The state of soviet tier 1?

I play almost always 2 v 2 and Soviet tier one just seems so lackluster now. I used to like it a lot (for the longest time tier 2 was in rough shape) but after the German scout car got buffed to use machine gun/cannon simultaneously and the Soviet sniper had its shoot speed reduced significantly it just seems like tier two is the tier of choice now.

It has:
Sniper: 360 MP cost, and just gets wrecked like crazy as soon as German scout car comes out. Even if you retreat as soon as you see it, retreat paths are unreliable and the German scout car moves bloody fast.
Jeep: really, REALLY flimsy.
Penal battalion: I have seen very few people who have been impressed with this unit.

Compared to tier two units, the tier one units seem to fall off mid-late game a lot harder.

What do other people think?

scout cars with snipers/flamers is still ridiculous.

T1 is very good, but it is pure anti-infantry. Be prepared to tackle to get out some AT soon to deal with the possible FHT or SC. Guards complement T1 extremely well and will give you a good stop gap against light vehicles until you get more appropriate counters in T3 or T4. If you do get a sniper, always keep your Guards around it to save them with button or get an easy kill on an overcommitment light vehicle.

Penals are very good, just hard to incorporate into your build order in a 1v1 effectively sometimes.

Since we're talking about 2v2 I'll just post my build. I'm no pro but it would have been working very well for me so far if my internet connection held up today. The build works better for 2v2 than 1v1 because you don't have much early capping power but I think you make up for that by being able to win the first few engagements.

The build I've been doing: engineer build Tier 1 then run to cap important point. Build penal battallion (10 second delay from building completion), conscript then scout car. You should have all of those units by the 3 min mark. If you were doing a conscript build you would have 4 conscripts and an engineer at the 3 minute mark. However my build has approximately double the DPS. The penals gain vet much faster than conscripts and are better at clearing buildings - I think they scale much better if you want to expect a long game.

You should be able to win the first couple engagements and equalize capping power. You'll pretty much have to go guards to handle the scout cars around the 5 minute mark. Then go T4 and use your SU-85.

I think it works just fine still.

Penals are pretty awesome, I use them all the time for fun specifically but in a competitive 1vs1 a good german player will shut down a penal build really fast. They're viable only vs opponents who don't realize you're stalling them to bulid tier 1 then pump out a penal troop or two. About 90% of the time you'll get out teched and ran off the map, would be cool to see these units change to be affordable in build orders (I know this sounds intense and COULD be a bad idea but maybe making them available in Tier 0?)

Also: snipers are still good, scout cars are still good vs heavy mg play. These things all got nerfed a bit because they were found to be easy mode pretty quick, time to polish your micro

I play almost always 2 v 2 and Soviet tier one just seems so lackluster now. I used to like it a lot (for the longest time tier 2 was in rough shape) but after the German scout car got buffed to use machine gun/cannon simultaneously and the Soviet sniper had its shoot speed reduced significantly it just seems like tier two is the tier of choice now.

It has:
Sniper: 360 MP cost, and just gets wrecked like crazy as soon as German scout car comes out. Even if you retreat as soon as you see it, retreat paths are unreliable and the German scout car moves bloody fast.
Jeep: really, REALLY flimsy.
Penal battalion: I have seen very few people who have been impressed with this unit.

Compared to tier two units, the tier one units seem to fall off mid-late game a lot harder.

What do other people think?

I don`t agree with your assessment of soviet snipers. The latest "nerf" was negligible at best, laughable at worst. Most of the time you shoot and reposition anyways. I would say the soviet sniper is still too strong, no let me rephrase that, OP. Scout cars are not a problem at all if you have Conscripts with AT nades and/or Guards around. If you don`t it`s your fault.

Tier 1 would be entirely worth it just for the snipers alone. Early flamer scout car can be a great stepping stone to get into a better position, very dependent on what your opponent is doing though. Penals are irrelevant most of the time and could use a serious rework, I give you that.

Jeep? JEEP???

If you dont have the micro, you ll have a bad time with T1.

Jeep? JEEP???

i said the same thing when i read it; as you prob could guess, he prob means M3 scout car.

T1 is very micro instensive.

Penal batallions are great because they are pretty much Conscripts .5 and get flamethrowers instead of all the conscript abilities.

M3Scout car isn't designed to destroy squads by itself, it is designed to give YOUR SQUADS 1.) mobility 2.) protection to squads (suppresion) and 3.) dmg sink (as you can repair it). Even putting conscripts in the M3 will dramatically increase the ablities of the conscript squad. With this being said, M3s lose 3/4th of their life to a Gren. Panzershreck shot. Therefore, that is your hard counter to it (at T1). Just as scout cars for germans get better with vet, so do M3s and neither of them really last in T3/T4 unless Vet 3.

