- Localize the exact spot where the dive bomb is about to hit
- Have enough time to move your units outside the AoE, once you know where it will hit
- But never both
(if you get the precise spot wrong, you WILL die. Even if you press retreat immediately, you WILL die if the path goes through the AoE)
Stuka Dive Bomb should either:
- Retain the flavor (no flare warnings)
- Or the devastation effect
- But not both
TL;DR: Just copy what Miragefla did in his mod. pls
In a game that promotes squad preservation, etc, the Stuka Dive Bomb has an unacceptably large AoE effect. This is also considering that:
- It comes extremely cheap at 160 Munitions
- The cooldown is only 50 seconds
- Comes with no visible flare, which should warn the player which direction he should be running to
- (It is still possible to use the ability in the base sector )
Stuka Dive Bomb insta-gibs everything on an radius of 15 meters
(by comparison, the Sturmtiger AoE radius is 8 meters. Thus, the area of the Stuka Dive Bomb is 3.5 times bigger)
To give you a demonstration of how big this AoE looks like:
^ You can see the tiny little aiming reticle in the middle of this Pro-blob
^ Note:
1. The humongous area of devastation
2. The fact that the surviving members took no damage
3. None of the bodies right in the middle of the AoE got gibbed (instead of all the remote ones)
Why?
The answer is that the AoE of the stuka dive bomb applies an insta-death critical to all affected squad members (regardless of how much damage they took).
The Stuka-Dive Ninja-buff has increased the killing area by at least 5 times (for no reason)
If we look at the stats over at http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/stuka_500_lb_bomb_mp we can conclude that:
- The ninja-buff MUST have added the insta-gib death critical (the radius of the pre-buff and the post-buff Stuka are identical, but the performance is nowhere the same)
- The one-hit-kill radius must have been AT MOST 6.5
Thus, the ninja-buff increased the killing radius from 6.5 to 15 (that's an area).
If the Stuka Dive Bomb wasn't UP before, and nobody ever asked for a buff, why did it merit a 5-times increase of the killing area?
How does the AoE look like in Miragefla's mod?
(Miragefla also reduced the AoE radius slightly)
Here:
^ You can see that:
- The dive-bomb still packs a lot of punch, if ignored.
- It is, now, possible to dodge in a combat situation, like other, more expensive artillery
- The dive bomb deals damage evenly, on all affected units, according to their radius from the explosion
The one-hit kill radius in Miragefla's mod is around 9.5. This is already bigger than the pre-ninja Stuka-Dive bomb (which was at most 7.5)
How does Stuka Dive Bomb compare to UKF Air Superiority
Assuming you go afk for the 30 seconds, and most obvious telegraphed ability, here are the before and after pics of Air Superiority.
Before:
After:
^ Yes, zooming-out can be a bit deceiving here. Sorry for that.
Now, compare these pics to the current Stuka Dive performance, and recall:
- Stuka Dive costs 160 munitions
- Stuka Dive only affords 5 seconds of warning time
- No warning cycle is painted on the minimap
- You can still retreat while you are being bombarded with the Bombing Run
- Stuka Bomb: one hit, and you're out
"You want to make weak Ostheer even weaker? That's just lame."
If your main concern is the 1v1 performance of Ostheer:
- The last time I checked Stuka Dive Bomb doctrines were out-of-meta in 1v1. Thus any change to that ability will not affect "competitiveness" in this mode.
- The main arguments around Ostheer weaknesses in 1v1 have to do with the early game. Stuka Dive Bomb is a late-game ability. Again, no effect.
- If you believe that OST REALLY needs to crutch on Stuka Dive Bomb to retain its 1v1 rating, wouldn't it be better to buff OST in ways other than are more consistent than an all-or-nothing gamble?
If you are concerned about anything other than 1v1:
- Then don't worry. Ostheer is consistently one of the best-performing factions in these modes (along with OKW and UKF) -- after 222 buffs and the VetBug fix; this is despite UKF cancerplay.