With the way things are currently going as we wait for GCS to chug along and waiting for the powers that be to grant us permission to begin work once again, the Balance Team has been doing some work on the side to try and work on certain issues and get them tested as we remain on stand-by.
Given that the main factions we want the others to follow are the EFA, we began working on them first and resolving their issues to see how it affects the rest of the game before we work on WFA and Brits.
Disclaimer: Relic does not support or hold the views of the changes. This is a side-project for the Unofficial Team.
Currently any balance mods that Mr. Smith, Miragefla or GGTheMachine are working on are not part of a planned or future balance patch for COH2. They are currently working on community balance mods out of their own interest and the changes in said mods are not intended for the live game (automatch).
When the time comes to work with the community on curated balance changes once again, there will be a clear distinction and communication coming from Relic around the initiative (i.e. the Winter Balance Preview).
Down below is a list of changes separated between Soviets and Ostheer.
EFA Patch Notes
The purpose of this mod is to do an overhaul of the EFA factions, fix unusable units/abilities, and discover interesting, non-abusive, ways to spice up the meta. Fixing the EFA factions will also help us gain a better insight as to what “EFA-level” really means.
Our ultimate goal is to grow this mod to the direction of including all 5 factions. However, in order to be able to establish a common base-line for all factions, we need something to compare them to.
Just a few things about ost from my humble opinion:
100 muni for stgs on stormtroopers is still a bit excessive, seeing as pgrens get them for free.
9 population is still too little for the stug g.
Pak43 is kinda cheap for what it is.
Stuka db still needs smoke, as the audio is ambiguous and can really easily be lost in a large battle and the ability is already insanely punishing to infantry even at the very edge of the blast radius (as in wipes them).
Looks pretty good, agree with most of the changes. Just one little thing, since the both the Anti-Inf and AT partisan are ultimately the same, expect the upgrade, do you think you could just merge them?
Looks pretty good, agree with most of the changes. Just one little thing, since the both the Anti-Inf and AT partisan are ultimately the same, expect the upgrade, do you think you could just merge them?
Then wouldn't partisan commander need a new ability? Also, I think there's like 1 other commander that gets at partisans for some reason, and normal partisans might not be intended. That would solve the nade cheese without having to put them on cooldown tho, since I'm assuming the appropriate nade would be locked behind the upgrade.
Good changes overall but I'm concerned by few things. The most important one is the amount of changes. I feel there is too many of them and the effect on the meta will be impossible to predict, even in testing.
Another thing is loiters. If I read correctly there is nothing here about stuka loiter. This ability should definitely be toned down - it is the stug/dshk level of OP.
As for soviet sturmovik loiter - every time I see it used it is really effective against infantry, often wiping squads on first run. Are you sure that the "deals 0 damage to infantry" bug is real?
1: Why would I want to lay a demo when a mine will suppress and take 2 models for 30 muni without me having to stay vigilant?
2: If mark target is disabled once the plane is shot down, I think this may become useless verses OKW.
3: Most outstanding point is the increase damage of the panther. I agree it needs this against advance medium but look, anything that has the name heavy tank with 800 health to be 4 shot by a medium tank should not be called a heavy. 2 prime examples are the kv8 and the Pershing, especially the pershing.
Conscripts
Initial improvements (DPS)
Accuracy changed from 0.541/0.495/0.334 to 0.56805/0.495/0.4175
Vet3 RA bonus reduced from 0.6 to 0.65
Accuracy bonus added 1.15 with veterancy
It seems like this is inconsistent with later description... Possibly a typo?
Then wouldn't partisan commander need a new ability? Also, I think there's like 1 other commander that gets at partisans for some reason, and normal partisans might not be intended. That would solve the nade cheese without having to put them on cooldown tho, since I'm assuming the appropriate nade would be locked behind the upgrade.
It is easy to replaced an ability which could be something like booby trap or pmd 6 mines to help partisans with there role of a harasser.
The other doctrine with partisan tank hunters are the Soviet Reserve Army. It use to be Soviet Irregulars, which they were crap. Additional options would not really be a bad thing like having a SMG upgrade. There is already Conscript SMGs in that doctrine also.
Can you explain how making the Pwerfer fire faster make it less punishing for the defender? Removing suppression doesn't make that much difference since all the rockets land at the same time anyways. I thought the suppression was a good way of using it as a an anti blob counter for the Wehrmacht which they definitely needed.
For the most part this looks really good, especially cons and Ost T4 viability. My only real concern is how useless Soviet Mark Target is about to be versus OKW. Maybe attach the ability with a global cooldown to Cons, Snipers and T70s instead?
Also, why the "soft" fix to the call-in meta rather than hard-locking the units to tech? Is it to retain a comeback mechanic if you really, really need a certain unit?
Can you explain how making the Pwerfer fire faster make it less punishing for the defender? Removing suppression doesn't make that much difference since all the rockets land at the same time anyways. I thought the suppression was a good way of using it as a an anti blob counter for the Wehrmacht which they definitely needed.
