Profile of GachiGasm

And USF could beat Grenadiers at long range cover to cover fights OStheer would simply be doomed since they would not able to do anything...

Its not like they can do anything reasonable against paths right now

To be more serious, dont think so honestly. Even if we imagine that this theoretical squad is a 5 men gren clone, Ostheer would still have assess to sniper\MG\mortar for gren support and unlike path this squad wont be able to spot them miles away.

There is at least room to balance them out. Maybe they also should cost 290MP, maybe they could be vulnerable in close range, maybe they should start as a 4 men squad with an upgrade to 5 later on, who knows. A lot of reasonable solutions could be found and it already would be better compare to what paths do right now.

I am fully with you on this one. I'd be more than happy to have another patch that makes USF a better core faction and removes path spam.

I honestly would rather see USF having a commander with somewhat more long\mid range orientated inf, proper one without gimmicks. I\R pathfinders remaining the same and regular pathfinders being made into a recon unit, not a fighting one. At least its more realistic approach imo.

Some stock USF options might be lacking in 2v2-4v4, but in 1v1 they perform alright, without even relying on Paths, so hard to tell if buffing stock options is a good idea to begin with.

And based on this, I don't think that pathfinder spam is covering it up other USF issues, at least not if you look closely enough. The lack of rocket arty is a long standing and well known issue among quite some others.
But pathfinder spam as a complete package together with USF does not seem OP. Pathfinders themselves? Might very well be. That's what I have said multiple times now.

It really depends on how you look at it, I'd say opposite honestly. I say that pathfinders are more or less alright in a vacuum, but completely broken as a package with airborn commander. I mean, technically I\R Paths are much better, but you rarely see them. As a matter of fact, before the howi nerf, I\R paths were used much more often, with a respectable rush for howi.

Problem is super multilayered. Starting from the fact that Airborn pretty much gives you everything except armor for CP, ending up with aggressive ambu and un-intentional synergy with scott. If paths were put in a different commander, even as they are right now, and removed from airborn then path meta probably wouldn't have existed or at least to a much lesser extend.

As for covering up USF problems, hard to say. To some extend it does, but as I've said before, path meta is supposed to either end game early or snowball via VP bleed, so by the time enemy gets a lot of armor you will be able to end game quickly. Thats the main problem with it, you have to play almost perfectly for the first 15-20 mins, in order to be able to stand in the game and the main goal of paths is to kick you out of the game before you objectively can start pushing them back.

Now, if pathfinder spam is OP - and it actually might be - then it seems to make USF perform similar to other factions. In this sense it would be OP compared to other options that USF have.

CoH2.org fucked me up again and deleted my message.

I think this argument is flawed.

I've checked OKW stats from Jan to Sep, during the ST abuse. As expected ST was in top 2 comander picks, while compared to live, OKW had around 3% more W\L across the board.

Now if we look at USF (and we can throw UKF here aswell). We can see that W\L for mentioned factions is increased by around 3-5% now across the board. Path meta was popularised for USF and UKF received buffs for AVRE, Rec.suppers and mobile assault. UKF now has a clear picture of mentioned commanders being top 2 picks in everything but 1v1. At the same time, soviets W\L didn't change almost at all, dispite OP axis stuff being nerfed, all the soviets W\L changes were within a Axis W\L change after the nerfs.

After that we can ask a question. If we consider the fact that Axis in general has an advantage in 3v3\4v4 and we also consider that stock USF\UKF roster didn't receive any major changes and also considered much weaker in teamgames. Does it means that commanders\meta alone is OP, because it can give additional 3-5% W\L for a factions with stock options being weaker?

Its not about making game more balanced, mind you. Simply because USF\UKF without commanders still remain at those ~45% W\L (since again stock options are the same), but commander\meta changes pushes them to 48-49% W\L. If the commander\meta can carry as much, with old stock option, it kinda implies that it might be OP, simply because in order to carry as much you have to be way too stronger then you should be.

So yeah, maybe USF win rate will plummet if path meta is nerfed. Sure. But at least it wont cover up the fact that faction need ajustments. Right now you can clearly say that those W\L are not because faction suddenly became balanced more, but because cancerous or OP metas being used, which require more skill to actually beat them, then to win with them. In the end making the game just frustrating to play.

And this is even without considering players who can master mentioned strats and simply dominate with them.

Funny enough, but USF has Inf Company which provides LMGs, sandbags, mortar and arty or Tactical Support which also provide LMG, forward reinforcement platform and Cali. Covering pretty much rifles problem on open long range maps, yet high ranks still prefers pathfinder abuse.

Its not about rifles performance like at all. Its this:

It's just that beating it is infinitely more difficult than using it succesfully because you're the one who has to take initiative while having far inferior informaton.

Do you even read other people's posts before making your own?

Stats for 17k 4v4 games played March April of 2022.

Yes?

Show Spoiler