Katyusha seriously need a nerf

Seriously - OKW players - get a PUMA and just go hunt these cumbersome units down.

Seriously - OKW players - get a PUMA and just go hunt these cumbersome units down.

Seriously soviet players,stop being childish.

Seriously - OKW players - get a PUMA and just go hunt these cumbersome units down.

works about 50% of the time. the rest the PUMA gets blown to shit by ZIS or AT NADE CONS with GUARDS.

There's so much noise in this thread. Here's a collection of opinions from players who have visible playercards, and are likely unbiased based on their stats:

VonIvan: Difficult to tackle, seems to agree something should change though. Possibly a longer cooldown.

Siberian: Maybe a slight damage decrease, but admits it's hard to balance around other factors.

Bulgakov: Damage/Range nerf, possibly, but admits it was useless before.

Aerohank: Was over-buffed. Reduce damage and AOE slightly.

Ginnungagap: It was over-buffed. It now shuts down any aggressive gameplay by OKW, which is no fun.

SuckMyClock: It's overperforming! If you disagree you're cray-cray.

armatak (CAVE TROLL): It is so much fun (a valid point!)

Then there are some players who play primarily allies but seem to agree that the new katyusha is too strong:

MilkaCow: The damage is too high, especially against static targets. Increasing cooldown is not sufficient to bring it back into line.

Sheepeh: Doubling the damage was not necessary, a slight buff would have been better.

FriedRise: Needs a slight damage/range nerf.

The really weird thing is the primarily axis player(s?) arguing that it's fine:

Arclyte: "Just don't blob!"

So clearly the Katyusha should be slightly nerfed. How exactly to do that is unclear. Any further ranting on this topic is pointless.

If the Russian player barely knows where some of the German units are located it's at least one squad wipe for sure. It's not about defeating a blob, you can't save any unit from the barrage.
Once you listen the sound of the rockets you have to retreat every unit (while mostly it is too late) otherwise they will all die.
And when you bring these units back to the front the cooldown is over and the same thing starts again.
The Stuka has a rather small line. Deathly and precise - Yes that is indeed true. But the line has a width of about two or three meters ( about 20 bananas) while the Katjusha has a circle of doom.
Everything in this circle will die if you haven't sacrificed at least a medium sized goat before the match.

Why is it unclear? The Katushya BEFORE the last nerf was fine. To get the close to the current effect you needed two. Which put you back on armor so if playing a team game your teammate needed to defend your Kats.

All it needed was a reduction of that nerf. The nerf made it from pretty decent to completely weak and useless. They didnt just revert that nerf they buffed on top of the reversion.

But the line has a width of about two or three meters ( about 20 bananas) while the Katjusha has a circle of doom.
Everything in this circle will die if you haven't sacrificed at least a medium sized goat before the match.

dammit that means two goats if i want good war spoils.

I have so much to say I don't think I can even get to all the points I want to reach.

First the short version: It was overbuffed

You can look at my playercard and see I spend most of my time playing team games soviet.

I actually had it in my mind that the patch notes said 120 damage, not 160. Based on the way Relic was balancing the Katyusha and werfer before WFA release, this is broken far from that model. I think that Allied faction is hit harder by the Stuka/kat issue since there really hasn't been anything bombing the hell out of OST players, so what we are seeing is OKW players crying on here.

Even though I feel the Katy was overbuffed, I care not for the tears, reason being that most of you OKW players are getting bombed at your base, which was aggressively placed on the battlefield. That's what you get. You took the risk and you got punished for it. I will tell you, even before the July 22 patch, the 80 damage Katy was being used by me to do the same thing. It was a bit less effective, but it was still effective. I'm going to post more, but I have to leave work now, I just wanted to bring up that point real quick.

Seriously soviet players,stop being childish.

LOL - I'm hardly a Soviet fanboy.

The Kat was a complete POS that nobody used - and finally they get it right so that the stupid blobbing mechanic stops.

