Profile of bert69

USF Reinforce Loiter is absolutely busted. 80 Muni for free auto reinforce to any USF units in a target area for 40 seconds. Actually quite amusing to see 40 Soap Clones from COD parachuting into your enemies cutoff

Honestly, pzgrens are in a really good spot right now. Try adding one of them into your build order before building t2

Recently I've been playing a lot of 1s and 2s and i feel that wehrmacht, while strong with ostruppen, 5 man grens and p4 timing are still kind of hamstrung by the fragility of their AT guns & MG42 once rocket arty hits the field when compared to soviet or OKW counterparts. Compare this with all other factions except UKF, they actually have an affordable, easy to access form of AT.

Current opinions of each factions team weapons (AT guns in particular)

1. USF have access to decent AT guns for 270 MP, in addition to RE zook squads which are decent in piling on damage to light and mediums.

2. Soviet have 6 man team weapons and arty barrage on Zis, imo this is an outdated mechanic from a long ago era where their Maxims and Zis-3s were flat out worse than Axis counter parts, where they needed the extra survivability.

3. OKW has AT accessible at T0, people have mixed opinions of them but i think they're in a strong position rn.

4. UKF probably suffers the most from terrible team weapon syndrome, don't really have to say much other than vickers has the same problem as Mg34 against blobs of >3 squads. You can fire off a burst first and still end up losing the squad without suppressing a single one. Their AT guns i think are in a good spot with the vet 3 buff increasing pen and damage.

5. Wehrmacht has good team weapon synergy where it can feel fun and engaging in the early and mid game, but really starts to feel like a chore in the late game as you're also the most fragile, notice most wehrmacht players start to transition to just pios and tanks as their infantry and team weapons just get destroyed by one clicks.

I suggest that to bring all team weapons in line with survivability, you can do a few things. For AT guns, they could be brought up or brought down to 5 men across the board. Arguably since wehrmacht are the most "team-weapon oriented" faction, this can hopefully help them weather the tide and preserve vet a little better when it comes to britblobs, rocket arty etc.

For MGs, I suggest that they all be dropped to 4 men, but either accelerate or remove the weapon recrew loop when the gunner dies.

Keep in mind these changes are trying to address the potency of rocket/call in arty in the game where it is just crater city by 20+ minutes in team games.

Edit: Hey guys, after thinking about it more, its probably going to take a huge rebalancing of all factions to make this work. Though I think the topic is still relevant, please feel free to discuss.

Goodjoke

Then you don't really know what's up here. Autofire is always always always a much bigger issue with hitting infantry than barrages are because it takes zero input given that it's in range and is a lot more accurate than a barrage for hitting individual squads. Barrages have never been the issue with indirect, it's always been autofire. Personally, I'd like to see all autofire nerfed across the board and barrages buffed somehow (maybe RoF) excluding scott because it's supposed to be long range fragile mini-brummbar (so autofire is it's main function).

Also I don't recall pack howie getting a damage bonus at vet3. You might be thinking of the 3 shell HEAT barrage at vet2.

Yea its probably the HEAT barrage, iirc it does give a damage bonus. I know autofire is what everyone hates but this is just my opinion on how the pak howie can be changed to provide more leeway for axis players to get around it, I proposed changes to barrage because you would rarely if ever see a pak howie autofiring into someone's base, meanwhile I've had multiple games already where I get white phos and heat shells dropped in my base. Back on topic, other than a 380 MP investment, the opportunity cost of the pak howie is almost 0, you are neither giving up the chance to get a vehicle nor anti-tank capabilities. (Captain unlock comes with aa truck and AT gun.) Not to mention it costs 100 muni to get a double zook RE to ward off any scout car/ flame HT dives. It's easy to turtle for a few minutes to get it out and bam you're back on course with map control because any fights you take against infantry in cover is almost instant win.

I mean there are a lot of other indirect ways to fix this other than nerfing the pack howitzer directly.
E.g. Buff Ost healing so that aoe damage affects them lesser letting inf squads get back out on the field faster (change healing to aura) LOL JK DONT KILL ME PLEASE