Profile of Esxile

IS-2 paired with Su-85 or 76 is a fucking beast. The tank is not the Shock one we knew from the past, honestly its main gun sucks. But boy, that armor. Every German player has played at least a few games where he fought an IS-2 and every shot simply bounced for 5-10 times in a row. Be it a PaK or a Tiger.

I honestly think of it as some kind of invincible, I never really think that I can kill it when I see it when playing as Axis.

Same could be said for the King Tiger with a pair of Jagpanzers, but the King Tiger has a valid gun and turret... I played a 2vs2 with a random soviet yesterday and I have been the first surprised when he told me he will soon have a IS-2, have been months seen I saw one on a game.

The way the balance team go is... not correct from beginning.

For example, about maxim, while OKW has big trouble with it, OST has none. You should question why? It's because OST have sniper, mortar and rifle grenade. Then you will realize that OKW need a similar unit or ability to counter soviet HMG, no need to nerf maxim.
Immediately after you nerf maxim, what's happen? DHSK become the problem. And then you try to nerf DHSK again. It's like you are trying to patch things by displaying stuffs and let people choose what best instead of thinking for BEST CONCRETE PLAN.

If you rely on community to give you a good idea, then that just proves your incompetence in balancing.

Not really, the problem with the DHSK is Penal+AT associate with DHSK. Take away any form of AT from Penals and the strat lose its power.

I hate to agree with this but yea.

nerfing FRP, good...
nerfing call ins, good...
lowering repair speeds for post WFAs, good...
trying to do something about cheese UKF emplacements, good....

then million other small changes and many of their justification for change is due to the prior changes in the preview patch.

the whole patch notes are like the longest ever. i read them. i like to remember them all clearly so i can formulate my criticism clearer but that is simply impossible - so two things can be going on here.

1. you guys are trying to micro manage way too much, i.e. individual units to the point where it is practically impossible to quantify and evaluate whether these changes made things better.

2. all these changes are actually integral to better balance...

I would go with number 1 - even if the preview version plays better to majority, there is no way to prove that most of the changes were needed or had part in making the game better.

And I cannot fathom any justification for a big ass patch (I know it hasn't been approved by relic yet). Two possibilities - relic only let us do 2-3 more patches or they let us do way more than that. In the former case, you don't want big ass patches because once you screw up, you don't have enough wiggle room for fixing them - the latter case, if we have many patches available so why are we rushing so much?

I'm afraid modders have forgotten why they were doing the mod in first hand. To have something ready to be presented to Relic and being implemented.
If the mod is proposing many interesting things, it went too far. There are so many changes how Relic is suppose to pick-up things in it whithout breaking the actual balance.

There are other tools to balance factions and units early/mid and late game and I wonder why Relic never used them as primary stat for the balance.
If we compare 2 units such as Riflemen and Grenadier, people are most likely to take in comparison their size, buying cost, reinforcement cost, upgrade available and dps stat. But there are 2 others stats that can make the balance work better between the two of them: the upkeep and popcap.
When it comes to balance, I have the feeling people always configure popcap cost of any squad to be the closer possible to the squad size like a 5men squad costing 6 or maximum 7 popcap and the only variable about this is if the squad is/can be considerate as elite or not. When in my opinion popcap should be a complete arbitrary value and only depending on balance wishes: how do we(as game designer) want players to use this particular squad, do we want him to build a lot of them or few of them and what impact on the game do we want from them and at which cost.
Squad Popcap should be completely dissociated to the squad size and unit power and solely depending on Balance and Gameplay meaning.

We know popcap and upkeep are linked and form what I call the macro-economic cost of a unit when the buying and reinforcement cost are what I call micro-economic cost.
What does it mean.

-Micro-economic cost means that a unit with a high buying and reinforcement cost but low popcap cost you nothing if you don't lose any model. You have your squad on the field, you paid for it and until you need to reinforce it, its impact on your economy is low since the upkeep is low.
-Macro-economic cost means a unit with a high popcap and upkeep cost but low buying cost and reinforcement cost impacting your economy over time (mp income reduced by upkeep). Until you start losing models and thus reducing your popcap the unit cost you manpower by affecting your income.

In other words, a Micro-economic unit is more related to Elite unit you need to keep alive at all cost and lose a little as possible models and a Macro-economic unit is related to your backbone infantry requiring your to use them in order to balance their over-time cost. (An Elite unit is most likely going to have both Macro and Micro economic cost high, this is an example)
You can keep your elite unit for ambushes and use it supportively.
Your backbone infantry need to be used as much as possible to mitigate its upkeep cost.
In practice, what does it means. Let's imagine that Riflemen squad popcap is 10 but with a lower buying and reinforcing cost than today. So buidling 4 RM brings you to almost half of your army population, + 1 Rear echelon and lieutenant and you go over 50% of your popcap. In order to keep your army viable and mitigate this cost you need to have your squads always fighting and pushing the enemy lines.
Now something important to note is every time you retreat a full health RM squad, you are losing manpower, the time to retreat + the time to get back to fight make you lose manpower via the high upkeep associated. As opposed, retreating a RM 2men squad cost you much less until your reinforce it. Macro Economic units are more impacted by suppressive fire in term of economy.
This mechanic of increasing popcap is particularly interesting to reduce the blob power. Continually blobbing 4-5 squads with high popcap and retreating as soon as you meet an HMG suppressing you but not killing so much models make you lose manpower via their high upkeep. Going full Riflemen, like 5 or 6 squads would be an over-kill for your economy. Even if you lose many models in the battle, your low income would not allow you to reinforce and develop furthermore your army.
In practice, this also requires some adjustment in teching and tiering. if 4 RM squads take you 40 popcap, how do you bring your army to the late game? With upgrades, in any forms, building each tier could reduce the upkeep cost, veterancy as well and finally some special upgrades to buy at specific tiers. Having a lot of Riflemen could be a strategy but costing you the price of an upgrade on T3 to be viable on the long run, a price that can includes fuel and so forcing you to take strategic decisions.

Those strategic decisions would happen at each tier of the game in case of tier upgrade. The player would have to think where to spend his economy. To reduce the impact of his early game units or to invest directly on the next tier unit with the possibility of "bankrupt" if it goes bad.

I would rather implement a fuel/mp cost to repair anything considerate as heavy/super heavy.