Give the Whermacht missile unit the same effectiveness - notice its that infrequently used that I don't even know the friggin things NAME?

That'll stop the US blob.

It keeps the game BALANCED.

Stop blobbing - end of story.

I would also say it's a little bit over the top. It would be somewhat fine if it was only good against infantry, with an appropriate long cooldown. But 3-shotting OKW buildings from max range shuts any form of forward OKW gameplay down, and that sucks.

... Except one is more expensive, with a viciously longer cool down, and with one volley instead of four?

Where do you get these comparisons?

Even if you ignore all those glaringly valid points, you still have the fact that neither Allie faction is based on setting up a forward operation. So if you get wrecked by a stuka you're just blobbing. If a katyusha fires on an OKW deployed truck, it's gone in 2 (incredibly short) cooldowns and everything around it is too, rendering null any attempts to save it.

Excellently put. Katy as of now, renders more or less vetted infantry useless.. since in a 3 vs 3 and 4 vs 4, there are always at least wee three or four of them playing Stalin's favorite music all over the map - constantly. If you don't hit retreat when the first salvo lands, you can pretty much kiss your vetted squads goodbye. While Stuka without the proper recon is relatively problematic, cooldown is so long that you find yourself always calculating "to launch or not to launch", and presents the actual menace - only to stationary support units, units in buildings and a reckless blob. I'm not even going to go into what a 100 fuel for a glass piece of arty means to a OKW player in the phase of the game where it can actually mean something. Also, many times I've lost stuka's due the headless Sherman or T34 martyr, and while loosing such a unit pushes OKW player to the verge of surrender, the allied one just orders another tank.

To all you defending Katyusha, read again what MilkaCoW has written.

In plain English he explains what's the difference.

All of you were calling Stuka OP but Stuka was NEVER as good as Katyusha is now (not talking beta).
Not only it's more devastating, can destroy base building and medium tanks but has MUCH LOWER cooldown as well and is CHEAPER. Also lets not forget that Soviet can build MORE THAN ONE in a game without any problems and serious economical drawbacks.
I understand bias but that's just ridiculous!

Yes, Katyusha is overperforming at the moment. It needed a buff, but that was vastly over the top. There are some reasons why it can't be kept that way:
- Overall damage output: 16 rockets at 160 damage are 2560 damage. That's sufficient to instakill all Oberkommando trucks. A single Katyusha, a single barrage. It needs 13 rockets to hit.
- Flight time: The Katyushas rockets fly for a far shorter time than the Walking Stukas. Stuka gives you a chance to react and spread your squads, Katyusha barely does, especially if fired from anything but max range. You should be able to predict where the rockets impact AND be able to react according.
- AoE profile and damage: While the Walking Stuka has by far the best AoE profile, the Katyusha is now a close second. Taking the squadsizes (and formation) into consideration they should have the same chance to instawipe a squad.

None of these are things that can easily be balanced out by just increasing the cooldown. If you remember the old Walking Stuka - even 5 minute cooldown would've still kept that unit useful. They actually need to be changed, but in a way that still keeps the unit useful. 100 damage on the rockets would still mean it could oneshot the FlaK HT if all rockets hit, so I fear it really needs to go back to 80. This can be compensated by a better AoE profile and maybe more penetration (or giving it crew stuns or whatever). The alternative would be probably something that shoots less rockets, but still at a high damage. Right know it deals twice the damage of a Walking Stuka and in a smaller area, making it far too good against static objects.

I feel the complaining about squad wipes and what not is mostly unjustified. There are some legitimate concerns that surround the high rocket damage. Lets be clear on this, if a soldier gets hit by a rocket in this game, he's dead. It doesn't matter if it's a stuka, werfer, or katty, each one has always dealt more damage than the health of any infantry soldier. So, complaints about direct hits should be muted. There are 2 concerns, splash damage and damage to structures/vehicles.

