Profile of UGBEAR

Infantry in buildings are too tough, addressed in alpha, and still un-changed.

I don't want to be stepping on anyones toes, but I personally think that Soviets have it far better even in team games. Altho, my perspective on the matter is slightly bias, so to say- since I only play with people that I know, or are good players. But when we do, we do with a breeze, even against good competetion players. It might ultimately just boil down to good coordination & synergy with everyone, we just mesh really well together, and speak about what commanders/units we ought to get.

If there's any point to it, I would give out some friendly advice;
- Always get someone to grab an ISU-152 commander oriented doctrine. Be that from the low-level one, to the CE edition one. There's no real prefernce, the CE one is far more agressive oriented however, and can support other agressions via Mark Vehicle.

The ISU-152 is excellent at denying & applying pressure and disloding - let alone killing virtually just about anything. It's an extremely valuable asset to the team.

- Have someone get the either Guard Rifle Combined Arms // Conscript Support doctrine to be able to continous lay down the early-mid game pressure. The Conscript Support works well with another teammate that has more scaling potential towards mid-late game. The Guard Rifle is abit more flexible in overall utility, with the Howitzer in particular

- Grab someone with an IS-2 doctrine. Whilst people will argue the IS-2 is bad, it's an excellent meat-shield for the rest of your tanks. Let-alone, good spotter for your backline tanks. Not a neccasity, but a good bonus to a strengthen late-game comp.

- Katyushka for continous stalls. Let-alone, good for dealing with PaK43s and just holler down playstyle. Don't overcommit on them, and keep them sparse, you'll need the SU-85s.

I wanted to elaborate more on this, but I'll get to it later :-)

Just for the JS-2, I completely disagree your point that "It's an excellent Meat Shield"

Let's compare it to a Tiger Tank
here's the table

Tiger I vs. IS-2
Health:

Armor:

GunDamage(alpha)

Penetration:

Reload

Scatter Max

AOE

Costs:

Special bonus for Tiger: 1 in 5 chance for a 5 second crew shocked critical on target deflections

Special bonus for IS-2:* 1 in 6 chance of 5 second crew shocked
* 25% of the shell’s damage is applied non-penetrating(160*25%=40)

Discussion:

Unit-Wise:
JS-2 Advantages: Only 25 more Frontal Armor, better Scatter (1 times more), 40HP damage granted damage if target ricochets.

JS-2 Disadvantages: 80/50 fuel More expensive than the Tiger Tank, fires 31.25& slower than the tiger, but they both has same Alpha damge(160HP/hit),140Pen(JS-2) vs 154 Pen (Tiger)( there's a catch in Pen, I'll bit*ching about it later).

Faction wise:
Oppel-Blitz+Strafing run Cheese Kommandant has a Tiger tank, by the fuel bonus of the well-balanced, perfectly fine Oppel-Blitz truck,you can get the Tiger without not much of a problem.

Spear-head doctrine commander, has a Somke+Tiger I combo, smoke disrupts Guard Vehicle, and makes enemy tanks unable to shoot the target, it's very powerful (yes I could say that is OP), makes the Tiger even harder to kill.

meanwhile, JS-2 comes with the shock rifle, which is a good doctrine, but the Shock troops has been nerfed a lot, and it's not really a cheese commander at any time,

Armor assault has a JS-2 as well, and you can combo it with auto-repair, but the other ability sucks bad......and it's a pay-for commander

Something about the Penetration:
For Tiger: tiger has 100% guaranteed penetration vs. T-34/76&T-34/85(both 120 frontal armor)
Tiger has a 85.6% chance pen SU-85's frontal armor(180), meanwhile Su-85 has 45.6% pen rate vs Tiger tank(350)
meanwhile JS-2 loss to 2 PZIV or Single Tiger for plenty of combat.........


