State of balance - Thematic problems in CoH2

If you have problems with what I've said regarding smoke is not required to counter MGs, lets compare player cards then. I don't use smoke and I do perfectly fine.

BTW, I don't really play as much as I did, but I can tell you when I lose as USF, its not due to MGs or earlygame (I'd say my earlygame is the strongest part of my game in all factions) - its due to lategame mistakes I tend to make

No I have problems with logical fallacies and false analogies.

As to OKW units being overnerfed, which was indeed needed after its launch, I tend to agree as well. I also feel that a lot of units don't seem to have a certain thing they are good at apart from a few select group of units. Next to this, the faction shouldn't be fuel starved with the fuel penalty, but should see something like a 90% mp income in my opinion. This would suit its theme much better as a hard pressed army that had manpower shortages after 4 hard years of war and destruction. I also feel Sturmpioneers need some love too, they take so long to vet up and are a pain in the ass since they always tend to lose models so quickly before they reach vet 3 (which takes ages). They don't feel like assault troops at all, requiring vet 3 to get a grenade (stun grenade mind you), when ironically sturmpioneers were some of the best armed troops in the Wehrmacht and all had grenades.

The Soviets are indeed in a good place and I don't want to see them removed from their good place that suits their theme so well. Yet I would like to see the AT grenade and the Molotov package to become one package. I think this would suit their core infantry better, since all the other factions either get a snare by teching to a single tier (panzerfaust on grens and panzershreck on volks) or getting vet (USF riflemen). (apart from UKF that is, which don't need it since their pak 40 clone comes around the same time as their sniper does, which can be a deterrent to light vehicles as well)

I don't remember what OKW was like at launch because I wasn't playing CoH2 then, but I was still playing OKW when Obers came with a MG34 on deploy. And I thought there was nothing wrong with OKW - you always need to make right decisions and you were heavily rewarded for unit preservation, as it should be.

You can make a case for it being starved of fuel penalty historically - the Germans were just as short on MP as they were fuel But MP Penalty would be interesting, although I do remember in Beta CoH2, the upkeep of units sometimes reduced your MP income to double digits if you were good at preserving units, so it felt like you were punished for keeping units alive - Its a very fine balance if you want a MP penalty.

Well, AT Grenade/Molotov - US didn't get that in VCoH, both were separate, but thats kind of a minor change/doesn't really affect anything/could be nice, could live without change. Doesn't hurt the theme at all, but yeah, Good posts!

No I have problems with logical fallacies and false analogies.

If you say that I have made logical fallacies and false analogies, then point them out instead of

Guy said a) so I'll ignore thread because he said a).

Not really good if you want a mature discussion.

If you say that I have made logical fallacies and false analogies, then point them out instead of

Guy said a) so I'll ignore thread because he said a).

Not really good if you want a mature discussion.

Saying USF doesn't need smoke because vcoh americans didn't need smoke is ridiculous. Coh2 Americans are completely different then vCOH americans.

This is the last post I waste on you.

This is the last post I waste on you.

Well, I made my comments about it, whether you decide to accept it or not is up to you.

This is really childish of you in a sane thread, but w/e its the internet, do w/e you want.

Whenever I face USF as OKW, it feels like I have been strapped down into a mental hospital wheelchair, with legs that can't reach the floor to move myself forward and a nurse is trying to move the wheelchair backwards whilst I have to race a formula one car for a best of three laps.

It feels handicapped from the start.

Whenever I face USF as OKW, it feels like I have been strapped down into a mental hospital wheelchair, with legs that can't reach the floor to move myself forward and a nurse is trying to move the wheelchair backwards whilst I have to race a formula one car for a best of three laps.

It feels handicapped from the start.

Its a problem for OKW yeah, it feels just gimped in general, USF is just really strong, which is fine, but OKW has simply been nerfed to oblivion, directly or indirectly.

I think rifle smoke would be a lot better if it had same range and AoE as shock smoke. Not the way it blocks LoS in a huge line and has super long range.

At the moment, I feel that CoH2 has some serious thematic problems that are exasperated by “balance” which at the moment, is focused on single units and stats of the unit being built rather than its relation to the rest of the faction and the underlying theme that the faction gives – that and a large amount of design flaws in certain factions (ie UKF) that make this game simply not as satisfying as VCoH ever was.

So, lets start with the themes of factions on initial release (not withstanding broken shit)

Soviets – Strong earlygame, very good assault units earlygame, had a choice between teching to either a generalist tank line or a Fire support line.

