Profile of Bulgakov

Jump back to quoted post24 Jul 2014, 23:40 PMVaz

I feel the complaining about squad wipes and what not is mostly unjustified. There are some legitimate concerns that surround the high rocket damage. Lets be clear on this, if a soldier gets hit by a rocket in this game, he's dead. It doesn't matter if it's a stuka, werfer, or katty, each one has always dealt more damage than the health of any infantry soldier. So, complaints about direct hits should be muted. There are 2 concerns, splash damage and damage to structures/vehicles.

Obviously, Relic must have felt the splash was too low at 4 to want to increase it to 6. For those who don't like to pay attention to the stats, this about the area of your average grenade explosion. I'm sure we all would be right to believe these rockets impacted with a lot more explosive radius than that of a grenade in real life, but that's what it is here in the game. So it's like launching 16 grenades without a timer. The shock troops grenade actually has a smaller area, 6 is the radius of bundle and the rgd that guards throw. The grenades have a damage amount of 80. So it's literally launched grenades as before july 22. If your soldiers got hit by the splash of kat or grenade, they could live only if they had sufficient health greater than the reduced damage done by splash (which is dynamically calculated, but always lower than 80). Now with the damage done being 160, surviving splash is much less likely.

Thanks to the wonderful individual who has made the stats site, you can see the dynamic damage calculation here:

http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/katyusha_bm_13_16_rocket_mp

According to that data, the minimum distance an entity can be from the explosion center is 2.675 .

2.675 is pretty damn close to the center. Considering the blast reaches out more than 2x that distance, I would say this is pretty lenient. After reviewing that information, I don't think that 160 damage is too harsh on infantry. Your squad pretty much has to eat one or more of those 16 rockets, since the damage drops off so fast. I find that when I'm striking OKW players they are sitting there at the impact site not paying attention or failing to retreat their squads that are attacked in the field. Most of the OST players I face are not attacking me with big mindless blobs and for that reason, they don't make for juicy artillery targets. OKW also gives more veterency, I don't know if you guys know that. Especially those vet 5 squads, I never got vet3 on my kat before WFA. Kat vet2 reduces reload, fyi. It's like that on most arty. So some of you calling for cool-down increases are likely experiencing the accelerated cool-down of veteren katyusha crews, making it seem like the barrages are coming too fast. Also, the Katyusha has precision strike, which btw, instantly killed full health squads before the patch for a 60mu cost, firing 4 rockets that would deal 320 cumulative damage. So, whether at 80 or 160, the result was the same, the spash increase makes this more dangerous though.

It really seems to me that people are upset the katyusha is doing it's job. I struggled game after game since WFA to find something the OKW were really weak to and about 2-3 weeks ago I realized they are extremely susceptible to artillery. OST wasn't, they have scout planes, bombers, artillery, and no gimped economy (which now OKW is not gimped on munitions). Many of us have outright stopped building arty because of poor results stemming from off-map attacks. Not just Soviet, but Ost too. Why build LeF when Sov will just bomb it after the first or second salvo? It was 120-200 mu to drop a 600mp unit with pretty much no risk at all. OKW doesn't have a lot of options and so I started doing what people stopped doing. I built katty and I built ml20 and both did well against OKW, especially when a 3v3 or 4v4 was all OKW, I usually don't even lose them unless my team loses the whole game. This is before July 22 patch I'm talking about now. So now with the kat buffed, I do see a big difference in how fast the sws trucks are being busted and to be honest I like the value that's being provided by the kat against OKW. I think it makes sense, considering how poorly it will likley continue to remain at fighting Ost players. Especially good players. To try and sit there pounding at OKW trucks for several minutes to get them off the field with a standard tank or at gun is painful and boring. It's similar to the dread I felt fighting British players off of points in CoH1. The worst one is that Flak upgrade, because even if I drive the infantry away, I stlli can't cap that sector with infantry because of the high lethality and pinning of that gun upgrade. The only way to cap it fast is to have a vet1 tank go and disarm itself to cap the point. I really don't think OKW should get these benefits without a considerable risk, which everyone is now seeing is manifested best as katyusha barrages. I bet USA players will cry too, if Ost starts bombing the American retreat points too. Both USA and OKW have the ability to retreat a distance much less than ost and sov, regrouping so close to the front comes with that downside that you might still be in range of attacks at your retreat point.

Regarding the speed at which sws trucks are destroyed. There could be a real issue there. I think it's a bit unbalanced for them to be too tough, considering this game's economy is literally the map, so having a stronghold like this gives a large benefit. So, I guess it's up to Relic and their design goals to determine if it's getting destroyed too fast. I'm happy with the speed now and before the patch.

Light vehicles are going to have a lot of difficulty though, most are only going to be able to take about 2 rockets, but that's a lot more forgiving than the stuka is.

That brings me to the next point, people trying to lock balance changes of the kat with the Stuka. Also, people claiming the Stuka is not the most devastating artillery in the game, which it is. The bombs drop precisely on target and do 200 damage each. In order for soldiers to escape a blast they must be at least 3.425 away from the center of the blast. Having the same AOE distance value of 6 as shared with the Kat and some grenades, you can see from the numbers alone that the stuka is much less forgiving than the new kat values. It shoots less rockets, but they will you where you want them to and over half it's AOE results in enough damage to kill full health squad entities. As is usually the case, the soldiers out in the field are often not at full health, so often times it's a squad wipe or weapon destruction (which is a support team wipe). It also has higher penetration, more health, and stronger armor. If your beating down the peasants of the Soviet army, then your likely not going to accumulate veterency too fast. The veterency data doesn't seem to be on the stat page, so I have no idea how it improves the stuka. So while the Stuka's individual cost is more than the Kat, your getting more for your money too. I've been on the receiving end of many Stuka barrages and they are devastating every time they hit. When WFA first launched it was the kind hit that you just kind of stop giving commands and stare at the craters where your army used to be. There hasn't been nerfs to Stuka, I had to learn to deal with it, anticipate where attacks will land, and try to understand what my opponents goals are, tactically. German weapons are always outclassing Soviet weapons, even when they didn't in the real world, and I find it funny there is such a large horde of people that find it fair and balanced. In this case, I expect most 1v1 top players aren't going to care much. I don't think I have tuned into a top players stream even 1 time and found they had built a katyusha. Even Siberian and Ivan who came on here to put their 2 cents in, I watch their streams often (not religiously) and I never see them build katyusha. I would imagine they might be doing it now to try and express imbalance, but I think the better OKW players are going to find that some of their high mobility units can sneak behind the lines and take out the kat pretty easily. The Puma, Luchs, and falls all do a fine job of this. While I don't think that changes to the 2 units should be locked in parallel, I do think that if people genuinely think the kat is too powerful and deserves nerfs, the same can be said about the stuka and it too should get hit by nerfs, although the changes don't necessarily have to be the same to both.

Anyone interested in the explosion stats of the stuka can find them here:

http://www.coh2-stats.com/explosive_weapons/walking_stuka_rockets_mp

Jump back to quoted post20 Jul 2014, 10:55 AMKatitof

Cool.

Now show a top 50 1v1 or 2v2 game where this was used and actually won the game.

Can't?

Then the issue doesn't exist. And don't bring up 4v4, all kinds of shit go there and it will never be balanced, its hilariously amusing seeing all these 4v4 spammers complain about spam tactics in spam game mode.