Profile of Esxile

Bad idea, you'll end with more wipe squad than today.

Before the last patch I was around 300 rank 1vs1 with Ostheer with 100 games playing normaly, I'm top150 with USF so I know the game, know strengh and weakness of each faction. Ostheer faction was feeling underwhelming but great sniper was their to balance it. I had no problem with it, same if losing I always understood why, things I did wrong, units not well micro etc...

Since the patch release I have almost only play Ostheer, around 35 games, and probably won at maximum 10 of them - not more.

- OP mortar for the USF killing squads like like no tomorrow, lenght of the game is just a question of chance to not get squads wipe too early. you may have a chance to win if you haven't be too unlucky and can get a tiger out (I'm happy I haven't face the combined arms bug at all)
- Spam Penal/Guards vs Sov. Penals eat Ost infantry and Guard eat Ost medium armor and infantry leaving you with pretty much nothing when T34-85 are hitting the field.
-Spam infantry vs UKF but I have maybe play 2 times in 35 games vs UKF so I'll not comment on it.

I just finished a game facing a guy with less than 100 hours playing Ost vs USF and the difference between skill was laughable, but since he had 2 mortars, was able to wipe some squads, I had to move all the time all my squads while he was just sitting on his fuel. He would have been better, he would have eaten me in 20 minutes. (But I won)

Anyway, for once I completely agree with the OP, at least for Ostheer. Relic can't leave the game like that for the summer, it is not about finding new strats, getting used etc... no, the game is clearly not balanced right now.
Maybe vs USF once the mortar get nerf, the balance will be back but Sov, they really need to look at the combo Penals/Guards definitively too strong.

Yeah, and? Why should LT, Cap and Major be free? Why does USF has to be special snowflake?

Cuz they cost popcap. The problem in your argumentation is nobody gives a shit if tomorrow lt/cpt/mjr are not unlocked with tiers anymore. Prices will be adjusted and then you buy them or not, we've seen Cpt get nerfed and nobody really complained about it.

The more I play 1v1 and 2v2, the more I suspect people of map hacking on me.
Sometimes it's so weird how some players manage to know exactly where you are heading to and with what, even when nothing is hinting that choice to the other player.

I'm not talking about an obvious path, cover or place.

Now I lurked around here and I read some people talking about map hacks.

So I was wondering if it's becoming a trend?

I know there was a map hack from a very few players, that got banned, I'm asking if it's much more common than we think.

I really want to ask you your rank but not for the same reason other people does.

1)Maphack doesn't make bad players suddenly good, when you aren't good player maphack doesn't win you a game.

2)If watching the replay doesn't show the evidence of maphacking (like someone explained earlier, seeing all your units getting insta-gibbed in the Fow), there are little chances people are maphacking.

3)And if they are, honestly, it doesn't serve them. There are many reasons why someone is bad at playing RTS games.
And one of the reason is a low capability to analyse a given situation in real time => The faculty for a human to analysis any given sources of information, take decision and make the right move following the decision making.
Having few information sometime make it complicated to take the right decision. but the opposite is also true. Too much information can take a lot of time to be compiled into the right decision making and action. And if you are already not enough good to deal with the normal amount of information provided by legal sources (information on field/sounds from the fog of war/intuition/experience etc...), adding new sources will not suddenly make you any better. If you don't know what is the best reaction to a certain situation, seeing the situation from a maphack visibility will not make you taking the right decision.

So it certainly works if you are already good at the game, if you know all the mechanisms and be good a analyzing information, compiling them into decision and make the right move. So this is why the question of you proper rank is important.
If you are a top10-50 player, yes your concerns are serious. If you are not and if watching the replay doesn't show a evident maphacking usage, then you should simply stop bothering with that. there is probably little chance your opponent is using it, and if yes, it doesn't really serve him.

To go further:

Maphacking is an additional source of information that need to be dealt with. But as any player doesn't like and doesn't want to be considerate as hacker, hackers simply try to hide it.
So hackers are facing a situation where they need
1) to compile more information they are usually able to deal with to decide what to do
2) Do the decision making stuff
3) hide their maphack decision making behind a legal decision making aka making sure to not be too obvious on the long run, making sure you can justify your moves behind legal facts.
4) This action of hidden usage of maphacking is in fact an additional layer of skill in the analyse/decision/action => analyse/decision/legal rending/action.
Something a good player will be able to perform, but not bad players. Bad players tend to mainly abuse of arty barrage on units they should be seeing without maphack because the skill required to perform all of this well is too much complexe for them.

Maybe to let its prey having a chance to escape? You know, keeping it balanced.
You can't lose vs anything in a 1vs1 fight with a Panther, even more if your target is already damaged and you want on the top of that making sure you can simply rush it and kill it on the move?

If you had asked the same for the Pz4, I would have say yes, but the panther...