Ostheer – Defensive earlygame faction , not as good at taking ground but compensates for that with endgame combined arms strength

OKW – Strong Earlygame and lategame faction, specialist faction where units only excel at one certain thing and thats it, has 5 levels of vet so if you keep your units alive, you will be rewarded.

USF – Strong Earlygame and midgame faction – offensive faction with a lot of mobility and firepower through mainline infantry, lategame strength comes from numbers rather than individual units.

UKF – Defensive Earlygame and strong lategame faction – has very strong, expensive infantry that are very good for defending territory but not so good for attacking. Excellent tank options though
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Based on this, lets see where we currently are.

OKW – completely gimped – their veterancy, even up to vet 5, scales really badly with allies, esp USF and UKF, and a lot of their specialists units, although they required nerfs from release, have been simply overnerfed. That and with the power creep that resulted from commanders like Heavy Cavalry and factions like UKF, means that their specialist units are all of a sudden not as good anymore. That and, with gimped resource production, OKW now find themselves inferior to all allied factions at all stages of the game, which completely goes against the faction design of OKW. I’m perfectly fine with 5 levels of vet – its hard to earn, but if you earn it, then you should be rewarded. – TLDR – OKW is completely broken now Themewise.

USF – Rifles are finally strong now, and no longer as strong as RE, but frankly, their earlygame is waaay too strong now. One ability that really should not be in the game is smoke – Rifles are the strongest main line offensive infantry in the game and they can be spammed from T0 – why they need an ability like Smoke is beyond me. I mean Conscripts do perfectly fine without smoke against MGs if you flank, and the VCoH US did perfectly fine without abilities like smoke against MGs and Wehr, so I don’t understand why such a strong unit needs an ability like smoke. This causes problems for the Wehr theme which I’ll get to in a minute.

UKF – Absolutely the most design and theme-breaking faction in the game. We’ll start from release. For instance, there is no reason as to why such a defensive faction in the game needs an AT sniper – which I thought was a silly inclusion by Relic. Because of its ability to damage vehicles, there are no real hard counters to the AT sniper. Especially considering that the AT sniper is in the same tier as the ATG that comes reasonably early as well – I don’t see why the sniper should be able to damage tanks. Moreover, I don’t even understand why the Brits have a sniper unit. In VCoH, the Brits could put a scoped rifle in their Tommie squad, which was perfectly fine as it costed muni and had less range than the Wehr sniper, so you couldn’t go around and pop units anywhere without really thinking.

Now I mention the Tommie squad, Relic what was up with the -10% decrease in MP, making them cost less MP per model than a Gren? Considering that the Brits are a defensive faction, this change really was not needed. It now gives the brits a lot of offensive options now esp against Wehr with field heal and everything since Wehr would now be bled per model instead of Brits, especially when Brit infantry is in cover. That coupled with the most cost effective assault engineer unit in the game turns the brits into what was a defensive faction into a viable offensive faction which pretty much hurts not only the British but also the Ostheer and OKW themes as well.

Finally, since due to the nature of CoH2 and most maps, its impossible to deny the British fuel, and now with the buff to british offensive ability, means that the Brits overall will tech a lot faster that Ost (and OKW) with better tanks. I’m perfectly fine with Brits having good tanks, thats part of their design, but instead of toning down British aggression in the early game, it has been ramped up significantly as we can see from the last patch.

Because of this, Ost has been left in the dust – typically (except against Brits) Ost tends to have a good way of defending itself while being outnumbered, which I’m perfectly fine with. But it has a harder time taking map control. In VCoH, the thing that made it interesting when US were able to take a good amount of vet control was universal vet that Wehr was able to buy that allowed them to have the midgame-endgame strength. This doesn’t happen in CoH2, and with power creep thats been going on, means that Ost no longer has the offensive endgame material that has been a core part of its faction design to win.

At the moment, the only faction in a good place currently is the Soviets. Its mostly remained to its faction themes and is competitive throughout the game with many viable compositions available – except for the SU-76 which, rather than being a glass cannon TD, should be looked at more as a midgame unit with decent AT and decent barrage instead of really good SU-85 levels of TD and completely gimped barrage – I feel leaving the SU-76 in its current state while switching it from T4 when it had to compete with the Su-85 to T3 lazy balancing. This isn’t a theme issue so much as it is a historical issue – its silly for SU-76s to penn KTs.

TLDR: Relic, stop listening to community about individual buffs/nerfs of certain units because of balance and instead, pay attention to themes of factions/historical authenticity that you’re promoting in your advertisments, yet so badly ignore and neglect in your faction design and balance patches.

