Profile of rumartinez89

Old school Jesus Troops hands down. If you don´t charge them down the middle, but wait for the right moment and sneak into enemy lines, they are unstoppable. Conscripts do the dying, Jesus Troops do the killing.

Also about Airborne Guards, I´m pretty sure they do actually have hold fire after the upgrade.

Yep, just checked it in a close game. Shout out to Zedor, game went to single digits for both of us. I found my new favorite Soviet commander, PPSH Penal to throw people offer the games and transition the others to AT while Airbourne Guards all go PPSH. That hold fire came in clutch, the AT strafe is crazy good when you get one in from the rear.

I am seeing a lot of bickering and wanted to go for something more light hearted. This is not about balance just which is your favorite and why/how you use them?

For me:
1. LMG Paras- Place them behind green cover get vet to improve rec acc and watch them melt opposing infantry. Less micro then zooks or thompson which frees me up for tanks or flanks with Rifles.

2. Panzer Grenadier - I dont play Axis much but I love to rush these using an Ass build, they have a hard hitting grenade and most units cannot withstand the early power spike. Some commanders provide utility or change in weapons if that is what you want.

3. Airbourne Guards - I think this is where most will have an issue. I love that I can pop out of a building and surprise unsuspecting units. I like to go for SMG and hide to get cover/cloak bonus could be even better if it had a hold fire toggle so I could wait for MG to set up or unit to get close to drop as many models as possible. Vet 2 healing is unique compared to other guards which let it stay a nuisance.

Thought I did fairly well but took for ever to close out due to issues with commander.

It's a question of what you want in your army composition and there will always be tradeoffs. If you want to have 2 units where one is solely AT and the other can be flexible AT/AI then that's fine. But 2 E8s, while more expensive also have the benefit of being generalists and more durable than the M4A3.

You don't ever have to worry about the Jackson getting caught by AT Infantry or the M4A3 getting outmuscled by other tanks (or being forced to use them together all the time). Easy 8 will almost always be the outmuscler and that's not nothing. It's not going to be great AI and it's not going to have Jacksons's Penetration ceiling but those are choices you willingly make and factor into your army composition. Those tradeoffs by themselves don't mean the E8 is trash. More simply put, don't build the E8 and expect it to perform like a Comet because it wont.

I see what your saying but they are generalist in the sense that if rng rolls your way you will do some AI damage. It will not punish blobbing like the regular Sherman HE will and to get the improved AT performance you have to invest heavily with more fuel, muni and loss of mobility.

So I end up punishing myself instead of my opponent until the E8 hits Vet2 where it finally starts to work as intended.
The outmuscling is only in a vacuum 1v1 vs OST tier 3. Looking at cost, the OST player could just make a Stug with the 2nd one not far away vs 1 E8. Yes, the E8 will win 1v1 but against 2 its losing no questions asked which is to be expected. Making the Stugs is a minor inconvenience for most players and does not require any specific doctrine to make. For OKW, only the P4J is getting outmuscled from the STOCK choices available.

Now looking at Army composition an OST player can be expected to have an AT gun which will reliably push back the E8, OKW can spam raks however the E8 has a decent chance of deflecting. This allows the Axis player to stick to their strategy which means my choice only disadvantaged me. I did not force them to hold out for a Panther which would give me at least a minute or so to create momentum.

The reason most have such high expectations of the tank is due to the relative weakness of the entire company. So like some have said the tank needs to carry the doctrine or the rest of Rifle company needs to be reworked.

But 85 still suffers from the same problems EZ8 suffers from anyway. Point is, IF EZ8 came with an overall better commander, it would have been fine addition to the army. But EZ8 is a "selling point" of the Rifle company, because other abilities are garbage. But EZ8 was never supposed to be a selling point of it, its just all the nerfs of the commander made it look like it is.

Its just the fact that EZ8 comes with USF version of ostheer "joint opperations" commander. Very specific, inflexible and fitted only for a specific type of play.

I agree with what you saying but supposed to is past tense, at this point it is the only reason to choose Rifle Company. One of my biggest issues with Rifle Company is Rifle Defenses, Advanced Infantry and the Halftrack are contradictory. Rifle defense promotes turtle based play from an aggressive faction, where Advance Infantry gives a flamethrower to a squishy unit but no sprint to make use of it. Flares to Rifle for more sight however the tank commander also gives sight so one is redundant and sprint to the rifleman which is only useful in certain scenarios. The halftrack comes to late to be used as a clown car so you got to use it defensively as part of a turtle strategy.
These 3 abilities form a weird passive aggressive grouping that needs some omph which is expected to come from the E8.
So either the rest of the commander needs to get buffed or the E8.