Is the Soviets underpowered in team games?

Is the Soviets underpowered in team games or is the OH just easier to play with? I've played SU for a while because that's the faction we started out trying to play with in our clan but we have moved on to OH since they just felt easier to handle and the results followed. If you managed to survive until late game it's still not much you can do against the OH doomstack of heavy armor despite the larger quantity you have of inferior tanks unless your enemies are really stupid. In my experience 2vs2 is fairly balanced but anything from 3vs3 and up is just a nightmare as an SU player. It's also not uncommon to see +75% searching games as Germans, even on a Saturday evening:



From what I understand the game is largely balanced to please 1vs1 players but doesn't Relic give any attention to the large amount of players who play this for fun WITH (not against) their friends in team games and have no ambitions in becoming the new Inverse?

What can be done to make Soviets more appealing for the large player base that prefer team games?

They specifically said in one of the last 2 casts on twitch that they are primarily balance for 1v1 and then 2v2s. Anything above will not recieve direct balacing (might change in the future?). Still, it scales up. So if soviet have an ever so slight disadvantage in 2v2, it will scale badly to more amounts of players.

This is something I actually find sad, many ppl play and may not like 1v1s. They might want to play the unit-fest that is 3v3+. I dont have any stats that show how many ppl are playing each of the 4 variants, and I figure they dont want to release those numbers.

As for suggestions to make soviet viable in larger teamgames, I dont really know apart from suggestions that will also affect all the way down to 1v1. I dont think a specific "the more players the less resources for ostheer" would make any sense.

In my eyes it looks like this, and this is my very personal opinion. Soviet tech overall in teamgames complement eachother, wich is good in a 2v2 situaion. But with any more players, it seems that it is actually harder to complement eachothers builds well. How many should go t3? All? How many T4? 3ppl? And if you are playing with random ppl, this is even harder since it might be hard to communicate. Ostheer on the other hand tech straight and a couple of hard hitting tanks that most players know how to use and can see a point of building, making it somewhat eaiser for them to play together, even if with randoms.

EDIT: As far as 2v2s go, I think the pool is close to 50/50 at the moment.

Soviets are great in 2v2 because one person can go T2-T3 while the other goes T1-T4. Your team can access all 4 techs that would be impossible in 1v1.

Le Wish: I think it would be hard to begin balancing 4vs4 and go down from that, so many more aspects to consider. I think the biggest problem is actually that Soviets seem so much harder to play with in team games compared to the linear tech for OH. The biggest question for a random OH player is whether or not he should skip T2 to get a fast PIV while the Soviet team will fail horribly if they don't diversify their buildings enough. The OH player can simply observe his team mates base and see if anyone went T2 before mid game or not. Soviets require a lot more communicating which is difficult since all players don't speak English.

link0: Soviets are IMO good in 2vs2 but the OH is in no way inferior to them.

Le Wish: I think it would be hard to begin balancing 4vs4 and go down from that, so many more aspects to consider.

Might have expressed myself unclear. I do agree the only way to balance the game is from 1v1 and upwards, not the other way around. What I did say was that if they for some strange reason would balance 4v4s first (again, something that in my eyes is a terrible idea), it would lead to problems down to 1v1s. Last I also said that any changes that apply only for 3v3+ games doesnt seem like a good idea to me.

Maybe. Too soon to tell, plus there will be a patch soon.

And I still say that if they won't balance the game to all its modes, they should balance the modes to the game, making specific tweaks to maps, pacing, and mechanics for 3v3 and 4v4, less so for 2v2.

Being able to conscript merge allied units would be awesome in larger games, imo.

People might poo poo about 2v2 though. But man, it always felt that should be something you should do.

Merge is powerful in the right situation, but is overrated by players that haven't used it enough to see its downsides. You can lose a squad from the ability, either from leaving a unit with low member count while under fire, or the numbers being off at the moment of merging and you end up merging conscripts completely into another unit. Either way, you are still effectively taking 1 unit off the field. If the devs ever make it so that Merge never takes the last man out of a conscript squad, so it's usable without extra math, then we can talk. As it stands, there's no reason why it should ever take the last man from a conscript squad.


Having good, well balanced team modes, especially 3v3 and 4v4 can do more for the game than the 1v1 focused game they've been doing since, well, forever.

Why? Because people like playing with friends. Even the more elite players still enjoy playing with friends.

People even want to see team games more, as for as much as you see skill shown in 1v1s, a whole team of good players coordinating together is as much, and often more amazing a sight to see a team work together to overcome.

