Profile of blvckdream

Soviets are forced to rely on crutch units because rest of the faction sucks

Yes. That´s my point. Apart from maybe UKF, no other faction has such a variety of useless trash abilities/units as Soviets. Which forces Soviets to use the same units over and over again, which is very boring and repetitive.

People continually bitch about differences, yet, don't want mirror stat balance.

I don´t bitch about differences. I bitch about most units not being useful and being limited to a handful of units.

All this comes from a 2v2 perspective:

Soviets are objectively the best Allied faction and are pretty well balanced with both Axis factions on most maps.

But why is it that despite all the balance work the faction has a trillion units and abilities but only a handful are actually useable? There is a huge gap between strong units that get used every game and the rest.

I really hate that if you want to win as Soviets you need to abuse the same units over and over again or get completly rekt because the rest is trash tier. T70, SU-85, counter-everything Guards, Snipers and Penals are basically the only choice you have. PPSH Cons can be viable but they are limited to a few doctrines and only useful on certain maps.

Conscripts without PPSH are still flat out UP at any stage of the game. They just get bullied by Volks, Grens and Axis elite infantry. The least they could have done is merge the grenade upgrade. 25 fuel just to unlock snares is a bit too much considering how much you need the T70 when you go Cons.

Maxim needs to get better suppression so it can´t just be forced to retreat by a frontally charging Volks that throws a flame nade. Just reduce squad size to 5, make it have a slightly longer build time and increase pop cap by 1 and give it good suppression. That way spamming it isn´t effective but it becomes a useful unit. Right now the Maxim at vet 0 is a joke especially because it requires you to not get sniper+penals. Meanwhile Ost can have actually good units out of T0/T1 without having to lock themself out of a certain group of units. Soviet mortar and AT-gun are OK in my opinion.

M5 HT should get a slight muni decrease or smoke so it becomes a worthwile unit to get instead of no-brainer T70 every single game.

Su76 is a terrible design at the moment. It has 200 penetration and 60 range which is insane for a 75 fuel vehicle. On the other hand the one thing it needs, accuracy, it doesn´t have. The Su76 is supposed to counter LV and help as a stop-gap vehicle vs Ost T3. Decrease the penetration and increase accuracy so it starts to counter LV, Ostwind + Ost P4 effectivly without relying on RNG that much. On top of that SU76 is one of the hardest vehicles to actually use because it cant aim it´s gun so needs to rotate the entire vehicle to aim. Which given how pathing works in COH2 makes it spin endlessly and get constantly stuck at small map objects.

T34/76 is another tank that I personally really dislike because it just loses vs every medium tank in the game. Since Soviets always need to built T3 to get to T4 it´s just not worth it over T70 unless you are already winning the game so hard that it really doesn´t matter what vehicle you get. The timing of the T34/76 is wrong as well. It costs more to field the first T34 76 than to field the first P4 as Ost. You are much better off building T70+SU85 and Katy if opponents has too many support weapons or blobs hard. That being said I I don´t really know how to change the T34/76 without making it too much like the 85 variant.

Soviet Partisans are terrible across the board, I have seen them once in the last months. Not worth it because they just don´t scale at all. Plus they come in bad doctrines, which is another big problem. The entire Partisan doctrine should probably be deleted and instead Partisans should find a new place in doctrines that don´t suck that hard.

Shocktroops are actually decent but they just don´t fit into any Soviet build order unless you gimp yourself by going T2 without PPSH Cons. They dont synergize with Penals because of their cost and lack of AT options. They dont synergize with PPSH Cons because you don´t need them when you already have several PPSH cons.

Dshk machine gun is so bad it makes the Maxim seem good. It has a tiny arc, comes late, costs 300 MP and still doesn´t perform well. Not sure how it was possibly to overnerf it that hard. The doctrines the Dshk comes in are not good so if you pick these doctrines it´s because the Dshk is a strong unit, but in reality it´s not. It has ok suppression and damage but set-up and tear down is too slow to compensate for all the glaring weaknesses it has. Useless unit. Perfect way to lose the game is to pick defensive doctrine or lend lease. Buff the DSHK back to the OP lend lease days. It comes in bad doctrines so it would be completly fine. What made Lend Lease OP months ago was not the DSHK but tech-free M4Cs that could be spammed all game thanks to supply drops. Buffing the DSHK would also make these two doctrines decent again and thus increase variety.

B4 howitzer is not super bad but 100% relies on RNG to do anything. Not a great design but it would be ok if it didn´t come in a terrible doctrine. Again a unit that you can´t really use because the doctrine doesn´t work.

KV1 is still a terrible tank in 2v2+, it does OK if Ost player is not smart enough to get Pak40s or T4 but you can´t count on your opponents stupidity to win a game. It does nothing vs OKW T4 because it can´t pen OKW P4, JP4 or Panther. It needs a bit more penetration or smoke to make it worthwile and comparable to the Churchill.

KV8 and KV2 are meme units at the moment. Not sure if the rework will change anything about that. I am sceptical.

Conscript Repair Kits are terrible and need a buff. Just WAY too slow. You need to keep ALL your mainline combat infantry away from fighting just to get the repair speed of a combat engineer. Complete trash ability. Increase the repair speed.

Incediary Artillery Barrage is fine but way too expensive. It doesn´t kill anything unless opponent is AFK and does absolutly nothing to vehicles. Maybe make it cost 100 muni and increase cool down.

Rapid Conscription is useless since the last nerf. Not enough time, too many units need to die. Worthless muni sink. Not sure why this ability was ever nerfed. Revert the nerfs and make it decent again.

I was wondering if this is the case yet everygame I build a ml-20 or even 2-3 of them and try to hit 1 Lefh I can't destroy it but mine gets hit by his constantly. Confirmation bias? maybe, but this happens everygame.

And isn't lefh getting kinda buffed with the new commander revamps making it even more powerful

No. Lefh shoots more rounds per barrage than ML20. The additonal damage and AOE that the ML20 gets is not as good as additonal rounds, which is why I prefer Lefh over ML20 any game. Both are heavily reliant on RNG though. Lefh gets counter barrage at vet 1 which is probably what counters your ML20s.

3v3 and 4v4 is not that good for howitzers because in 90% of games someone is going to have a arty/plane drop which renders your howitzers useless because as soon as opponent has saved up the muni he is just going to destroy them. Howitzers need time to become effective and worth the investment.

Soviets have a doctrine called Soviet Combined Arms which has recon + IL2 bombs (so you can kill a howi in 2 clicks) + guards + howi + at gun camo. Check it out.