Balance Preview Update 09/09/2015

Interesting take on improving brit early game.
Nice to see partisan cost go back to where it was.

are these updates happening daily into coh2 or are these running improvements that are going to be released all at once in the near future to fix the cluster F*&^ that is current balance?

care to elaborate?

I'd say Brace's Cooldown lasts a little too long myself. One Puma is all it takes to quickly destroy your Mortar Pit while you are fighting hard on the front line. I honestly still think that making Brace last longer might have been a good "Nerf" since the weapon will be out of action longer without losing an expensive investment so quickly.

Or better yet, make at least the Mortar Pit have a health increase to withstand a couple more shots from long-range direct fire.

Speaking of emplacements, I just noticed today that the Vickers HMG can no longer be garrisoned in any of them?

care to elaborate?

Unless an emplacement is placed in a location where it is ineffective (near your base / away from action), in most maps (all?) there are locations for indirect fire to attack the emplacement with the Brit player having little recourse.

Take Kholodny (summer or winter), for example. For a Brit spawning in the west spawn, a conservative placement of the Bofors would be at the fuel / munitions cutoff near your base. Unfortunately, both the Mortar and ISG can sit in completely safety in many of the East spawn's location and begin barraging the emplacement in the fog.

You are forced to rush into an enemy defensive position to take out the mortar, or you lose your emplacement. There is no other tactical decision you can make and this makes for terrible gameplay. With other factions, you can at least reposition your static defenses to hide from indirect fire.

In the live version of the game, the balance between static positions and mobile artillery is almost fair. The cheaper mobile artillery forces the static position to shut down; the Brit is now bleeding manpower upkeep for a paperweight. This balance breaks down because the Brace mechanic is abused for purposes other than indirect fire response. For example, an AT gun starts attacking the Mortar emplacement and all of a sudden it is unkillable. This is the problem.

Unfortunately in the balance preview, the Brits now have no tactical answer to indirect fire. Once the enemy gets a mortar or ISG, your emplacement gameplay ends for the remainder of the match, since there is no way to keep them alive.

I would guess a change to the Brace mechanic is required - make it reduce damage only from indirect fire. Once this is made, I see no problem with the Brit player shutting down the functionality of the (very high upkeep) unit in exchange for surviving ISG / mortar bombardment. Once functionality is disabled, ground forces can move in and clean it up. That to me is tactics.

*truth*

I really, really agree with all of that.

nvm

Good changes

I would guess a change to the Brace mechanic is required - make it reduce damage only from indirect fire. Once this is made, I see no problem with the Brit player shutting down the functionality of the (very high upkeep) unit in exchange for surviving ISG / mortar bombardment. Once functionality is disabled, ground forces can move in and clean it up. That to me is tactics.

God bless you sir

I would guess a change to the Brace mechanic is required - make it reduce damage only from indirect fire. Once this is made, I see no problem with the Brit player shutting down the functionality of the (very high upkeep) unit in exchange for surviving ISG / mortar bombardment. Once functionality is disabled, ground forces can move in and clean it up. That to me is tactics.

+1
Really like this idea, would love to test it out.

Sensible changes +1

I'd say Brace's Cooldown lasts a little too long myself. One Puma is all it takes to quickly destroy your Mortar Pit while you are fighting hard on the front line. I honestly still think that making Brace last longer might have been a good "Nerf" since the weapon will be out of action longer without losing an expensive investment so quickly.

Or better yet, make at least the Mortar Pit have a health increase to withstand a couple more shots from long-range direct fire.

Speaking of emplacements, I just noticed today that the Vickers HMG can no longer be garrisoned in any of them?

I'd agree. 30 seconds would be better. It's plenty of time to destroy the emplacement if you have the proper tools. 60 seconds just leaves it too open to be being quickly taken out by things like a single stuka or call-ins even after the player has successfully defended an assault.

I'd agree. 30 seconds would be better. It's plenty of time to destroy the emplacement if you have the proper tools. 60 seconds just leaves it too open to be being quickly taken out by things like a single stuka or call-ins even after the player has successfully defended an assault.

It's currently 90sec according to the changelogs.

It's 60 seconds as the cooldown ticks down while it's active

+1
Really like this idea, would love to test it out.

+2 The recast timer for LeIG Barrage is so short that you can just endlessly barrage an emplacement and there is nothing you can do because of the 1 Minute Recast on Brace which opens the emplacement to too much damage.

