Please call me out and add/dismiss any of my suggestions that you agree or disagree on, but please, lets not fanboy and only use a fair analysis.
A little about me if you don't know: I started as a USF player, and have now gone over to Brits. I have barely played axis online however so if some of my observations are incorrect then that's simply confirmation bias but I have watched enough live games and replays to get a good gist of the axis viewpoint.
My playercard is here: http://www.coh2.org/ladders/playercard/steamid/76561198121057184
You can also see how I play here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_FcMLa_cOYJ0NeGXRVgvFoMs0PUCLPbr
Now I have hopefully gained some acknowledgment, I present to you my 15 Suggestions to Balance COH2!
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1: Flames
A) Flame grenades are far too effective, rendering MG's in building pointless, even Mg's set up due to how fast the grenade kills vs the time to deconstruct and move from the position. The initial blast can and does kill models, reducing the health of the survivors and not long after, the entire squad is dead. The allied MG's simply don't suppress in time even if they are shooting at the same squad from the time it enters the cone to the time they get in grenade range, they always get to throw it, unless, you have more than 1 MG.
- Side note:
OKW received these grenades due to having 'no way' of clearing garrisons effectively despite having tech free grenades, LeIG, insane close quarter Pios and the likes, but lets look at each factions (base) anti garrison options:
OST - Flamers/Sniper/Mortars/Grenades/Flame HT
SU - Flamers/Molotov/Sniper/Mortars
OKW - Flame Grenades/LeIG/Grenades
USF - Grenades
UKF - Grenades/Sniper/(static)Mortar Pit/UC Wasp
So why did OKW require the Flame Grenades and not the USF?
B) Both the crock and the OST halftrack murder squads in buildings with no time to react at all, sure call it punishment for not watching that squad, but engagements happen across the whole map, the second a unit shouts or you spot an enemy on the mini map you should be able to react in time. This just isn't the case against these vehicles, and far too often, they wipe on retreat.
Solution - Give all flames 0 damage which then increases over time to the maximum value at the spot of the fire, that way it still acts as a anti garrison/position weapon but allows the player time to react. Next, remove the blast from the OKW flame grenade (unsure if the Molotov does the same, same applies if so) so it has an actual difference for use, as currently, it blows up, kills enemies, then, continues to kill enemies if they don't move... Why would you use a normal grenade instead?
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2: Stun Grenade
I'm perfectly fine with this grenade as a pure stun weapon, rendering all models unable to react until the timer ends, however, on multiple occasions the grenade itself has wiped entire squads or the majority of models within it.
Solution - Remove the damage inflicted by the grenade.
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3: OKW Flak HT
Through natural progression OKW get a building that can cut off whole sections of the map, it can wipe infantry and damage vehicles, but worst of all, it shoots down all abilities that use planes.
Using Recon against OKW is pointless, calling in gliders is risky, using any form of plane attack that circles the area, again, pointless.
Solution - Give the building two settings AA or AI that the user has to cycle between with each variant having a cool down so they can't just switch immediately. Only removing the pen on vehicles if the same applies to the Bofors.
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4: OKW Base defenses
Have you ever been in the situation where an Luchs has managed to get into your base and ran around killing infantry/structures? Ever tried doing the same with an AEC or even a Cromwell/Sherman? Doesn't work does it.
The pen on the base guns is just too high on vehicles, countless times I've chased a low health panther with one shot needed to finish it off, only to be killed by base defenses.
Solution - Remove the chance to pen vehicles, keep the AI but completely remove vehicle damage.
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5: Axis off maps
The majority if not all of the axis off maps can be targeted inside the enemies base, yet, the allies are restricted to be able to activate anywhere inside the base perimeter.
Solution - Don't let it target inside base sectors the same as allies cannot (least the Brits can't) or, let the allies target inside the base, it's simple really.
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6: LeIG
Arguably the best doctrine free indirect fire in the game, (I would rate it that anyway) but it has 1 problem, 1 major problem and that is it's accuracy at/and range.
If you play as UKF you will know where I am coming from, whenever you play against OKW its 99% of the time pointless to create emplacements. The leIG out ranges each of them by quite a distance and its chance to damage the emplacement is around 60-70% (Confirmation bias?). Build 2 LeIG's and place them next to the medic/AA truck and you never have to even get close to the emplacements to kill it.