For ranked game, you can see a tiger in 2v2+ almost every single game, and when did you saw the JS-2 last time?





discussion:
All soviet Tank has been scaled down except JSU-152&Su-85 is due to the "ram" ability, dev want all soviet players use Ram as a Counter too axis armor and meanwhile making almost all soviet tank overpriced for it's combat capabilities.

suggestion
Tweak the Ram, something like make it to Vet 1 unlock, and improve the JS-2 & T-34 series both penetration,and price tweak,

JS-2: Call-in only available while player have the T3 or T4 building
Price Reduced From 680/300 to 580/215 as previous.
Alpha rise from 160(same as PZIV&Tiger) to 180, but maintains a slower rof
Penetration rise from 140 to 154(as tiger but inferior to panther)


Tiger tank: Reduce price from 600/250 to 560/210, but requires player either Build T3 building or Reaches battle stage 4.

T-34 series: Ram become a Vet 1 unlock (or change the ram to override)

Armor rise from 120 to 145~150

T-34/76. Penetration rise from 75(lol) to 100~105 (still inferior to PZIV)

damage rise from 80 to 120 (PZIV has 160 damage)
(comment: make T-34/76 feels like a Cromwell in T-34/76, it stands a chance vs. armor, but did I ever heard about a sober player whine about Cromwell being OP?)


T-34/85. Call-in only available when player builds either T3 or T4 structure. And call-in becomes a single call-in (720/260 per pack is absurd)

Penetration rise from 110 to 150(inferior to Tiger(154) and Panther(170) but better than PZIV 110)

reload decreased from 8.45 to 7.0 (still inferior to PZIV 5.75 and still the same alpha 160 damage/hit)

(comment: a bigger soviet-PZIV, an intermediate of PZIV and Panther tank just like in real-life)



conclusion: JS-2 is a waste of an huge investment. So does T-34/76&T-34/85,tweak the ram, make soviet tanks feel like TANK




Thoughts? Call me a fanboy if you wish

T-34 is a high risk - high reward kind of unit. If you build t-34s just for "rofltstomp" purposes you're doing it wrong.

95 fuel 240 for a ram wagon is a "high reward"

Can reliably penetrates the Rear armor of a Panzer IV and Stug or a Panther instead of having a penetration lower than the Rear armor of each one of them is called "ROLFSTOMP"?

not sure you are joking....

I agree mostly with you post but not fully. 95 fuel for what you are describing is essentially a bigger T70 with ram... it just does not seem to fit into t3 for me. the only reason to buy it is for ram? seem like bad design to me. Trying to balance a tank over one gimmicky ability will always lead to imbalance issues.

The fact that a Dev said you have to go t2 to make T3 viable seems like a bad joke to me, RTS games are suppose to promote new strategies being formulated NOT trying to force you into pre determined build orders.

I would like to see Ram changed to a vet 1 ability which only stuned each vehicle for 5 secounds and then boost it's damage vs vehicles or reduce it costs. i find it very strange people are arguing it is ok to pay 95 fuel for a battering ram...


This is just my opinion but i find anyone who thinks teh T-34 is fine in its current state a German fan boy and values there own interests over that of game balance.

I do not think the current T34 has anyplace in the game currently, the Ram ability is a one trick pony that is hurting balance, you get no cat and mouse gameplay, you can not use your tanks to flank enemy tanks because the only time you can kill P4s is with a ATG in support and they can not flank well..., there is no tense positioning moments, oh look p4, RAM bring up ATG. or oh look t34 pop smoke get too close for it to ram and kill it.

Ram makes the tank game Dull, boring and leaves no room for tactics.

This, move the Ram to vet1 or tweak it, and make T-34 tank feel like a tank

Team games are a lot harder to balance than 1v1s. I still don't think Soviets are weaker in team games other than when both Ostheer players spam Opels and strafe.
The soviet tech trees and doctrines can work very well together between two or more players whereas the Ostheer players are basically each just doing the same stuff like in a 1v1.

In the end it comes down to what people expect what formats balance should be for. I think I'd prefer 1v1 balance over team game balance. Of course extreme imbalances in team matches need to be fixed as well (Opels, strafe).

I don't think you can not find Opel+Strafe abuse in EVERY 2v2 GAME,

2v2 balance=Med+Late unit balance, Tank META(which is currently stupid) and Howitzers, 2v2 is pretty popular in vCOH, but I do not like fight against Brits in vCOH...


(BTW:my mate found that both Soviet and German howitzers won't shoot if there's a "rock" "tree" "vehicle" get in it's line of sight, pretty stupid.......)