While I can understand that you see the buffs it got as "not enough", in my opinion you are not giving really good arguments for it.
It doesn't matter which buffs the other heavies and which ones the Tiger in particular got. You can use other heavies as a "benchmark" for comparison but only if you assume that your benchmark is decently balanced or if the comparison is useful in some other way. But how does the general power level of the Tiger in OST correspond to the general power level of the Pershing in USF? Hard to determine, yet it would be important for your points, since the power level is what you're actually talking about.
You criticize that USF can build only one RE in a viable build, which is not enough to repair the current Pershing? Balance team then did exactly the right thing: Make repairs with one RE quicker. What is your point on this?
Heavies in general might come a bit too late? Pershing goes to CP11? Looks like the correct call from balance team. It doesn't matter that the Tiger gets the same buff, they're not meant for a 1v1 shoot out. Unless you wan't to say that a CP11 Tiger were OP, but that again has nothing to do with the Pershing. Or you say that the Pershing is still too late at CP11, which in turn has nothing to do with the Tiger.
As to your last point: Sander literally posted a screen showing he played heavy cav recently and still is top 10. I trust him enough to not fake this, so yes he apparently did exactly what you were asking for and I assume he even picked it vs good players.
Instead of adjusting the 10% DR to accomodate the stug, you could simply increase stug health to 600 or 640 like a proper medium. (why its 560, I fail to understand).
Back on topic.. This version of mark target is fail because
1: Pak already has very very good pen and allied tanks short of is2 cant stand pak fire for long so armor debuff makes no sense to me. Panther has 220 pen already and stug also has 180? which is good enough
2: The only usable scenario I see is maybe marking the t70 so that the pak can reliably hit it, but this defeats the point because by then you already have a higher tier and tank out.
Like I actually want to know what scenarios you guys have in mind concerning this tank and this ability.
personally.. id like the cp4 to call in flares like that command panther will. no need mark target no smoke no thing else is needed.
The StuG survives three shots but then dies to a snare, which makes it slightly weaker than a medium that would survive a snare and three shots. At this strength, the StuG can reliably fight mediums while being weaker when a snare threatens it.
Regarding the CP4: The ability will still come in handy for T3 P4 builds as well as when facing Soviet doctrinal armor as well as late game UKF. If it is worth it for the accuracy (which will help in almost any setup) alone is debatable, but it fits the role of complementing other units. It'll make a medium only rarely miss its target, at least when stationary
yeah, i agree 15% might still be a bit too much and something odd like 13% is kind of questionable. I guess the only way around this would be to give tanks and infantry a flat HP bonus instead of a relative increase (i.e. 160 HP for tanks and 10 HP for infantry).
I'd actually love to see the day1 rage of everyone that loses his tank because it survived with 160 and then leaves the CP4 aura, causing instant death. I'd bet money on the code glitching out and that happening.
Personally I see little issue with Panther surviving an extra. Invest manpower power, fuel and pop in a CPanzer should helpful even for unit like the Panther.
Panther survives already an extra shot (even a snare won't kill it), the question is more if it should survive two extra ones or not, which - judging by my gut feeling - could be very problematic since this would boost it's survivability above any heavy in the game.
15% damage reduction (and the previous 20%) are super strong buffs.
Even at 15%, a Panther would survive two additional shots, and a P4 would need 5 shots with not even a penetrating snare being sufficient to replace the last shot.
The only way to achieve the result of the StuG surviving a fourth shot without screwing with other units too much would be a very quirky 13% reduction.
This would mean that:
- StuG survives another shot (and runs away with a frustrating 3 HP, not sure how great this would be for a fair feeling of the game)
- P4 survives another shot like it does now, a snare could still kill it but only in the case that it penetrates (in contrast to now where even a bouncing snare should kill apart from bugs). If the snare bounces, the P4 now runs away with 15 HP.
- No change for the Panther.
So overall, yes it would achieve what it should. On the other hand I feel it would be a huge source of frustration for all Allied players, especially more casual players that do not know the stats (when I started back in the day I did not even realize for some time that all mediums can take the same amount of hits, as well as that damage does not depend on range). I'd rather go with a utility ability like the balance team does now.
I thought that was already the case? I could be wrong though.
Friendly fire damages are completely inconsistent across all factions.
You can run straight into some abilities and only get little damage, while others will kill your own units fairly quickly as well.
Most abilities don't do much damage on your or allied units though, so most of the time you are fine charging into your own arty.