The other idea I've proposed in other threads is to keep Brace the same as the Live Version but give it diminishing returns so that an increasing % of damage goes through the longer the emplacement is under sustained fire during the duration of Brace. This would effectively simulate Brace failing as the emplacement remains under attack, which rewards the Axis player for going all in versus an emplacement.

EDIT I'm also worried that Volks Incendiary Grenades will be OP against emplacements since for a small amount of Muni you can hard counter an Emplacement (especially with a long Cooldown on Brace) 2 Grenades Spaced out a bit = GG Emplacements.

Agree with dbmb +1

I made a thread about this, but I figured I would shoot the idea to Relic in this thread, follow the link if you want to comment on the idea in the other thread: http://www.coh2.org/topic/40076/balancing-british-emplacements

British Emplacements currently seem only strong with Brace and only "decrew" at the smallest sliver of health. I was thinking about this change to them.

Keep the new Brace change (30 sec of invulnerable and 60sec of cooldown), raise the HP of Emplacements, and give them a higher decrew chance. What this will do is allow the Brit player recrew and only pay the recruitment cost on new squad members rather than constantly have to pay for an entire new emplacement(which are very expensive). This would also help to promote emplacements' defensive play by having the player risk the enemy taking the easier to decrew emplacement if it is too far up (although the Brit player would have the same amount of chance to decrew it if the enemy has it).

I think this would help to make emplacements more viable without making them OP or gimmicky(like current Bofors).

omg relic is actually listening to the community, is that real life

Unless an emplacement is placed in a location where it is ineffective (near your base / away from action), in most maps (all?) there are locations for indirect fire to attack the emplacement with the Brit player having little recourse.

Take Kholodny (summer or winter), for example. For a Brit spawning in the west spawn, a conservative placement of the Bofors would be at the fuel / munitions cutoff near your base. Unfortunately, both the Mortar and ISG can sit in completely safety in many of the East spawn's location and begin barraging the emplacement in the fog.

You are forced to rush into an enemy defensive position to take out the mortar, or you lose your emplacement. There is no other tactical decision you can make and this makes for terrible gameplay. With other factions, you can at least reposition your static defenses to hide from indirect fire.

In the live version of the game, the balance between static positions and mobile artillery is almost fair. The cheaper mobile artillery forces the static position to shut down; the Brit is now bleeding manpower upkeep for a paperweight. This balance breaks down because the Brace mechanic is abused for purposes other than indirect fire response. For example, an AT gun starts attacking the Mortar emplacement and all of a sudden it is unkillable. This is the problem.

Unfortunately in the balance preview, the Brits now have no tactical answer to indirect fire. Once the enemy gets a mortar or ISG, your emplacement gameplay ends for the remainder of the match, since there is no way to keep them alive.

I would guess a change to the Brace mechanic is required - make it reduce damage only from indirect fire. Once this is made, I see no problem with the Brit player shutting down the functionality of the (very high upkeep) unit in exchange for surviving ISG / mortar bombardment. Once functionality is disabled, ground forces can move in and clean it up. That to me is tactics.

+1

keep up the good work!

In the current build conscripts can't AT grenade the ostheer halftrack or the scout car. It looks like you can't AT nade anything.

EDIT: This is an issue with commanders that have conscript repair, as the hotkey to repair is the same as the AT nade. Still annoying and should be fixed but not what I initially thought it was.

I'm very pleased to see that the update has reconsidered the weapon for the Partisan. MP44 is definitely not my first thought for a Partisan squad to have. MP40 is arguably not the most common either but it certainly is better. Now I tested them out with a few AI matches and here are a few things I've noticed about their new camouflage.

1) Even without any cover, they will remain camouflaged, but since they currently do not have hold fire, they will break out of their state as soon as they come within engaging distance (which is quite far).

2) Even when building, they will remain in camouflage. This means magical wires setting themselves up for the opponent as well as mines.

3) Any crew weapons they grab will gain the camouflage effect. Camouflaged Pak40, anyone? TWP OUTTA NOWHERE.

4) Weaker weapon made them a lot less "Run and GUn" but ambush based instead. Had a few tested scenario when they attacked by breaking out of camouflage close up (don't ask me how I got past the fact they didn't break out of camo before getting close, I used dark magic) and it is quite effective. Now imagine that with a mine previously set up? Squad wipes before the opponent can even react!


Should point 1, 2, 3 be kept how it is? Or is that too good to be true?

Edit: Personally feel that the Partisan should suffer the same penalty the sniper do from scout cars and such. They are similar now that camouflage is their unique advantage.

http://www.coh2.org/post/create/thread_id/40074/quote/392705

Pls lower Infantry section costs