Ok then, I guess Aimstrong won $1300 playing the worst 1v1 faction just for kicks right?
A top player can win with any faction he wants; he used units that are now patched (Centaur, sniper).
I ignore the majority of 2v2+ players because none of them have any idea what they are talking about. Again, you play one faction 90% of the time, why should anyone give you the time of day?
The way you worded this makes you sound quite arrogant unfortunately. I do admit a lot of casual players probably don't understand what's going on, but there are a lot of high-level players too and it's foolish to ignore what they try to say (e.g. a number of people in this thread).
And are you trying to say that League of Heroes was more popular than 1v1 tournaments? The OCF final had over 2000 people watching, League of Heroes hardly broke 500, which is par for the course for a normal stream at peak hours.
This is easy to dismantle. OCF was a highly-advertised crowd-funded tourney with a large cash pool (for COH2 at least) that was announced for a long time. Heck, the Russians didn't even stream in English for an English-majority game. Also the nature of 1v1s make it easier to cast with famous casters, etc. Whatever. The balance patches are mainly for the players, not the spectators. Point is more people play the large team games.
If balance was changed on popular demand from people that play one faction and think they know everything, then this game would have been dead long ago. Just because one patch fucks up team games doesn't mean that balancing for 1s and 2s is the wrong way to go.
I agree with the first sentence. But why not balance with all game modes in mind? If something may not be a problem in 1s and 2s, but is clearly a problem in team games, then let's put that as a priority too.
All I'm pointing out here is that even though your arguments may be true, you come off as a bit hostile to those who enjoy the larger team games. The goal is to have a balanced game for everyone and when balance messes up other modes, you should see that as a problem for the community as a whole.
Initially I advocated that we should wait until things stabilise, but if the patch has generated such a negative reaction, and affected the enjoyment of large portion of the community, then there is a problem.