Obviously, Relic must have felt the splash was too low at 4 to want to increase it to 6. For those who don't like to pay attention to the stats, this about the area of your average grenade explosion. I'm sure we all would be right to believe these rockets impacted with a lot more explosive radius than that of a grenade in real life, but that's what it is here in the game. So it's like launching 16 grenades without a timer. The shock troops grenade actually has a smaller area, 6 is the radius of bundle and the rgd that guards throw. The grenades have a damage amount of 80. So it's literally launched grenades as before july 22. If your soldiers got hit by the splash of kat or grenade, they could live only if they had sufficient health greater than the reduced damage done by splash (which is dynamically calculated, but always lower than 80). Now with the damage done being 160, surviving splash is much less likely.

Thanks to the wonderful individual who has made the stats site, you can see the dynamic damage calculation here:

http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/katyusha_bm_13_16_rocket_mp

According to that data, the minimum distance an entity can be from the explosion center is 2.675 .

2.675 is pretty damn close to the center. Considering the blast reaches out more than 2x that distance, I would say this is pretty lenient. After reviewing that information, I don't think that 160 damage is too harsh on infantry. Your squad pretty much has to eat one or more of those 16 rockets, since the damage drops off so fast. I find that when I'm striking OKW players they are sitting there at the impact site not paying attention or failing to retreat their squads that are attacked in the field. Most of the OST players I face are not attacking me with big mindless blobs and for that reason, they don't make for juicy artillery targets. OKW also gives more veterency, I don't know if you guys know that. Especially those vet 5 squads, I never got vet3 on my kat before WFA. Kat vet2 reduces reload, fyi. It's like that on most arty. So some of you calling for cool-down increases are likely experiencing the accelerated cool-down of veteren katyusha crews, making it seem like the barrages are coming too fast. Also, the Katyusha has precision strike, which btw, instantly killed full health squads before the patch for a 60mu cost, firing 4 rockets that would deal 320 cumulative damage. So, whether at 80 or 160, the result was the same, the spash increase makes this more dangerous though.

It really seems to me that people are upset the katyusha is doing it's job. I struggled game after game since WFA to find something the OKW were really weak to and about 2-3 weeks ago I realized they are extremely susceptible to artillery. OST wasn't, they have scout planes, bombers, artillery, and no gimped economy (which now OKW is not gimped on munitions). Many of us have outright stopped building arty because of poor results stemming from off-map attacks. Not just Soviet, but Ost too. Why build LeF when Sov will just bomb it after the first or second salvo? It was 120-200 mu to drop a 600mp unit with pretty much no risk at all. OKW doesn't have a lot of options and so I started doing what people stopped doing. I built katty and I built ml20 and both did well against OKW, especially when a 3v3 or 4v4 was all OKW, I usually don't even lose them unless my team loses the whole game. This is before July 22 patch I'm talking about now. So now with the kat buffed, I do see a big difference in how fast the sws trucks are being busted and to be honest I like the value that's being provided by the kat against OKW. I think it makes sense, considering how poorly it will likley continue to remain at fighting Ost players. Especially good players. To try and sit there pounding at OKW trucks for several minutes to get them off the field with a standard tank or at gun is painful and boring. It's similar to the dread I felt fighting British players off of points in CoH1. The worst one is that Flak upgrade, because even if I drive the infantry away, I stlli can't cap that sector with infantry because of the high lethality and pinning of that gun upgrade. The only way to cap it fast is to have a vet1 tank go and disarm itself to cap the point. I really don't think OKW should get these benefits without a considerable risk, which everyone is now seeing is manifested best as katyusha barrages. I bet USA players will cry too, if Ost starts bombing the American retreat points too. Both USA and OKW have the ability to retreat a distance much less than ost and sov, regrouping so close to the front comes with that downside that you might still be in range of attacks at your retreat point.

Regarding the speed at which sws trucks are destroyed. There could be a real issue there. I think it's a bit unbalanced for them to be too tough, considering this game's economy is literally the map, so having a stronghold like this gives a large benefit. So, I guess it's up to Relic and their design goals to determine if it's getting destroyed too fast. I'm happy with the speed now and before the patch.

