Profile of Kothre

I feel like the US is arguably the best 1v1 faction in the game right now, though not by a huge enough margin to warrant a lot of the complaints I've been seeing. The US has a lot of strengths in that they're great at taking territory but, but they have a hard time keeping it for prolonged periods of time. I just want to give my two cents about the faction as a whole:

1) The entire faction is built around riflemen. If they get nerfed, they have to be extremely well-thought out and reasonable nerfs. We can't have them turning panzergrenadier bad, or else the US faction will be the laughing stock of the game. I believe that the problem is blobbing, not the riflemen squad itself. A better change would just be a increased received accuracy to clumped units as others have suggested, which would both make rifle blobs more reasonable and improve the entire game's tactical value overall. Considering rifle blobs are basically the only "OP" complaint I see levied against the US faction besides the AA halftrack, I don't see why anybody would disagree with this.

2) AA Halftrack is great against Ostheer and good against Oberkommando. I'm more convinced that the reason it's so good against Ostheer is because of a deficiency with them not because America is OP. Keep in mind that this thing is 60 fuel and one of the few units people actually tend to build besides riflemen. It should be effective for its cost. I'm going to echo what I said with riflemen about overnerfs, because Relic has a tendency to overdo it with their balance changes. People don't need another reason to build nothing but one unit type.

3) ...why is their HMG 280 manpower instaed of 240? Especially after they got nerfed (excuse me, "bug-fixed"), it doesn't seem any better or worse than the MG42, except it comes out later. Maybe someone can correct me on this, because I personally don't see much difference in performance.

4) Pack howitzer is utterly worthless, but everyone knows that already. Either it needs a cost and population reduction to a normal mortar squad's, or (preferably) just gets a buff to be worth a damn. This thing had amazing AoE in the alpha and was a monster of an artillery piece. Now all it does is make a cool whooshing noise.

5) Is it just me, or are Shermans worse against tanks than T34/76's? It's like the vet 1 radio net ability is the sole reason Shermans are good, forcing you to spam them like riflemen. Their HE shell is odd, also. It has tremendous splash and damage, but it barely ever hits even when stationary. It really needs an accuracy increase and a splash decrease to make it more consistent.

6) The supervise ability on the captain is just stupid and adds more micro to an already micro-intensive faction. Nobody used the Wehrmacht Officer in the first game, so I have no idea why Relic thought people would enjoy a similar unit in the sequel. Is the captain supposed to be AT support, or a babysitter? Just cut down on the tank build times a little and get rid of supervise.

7) Rifle company is so good it invalidates every other American doctrine, in my opinion. The veteran riflemen ability could use some sort of change.

8) Rear Echelon troops need mines. There is quite literally no purpose to this unit whatsoever since volley fire got nerfed (it was stupid anyway). Vehicle crews can repair themselves, and US don't get sandbags except in one doctrine.

9) Having to pay 5 population just to have any sort of healing utility at all is annoying.

10) Last but not least, US early game is just flat-out boring because the only unit you can build is riflemen. No wonder people blob.

Honorable mention: Pershing. Pretty please?

Instead of a cumbersome button to rotate your turret 12 o'clock or 9 o'clock or whatever, it would be the easiest to simply hold the mouse as you do now to rotate the vehicle, but then click the left mouse before you release right mouse. That seems the fastest and easiest way to me.

Mate, if jesulin and Helping hans are struggling with soviet player 10 ranks lower. Then something is wrong. ATM balance is horribly scewed in favour of allies. Sovs due to diverse cheese tactics and units, and US in early game brute strength.

The % you mention is simply due to bordem with the faction. Sovs and Americans are very very boring to play and easy to use and have OP units. Its not a challenge, psychologically people would like to overcome difficulty so hence you are seeing more axis players.

10 ranks doesn't mean that much. When you're in the top 200, ranks fluctuate pretty quickly.

You can't just give your opinion on why people play Axis ("Allies are boring") and expect that claim to carry weight with the rest of everyone else. I happen to find Allies a lot more diverse than Axis, so I don't know man. I too like to overcome challenge, but let's be real here. How many video games have you played where if a weapon, faction, or whatever is deemed overpowered by the community, people don't overwhelmingly flock to it? The people who do that far outweigh people who refuse to use the "OP flavor of the month" in my experience. I'm not trying to flame you or anything, but I think that claim is just absurd.

And don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that the game's balance is horrendous, though it isn't perfect. 1v1 I think is mostly fine (though Ost vs US definitely favors US early game). What I am saying is that anything 2v2+ exponentially starts favoring Axis, mostly because of OKW for reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread. Ostheer if anything could use buffs on some units (Brummbar, Panzergrenadiers), and they aren't as big a threat now that Panthers aren't invincible death machines like they used to be.

You should try playing allies. It's pretty hard, actually. I hate the soviets with a passion. Nearly all of their infantry need to get pretty close to dish out damage, which is really not easy.

The US late game is a micro hell of trying to keep Jacksons alive.

This is exactly why my 2v2 partner and I have a lot tougher time with Oberkommando than Ostheer. Conscripts (and penal battalions) without a ton of maxim support are just not able to hold their own against Sturmpioneers and Fallschirmjager that are bumrushing you, at least not cost effectively. The thing is that conscripts are balanced vs grenadiers in that grens excel at long range and cons at short, but cons' short range is nothing compared to the aforementioned OKW units. This necessitates the overreliance on shock troops and maxim spam. And once Obersoldaten come out, your shock troops get shredded from a distance when the blob comes a-chargin', hence the maxim being so relied upon.

I'm not complaining about that fact so much as I am seemingly every Axis player wanting to nerf maxims into the ground for it when they don't realize it's the only thing keeping Soviets from getting steamrolled by blobs. I'm going to be livid if Relic nerfs Soviet weapon teams to 4 men (like they said they want to) and then doing absolutely nothing to compensate for it.

We just played a 2v2 where the entire team moved in one blob the whole time: Battle of the Blobs 2014. I'm not whining, because we won anyway, but it's stupid how much work it took to kill such a stupid strategy. I feel like WFA armies really devolved the meta into blobbing like Panzer Elite and British from OF. Both the WFA are much more blob-heavy and I think it's killing a lot of strategy in the game, which disappoints me whether it beats me or not.

Damn, man, you really thought this patch out. I'd love to play this version of CoH 2. I can honestly say it depresses me that this will probably never happen, because your fantasy patch is seriously that well-thought out.

I especially like your suggestions regarding Wehr T4, conscript upgrades (I've been wanting that exact system since release), maxim changes (that are both simultaneously a nerf and a buff), and rear echelons getting mines. Also, PaK 40's vet 3 camo got removed several patches ago for some inexplicable reason in case you didn't know.