Profile of Cruzz

It´s tough but not too tough. A small reminder: Vet2 on a SU-85 enables the vehicle to kill StuGs with two shots. If you kept your Panzer IV alive for so long (it reaches vet2 with roughly 40 infantry kills or some vehicle kills), it deserves this buff.

Small reminder: why on earth would you fight SU85s with StuGs? It's rather like using T70s to counter PIVs.

The 0.45 received damage is freaking ridiculous on halftracks, though to be honest you've generally already lost the game if they have enough kills to hit vet2. A 700 HP (5 hits from an SU85) extremely high damage and high mobility unit is just as silly as the KV8 that some axis players love to cry about. It's pretty damn hilarious on all the blitzkrieg tanks too, because coupled with vehicle smoke it effectively means you'd have to really royally screw up to ever get one killed.

The SU85 is pretty much the only soviet vehicle that benefits more from the soviet veterancy, because it actually has the range and penetration to make use of it. With any other unit I'd swap for the axis veterancy (even if it didn't come with blitzkrieg) in a heartbeat.

No, what he meant is that engineers didn't get vet for mines in CoH1 either. So this is just continuing with that system.

Engineer exp requirements would likely have to be increased a lot if their mines counted for exp, which would make getting experience without mines extremely hard.

I think the ISU's range is even better than the SU-85's, and the pen and damage to it is very effective against medium armour. Even heavier armour other than the elephant can't really compete with a supported ISU.

It has the same range as the elephant. It has a very slow turn rate, more scatter than the su85, very slow reload and can't fire while moving, so getting hit by it more than once with vehicles is generally very much not an issue in 1vs1. Claiming that heavier armour can't compete with one is effectively saying they can compete with an su85 even less, because apart from the range the SU85 really is a much better unit in every way.

I guess it's an ok unit for large team games (3vs3 and 4vs4) and the most open 2vs2 maps where you can use the range on it to gib infantry from multiple players whenever you're not faced with an elefant (a pretty big requirement there...) but it just effectively becomes a katyusha replacement with mild AT then. In 1vs1 I'd be glad my opponent wasted resources on one no matter the situation, which puts it in the exact same bin as the IS2.

Similarly, the Steam stats are not really indicative of in-game balance. In general a lot of the changes to Soviets came about partly as a result of previous tournaments where the Soviets completely dominated. Personally I think things like the scout car squad deaths on destruction change and the SU-85 cone sight change have actually made the Soviet faction more fun and engaging to play.

Yes they did, and now in the tournament held in this patch, did soviets actually win a single game? Every game I watched ended with the germans winning.

There's not really any truth that the German play doesn't involve a lot of micro. Armoured cars are very micro intensive, dodging molotovs is normally more micro intensive than dodging riflenades (not right now because broken sound). I agree that Germans are a easier/less stressful to play right now, if you're not above going the MG suppression bulletin and LMGs everywhere but I don't think the balance is actually massively off in general, just that the MG-42 needs a look-in, and a few things on each side are OP and UP (so, maxims a bit UP, KV-8 way OP etc. etc., LMG-gren OP, German Sniper very much UP).

As a player who plays both and finds soviets immensively frustrating to win against anyone with a clue right now, I really don't agree with any of these points.

Molotovs are a very low reward skill even if they land, they're 10 impact damage with 6 damage per second ignoring the RNG, so effectively they never kill anything outside of the RNG as long as you move out after sitting in it for a couple of seconds. Getting hit with a riflenade always carries a very big risk of having the entire squad gibbed, a molotov has no such immediate risk and is much worse in several ways (requires teching and has horrible range with a very obvious animation).

Armored car micro honestly isn't any harder than clown cars (the unit behaves far better because of the rotating turret) and is far more rewarding in terms of kills.

LMG42 completely removes conscripts from the game, which is why people just go snipers.

MG42 can be used earlygame to lock out all the important points with no real counter for the soviets to stall for T2, and after that can be used either as a bait to force soviets send vehicles/snipers to them, or as an offensive tool to neuter any soviet infantry push by keeping an mg42 with you to instasuppress anything that comes in front of your grenadiers.

FlameHT tends to be impossible to deal with without several guard squads or a lucky mine hit.

Basically I just trollplay as germans, never equip MG bulletins, only make at most one MG during an entire match, don't dodge out of molotovs until after they hit most of the time, and winning is still so much easier than with soviets. Soviets have the option of either going for the entirely predictable 1-2 conscripts, T1 and sniper cars and guards, T4 to which you can lose if the soviets play extremely good and keep on getting lucky, or some more unpredictable alternative build that you will pretty much always win as against germans if you don't mess up because the other units are so bad. As germans you can choose to do any number of things build wise, all of which work good, some so good (T2 vehicle rushes) that they force the soviets to get counters before you even make a single unit.

As germans since this patch I have won around 30 games and lost 4 (out of which two I lost to relic servers going down) while just messing around, with soviets I've been hovering far closer to losing every other game this patch while shedding tears of blood.

http://www.coh2.org/ladders/playercard/steamid/76561197970841350

But obviously because I'm not in top 20 with both factions this opinion is not worth anything.

I haven't tried stug vs KV8, it has better reload time than a P4 but does it also have better penetration? P4 is definitely faster, but as you say we shouldn't look at units in a vacuum, and if KV8 has any support its unlikely you'll be able to circle it. Most of the time a P4 would trade shots with the KV8 frontally and it seems to deflect an awful lot. Which as I said is fine if it wasn't instagibbing infantry. I wasn't comparing it to P4 btw (which is pretty balanced now as a generalist tank), more just saying how P4 isn't really a counter to it. You meed Panther or Tiger or Elefant to have a real shot of taking it down. If you're looking at a role comparison of a hard AI and light AT, compare it to say an ostwind - which granted has great AA but thats rarely useful in 1v1 - and you can see what I mean.... Yeah its 40/20 more, but doesn't require teching. Ostwind can't ignore AT guns and AT grenades, infantry can get away easily, the KV8 is worlds in front.

StuG has 140 pen (110 pen for PIV), from the front if firing all the time it'll kill the KV8 in 3/5ths of the time it takes the PIV to kill one. Plus if you get vet1 on the stug you can weak point stun the KV8 for a bit and so on.