Soviet Snipers Squad are not fun

sadly, sniper spam is the only competitive strat soviets have.

This really isn't true, penals have been seeing good use in the meta recently, and to be honest everyone saying that they don't scale just isn't paying attention.

This really isn't true, penals have been seeing good use in the meta recently, and to be honest everyone saying that they don't scale just isn't paying attention.

Just because a few people instead of getting 1 conscript in the early game , gets 1 penal and then spams gaurds doesn't matter.

They don't rely on penals, they rely on gaurds and/or snipers,possibly 120mm.


Penals pretty much lose to sturmpios at all ranges, even worse than conscripts, who atleast have a slight long range advantage over sturmpios.

Compare penals to rifles, rifles are comparable at close range, but completely outclass penals mid and long range. Plus rifles have at nades, grenades and smoke grenades, and can be upgraded with m1919 or BAR. Also rifles can be built instantly, while penals require you to put down T1.
And rifles cost 10 mp more than penals.


Sadly this is a problem with the design of the soviet faction, and thank god relic is going to implement modding, then we can make our own balance patches. YAY FOR RELIC

This really isn't true, penals have been seeing good use in the meta recently, and to be honest everyone saying that they don't scale just isn't paying attention.

Close range infantry won't scale well until LMGs aren't fixed. Losing half your squad just getting close to the enemy isn't fun and it isn't balanced precisely. Penals can be useful only in urban maps, instead of that, they are as useless as conscripts lategame at this moment.

Only Shocks do well, and that is because they have armor and smoke to get close without being raped.

And back to the topic, probably the best solution to soviet sniper squad is increasing their reinforcement cost significantly, like 150 or such. Also, sprint should be more expensive or even being removed.

Why wasnt he movie realistic, I enjoyed it pretty much the first time I saw it



Now let the rage begins

In vCoH the snipers were pretty much the closest things to identical. It was the only unit that both of the vanilla factions had at their disposal that was virtually on an even playing field.

Except in that case, the axis sniper was superior because of how wehrmacht bought vet, but the american sniper at vet3 became the most powerful with the ability to move at full speed and remain cloaked anywhere.

Having one unit in the game on an even playing field would be a very good, and much needed alteration to CoH2. The sniper team was a good idea, and very obviously some dev's personal pet project, so I cannot see things being touched.

But in the end, the way True Sight completely borks infantry's ability to fire consistently on anything, snipers are exceedingly hard to use in their intended role. Between the environment itself, and half the things that randomly blind the ability to fire, snipers have trouble maintaining range, (Except for soviets, with sprint.) The massing blob that can (nearly) wipe a squad in one volley and retreat is a war of attrition that hardly anything can overcome, just with veterancy alone. Even if A sovet sniper blob loses 1 squad member each, the amount of manpower dished out in a volley can still be worth it if a vetted squad is eliminated.

But honestly? I don't see the need for sniper blobs. Grenadiers are inept at spreading out in cover and they love humping each other in the trenches, so just about any explosive shell wipes whole squads in one shell after minute 20.

If snipers are going to be back as they were in vCoH, I'd prefer them to be removed from the game.

If snipers are going to be back as they were in vCoH, I'd prefer them to be removed from the game.

Snipers used to be balanced in Coh1. Pretty much due to the fact that there

1)were no two-men snipers
2)and a hard counter existed from the beginning of the game
3)for no fuel cost and 180mp/220mp respectively.

just limit the number to one for both sides. or snipers should get a massive received accuracy penalty if they are near each other

I prefer the German sniper as it isn't just their rate of fire that is better but they get their shot off faster so it is easier to back them off and keep them alive.

I would say cap soviet snipers at a max of 2 squads, and slightly lower the bonus move speed sprint gives.

I don't think anything beyond that is needed

Snipers used to be balanced in Coh1. Pretty much due to the fact that there

1)were no two-men snipers
2)and a hard counter existed from the beginning of the game
3)for no fuel cost and 180mp/220mp respectively.

They weren't balanced at all. Their supposed hard-counters were ineffective past 5 min in the game, and after then you can only rely on indirect fire or countersnipe. By the way, axis had sniper+bike in the same building, but allies had them in different tiers. That was BS.

Snipers in vCoH were a game inside the game. They were boring as hell and countersniping was absolutely RNG dependant, as while snipers were moving you had a 50% probability of missing the shot.

I hope CoH2 never takes that route with snipers.

