Profile of Protos Angelus

Long range units will always be superior to close range units. Only map that comes to mind, where close range units are almost always superior to long range, is Ettelbruck for 3v3. Don't know if there are any other maps in other modes.

JLIs perform decently close range. With the 75% crit threshold, they just need to hit once in close range to insta kill a unit. And that 75% threshold will most certainly be reached on approach, even a short approach.
Obers have bundle nade + slow/damage nade which are on separate cooldown, which makes any other close range unit useless, even on tight maps. Especially since the fuse on the bundle nade is quite low. Eg. you can react in time, but the infantry might need to turn. The turn animation can sometimes be wonky. Hence why bundle nades from PGrens, Obers and Falls should ALWAYS be dodged forward or diagonally forward, to avoid the turn-back animation.

Blobbing is also not really a problem.
Soviets have a katyusha.
OKW has a stuka + elite infantry. And the flak HT is brutal against infantry, with pretty much instant suppression. And the MG34 is practically identical to the MG42 in terms of suppression and has the same wide arc.
OST has grens with LMG and MG42 and werfers to deal with blobs. And you can always count on PGrens with bundles, which are thrown quite quickly, land fast and have a short fuse. PGrens overall throw the bundle nade quicker than rifles throw their nade, with a much deadlier impact.
USF and Brits can only pray that they have a Soviet ally in team.
In 1v1s, blobbing is punished by playing around the blobs and capping. So for 1v1s, blobbing is a problem for low ranks.

The only stupid thing in COH2 is the balancing done by community members for free. They should have payed the team, and we wouldn't be left with 2 OP commanders in OKW, 2 OP in OST, 2 OP in Soviets and 1 OP in USF. Brits are a shi* tier faction which only a few know how to play properly. And we wouldn't have factions which have been changed so much from their original design.

Eg. due to the fact that OKW has raketen which can retreat, they should not have a stock premium medium tank. And due to the fact they have plenty of elite infantry, with the starting one being brutal close range, and volks having a good power spike, they should not have had an MG in their stock roster. Also the lower fuel income was a good mechanic for them, given that their late game armour was pretty much OP. Now, their late game armour, only the KT is OP, but the rest still is more than worth the premium price tag.
But then again, having a random team of community balance members, balance the game for free, on their spare time... I mean. Bias will always be there, but on average, if a team has 10 members, say that 5 are "ever so slightly" favoured in axis, and 5 are "ever so slightly" favoured in allies. It will balance out in the end. Some play allies more, so they know what to balance in allies vs axis, and vice versa for axis biased. It's normal and human and expected. But you pay them, and they make it their job to balance it and contribute to Relic. You don't do it for free and then wonder why every balance patch, something was broken OP, either in axis or allies.

In sort what I previous posted. You are saying "Don't trust the analysis, trust me because I say so".

Sorry but can't, I trust MMX's analysis more.

Trust whoever you want more. There are people that believe the Earth is flat. Couldn't give less fu*ks who you trust.

In other words you disregard MMX analytic comparison because you say so.

As much as I respect his fortitude and decision and tenacity to create such simulations, they serve no real purpose. On paper they look nice and all, but the amount of extra, beneficial information they give you is nil. Mainly because there is no standard empirical method with which you will measure. It's a game with a large amount of variables/parameters, and trying to fit it to some model is... well. Not really necessary. Not to mention impossible. As nice as it looks, it's just a bunch of simple equations fitted to some data model, which was taken from the seralia stats. Not really telling anything. The most accurate and simple truth is: M1 81mm mortar, compared to OST mortar, has 25% lower AOE profile. That's it. That's the only difference if and only if the stats on seralia page are accurate. You can take what you want from it. Some will say M1 81 is useless, some will say it's OP. Don't care. I say it's meh performance wise, but being in USF, it's useless.
That aside, you also have a faction that needs to be mobile and aggressive, and spending MP on a mortar spells doom. But of course, I don't expect you to understand that.
Tens of thousands of games, and still you su** bal*s; With each faction. So stick to your paper general wannabe mathematician analysis or whatever rocks your boat, and leave me out of it.

