Profile of Abokasee

Priest? isnt that enough arti
Cmon where is our Hummel then?

Some sort of an upgrade for the normal sherman would be a cool thing... like in vcoh
(Pay some fuel/ammo to get a better version of a sherman...)

tbh rather see that then the Snooker-Que Walking stuka.

Annoyingly relic wanted to move away as far as possible from DoW1/CoH1 style upgrades like many SC/WC inspired RTS games, so we probably won't see that.

Priest is doctrinal.

OKW has Walking Stuka, Whermacht had Panzerwerfer and Soviet has Katyusha. Wher and Soviet also have buildable artillery pieces. OKW lacks doctrinal artillery and USF lacks non-doctrinal artillery...

USF needs non doctrinal artillery

Lacking doctrinal-arty is only really a drawback when you consider the rather niche-use of Arty as Heavy-AT (which seems to be one of the optimal ways of destroying Jadgtigers in 4v4)

EDIT:
Also admist this threads fecal-flinging competition of "Your tank was less produced than my tank." we have forgotten Relic literally added a Fictional "Stun" grenade. Yes this may be a reference to the Model 24 "concussion grenade" (#wikiwarrior) but that means its heavily dependent on HE, rather than Fragmentation; either one is going to murderating poor buggers with the effect of "ow I got knocked the freak out" being secondary.

In short: Relic is (slightly) more influenced by gameplay choices for the sake of interestingness (lets not touch on the topic of balance with some of these crazy things); the Ostwind is in because the Wirbelwind was in the last game (and not all that more common) and they were interested in having a vehicle that could bully around the light-armour vehicles. The choice was then between the Ostwind and the ugly as sin and obscure as heck Mobelwagen.

Sometimes this quest for quirks is bad; like cons being outstandingly crap late game at anything except engine botherers, or Fallschirmjager casually walking out of a building and murdering everything with FG42's like they just casually left $20 for Taxi-cab fare after banging some french-chick.

...Alex you're aware both OKW and Ostheer stock is perfectly capable of handling anything available to either of the Allies, at all.

The IS2 isn't even that great - a Panther will slap the shit out of it generally. It will certainly be sending it back to base for repairs after any fight. Heck just bring some Pak40s, get some units up front to provide LoS and you'll be making IS2 usage very awkward indeed.

For OKW, Rakten's don't quite cut it true, but a large number of Shreks are capable of discouraging particularly brave use. Oh whats that on the horizon? Oh its a Panther! It even has an OK performance against infantry and with allied Infantry AT being 100% fucking pathetic: Getting a AT grenade to not bounce off a Panther is like getting ice to sink. Bazookas really don't fair much better and often players won't purchase them anyway because the BAR is a much more confident usage of munitions and weapon slots.

OKW also has access to the Jagdpanzer. I'm surprised its not seen all that much. Actually I'm fucking not. The reason I'm not surprised is because Shreks and Rakts are just fine, and its really not that long till you see a Panther if they're playing alright (and if you have an Ostheer building catches). Meanwhile, the Soviet equivalent, the SU85, fulfills a desperately needed role of "Mobile(ish) AT", which the ZiS-3 often can't cut because it just isn't mobile enough... and is vulnerable to Walking-Stuka.

So every Soviet player is essentially forced to go into a tier in which there is no general purpose tank (not that I would want a T34 anyway). Sure it has the Katyusha for anti-infantry but that's artillery, not a combat vehicle. And the SU76 is just complete rubbish.

Which then leads onto Doctrine dependence of Soviets.
Virtually every viable doctrine will include Shocktroops. Because they can actually sodding compete at all with Axis late game infantry without bleeding manpower like a 5 year old attempting to use a Ketchup bottle. They bring in no AT but at least they can be used to cover the retreat of your own vehicles if things get desperate, but really your other infantry options were not bringing all that much AT to the table anyway, so you might as well opt for an infantry thats worthwhile. The reason this is being brought up is that Soviet options are already limited by if they want infantry worth a damn (where the only alternatives are FwdHQ and PTRS blob, both of which tail off like heck late game without good skill with handling ZiS and SU85's.)

So, from doctrines including Shock troops and some sort of late-game viable unit, we have:
- IS2. It's a good tank no doubt, but it takes up just shy 1/4 of your pop cap, and is very vulnerable to Stock Axis units (can't say that about Jadgtiger, Elefant, Tiger(less so) and the KT).
- ISU152. Retard strong gun. Shame it's Armour isn't as thick as the buffoon of a driver handling this thing. AFAIK admittedly most players skip of this nowadays. Oh its even more expensive than the IS2.
- B4. As this argument is based around stock units of Axis, this is actually very good. In reality though CAS or any kind of "hand-of-god" will get rid of this. Heck Walking-Stuka is hardly a bad option.

And would you look at that I'm all out. We have 3 doctrines to pick from if you want a reliable AT that isn't the SU85 (or can be used to supplement it). Heck the best thing about the Shock-Motor Heavy is that it has precision strike - maybe their engine is damaged/destroyed so you can land that and kill a vehicle for a whopping 200 muni. Woop-dee-fucking doo.

Important to note that in the situation the PTRS is available (to Cons), Shock Troops, IS2's (the "when in doubt take") are unavailable - either will reduce the emphasis of AT on part of the Axis player(s) as it's likely the Soviet player is not going hard on Armour.

The main reason the PTRS is good is that it allows Conscripts to be useful outside of throwing AT-grenades and merge in the mid-late game. If the PTRS received something of a slight accuracy nerf, but the Cons themselves were improved: removing that ridiculous incoming accuracy modifer and giving them a non-doctrinal muni weapon for late game would be a fantastic start (but the latter is a drastic change Relic will likely not employ) you almost certainly would never see it used this much.

PTRS con blobs at the moment, besides the omnipresent "doctrinal" issues, doesn't have any unique drawbacks, but Relic will need to be careful in that they don't just return the Cons to borderline uselessness again.