Remove Shreck from Volks

Puma can kite Medium armor pretty well by itself as long you keep a distance. I have done on numerous occasions and Fortune has done this as well.

Kiting works well on open maps, but if you get a single game freeze your screwed. The Puma's main also doesn't pen well against T34/Sherman frontal armor.

Puma can kite Medium armor pretty well by itself as long you keep a distance. I have done on numerous occasions and Fortune has done this as well.

When is enemy medium armour ever by itself?

Any decent opponent won't push his armour forward without support. You can expect AT nades (and therefore engine crit) from soviet, and Jackson just destroys Puma, even without support

Also as Alex said, Puma doesn't do well pen'ing frontal armour. It's only really decent on rear armour of medium tanks

The Puma gets here before medium armor does, has smoke to get out of tricky situations, is fast, has long range, and is the price of a light tank. One puma will shut down light armor play from allies, and is a legitimate threat to medium armor. It is supported by OKW infantry, it's not like you can just bum rush a Puma with a Sherman and come out on top unless they sent the Puma out by itself far away from support. Even then, smoke can save it a lot of the time.

It's a solidly performing unit. It's not some rare unit never seen in competitive games.

Puma is an ok unit, but there is a few good reasons it is not a commonly used vehicle; particularly in team games.Building mech HQ - and therefore Puma - means foregoing the Medic HQ (which is pretty much essential for OKW due to their reliance on Infantry throughout all stages of the game).

People using the Puma to justify stupid ideas like moving shreks to Sturmpios are foolish. I really don't understand why people jump up and down and cry and whinge so hard about volks with shreks. Yes, they are cheap, yes the shrek overperforms at long range, but there are _SO_ many other issues with the game that deserve more discussion. OKW (and USF) both have some pretty major design flaws - both positive and negative. Relic's intention of making the WFA armies unique backfired because they did not take the time required to properly balance then against the vanilla armies. Take note that the posters on .org you CONSTANTLY see complaining about OKW OP units will NEVER mention the flaws with OKW (aka abysmal indirect fire, no early-game counter to garrisoned inf, lack of viable late-game muni sinks/artillery/indirect apart from Assault artillery).

I've said it before and I'll say it again.The easiest (and therefore most likely fix from Relic, because lets face it, Relic obviously don't want/cant commit resources to major faction overhauls) way to balance Shrek'd volks is to give the Volks Shrek a long-range accuaracy and/or Vet bonus nerf - which of course would have to be coupled with a much-needed buff to the raketenwerfer.

It's always the most biased, dim-witted people who create and post in threads like these. coh2.org (especially balance sub-forum) has become a joke. Most people with half a clue don't play coh2 anymore or have given up trying to fight the sheer idiocy of most posters on here.

Stop posting Alex, trying to debate with "people" on this site is like trying to teach trigonometry to the mentally handicapped

No one is saying the Puma as a unit sucks, it doesn't. But there is a difference between saying it's bad and it's not worth the fuel. You would be better getting a Puma then say, spamming flak traks if your intent is to counter light armor. But generally your better off saving fuel for a Schwer or using your early game fuel to get a Flak trak if you need to counter infantry/scout cars or a Stuka if you need to counter weapons team spam. This of course assumes you went Mechanized. If you went battlegroup it doesn't matter because no one in there right mind is going to go BG -> Mechanized unless you have a team make backing you up.

The issue people have is that giving shreks to sturms would basically make them Pgren's 2.0 which is boring. And making Volks grens 2.0 by giving them AI and Snare is boring.

Hey here is this faction that does alright for itself, lets make it's early game model literally the worst faction's in the game.

Your statements are just hilarious. Few posts above multiple posters stated opposite yet you still argue.
Let me repeat it for you once more.
Puma as a unit is perfectly fine and viable. It's worth every fuel you pay for it and with its Vet bonuses is scaling very well into late game.
If you're unable to get the full potential from it then it's you not the unit.

Can I ask what game mode you're usually playing? 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4? I'm asking because I can see Puma hard to utilize in large team games.

As it stands we can all agree that the new factions are poorly designed. Relic as a business fails because they fail to engage customers and gather feedback as to what they want. They hide behind the NDA wall and release products that they want to play not what we as a consumer want.

With that said prior to the release of WFA we had tons of information on USF and almost nothing on OKW. Most of the design issues with the faction could have been avoided if they had an open beta and listened to feedback.

OKW Flawed Design- As faction design goes they feel rushed, lazy and quite honestly Relic could do better than this. Relic seems to copy and paste things from the other games they have worked on and just throw it in. Volksgrenadiers are basically Plague Marines from Dawn of War 2 with a skin change while copying the truck mechanics from the British in COH 1, one mechanic that had tons of negative feedback. Considering how during the early COH 2 beta Shock Troops had the ranger tooltips at the victory screen it seems apparent that they half ass it when it comes to creating things in COH 2.

