Profile of Vaz

I really like these changes. Everything looks really intelligent. Even more so, my Soviet strategy uses at least 1 Katyusha to pressure/destroy OKW positions and blobs. I am disappointed the changes were not mirrored for the werfer though. I've always felt the werfer was a bit more harsh because of the tight circle, but typically changes to one are placed on the other.

Fairly doesn't mean perfect, a 4 squad LMG gren blob vs 4 of any other soviet squad other than maybe shocks is always going to win and I doubt cover would matter. Not win by a little bit, but win like with all 4 squads intact, perhaps without even losing a man, Especially with vet. With first strike, I don't think any infantry stand a chance, I've done some dirty things to blobers with first strike and lmg.

The armor thing, I get your point, but some units are actually wearing armor that would stop a bullet (like shocks). So to see a round hit and not do anything is ok. I would actually have some weapons slightly tweaked for greater than 1 penetration but maybe less than 2. TBH though, I wasn't fully aware that received accuracy modifiers were added, I'll have to read up on that more.

I have felt the difference with shocks, but more towards ost than okw. Against obers only 1 survives. If shocks have to retreat, they won't get home. So it turns into this all or nothing attack, for the soviet player of course, the okw can retreat without penalty but I guess that's what the high price gets you.

So I've read through about 3 pages of this and it's funny because I felt like there was something I wasn't seeing. I haven't bought WFA yet, and although I played a lot of Axis in CoH1 I don't find them as attractive here in coh2. 1v1 isn't much fun to me, so I don't play much of it. So I'm playing team games as Soviet and it is hard as hell. I've noticed that it isn't a skill issue, good and bad players get lazy with Axis design, OKW more than Ostheer.

Here's the thing though. I stated they get lazy with Axis design, but I think it's really more that they are not challenged by Soviet design. This is why players will just resort to liberally attack moving blobs around the map and winning. Usually with LMG units, which Soviet units can't handle with or without cover. For now, I'm just talking about infantry.

I don't see a need to nerf Axis as much as I see a need for buffs and changes to Soviet

The problems I see are that while most of the infantry in the game are on equal footing with health after the removal of most armor, the piss poor accuracy of almost every Soviet infantry holds them down and is likely a spit in the face to many of the real soldiers who fought. The other issue I see is that the unit selection is pretty bad. There are game assets that are not used in multiplayer, but could help change things for the better. Here is a short list of assets I think should be added and how they can help:

• Frontovik squad is not used at all. This should be a really cheap, really shit squad, like the current cons are and should be tier 0 instead of the current cons.
  
• Gaurds armed only with rifles, would make a good t3 addition considering their improved mosin accuracy in the profiles. These non-doctrine units should not be upgradeable to hold ptrs, but maybe replace some SVT's. Squad number could potentially be reduced to 5 or 4 as well.
  
• Shock Troops armed with rifles like we used to have before they were equipped with ppsh-41 standard. Facing off against units like Obersoldaten with the extreme close range of the ppsh-41 is usually a suicide mission or a waste of MP and pop-cap as they sit around while the player looks for an opportunity to get in close. Even up close, the doctrinal storms still run a high risk of losing to this long range oriented expensive unit. A rifle variant would allow them to make use cover positions and still challenge units like Obersoldaten (likely still without being better than them). These Storms would be placed in T4.
  
• T34/85 could be made non-doctrinal without causing a detriment to the value of the commander call-ins, by simply making a variant that manifests itself through a lower health value. It can have the same health as the t34 for example, as opposed to the 800 or so it comes through the call-in. This would give the commander call-in a benefit of same cost but more health, yet still allow base soviet army to have this iconic weapon.
  
• The KV-1 is a call-in right now and it shouldn't be. It should be in T4 right now. I don't have any ideas right now on how to differentiate it from the commander call-in, maybe do something dumb like what was done with the panther command tank.
  
  

I think I mentioned this in another post, but I think global changes to cover over-all would do wonders for a lot of the balance problems in this game concerning blobs. Regardless of the faction, if cover was more important, the importance of tactics in this game would increase. Currently cover is offering fairly mild defensive bonuses and no offensive bonuses. Adding in offensive bonuses and buffing defensive bonuses would allow Relic to create a more natural and dynamic balance between infantry, without having to resort to retarded global accuracy values on some units (Looking squarely at you, Obersoldaten!). If I'm not mistaken, they should even be able to tweak these on a per squad basis as well.

This would potentially allow them to do something like give all infantry in the game of a specific profile the same accuracy value while not in cover and make increases based on cover type. Taking grenadiers and cons as an example, this would mean that if cons engaged grenadiers in open ground, their numbers advantage would shine through profoundly resulting in a clear win for cons. In light cover it would be a close battle, where distance and rng decide. In heavy cover, we would see the grens take some losses, but ultimately win every time 1:1. So someone with a blob of 4 lmg grens coming to attack a some con squads behind stone walls would have significant difficulty winning and would likely have to rely on the Soviet player failing to dodge rifle grenades.

With all that said, I want to see the return of armor values to infantry. I think relic set the values too high initially and that created a bad experience for a lot of us. Some units that maybe should have had armor (like penals) didn't, even though they cost as much as armored units. Units like Panzer Grenadiers became really dumb and frustrating to use. I think giving units like PG a value of 1.25 instead of 1.5 would be nice to try and smaller values like 1.1 or 1.05 for units like penals would be helpful to increase the durability and separate their role from other infantry.

I have long hated the "simple logic" of the argument that Axis units need vastly improved performance due to squad count. This game does not operate on a simple logic, it is very complex and there are a lot of compounding returns and losses. There are many instances were in the grenadier vs conscript battle, the cons lose a man from the squad before that man even does any damage at all. So how can a calculation be run to show the firepower of 6 men on 4 when it's common for it to end up as a 5 on 4 before the grenadiers even take the damage from 6 men? There is a lot of rng at play, but my experience has shown that given proper micro and planning, grenadiers are often able to come out on top in battles against cons without losing a single man (usually when armed with lmg, but not always). This issue is then increased even further when considering the extreme lethality of OKW. Although I do feel that smaller Axis squads should perform better than larger Soviet squads, I think the gap right now is too large. CoH1 likely proved that Relic had the values too high, as 6 man American rifle squads would tear through grenadiers before vet came into play, but there was a giant reduction in accuracy going from riflemen to cons. Even worse is the fact that riflemen and grenadiers had costs differences in coh1, with grens costing a little more. Even considering that, I felt that the infantry battles were far more satisfying in CoH1 regardless of the faction I played as.

Some of these suggestions have the potential to disturb 1v1 quite a bit, most noticeably with the Ostheer, who is having a similar issue struggling against the USA. Obviously there are going to be some similar changes that would be good on that front as well, changes that could be implemented without disturbing the fairly decent balance that currently exists between Eastern armies. Giving Axis access to a more general purpose and cheaper mine like the tm-35 would go a long way, I'm sure there were a billion different mines they deployed irl. That would make it easier to deal with stupid spam strats like what Molo does or did with scout cars. I think a lot of the weakness put into the soviet army is at the root cause of why relic feels the need to hide higher cost vehicles in OKW with a gimped economy, which I think is a balance issue itself. Players should be on equal footing based on territory they hold, not chosen faction.

You didn't support them. They have a modifier to kill retreating units.

Sorry I didn't tell you everything I had. The support got completely trashed without killing a single man out of the enemy squad, which is why I hit retreat.

not damage, damage is fine. Penetration and only vs tiger. It doesn't have issues with anything else.