Against any other faction the mortar range is roughly the same along with the Bofors garrison ability, allowing a proper defense of the emplacement from indirect fire. As it stands the LeIG has just too great a range and too great an accuracy at said range.
Solution - Reduce the accuracy of the LeIG dramatically at range or simply, bring the range in line with other mortars.
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7: Bofors Garrison Ability
Currently it is possible to switch from the Bofors normal firing stance, to the garrisoned ability, and back to the normal stance without any punishment for doing so other than a cool down for the ability.
Solution - Give the gun a longer setup/deconstruct time for activating or deactivating the ability, that way, just like brace, the axis can bait the bofors into firing its ability and then attack it during the setup period.
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8: Rocket Artillery Units
Ignoring doctrine ones here as we are all aware of the problems with the Sexton, Priest and CalliOPe the damage and accuracy of the Katyusha when compared with the Axis variants is, well, incomparable.
Pointless History Lesson - The Katyusha just like the Panzerwerfer were inaccurate but with the amount of rockets fired, it would devastate the area it was firing at, so much so the Germans and Ruskies feared the weapons. The Katyusha had greater mobility and despite the Panzerwerfer having tracks it had worse mobility due to constant mecahnical problems.
The Panzerwerfer does just the above, it scatters a large area and nothing, and I mean nothing (well talking infantry/team weapons) can or will survive the attack no matter if they are garrisoned or not, if by a miracle a unit does survive it gets pinned anyway, so a retreat of the area is inevitable.
The Stuka is another story completely, Creeping Barrage was removed (?) from the Katy because it was 'Too effective' yet here is a vehicle that does just that and better.
The Katyusha , as it stands it's just pointless to use, its accuracy is horrible, its damage is minimal and to top it all off, it doesn't even pin.
Both axis variants are guaranteed wipes if the infantry doesn't move, the Katy is a dice roll if it will even kill a single model.
Solution - All Rocket Artillery should serve as a 'Get out of this area' weapon so with that said:
- Reduce damage of all rocket strikes o eliminate the chance of an instant squad wipe with one rocket
- Stuka: Slightly increase the time it takes for the rockets to land along with a reduction of the blast radius. Currently it's accuracy is perfect and it's damage is extremely high, where is it's downside?
- Panzerwerfer: Remove pin/suppression, reduce damage, and greatly reduce accuracy the further away from the target area it is.
- Katyusha: Reduce base scatter to bring it in line with the axis counterpart, reduce accuracy the further away from the target area it is, and increase the number of rockets fired in each salvo by 2.
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9: OKW Base Trucks
Ever found an OKW truck sitting in the open unguarded and started to chase it? You get it down to around half health until it escapes or you are forced away, as you return to the area quickly after you find the truck setup with full health, untouched from the damage you caused to the truck.
Solution - Just as the trucks can be damaged during setup and that is then applied to the building, do the same for the truck and apply any damage caused by it to transfer to the building/setup stage.
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10: AT Squad upgrades
Early vehicles is something relic tried to achieve by delaying tank tech via cost and CP's, however, without even touching infantry/AT weapons the desired affect hasn't been achieved and early vehicles are often skipped by allies in favor of a 'fast' Sherman/Cromwell.
Mainly, we have to look at what causes this skip, I mean, if you have access to an AAHT, Stuart, AEC, M20, 222, HT etc, why would you not use these vehicles to your advantage in the majority of your games?
The answer is Panzerschreck and to some extent, Panzerfaust.
The former comes early, has good range, great damage, decent accuracy, good ROF can be fired at infantry and kill models, the latter comes early and will, for the majority of time, apply an engine crit on the light/medium it hits. If you play as UKF and build a UC the chances are it will receive an engine critical before the engineers are even unlocked.
Now ask yourself this, and be honest, when was the last time you played against OKW and saw a Raketenwerfer? Stop lying! That's better, you rarely see them because Panzerschreck's are so effective, more mobile and can fight off infantry just as well as they can tanks. Can you blame an OKW player for this? Not at all, I hate having to build AT guns instead of an infantry squad but I have no choice.
This loses map presence and more than one is required to kill or scare off a vehicle controlled by someone who knows how to BLOODY CIRCLE STRAFE! *Ahem* Sorry, Luchs nightmares.
