Profile of Grumpy

Supression sure. But sniping vehicles and infantry alike? No way. Had too many 222s aand stuarts blow up by the leig and The p ppack howi.

The pack howie does 80 damage and is only going to kill a 222 if something else badly damaged it first. However, both are pretty good at driving light vehicles back.

They both need to be nerfed, but the LeIG needs more of a nerf. The LeIG has roughly half the effective scatter and nearly always hits its targets, including lone snipers. The scatter on its barrage doesn't seem distant dependent so it hits in the same small circle at max range. I've been trying to play UKF this weekend and have lost probably five snipers to the leig.

LeIG has a fairly wide firing cone so the nerf to auto-rotate won't hurt it too bad. The pack howie has a much smaller firing cone and is nearly worthless in the October patch review. It also has a really long range for auto-fire and barrage.

The one-hit pin is what bothers me the most about both of these weapons currently. I've had 1v1's where I win a battle at my fuel and am recapping when one of these lands a direct hit, forces a retreat, and completely changes the course of the match. OWK can build this shit starting at about 3:30 in the match.

Long range killing of dudes with stuff. LeIG and Pack Howie were used before they got supression. They weren't stellar, but noone ever said "wtf do I use these units for".

The LeIG was mostly useful to chase off 120mm mortars and stop bleeding mp. It was okay at best for a regular combat role. The pack howie was also okay but not great. Neither of them performed up to their cost or pop cap.

In both cases, the buff to those units gave OKW and USF some cheese to fight other factions cheese. Up until last week, the win rates shown on coh2chart.com was probably the most balanced that it has ever been when looking at all four game modes.

The nerf, particularly to the pack howie, will leave the USF without any blob counter. The USF hmg doesn't stop blobs, it just gives them a free hmg if they want or something to salvage.

At some level, Relic did need to do something about these units because gameplay in 1v1's had got to where it wasn't fun. I don't want an hour long arty-fest and these units had turned every map into Sittard (sp?).

It is disappointing that Relic nerfed the pack howie much harder, while leaving the pop cap and cost the same. I wonder if they realized that the pack howie shoots fewer shells in a barrage, has a narrower firing cone, and significantly worse accuracy, all while costing 50 more mp to purchase, 3 more mp per minute in upkeep, and 2 more pop cap.

Why should it be? You want to keep instawiping 4 men units?

lol - It rarely wipes 4 men squads with the current AOE of 6. It doesn't have the accuracy of the LeIG so a AOE of 4 makes it nearly useless. It's a 56% nerf against a unit that already doesn't perform as well as its OKW counterpart.

Initially this was posted in the October Balance Preview Feedback thread, but I'll put it here too for visibility and discussion:


The drop in performance of the Pack Howitzer compared to the Infantry Support Gun is huge and nonsensical considering the prices and targets between the two. In a field test with the auto-fire, the ISG suppressed an enemy squad at max range on every shot except one, until the squad's eventual death. The Pack Howitzer missed about eight shots before hitting which killing 3 Volksgrenadiers and suppressing the squad, then proceeded to miss about a dozen more before wiping the other two members. That is extremely inconsistent and impractical, and it must be amended before the patch goes live!

As for Range, the Infantry Support Gun is far superior to the Pack Howitzer. The Pack Howitzer has 80 range while the ISG has 100, the ISG gets 5 range at Vet 1 and 33% more at Vet 3 for a total of 140 Range. The Pack Howitzer would get 33% more at Vet 3 for 104 if it wasn't broken. But unfortunately it is and the Pack Howitzer remains capped at 80 range while the ISG gains nearly double that number. Even the Soviet Heavy Mortar has superior range (100) to the Pack Howitzer. This is also very ironic because the Pack Howitzer outranged the LeiG 18 by over twice as much in real life, in-game it's strange that a short barreled Infantry Gun has much better range than a Pack Howitzer.


Onto the Barrage and Cooldown stats, the Pack Howitzer again finds itself behind, not only firing less shots but also doing so less frequently:

Pack Howitzer
Vet 0: 3 shots, 60 second cooldown, 80 damage
Vet 3: 3 shots, 39 second cooldown, 160 damage

Infantry Gun
Vet 0: 4 shots, 30 second cooldown, 80 damage
Vet 3: 4 shots, 14 second cooldown, 80 damage
Vet 5: 8 shots, 14 second cooldown, 120 damage

The Pack Howitzer starts with double the cooldown of the Infantry Gun right off the bat, but while the Infantry Gun gets a 40% quicker recharge at Vet 3, the Pack Howitzer only gets a 30% reduction at Vet 3. Since cooldowns start once the first shot is fired, the Infantry Gun is fully able to barrage again immediately once the barrage completes, the Pack Howitzer has to wait about 20 seconds to barrage again (cooldown numbers on the list don't match the math, they were what I observed in-game by firing one round of a barrage, immediately cancelling it, and checking the timer ). At Vet 4, the Infantry Gun gets to fire 8 shots while the Pack Howitzer never fires more than just 3, but that's Vet 4+ and is supposed to be superior, so I'll concede that point. Reguardless I think both barrages should be 5 - 6 rounds, 3 is too little.

Lastly, the projectile lowest angel increased from 10 to 40 does not apply to White Phosphorous Barrage.

Good luck getting any traction with this. I said something similar in the larger October balance thread and it was mostly ignored with one person saying that the pack howie is okay after the nerf.

I mostly play OKW and USF. In 1v1's, I'll sometimes get 45-50 kills with an ISG (which leads to comments about my lack of skill and sexual preferences). I get barely over half that with a pack howie that costs more and has two more pop cap. The only time I like the pack howie better is when destroying buildings, bunkers, and trucks. If one of these should have been hit harder, it should have been the ISG. In general, they both should have been nerfed because they've made the game not fun. It really isn't fun to play an hour-long 1v1 that turns into an arty fest.

Relic gave it to everyone who played during the MLNW event, which was a shit decision as it was badly overpowered back then. It has always been available as war spoils.