Profile of Cruzz

I think the M3 is fine. It sucks because people are using it as an Armoured Car, which it is not. It is a Scout Car, it has a large visual range and is very cheap. It can be makeshift armour and very effective if you macro it well, but it's not a 222 or T-70, you can't charge it into a group of soldiers and expect victory. Half the time you can't even do that with a 222 or T-70, because of AT Grenades, PTRS, Panzerfaust, and Panzerschrecks.

Awww man, it's a good thing this thing only costs 230/5 instead of the backbreaking 240/10 that the 222 costs, because I'd hate to have to pay that extra 10/5 for actual combat capabilities.

it survives a single faust and will typically still force the gren to retreat. good players will consider this a buff. people who try to circle 2 pios and dont even try to save their vehicles when damaged will be disappointed.

the fact german infantry has lost all of its armor (except pgrens who still lost the majority of it) is a significant boost to its dps.

the fact it costs more mp and less fuel is also a buff in my opinion. mp is obviously much easier to get, is impossible to cut off, and doesnt delay your teching like fuel.

No, sorry, I don't agree with anything you said. The health buff doesn't actually help you one bit against a gren squad, because it only means you are left at 80 health instead of 60, which is 5 instead of 4 shots from the grenadiers, or 25% increase in survivability after a faust. Meanwhile the chance for any single infantry round to penetrate you from the front has increased by 55%! Against pioneers it's even worse, previously they were the prime targets of M3s, now they're things you run away from because their mp40s will eat you alive if you dare to come close. Assgrens are similarly improved against the m3, now even one squad is a reason to stay the hell away while previously you could kill a lone squad with an (empty) m3.

The extra MP instead of fuel is extremely bad for early game progression, because it means making an m3 represents a straight trade off for a normal combat unit. It also represents a reduction in options, previously you could make a fuel cache to make up for the fuel cost if you really wanted to (not that anyone did because it wasn't needed). Now you can't. There's also the reality that with so many people just playing guard rifle straight to t34/85s, fuel is largely meaningless (you will always have enough by the time the cps are up), while manpower is always valuable.

The only thing that's true, is that m3 gun dps is now increased relative to what it was against units that previously had armor. The thing is, the nerfed survivability against all small arms, means you have to stay much, much farther out(actually out of combat, but let's pretend you can stay at max range with the thing). And how much damage does an m3 do at max range? Pretty much exactly the same as a vet0, full conscript squad.

What sense does that make? Not only is this fight against pioneers who always had 1 armor, the amount of armor a unit has will not in any way affect the relative performance between small arms because they all have the same penetration rating of 1.

I don't know, for me a lot of the issues described are a result of the small arms changes. I think if you're struggling after new patch you are really struggling to adapt rather than something is unbalanced.

If I only struggle with one faction, it's an "adapt" issue?

Lets be honest last couple of months it was extremly easy to play as a Soviet. All you needed was a blob of Conscripts equipped with PPSHs roaming around the battlefield and destroying everything.

And did you, pray tell, ever try play without ppsh cons? Because you know, actually all these other strats for soviets sucked last patch as well, which was why 90% of the player base was playing advanced warfare. You had ppsh con spam on all maps, and sniper spam on some maps (Langres and crossing, other maps it really was not a problem), and other strats were pretty easy to counter as germans.

Now everything depends of how you approach the engagement and how you utilize cover. If you do it right Pios will die, so will Grenadiers and Panzer Grenadiers as well. You need to think more strategically in this game now.

I don't have to think as germans. I know that if my grens are atleast in yellow cover, I will win against conscripts in heavy cover guaranteed. I don't have to think about whether my PGrens have to run through red cover to get to cons, they'll easily win even if take some fire. I don't have to worry about combat engineers with my units, because they will all win against them. I don't have to worry about getting flanked by automatic weapon squads, because the soviet ones won't kill anything on retreat. I don't have to worry about early vehicles, because the M3 is the worst it has ever been. I don't have to worry about infantry AT with tanks, because soviet AT is still bad. There's a lot I don't have to think about as germans that i have to constantly think about as soviets.

Of course your rank as a Soviet will drop but it shouldn't be there in the first place do to the advantage you had over couple of last months. It is basically almost the same situation that happend when MG42 was overpowered at the beginning of CoH cycle.

My soviet rank already was half of my german one before this because I was purposedly avoiding playing ppsh spam or more than one sniper. In that sense this patch mostly just forced my playstyle on everyone, but the thing is, all you're left with now are the strats that were already weak before this patch, and they've been made even weaker by the mechanics changes that all favor the german faction design.

Well, your first phrase explained all your next words and your problem with the new march 25th patch. Soviets have no more advantages in the early game. Well, this is called balance, ya know? No faction having advantages.
I think that the small advantages german faction had, were fixed by the last mini-patch - 28th of march, except the one with pios.

What he obviously means (and I'm sure you understood as well despite playing dumb) is that pretty much every choice for soviets early game is inferior to the equivalent for germans. Which is pretty damn bad balance. And this isn't just limited to the early game, because later on they have the exact problem when combating tanks because their vehicles are way too focused on killing infantry and their infantry is not nearly as good at combating tanks as the germans.

Without having played the hotfix (hooray for backseat gaming), I can tell you it will solve approximately none of the current issues. Riflenades will be slightly weaker again, but still stronger than they were pre 25th. Cons will still be useless compared to grens. ppsh will still be the worst weapon in the game due to range issues. Grens will still reign king at range against all soviet infantry. Penals may be able to fight against grens with a single weapon upgrade at short range, but will still lose at the most common combat ranges.

The only real change will be that you can now choose to do T1+T2 play to call-in tanks more realistically. Which is very nice for variety but really doesn't make any difference to the german side of things because grens are the counter to all of these units.

Agreed with the OP. Too many soviet players are just used to swarming a map with infantry, neglecting cover, and winning.

This patch is a MASSIVE step in the right direction for COH2 but of course there will be more adjustments in the future such as pios im sure. For once a patch that raises the skill level a bit instead of lowering it, and that goes for both factions. Of course scrub players who nub'd their way to the top of the ladder will hate it. I hope to see more patches like this in the future.

I can literally just attack move towards soviet base with grens and be assured of winning unless the soviet player has found some green cover to hide behind. Wow much skill, so tactic. I would've hated to play germans before this if this counts as "raising the skill level".