Profile of Funkeh

So, according to you the game is perfect then? No problems with the Pak40? Clown Cars with snipers in them are fine as they are? Oh and the Maxim is fine as well? The German strafe is also perfectly fine is it? The IS-2 is also totally worth 300 fuel too is it?

Dude don't be so naive. Just because Inverse says the balance is fine, doesn't mean fuck all. For god sake, he was saying the other day that the German Strafe is "prohibitively expensive" when everyone except for him knows that at 120 munitions is far too cheap.

You really have to take a step back and realise if the entire community except for a handful of people would like to see a patch, then chances are, statistically that the majority are right and the minority are wrong. It's just the way it is.

I am not a huge advocate for hasty patches either, but issues that are CLEARLY issues like the German Strafe, Clown Cars, Pak40 all need addressing as indicated by the MAJORITY, then Relic need to start there and slowly tweak things.

It's not perfect, but my point is that this thread's OP is a sensationalist. No match up is completely unwinnable at the moment (outside of 1v1 that may change as imbalances are multiplied exponentially).

If a patch is released that stops Snipers being able to fire in an M3 (could then allow for some clutch saves, it should never have been able to shoot out of it anyway), and another change to how effective a flamer becomes inside it (especially to squads on retreat), then I think it will be fine. The German strafe should match the Soviet one more closely, both in cost and radius - perhaps keep the flavour differences with pinning for Germans and damage for Soviets.

I think weapon teams in general need a little bit of tweaking here and there, as well as some other minor things, but yeah, no one can deny that the M3A1, Assault Support Strafe and (I think) support weapons need some tweaking so that the game becomes both less cheesy and more balanced.

I agree that the pure damage of the Maxim makes it a viable combat unit, rather than a support unit, up until a Flammenwerfer is unleashed.

Counters do exist however, one of my favourites being to deny engagements and focus on capping until you can get out a flammenwerfer. Without guards from earning CPs, a four maxim strat is far weaker.

If the maxims are supplementing a conscript force (say 2-3 'scripts and 1-2 maxims), then they are obviously playing a largely infantry army, that could be countered effectively by a defensive position and commander choice, or the same as above, but with even more scope for vehicles due to the fuel that would inevitably be dumped into conscript upgrades (moltovs and AT nades). Especially use of buildings with your own MGs, to force molotovs, and to counter attack from. Whilst maxims do a tremendous amount of dps, they lack the sheer suppression of the MG 42, especially with their narrow firing arc.

I find all mentions of balance on gr.org, the official forums and the one we are using right now, quite disconcerting. Their only saving grace is that players such as Inverse, Deeptrance83, CombatMuffin (at least allows that hasty patches are not the answer, citing Aimstrong's Bulletproof strat) and Hubewa are actually open-minded enough to think outside the box to defeat the current meta.

So many players are ignoring options they have been given by the game, and new mechanics. People love to just cry "imba", "op" and "broken" at the first sign of danger, but do not always factor in poor play, planning and strategy.

There are imbalances; but the discrepancies are not close to being as powerful as the vocal part of the community would have you believe. There are many games which go un-patched/cared for by the developers in which players actually have to think and evolve strategies around what they are given, rather than pine for a balance patch that will likely skew the meta in another direction until the next patch cycle.

I for one felt that during the TFN tournament (I watched all casted games in their entirety), there were a lot of missed opportunities by Ostheer players to capitalise on the games at hand, such as a dearth of smoke usage and blitzkrieg to flank SU-85s, as well as completely switching out of vehicles and opting for infantry + artillery-based tactics against non-shock trooper commanders. In some of the later games, a seemingly potent Ostheer strategy was to lock down a section of the map with a large tier 1 army into a panzer iv, which I think could posit a good outline for a staunch counter to the current Soviet t1-t3 strat.

Essentially I feel that the game should be given another few weeks before a patch is drawn up, so that the weight of automatch statistics will be overwhelming. There are simply too many unexplored nuances that could totally re-shape the metagame as it stands.