Soviets since the last patch

I am not the best CoH player ever. But, having said that, I can expect a slightly higher than 50/50 win ratio.

With that in mind, I'm wondering if it's just me or if the last patch made the Soviets slightly out of kilter. Going by the stats today, whereby 75-80% of 1 v 1 players that were matched at my level were playing Soviet, I suspect this is the case.

Here are my specific issues:

1. Hit the Dirt. Not a win button, but I think that conscripts getting this ability straight off the bat is unbalanced. I'm spending munis hand over fist rifle nading these squads as my early grens (what, with the negligible cover benefits of CoH2 as currently configured) aren't meaty enough to counter the spam. Ooorah and molotovs make flanking Mgs pretty do-able. In short, the flexibility and easy access to HtD strikes me as superior to the fairly squishy early Wehr infantry.

2. Clown cars. This is getting silly. How do I prepare for the clown car rush? The Soviet player gets to dominate the field and by the time I've spent munis on fausts and an up-gunned AC (assuming it doesn't get magic-homing At naded) they've just built another. Again, the most viable early game counter, the AC, is too squishy.

3. Shreks at 120 munis? This is getting silly. My PAKs get flanked, I don't have enough munis for shreks and the StuG has gone from being a potent mid-game AT counter to being made of tinfoil and completely useless versus infantry.

In short... any half decent Soviet player has access to flexible, cheap infantry that ensures early game dominance. Clown cars seal the deal. I know its coming but my counters are simply too expensive.

As I said, I'm not a noob. I can hold my own against a lot of players. But at the moment I'm losing six games in a row to Soviet players and 1 v 1 is dominated by them.

Would love some advice, or do others agree that there are significant balance issues?

Sov is easymode.

Soviets do have an advantage, mostly derived from superior firepower early on.

Hit the dirt should come at least 1 CP, and the troops should have a decrease in offensive capabilities while in HtD. Another possibility is to make it time limited: suppressed soldiers, for instance, get a small defensive bonus, but if they remained pinned, they become easier to hit.

PPsH's should be 2 CP's (like G43's do, they arrive just in time for an extended T2), and guards 3CP's. The disadvantage of the doctrine is their weak late game, and late guards. Really good soviets don't really need guards, anyways.

ppsh should also cost a bit more munitions. Overall, most munitions upgrades and abilities should be looked at and reconsidered. With Soviets you stockpile it or mine everything whereas as Ostheer you're often pretty starved for munitions.

A scout car can be countered by:
- 2 grenadier panzerfausts (2 squads are part of a lot of builds, keep them together once you hear the scout car, you will be able to hear it a lot sooner than you'll see it) (cost effective)
- an upgunned scout car (rather expensive, doesn't scale well into mid game)
- 1 grenadier panzerfaust and 1 Mortar (cost effective)
- 1 well placed mine (cost effective)
- a flame ht (rather expensive, but very effective even after getting rid of the scout car)
- 1 panzerfaust and a bit of sustained small arms or mg fire (cost effective, can be harder to pull off)

I'm pleased to see that both on here and on the official forums that people are in broad agreement with me on this one.

Doctrines are another area of concern... Soviet ones easily trump many of the mediocre Ostheer commanders / doctrines. Is there *really* any comparison between the super-tank centric Soviet commanders and the let's-drop-some-smoke Ost? Don't mention elephants, who actually can afford them or even get to that many CPs anyway?

So far all my doctrinal success has relied on Mortar HT, G34s and Panzer Smoke.
Pretty much all that Ive been able to use to any significant effect, and each in a different doctrine

They really should just bring back the Rifle/Volks mechanic...As it was perfect.

Make Grens 260, cheaper reinforce.

Pgrens to 330, slightly higher reinforce cost than current. This could well solve a lot of problems and make German infantry more potent early-midgame when needed. Higher reinforce cost makes them less spammable but cheaper initial cost gives them field impact when the first one hits.

The double shrek at 120 still makes me mad. I need the shrek to fight off the highly mobile clown car. I do not need TWO shreks at this point. Give me 1 at 70, two for 130, or maybe 65/65. I can not grok how they figured out these costs...

Shrek costs need to come down so Hit-The-I-Win-Button can be effectively countered with bundled nades. Making us buy two at 120 is hurting that ability badly...

They really should just bring back the Rifle/Volks mechanic...As it was perfect.

QFT.

This, and a slight adjustment to cover values, will help bring back what Tommy has called 'The Dance' i.e. that vCoH style, early game, micro-reliant infantry skirmishing that many of us want to see in CoH2.

or maybe 65/65. I can not grok how they figured out these costs...

+1 for the Stranger in a Strange land reference.

Shreks are not viable due to cost, true.

