Profile of Hannibal

One major issue right now is playing soviets in team games.

Currently in team games soviets are under performing badly.

Axis factions are easier to play. Your infantry works great and you have an early presence.

Any map you get with an OST and OKW player on the same side, you lose. By the time you get to the fuel they have already locked it down. So you lose ELO.

Now your ELO is worse, so you get stuck with noobs who dont even try to get the fuel. They run to the middle and camp out. Then get run over with blobs and early vehicles. So you lose ELO.

Now you are not only playing with noobs, but noobs that just bought the game. Meaning most of them do not have ALL of the allied factions. Which means you now get all soviet games against mixed axis teams.

GG ELO Hell.

Now add this all to premades, AFKs, bug splats, bad spawns, axis favored maps, etc. Playing soviets right now is a joke.

And that is where the MM sucks hard.
1) Getting premades 4-5 games in a row.
2) Games where the enemy is even remotely better than your team = loss because allies crumble after about 12 minutes.
3) Getting the same afk or bug splatter on your team 2 and 3 times in a row.
4) Playing the same map several times in a row. And getting the shit spawn every time.
5) Always getting the worst player on the team in your next match.

With the current state of the game and MM, I /L out of about 3 out of 5 games. Stuck in ELO hell just due to the MM.

This is quite an exaggeration. The game even in 4v4 is at least balanced enough that you don't have to sink THAT far below your actual skill level, because at some point you will just win by out-microing.

Some of these things are just BAD LUCK. And I have horrendous luck. But some things could easily be fixed by those cucks at Relic.

1) Calc an estimated ELO for premades.
2) Dont play the same map twice in a row.
3) Adjust ELO based on current win rates for the factions and mode.
4) Dont play with the person who just crashed the last game.
5) Adjust ELO on faction performance per map.

There are probably 3-5 more things that could easily be added by any competent programmer in about 20 minutes. But here we sit...

Sadly, the only point in time when Relic will gather a lot of data on winrates and maps without it being influenced by patches is when, well, there are no more patches. Catch 22...

Basically the whole problem is not with ELO ranking in and of itself, rather how the game uses it:

Lets say that in the last few games I suck hard right? Let's say -5 streak. Naturally, I will lose ELO points, my opponents will get them ofc and normally I would play with lower-ranking opponents so as to make the game fair.

The problem with COH2's implementation of that is the fact that they filter your teammates by elo, BUT not your opponents. Hence, ELO hell.

If you have -5 streak it is very likely that you will end up with a teammate that is also on a similar losing streak. HOWEVER, it is no guarantee that your opponents will also be at the same level ELO-wise, and if you work that out using induction, almost always you will be playing against better teams (or even worse, arranged teams) whilst at the same time the quality of your teammates will continually erode --i.e. ELO Hell.

I made the point bold that I don't get.
Do you have any backup for that? To my knowledge, as well as how any other skill based match making system works, it tries to match your ELO with an opposing player. I doubt Relic re-invented the wheel here, since it also does not make sense. Matching your ELO to an opponent is even more important for balancing than matching your ELO to your team mates' ELO.

What you explain does not make sense. A losing streak should have nothing to do with any of this, even if your assumptions were true.
There's these options:
1. The game does care about the ELO of both teams -> games should be fair at any level and previous games do not matter, you'll just get matched to higher/lower ELO. In my eyes, this is the current system with bad implementations and "hick ups" here and there.
2. The game does not care about any ELO -> completely random games. This is surely not the case, at least not by my experience.
3. The game cares only about similar ELO in your team, but not in the opponent's team -> Random opponent strength with random wins and losses. Any streak does not have an influence.

The only way your explanation would be true is if CoH2 somehow remembered your starting ELO at any given day. Then, when you lose, the game updates your ELO only when looking for team mates but not for opponents and will still continue to find opponents for your high ELO.

Why should it do that? This is creating hugely complicated extra steps. Also what happens the next day? Does the game fully update your ELO? Does it only update once you win a game? Do you then get continuous wins as well? What will the game take as a reference point for finding opponents?
None of this sounds logical, and therefore I assume the game does not do that. The match maker is just shoddy sometimes, let it be due to lack of players, due to some players searching too long or other badly tweaked parameters for the current player base. But overall in 2v2 and 3v3 I found it to work decently well.
The really bad thing is that it does not seem to adjust for arranged and random teams, leaving randoms less of a chance in such a matchup.

Combat engineers can work as your mainline because they cost absurdly cheap and have a flamethrower upgrade, but even without it you can hold your ground

they have 2 models less, but you make 7 to 8 squads at the very least, and you stack multiple of them anywhere you are supposed to fight. Fun tactic

They don't
You're ignoring the fact that CE have to retreat after losing about two models. This means your army can only lose half their strength until you're incapable. If you retreat Cons the same way, you have to lose 67% of your army until you are pushed off.
CEs don't work as mainline. Not early game, and surely not in the late game.
Instead of spamming a ton of CE squads that you cannot afford flamers for anyway, just build two CE and 3 Conscripts and use merge. Same effect, better fire power, and cheaper on your MP while having the same amount of models on the field

Good guess. Taking in account penetration chance and accuracy of ATG (4% miss chance at long range for ZIS and 6pdr) a ZIS or 6pdr needs to shot 13-14 times on average. That are about 35 seconds for double ZIS and about 30 seconds for double 6pdr (with the initial shoot of both ATGs taking no time). That leaves some time to react. Using panzer tactican while remaining hulled down would prolong this furher since not all ground attacks will hit. So I do think there should be some time to communicate with teammates that are listening and reacting. Of course there are random mates where all communication is sucked up by a black hole.

I do think USF has the biggest problem with Command PzIV / hull down combo since they have no ATGs which aren't a munition sink. USF only has the Jackson as a reliable AT source and that one will loose badly vs Panther with hull down / command PzIV aura. You can pretty effectively shut down USF tanks at certain areas of the map that way.

Well from the top of my head I calculated with 200 pen, which is slightly off. Chances change quite a lot depending on veterancy of both the Panther and the ATGs.
One downside I had when I tried to play with hull down (already some time ago), is that you can feed a lot of vet to enemy ATGs. The ATGs can take 1-3 salvos and then pull back. It's hard to react properly on time. The enemy can generally take the initiative. Unless you have constant vision with a high vet 222, there is a decent chance you won't spot the approach.
This is obviously a micro issue too which I am really not good at, but on the other hand this is the same for the Ostheer player.

"only" 9 shots equals to outsurviving allied heavy tanks and even the king tiger in terms of what you can sustain as punishment. actually, a veteran sturmtiger has only 40 more health points

1400 potential health for a tank is really strong + you also shield infantry with the aura + IT ALSO WORKS ON ALLIES. to top it off, hull down demounts instantly (letting you escape right away) and (I THINK) you get panzer tactician with it.


in team mode additionally you can reliably pull off this build, unless you are heavily losing (triple cap & both fuels lost.) axis teams simply need to get fuel caches and play the waiting game, and eventually overwhelm the allies with panther/arty spam

Yes, I fully agree.
I just added some points that I think are necessary.
My main point is: It is an expensive build and it will only work as a complete package. Without the Brummbar/PWerfer it basically falls apart since your Panther will get killed by ATGs. And the earliest you'll get it is 25 minutes if you skip literally all unnecessary fuel cost and your team has to build fuel caches. Realistically, you're on the 30 min plus side. The other option is that two Ostheer players need to split the units among each other, but this required way more micro and coordination as well as force concentration.
The build works very, very well on larger modes with narrow maps like Angermunde, especially if the opponents do not spam artillery. It doesn't on super open maps or smaller modes though.