Good post, and I agree that the Soviets are in a good place right now. maybe better than USF! As USF you have the blobbing way or the highway. As soviet, you have more options and solutions to everything without being handicaped because your infantry sucks (as in ostheer's case, which if would have a good back bone - balanced grenadiers - would be as best as soviets).

Yeah believe it or not, I play full conscripts into Tier 3

It is easy to believe. I watched the replay a year ago, one of the top players. For the whole game he use 2 units type: conscripts and T-34-85. It was disgusting.

Great OP, fully agree.

Soviet are much better thematically now than earlier, what I would like to see is: nerf to su76 pen, to make it more fire support than AT and make su85 viable, maybe buff pen for SU85 a small bit too. Make both T34/76 and T34/85 a tad cheaper in manpower, they should be a vital part be the soviet force IMO. Penals could use some improvement, but dont want to see flamerspam.

Though I think Otheer is in a good spot thematically too. Maybe MG42 is a bit easy too counter and maybe 222 could use a small armour buff, otherwise fine IMO.

For USF I would like to see more use of for example 50cal, it aint bad, but rifles are a bit too good at vet3 at the moment, would it be enough to nerf the recieved accuracy of riflemen at vet? Tier2 could use some buffs, what about increased range for 50cal? Would be interesting to see it used as a support weapon from the back. I also think the buff to sherman pen was unneccesary, the AI is great, and does not make sense for it to be better at AT than a long barreled Panther 4. USF has great tank destroyers for AT, in line with the US doctrine at the time. The 57mm AT-gun could use a small buff to make it viable instead of this buff to sherman pen.

UKF: tommies are IMO too cheap to reinforce at the moment, but this change was to limit the heavy manpowerbleed they had. Would 30 mp make any difference? I dont know, but it would somehow make me feel better than being cheaper to reinforce than grens. Absolutely can not stand the cheap reinforcementcost of vetted heavy engineers, 15mp wtf, need another vetbonus instead. Bith IS and sappers have 0.8 recieved accuracy standard, this is in line with other factions elite infantry and a bit too good. Either cheap to reinforce or elitelevel recieved vet, now they have the cake and eats it too, something I see all over the UKF faction.

6 pounder is a bit too strong, is the 150% accuracy really present? If so please remove, otherwise a small cost increase could be in place. Vickers is in a good place, they need something early game for defense, could use nerf to damage and buff to supression to make it more of a defensive weapon. Not sure what to do about emplacements but would like to see them being viable.

Somehing I never see is the base artillery used for UKF, this need to be buffed somehow, the same stands for Sexton which needs a buff for sure. UKF should have good artillery, instead of cheap infantry.

OKW: actually dont know what to do here, what about buffing volks AI damage, especially long range, while increasing their cost, if they werent so cheap to reinforce, blobbing up and charging with panzershreck, taking losses but reinforcing, finse and repeat, would not be viable. Sturmpioneers could use some grenade, imo they should definitely have the flamegrenande from the get go, while leaving the volks with normal nade, makes so much more sense thematically. Kubel is a problem, because it aint viable after the few first minutes. MG34 instead would solve quite some problems, but I understand if Relic wants to keep the kubel. In that case we need some changes ro the behavior, make it setup like a MG, so it does not lose supression by rotating/moving suddenly.

FINALLY: nerf all flamer units damage to units in green and yellow cover, no need to counter units behind cover. Better to buff bonus to units in garrison, this is where flamers should shine. Not as a universal weapon to charge static mg-positions. This is imo the biggest problem in the game at the moment, long range units are totally negated by charging flamer blobs, and have to retreat.

PS: Riflemen smoke is too good against mg42 totally negating it, would an increased ammocost to use, be a good nerf?

UKF doesn't feel like UKF without their manpower bleed. What differentiates them to USF besides the fact they have better late game armor and support weapons then?

UKF doesn't feel like UKF without their manpower bleed. What differentiates them to USF besides the fact they have better late game armor and support weapons then?

I agree, but earlier they had huge difficulties with osttruppen and snipers, did the change to reinforcementcost fix this or was it something else?

I agree, but earlier they had huge difficulties with osttruppen and snipers, did the change to reinforcement cost fix this or was it something else?

Ostruppen and snipers still counter brits hard early game. What really helped UKF was that the ost snipers fire rate and camo recloak times got nerfed. So it was a lot easier to counter snipe and he wouldn't be picking off inf section models every 2-3 seconds with the potential wipe on one member squads with his incendiary round.

