Profile of JPA32

Can we just rework Luftwaffe Ground's Airbourne Assault? It's completely garbage for it's cost and it's better off being entirely changed to something else, probably something more related to Falls. Also, Luftwaffe Ground is already one of the most popular OKW Commanders due to Valiant Assault, Falls, and the smoke recon run and now it's even getting buffed with the Heavy Fortifications change (which imo it really didn't need.)

I genuinely would consider removing Heavy Fortifications from Luftwaffe Ground and having a three way swap replacing Heavy Fortifications with the 221, replacing the 221 in Elite Armored with the Opel Blitz, and finally replacing the Opel Blitz in Firesturm with Heavy Fortifications.

I could see Firesturm gaining a lot from the ability for Volks to wire off cover and Sturms zoning area with flak emplacements/S-Mines to make MP40 Volks stronger on approach to units in the open or weakened while trading the Opel Blitz pseudo-ambulance won't intrude on the Le.i.g from Battlegroup anymore and it's incendiary Munitions (Which I think need to be buffed vs things that aren't emplacements but digression aside.)

Furthermore, The 221 holds a weird spot in Elite Armored. Generally you want to go Mechanized so you have Heat Puma's since they can punch up into mediums, but the 221 requires you to build an early truck and sit it around until then which just feels awkward if you want to build this. Adding the Opel Blitz is just a natural fit for what this doctrine already wants to do since it provides you with the Ambulance you need to go Mechanized and not waste Munitions spamming medkits.

In one fell swoop we slightly nerf Luftwaffe Ground with the underwhelming 221, while buffing Elite Armored and Firestorm and providing them resources that fit the gameplan of their doctrine while removing the contradictory resources that worked against the doctrines itself.

This is a post regarding popular Soviet Doctrines and how the balance patch is changing them for the state of 1v1. The 7 relevant and most popular Soviet Doctrines for 1v1 are roughly in this order.

Guard Motor Coordination Tactics
Airbourne Troops
Guard Rifle Combined Arms
Shock Rifle Frontline
Lend Lease
Armored Assault
Counter Attack Tactics

Now, lets go through them one by one.
Guard Motor Coordination Tactics - The most boring doctrine of all time. Solid Elite Infantry, Solid Elite Armor, Solid abilities, + 1 meme Mortar. Not being touched in anyway despite being incredibly popular.

Airbourne Troops - Incredibly obnoxious with overtuned SVT's that are getting slightly nerfed, IL2 Rocket Run getting gutted vs heavier vehicles. Sure, this doctrine is annoying and probably warrants a nerf. I'd like to see SVT's redesigned entirely but we can work with what we've got.

Guard Rifle Combined Arms - KV1 getting neutered (rightfully so) and for some inexplicable reason it's losing it's loiter for the garbage AI strafe. Seems bad now since PPSH Cons still feel incredibly weak, and the ML20 is a meme. imo objectively worse than GMCT now since the KV carried this doctrine hard.

Shock Rifle - Untouched, but it's about to be heavily invalidated by Soviet Shock due to the 85 > KV8 and Incendiary Artillery Barrage being trash. (I wholeheartedly recommend a buff for it in some form.)

Lend Lease - Being absolutely gutted horribly. Assault Guards change is a buff but ultimately whatever, but losing the ability to expend excess Munitions for Fuel in "Allied Supply Drop" for a 200 MP Opel Blitz is unusable due to how hard you bleed Manpower as the Soviets, the triple heavy Manpower doctrine abilities (Ass Guards, Opel Blitz, DShK.) and how impossible Opel Blitz are to keep alive against competent players, and if the M4C Sherman is getting the same reload nerf that the 76mm Sherman is getting (Which I think it is since they're the same tank unless I'm mistaken?) then it's probably not worth using over 85's or KV1's. This doctrine has nothing worthwhile now in theory since there's a better way to get DShk's too. (Airbourne)

Armored Assault - Great doctrine, minor flaw in no elite infantry but that's okay because Radio Intercept is crazy good, isn't being touched, minor buff to IS2. Outlier here. Please don't nerf.

Counter Attack Tactics - Like Shock Rifle, this doctrine seems even closer to just being a worse version of Soviet Shock now. Explaining more here. Obviously both doctrines have Shocks, but the choice between KV1 and 85 is personal preference, both doctrine share recon overflight. 152mm Howizer Barrage is amazing for dealing with/displacing AT Guns and when combined with the 85 which is fast and trades up vs both P4's that is quite strong (Not that that is inherently a bad thing) and the direct doctrine competition there is the... B4. hm. These are just the same doctrine but with a difference of a meme cannon vs a usable ability right now.

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The point I'm trying to make here is that the only 2 Doctrines safe from this patch are Guard Motor Coordination Tactics (The most popular but boring Soviet Doctrine by far) and Armored Assault. Everything else has been nerfed heavily or invalidated by Soviet Shock being buffed through the roof. I'm not quite sure I like the direction this is going since we're nerfing everything that dares to compare to GMCT which is probably going to lead into a somewhat stale meta instead of the interesting somewhat diverse doctrine choices we have right now. Even the tier 2 options can peak their way into play with Urban Defense and Defensive Community having merit.

