Profile of Storm Elite

Surprise-surprise. Dane was right.

Completely unusable profile, because even unupgraded rifle squads like Conscripts and Riflemen, as well as specialized upgraded squads like PTRS-equipped Guards, simply turn and focus fire the instantly wipeable four-man Stormtrooper squad, regardless of how much space there is between them and the flanking Stormtroopers when the Stormtroopers turn a corner and start rushing in.

There is absolutely no way to use close-range weapon profiles against anyone with half a brain. Countering them doesn't require either tactically savvy positioning (like having an HMG WAY in the back behind your frontline) or careful army composition planning (like ensuring you group long-range units into squads with automatic weapon wielding units to prevent flanking rushes).

Simply no reason, at all, to play Ostheer with a focus on infantry still. Especially with JLI now being so much better now for OKW and allowing OKW to basically have an Ostheer-flavored play style without the instantly wipeable infantry squads.

That's not an exaggeration.

Now, I don't play a lot, so we're not talking hundreds upon hundreds of matches over the past six months, but still, I play enough to notice patterns, and this one is absurd.

Every single Soviet player I play against never brings out so much as a single AT gun, instead upgrading every single infantry unit (Conscripts? What are Conscripts?) with AT rifles.

This results in one of two outcomes:

• The Soviet player loses spectacularly because he fell into this enormous noob trap
  
• The Soviet player wins by combining these Universal Soldier units with tanks and various complex tactics
  

Neither of these situations is acceptable.

OKW players had Panzerschrecks essentially removed from their faction to prevent this very thing.

Yet now, every single match against Soviets is a match against nothing but AT rifle equipped Guards and Penals, with Penals also, for some inexplicable reason, being allowed to retain their satchel abilities when equipped with handheld AT weapons, which can, also inexplicably, penetrate literally all tiers of tanks except maybe heavies.

When are these absurd double standards going to stop?

Note: I'm not arguing FOR Universal Soldier squads. I don't think they belong in any faction, and I was happy when Panzerschrecks were removed from Volksgrenadiers.

But as mentioned above, allowing Soviets to have entire teams of universally capable squads is detrimental to literally everyone. It traps newbies into impossible situations where their infantry ends up outnumbered, and it takes away the challenge of proper army composition management from experienced players who opt in to using these units as crutches.

And frankly, it's getting boring as all hell. Match after match after match -- the same thing, requiring the same counters and the same resource considerations.

No machine guns, no AT guns, no mortars, nothing -- just spammed Universal Soldier squads.

This needs to end.

What. Riflemen are universal soldiers. They take no damage on approach and win automatically in close and medium ranges, which is the only ranges any engagements happen at because the soldiers in CoH2 are blind and can somehow, paradoxically, shoot further than they can see.

And more expensive??? Is that why USF outnumbers Ostheer on the field every single match?

1-vs-1, Grenadiers lose to Riflemen without having a chance, because Grenadiers do not have high DPS at long range (where they're supposed to excel) and have low DPS at medium and close range, while Riflemen have stable DPS at long range and high DPS at all other ranges.

When USF can only bring out one Rifleman squad for every two Ostheer Grenadier squads, as it clearly should be, it'll make sense to start balance discussions regarding number tweaking. But until then, any complaints about Grenadiers, the single most often instantly wiped unit in the entire game, are invalid.

Wasn't anti-air changed at some point to basically be random chance for each shot of shooting down a plane outright?

Definitely remember something like that being discussed, with two options being either random shoot down chance or tweaking health amounts on planes, with the decision being made to go with the random chance to avoid the constant plane health tweaking that was going on without any consensus on what amount worked best.

Or did I dream that discussion up?

The more I see of the Ostheer squad leaders, the more I wonder: what is the point of the current G43 upgrades?

Clearly, the best performance from a G43 is in a squad with just one, with all other models dealing damage while the G43 sniper picks off models.

So why give a change as monumental as five-man squads only to a single commander?

I'd say replace all G43 upgrades across all commanders that have them with squad leaders.

Because let's be honest, having a four-man squad with just two G43s accomplishes absolutely nothing in terms of changing the squad's performance, since the two remaining K98ks are a liability on the move or up close.

So this new approach of focusing on strictly ranged units having a single, potent G43 (Grenadiers and JLI) is clearly one of the most sensible changes that's been implemented in a while. It just needs to be more widespread than just a single commander.