Althrough I like pgren strats, I find lack of infantry in my army composition until 4 minutes mark really disturbing.
Also, if playing not 1v1, and your opponent is not complete tryhard, then he can deal with your MG's with one simple trick - get one mortar(since he does not need that much of capping power in 2v2 or 3v3). American mortars are made just for that - smoking whole sectors.
Well, it is true that not having infantry early on is very dangerous, that is the reason this strategy is rarely used, because the enemy can exploit your weaknesses by being agressive and getting light vehicles.
Which is why I think that that the only way this strategy can work is if your enemy doesn't expect you to do it, or they don't go for light vehicles for some reason and you use your 2 pios and 2 mgs perfectly to keep your territory.
In not 1v1 you also have teammates that can help you deal with the smoke, and you can't forget about 2 pios, give them a flamethrower and there are little to no engagements where they would lose at short range in the early game, they also have 42 sight, so they are great for supporting and protecting your mg42s. |
Thanks a lot 
I have problems with p4 and to me it seems almost useless agains elite infantry or generally zooks. In the past with 1v1 you almost never teched to the last tier. What about now? Do you build a lot of p4?
Zooks shouldn't be much of a problem for a p4, unless you are talking about elite zooks(paratroopers and rangers after the new update).
Typically it is nice to get a p4 to have a mobile answer to light vehicles that you weren't able to destroy, while also having more anti-infantry power. In 1v1 spamming p4s works fairly well unless your enemy gets tanks with heavy armor like the kv series or premium mediums like t34/85 or sherman 76. I typically go for T4 after one p4 if I think that multiple mediums won't work very well against my enemy(they are putting down a lot of mines, so you can't flank, maybe they are going for a high tier vehicle that mediums would have a hard time with). Going for multiple p4s is all about attacking from multiple angles and flanking, so if your enemy is very cautios of that and you feel that he isn't easily flankable, it's probably better to go for T4, while keeping your p4 safe and using it to quickly respond to infantry assaults or light vehicles attacking your pgrens. |
Ok. but what about mud-late game?
Well, with the new patch pgrens will get a vet 1 passive that buffs them when they are near vehicles, the speed increase can be especially helpful. If the enemy has a lot of long range squads, don't just walk at them with pgrens. Distract them with something else and then sprint, ambush the enemy from camo. As I said, I think that pgrens become a lot more flexible and powerful with ambush training, they get a lot more options to get into optimal engagements, they are expensive to reinforce, so winning engagements with minimal losses is very important. It's a bit more difficult to use them properly, but when you do you get good results. You just have to think tactically and spread them out to attack from different angles, use sight/shot blockers to get close. Against enemy short-range specialists like shocktroops you have to exploit their weakness to vehicles and use your multiple pgren squads to attack enemy AT weapons from different angles to atleast force them away, leaving shocktroops vulnerable. Or you can just fight them with 2 squads at once, 2 pgrens can beat any short range specialist, especially if you make them come to you. You also shouldn't forget about your mgs, and the fact that you can give them camo(if you have ambush training which i higly recommend if you want this strategy), they can deal with cqc specialists, though you have to watch out for smoke.
Mid-late game all depends on what the enemy does, your t3 and t4 choices are mostly independent from your early game strategy, so you just get the tanks that you think would help you the most. Consider getting a 251 for reinforcement, and then getting it to vet1 and using its "Infantry Awareness" ability, it's really cheap and provides you the intel to exploit weaknesses in enemy formations(remember that you can see which units the 251 have spotted in the tactical map), which is very helplful for pgrens, but you have to be very careful with it and protect it from any medium or light tanks rushing in. |
What exactly does the passive vet 1 do now?
I can imagine some nice 251 + PGren strats right now with the aura + reinforcement. Replace with a command P4 later and you have quite a decent force.
+20% movement speed and 0.9 recieved accuracy.
I thought the 251 strats would be cool too, but it's still pretty hard to pull off due to how fragile and slow they are, I found p4s better suited for this role, while a 251 could still be waiting in the rear to reinforce. |
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I have been doing a similiar strategy, however I put more emphasis on pgrens, rather than the 222(maybe I can get away with it due to playing on a lower skill level). I found it to work better against usf without mechanized. This means no early vehicle to exploit your lack of fausts, and riflemen don't do well against pgrens, especially if pgrens have ambush training(I think this ability makes pgrens way more flexible and useful).
I think this strategy only really works if your opponent doesn't expect you to do it, because there are a lot of weaknesses for them to exploit. Mines are more powerful against this build, a sniper would bleed you a lot, light vehicles have more freedom. But if your enemy doesn't exploit these, you have pgrens as your main infantry units, jager command squad to conpensate for lack of T1 with faust and smoke. Having pgrens instead of grens really changes how you play and, I think, makes ost a lot more agressive than normal, while having options for ambushes to defend.
Hard to say if there are good ways to keep map control at the start of the game, other than using your 4 units with perfection. |
Ostwind
The changes seem to focus on turning Ostwind into a AI killing machine, while the reduction in scatter will make it even worse vs vehicles. Imo the unit should become better investment offering more. Compared to the Centaur it has allot less armor and bigger target size.
Suggestions:
Tone down the AI of the unit but increase its performance vs light tanks.
