Profile of drChengele

The Panther needs a very small tweak and I hope the balance team gets it right. But it's not that bad as people say it is.

So the thing is, this was originally supposed to help team games become balanced. Lots of units that do not even surface in 1v1s turn the tide in 3v3s+. Panther is one such unit. In a 1v1 it is murder to stall until t4, so the Panther naturally underperforms when you consider the tech costs involved. In a team game you have more or less the same amount of territory points to fight over, but 4 times more people going at it. Having a mobile kampfgruppe of Panthers is practically uncounterable for cost by the Allies.

Now, I am not saying that the Panther is in a good place or that it should be nerfed into the ground. Frankly I can think of no solution that would equally please 1v1 players and 4v4 players. So keep that in mind. Just offering perspective.

I feel that the Panther was not nerfed based on its 1v1 performance, but based on the fact that a flock of Panthers roaming the battlefield are a hallmark 4v4 strat.

When there is only 1 Panther (which is usually the case in 1v1s), if you snare it, you can at least exploit it. In a 4v4 you cannot dive to kill it with tank destroyers (since the other Panthers and God knows what else will pounce on you) which means damaged panthers can keep reversing with its monstrous frontal armour. Which translates into a lot of veteran Panthers roaming the battlefield at the 35 minute mark, and that is usually followed by a "gg" typed into the all chat by the allied team..

It's serious, completely serious, give top level 1v1 players 65 muni demos even with a 3s timer and watch the world burn.

The problem with demo changes is not that they are nerfed or buffed. The problem with demos is that this change completely flips upside down what they are supposed to be used for - at least on paper, the consensus seems they are there as blobbing deterrent.

This change will completely remove the blobbing deterrent part while on the other hand they will still be used to wipe capping squads even at top level play and for much lower cost, as you correctly state.

So no, people are not complaining that it is a nerf. For a change that supposedly aims to fix one-click-wiping unsupervised capping veteran squads, this change actually "fixes" i.e. removes all other potential uses of the ability while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing to solve the one-click-wiping of unsuperwised squads and in fact pigeonholing the ability into being used in exactly this way.

Sure there are more things you can do now against stationary structures. If you have 200 ammo you can place 3 charges in place of 2. Some cheeky smoke play vs the Schwerer comes to mind.

Ultimately I am not an authority on what demolition charges are meant to do, so I can't say that the modding team has it right or not. I am personally glad that at least some change has been made. Anything is better than what we have in place currently.

Actually back in the day I proposed a delayed detonation after you click, let's say 3 seconds, but the timer is invisible to the enemy. The price would remain unchanged. That still doesn't solve the lone capper problem but it would allow blob punishment. And unlike the current change, noone can call it a buff - it would be a straight up nerf.

What about limiting the jadgtiger to 1 per game per player (as the tiger ace), that will fix it for teamgames on which if you manage to spend a lot of resources and effort to kill it, they just insta-call another one because they didnt need to invest the fuel into more units while it was on the field

I would love it if there was a 1-superheavy-per-team limit (ISU, Ele, Jagd), or something like a shared pool of heavy tank population. This would not impact 1v1s at all (where the problem doesn't exist anyway).

Or like, entire team gets 15% fuel penalty per KT/IS2/Croc on field and 30% fuel penalty per superheavy. You want 4 KTs? Enjoy your 60% reduced fuel income lulz.

They wouldn't even need to nerf Ele/Jagd then (and could even make ISU great again).

It would be absolutely hilarious listening to people raging at their teammates.

It's not gonna happen of course, but a man can dream and giggle.

I believe I know why Lelic chose to nerf the Panthers. Because of team games, because more people play team games, and therefore more people weighed in on the balance patch with feedback.

Panthers are insanely good in team games. By minute 25-30 a decent-strength tank company of Panthers is able to roam the field and quickly respond to threats, can easily back away for repairs, dive on demand to get arty kills, and harrass the map self-sufficiently.

People forget there is no way to counter a Panther 1 on 1 for Allies. Cost for cost, there shouldn't be a way anyway; but this does have some implications.

Jacksons and Fireflies cannot kite without supporting units (or a TD + meatshield combo). Either way you either depend on slow infantry units / AT guns, or resource superiority. And if you have a TD and a meatshield, the Axis player will have two Panthers soon, etc.

Whether this means they should be nerfed or not - that's not for me to say, and depends on how much priority you put on team games.

But then again, these same games also had the Elefant / Jagdtiger dominance so maybe we are not getting the full picture. Not gonna lie, I worry about the 640HP Jackson.

Extremely disappointed.

Team games have been the lifeblood of CoH2 and the most played mode, period. Finally we get a dedicated balance patch specifically to address this mode, and inject at least 1 more year of vigor into the game's playerbase... and what happens? Relic pulls the plug on it.

Holy shit, Relic appears literally allergic to making money in the long run.

I get it, CoH2 has been milked for everything it's got, and assigning people to the patch would be money down the drain (ostensibly). But there is large non-immediate gain in having a faithful and dedicated community, while Relic is doing their best to shoot themselves in the foot and alienate said community.

(Let's not even mention the fact the mod is being made by community volunteers, thus reducing Relic's workflow to QA only.)