Profile of SweetrollNearTheDoor

Howdy!

I've been playing coh 2 since the beta in 2013 and loved the first one albeit I stumbled on it just a year before coh 2 was released. I've never really felt the need to be too active on the forums but after most of my friends stopped playing coh after December balance patch hit for various reasons I wanted to share some of the observations I've made over the years.

For many years the forums had a lot of great people who based their opinions and views on hard facts and stats and who brought interesting insights to our knowledge like the amazing Cruzzis the More You Know megapost. Posts like these helped relic and the community to find game breaking bugs and whatnot and I'd say they contributed much to the players and the balancing of the game.

Nowadays I feel there are less such topics created and most posts are based more on feeling rather than hard facts. (as a side note I find it very unfortunate that coh2stats isn't being updated anymore with its faction and rank based win-loss ratios which overall helped to see the state of the game in different skill levels and game modes ) I find it troubling that I've seen many good topics derailed or trivialized by lazy counter"arguments". Here are a few made up examples that I've seen used in various posts to disregard the original point:

1. Argument: USF riflemen struggle against multiple MGs. Counter: Smoke and flank L2P.

2. Argument: Wehr T4 is not very viable in 1v1. Counter: playercard plz --> rank 5000 player so argument invalid

3. Argument: Artillery cover is overperforming. Counter: you should have won the game before that.

4. Argument: Jackon is slightly overperforming. Counter: You're an axis fanboy so you want to nerf every Allied unit to the ground.

Posts like these are not that contributing and will usually start to sidetrack the subject and reduce it to useless bickering. I'm not sure if it's me not focusing on such replies as much in the past or are arguments like these used more nowadays instead of facts and stats from the game. I know it's easier to say a post is just pure bullpudding than to make a fleshed out counter argument to it. Sometimes it might feel extremely futile and a waste of time but I think that is the only way to keep a debate about balance productive and one needs to invest some time to his/her answers to keep the thread productive.

I find it unfortunate especially in threads where people try to propose new ideas on how to revamp certain units. While there often are some oversights I think it would be better to try and improve upon the idea rather than just saying "Your idea is completely wrong because you forgot this one interaction between another unit and it should be scrapped completely"

Also there seems to be more divide between the community. Sometimes it feels like there are only two extremes to choose from: either a full blown Axis fanboys or a total Allies fanboy without a multitude of choices in between. Such mentality makes it easy to discussions to devolve into a Our side vs Their side debates. There are no winners if one side would win the debate and in a theoretical scenario get to dictate the course of the balance changes. The weaker side would lose its playerbase and the "winning side" would have no one to play against or most matches would be just roflstomps without offering much of a challenge.

I wanted to make this post because I think that at this stage of CoH2's life cycle with maybe one balance patch coming in the future we should try to focus on finding common ground rather than fighting over trivial things and avoiding "identity politics". (of course coh is not a larger than life thing in itself and should be trivial in any case ) I'm not suggesting people should stop making arguments and say everything is in a good spot right now but focus more on substance of their post instead for example focusing on discrediting their arch nemesis.

This is a rather small community (but extremely passionate) in the first place so it would be great to see more people focusing on finding solutions together rather than trying to see who can win the most debates and can KO their opponents better. With Iron Harvest on the horizon which I suspect will compete with CoH's playerbase I fear that several people want to switch to that if they feel they have been wrongfully ridiculed or their opinions and observations have been ignored or discredited without good reason.

PS. I'm not sure if this is the proper forum to post this so feel free to move it but I wanted to share my thoughts and hopefully hear opinions from the community on whether they agree with me or not. I hope this does not devolve into a personality politics discussion I mentioned earlier

OKW have plenty of doctrinal counters for the doctrinal soviet threat of 120s. You have Feuersturm Incendiary muni for leig, Overwatch has a stealthing mobile detpack, Luftwaffe has Falls, and Scavenge has Jaegers. not to mention a plethora of offmap arty callins.

I have yet to see effective use of the leig incendiary shells, most of the time when an opponent has tried to use them I've been able to ignore the barrage. They feel to be more bark than bite + nice visual effects. It is a cool mechanic in theory but when your allied counterparts get well performing infantry callins at early CP levels from most meta commanders it seems a bit lackluster. Nothing wrong with the ability itself but I think you get more out of commanders that give the maximum amount of firepower while utility rarely has such an impact. (Take Soviet Mechanized Support for example: I much rather have a commander that has good call-in infantry, mark target, bombing run and an ISU152 + the rarely used soviet AT gun camo than a commander which gives me a flare when an enemy starts to decap a point and a broken lawn mover)

You will drain your munition if you try to use the tungsten every time an axis tank get in range, and it's hardly a sure-pen against the big cat anyway.

Are you saying occasionally using a 30 munition ability that lasts 30 seconds in late game where its regularly needed is budget breaking? Assuming your unit preservation is decent you already have your BAR / lmg blob well before later stages of the game where US has only a few good munition sinks like the Thunderbolts which is commander specific. Against mediums without armor skirts normal rounds will do well enough imo.

Also I have no idea how OKW survived with their 35 munition fausts while having to upgrade their inf, use flame nades and bundles to maintain good field presence and plant mines in that case.