Not to mention, nowhere does he explain the methodology he used in generating such stats. Which equations, which model, which representation. He just puts graphs on a paper, says he did 2500 repetitions and calls it a day. That wouldn't fly in a high school physics journal. I'm not saying he's lying. Of course not, but just putting graphs and giving a short explanation is... in poor taste.

Thank you very much. Have a pleasant day

They are VERY good in teamgames.

Quite possibly the second best axis infantry in the game, only PTRS penals can compete with them

I mean Pathfinders are definitly support units, thus 1 CP would be nice. I guess the reasoning was that the balance team wanted to give a second mainline starter option to USF. Sadly Cav Rifles couldn't be 0 CP, cause of reasons of course. USF's other mainline is not cost effective with the current mappool.

But how are JLI support units? Thanks to their ambush ability and RA they for sure feel like elite infantry. The JLI werh variant for example, is 2 CP and it works. Could you explain to me why the 2CP JLI did not work for OKW?

Pathfinders should not have been 0CP, but then again. Until 6 months ago, I've been playing 90% of Heavy Cavalry and 5% Airborne/Infantry. I did manage to reach rank 1 on multiple occasions for a couple of days, but after switching to pathfinders on large, open maps... the difference. How much easier it is playing against OST in 3v3s.... Example.
Take Across the Rhine.
There are a couple of MG42 positions like the top building or bottom behind the green tank covers, which are impossible to dislodge without mortar smoke (and building a mortar as USF is shooting yourself in the foot, especially since REs are combat useless early on).
So you have the Rear echelon and a rifleman against a pioneer and an MG42. Echelon can't fight a pioneer, even behind green cover. Tested it out plenty of times. In the beginning of the game, you can literally rush a pioneer over neutral cover, up to the green cover where the Rear Echelon is (eg behind the tank) and still win the fight with 2 pioneers remaining (something you can't do against sections or combat engineers, other starting units). And the MG42 needs a split second of a burst to suppress, unless you're running over yellow crater cover. You have a gren coming, and your second rifle. So it's a gren + pio + MG42 against 2 rifles and a RE.
In reality, it's 2 rifles and an equivalent of a single rifle model (so 2.2 rifles) against a gren, pio and an MG42 which if it suppresses, you're done.
Your options are:
Sit behind green cover and allow the potential sniper to hammer away at you (eg, double pio + MG42 into sniper builds vs USF on such maps), or the MG42 (42 pio sight).
Or
Split all your units and pray to God you guessed correctly that you sent the RE to the MG42 arc and your rifles are outside of the arc. You then have to pray that grens have poor RNG and they don't instantly connect those 16 dmg shots and take down your rifles on approach.
All of that disappears with Pathfinders. You don't have to guess, you are not "out-sighted" by pios, you don't depend on RNG/luck to flank the wide-as-fu*k arc MG42. Life is much easier.
Come lategame, you won't get shredded by grens, because you can outblob the gren blobs with paratroopers.
Obers as well.
Life is much easier if you go for pathfinders in teamgames.
But why do you need to go for pathfinders unless you want to play an uphill battle and suffer and bleed a lot more?

A) Map design + MG42 arc width
- Plenty of maps where a single MG42 is enough to practically cover an entire segment of a map. This is abhorrently obvious in 3v3s, which are basically 1v1s on a much smaller map/lane.
In 1v1, you send your RE to cap, another rifle to cap something else, and the third rifle to flank as needed. You can't do that in a 3v3. Why? Because you are not an omnipotent God. What if you're microing your rifles against an MG42 and the 3rd unit you sent to perhaps help your teammate's VP lane gets swarmed. Much larger population, and you're never really safe. I do play across 2 lanes. Always. My VP lane in 3v3 + the neighboring, allied one. Lost track of how many units I've lost to help/flank the allied VP lane only to get wrecked by some bundle nade for the split second I wasn't looking. Or even worse, a spio behind a sight blocker that wipes in 3 seconds point blank. So in the end, you try to focus on your lane, and only when you secure it, you send troops elsewhere. Hence why perhaps, without sight, most of your units can get fu**ed by a single MG42. Map design (Redball, Rhine, Whiteball... most 3v3+ maps).

