Relic Winter Balance Preview v1.3 Update

Just reverse the penal changes to what we have now.

Remove the flamer.

Now you have a mid-long range "rifle squad"

Fixed.

Still, a dedicated soviet tank hunter squad (4 men, 2 PTRS, mines+at nade) would be better than this blob promoter

i can literally feel the penal blobs crawling "the ring"-like out of my screen

FFS stop it, penals ptrs was never a good idea and yet you keep trying to make it real and the more you try the worse it gets.

Penals should be an AI unit. In Winter Patch they are simply not cost efficien in their AI role. They need an upgrade like dp28 to make them worth it. Cons should be the soft AT support infantry eitherway they will not play any role.

I don't need to try it though. What they're failing to understand is in COH, not every building needs to counter every other building. Not every unit needs to have 20 abilities and sub classes. If you go heavy T1 and you allow your opponent fuel to get a vehicle before you get AT you SHOULD be punished. Every tier is not a damn swiss army knife. This is not balancing this changing game mechanics to your personal taste.

The problem is T1 is a shit tier & penals suck but penal spam owns noobs so they are trying to rework penals & T1 within the limited scope that relic has permitted them. I've been saying for months that USSR lacks mid-late game elite inf, such as OKW obers & weh mg42 grens, so penals should fill that roll but Relic doesn't know how to move penals to the later stages of the game. Personally I think moving penals to later tiers and/or giving cons a weapon upgrade while leaving T1 as a useless tier is better than trying to make T1 better & balancing penals in T1.

USSR is a near perfect faction with their only weakness being elite inf, which is kinda filled by guards, so the focus should be more on nerfing the strong points, such as t-70, and buffing weh early game by making grens' early game better while their mid-late game weaker with mg42 upgrade nerf since grens outscale cons by a lot. (weh could probably use more buffs but the gren is the most needed one).

Just reverse the penal changes to what we have now.

Remove the flamer.

Now you have a mid-long range "rifle squad"

Fixed.

Do this please

i hate how most of the balance is just in such a small hand full of units.

Have you considered moving flamethrower package to t4 like ptrs.

Along with that. What do you think of T4 side tech that allows 45 muni dp28 for conscripts. To counteract this. Allow grens to equip g43s and lmg42s if grens decide to pick a g43 doctrine. Lock that to Ost t4 if you have to.

Why not just make PPSH a 60 fuel global conscript upgrade from HQ like vCOH BARs? Put Penals back to where they were pre-pwnage, and you're done. You got your midgame punch, you still got your tech cost if you do it, and everything is good.

Penals are still good for the ability to flush units out of buildings or destroy buildings outright with a satchel if you want.

All tiers having some form of soft AT has always been present. Introducing an AT option in soviet t1 is just bringing them up to par with the initial design. Albeit a bad initial design to have every tier be a swiss army knife since it reduces the importance of fuel and thus the importance of winning the actual fight for territory. But that's on relic and the balance team can't fix that given the scope they're allowed.

The changes are reasonable except the return of penal flamethrower with ppsh's. It's out of the scope of fixing the vehicle meta and just adds ppsh's on top of what we had before. Every soviet player is quiet right now cause they know how much flexibility it gives them. OKW do not have a viable suppression platform to deal with that and buffing it, while needed anyway, is not within Relic's scope for you to change. Keep the v1.2 penal

I completely agree. Unfortunately CoH2 is full of issues caused by changes in the initial design done very early in the game's lifespan. Guards and Shocks used to replace Penals (which, granted, would probably have its own set of problems), and if you look at early Soviet commanders it seems that the great majority of them were intended to have either of the elite infantry units available. Then people cried for greater commander ability diversity. Most (or all?) call-ins used to be built from tier structures. They changed that, and we had call-in meta for ages before they partially went back to that idea. A lot of the later problems the game had were due to this indecisive and possibly rushed early development, IMO.

...and a three second command delay that made it almost impossible to dodge Satchels. Oh beta. Oh release. Oh CoH2 for the 3 years afterward.

But you have to put yourself in the balance team's position. They've said multiple times that they are limited in what they can do, and are doing their best to leave the game with a large number of viable strategies, considering that this patch will come out in February (if not later), and God knows when the one after that will be.

