The post seems a bit disillusioned on what its adressing. "Artillery" seems to mean something that wipes squads. But all squadwipes in this game is done by actual units. So if the post is about the katyusha, you can counter it with a puma, volksblob or a stuka. If you dont, there will be squadwipes.
That's much easier said than done, especially against good players. They can just move the Katy as soon as they hear the Stuka firing. Good lucky getting Volks that far behind enemy lines. A sneaky puma might work but that relies on not hitting mines or running into a Con squad. Ostheer has better options via a 222 or even a 251 loaded up with 1 sweeper pio and a schrecked up Pgren squad, but it is still extremely dangerous/difficult to properly counter a Katyusha.
The larger issue at play in my opinion is actually the 120mm mortar/Pack howi/B4/ML-20. The fact of the matter is, if you do not have a stuka dive bomb in your team-game, you WILL lose to the B4. You can build the B4 inside your base sector, or so far behind the front lines that is will be effectively impossible to reach. After thorough testing last night the only truly guaranteed B4 kill is flare or recon + stuka dive bomb - other off-maps have the potential to de-crew but not fully kill the gun (although some do sometimes depending on the RNG of the shells landing). Either way it completely pigeon-holes Axis into playing Jaeger Armor, because for whatever reason Luftwaffe Supply is banned in tournaments (I think the fear of feeding OKW fuel for a super fast KT, although I think the B4 is way more game-breaking than luftwaffe supply).
The 120mm mortar out-ranges every other mortar in the game, except the ISG which is absurdly over-priced for its current performance. It has the best AoE profile of every mortar in the game, has a small area in which the barrage ability will scatter, a 6 man crew, precision strike, and can retreat with 1 model alive. It's completely stupid. The only threat to the 120mm is a walking stuka, once again pigeon holing the axis players into spending an exorbitant amount of fuel on a single piece of indirect fire in order to counter your man-power only based mortar, which inevitably leads to being over-run by masses of medium armor.
Pack Howi is mostly an issue with the vet 2 bonus which freaking DOUBLES the damage that it does... I'm not sure why this was ever considered to be a good idea. Relic tested damage increasing Vet on Rifles in the WFA alpha and it was abundantly obvious that units gaining damage with vet completely broke the game - so I honestly have no clue why the B4 and the Pack Howi gain bonus damage.
Spreading your army out against any of these units only minorly reduces the chance of having units instantly die. In my opinion none of these things should have the capability of wiping a full health squad off the face of the map. There's just no counter-play. You hear the B4 start shooting, you can maybe guess the general area in which it is shooting but unless you are able to move everything out of the area between hearing the shot fire, correctly guessing the point at which the shot is coming, and the shot actually landing you will always have a chance of having something die. Also, it is essentially impossible to move everything that quickly out of the area with the way support weapons have to pack up. And during combat you can't predict where a 120mm/Pack howi shell is going to land, eventually you WILL lose squads. I cannot remember a game in which I built a 120 or Pack Howi that didn't 1 shot at least 1 squad, generally I lose track of the number of squads I wipe with these things. Oh the M8 Scott is another big felon in this department.
Anyways, the notion that Player B has to go a specific doctrine in order to counter the doctrine that play A chose is poor design in my opinion. This is true for the B4/ML-20. The notion that indirect fire should have the capability to 1 shot squads with impunity is also poor design in my opinion. I play CoH 2 to satisfy my inner WW 2 nerd as well as try and tactically out-play my opponent. To beat Axis this patch you pretty much just make a couple 120s, bombard any forward truck on cool-down until it is dead. If there are no forward trucks just put the 120s somewhere safe and wait till you hear "We fucked up that squad!" over and over again. It's really dumb. I spent like 5 hours playing 2v2s with Sib as allies yesterday going strictly captain tier with a Pack Howi. Didn't lose a single game. My Pack Howis always 1 shot squads and generally ended games at vet 3 with a disgusting amount of kills.
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cblanco ★ 
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