B) Grens cost 240 MP but are worth at least 270. 300mp + 60m with the LMG. Sure they are a 4 man squad, but they can charge REs which are behind green cover, and win. Try to charge pioneers behind green cover with rifles to displace them quickly. Of course, why would you charge pioneers behind green cover? Well, rifles suck long range, and the pioneer-rifle combat, with both of them behind green cover will last for centuries. Rifles will win with 5 models standing, but to take down one model... months, maybe years.
Long range units can sit behind any cover and hammer away. Units like rifles need to close in to be effective.
MG42, with the current ROF, effectiveness of inc.rounds, and the suppression, combined with the pio sight, should have had a small arc, not the big one. Vickers has sh** suppression, and a wide arc on it is justified, especially since early on, they don't have real vision bonuses unless you tech early pyrotechnics and delay UC/heal. And that's one unit max, whereas double pio is quite common in 2v2+.

I couldn't believe how easier it was to play COH2 with USF, especially since I don't play COH2 much. I've got around 1800-2000 games in close to 10 years of COH2. 1500 USF games competitively and around 200 AI skirmishes and around 300 custom games on same maps/rules like ranked, but not. So first couple of years it was AI training, then WFA came out around 2015, started with USF, continued. So 1500 games in 7 years. 6 years of USF, mostly with heavy cav or infantry. With the community made balance patches, it became more difficult to play USF in teamgames. The strength of rifles waned, OST mainlines got buffed so they don't suffer early game. And the USF late game wasn't buffed to compensate. So you have a faction that is meh early, meh mid. Weak late.

Unless you go for airborne.
Then you don't have to suffer early.
Mid game you can win with paras and barfinders + AAHT (and dodge AT with extra vision).
And late game you have P47s to help out with the dives.
And if the OKW player goes for the HEAT shells + 72.5 sight KT + frontal MG suppression. You can bet your ass you will need a Hail Mary with AT offmap to destroy it.

You could also go a full circle and say: Game was being balanced between Soviet vs Ostheer. So as Ostheer was getting needed buffs for Soviets, and USF was getting nerfs because they ra*ed grens even harder than conscripts at close range, nothing was compensated. On the top of my head, the nerfs that stuck out the most:
Pak howi nerf. Nothing gained in return (6 man squad is not a buff, not with 1.25 RA, basically a nerf for the more compulsive people that want their squads at full HP).
Rifle smoke loss. "To foster combined arms".... with what other units? Rear echelon? I'd understand if USF had stock elite, but that was just a piss poor reason to nerf rifles.

People say "Spios are overloaded with jobs".
REs are not?
Plant tank traps for cover against long range axis infantry. Place mines in case of dives, so at least you slow down tanks. Run with blobs to use smoke against MGs, schwerer or whatever else. That's not an overloaded job? Not to mention they are useless in combat throughout the game. Spios get useless in combat after minute 16 unless with shrecks. And they do have the concussive. People are afraid to buff REs because they might get blobbed. I mean, unless it's not some mega uber buff, if you lose to RE blobs, you deserve a loss. It would be like a soviet player with 3 katyushas complaining about ober blobs.

All in all.
Use paths if you don't want to suffer.
I learned that recently. Makes the life so much easier. Don't get me wrong. Paths are extremely weak against LV plays, and you have to hug your ally that has some snares/AT. But overall, it's a blessing, especially since OKW players don't like using Puma/Luchs and a lot of OST players don't know how to use the 222 (double 222 sh*ts down pathfinder's throat with extreme prejudice).
I used to suffer in a lot of open games, but no more.