I find the Pak43 to be pretty good at its job. You really have to exploit the fact that it can fire through everything and put it in an out of the way spot, ie behind a building to block Katyusha shots. Also, I don't think it can fail to penetrate anything (penetration 400), even a stolen Elefant. It does require a bit of babysitting because you have to manually aim it, but I haven't had any real issues with that.
That being said, I would be extremely happy for a "fire only at armor" button on all ATGs, Pak43 included.
Its Vet1 might be bugged, though, like how the other weak point abilities were. I tried using it a couple of times but it never seems to do anything (or else I'm just being oblivious and missing something). |
My point was that using a unit designed to flank is not inherently riskier than sitting defensively, as you said. Sometimes sitting defensively is the riskier move.
I can sort of agree with that. My issue stems mostly from the fact that presuming that it needs to be a flanker, it needs a turret and speed. Okay, no problem - it has those. That could be neat and balanced with the SU85 - one is designed to be a stonewall, one is designed to be a flanker.
Except the panther still costs twice as much and requires teching into another tier. Its upsides (slightly better survivability) I believe are terribly outnumbered by its downsides compared to the Soviet counterpart. It still requires being risky with it. Nullist is correct in that it is not about using it correct, it is about its impact if both players are playing equally well. It is my belief based on statistical and personal experience that its impact is not sufficient, doubly backed up by its total lack of use in high level play.
Stug could be considered SU85 counterpart, maybe, though that's a whole different ballgame. |
I don't really understand people's issue with it being "bad". Cost quibbles aside, purely how the unit performs in its role is amazing. Before the SU-85 changes, we could not say this as it was much harder to flank them. Now, it's just a L2P issue in flanking with them. Because other than SU-85s, there is no other armour threat to them. If they had much anti-infantry capability too they'd be OP.
Agreed, I'd like to see ZiS and Pak become better. I don't want to see panther gain anti infantry, I'd like to see it become cost effective. |
I think you make a mistake by comparing them in a vacuum like that. I dont think the stats look all that bad. And you are really not giving much for the turret, which is what makes this unit so much more versitile than the SU. Ingame it eats Su85s like candy 1v1. At vet 1 with blitz its crazy fast, and smoke provides good getaway chances. Really giving this unit the upper hand against a su85.
Even if both are AT weapons the SU does best by either lurking at the back, or slowly creeping in. The Panther on the other hand is a deep flank unit. Rush in, hit desired targets and move out again, something a SU has serious problems with due to the lack of a turret.
In that sense, both are AT, but they got different roles. One is backline TD, the other one frontline makes heck of a difference imo. Ostheer dedicated TD is rather the StuG. A comparison between those would be more fair (StuG falls short here though, but cheaper).
The aggressive rush in would be fine if it weren't so expensive and hard to vet, I think. One of the points I tried to raise was that even with blitzkrieg, you're making a huge risk to rush a soviet. (Furthermore, getting blitzkrieg on a panther is an accomplishment in itself.) If it doesn't pay off, it's not like you're out a T70 or something small - it's a potential GG to lose your panther. And things like mines, button, bad pathing, whatever can all seriously ruin your day.
The turret and armor I don't lend that much to because, as you mentioned, it needs to push. If it's circling a tank or behind enemy lines, assuming the forces are supporting eachother and other player is decent, chances are it's going to take rear armor hits. It's going to hit a mine or catch an ATnade. And it's going to die. You might take out something too, but it takes a lot to make up that cost of teching and the panther itself. I find it much easier, safer, and consistently rewarding to push or creep while playing Soviets.
If you do break through and manage to not have any of that happen, yeah, it works pretty well. I'm not trying to contest that at all. But that doesn't seem to be the case most of the time.
Again, it's not "panther vs su85". It's "both faction's dedicated AT tank", where I believe the panther falls short. On paper it seems so, in my personal experience it seems so, and judging by its total lack of notable presence in any tournament it seems so too.
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I haven't seen a thread on these yet, so thought I'd make one.
The TLDR is - I think the panther might be one of the worst tanks in the game and I'd like to figure out how to fix it. A lot of the comparisons are against the SU85 not because I'm some Ost fanboi h8ing on teh soviets, but because they're asymmetrically in the same role - high tier dedicated AT tank.