OKW Theme : The overall theme of this faction is to portray Germans during the end of the War. Low on resources and battle hardened experienced troops. Now the theme that relic has planned and the execution is poorly thought out.

Thoughts and Ideas : I for one do not like to see endless hordes of Volksgrenadiers like it is Starcraft 2 with hordes of Zerglings rushing across the map dying wave after wave until they break the enemy. At the same time Volksgrenadiers are needed.

Why Volks are needed - It is Not because they lack good vehicle AT, puma, Jagpanzer and so on are all pretty good and quite strong at what they do. The issue comes due to the resource penalty. If you lose a Puma or Jagpanzer it is pretty much GG as you cannot easily replace your fighting force like Soviets can. Losing a T-34 is not as big a deal as losing a Jagpanzer because you can replace it as well as having Fuel Caches as well to increase the fuel gap even further between how many vehicles can be put out on the field. Anyone who argues otherwise simply has not played OKW or faced good allied players. Also Raketenwerfer is rather unreliable as it tends to get 1 shotted by everything without doing any damage. On top of that OKW has plenty of manpower. So much so in fact that if playing OKW, I could have plenty of volks on the field and still float manpower as I have nothing else to spend it on. Volks are cheap and a reliable form of Anti tank without requiring a fuel cost. Soviets have the Zis as a backup. Whermact have paks. Even American AT Guns are more useful than the raketenwerfer. This leaves OKW as Volks with being the only reliable form of anti tank. Fixing Raketenwerfer would not fix Volks Spam, it would make the factions anti tank ability even stronger than what it is now. The real problem is the manpower issue. Here is how we tackle that issue while at the same time addressing other issues with the faction. I for one do not particularly favor one faction over the other and would like to see a well balanced game.


Possible Solutions - As Relic is unlikely to provide sweeping changes to the faction the best that we can hope for is tweaking what we have. Realistically no matter how hard people cry for Panzershreks to get removed from Volks, even if 95% of the playerbase agreed on this Relic does not listen to its customers very well with the exception on the recent poll involving ISU/Jag. Hopefully this is a trend they will stray away from in the future.

Resource Conversion- This is the solution to all of the problems in regards to OKW. The Mechanized building allows you to convert Fuel into Ammo and Ammo into Fuel. Instead of converting Ammo or Fuel I propose converting Manpower instead of ammo into fuel or fuel into ammo. This would also solve issues with being paired up with Whermact players who builds Fuel/Ammo Caches as the OKW could gain large resource income defeating the purpose of the faction being limited on resources. The resources gained from Caches do not come at a cost to the OKW player which results in team games being a mess right now.

The Conversion Ability would be changed as Follows : Convert Manpower into Fuel/Ammo. While Active The player would convert a portion of his manpower income to gain Ammo or Fuel (Depending on Building made, more on that later) Think of the ability working the way Soviet Industry works with how it converts I believe 60 manpower (if I am not mistaken?) to gain +13 Fuel.

Each Building has its own Resource Conversion : Split up the Conversion Ability so that instead of both abilities being in the mechanized building each building has its own conversion.

Battlegroup (Healing Building) Would Allow you to convert Manpower into fuel. Having it convert Manpower into Ammo would promote Panzershrek Spam which is why I opted for Manpower into Fuel Conversion with this building.

Mechanized (Repair Building) - Getting this Building allows you to convert Manpower into Ammo. Basically by splitting up the conversion ability between Battlegroup and Mechanized it promotes different build orders. You always see Battlegroup into Flak HQ, or Mechanized into Flak HQ, by splitting the Conversion abilities between the two buildings it opens up the choice between Going Battlegroup->Mechanized->Flak or Mechanized/Battlegroup into Flak HQ. To make getting battlegroup/Mechanized Worthwhile both conversion abilities could be activated at the same time.

What this would Fix - By allowing the player to convert Manpower into resources it would make Manpower an important resource. This means that no longer would you want to mass volks and attack move to victory as taking model loses would actually hurt. It would reduce manpower float on OKW and open up more vehicle based gameplay while also creating new strategies between teching up instead of the same thing which is rush Flak HQ. Also since the player is converting Manpower instead of Ammo/Fuel it would alleviate some gameplay problems when it comes to having a Whermact team mate building Ammo/Fuel caches and converting resources to get a high income. Numbers for the Conversion ability would obviously have to be tested and tweaked to get this right but I feel this would be the best solution to not only reducing infantry spam as a whole but also allowing for OKW to field more vehicles. By having the ability to field more vehicles, losing a single tank would not be as devastating compared to the other factions especially since they can all build Fuel Caches (essentially converting manpower into fuel in a different way)

Certain vehicles will have to be adjusted in Strength (such as Jagpanzer 4 to prevent jagpanzer 4 spam meta) but these are numbers that can be tweaked without requiring too much work on Relics part while addressing the issue at hand.

