The solution is clear
1) Either heed the GCS results and ask the tournament players how to balance the game. This forum might as well close down the balance section of the website because the thoughts of the lower 99% don't matter and hence if you wanna get good, watch the pros and copy their op build orders, cheese tactics, and game mechanic abuse they may be exploiting. There will be absolutely ZERO room for creativity. Play meta OR LOSE.
2) Or start supporting coh2chart.com again with updated winrate data and let everyone know how the average and above avg players are performing and base balance off of those results. GCS will be hosted merely for hype purposes.
If u don't want to hear my reasoning this is all u need to read. Otherwise, my rant is below.
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For example USF/UKF were underrepresented and performed badly. Ask the tournament players why that was. Ask why they were afraid of using those factions, why they're underpowered, which units to change, how to change them (just a point in the right direction is enough, the balance team could iron out the details.) They could've answered these questions in five minutes after the tournament. Didn't they all fly to Manchester to compete in the tournament?
Because now you have threads like the one accusing the flamer HT of being op because HelpingHans had the balls to build TWO of them. Tell me, have you seen a player in automatch that has the skills to micro 2 of the hands-down hardest to micro 5min lights in the game plus a lot of squishy ostruppen? It's good to see that some people realize that just because a unit was used to great effect in the tournament doesn't mean it's op. If you have any experience with the flame HT, you'd know that attack move and selecting a unit to attack doesn't work as the brakes on the HT are quite poor and when the HT start spewing flames, it's already in snare range. It's the only light vehicle that doesn't stop at max range with an attack move or select attack. This unit was already nerfed THREE TIMES and apparently that's still not enough for some. And of course there are more of nerf axis threads that nerf the wrong units.
It seems the standards for nerfing and buffing are quite different when it comes to axis and allied factions. It seems that the suggestions regarding axis factions fall on deaf ears many of the times. For example, stormtroopers, despite the polls showing the majority of players wish to keep the stg upgrade as an option, the bal team have decided to ignore the poll and as if the mp40 nerf wasn't harsh enough, we're going to force you to upgrade for them while commandos get them immediately. I wouldn't be against this kind of authoritarianism from top 100 bal team members if it was CONSISTENT. Meanwhile a patch or two back one or two scrubs on the forum didn't know how to deal with Tiger Ace and KT and bam! both units get hit with a nerf bat. Why couldn't the balance team just ignore them like they ignored the stormtrooper poll? I recall there wasn't even that many people complaining about the prenerfed TA and KT. Not surprisingly, this patch is rebuffing the KT because it is clear the bal team overnerfed it. And of course while the balance team is busy slapping on "mark target" on the wc51, they say that they're not sure what to do with the stormtroopers, in fact it turns out they did, instead of correcting their mistakes, they further nerfed them.
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I'm gonna further explain WHY the storms suck. I've done ample testing and watched players like Imperial Dane use them. They're damn good when they get into point blank but getting there is the problem. Sprint is only on one doc, smoke only works defensively (when u want to force enemy to close in) or only offensively vs mgs. Ambushing is unreliable as u depend on the enemy to bump into u which may or may not happen. Mp40s make tactical advance SO MUCH WORSE. You need to use the ability point blank. It's only great vs support weapons, ie. units that can't shoot back or weak 200mp squads. I find if a unit immediately retreats after being focused down with the ability, the dps from the storms drops off almost instantly. With the stg upgrade, the midrange dps with tac adv is still substantial but now with mp40s it's laughable. It's so easy to counter tac adv now, either just retreat, lob a nade or simply stand your ground if your squad is well equipped too to feast off the RA penalty. The whole point of changing hte storms was that they overlapped too much with pgrens. What kind of reason is that?! I'd say they were better pgrens. Most would agree in the poll that the stgs were a bit pricey and most importantly nobody said they're op. DON'T FIX WHAT ISN'T BROKE. Nobody asked for drastic changes to storms ffs. My solution is that if u have to keep mp40s then change tac adv so that either the mp40s get the dps profile of pgren stgs at midrange while keeping the same dps of the mp40s at short OR removing movement & RA penalty.