Profile of Mazianni

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I had a huge fucking post written up and this useless website logged me out before I could post it. I'm tired so this is going to be quick and disorganized.

1. What is the Panther? What is it supposed to kill?
It's hard to classify this thing. You say so yourself. It has pretty piss-poor AI, sure, at least before the pintle upgrade, but it also has more or less heavy tank durability (as well as heavy crush), which by itself basically lets it hard counter allied mediums. You could reduce the range to 45 and it would beat the shit out of any non-TD stock allied vehicle in the entire fucking game. This thing even has a favorable penetration ratio compared to the comet, which it is often compared with. You say something very simple and not very controversial, that this unit should be better than the M36 since it costs 90mp and 40fu more than it. I have made the argument many times before that it already is a clearer, or perhaps harder counter to medium tanks than the M36 is, since the Panther is for all intents and purposes fucking invulnerable to allied mediums. This is a fact. Theorycrafting about flanking the Panther with two mediums (a flank with only one medium tank is not mathematically sufficient; if every single medium tank shell penetrates the 90 armor rear, the medium tank will still lose the trade) or some complicated combined arms operations is not a valid argument, particularly when map pools are considered.

Is it better at fighting heavy tanks? No, it's not, and that's a problem with this unit that I think should be remedied; maybe 10 extra penetration and 5 extra range was a lowball, but I don't remember what the IS-2 armor got lowered to. It'd have made it a slightly more dangerous foe to 60 range allied TDs as well; you constituted this as a nerf, I have no fucking clue why but lets move on.

Is it better at fighting enemy tank destroyers? The matchup is complex. Being able to cruise the battlefield basically immune to stock infantry AT weapons and medium tank shells is something Axis players take for granted (as is the Pintle and dual MGs that already give the Panther better AI performance than any TD in the game). These are already qualities that make it "superior" to the M36 you compare it to(and which, I will reiterate again, and for the last time, I have already called to have rebalanced on this very forum, something which you MUST be aware of by now.) Whether they would decidedly contribute to a Panther victory in a one-on-one fight in a realistic game I can't say, but the advantages of the Panther cannot be discounted any more than its' range disadvantage.

But fine, let's look at some alternative balance concepts based on theories of what the fuck this unit should do.

1. Panther: Uber TD: Anti-TD nightmare
This is by and far the most autistic of the options, but it exists, and I'm sure many low IQ morons suppose that the unit should do this by default in its current state.

Basically, make the Panther either outrange allied TDs, which would in essence make it a superior anti-medium TD as well, or give it 60 range but also allow it to somehow outfight other 60 range TDs by virtue of durability or DPS or both. Since I am familiar with you and generally believe you are not braindead, I will remind you that the Panther in its current state hard countering the opposing units that are currently assigned to counter it presents a balance issue: if you have forgotten this, think for a moment of a heavily armored 60(minimum) range tank cruising around the battlefield with its 960 HP and 260 armor, shrugging off bazookas, PTRS and PIATs, blowing up the opposing TD, completely ineffectual medium tanks, maybe an ambulance, basically having free reign until the dumbfuck player behind it pushes his luck too far and gets his damaged Panther snared in front of 2 or 3 M1 anti-tank guns. 6 penetrating hits is a lot harder to make on 260 armor than it is to make 4 penetrating hits on 140 armor.

Obviously, then, to make this work you would need to make the Panther vulnerable to sources of damage it cannot simply destroy from 60-whatever range, a vulnerability every other 60 range TD has. Drop the armor and the HP down to the level of its competitors or near to that. You could conceivably leave armor somewhat higher than the Allied 60 range TDs by nature of the Allies' higher medium tank point blank penetration and higher quantity of low-penetration infantry AT sources, but HP would need to dive downwards; 720 at the absolute most.

2. Heavy tank killer
This has already been thrown around and mostly involves raising the damage of the main gun to 200 and/or raising penetration as well. It wouldn't really make this thing any more capable of raping allied TDs than it is now (640/200 = 3.2 = 4) so I figure Axis mains will still bitch about it, but hey, the AT power of the unit is increased, and it cements this thing as some god tank destroyer while keeping the quirky nonsense this thing has.