Believe me I've tried. And I've tried time and time again to express the reality that because the scope is so limited, trying to rebalance the entire game (while also attempting to predict the metagame resulting from their own changes) is a ridiculous effort that will result in people getting caught up in sunk-cost fallacies of the proposed/their own changes. It also heavily reduces the odds the mod will be implemented in a favorable fashion to the live game.

I've been saying this since the MAY preview patch. It's what happened with the map contest, even. Getting feedback doesn't validate ideas as good, feedback is what helps determines whether an idea is good or bad.

I've spent hundreds of hours fiddling with CoH2 in mod tools and I completely understand how intoxicating it can be to be able to make changes to the game that you can really see and look at, and go "I did that." It feels great. (And for those changes to make it into the live game, or even just be in an 'official' mod? I can't imagine!) But man I have the humility to understand that my opinions aren't golden because I spent time on them. I used to push and argue for 5 man grenadier squads until I built a mod to test it. I quickly realized it wouldn't be healthy for the game. (I didn't test it as a T4 clone of UKF's Bolster though.) Same with the M42 AT gun being in T1 with a T70 gun.

I think the molotovs on Penals isn't necessarily bad at all, especially if they lose their flamethrower. But if they're getting PPSH + Flamer again, I don't see why they would get molotovs, and I REALLY don't get removing Oorah. Oorah is not Fired Up.

Why not just make PPSH a 60 fuel global conscript upgrade from HQ like vCOH BARs? Put Penals back to where they were pre-pwnage, and you're done. You got your midgame punch, you still got your tech cost if you do it, and everything is good.

Global upgrades in CoH2 2016? Ghad, if only.

Penals are still good for the ability to flush units out of buildings or destroy buildings outright with a satchel if you want.

Hey maybe they'd have to be unlocked through the T1 building. Maybe something like 80mp and 25 fuel wouldn't be too bad. Keep that AT functionality too.

Put Penals back to where they were pre-pwnage, and you're done.

Penals are still good for the ability to flush units out of buildings or destroy buildings outright with a satchel if you want.

Then we are back to the point where now one builds T1 unless they want to go non competitive meta on 2v2+. If you need to move units out of buildings you go T2 mortar or flamer on CE.
Someone said it before and i coincide. They are trying to fix T1 by just adjusting what they are permitted (Penals) and i think this will just generate problems on the long run when they try to revisit other things.


I do think this current implementation is a mess.
-OKW Flak HT: if the unit is good/god tier on it's own (specially on the scope of all LV been changed) i think it's fine to delay the unit but delayed only because it counters certain tier is not good
Following that train of thought I don't agree USF T1 is defenseless and i'm convinced that it's better to keep the current 3 SU T1 units AT-less (i'll prefer testing M42 with the CURRENT LIVE version than PTRS, keep the AT satchel)
-Adding molotovs back is pointless with flamer been brought back.

QUALITY OF LIFE
Retreat point de-congestion

Is there anything you have/can do about retreating squads for Brits sometimes going in front of the weapon racks Vs sometimes going behind them right next to T0?

The latter can cause serious frustration as they run past usual stopping points for retreating squads, taking longer to regain control of them for no real reason.

Also, I imagine this is the same for every faction but when 2 squads retreat to the same point and stand on top of each other, 1 squad will make it back and regain control, the other will stand there for a few seconds until a squad moves or a timer? runs down and you can then regain control.

Keep up the good work

seriously, this is ridiculous. USF LT Tier doesn't have any hard counters for vehicles. it's a risk/reward situation, as is the current SOV Tier 1.

I've stop read after this. Jesus christ, there should be an script which should deny posting in balance section if you are under top 100 in 1v1.

Still, a dedicated soviet tank hunter squad (4 men, 2 PTRS, mines+at nade) would be better than this blob promoter

i can literally feel the penal blobs crawling "the ring"-like out of my screen

Go play then, and show us replays of how overpowered Penal Blobs are. (They're not)

Regarding Winter mod:
I think there are problems in the direction on what they want Penals to be and specially the interpretation of what is the problem with the unit. I don't think it's bad for Penals on been a good AI unit, i think it's bad that you can spam them on live.