Light vehicles are going to have a lot of difficulty though, most are only going to be able to take about 2 rockets, but that's a lot more forgiving than the stuka is.

That brings me to the next point, people trying to lock balance changes of the kat with the Stuka. Also, people claiming the Stuka is not the most devastating artillery in the game, which it is. The bombs drop precisely on target and do 200 damage each. In order for soldiers to escape a blast they must be at least 3.425 away from the center of the blast. Having the same AOE distance value of 6 as shared with the Kat and some grenades, you can see from the numbers alone that the stuka is much less forgiving than the new kat values. It shoots less rockets, but they will you where you want them to and over half it's AOE results in enough damage to kill full health squad entities. As is usually the case, the soldiers out in the field are often not at full health, so often times it's a squad wipe or weapon destruction (which is a support team wipe). It also has higher penetration, more health, and stronger armor. If your beating down the peasants of the Soviet army, then your likely not going to accumulate veterency too fast. The veterency data doesn't seem to be on the stat page, so I have no idea how it improves the stuka. So while the Stuka's individual cost is more than the Kat, your getting more for your money too. I've been on the receiving end of many Stuka barrages and they are devastating every time they hit. When WFA first launched it was the kind hit that you just kind of stop giving commands and stare at the craters where your army used to be. There hasn't been nerfs to Stuka, I had to learn to deal with it, anticipate where attacks will land, and try to understand what my opponents goals are, tactically. German weapons are always outclassing Soviet weapons, even when they didn't in the real world, and I find it funny there is such a large horde of people that find it fair and balanced. In this case, I expect most 1v1 top players aren't going to care much. I don't think I have tuned into a top players stream even 1 time and found they had built a katyusha. Even Siberian and Ivan who came on here to put their 2 cents in, I watch their streams often (not religiously) and I never see them build katyusha. I would imagine they might be doing it now to try and express imbalance, but I think the better OKW players are going to find that some of their high mobility units can sneak behind the lines and take out the kat pretty easily. The Puma, Luchs, and falls all do a fine job of this. While I don't think that changes to the 2 units should be locked in parallel, I do think that if people genuinely think the kat is too powerful and deserves nerfs, the same can be said about the stuka and it too should get hit by nerfs, although the changes don't necessarily have to be the same to both.

Anyone interested in the explosion stats of the stuka can find them here:

http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/walking_stuka_rockets_mp

Katushya did its job just fine before its last nerf. It wasnt over the top. And it wasnt what it is now. I used them on every team game back then.

Again all relic had to do to make the Kat "Do its job" was to revert the last nerf.

are you talking about the nerf to the AOE profile?

are you talking about the nerf to the AOE profile?

Cant remember maybe Milka can spell out what it was exactly. But they nerfed it with the ML20 and LeFH. I think the AOE profile was an attempt to revert the nerf.

But before they messed with it then it was pretty much middle ground where it is now. Not as bad as it was and not as good as it is.

I feel the complaining about squad wipes and what not is mostly unjustified. There are some legitimate concerns that surround the high rocket damage. Lets be clear on this, if a soldier gets hit by a rocket in this game, he's dead. It doesn't matter if it's a stuka, werfer, or katty, each one has always dealt more damage than the health of any infantry soldier. So, complaints about direct hits should be muted. There are 2 concerns, splash damage and damage to structures/vehicles.

Obviously, Relic must have felt the splash was too low at 4 to want to increase it to 6. For those who don't like to pay attention to the stats, this about the area of your average grenade explosion. I'm sure we all would be right to believe these rockets impacted with a lot more explosive radius than that of a grenade in real life, but that's what it is here in the game. So it's like launching 16 grenades without a timer. The shock troops grenade actually has a smaller area, 6 is the radius of bundle and the rgd that guards throw. The grenades have a damage amount of 80. So it's literally launched grenades as before july 22. If your soldiers got hit by the splash of kat or grenade, they could live only if they had sufficient health greater than the reduced damage done by splash (which is dynamically calculated, but always lower than 80). Now with the damage done being 160, surviving splash is much less likely.

