Profile of BlueKnight

And your saying The IS2 is not, It effing fires at 4 man squads dude, by late game most of allied main lines are at minimum 5 man squads. And Allies have higher dps output with their shocks/2x bar rifles/2x bren sections/Rangers/mandos and 2x lmg paras. It's actually axis squad who are low most of the time. Take your allied goggles off. Heavies Fuck everyone regardless of faction.

Except that Tiger I has the highest ROF of all heavies etc. They are in maaaaany axis doctrines with great abilities like fragmentation bombing, panzer tactician, stuka AT strafe or the OKW Tiger with smoke screen/recon, Panzerfusiliers and tank commander. Allied heavies are too strong AI wise too, but are not as broken as the Tiger I atm. Currently it's like if SuperPanther and vet69 P4 had a baby.

Air landing office is going to be a stock unit, per the patch notes and retaining its vet 1 recon ability. Which is a better version of the USF Major's Recon as you can better direct it.

Fact of the matter is, OKW is losing the ability to counter cloaked units and gaining nothing in return. That is not fair and makes the already arduous task of countering snipers even more difficult.

Also Ober STGs and a loiter recon are not comparable.

I forgot that air landing officer will be stock, sorry. Appears that OKW camo reveal abilities will be similar to these of Soviets.

While I agree that Ober STG44 decloak is limited in range, loitering recon planes tend to get shot down quickly and don't often provide much of a decloak value. They are better for using offmaps on enemy howitzers. Meanwhile as long as you keep at least 1 STG Obers next to your infantry, you will never get ambushed by commandos. I think it is a strong counter.

Countering snipers when you don't have access to sniper yourself can be tough, but with access to JLI or Falls I think it is easier done by OKW than by USF. Sometimes even a good burst from kubel can force the sniper home, not always easy to do, but better than nothing. From my experience Puma's coaxial MG does amazing dmg to snipers. High mobility, high vision range and panic smoke of Puma can help if you want to use it against snipers.

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I use Feuersturm on Ettelbruck every time. Last time both of my ISG had ~40 kills each and were both vet 5 undoubtedly due to the frequent fire barrage usage. the incendiary barrage is amazing vs pak howie, mortar teams, MGs, emplacements and forward HQ. I can't count how many HQ buildings I set on fire with fire barrage and Spio flamer. You have to be aware of enemy Katy, but luckily for me, my opponent wasn't on point with his barrages and I managed to keep both the ISGs alive.

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I see your point of view. Game had broken-strong units in the beginning and now majority of units/abilities are significantly less leathal than they used to be in the past. There is however a mild trend of infantry units getting buffed or arriving earlier for last 2 years. These buffs are mostly NOT at an alarming level, but they happened.

PPSH arrived at 3CP for years, they were always coming up against PGs, due to own stats and ability combinations, they were also much stronger in the past.

While I agree that Ppsh timing was always later than PG timing, you usually were building more Grens because you needed infantry and could not afford to wait for PGs much. You had 1 PG group maybe, because that's all you had room for in your roster. At the same time SOV always had bunch of Con squads that could later be upgraded with Ppsh which resulted in more con vs gren engagements 2 years ago. Per my understanding, it also made gren G43s more attractive to deal with Ppsh Cons, due to G43s performing better up close than the LMG upgrade.

This is a very subtle game dynamic change that compared to past power levels may seem negligible. I started playing coh2 a bit over 2 years ago, so I never played myself against AT-satchel Penals without PTRS, flamer Riflemen or super-Obersoldaten. I started playing not long after KT frontal armour nerf I think. This is possibly why I am more sensitive to these minor gameplay changes.

I wanted to thank you again for your detailed response. I know that you and Vipper have been playing this game longer than me so both of you remember the old-time opness, but possibly Vipper's point of view is more similar to mine about this topic and he might be reluctant to further continuation of this mild infantry buff trend. I am also aware this has not always been just buffs. Not that long ago UC and IS got hit by some nerfs, LT and CPT cost more MP now, M20 lost zook and got increased build time, 251 flamer got hit by much needed veterancy nerf, pak howie auto-attack got significant scatter nerf and is mostly used as barrage tool nowadays and remains efficient in that role, Stug lost some ROF, SU76 lost ROF and has muni cost on barrage. All of these were nerfs, but at the same time, they were good changes. I am also aware that many of these units got some sort of compensation bonuses like lower target size and increased rotation rate for Stug. This proves that both buffing and nerfing can be used to achieve balance. I am almost certain that Vipper has mostly recent infantry changes on his mind when talking about powercreep as vehicles have been maintaining decent asymmetrical balance receiving both buffs and nerfs for a while now with exception of heavy tank changes.

Who's your dealer? He seems to have legit good stuff.

Please, don't be mean. After all you have to agree that some units got buffed quite hard and are on the OP side like Falls or heavies. PG coming earlier improves variety, but on the other hand it gives you stronger infantry earlier, which is a form of power creep, even if small. Ppsh cons are less appealing against wehrmacht as PG who come earlier counter them well. Assgrens needed a buff, but now they are a very early strong infantry, have 5 smg and sprint and make Ppsh upgrade look embarassing. Similar 5 men smg squads have been made available to other factions early as well.

Bunch of infantry got some minor buffs or changes to vet that increased their lethality or improved survivability which is more or less balanced against infantry, but when this buffed infantry faces a MG or even a single squad has ATG in the firing range, there's a high chance it's a dead teamweapon. To deter an enemy vehicle from advancing, due to the aim time and animations and despite your best effort, your ATG may come within firing range of enemy infantry. The damage that you inflict to their infantry is incomparably lower than that dealt to the teamweapon.

As Obersoldaten can be implemented in the build order quicker, there was a surge of elite infantry compositions in teamgames. Even if their upgrade is hidden behind full tech, you already have the unit in your army composition. Was it available later, you would already have that slot filled by another Volk squad and wouldn't build that Ober squad. This results in stronger infantry itself and stronger army compositions.

I agree that a lot of OP units were nerfed like Brumbar, KV-8, JLI (though they are still a bitch with 75% crit bs) and some abilities were nerfed like Overwatch flares or IL2 loiter dmg, I am also happy about the spotting scope changes. I am fairly sure though that the average time-to-kill went down over the last 2-3 years. I am looking forward to the announced ability nerfs to fragmentation bombs and butterfly bombs, faust removal from Falls and hopefully AOE or ROF nerfs for heavies. It would also be nice if IL2 rocket strafe was less of a cheese mechanic. With IL2 bombing at least you have to be perfectly aimed and on time and can't spam it due to cost, meanwhile IL2 rocket strafe comes faster and is a huge threat to super heavies. At the same time it's a blessing in current meta, because super heavies are OP in teamgames, all of them except for maybe KV-2.

Example and sidenote:
Raketenwerfer changes were a huge improvement compared to the past cheese stealth. In case of raketen, it sacrificed cheese for combat capabilities, so it can be used more like an ATG. I think similar could be done about T34/76.

T34/76 could see 10FU and 15 pen increase so it bounces less vs vehicles like Ostwind and can be used as an actual tank instead of snare. <- This change I would not consider power creep, as this makes player calculate more before he throws his T34/76 in a ram maneuver, it doesn't increase AI capabilities and makes it actually possible to use T34/76 in medium tank engagements without being as heavily dependent on rng.

I don't want to derail this thread with this sidenote. My point is that the game can be improved by shifting power from the cheese aspect of a problematic unit to something else.

I forgot to mention that I am rather happy about game balance decisions. This might not be obvious from my post.