If I've to suggest something taking into account Preview v1.3 doesn't exist...

Penals:
-Popcap from 7 to 9
-Reinforce time from 5.4 to 5.9 Build time from 32 to 35 seconds
Penals shouldn't be your main infantry unit and if so, it should take a hit on the number n timing you can produce as well as map control early on

-Penal Veterancy 3 accuracy reverted from 1.3 to 1.15
-Penal Veterancy 3 received accuracy from 0.85 to 0.77
This is basically reverting the scaling change but nerfing only the extra accuracy Penals get at vet3. Since they vet requirements had been increased, i do think it's fine to get an extra 15% at vet3 to offset weapon upgrade/dps increase at that stage of the game

-Penals keep oorah at vet 2
-Flamer package cost increased to 75 munition. Includes 3 Conscript PPSH.
-Oorah and AT satchel is lost upon upgrading flamer package
The PPSH should had been included when they buff Penals to avoid the whole current situation of Rifle flamers 2.0. Oorah was added when vanilla Penals were still bad, so removing it when upgrading with PPSH flamer is a safety measure. This CCQ package should be a strategic option, not a must have.

Now the controversial. I don't think it's bad for T1 to be AT-less but if the design direction is to open up more possibilities with T1 and not hang as much with Guard/AT-sans commanders then...
Option 1:less intrusive
-Remove PTRS on Penals.
-AT satchel is unlocked after researching AT nades. AT nades name changed to AT package (more of this later).
Option 2: current model
-AT package tech unlocks PTRS n AT satchel. Once T3 is unlocked, possible option to buy a 3rd one.
Option 3: less likely to be implemented but IMO preferred to option 2
-AT package unlocks AT satchel and M42 to be built on T1

M42:
-At first, just test the live version with retreat.
-Change vet 1 tracking with camouflage + ambush bonus. When shooting out of camo, increase damage from 80 to 120 and pen to other AT guns level.
I don't think the current M42 is as bad as a stopgap unit IF it's on T1 as opposed to a commander option. Further changes could be tried later but for the moment, i think it would be fine as it is.


PD: i still hope that utility based changes can still be applied to either sniper or M3 scoutcar. I know i've suggest before things that require way more work but for now could something small like this be implemented?
-Sniper flare cost reduction and reveal of cloaked units
-M3 scoutcar lower vet requirements. Bonus: Removal of overdrive munition cost and improve loading troop time (simil to what has been done to HT).

The changes are reasonable except the return of penal flamethrower with ppsh's. It's out of the scope of fixing the vehicle meta and just adds ppsh's on top of what we had before. Every soviet player is quiet right now cause they know how much flexibility it gives them.

PPSH is definitely a downgrade of regular SVT Rifles, and they purposefully synergise poorly with Flamer which can't fire on the move. Penals also have less durability through vet scaling compared to Penals in Live. PPSH Penal Flamers are situational instead of a no-brainer complete upgrade like the previous Flamer Penal.

"Squads will halt their retreat within 10 yards from the OKW headquarters"

Zomg, been waiting *years* for this!

I think the whole "out of scope" is a big problem for this balance patch. If we are going to fix COH2's stale meta and early game, it can't be done by keeping some units out of scope. The conscript and penal designs have BOTH been factors in causing T1 to never be used, and I don't see soviet early game being fixed in any way without touching cons. Otherwise, we either get penals > cons in every way, or T1 still being shit.

Its just a side effect of cons having a lot of utility and penals being entirely AI focused.

I don't need to try it though. What they're failing to understand is in COH, not every building needs to counter every other building. Not every unit needs to have 20 abilities and sub classes. If you go heavy T1 and you allow your opponent fuel to get a vehicle before you get AT you SHOULD be punished. Every tier is not a damn swiss army knife. This is not balancing this changing game mechanics to your personal taste.

Absolutely agree. Adding more chaotic options to already chaotic mechanics is just a wrong way. Soviets r ok I don´t think they really need any AT option in T-1. They have plenty of AT options even with commanders and u just can´t ignore commader system in COH2. U can´t change something what cannot be changed. I though u guys r trying to balance the game not creating other scenarios like PTRS Penals and to be honest I don´t really think that relic will add even half of these changes in to their game.