Particularly Lend Lease is incredibly fun and it's getting absolutely dicked out of nowhere, I'd like to see Allied Supply drop stay which will help keep the doctrine relevant and drop pressure off it's heavy Manpower expenditure back into Munitions. I don't see a reason that the IL2 Rocket Strafe needs to be neutered when the whole problem with that doctrine is SVT's being way too good. The AI strafe in Guard Rifle is infinitely worse than Mark Vehicle or the loiter and it's supporting abilities are also worse (ML20 and PPSH Cons) so I don't see a reason to swap that out. And finally I think Soviet Shock needs to lose it's Recon Run and GMCT needs to lose it's Vehicle Crew Repairs for less impactful abilities. Both these doctrines are just way too efficient both in practice for GMCT and in theory for Soviet Shock that it's going to be very difficult to pick a Shock or Guards doctrine other than these two with the current state of balance patch changes.

The Rak trading actual combat ability for the ability to retreat isn't a good thing for the rak I hope you guys realize. AT Guns shouldn't have to be in positions to retreat in the first place. Retreating your Rak(s) means you don't have AT Guns on the field for the next however many seconds it takes for them to run to base and return meaning your opponent just brings his vehicles up supported by his AT Guns and overpowers you. Rak has retreat out of necessity not out of desire. OKW would be ecstatic about the ability to trade retreat for 60 range because it could do it's job better.

That being said, the Rak is fine and doesn't need to be changed, it's still the worst AT gun of the bunch since it can't zone the same area other At Guns can, but it's perfectly usable ever since they buffed it's range from (40? 45?) to 50 and the retreat adds a little extra unique dynamic that allows it to be a little more aggressive to make up for the poorer coverage.

What if we, and stay with me here its a big one, we just don't give the crew the ability to hop out like the priest and pershing.

I know, i know its impossible and never been done before, but I think if dev team put their heads together they may figure out how to make a beefier doctrinal tank exist without self repair.

I'm really against this "Remove Vehicle Crews from USF Vehicles" thing. I understand they're powerful, but this is a core element of USF and it seems to be arbitrarily divvied out between random vehicles on a whim based on whatever winds of balance is blowing.

I'd much rather see the Vehicle Crew ability to repair nerfed significantly on a baseline, but the Vehicle Crew themselves given an ability to repair at a faster rate for munitions akin to any normal doctrinal Vehicle Crew Repair rate. That way shit like the WC-51 wouldn't have infinite uptime unless you were flinging munitions left and right which would hurt you in other aspects.

On top of that, I'd honestly like to see a "Light Vehicle Crew" and "Heavy Vehicle Crew" with different vet bonuses and pop cap to fix the ridiculously lazy solution of popcap cheese and give a little more wiggle room for balance. On top of that, iirc the Pershing doesn't have a Vehicle Crew because it would allow you to call another one in if disembarked, so give them a unique Vehicle Crew (Armored Vehicle Crew?) that would also be tied to the Pershing Cooldown if that's such a large problem for repair rate too, lock their Munitions-based VCR behind Vet or just don't give it to them if you don't want a reasonably repairable Pershing, could even extend this to the Ez8 and give them the same crew since it's a different Doctrine.

Not really, there are modes than simply 1vs1.

I don't care about team game balance because it's impossible to balance on a fundamental level due to unfixable flaws. Also Brits suck in team games anyway as far as I can tell, so that's irrelevant to me.

You are wrong heavy sapper upgrade give up to 3 weapons plus armor.

Worth keeping in mind then. Might go look at that since it seems interesting. I don't believe Recovery Sappers can be upgraded with the Heavy package can they?

And are not mainline infatry. They are cheap unit with low reinforcement cost and tonnes of utility.

So are Conscripts and Ostruppen. That doesn't make Sappers unsuitable to be treated as a Mainline style unit when you kit them as one. I'm pretty sure they're worse than both Cons and OPtruppen when kitted out too but that's speculation on my part.

Again not really, its like saying that putting lmg on Riflemen makes no sense. LMG on Riflemen work great.

A single Bren gun is much worse than a 1919 (Reflected via the price and the 2x slot usage) A singular Bren is actually quite underwhelming and barely improves very much about the unit's performance within reasonable combat distances unlike the 1919, it's the second Bren on the IS that push them into being a strong upgraded distance unit hence why most Brit players focus double Brens per Section over spreading singular Brens around.

It actually does. They can fight longer range unit better and still be good at mid range. In sort the unit instead excelling in one range it becomes good at all range.

You're just objectively wrong here. Splitting your weapon upgrades doesn't provide you enough universal damage to be effective at all ranges, it simply allows you to not be punished for sub-optimal play. The only way this is an effective way to kit your infantry is if you're constantly being caught out of position and misplaying your units and even in those situations you're going to be severely ineffective in infantry fights since you can't utilize your maximum damage potential by placing your infantry into a position to succeed. You're doing what is called "Playing to not lose" which ultimately ends up with you losing over a long period of time because you aren't directly countered by anything, but you lack the strength to actually win fights decisively due to the split efficiency. You should work on placing your units in situations to succeed with their maximum potential over attempting to avoid being caught with your pants down.