Nowhere is this more evident in the decline of Starcraft from the esports scene, replaced by team oriented games. Even if you aren't interested in esports or competitive play, it's a significant indicator of that.

But some will say that that still doesn't appeal to CoH players. Well, lets be frank and say that CoH2 has already sold as much as it will ever sell to CoH players.

soviet 2v2 can be crushingly powerful, but nothing a similarly good german team cannot handle.

soviets overall are under powered in my opinion

In 3v3 and 4v4 Ger is OP. Its kinda ridiculous ... Im a Sovet player but when I had a -6 streak on Sov I began playing Ger and got a 21 streak only lost by synch error on the 22nd game.

When I play Sov I gotta micro like hell, but playing Ger is easy mode on 4v4's.

I did play a top 10 ranked team in 4v4 and won without trouble as Ger

As someone said, it would be extremely useful if you could merge with your team mates units, especially if the merge ability never took away the last man in the squad from you. It would really help if you could give away the few extra men you have left in a wounded Conscript squad before you retreat to help man the support weapons for example.

It's obvious that the community desires more team games. Just look at TFNs and the Propagandacasts shoutcasts as an example, their 2vs2 games always have plenty more views than their regular 1vs1 casts. Why? I think people prefer the aspect of teamwork rather than who's having the highest micro (although it's generally not what's deciding a 1vs1 but anyway). I also think that our future 1vs1 pros will start out with team games since I guess most of us heard about this game from friends who wanted you to come and play WITH them.

It's funny that no one have said that the factions are pretty balanced in team games in this thread.

german 3v3/4v4 easymode
3 grens, get fuel
flame ht
skip t4
spam panthers
profit!

Soviets are just a bit harder to play and their units are not straight forward. That's all.

OZ: "That's all"? Hypothetically you could say that a game is balanced when both sides field as much firepower as the other, just the difference is that one side need to control twice as many units. But hey, the game is balanced because both sides combined forces do as much damage.

Hypothetically.

Well it's my opinion only but I think you gotta be more careful when playing Soviets as one mistake, especially later, when tanks roll out (hi Panthers) can cost you a game. You need decent micro as well.
Before introduction of Assault Grenadiers Soviets got quite strong early game, but this has changed as well but overall balance is better than ever was.

I disagree with what many people are saying about the Soviets being a bit more powerful in 2v2. Lately, from a critical perspective, 2v2 has ended up into a spam fest of assgrens and regular grens into flamer halftrack and p4 spam. This is quite hard to counter as the Soviet player due to the phaust ability the Grens have, allowing them to support the assgrens in making considerable pushes on the map. I think assgrens should have been a 1 CP unlock ability, but unfortunately no skill players are resulting in a mass spam of them which is quite a pain to deal with in 2v2, one mess up and it's GG once the Ostwinds and P4s roll out to support the assgrens, because by that time, even if you get upgradable ppshs, it won't make a difference when they have a fuel advantage, as assgrens can just camp on fuel points and wait long enough to get t3 out, or if someone decides to go maxims or scout cars they can easily be countered by either A. gren support(scout cars with flamers), or B. flamer halftrack(maxims). This doesn't however mean that con spam/maxim+scout car spam is completely ineffective, but when both go toe to toe I find the Ostheer have an easier time dealing with certain aspects of the Soviet Tiers. Unless the Soviet 2v2 team is able to defend fuel points consistently throughout the game, which is unlikely when people assgren spam straight to the fuel point and harass cutoffs/fuel points to death.

2v2 no
3v3 somewhat to yes (depending on the map)
4v4 yes to hell yes (depending on the map)

only the end game tho (armor aka Panther spam)

What can Relic do, not much other than adding Soviet tank that has similar capabilities to Panther (mobility, turret, etc) and/or infantry with true AT capabilities.

Su85 just doesn't cut it in 4v4 due to requiring to be supported with inf (AT nade Cons/Rifleguard button down) and/or mines. Which is problem with all arty/rockets/bombing/ranged weapons/stuka/strafing etc you get in average 4v4 game. And of course German players being able to gang up on single Soviet player, run him over and pull out before he can get help. (read blitz and Panzer tactician smoke)

I don't understand why they cater to 1v1 and 2v2 though. Balancing 4v4 makes 8 people happier and makes 8 people play more, 8 more people to sell their DLC'sto and makes 8 more people stay and keep the game alive.

You may argue that there is no stiff competition in 4v4 as compared to the 1v1 but really, how can there be stiff competition for 4v4 when it's being ignored?