To all you defending Katyusha, read again what MilkaCoW has written.
In plain English he explains what's the difference.
All of you were calling Stuka OP but Stuka was NEVER as good as Katyusha is now (not talking beta).
Not only it's more devastating, can destroy base building and medium tanks but has MUCH LOWER cooldown as well and is CHEAPER. Also lets not forget that Soviet can build MORE THAN ONE in a game without any problems and serious economical drawbacks.
I understand bias but that's just ridiculous!
Yes, Katyusha is overperforming at the moment. It needed a buff, but that was vastly over the top. There are some reasons why it can't be kept that way:
- Overall damage output: 16 rockets at 160 damage are 2560 damage. That's sufficient to instakill all Oberkommando trucks. A single Katyusha, a single barrage. It needs 13 rockets to hit.
- Flight time: The Katyushas rockets fly for a far shorter time than the Walking Stukas. Stuka gives you a chance to react and spread your squads, Katyusha barely does, especially if fired from anything but max range. You should be able to predict where the rockets impact AND be able to react according.
- AoE profile and damage: While the Walking Stuka has by far the best AoE profile, the Katyusha is now a close second. Taking the squadsizes (and formation) into consideration they should have the same chance to instawipe a squad.
None of these are things that can easily be balanced out by just increasing the cooldown. If you remember the old Walking Stuka - even 5 minute cooldown would've still kept that unit useful. They actually need to be changed, but in a way that still keeps the unit useful. 100 damage on the rockets would still mean it could oneshot the FlaK HT if all rockets hit, so I fear it really needs to go back to 80. This can be compensated by a better AoE profile and maybe more penetration (or giving it crew stuns or whatever). The alternative would be probably something that shoots less rockets, but still at a high damage. Right know it deals twice the damage of a Walking Stuka and in a smaller area, making it far too good against static objects.