The reinforcement cost just made it more viable to not go double snipers with UKF and instead get more than 2 infantry sections for infantry going.

Ostruppen and snipers still counter brits hard early game. What really helped UKF was that the ost snipers fire rate and camo recloak times got nerfed. So it was a lot easier to counter snipe and he wouldn't be picking off inf section models every 2-3 seconds with the potential wipe on one member squads with his incendiary round.

The reinforcement cost just made it more viable to not go double snipers with UKF and instead get more than 2 infantry sections for infantry going.

Okey I understand, well it is a good thing that not every game boils down to sniper vs sniper anymore if that is the case. I for one am quite fine with UKF being pushed back in the early game, as long as they have the tools to recover.

Maybe increase IS reinforce cost to around 30mp to help OH early games. The biggest offense I have with the UKF is that their unit performance is so varied: you got amazing units like IS, Vickers, 6-pounder, AT sniper while you also got shit like UC, AEC, AT IS (PTRS Cons are better than them in very way), also nobody use base arty like ever and Royal Arty is crap, like NKVD-crap.

Maybe increase IS reinforce cost to around 30mp to help OH early games. The biggest offense I have with the UKF is that their unit performance is so varied: you got amazing units like IS, Vickers, 6-pounder, AT sniper while you also got shit like UC, AEC, AT IS (PTRS Cons are better than them in very way), also nobody use base arty like ever and Royal Arty is crap, like NKVD-crap.

UC seems okey to me, especially with flamer, MG could use a cost decrease and/or performance increase. Never even seen base artillery used.

UC is only used for flamer / Command Vehicle buff, anything else it is pure crap.

FTR, I had a big problem with Ostruppen doctrine on release In a game with specialised infantry vs cheaper infantry, all of a sudden, the specialised infantry side got cheap spammable infantry that was even more spammable at the time than Conscripts....

They've kinda sorta fixed it but really... it pales compared to other problems.

Good post, and I agree that the Soviets are in a good place right now. maybe better than USF! As USF you have the blobbing way or the highway. As soviet, you have more options and solutions to everything without being handicaped because your infantry sucks (as in ostheer's case, which if would have a good back bone - balanced grenadiers - would be as best as soviets).

The matchup in the best spot currently is Ost vs Soviets, thematically both sides aren't too broken against each other so you still have a good quality, balanced challenging game from it.

Ironically the thing that relic changes the least recently is most balanced

It is easy to believe. I watched the replay a year ago, one of the top players. For the whole game he use 2 units type: conscripts and T-34-85. It was disgusting.

I wouldn't say conscripts -> T3/armour is bad because conscripts aren't that strong, esp against Gren MG34 or Pzgren, Cons have always been very squishy units so I'm perfectly fine with it - you legitimately need skill to play.

Not uber stronk rifle A-move and smoke, esp when rifles have BARs and Rifle Company free vet - especially when its so easy to negate any crowd control effects thanks to smoke.

I think rifle smoke would be a lot better if it had same range and AoE as shock smoke. Not the way it blocks LoS in a huge line and has super long range.

I think another problem with rifle smoke I have is that the smoke ability is available on every single unit.... unlike soviets where its only on shock units (literally). If they moved smoke ability to LT and Captain, its still better than every infantry unit having an "I win" button against MGs, whats the point of building MGs in that case?

FTR, I had a big problem with Ostruppen doctrine on release In a game with specialised infantry vs cheaper infantry, all of a sudden, the specialised infantry side got cheap spammable infantry that was even more spammable at the time than Conscripts....

They've kinda sorta fixed it but really... it pales compared to other problems.



The matchup in the best spot currently is Ost vs Soviets, thematically both sides aren't too broken against each other so you still have a good quality, balanced challenging game from it.

Ironically the thing that relic changes the least recently is most balanced



I wouldn't say conscripts -> T3/armour is bad because conscripts aren't that strong, esp against Gren MG34 or Pzgren, Cons have always been very squishy units so I'm perfectly fine with it - you legitimately need skill to play.

Not uber stronk rifle A-move and smoke, esp when rifles have BARs and Rifle Company free vet - especially when its so easy to negate any crowd control effects thanks to smoke.



I think another problem with rifle smoke I have is that the smoke ability is available on every single unit.... unlike soviets where its only on shock units (literally). If they moved smoke ability to LT and Captain, its still better than every infantry unit having an "I win" button against MGs, whats the point of building MGs in that case?

k hold your horses there mate

not all USF units have smoke and they arent free(and dont kill your infantry)

also captain doesnt have smoke