Increase armor reduce size target to perform better vs light tanks
Increase the damage vs light tanks. One could either give the Ostwind 2 fire modes AI and AP with AP or one could turn the auto cannon into a accuracy based weapon similar to Centaur.
Panzergrenadiers
Imo semi elite unit should not be available in their full potential this early. They should follow the power level of mainline infatry and scale with them.
Suggestions:
PG become cheaper close to 280-300 and come with worse weapons a combination of k98/g43/ST44 getting the rest of their weapon as an upgrade.
Since there is real danger of shreck blob one could removed the shcrek upgrade from the PG and create a separate unit (AT PGs) that can upgrade with shcrek.
Don't really see how creating a separate unit for shrecks will prevent them from being massed. Pgrens with shrecks are too weak against infantry, so they become a dedicated AT unit, this is just unecessary, unless you want that unit to be drastically different than pgrens with shrecks.
I don't really see a problem with the new pgren arrival time, not many people used them in the past, this change doesn't really make them appear too early for the enemy to not be able to do anything against them. Before they arrived too late for their power level, even with these changes most players will not get more than 2 pgrens, because most people will still go T1 and get grens to survive early game against LVs. |
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Maybe giving artillery the ability to fire smoke at an area for prolonged periods of time(longer than normal barrages) could be a way to make it more interesting?
Maybe giving artillery different barrage patterns or giving the player the ability to control it more directly could make it more interesting? Just throwing out ideas to make arty less of a base bombing lottery, because right now the only synergy it has with other units is area-denial, which is typically not a major problem for the enemy, unless there is a lot of artillery, or you get some really lucky shots.
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I'd like a commander design feature.
give a player x amount Cp to build their own commanders. Each commander ability would be tied to a commander slot, I.e first two slots are for 0-4 cp abilities, the next two you have to have 5-10 and the last for abilities costing 11plus cp.
This would be to stop people stacking low cp abilities to get an overwhelming early game advantage, but would still allow people enough variation to create new commanders
There is a mod for it, it can only be played in 1v1 and both players take turns banning the other from something or picking something for themselves. It's on the front page of coh2.org |
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Well, shocks are very resilient to smgs(due to armor) and have a lot of short range dps coupled with smoke and a grenade, so mgs aren't an easy answer to them, and you need to be firing rifles/machine guns at them to deal effective damage. I'd say that you should probably have mgs, but they alone aren't enough. The way to beat them, I think, is to use their expensiveness against your enemy. Its highly unlikely that your enemy would get more than 2 shocks, otherwise he wouldn't have the mp to get all the other stuff that protects him from vehicles. This way you can outnumber them and force AT elements to constantly follow them and protect them by getting a luchs, then you can use the extra squads you have to put pressure on those AT elements, make it difficult for him to protect them while attacking your sectors. For this you probably would need 5 volks. Now you have to fight ~ 2 shocks and 3 penals, 1 or maybe 2 of which will have ptrs. Since you outnumber them, it gives you more opportunities to apply pressure to vulnerable elements that protect shocks from vehicles and expose them to luchs/p4 or overwhelm the shocks with k98s and stg44s. Of course you have to be careful and try to force the shocks to have to come at your troops while being shot at(vet3 shocks can beat 2 or even 3 volks if the battle starts at short range).
Basically, you have to outposition the shocks by flanking them and attacking their AT protection and then move in with a vehicle, if they use smoke to get to your mg, use that smoke to hide your vehicle from enemy AT and prevent the shocks from advancing while repositioning the mg, while forcing the shocks to react to your squads flanking and attacking those at guns/ptrs penals.
It mostly comes down to micro, rather than a build, I think, though it is possible that there are some specific builds that do really well against T1 soviets with shocks, I do think that getting extra infantry is helpful.
(I could be incorrect, since I'm not a top-tier coh2 player and haven't really faced this build as OKW) |
Shrecks are fine in my opinion, in the right situations they can be devastating. But they also have their weak points.
If I feel defensive I use Pak40s as AT. (needs fausts or mines for optimal performance)
If I feel offensive I use Shrecks as AT. (Needs other agressive units (Basic PGrens, G42 Grens and/or Pz4 for support).
Additionaly I think a change in tec and building cost should be made with the new patch. Increase the cost for the first Tec from 100MP to 200MP, because now it gives you Pgrens without the building and reduces the risk of a T1-T3 rush (You can use the shrecks to survive until your mediums hit the field). To balance things out reduce the cost of the T2 building from 200 MP to 100 MP, because it lost the Pgrens and I fear many will skip it if it costs 200MP.
Just my opinion.
I dunno, the whole point of moving pgrens to T0 is to make them more accesible, so they get used more often. They already cost a lot of MP, I don't think it's necessary to move 100mp from T2 to BP1, this would only serve to make the one pgren squad most players will probably consider to get less appealing(going for 2 or more squads is too much of an investment in most situations).
Also, most players get T2 for the light vehicles, and the PAK40 is typically preferred over pgren shrecks, I doubt saving 200MP and 20FU would make players consider skipping T2 and relying on pgrens instead of getting the PAK40. It could help players that already do that, but then they are already doing it fairly succesfully(unless they like to lose), so they have some other strategy to compensate for the lack of T2.
Pgren shrecks aren't really better than a pak for AT, they have their pros and cons over it, but aren't directly better, typically harder to use and keep on the field, and cost additional 100 munies, which could be spent on mines/upgrades for grens. |
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