Profile of Jae For Jett

I guess one could replace 'team weapon' with 'any defensive position', or a VP cap circle, for instance. Or an ostheer teammate.

I'm not suggesting OKW's team weapons be buffed, but I do think OKW's team weapons are worth protecting, not to mention building in the first place.

What kind of defensive position do you mean?

As for protecting a vp cap circle, thats not how it works. Close range weapons work in a few cases: ambushes (like around sight blockers), offensively (when pushing another squad/running up to close range), defensively (when the enemy has to walk up close for some reason). Vp cap circles do not directly involve any of those cases. Vp cap circles do not force the enemy to walk up to you into close range and have nothing to do with ambushes. Being able to run up to another squad exists entirely independent of VP cap circles as well.

With regards to protecting an ostheer teammate's weapons, that means youre saying that the upgrade should be reliant on its interactions with teammates, and not with its interactions with the rest of its own faction. I can't say that that way of balancing is wrong, but I do think its a terrible way to balance a single upgrade when every other ability and unit in the game is balanced based on its performance in the faction, and not through its synergy with allied factions.

I know you're not suggesting okw's team weapons be buffed, and thats where im saying your argument falls apart. I'm saying that if it were to go how you suggested and they were balanced around protecting team weapons, that the team weapons theyre protecting would need a buff. Yes, OKW's team weapons are worth protecting. Yes, theyre worth building in the first place. No, theyre not strong enough to be the new focus of the faction as they are, even in dbp (which is essentially what you would be suggesting).

The critical fallacy here is the assumption that infantry squads are only used to fight other infantry squads.

Volks with a full smg package can be used to clear team weapons, most prominently atgs and mgs. It's a tactical use that isn't just slugging manpower at manpower.

An smg squad also defends team weapons like isgs, raketens, and mgs from being overrun better than a rifled counterpart.

Team weapon management and support is a huge part of volks, or at least IMO they should be.

That kind of usage doesn't show up when calculating spreadsheets.

So that they can protect a low aoe isg? Or an mg34 that is still weaker than all other HMGs in the game? OKW support weapons did get buffed (quite substantially, really), but their support weapons are still weaker and perform worse in their intended roles than those of other factions. If you want some kind of interaction where volks protect team weapons, then those team weapons have to be worth protecting. So then, say, you buff okw support weapons. You now have a faction that has somewhat weak core infantry, with strong support weapons. That is what ostheer is already.

Lufwaffe ground forces is my favorite doctrine. I used it in GCS, and in retrospect, I probably suffered for it. In live patch, the doctrine is not strong, and any youre better off using any of the other meta doctrines (as is the case with other factions too). My issue is that with these changes, I see a net nerf to a doctrine thats already lacking power.

On live, almost all of the strength of the doctrine is in fallschirmjagers. You wanted to weaken the infiltration aspect of the unit (more than fair); however, that was the entire reason this doctrine was ever picked in the first place, and the buffs to other abilities are not enough to compensate.

Why would falls be preferable to jaegers now? Jaegers have better sight range, sprint, are cheaper, (later they have infil nades, but thats a scavenge commander ability), and scavenge. They trade all of this for what is now a nominally lower dps. I would straight up take jaegers in this doctrine now over current falls.

Now (imo), every single other ability in scavenge is more useful then every single other ability in luftwaffe, barring the recon run. Thorough salvage is nice (though somtimes a detriment), infil nades are the cheesy kind of strong, ostwinds are excellent (though nerfed on dbp iirc), and scavenge artilley is also excellent.

Comparing each ability and its changes:

Recon runs are good. A nice change to an already decent ability. Kind of awkward to utilize both the smoke and recon at the same time as others pointed out, but a cool change.

Falls changes I touched upon already. I now consider them worse than jaegers overall.

With regards to flak emplacements, what can a flak emplacement do that a well placed bunker wont do (besided AA). All without the (now greatly lowered) threat of it being turned against you. Then you consider the relatively high fuel cost in a faction that really needs to stay ahead in fuel to get proper teching, and the flak emplacements are still too risky to use. Its not about the effectiveness of the emplacement, its how easy it is to hard counter.

When you combined the cost and the limited duration, valiant assault was just too short and too pricye to to be useful. The Valiant assault changes are nice, but I dont think the changes are enough to make it be used.

As for airborne assault... its still a super high munitions ability with a still close-to-useless strafe that gives you fallschirmjager at a point where you dont even want them. The ability is at such a high cp that fallschirmjager are dead weight at that point. They have a high reinforcement cost and will be facing vetted up, up-gunned squads. At this point, your army is probably at the size where adding a squad like fallschirmjager will bleed you to the point of being unable to reinforce at will. And what even is the use case for the ability itself. Use it for the strafe? Thats easily dodged. Use it for the AT strafe? Its hardly impactful or useful enough as an AT strafe. Use it for the falls? Like i said, at this point, you dont want them. Use it in the perfect situation where you get to utilize all of the above aspects? Regular strafe is then dodged away from, AT strafe then does close to nothing, and that falls squad that you dont even want is being shot out of the sky. It just isnt a good ability. Its a cool ability. It has a cool concept. It has no real use in the game. Compare this to scavenge artillery which has MUCH larger area denial, is cheaper and scales up with munitions.

The abilities are still so niche or useless that they cant compensate for the nerf to falls.

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Now that arty cover has been nerfed, there is nothing to stop me (I hope...)

People mentioned some great options already, so I'll just emphasize some of the more practical ones:

Raketens can be used for scouting, especially once they've hit vet 1.

Panzerfusiliers' g43 upgrade grants extra sight range.

Volksgrenadiers get more sight range at vet 4.