So on one hand we have a faction that needs to build a dedicated AT unit, whilst the others build base units and no need for any AT dedicated weapons or side techs to allow the ability.
Now, how often do you see Piats? It's hit and miss isn't it but how often do you see every/90% of the enemy with them? Now ask yourself why and then we have the solution:
1: They are difficult to hit a moving (or even static at times) target
2: Require a side tech
2: They reduce the damage output of the squad considerably which near forces the bolster squad upgrade to maintain fighting infantry effectively.
Solution - For ALL infantry AT weapons*
- Reduce the damage against vehicles
- Reduce the ROF
- Reduce the accuracy at range
- Remove the ability to fire them at infantry
- Add a switch ability to 'put away' or 'bring back' the weapons (controversial as some may see the choice to equip AT and the reduction in AI power to be cause and effect)
- Add cost for the tech
*Well, maybe not the piat, that's bad enough as it is, ha.
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11: Scavange
I don't like this ability at all, fair enough OKW can't build caches so they can salvage to counter this imbalance so I let my hatred slide for this ability, until...
My team weapons disappear and the OKW player receives fuel for the privilege. Fuel? For an AT gun that doesn't cost fuel? Not only that but it gets salvaged so quickly, losing a team weapon actually means losing a team weapon against OKW.
Solution - Increase fuel from salvaged vehicles and remove the ability to salvage team weapons.
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12: Kubel
The bane of any allied player, don't get me wrong, the change has really made the vehicle useful now and in some way took a lot of strain off allies players with the suppression it gives but for the love of God it's worse than ever.
The result of it being able to cap is an instant swarm of infantry at 'your part' of the map, pushing you off as the kubel back caps.
Solution - Bring back the Kubels suppression but bring it in line with the Vickers suppression rate, not the MG42 as OKW lack doctrine free MG's and change the Kubels capping ability to de-capping only.
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13: King Tiger
This one out of the whole list is one that is potentially the most personal and not one that is in favor of balance, this though is up to you to disagree or agree with me
The KT is one of two things: It's either a last ditch attempt or a way to guarantee victory, the only requirement to purchase the KT is to have built all three base buildings, that's built, past tense.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to require all 3 buildings to be alive and well before it can be produced?
This creates two scenarios, one where the allies rush to kill a truck and the other where the OKW player doesn't push so far with the trucks due to the want for a KT to be built. After all there is nothing more frustrating than leading the game, destroying the AA building and then facing the KT as a consequence.
It results in a mindset of "I will place this here to defend/deny this area, if it dies I can always save time, manpower and fuel by just buying the KT until that then gives me enough of an advantage to rebuild it" etc.
Solution - Require all three buildings to be up and active for the KT to be built
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14: UKF Heavies
UKF can build as many Churchill's as the population cap will let them whereas each other faction is limited to only one heavy on the field at a time.
Granted these heavies have a fairly awful main gun, but in bulk/mixed in with the 2 variants they can become difficult to counter and quickly overwhelm the opponent.
Solution - Limit to one Churchill on the field and increase the Health/Armour of the Churchill,
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15: Blobbing
Aaah this old chestnut, the pain for every player yet nothing has been done to punish it. We all have our methods but this is mine and I may be biased, but its a good one
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Theory:
These are the setup values:
- maxX = 500; (the timer)
- x = maxX;
- inarea = 0;(how many squads are in an area)
- reacc = 0; (received accuracy)
- rof = 0; (rate of fire)
Step inside the circle and X decreases, inarea increases by 1 and upon x reaching 0, reacc and rof are increased by the inarea number, then applied as a negative effect to each squad, x remains 0 until all squads separate, x then returns to maxX.
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With this method blobbing will both severely hurt your units in combat and in real time add or remove negative effects for players that simply fail to use proper unit positioning or a move everywhere.
It still allows for players to mass move an army together due to the debuff being removed once the squads space out from each others area but it brings back benefit to players that use the environment and positioning to their advantage.
Solution - Here is a lovely image demonstrating my solution:
(If its too small right click, open in new tab)
For now, this is all I can think of, I will add more if I see more but for now, I think 15 is enough and should generate a fair amount of discussion (hopefully) so we can push the game in the right direction.
TLDR; I hate OKW
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