Yeah that does seem odd. Although even when troops were moved, if they just got barely nicked by like 1 rocket the squad would get suppressed.
For the most part this looks really good, especially cons and Ost T4 viability. My only real concern is how useless Soviet Mark Target is about to be versus OKW. Maybe attach the ability with a global cooldown to Cons, Snipers and T70s instead?
Also, why the "soft" fix to the call-in meta rather than hard-locking the units to tech? Is it to retain a comeback mechanic if you really, really need a certain unit?
Yeah the sturmoviks do tend to get shot down pretty easily by the okw flakhq.
Looking over this list there are many good things that look like they would be alright. However there are many changes that I immediately have issues with, so I will mention them.
Callins. I completely agree they need to be addressed, in my opinion in a perfect world all callins should be tied to tech. That being said, if its suggested that EFA would see some sort of callin restructuring it would a complete disaster to not fix ALL other factions callins as well. Having to tech for my tiger or having to pay more resources while a usf player could still call in a pershing would be nuts. If callins are reworked they all need to be done at the same time.
Vet 1. Simply put I don't agree with changing vet1 abilities on EFA. I understand that having med kits at vet1 or flares is not ideal in many cases, however one of best aspects of EFA is the consistency. EFA in my opinion are by far the best designed factions, messing around with there consistent nature seems like the wrong road to go down.
pak 40. Nerfing twp seems like a horrible choice. IF there is an issue you could make the point that it's ability should see a dam decrease. Removing the stun is vastly decreasing the paks lethality, while at the same time reducing ost ability as a defensive faction. Twp adjustments were needed for units that had mobility, but I cannot understate enough how much i disagree with a pak 40 stun removal. I have no issues with pak 40 stun, yes it is extremely powerful but given it comes from solely at platform that has no other utility its fine.
Stug twp. I can say that I just don't understand why twp has gone down the road to apply a blind effect. If the are issues with twp being to strong I would far rather see a dam reduction rather than a switch to blind. Blind is gimmicky and boring while turret lock offered the option of promoting micro by manually rotating the chassis to the main gun could still fire. It also goes without saying that blind is also frankly an immersion breaker for me. It makes no logical sense to me, while twp that locks turret does. On smaller armour blind works for me but on med armour? Really?
ost tech. i think everyone agrees that ost t4 needs to be addressed HOWEVER, making t3 cost nothing is not the way to go. Ost teching is by far the best designed tech in the game. The ability to skip building tiers while still having to pay for research leads to by far the most fluid and diverse strats. t4 needs to be addressed but messing with the tech structure of ost itself would be a tragedy.
ost panther. the panther does need a rework, badly. I don't want to see a vet rework though ie 2 and 3 swapped. One of the best aspects of EPA is the consistency they offer. ost armour get skirts at vet 2 thats how it works, don't mess with this, more randomization is not good there are many other ways to rework the panther.
elephant. Why on earth are we messing with this unit to make it less of an at specialist? I get that it doesn't have a lot of 1v1 draw but tweaking it to make it somehow have utillty with and he barrage would be silly. tbh I don't see why this is being messed with right not. not when tommies still cost less than grens to reinforce.
ziz barrage. 35 mu barrage is just asking to get spammed even more so with dam increase.
maxim. can we just see the maxim returned to pervious live patch but retain the set up break down times? the unit was supposed to be good vs single squads hence the small ark. now its just in a weird place. for real just change it back.
again many good things, but these stand out is badly out of place.to be completely honest I don't feel like the road the balance team is going down is the most beneficial for coh2. At this point we should be addressing balance issues rather than looking for large scale restructuring of factions. example: proposed partisan fix would solve the issue of cheesey partizan snares but why not just make all infiltration units spawn with nade cooldown? cheesy wipes and snares across game fixed, easy, less work. I appreciate the amount of thought and work you guys put into the game but I feel that we should be looking for simple fixs that help iron out the game rather than large reworks. I think the community would rather see a balanced game rather than a massive rework of all the factions. given that coh2 is almost 5 years old realistically simple solutions seem to be the best in my mind.
Can you explain your changes to the elephant? You nerfed it's dmg and "increased its AI and AT utility". So you added the armor detection to it which seems fair, but what exactly is the HE barrage? Is it a toggle between the AP and HE rounds like ISU? And how will this change its performance against heavy tanks? Will it require extra shots to take down heavies? It already misses very often against medium tanks to begin with.
I think the dmg nerf should've come with a ROF buff and or accuracy buff to attain its role as a heavy tank destroyer. Adding AI to a heavy tank destroyer seems way out of place.
Another option to decrease it's performance against medium tanks is to decrease it's accuracy so it still effectively deals with the higher target sized heavies but is less reliable vs mediums.
Overall I don't think the changes to the elephant are fair.
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