrage at a vet level.

Sturmpios should stay the same. Yes they are pretty powerful and do very nice damage at all ranges, but its a big loss if they die early on. Loss of firepower (that volks can't really make up for) and the loss of a repair unit as well as being expensive to replace.

I think the Sturmtiger needs adjusting. I never build one because of how unreliable it can be. Having it explode against fences instead of vs the target sucks big time and for me makes it a waste of resources and pop cap.


Soviets:

I think conscripts and penals need to be separate more in their roles, as they are too close right now. I would like to see Ppsh become a core ability to unlock / research to help conscripts scale into the late game. Ppsh has become a fair bit more useful since it was buffed slightly.

I think SU76 should be swapped with T70. T3 gains some long range light - medium AT. I think the SU-76 could use a small penetration buff though, as its all but useless against heavy armour. T70 in T4 would give some AI capability as well as providing a scout for the SU-85. Should make teching instead of relying on call ins a bit more attractive.

I also wonder whether T-34/85 should be removed as a commander ability and instead some form of upgrade, to once again encourage the use of T3 instead of just call in spam.

Maxims is a tricky one. They probably need slight adjustment but I can't help but feel that maxim spam only exists vs OKW because of how weak their core infantry are vs OKW. I dunno, but any change needs to be carefully thought out.


Wehrmacht:

I've barely played them since WFA release so cannot really comment

For what its worth, I've played most of my post WFA games as OKW.

Kugel it's too clunky. HP boost it got helps but even in the early game it can be focus fired so easily. Plus terrible patching on top of that.

Maybe, If you were balancing just for OKW vs Soviets, the soviets have the M3 that can chase and destroy it early, but USF relies on small arms fire and Kubel spam would become a massive issue if they were anymore agile. Remember that the Kubel only costs 240mp so your getting what you paid for.

My opinion on USF is that it needs to be weaker early/mid, but stronger late. I'm not entirely sure how to achieve this, but it would go a long way to making USF competitive in team games. I feel like it's early game strength is the reason it's unbalanced in 1v1 and it's late game weakness is the reason it's unbalanced (the other way) in 2v2 and higher.

This is ignoring the "rare" commanders; I have no idea if Rifle company is amazing late game or if the mech commander's arty is still OP as hell.

My opinion is volksgrens should only need slight buff (or not at all), no need to give them AI weapon upgrade. OKW have Obers, before obers u can get fusiliers/fjagers they are really awesome i think (especially fusiliers for that price).
My problem is usually people rushing panther because only non doctrinal all around good tank. But not good for their price, overpriced compared to oshteer same panther (+33% fuel). The teching is take more fuel too (ostheer 110 fuel, okw min. 120+33%= 160 fuel). This just a bad design, get the same tank with 33% more price. And ppl still rushing to panther cause no other option, besides supertanks and commander doctrines that u can never get from war spoils haha.
JagdP is really good, but his mobility can be really bad too.
OKW definietly needs more mid tier tank doctrine units i think, and/or make the rare commanders more accesible to players.

The most pressing issues imo (note that I don´t have western front armies, so I only fought against them or with them in team games):

USA:

- Slight cost increase to the vet Rifle call in
- A Sherman 76mm medium tank in Tier 4, or some kind of upgrade for the stubby Shermans

OKW:

- Obersoldaten shouldn´t be able to fire their MG34 on the move

Russians:

- ISU needs a range buff but an increased reload time and less accuracy

Ostheer:

- Panther health increase and slight cost decrease
- Panzergrenadier armor increase
- Elefant is useless with the current range - needs to go up again
- Pak 43 also needs more range

Regarding Danes opinion on the OKW:

He probably doesent want them to be overpowered, he might just have a different design-idea of the faction as a whole and considering this idea some units look far to inefficient to him.

Currently I see most players rely on sturmpioneers, or some kind of elite infantry for anti infantry measures when playing OKW. The Kübel really is more of an early game unit and anti-infantry-wise volks truly arent that great. So basically: Currently I have no problem with volks, they are a good unit but I can understand that if someone has the vision that Elite infantry should support core infantry and not the other way around Volks are simply too weak. Some moderate nerfs to "über"-units like sturmpioneers (which themselves are balanced fine, but still "über"powerful compared to other starting/builder units) and Obersoldaten and a slight buff to volks to compensate might be an interesting idea. Volks should be dependant on other infantry units and vice versa, so this change hsould only shift the Volks:Elite Infantry ratio.

Since Dane was imo pretty spot on with problems of other factions I suspect that he simply wants the OKW faction in general to play a bit differently.

How long before people realize that the whole design of OKW revolves around keeping your units alive for the lategame where the increased vet gives you an advantage?

Amazing how there are people still asking for a buff to volks, they are not supposed to win against riflemen, not at long, medium or short range, they cost less, they have 2 extra levels of veterancy, they can get an AT upgrade effective throughout the game (with freezing immunity wich is a nice extra bonus).