Ammo Dumps - Aside from Panzershrek upgrade (90 Ammo) the OKW lack ways to spend ammo. With being able to convert Manpower into Ammo/Fuel to negate the resource penalty we can address other units that players have issues with in terms of balance such as the Stuka. By being able to convert Manpower into Ammo the player could potentially have alot of ammo and nothing to spend it on. Here are some ideas to add ammo dumps. The Goal here is to give the player incentives to spend ammo on other things besides Panzershreks and to overall make the Manpower->Ammo conversion more useful.

SdKfz 251 "Stuka zu Fuß" Half-track- could come with an ammo cost to fire each barrage.

Sdkfz 251/20 Half-track w/Infrared Searchlight - Give this unit an ability to focus its spotlight granting the player sight on areas the Searchlight covers for x amount of time. Costs Ammo

SdKfz 234 ‘Puma’ Heavy Armored Car - Ammo Cost on abilities increased to prevent spamming.

Obersoldaten - They Can pay for the LMG upgrade that they have.

Sturmtiger - Pay Ammo to substantially reduce reload time (would have to be expensive 150-200 to be on par with other strikes other factions have)

7.5cm le.IG 18 Infantry Support Gun- Add an ability to let it fire incendiary rounds at vet 0 - Costs Ammo, Useful to help clear out buildings as this unit takes forever to clear something out of a building reliably. Would also be useful to force maxims and such to move and re-position.

Sturmpioneer Squad - Allow the SturmPioneers the ability to drop the Medical Boxes at vet 0 instead of requiring Veterency. The heal from the Medical Boxes cannot be used in Combat like it used to so being able to use it at vet 0 would allow for Mechanized Building opening to be viable as you can still heal your units although at a cost.




Final Thoughts:

I feel that this would be the overall best solution to the issue that most parties could agree upon. It would reduce Volksgrenadier Spam by addressing one of the factions issues which is excess manpower combined with cheap reinforcement costs on some of its units while opening up more strategic gameplay. Doing damage to volks would actually mean something as oppossed to being shrugged off and actually cause manpower bleed for poor gameplay. I would prefer if instead arguing for Panzershrek removal we could tweak this idea and address multiple faction design problems as a community together since OKW is not the only faction with some issues as the other factions as well need somethings fixed. The goal is to make the game as balanced as possible while making each unit have a place and use as we have some rather lackluster units/commanders in the game at the moment.

Your solution would neglect OKW resources starvation completely resulting in faction not being limited anymore.
Slight manpower reduction is a neat idea though.

To summarie this topic:

So far we came out with few ideas:
- transferring Shreks onto different unit,
- reducing long range accuracy,
- make Shreks cost ammo,
- make Volks less resilient,
- apply manpower gain reduction to reduce unit spam.

Well if you have ever played against Soviet Industry they are not exactly spamming infantry as well as tanks. It is the OKW Infantry Blobs that end up defeating you not the vehicles. Also while yes they may not be limited in Ammo or Fuel it is kind of hard to make tanks if you do not have any manpower. With the right numbers in place it would work and make the faction more interesting to play.

Your solution would neglect OKW resources starvation completely resulting in faction not being limited anymore.
Slight manpower reduction is a neat idea though.

To summarie this topic:

So far we came out with few ideas:
- transferring Shreks onto different unit,
- reducing long range accuracy,
- make Shreks cost ammo,
- make Volks less resilient,
- apply manpower gain reduction to reduce unit spam.

well since you have godlike micro skills to use the puma why are you complaining about the shreks.
after all its easy to micro you medium armour out of the range of the slow moving volks.

Most people here that saying that the puma is fine are full shit, continually saying things like micro but apparently dont have the micro skills to get their medium tanks out of dangers.

These suggestions and thread are their fore stupid.

well since you have godlike micro skills to use the puma why are you complaining about the shreks.
after all its easy to micro you medium armour out of the range of the slow moving volks.

Most people here that saying that the puma is fine are full shit, continually saying things like micro but apparently dont have the micro skills to get their medium tanks out of dangers.

These suggestions and thread are their fore stupid.

Shrecks have more or less the same range than medium armor, where Puma outranges everything.

Still waiting for a replay.

well since you have godlike micro skills to use the puma why are you complaining about the shreks.
after all its easy to micro you medium armour out of the range of the slow moving volks.

Most people here that saying that the puma is fine are full shit, continually saying things like micro but apparently dont have the micro skills to get their medium tanks out of dangers.

These suggestions and thread are their fore stupid.