Snipers need to be micro'ed the most out of all the T1 units. You give an example where your sniper gets followed by a scout car even when you try to "retreat early". Well, the soviet sniper is not designed to be by themselves. You need to keep conscript/penal/shocktroops/guards squads by the sniper so you can "protect them" and shoo away a enemy scout car. From my expierence, keeping your soviet sniper underfire (no retreat)and using your OTHER units to kill the enemy that's shooting your sniper can work but, you need to keep an eye out of your sniper AS WELL AS, use cover. Cover is the most important tool for ANY sniper squads as they pretty much always make the sniper invisible to focus fire.

The game is not "make hard counters and retreat my unit" you still need to have positioning and micro take place, MOST IMPORTANTLY soviet T1.

TLDR; use cover for your snipers, always. Penals help w/flamethrower. M3 scout car needs to be micro'ed, have units inside of it and stay at a distance. T1 is awesome.

You forgot to add the lack of any AT weapons.

Used to be everyone's gameplan as Soviets was T1-T4 until the Ostheer scout car change (so countering an M3 no longer requires you to spend the 70 munis to get something that won't vet and is borderline redundant).

Since that change the Soviet T1 has seemed pretty balanced but pretty unforgiving of mistakes. M3 scout cars have really caught me out recently a couple of times. They can still do good work. Penals - I really don't know what needs to be done about them. With the abilities they have (nuke satchel + flamer of death), they can't really be made cheaper but they're still a bit too weak to really be viable. Maybe getting 1.25 armour or something like that for a little more durability.

Snipers are still pretty awesome. Think T1 will be better once they fix the riflenade warning again.

@Thunderhun - that's kind of the point of it, though.

If they find some way to improve penals, I think it would make T1 very interesting. I want to like penals as they are now, but I just can't. They're too expensive and squishy. Too much glass, not enough cannon to justify the cost.

I find penals to be too gimmicky right now. Satchel is one of the lamest abilities in the game and is essentially a micro check. Enemy sees it in time, complete waste, if not, he loses a squad. I'd like to see satchels removed or the timer increased to make it an anti emplacement only ability and then have penal armor slightly increased or cost slightly reduced.

Overall I'd like to see the build times of soviet t1/t2 drastically reduced and the build times of t3/t4 possibly increased to encourage early game soviet unit diversity. Right now, building an early tier building is usually a huge loss of map control as it delays a conscript with cost and removes a combat engi from the field for a long time (less of an issue in team games).

Not to mention Penal Battalions are just as likely to blow themselves up.

But, according to that beta stream post, I guess there's going to be a pretty big change.

But, according to that beta stream post, I guess there's going to be a pretty big change.

What post is that?

You mean this?

Just to answer a previous question, beta invites are closed for now. We'll likely open it up again in a few months.

Some have guessed correct, we're currently testing a new veterancy system. We're looking to better maintain unit roles through vet and avoid scenarios where units now take twice as many shots to die.

You might also notice some differences with the AT guns on both sides.

http://www.coh2.org/topic/8660/beta-play-test/post/80506

I dont think that is actually anything like what you think it to be.

Considering that it is sometimes impossible to dodge the satchel charge (you can retreat when it lands but pathfinding means you're staying 2 seconds), T1 is better than people think.

Regardless, in 1v1 going t1 necessitates you play a doctrine with Gaurds in it, but there's nothing wrong with that. Even after the 223 buff, 3 conscripts + snipers + gaurds is still a very strong opening.

Would adding some infantry AT to Special Rifle Command (please don't call them tiers) be good? Like 2 Bazookas or 4 AT rifles on penals or adding another squad with them. Maybe PTRS upgrade on snipers that penetrate every shot and have increased chance of criticals. I think those could be cool ideas, but I don't know if they would be balanced.

I play germans, imo Penals aren't very scary, except the satchel charge radius. I think they could could use a price and armor buff provided stchel charge stops blowing up half the damn map. But maybe I'm just stuck in noob league where players can't use them and they are better than I think.

I dont think that is actually anything like what you think it to be.

I've attached a replay of a game played on our test servers. Take a look and see if you can spot the changes. These recent changes are meant to make Soviets more viable without doctrinal units in the early game. I'll give you one hint, every single unit in the game has had something changed!

(...)

So we know that the devs are acknowledging problems with the Soviet game flow, specifically in the early part. In the actual stream he's showing off T-34s backed up by ZIS-3 gameplay, with changes from the beta patch test server, including mentioning changes to AT guns for both sides.

In that later post, he also mentions changing a lot of the veterancy across the game.

The next balance patch should have a decent number of changes. Not sure of what's actually in there, but you can extrapolate that they're trying to reduce railroading of Soviet builds towards the SU-85.

Not to mention Penal Battalions are just as likely to blow themselves up.

But, according to that beta stream post, I guess there's going to be a pretty big change.

It just sounded like they would change something directly with the Penalbattalion.
I guess you wanted to say the whole flow (big change) will be diffrent and penals could shine more in the new environment, which I agree with, that could happen.

Er, I just meant that the whole game would change.

Sorry for not making that clear.

I hope strafbats do get a change, but I'm okay with smaller, more frequent steps in balance.