Profile of Blovski

Many of you forget two Things here:

1) A lot of players actually have no clue what GG stands for. They're just lemmings doing what everyone else is. Same as with LOL.

2) Quite a few players you match up against do not speak English. They may for that reason just type GG as sort of a 'hello' or 'goodbye'.

So there are actually reasons not to feel offended if the winning player throws a GG. Especially not if it's the only communication you had since GL HF.

I'm more concerned by the lack of communication tbh. I feel it has dropped a lot compared to COH1, and I partly blame the missing lobby for it.

The lobby was the cave of the pocket-nazis, I know, but it was also a place to get to know strangers a bit before you killed them on the battlefield.

I had a handfull good contacts build like that. I think it does add to a good gaming comunity.

I personally got into COH quite late and I've had way more nice interactions in this game. In VCoH it was just everyone either trashtalking over nothing whether or not they were winning, or people accusing you of being a smurf. Maybe it was different when you got a bit better but at low levels it was invariably pretty poisonous.

Yeah, on the preemptive GG, I don't mind Stephenn's way - that doesn't bother me. The early winning GG is pretty rude, as is people typing 'leave'. People leaving without gging is OK. People being ragey twats is kind of to be ignored. I quite like glhfing because people who are going to be twats later usually respond by complaining about the map, which is a good indication that you should get a troll unit to make them foam up.

PAKs are so slow and often innacurate (yay RNG) that people will just drive right past them. If you watch vonivans stream or andy they will buy 3 and just purposely drive up to it and decrew it. they might lose one or two but at that point it doesnt matter because it was the only threat to their rush

More importantly PAKs are defensive and you cant push without vehicle support outside of your immediate defensive area because a t70 can float along the perimeter and hit where the PAK isnt - mobility

Teller mines work great 95% of the time (I've seen a t70 survive occasionally) but smart players will avoid main roads when t70 rushing. Worse its hard to even get the munitions for mines in the first place in a game with heavy soviet pressure on your resources

Shrecks are kited by a t70 and pgrens will then die when they try to retreat. Also 120 munitions is way too expensive

T70s could use a small speed/mobility nerf (its a tank not a race car) but the meta that gets them out at 9 mins in as much at fault too, if not more so
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Munition costs are voluntary for soviets (abilities) and mandatory for ostheer (upgrades). Thats a flawed balance that contributes to soviets having an easier time managing munitions

Worse the cost of a 120mm precision strike, which will instantly kill a squad or support weapon is only 45 munitions... as much as a frag grenade. Difference is frag grenades you see coming, and they dont launch from halfway across the map. GG

Demo charges require no upgrades, not even the minesweeper one for 30muns, and at 90mun will kill any squad/squads in the game outright. they probably tear up vehicles but I dont see people using them against that. Good bye vet3 PGREN squad 25 mins into a close game because you tried to capture a VP. Ostheer naturally cant build them for some reason

Not meaning to sound too skeptical but I get the impression you've played a lot more Ostheer than Soviets (especially in terms of reasonably high level games) and consequently you've experienced horrible situations a lot more as Ostheer than as Soviets and you're always on the receiving end rather than the using end of these units. Hence, you probably don't see the 120mm studiously missing everything you barrage at for half a game, you probably don't experience the frustration of your conscripts being incapable of scaling against grens because of LMGs (your spare munitions won't help you), you won't find a north Langres start where you have no munitions and no manpower and no fuel and in spite of killing a scout car, an FHT and the first Ostwind yet there's still no way back onto the field on account of how many tools the Ostheer have for sitting on that cutoff, you won't get a T-70 only for it to be cleverly ambushed by shreks/a pak and a faust and thus find yourself pretty screwed, or go for the Von Ivan T1-T3 T-70 rush, be fiercely contested and then struggle like hell to deal with P-IVs on account of backteching being prohibitively expensive. Similarly, a game where Von or Andy have the fuel to have THREE T-70s by the time the first PAK is out is usually a game they've already won rather than a typical close early game. If they had a similar fuel advantage as Ostheer they would be sitting very pretty.

This is just going off streams but it seems like most of the players who are very strong with both factions think the game is a bit Ostheer favoured, I think it's very hard to make an authoritative argument about the balance needing fixing when you only experience the frustrations of one faction.

(For instance, Von Ivan, if he's not massively winning a game, does not usually have a load of munis as Soviets because of how much he oorahs, molotovs and uses AT nades. Likewise, T1->T4 with Guard Motor is usually an extremely muni-expensive strategy... and Ostheer were successfully countering it even before both the SU-85 and the Soviet snipers received serious [albeit, imo, justified] nerfs)

Edit: watching your game... I'm not really sure it's good evidence for your arguments. You have a roughly even early game, then your first P-IV (which was able to arrive reasonably ahead of the SU-85 despite even fuel control) gets stopped from capitalising by running into a mine, and you lose your second vehicle (the Ostwind) as soon as it comes out thanks to playing very aggressively with it and getting it AT naded when you're aware an SU-85 should be around. After the Ostwind loss you fairly quickly lost most of your grens.

Tsubaki doesn't generally have a load more munis than you and I think it's reasonably obvious from the replay that your play, whilst you started off pretty well, really dropped the ball in the mid-game against a very good Soviet player on a map that's pretty good for the T1 T4 strat. TL/DR: looks like you got outplayed rather than a key top-level balance concern but what do I know?

Are the invitees in the best of 1 mirrors? because *anything* could happen there. First invitee to go... maybe DevM? I mean, he's improved a lot and he's still got them COH vehicle micro skills but I'm not sure he's really got a COH 2 mindset yet.

Ami will not be able to find the commanders. Ipkai will know what they are if he ends up co-casting any of it. As far as to look out for... maybe Tsubaki Yayoi. I'd love to see more of Jesulin after the last time he was in a tourney. Barton always loses to Von but I'm hoping to see that battleofthetrolls anyway.

Depending on patch, I'd say a marginally better Ostheer winrate. Like 60%.

The most legit strat...

@Con, how much of an effect would you say the 1/2 capping speed has on Ostruppen? I mean, some, but I'd hardly say they're not OP any more as a result of it. Can't imagine it changing the VODs very much.

I see you've ignored all the corresponding advantages of the Ostheer in your write-up.

There are plenty of options for the Ostheer, whether that's going aggressive with an FHT and Pgrens during that phase of the mid-game where Tier 1 Soviets struggle a bit, putting down an Opel truck to get you ahead on the vehicle tech and allow you to keep the snipers pinned for most of the game, going for a PAK-43 or saving up for an elephant to ward off the SU-85s, getting a mortar halftrack to answer the snipers. If you feel incredicheesy, spamming Ostruppen more or less makes snipers pointless.