Profile of Esxile

It isn't easy to have an opinion on that preview without knowing what are going to be the other factions.

The Cons are, the sniper and the late game designed to be weaker than their opponent.
Pros are the inclusion of air support into the stock units and the variety of upgrades.

The unknown is about indirect fire, there is just a mortar filling this role. I really hope they're not just creating a artificial gap for their purpose of asymmetrical design.

Thx for the visualisation. I took your graph and added the prepatch state before the big AOE nerf with a purple line. You can see how huge the difference is.
I added an orange line for a possible buff that would turn it in a better blob controlling machine which wouldn't affect its performance versus single units that much.




Edit:


You are right, the current damage (red line) should be capped at sixty until range 0.75 or 1. I'm not sure if it is 0.75 or 1, because in the patch notes of february they stated 0.75 for near distance and now they stated 1 for near distance.

Old patch note:
Auto-fire range from 60 to 50
HE Barrage scatter max from 10 to 7
HE Barrage Damage from 100 to 80
HE Barrage AOE damage from 1/0.25/0.1 to 0.75/0.4/0.2
HE Barrage AOE distance from 1/2/3 to 0.75/2/4
HE Barrage Angle scatter from 7 to 6
HE Barrage shell count from 4 to 5
HE Barrage reload from 2.75/2.9 to 1.75/2.9
Barrage shells now use mortar explosion effects to distinguish them from auto-fire rounds.
Veterancy 2 scatter bonus now applies to the barrage instead of the unit's autofire
Smoke no longer shares a cooldown with the main barrage
Human Crush removed

What's pathetic from the balance team shown on this graph is the huge nerf the unit get 6 months ago and the small for nothing buff it get now.
They don't have a clue with what they did in february and they're don't have any idea on how to fix it.

I'm not sure I agree.

A faction being a little harder to grasp, but having the same power-level as other factions isnt what I'd called "imbalanced". Axis and Allies apparently have a similar winrate assuming both sides understand how to play, this is fine and good.

There's simply no sense in trying to balance around players who do not understand the game/their faction.

Nope you're wrong, if faction knowledge was enough then we would have 50% balance regardless of learning curve of each faction. But that's not the case, what bring this supposedly 50% between arranged teams (I didn't see any data supporting this claim) is communication that cover the gaps and lacks, with communication you'll obviously not ask an USF player lacking arty in its loadout to cover this function, but also - and more important - you'll define the strategy before the game start with specific commanders on each player's loadout, thing impossible to do in random.

You can be the best player in random, if you don't have the correct synergy with your random mates on each loadout as allied, then you've already lost unless facing much weaker opponents. Axis do not face this issue as their stock army already cover 100% of the functionalities required in any matches.

Then there are other aspects that favor Axis such as starting with the best unit available or being able to build them right from the start and having excellent synergy. Maps that are at best balanced between factions but for a big part favor Axis and obviously the best end game units stock wise and only sharing this state with some Commander specific units available on Allied side.

HMGs and Spio can be defeated easily with communication early on, the same with late game big units even if you don't have yourself any equivalent on the field, with communication. But communication isn't an active part of the game design, units haven't been designed with communication in mind. Communication just appears to be a decisive factor today, but that hasn't been always the case when the game was so badly balanced, even communication couldn't help.
Communication allows players to overcome gaps and lacks but is not part of the balance. Remove those gaps and lacks and Allied factions will not suddenly out pass Axis one on the the arranged team win rate, it will probably promote and enable more strategies, diversity and more commanders.

But we all know that gaps and lacks aren't going to be fulfilled because Relic doesn't want. That shouldn't be a problem, you can still balance the game with gaps and lacks but not with the decisions taken on the last patches.

Please, for the love of god, stop using that site for 4v4. As a 4v4 tournament player I can guarantee you that arranged team vs. arranged team in 4v4 is completely balanced or depends on the map.

Random 4v4 automatch is a shitfest of monkey apes that cant deal with the tech tree of USF and soviets. For example soviet t1 players that get rekt by blobs and tank rush because they dont know how to counter it without a HMG or AT gun. Same story with USF tech tree as HMG and AT gun + packhowie are kinda mutually exclusive. Both axis factions always have MG, AT guns and indirect fire no matter how they tech. I have seen it sooooooo many times now on playercards where someone had 60% winrate as axis but 40-45% winrate as allies because of this (ofc the player was just bad as well)


Oh and there is also the 4v4 matchmaking. We (a lot of 4v4 players that I know & myself) have a saying "Do not search allies 4v4 in dead timezones, only in EU afternoon time. You will always get unwinable games."

Then you decribe yourself that the game isn't balanced but strong team communication overcomes it. The "don't play random" doesn't work as a counter argument but as a workaround to the imbalanced state of the game.

Modding team never gave any justification for pak and scott last nerfs. No video, no replay. One just say when dual they overperform but thats relevant for any support weapon. Dual atg 2 shots tanks, dual hmg lock half the map, dual isg murder team weapons, dual r-arty wipe half armies...

And since they're not accountable for their changes, expect more OPstruppen and more nerfs to USF.