Stuart is quite fine. It's in a good spot. Thing is, people see the fast firing T70 that keeps the Soviets alive and think that that's the gold standard. It's not. Stuart won't bleed like a T70 or Flak HT but that's why it can deal with any other Axis LV with ease, something that axis can't do easily. Sure they have the longer range and faster firing snares, but still, taking everything into account, Stuart is fine. It could use a little price reduction, 5 fuel, but that's it. It's in a good spot.
Given how it's in a tech without the AT gun, it's kinda needed that it has better AT properties, than AI. |
so you think beating a top 300 team is something that is worth posting ?
In 3v3 a 300 rank team is like a 3000 rank for each individual in that team ... well done !!
... that's the whole point. To show that ranks mean sh**. And I've seen top 300 teams that actually play well and have 70%+ winrates, so go back to your twitch and be proud of being a streamer, God knows your parents aren't. |
Short game that had massive, and I mean massive 2v2 on the top fuel/VP/cutoff. You kinda want to spread out and capture mid or push through mid, but when the double OKW bunkers down around the battlegroup.... Number of kills/deaths surpasses most 20 minute 3v3s.
Absolute doozy of a game. |
The player leaves the game after 2:58 ! and the AI starts to build just Medic Squads ! Yeah of course we lost the 3vs4 !
See the Screenshot !

Probably saw that movie Hacksaw Ridge |
On paper yes, ST AOE technically much better, but the main problem is, even considering that it has better chances at wiping retreating units, ST still need much more pre-positioning to be able to roll in, unload and roll out.
Not to mention that, support weapons like AT guns cant soft-retreat from AVRE aswell, unless pre-spotted and retreating support weapons have very big chance to be wiped as well. Also, unless its volks\PFs\Ostts all squad models will be in kill radius of the AVRE anyway.
Objectively ST AOE provides better blob control, but its still imo very debatable if its bigger AOE actually that much powerful and impactful.
But if we only speak about scenario where ST rolled in, successfully shot and rolled out, ignoring everything what comes before it, then yes its AOE provides much more.
Not really. Maps that are hard on the ST are maps like General Mud (A brilliant map), where there are a lot of assaulting paths. Most 3v3 maps, you use the ST with a couple of buttons.
Drive forward -> click boom -> reverse -> wait for reload.
Heck, I remember on winnekendonk where it took me and my teammate I think 2 full minutes of extremely micro intensive flanks and assaults to kill one ST. The biggest problem was the psychological one. Is it ready to fire again?
I dived with 2 jacksons and rifles and started barraging with pak howis. There was one bounce but about 5 misses in total between the jacksons and the allies T34s bounced or missed pretty much every shot on the run. After all was said and done, that was full two minutes of trying to kill one sturmtiger that literally fired and just reversed back behind the treeline on the bottom winnekendonk fuel (north-eastern).
So on some maps, maneuvering the ST will be difficult, even for a good player, on most maps, it's a piece of cake. Even more so because you know it can take a punch. You know that TDs are needed to penetrate, and even then there can be misses. Last but not least, in teamgames, the unit density is high, so chances are you'll get counter flanked trying to kill the ST.
On paper, killing a ST is easy. Oh it has only 220 armour, TDs will penetrate 95% of time... but yeah, TDs need constant sight, need not miss and you need to deal with all the other sh** around the ST.
Well unless you're a certain top10 OKW player that drove the ST solo, unsupported over the frozen river on Rhzev Winter and cursed the RNG when I fired one shot at it.
And it is, yeah. It's not debatable. If you've played against a ST and/or played with AVRE, you'd notice the difference. AVRE ONLY if it lands the shot, it's good night. ST even if it doesn't land it close to perfect, it's good night or close to it. Thank fu** that the germans didn't make it with a turret, because 80 years later you'd get a turreted sturmtiger that shoots nukes. |
Its not that ST was nerfed, its the fact that AVRE was buffed in the same patch with ST nerf. This was pretty much an absurd.
AVRE and ST are literally identical units (premise of which community generally arent really enjoy).
Their stats are asymmetrical but in the end they are giving the same result. For example ST has more HP since armor is pointless against allies TD, while AVRE has less HP but more armor, pretty much almost every single stat works like this for them. AVRE max speed is slower but it reaches it faster, ST is vise versa and so on.
Difference being ST has bigger AOE (which hardly means anything since you still need direct hits to wipe) for the cost of manual reaload and lack of turret. AVRE has smaller AOE as a price for having turret and auto-reload.
But point is being, why ST price and CP was increased (alongside deserved stats nerfs) while AVRE remained at the same price\CP and got a huge buff via projectile fix which made ST OP in a first place. Multiple balance patches and human time spent, to recreate old balance again where ST is pointless most of the time, while AVRE is superior in every single way considering the role of the unit. Yet, they become even more stronger and frustrating to play against, because both now have projectile fix.
This situation pretty much illustrates one of the core problems balance team had imo, which resulted in fuck ups people like to bring into the disscussion.
AVRE is in a lackluster commander and in a faction that is pretty fu****g bad in teamgames (where such heavies are not pointless). I agree that they should be priced the same, both in CP and in fuel/MP.