Not sure if you're trolling as your nickname let's suppose it.

M1 ATG lost its effectiveness when Tigers, panthers and such are hitting the field. You like to pickup the M1 over the raketen, that's normal but have you tried to analyse why? Simple, USF only have medium tanks, you wouldn't be picking any M1 left on the field if the USF player had steal you your King Tiger.

USF is the one with the less AT option of all factions, I let you do the count of what OKW (better AT faction), Ostheer, UKF and Soviet have in comparison.
The problem with the Jackson lies in two points:

-1 Lack of stock AT option between the M1 and the Jackson, per say the M10 should have been stock along with the sherman.
-2 Lack of Tier 4 where the Jackson should have been put with a stock Sherman upgrade to meet Ez8 stats.

In the current format the Jackson will never be balanced, it has to stay relevant vs Medium, even if not dominating them and need to be a capable counter for KT, JT, Ele, that's not possible from a design perspective without introducing at least an upgrade to differentiate both figures.

Now IMO, there is an upper problem in COH2, it's the dominance of Tank Destroyers on the battlefield to the point where nobody build regular tanks.

First of all you seem to have a lack of playing hours in Skyrim or you never talked to a City Guard

2nd I pick an M1 over a raketen because i want an AT gun that doesn't get instagibbed by a random medium tank shell and that doesn't take ages to fire on a target that is near the edge of the cone of fire. (& while not having to be in harms way while doing so is a plus)

3rd I agree that USF has few AT options and maybe keeping Wolverine in Armor Company is not worth it anymore since it seems to be extinct after December for understandable reasons. That has lead to most of the burden being put on the Jackson which seems to be at least partially the same problem Sturmpioneers have (having to deal with repairs, mining, sweeping, field fortifications, combat, AT and garrison clearing) but unlike Sturms actually overperforming versus certain targets.

4th: I'd say the biggest problem with Jackson is that it has no real weaknesses or downsides. Flanking it amounts to very little because of its mobility and turret traverse speed. Outranging it relies on doctrinal heavy TDs (which now have worse synergy with the rest of the army imo because for example if you have a JT and a panther as a team the panther still needs 3 shots to kill a medium after a JT has fired at it so the nerf in a vacuum seemed a lot better than in practice where heavy TDs work in tandem with other units.)

Dives against Jacksons are also risky because if you miss a few shots the Jackson might very well chase you on retreat with its good speed. I'd go as far and say even mirroring its stats with a Firefly which has clear disadvantages might be more beneficial to the gameplay than the current Jackson meta.

GeneralsGentlemen mentioned one of their frustrations with snipers in one of their shoutcast which I agree 100%. Your opponent will not lose a sniper due to you outplaying him/her. The sniper gets killed when the user makes a mistake or gets greedy, not because you outsmarted your opponent. (assuming decent sniper micro naturally) I think the same can be said for Jackson. The sniper argument seemed pretty valid in last weekends King Of The Hill with Luvnests amazing sniper use and ridiculous kill counts vs VonIvan.


And finally I agree on the TDs dominating most gamemodes over other armor types. Elephants and JTs were at least doctrine specific so you wouldn't see them every single game but any US player in their right mind will build a Jackson or two or three at some point in the game.

because set USF players dont wna use combined arms. Why use combined arms when u can blob ur way to victory. Its easier and more effective to spam riflemen to deal with inf and get jacksons to deal with every single axis tank

What if I told you one can do both

That's relics and modders idea.
All factions must have cost effective TD that needs to fight even the heaviest of opponents armor.
And that well balanced ATG is still weakest ATG in game by a long shot in terms of penetration and is not reliable against heavies at all.

Ok I'm curious why people have such an issue with using the USF AT gun. For starters it's pretty cheap and can be acquired without going Captain if you go Airborne or Recon Support (both of which are very good doctrines this patch so you're certainly not gimping yourself with those). It has the largest cone of fire and the rate of fire will do wonders against mediums and can get good chunks of health off from heavier tanks if it gets some rear armor shots.

Granted the base penetration (assuming the stat site is up to date) is only 140 compared to the Pak40s 200.

Then again the Pak doesn't have the AP round ability that should give it 50% extra penetration which would make the penetration 210 which is far from lackluster in my opinion. I found that the M1 penetrated a Tiger frontally pretty reliably from max range + the self spotting and increased range it gets with vet 1 is very useful.

If I can pick for example between stealing a raketen and an M1 i would pick M1 every single time. I will gladly pay a minuscule amount of munitions (and USF is not a munitions starved faction to begin with so I see no problem in paying for penetration) if it nets me a proper AT gun. It may not always penetrate from max range but it will stay relatively safe compared to certain gimmick AT gun that gets instagibbed by the things its meant to counter and is such fun and joy to play against/with...

I don't know what people expect from an AT gun that has specifically been given a munition ability that is meant to help dealing with heavier armor and not utilizing it when fighting heavy tanks. In its price range it performs its job well enough and will scale into late game with its utility and vet. And yes I admit it is more micro intensive than just A-moving double 6-pounders but I think that issue can be overcome with L2P and smoke and flank. Kappa