Thanks to the wonderful individual who has made the stats site, you can see the dynamic damage calculation here:

http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/katyusha_bm_13_16_rocket_mp

According to that data, the minimum distance an entity can be from the explosion center is 2.675 .

2.675 is pretty damn close to the center. Considering the blast reaches out more than 2x that distance, I would say this is pretty lenient. After reviewing that information, I don't think that 160 damage is too harsh on infantry. Your squad pretty much has to eat one or more of those 16 rockets, since the damage drops off so fast. I find that when I'm striking OKW players they are sitting there at the impact site not paying attention or failing to retreat their squads that are attacked in the field. Most of the OST players I face are not attacking me with big mindless blobs and for that reason, they don't make for juicy artillery targets. OKW also gives more veterency, I don't know if you guys know that. Especially those vet 5 squads, I never got vet3 on my kat before WFA. Kat vet2 reduces reload, fyi. It's like that on most arty. So some of you calling for cool-down increases are likely experiencing the accelerated cool-down of veteren katyusha crews, making it seem like the barrages are coming too fast. Also, the Katyusha has precision strike, which btw, instantly killed full health squads before the patch for a 60mu cost, firing 4 rockets that would deal 320 cumulative damage. So, whether at 80 or 160, the result was the same, the spash increase makes this more dangerous though.

It really seems to me that people are upset the katyusha is doing it's job. I struggled game after game since WFA to find something the OKW were really weak to and about 2-3 weeks ago I realized they are extremely susceptible to artillery. OST wasn't, they have scout planes, bombers, artillery, and no gimped economy (which now OKW is not gimped on munitions). Many of us have outright stopped building arty because of poor results stemming from off-map attacks. Not just Soviet, but Ost too. Why build LeF when Sov will just bomb it after the first or second salvo? It was 120-200 mu to drop a 600mp unit with pretty much no risk at all. OKW doesn't have a lot of options and so I started doing what people stopped doing. I built katty and I built ml20 and both did well against OKW, especially when a 3v3 or 4v4 was all OKW, I usually don't even lose them unless my team loses the whole game. This is before July 22 patch I'm talking about now. So now with the kat buffed, I do see a big difference in how fast the sws trucks are being busted and to be honest I like the value that's being provided by the kat against OKW. I think it makes sense, considering how poorly it will likley continue to remain at fighting Ost players. Especially good players. To try and sit there pounding at OKW trucks for several minutes to get them off the field with a standard tank or at gun is painful and boring. It's similar to the dread I felt fighting British players off of points in CoH1. The worst one is that Flak upgrade, because even if I drive the infantry away, I stlli can't cap that sector with infantry because of the high lethality and pinning of that gun upgrade. The only way to cap it fast is to have a vet1 tank go and disarm itself to cap the point. I really don't think OKW should get these benefits without a considerable risk, which everyone is now seeing is manifested best as katyusha barrages. I bet USA players will cry too, if Ost starts bombing the American retreat points too. Both USA and OKW have the ability to retreat a distance much less than ost and sov, regrouping so close to the front comes with that downside that you might still be in range of attacks at your retreat point.

Regarding the speed at which sws trucks are destroyed. There could be a real issue there. I think it's a bit unbalanced for them to be too tough, considering this game's economy is literally the map, so having a stronghold like this gives a large benefit. So, I guess it's up to Relic and their design goals to determine if it's getting destroyed too fast. I'm happy with the speed now and before the patch.

Light vehicles are going to have a lot of difficulty though, most are only going to be able to take about 2 rockets, but that's a lot more forgiving than the stuka is.