This is also keeping in mind things like timing windows. Obviously a Panther will beat a T34 or a T70 1v1 handily, but they don't appear around the same time. Not including some 4v4 gimmick where one person skips all tiers and spams T4, the panther will be one of the last unit types to hit the field (if at all).
Also, before any history buffs jump in and say that the panther was classified as a medium tank - yes, I know. But in this game it's a turreted tank destroyer. I'm not at all interested in historical facts in this thread, just the game.
Reasons why include:
- Requirement to linear tech T4
- High cost (600 mp)
- Extremely poor vs infantry, perhaps worst in the game.
- Does the same damage and penetration as the SU85 (160 damage, 170 penetration)
- Fires approx 50% slower than SU85 (reload of 4.0 vs 6.45).
- Misses more shots than SU85 due to worse scatter values
- Deals less damage on misses due to less AOE splash than SU85 (0.5 vs 1.0).
- Worse range than SU85 + no vision extension. (50 vs 60)
- Requires more experience to vet up / plus hits the field much later. (1790/3580/7160 vs 2530/5060/10120).
- Required to be used aggressively due to range discrepancy which increases risk of loss. This is only half a point I suppose because map and a whole lot of other factors can impact this.
All that for a tradeoff of having 2 shots more worth of HP (640 vs 960), better frontal armor, a bit faster, and a turret.
This isn't factoring in things like Mark Vehicle, Smoke, Button, mines etc because that's all going to be matchup dependent and can obviously change the outcome.
My analysis both on paper and in practice has been that the Panther is desperately lacking. I remember back in the alpha and early beta it was pretty overpowered, but at this point I think something needs to swing back in its favor. Either in addressing its counterparts or tweaking its own stats / costs. |
I am starting to wonder if there is some very minor sync issue with where models are / where the grenade lands. Or if there is early CoH1 "scatter" on grenades where they're not going where I think they are. I'll see if I can come up with some canned video examples, but I've been observing cases where almost identical scenarios yield very different results.
@Greendevil, I agree, it seems that not retreating until after the explosion is the way to go. The retreat bunch up can be very fatal. |
My impression is that Soviets are actually better late gate. Ost seems best right in the mid game, maybe a bit stronger early game too.
Once the stonewall of SU85s appear, it's an uphill battle for Ost player. That single unit just owns so hard. At that point you have a lot of options to "ATG creep" as it was called in CoH1 - Katyusha / 120mm to get rid of dig ins, vetted cons/shocks to push up and cap, KV8 + SU85 combo to prevent ever taking anything back. Unless you get greedy or careless, of course.
The Elefant and to a lesser extent Pak43 are really the only solid counters Ost gets late game. Panther is a joke unless heavily vetted. Tiger is not bad after last patch but generally too slow / expensive / not numerous enough (in team games).
That story earlier in the thread about 3 SU85s losing to 3 P4s must have been a case of outstandingly bad micro and/or positioning and/or support. Or all the P4s were vet3 and all the su85s were vet0. 3 SU85s will absolutely crush 3 P4s if the soviet player has a pulse. |
Ignoring all the little kid squabbling in this thread, I think the su85 is still a problem. The combination of range, damage, and armor is just too much. It actually parallels the MG42 problem pretty well - even if you catch a su85 out of position, it's going to have tons of time to scoot away and do whatever it wants.
It still snipes infantry / pak like nobody's business. It still bounces shots / causes misses (even from panther!). It still does just wtf damage and penetration once it hits vet2, especially since you can stack it with mark vehicle if you go that doctrine.
I very much enjoy the T34 buffs because it has made the game more deep in 1v1 and most 2v2. But any 2v2+ it still devolves into complete SU85 spam which is just so f'ing boring from all sides. Combined with the Shock fix, I see a lot more KV8 usage as well which, when you combine the two, is all you need.
Playing with it still feels like I'm cheating. Playing against it makes me want to just /quit every game. Everyone knows that it's wrong and a bad design decision, can we please just fix it? |
Is there concrete evidence of what the damage formula for grenades is? All grenades - rifle, satchel, bundled, etc.
I've been trying to pay particular attention to some recent games and I cannot for the life of me figure out why sometimes a grenade causes instant squad wipe and sometimes it does absolutely nothing. Lots of different squad groupings, squad health, retreat and not retreat, and I can't tell a thing.
Thanks. |
Oh come on. Is this serious?
*looks at OP*
*sighs* |