If snipers are going to be back as they were in vCoH, I'd prefer them to be removed from the game.

Yep. The cloak everywhere stupidity eventually made the CoH1 metagame extremely stale and boring.

Personally, I'd increase the reinforce cost of the Soviet sniper quite signifiacantly, 120 at least but preferably 150. Losing the spotter should be a massive blow, since it means if your sniper was a german one it was dead.

And Sprint needs to either be nerfed or replaced.

Snipers in CoH 1 were obnoxious. Watch a guy named Marinez stream coh 1 sometime, he abuses snipers and their romulan cloaking devices so hard it makes me cringe.

You guys wanting VCoH-style snipers don't know what you're asking for, especially if you hate CoH 2's snipers.

Nerf the Soviet sniper with a massive reinforce as listed above. Then buff Penals to their original G43 level at 360MP and Buff conscripts in some fashion. There problem solved on all ends of the spectrum.

Long Range DPS unit non doctrinal, Useful core infantry, More risk for snipers. I think everybody would be happy. I know I sure would like to have something running around the field that wasnt a Veterancy dispenser at T0 to SturmPios(I am looking at you scripts)

As Burts mentioned Maxim Spam and Sniper spam are symptoms of the disease. Not the disease itself.

I don't think there is a problem with either of the sniper units. I will admit I liked the German sniper better when he had the armor value of 2 (I think it was 2). So giving him a received accuracy .5 would be nice. The soviet sniper has some tools people like for ease of use, but it isn't as efficient as the German, just easier to use.

I think OP is more upset at getting a lot of squad wipes and I have 0 empathy. This is 100% l2p. It has nothing to do with any sniper being over powered. I feel like this is the same thing as getting upset at JT blowing up your tanks. That's its job. I've used sniper strats and people have outsmarted me and I lost all my snipers. It's not something impossible, you need to outsmart your opponent. If you want to build a big army and go forward, play command and conquer.

The soviet sniper isn't overpowered, but you have to admit having 3+ on the field is pure cheese. It makes the game look retarded and it's not fun at all to fight. It wasn't fun in CoH and it's not fun in CoH2.

The reinforce cost is fine, but a cap of 2 snipers max would curb the cheesy spam.

Agree 3+ snipers is just silly and is what alot of 1v1 games degenerate into vs soviets, as soon as I see 3 or more snipers I just quit and look for an actual fun match. Couldn't give a shit about rank anymore with all the bs cheese would rather just have a fun game even if I still lose.

I have also played vs a few ostheer sniper blobs recently which is arguably just as hard to counter if you went T2 as soviets.

Maybe a compromise would be to lose the reinforce ability for the sniper team. You lose the spotter and never get them back. Maybe a slight chance to miss targets after spotter dies.

This keeps the russian asymmetrical balance while punishing poor micro.

IMO the biggest issue with the unit is the get out of jail free card. The sprint ability is a joke, and allows for the soviet player to get away with shitty micro and get out of bad situations. IMO the reinforcement cost of the sniper squad needs to be upped, so if you do manage to kill one member of the team you really feel it.

+1 Couldn't agree more.

I've used sniper strats and people have outsmarted me and I lost all my snipers.

The fact you lost your snipers in a game, or the fact that sniper spammers are capable of losing games, has exactly zero relation to this discussion. Nobody claims snipers can't be killed. Hell, they might even be 100% balanced for all I care. (It is my opinion that sniper cheese with Guards into callins, especially vs. OKW requires much less micro for a much higher manpower bleed).

The question here is whether they make for a healthy meta.

Snipers remove an integral part of the CoH dynamic (and did so in CoH1 as well), which is cover-based infantry / weapon team game.

This is a world war two game. I do not expect realism, but I do not expect paradropped Shermans which oneshot Elefants with rainbow plasma cannons either. Soviet sniper teams lean more towards the rainbow end of the spectrum than the authenticity end.

It is not authentic nor iconic of world war two to have multiple highly mobile sniper squads working in tandem, invulnerable to return fire due to range advantage, dancing back and forth in the open, and sprinting away with ease from enemy line infantry when cornered only to turn around and shoot them in the face once they gain enough range on them.

The quadruple whammy is : two-man squads (of which both are sharpshooters) with relatively cheap reinforce, small axis squads (making it easy to reach critical threshold of retreat-or-risk-losing-150+ manpower), huge manpower penalty for a squadwipe inherent in the game, and Sprint ability obtained at Vet1 (which comes very soon for Soviet snipers).