That brings me to the next point, people trying to lock balance changes of the kat with the Stuka. Also, people claiming the Stuka is not the most devastating artillery in the game, which it is. The bombs drop precisely on target and do 200 damage each. In order for soldiers to escape a blast they must be at least 3.425 away from the center of the blast. Having the same AOE distance value of 6 as shared with the Kat and some grenades, you can see from the numbers alone that the stuka is much less forgiving than the new kat values. It shoots less rockets, but they will you where you want them to and over half it's AOE results in enough damage to kill full health squad entities. As is usually the case, the soldiers out in the field are often not at full health, so often times it's a squad wipe or weapon destruction (which is a support team wipe). It also has higher penetration, more health, and stronger armor. If your beating down the peasants of the Soviet army, then your likely not going to accumulate veterency too fast. The veterency data doesn't seem to be on the stat page, so I have no idea how it improves the stuka. So while the Stuka's individual cost is more than the Kat, your getting more for your money too. I've been on the receiving end of many Stuka barrages and they are devastating every time they hit. When WFA first launched it was the kind hit that you just kind of stop giving commands and stare at the craters where your army used to be. There hasn't been nerfs to Stuka, I had to learn to deal with it, anticipate where attacks will land, and try to understand what my opponents goals are, tactically. German weapons are always outclassing Soviet weapons, even when they didn't in the real world, and I find it funny there is such a large horde of people that find it fair and balanced. In this case, I expect most 1v1 top players aren't going to care much. I don't think I have tuned into a top players stream even 1 time and found they had built a katyusha. Even Siberian and Ivan who came on here to put their 2 cents in, I watch their streams often (not religiously) and I never see them build katyusha. I would imagine they might be doing it now to try and express imbalance, but I think the better OKW players are going to find that some of their high mobility units can sneak behind the lines and take out the kat pretty easily. The Puma, Luchs, and falls all do a fine job of this. While I don't think that changes to the 2 units should be locked in parallel, I do think that if people genuinely think the kat is too powerful and deserves nerfs, the same can be said about the stuka and it too should get hit by nerfs, although the changes don't necessarily have to be the same to both.

Anyone interested in the explosion stats of the stuka can find them here:

http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/walking_stuka_rockets_mp

1000+ games as Soviets
0 as OKW / Ost


That would all be very interesting if you'd ever played a game as OKW, actually had to face it and knew what you were talking about. But you haven't, so you have no perspective.


Your best quote:

"to be honest I like the value that's being provided by the kat against OKW"

DO YOU? REALLY? WOW! Yes, of course you like it. I'd like it if suddenly my kubels and US M20s were given tank armour and sniper rounds. I'd come hunt you down with them. But that's called chumpish glee. You're not supposed to like it when you realise something's too powerful. You're supposed to think "oh, this is too easy, it's not interesting"

Reverting wouldn't fix some of the issues so I think it's useless to talk about that. That was prior to the AoE revamp (mid range should always be below 80 now) to better allow to designate an area in which it's lethal to infantry.
It's rockets were still 160 damage prior to that, allowing it to oneshot trucks which is one of the bigger issues atm :/

Reverting wouldn't fix some of the issues so I think it's useless to talk about that. That was prior to the AoE revamp (mid range should always be below 80 now) to better allow to designate an area in which it's lethal to infantry.
It's rockets were still 160 damage prior to that, allowing it to oneshot trucks which is one of the bigger issues atm :/

I think the Trucks are a bigger issue than the Kat The Kat is just highlighting the issues of the trucks themselves. Even if you plopped your trucks in your HQ sector they are still made of paper...

Edit: And what I mean by that is Arty close enough to your base sector will destory them with ease even if they arent forward.

@Bulgakov

Havent you seen the error in your flawed logic of obsessing over playercards after I mentioned that the Ost Mortar got a stealth buff and you went on the tirade of how I wouldnt know because I only have more games with Ost then you but not as much as I did with Soviets? And yet IT DID get a buff...

Can you knock that crap off already

Not agreeing with the post just the playercard crap.