My main issue with PGrens, is that they are very effective, but not effective enough. Shock troops decimate them, no matter the circumstance (its an I-Win situation).

The scout car is fine statwise. It dies fast enough, and given the right circumstances, you can destroy with one gren and one mg. Maybe increase the fuel cost a little so it weighs on your transition and upgrades.

Really, the scout car and Armored Car are useless in after early mid game. Anything simply rolls over them (in the case of Armored Cars, even the lowly conscripts).

CombatMuffin, I hear you but it's a bit chicken and egg. I find myself needing early rifle nades versus HtD, which degrades my ability to get LMGs.

I am now playing a very defensive run-around game to mitigate this, a bit like Amis versus PE which is totally ass-backward. This is to try and retain munis but of course given the 30% faster manpower ratio of spammed scripts, even this is tough.

It simply shouldn't be like this. And it is because some of the finesse from vCoH is missing, the granularity. Micro seems to matter very little in early inf v inf play.

Lately, I've been having my clown cars die to one faust after a bit of gren small arms fire.

For me, I find the Soviet doctrines (or at least 2 of them) very much resemble the VCoH doctrines (Infantry and armour)

In the meantime, most of the German doctrines are completely useless. I reckon you could play the entire game factionless and it won't affect things much.

The only one I'd consider playing is the Ostruppen one. Only because with the free infantry squad after 4 men are lost, and the sector artilery .

But I agree, all of the German doctrines... do mostly nothing...

CombatMuffin, I hear you but it's a bit chicken and egg. I find myself needing early rifle nades versus HtD, which degrades my ability to get LMGs.

I am now playing a very defensive run-around game to mitigate this, a bit like Amis versus PE which is totally ass-backward. This is to try and retain munis but of course given the 30% faster manpower ratio of spammed scripts, even this is tough.

It simply shouldn't be like this. And it is because some of the finesse from vCoH is missing, the granularity. Micro seems to matter very little in early inf v inf play.

It is missing granularity: the damn small arms damage. I was playing a game earlier. My teammate barraged an enemy maxim with a mortar, to no avail. I am content with the tank balance so far, although I think Ram still needs fine tweaking.

LMG's are mostly useless for me, but I've stated this numerous times. Sacrificing that mobility is just too damn much. If the LMG had a munitions cost for suppression, like the Bar did, I'd be VERY satisfied.

Clown cars are kinda stupid and its really frustrating to keep getting matched against people that just leave the second their bullshit easy mode flanking fails, but they seem pretty easy to kill. Once you see one just immediately stop getting T1 units and get upgun scoutcar ASAP. This could still be useful later in the game depending on what he makes. They will rape SU76 when circled, are capable of circle strafing and killing damaged SU85s, and excel at hunting down and killing artillery. Sadly they suck at everything else currently so until you need it again just park it in your territory and maybe you will get a lucky plane shoot down with it.

And I really dislike HtD/ppsh/Shocks. They do almost no damage at all, they win engagements because they are far too durable. Decreases to shock armor and HtD would be nice, and a substantial buff to the ppsh because the thing is on par with the vcoh Jeep when it comes to damage output.

... a substantial buff to the ppsh because the thing is on par with the vcoh Jeep when it comes to damage output.

.. which is still more than the AC

Disagree, ppsh is a decent DPS increase, especially for only 20 muni. Do some tests close range and come back and talk to me.

They really should just bring back the Rifle/Volks mechanic...As it was perfect.

I reckon part of the reason why there was a rifles/volk mechanic was because there were so many points to cap (and you had to actively cap) that positioning was important, and any fight could delay how you're capping the map, which is a big thing.

Here, you don't have much to cap, in the opening, you can easily pump out 5 russki units consistently and esp on maps like priyapat (aka Scheldt V2) you could pretty much go

"Oh so your gren squad pushed out my cons squad. That's okay, I'll just send in another cons squad to push out your grens and get my other 2 squads to cap other spots which you can't possibly counter without spreading your forces".

And considering Cons are T0, it means the Russians will always have a faster start than Wehr if the Russki player's going 4 Cons to start with.

To me, the Rifles/Volk dynamic was easily the best part of a COH1 opening, but sadly, it would be hard to bring back unless significant changes with the numbers are done.

Increasing Pio combat viability would go a long way towards alternatively returning more opening dynamics.

Now they are forced off by anything and everything.

Increasing Pio combat viability would go a long way towards alternatively returning more opening dynamics.

Now they are forced off by anything and everything.

hm, I think, decreasing cost and build time is better than that. to 140~160 manpower.

so.

soviet engineer - high cost and long build time. but strong.

german pioneer - weak. but low cost and short build time.


It can control the balance.