Profile of JohnnyB

JLI are great to shooting down UK sniper.

Except for the cases when UK sniper is moving together with 2-3 tommies squads. You can't touch it and your JLI's will die if you don't retreat them before they even fire a shot.

You have tanks for that.

Of course. I have units that require fuel for building, fuel for teching, besides alot of mp and amo upgrade.
Are you pussyking reloaded?

Go LeYawn, go!

@ Austerlitz
@gman1211

Victory can be achieved with axis on 2v2 but on randoms is verry difficult. If you have a partner and you play AT, it should be more easy.

So, in short, if we want to have a good chance to win, me and my partner go dual OKW or OKW + Lostheer.

It better works on smaller or tighter maps, but this is what we do in general:
- for dual OKW we both play with med truck on the field and mg doctrines.
- for OKW + Lostheer we do the same, with the difference that Ostheer player relies only on mgs, mortars and engineers, and zero grenadiers. This is the way ostheer plays while building as many fuel caches as possible and placing as many AT mines as possible. Then directly T4. Yes, T4, while chosing a pak43 doctrine (preferably festung armor - is the best for this job). The lack of AT for light vehicles and tanks such as stuart, T70, Su76, halftrucks is fulfilled by raketen and shrecked volks + one Jagdpanzer in early game. in middle game pak43 makes a nice addition to the arsenal, then the T4 units come and it's kinda over.

The infernal shooting done by 4-5 mg42s and mortars that support OKW units is somthing we didn't see defeated untill now.

Is ostheer supposed to rely on team weapons? Good. We just spam them so that OKW units can resist and break their way through. It's not nice, it feels rough and stupid, but it works.

So if you want just try this, like I said, with your partner, on smaller maps. Hope that helped, that is the purpose I wrote this.

At the moment, I feel that CoH2 has some serious thematic problems that are exasperated by “balance” which at the moment, is focused on single units and stats of the unit being built rather than its relation to the rest of the faction and the underlying theme that the faction gives – that and a large amount of design flaws in certain factions (ie UKF) that make this game simply not as satisfying as VCoH ever was.

So, lets start with the themes of factions on initial release (not withstanding broken shit)

Soviets – Strong earlygame, very good assault units earlygame, had a choice between teching to either a generalist tank line or a Fire support line.

Ostheer – Defensive earlygame faction , not as good at taking ground but compensates for that with endgame combined arms strength

OKW – Strong Earlygame and lategame faction, specialist faction where units only excel at one certain thing and thats it, has 5 levels of vet so if you keep your units alive, you will be rewarded.

USF – Strong Earlygame and midgame faction – offensive faction with a lot of mobility and firepower through mainline infantry, lategame strength comes from numbers rather than individual units.

UKF – Defensive Earlygame and strong lategame faction – has very strong, expensive infantry that are very good for defending territory but not so good for attacking. Excellent tank options though
_____________________________________________
Based on this, lets see where we currently are.

OKW – completely gimped – their veterancy, even up to vet 5, scales really badly with allies, esp USF and UKF, and a lot of their specialists units, although they required nerfs from release, have been simply overnerfed. That and with the power creep that resulted from commanders like Heavy Cavalry and factions like UKF, means that their specialist units are all of a sudden not as good anymore. That and, with gimped resource production, OKW now find themselves inferior to all allied factions at all stages of the game, which completely goes against the faction design of OKW. I’m perfectly fine with 5 levels of vet – its hard to earn, but if you earn it, then you should be rewarded. – TLDR – OKW is completely broken now Themewise.

USF – Rifles are finally strong now, and no longer as strong as RE, but frankly, their earlygame is waaay too strong now. One ability that really should not be in the game is smoke – Rifles are the strongest main line offensive infantry in the game and they can be spammed from T0 – why they need an ability like Smoke is beyond me. I mean Conscripts do perfectly fine without smoke against MGs if you flank, and the VCoH US did perfectly fine without abilities like smoke against MGs and Wehr, so I don’t understand why such a strong unit needs an ability like smoke. This causes problems for the Wehr theme which I’ll get to in a minute.

UKF – Absolutely the most design and theme-breaking faction in the game. We’ll start from release. For instance, there is no reason as to why such a defensive faction in the game needs an AT sniper – which I thought was a silly inclusion by Relic. Because of its ability to damage vehicles, there are no real hard counters to the AT sniper. Especially considering that the AT sniper is in the same tier as the ATG that comes reasonably early as well – I don’t see why the sniper should be able to damage tanks. Moreover, I don’t even understand why the Brits have a sniper unit. In VCoH, the Brits could put a scoped rifle in their Tommie squad, which was perfectly fine as it costed muni and had less range than the Wehr sniper, so you couldn’t go around and pop units anywhere without really thinking.

Now I mention the Tommie squad, Relic what was up with the -10% decrease in MP, making them cost less MP per model than a Gren? Considering that the Brits are a defensive faction, this change really was not needed. It now gives the brits a lot of offensive options now esp against Wehr with field heal and everything since Wehr would now be bled per model instead of Brits, especially when Brit infantry is in cover. That coupled with the most cost effective assault engineer unit in the game turns the brits into what was a defensive faction into a viable offensive faction which pretty much hurts not only the British but also the Ostheer and OKW themes as well.

Finally, since due to the nature of CoH2 and most maps, its impossible to deny the British fuel, and now with the buff to british offensive ability, means that the Brits overall will tech a lot faster that Ost (and OKW) with better tanks. I’m perfectly fine with Brits having good tanks, thats part of their design, but instead of toning down British aggression in the early game, it has been ramped up significantly as we can see from the last patch.

Because of this, Ost has been left in the dust – typically (except against Brits) Ost tends to have a good way of defending itself while being outnumbered, which I’m perfectly fine with. But it has a harder time taking map control. In VCoH, the thing that made it interesting when US were able to take a good amount of vet control was universal vet that Wehr was able to buy that allowed them to have the midgame-endgame strength. This doesn’t happen in CoH2, and with power creep thats been going on, means that Ost no longer has the offensive endgame material that has been a core part of its faction design to win.

At the moment, the only faction in a good place currently is the Soviets. Its mostly remained to its faction themes and is competitive throughout the game with many viable compositions available – except for the SU-76 which, rather than being a glass cannon TD, should be looked at more as a midgame unit with decent AT and decent barrage instead of really good SU-85 levels of TD and completely gimped barrage – I feel leaving the SU-76 in its current state while switching it from T4 when it had to compete with the Su-85 to T3 lazy balancing. This isn’t a theme issue so much as it is a historical issue – its silly for SU-76s to penn KTs.

TLDR: Relic, stop listening to community about individual buffs/nerfs of certain units because of balance and instead, pay attention to themes of factions/historical authenticity that you’re promoting in your advertisments, yet so badly ignore and neglect in your faction design and balance patches.

Good post, and I agree that the Soviets are in a good place right now. maybe better than USF! As USF you have the blobbing way or the highway. As soviet, you have more options and solutions to everything without being handicaped because your infantry sucks (as in ostheer's case, which if would have a good back bone - balanced grenadiers - would be as best as soviets).