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Pershing is heavy infantry support only in 1v1s and 2v2s. Good luck supporting anything with 45 range and 270 armour that gets penned by pretty much everything (hell, yesterday P4 had 3 pens in a row on mid range vs my pershing, RNG but still, the armour is low enough for RNG to be effective).
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Pershing needs 300 armour OR better AI through MGs (or maybe introduction of pintle MG) OR through AOE/scatter profile. Best way would be to give it 300 armour, buff MGs by a tiny bit and call it a day. At least in my opinion.
The pen chance for medium vs generalist heavy is one of the lowest you can get (Elefant/JT/etc excluded, these are even lower) with late game units. With the RNG base of this game obviously everything could happen. CoH2 is a lot about reliability. Fighting a Pershing with a medium is extremely unreliable and therefore uneffective, not "effective" with RNG. If your complaint is that RNG were too effective, an armor buff to 300 would do next to nothing in that regard.
OST has medkits on all their mainline infantry that can be used on any squad but that doesn't change that it can also have one of the most inexpensive healing bunker. OKW light vehicles aren't any better than T-70, Stuart or M20.
Sturmpioneers medkits used to be unlocked with veterancy, and passive healing for volksgrenadiers used to be unlocked way before than vet 5 so whatever the original design was it doesn't really matter. USF was designed to not have a tier 0 mortar
OST medkits function very differently though. No AoE healing, casting time and you can "only" use it on your main line. Medkit crates can be picked up by anyone and most importantly provide AoE healing, practically cutting the price at least in half. However you are fixed in place, but that is the case with any "medic squad" healing as well, which they are meant to replace.
Claiming that it worked because Mechanized used to be meta ignores the fact that LVs are ALWAYS the meta for all factions, that the Battlegroup started seeing use because the flak ht was improved after being useless for a lot, as well as several key changes that OKW went through
Mechanized builds were nerfed, and so were Volksgrenadiers, which made Mechanized builds much less powerful. Ultimately there's no "meta" for OKW because the faction is competitively dead with 3 picks and 0% winrate in the last ML5, volksgreandiers late game bleed and inefficient trading being great part of it, which is only made worse by the lack of healing without backtech
OKW is strong in all modes (outside of tournaments), and even in 1v1 does not lack much behind Ostheer if at all. The lack of tournament play is something to be concerned about for sure, but given that larger stat samples show otherwise this does not seem to be a problem outside of the top 20 players.
Regarding LVs: OKW functioned well on T2 builds, even without a heavy to crutch on. Players still seemed to choose T2 builds despite the heavy mun bleed for a long time. Now their T1 got stronger and more accessible. Now there indeed is some powercreep that made other factions easier to play as well. Maybe my view on this is scewed, but I see both T1 and T2 builds regularly in the game.
The only faction in game that has a fully linear teching is Ostheer, because the mod team went out of their way to force a fully linear teching and disincentivize Tier 0 into Tier 2 builds, and still, OST can ignore the Tier 4 if not accessible. UKF has several side techs and Anvil + Hammer. No faction would be similar. Even OKW itself wouldn't change since its bad design basically always accounted for the player fully teching anyway, which works in resource inflated teamgames but gets absolutely stomped in 1vs1
It would still be a ridicolous munition sink. The only good med crate is the 221 because it can be dropped as single one to heal whenever you want field presence, which is a good tradeoff and a useful ability. Healing an entire match off sturmpios med crate *3 in your base costs simply too much and is far from what Relic probably originally designed med crates dropped by infantry for.
The aim of my suggestion is to slightly reduce the mun bleed of OKW from the mid game onwards. This should keep the intended trade off between STGs and healing intact while allowing more munitions float later on. As you said, OKW is supposed to get all trucks out at some point. If the resource pressure is too high in 1v1 but not in team games, SP veterancy might actually be the way to go. SPs shine in 1v1 situations and can level up quicker, while they are worse in team games. Additionally, wipes are also easier in team games due to more arty. This change should therefore benefit 1v1s more than team games and would ease the pressure of getting T1 out after teching T2 and T3.
Regardng scaling:
Is the scaling to vet3 still balanced? I ran some (current build) tests of Pershing/Tiger shooting at Volks/Rifles at about range 3. At vet0 the Pershing had a decent advantage where I can see proper use for it. But at vet3 I was not so sure anymore. The Tiger seemed to close in very nicely to the point I would say they are about equal. Especially when the pintle was upgraded. Considering the Pershing is 2 POP cheaper this is still a win for the Pershing, but on the other hand its biggest advantage is not so much an advantage anymore.