Profile of Esxile

As ostheer build two stug and GG, as OKW as you'll het anyway two raketen to support your armor the Ez8 is just irrelevant.

RE flamethrower still get rekt by anything.

I think the commander will go back in the unused commander pool.

Fact is that the win rates can jump vastly between different months and even between related game modes such as 3v3 and 4v4. I agree that standard deviation is no indicator of balance being good or bad at all. But people here claim that some factions are clearly UP because of their win rate being lower than another faction's by a couple of percent, while next month or in the next game mode the difference is much smaller or even reversed. This is a strong hint that the data we have is not robust in the first place.
My point is that we have to consider much, much more than just the win rates that the site gives us. We cannot solve the balance issue on the current "hard" data alone. Like it or not, we have to make a ton of "educated guesses", and that's exactly what the balance team is supposed to do. The win rate data can help, but I get the impression that too many people assume it should be the main or even the only metric for balance. Given the quality of the data, this is quite naive.
Especially if we consider that the data is highly interdependent in team games. One bad faction will drag their Allied faction(s) down in the win rate. Some of the win differences can literally be a good team suddenly having two free weekends. Again, those win rates are a hint that something might be off, but definitely overblown in the discussions here.


I think this has mostly to do with USF and especially UKF having so many holes in the line up compared to Axis factions that picking doctrines is not a nice addition, but essential to the faction. Allies have 2/3 of their factions hampered by this, while both Axis factions unlock all "basic" tools in a normal teching path (OKW having some quirks but still).

Overall the patch still goes into the right direction in my eyes, but as with every patch we have to check which changes do not work. Overall the patch should not be seen as a general faction balance patch, since fixing the factions via commanders will create more issues once core units get changes later down the line. Previous patches have fallen short on more fundamental changes to mostly UKF, but I'd attribute this more to Relic than the balance team.

Off note, I am quite happy though that team games are finally discussed for general balance. It actually shows us how far the game has come that the biggest issues have moved from easier to analyze 1v1s to chaotic large modes.

The patch is going to increase the late game issue because its not a balance patch, more of a players wishes release, The few changes that are really about balance making through it will not be enough. As I said previously this team isn't a balance team but a modding team adding up what they wish and covering it under a "balance" blanket.

Balance has been wreck some patches ago already, the in-game economy is a joke with the profusion of manpower avalaible unless you seriously screw-up early on and how the game allow player to have huge army composition with the constant reduction of Popcap for anything. Axis faction having everything stock wouldn't be a problem if, as some year ago, a player couldn't build standard army composition as of today. Nobody would build as standard 2 HMG and 2 Atgun in every game if every faction popcap were seriously taken in consideration for what its suppose to be: to generate gaps, to not allow players to be able to response to every threat as standard play, to force players to build around their strategy and counter their opponent´s one.
Today as a result of not having taken in account the economy side of the game and only focus on units stats (as if the game was just an excel) 2/3 of the balance aspects on which the game should rely doesn't exist anymore.

The way the balance is today is a dead-end. Not because you can't balance it but because many important aspects of it has been relegated into no-existance. And all of that just for having given the keys to modders and not people with a real vision about game design as a whole.

At the end I agree with you, those 5% deviation in favor for Axis faction will always remain for the good, because otherwise that would indicate that Allied factions are overperforming on their individual unit statistics.

On a personal note, because some here were talking about it, tournament on 1vs1 or 2vs2 are getting boring to watch, those actual TOP players leading the column now are boring to watch, they're specialist on planning, slow building their army composition, no taking any risk before having it all in place, they perfectly feet this meta of lack of lacks, no urgent decision making to counter their opponent, just sit build and wait that support so well Axis faction design on teamgame random.

I'd suspect that all the lane maps (White Ball, Red Ball, Hamburg and to some extend Arnhem) being the most popular maps have quite a significant impact on the Allies/Axis global win ratio because those maps are relatively easier for the Axis with their HMG 42s and especially superheavy TDs, and because most casuals have a hard time dealing with them. Sadly top 200 3v3 and 4v4 data is such a small sample size that it's unreliable, but at least in 2v2 with a bit bigger sample size it shows that within the top 200 the Axis/Allies WR is mostly fine at 52/53 vs 49 (with the exception of UKF, but again that could be skewed due to low sample size). I'd consider anything between 47-53 to be good enough.

Also the Allied factions seem to rely more heavily on light vehicle play, as indicated by high WRs in 1v1 for USF and SOV (but not UKF who lack an AI LV), which makes them very good at 1v1, but less so at teamgames where LV play is weaker.

UKF is not doing well, but that's why they are getting a boat load of buffs to their doctrinal arsenal in the upcoming patch. Along with a heavy nerf to Jaeger Armor.

I wish we could add the Land Mattress and the Calliope to the stock rosters of UKF and USF, as I reckon that would improve their performance (mostly on the lane maps) dramatically, but sadly that's not going to happen.

Error margin is can be an argument if it doesn't shows always the same factions on top and always the same faction on the bottom, if we were seeing Allied bottom one month and then Allied top the next month you're analysis would be correct but we're far from it. When there is always the same factions on top and the same on the bottom that's not anymore error margin, that's inbalance.

Then you're just explain us that water's wet and you can't do anything about it.

Finally you're telling us oh sadly Calliope can't be stock this didn't stop you to decided to nerf to the ground Scott and Pakhowi which were the lower version equivalent of Calliope for USF. Oh and after those nerf USF players are picking even more Calliope so now its time to nerf it too, too bad.

I Enjoy TBC while the patch isn't out. But that's more a matter of playing with friends than the game itself.

Try replacing the T70 by a M5 upgraded to suppress him from range.