I seldom see AVRE in teamgames, even when pulled off correctly, it just becomes a target for Panthers/JP4s for veterancy. ST on the other hand, has obers to fend off any infantry assaults, retreating raketen to fend off TDs and a single JP4 can deny up to two TDs if well placed, with it's low size and high armor. Basically meaning that a ST can just sit and protect a VP/fuel while not being in the danger of a flank (eg, middle indestructible sightblocker on Redball). AVRE is harder to defend generally, being in such a faction/commander.
What they should have done is, aside from making both asymmetrically-identical (if that makes sense; same units but different pros/cons):
1) Sturmtiger reload decrew if shot -> pop cost to 23 (having 2 sturmtigers is half your army at this point)
2) both AVRE and ST grind to a halt during reload (destroyed engine speed) -> more micro
3) Sturmtiger is mutually exclusive with KT
4) I'm not sure of AVRE's veterancy bonuses, but both of those should not have sight,range larger than 35, not even with veterancy. Especially not for the HP/armour they sport. Heck, Sturmtiger needs 9 penetrating shots to kill. So counting in the misses and the bounces, you need about a minute to kill it with even 2 TDs (which take away a lot of AI power in brits and USF, especially vs obers). It's absurd |
Honest to God I though that this was a top 2000 game, even though there were 9k players playing at the time of search, and the search lasted for 2 or 3 minutes. How was this top 300 or whatever, I honestly don't know.
If you want to see some piss poor flak halftrack play, watch it, and there is a great P4 flank that took me by surprise
31 min
Rheine 3v3
|
Top 500 ranks
Oka River Winter
3v3
45 minutes
Not an all too shabby game. You can feel the win in the air but you know that you have to work for it. |
Jackson is a quite balanced tank, overall. The wind up, wind down don't matter much. Even in the video, sure the Panther fires it's first shot faster, but <1 second... not really important. And jacksons definitely don't penetrate everything at all times. Heck, I've once ambushed a lone elefant with a Pershing on one side and a Jackson up front, and it still managed to get away. Jackson bounced, if I remember correctly, 3/4 shots. I mean, the penetration on the jackson, at ranges you should be using it, is 220. P4J is 234 (6% chance of a bounce, not much, RNG can be tricky, and I have had Jackson bounce on the P4J, but seldom).
So technically, even stock medium tanks can deflect the Jackson, albeit seldom.
The main problem, in my opinion is that the super heavy tanks fire too fast once vetted up.
Elefant at vet3 fires every 4.5 seconds, same as the Jagdtiger (faster than the Jackson at vet3).
In teamgames, where bringing down such heavy beasts is not easy. You have the enemy himself to deal with, and their supporting troops, plus the ally which will definitely be guarding it, not to mention backwards schwerers that deny infantry, so you need to coordinate the sh*t out of it to take it down, whilst using the elefant is pretty straightforward in most 3v3+ maps. Park it in the lane and forget about it. Even if it's being dived, you have ample time to react given how it has 1000+ HP and 400+ armour. If it were up to me, I'd increase the ROF by 1 second on both ele and jagd and I'd make all super heavies (Jagd, Ele, ISU152, Sturm, KT) crippled on any tank snare. If you managed to snare any of the super heavies, they would always get the engine destroyed critical, and grind to a halt (speed = 0.1). It would even be realistic as those tanks were extremely unreliable in real life since motor mechanics was not developed enough to fit such heavy beasts (heck, even Panthers and Tigers had a fuc*ton of mechanical problems, and were lighter).
Jackson is more than fine in 1v1s, and in teamgames, you usually need 2 of them to contest the axis, especially in super lane-y maps where KT can put on spearhead mode without any drawbacks (eg Redball which has no flanking routes, so the turret rotation 45deg lock is inconsequential). Heck, spearhead suppresses infantry in 360 better than an MG42, given how it's firing from an elevated position at all times (tested, MGs suppress better if in elevated positions against yellow and green cover, eg in buildings or KT, given how projectiles are 3D vectors in this game)
|
I've reported allies on a couple of occasions, and enemies a couple of times. enforcement@relic.com
Enemies:
1) Commander bug abuse: reported once, after a day, got confirmation from Relic that they have: " I can confirm that we have reviewed your report and have taken all necessary action"
2) Enemy destroying the base of their ally because he/she was Chinese (I agree that most top Chinese officials should be purged but still...). Also got confirmation of a penalty.
Allies:
1) Using barbed wire around the 3rd ally. Also penalized
2) Teambase killing -> penalized
I don't report toxic chat as I couldn't care less so I don't know whether you get penalized for chat abuse.
Point is, if anyone is abusing or making the gaming experience worse than it should be, just send the e-mail with a couple of screenshots and the replay. Something like:
"
Player name: xyz
Steam 64 ID: ####
Explanation: xyz
"
I always got the confirmation back that they have taken steps to review and penalize.
EDIT: Each time I've written down the steam ID to check on coh2stats whether they have played any games recently... and lo-and-behold. Most of them have not played for months on end (the commander abuse guy, last time I've checked, was offline in COH2 for a month, haven't checked since) |