Because you can have only certain number of Pumas on the field without crippling your army composition while it's not uncommon to have 6 squads of Volks. Puma cost fuel, Volks don't and fuel is harder to get than munition.

When is enemy medium armour ever by itself?

Any decent opponent won't push his armour forward without support. You can expect AT nades (and therefore engine crit) from soviet, and Jackson just destroys Puma, even without support

Also as Alex said, Puma doesn't do well pen'ing frontal armour. It's only really decent on rear armour of medium tanks

Obviously I am not going to have my Puma unsupported either. Yes AT nades are problem for those n00bs who move in their Puma's like P4 or KT. Puma is a recon vehicle that should be kept at range against infantry and armor. The whole point of the unit is to kite medium with long range and do damage.

Yes Jackson can out do damage but you can get pounce on them with a surprise hit run (again its a recon fast unit for harassment and kiting). Also, keep the shreks by your side when you see a Jackson.

Jaigen, since we are all of full of sh*t, please upload your replay of your God like Axis only skills.

The manpower conversion is an interesting idea, Kurobane. I like that a lot actually.

(...)puma is badly under performing(...) making it a rather bad medium tank hunter.

Most people here that saying that the puma is fine are full shit

Haha, thanks for the laugh.

As Kurobane as pointed out the reason the Puma isn't worth it is because it's fragile and it is very hard for OKW to replace losses with the drastically reduced fuel income. Think about it for a second, with Soviet Industry you see tank spam because of the increased fuel amount. With OKW you see infantry spam because they don't have fuel.

If you want less blobs/shrek problems make it so OKW doesn't need to be so fucking picky with their build orders. I'm always going to invest my fuel in a durable unit over a lighter unit because it's far far easier to keep a Panther or Jadgpanzer alive than it is to keep a Puma alive.

It also seems people have no idea how smoke works, and the fact you can use attack ground to completely negate it.

My suggestion for changing volks that doesn't make them a copy of Grens and Sturms a copy of Pgrens:

1. Allow volks to merge with other squads, considering the nature of volks similar to cons this makes sense and would help give them utility.

2. In place of the shrek give them a standard AT grenade that doesn't snare but does a absolute fuckload of damage and has an assload of penetration, almost 1 shotting a scout car like the shrek does. That way people won't just drive a sherman/other tank right into the middle of your infantry. Call it an "AT grenade bundle"

3. For an optional upgrade of 90 munitions they get protection from cold and 3 StG 44's like how cons get 3 PPSH, this would help the Volks retain use in the late game when shocks are roaming the field.

4. A sixth man joins the squad at vet 3.

EDIT: Oh and give Ober's the option to replace their MG34 LMG with 4 shreks for 180 munitions.

Because you can have only certain number of Pumas on the field without crippling your army composition while it's not uncommon to have 6 squads of Volks. Puma cost fuel, Volks don't and fuel is harder to get than munition.

Complete bullshit. You can have 3 puma's out with the 4th well on its way if you dont go for the panther. And according to you the puma is so good it rapes every single piece of medium armour so 3 puma's should be completely sufficient to deal with any medium armour and most people will not bother with it panther. it should be a typical cookie cutter build. But it isnt because its nowhere near as good as you describe.

To say puma's are limited by fuel is crap because they cost as much as a t-34. and yeah they can be spammed but nobody seem to do that for some reason.

No. You want to make Volks even more powerful then they're now.

This topic exists because there is a problem with this unit and overall impact it has on the meta game. Shifting power doesn't solve anything.

As I don't think Relic will change unit design draticaly the only viable options are either reduce Shreks long range accu or Volks resilience.

No. You want to make Volks even more powerful then they're now.

This topic exists because there is a problem with this unit and overall impact it has on the meta game. Shifting power doesn't solve anything.

As I don't think Relic will change unit design draticaly the only viable options are either reduce Shreks long range accu or Volks resilience.

Well considering with out shreks volks are literal garbage that lose to every other infantry unit in the game I would say if your going to take away literally the only thing that makes them good they deserve a buff to keep them up to par.

You also understand the reason they are so resilient is because they vet up very fast from shrek use right? If you take the shrek away they won't vet nearly as fast and will scale more naturally like all other infantry in the game. Also an AT grenade bundle in place of a shrek would mean the only thing you need to do is have your sherman just kite out of the Volks small throw range.

Relic themselves have said it, the shrek is a crutch OKW needs due to the way the faction is designed, so removing that is a drastic change.

Maybe Shrecks upgrade should be available, when you make all the OKW buildings, or when you have 2 buildings completed?

Similar to the OST half-truck flame upgrade

Well making so they come after all the buildings is a tad insane because you normally only put down all 3 if your going into super late game or want to just hold for a early KT.

Not to mention the fact that binding the Ostheer flame upgrade to t3 has made it so you literally never see it get made lmao.