3. Premium medium tank
Typed this out and immediately realized it'd require completely revisiting the unit as it is, but I guess you could imagine this thing as some sort of Comet clone. Ideas of giving this thing the Sherman HE shell for whatever stupid reason make me want to kill myself when I think of how they'd manage to pack so much HE filler into a high velocity long-barrel 75-mm gun shell, but whatever! Realism is gay, right! Still wouldn't be capable of raping the M36, so people will still bitch, probably moreso once they realize the PzIV isn't the Cromwell and would be way more cost efficient than producing an Ostheer/OKW Comet clone.

4. Speedy bruiser tank
Give this thing moving accuracy. Another fuck realism and fuck history concept but at least it continues the Panther's tradition of not having a clear role or direct comparison in the game. You could give this thing 0.75 moving accuracy and I suppose it'd be better at killing TDs, as well as anything else it can penetrate, but probably still not enough to end the bitching. Considering people already complain about stationary accuracy there'd probably be an accuracy buff in general here just to keep this thing suitably oppressive against everything that already cannot penetrate it and is thusly already basically hopeless against it.

Reduce its HP from 960 to 800, max speed from 6.6 to 6.4, increase far penetration from 220 to 230, range from 50 to 55, and move the 1s wind-down to reload time so it can be decreased with veterancy*.

*((5.2-5.6)+1) to (6.2-6.6), vet 3: ((3.64-3.92)+1) to (4.34-4.62)

The only thing Grenadiers need imo is faster (I recommended 25% faster) veterancy gain after T4 (or maybe even BP3) to allow them to recover veterancy after wipes faster (what I recommended instead of this capture rate buff...) and possibly better veterancy; I would be in favor of Grenadiers getting their 25% rifle grenade attack range veterancy back (or a reduced version of it), and making the recharge time buffs apply to all their abilities and not just the panzerfaust. They absolutely don't need any more defensive or main weapon veterancy bonuses though.

In the late game, Ostheer has non-doc elite infantry (PzGrens) to do most of the things Grenadiers can't combat-wise, like short-mid and mobile engagements. 240mp+60 mun Grenadiers themselves losing versus 280mp+120muni or 270+90muni infantry does not really seem like a problem to me.

I honestly think Pioniers are the only Ostheer infantry that need a hard looking into, and legitimately might work well with a stock 5-man upgrade, since that'd help them recrew weapons and get in close with their MP-40s.

>Sturmtiger has less armor than Pz IV J

Wait what

Was it always this way?

60 range TDs will always and forever be tied to the fortunes of ubiquitous high durability high armor Axis heavies, from Panthers into Tigers and KT/Heavy TD.

M36 should have it's firepower adjusted to counter these units in particular, but be less effective versus medium armor, as the FF is currently balanced.

Stock penetration nerfs for M36 or SU-85 shouldn't even be in the realm of consideration as long as Axis heavies exist as they do now. If we want to nerf Panther HP pool and tone down heavy call-ins or somesuch maybe we can move in that direction (and possibly remove the wind_down/wind_up for the Panther as well), but that is making things more complex than they need to be.

Pretending 60 range TDs would vanish in any case is insanity; they will always be meta as long as they are the only option for countering the heavier axis units that are essentially guaranteed to show up, especially in the heavy tank meta and especially in team games.

Idiots and retards will counter by reading none of my post and claiming the heavy meta is a reaction to TDs, but this doesn't change in any way the fact that said TDs are the only counter to heavy tanks of any sort. Allied medium tanks lack the penetration and effective AT DPS to face anything above a Panzer IV (as it arguably should be): a Panther hard counters allied mediums far more than a SU-85,FF, or even M36 counters Panzer IVs. Tigers and KT are an even bigger problem as they combine this durability and nigh-invulnerability to most stock AT with the ability to wipe infantry and ATG crews, making TDs the only option short of triple ATG spam (virtually impossible in team games due to non-doctrinal Axis rocket artillery.)

Absolute morons with double digit IQ, grade school reading comprehension and broken English will refuse to realize this fact no matter how many times it is restated and so these threads and posts like them will continue until this game finally dies, because Axis mains believe half of the enemy team's popcap should be dedicated to 'combined arms' countering their one heavy shock unit, and anything else is 'lazy'. Instead, despite calls for rebalancing the M36 in particular to make it less oppressive versus Axis mediums, we will continue to hear bitching about these units until they are collectively nerfed into the ground to make room for more braindead heavy tanks play.