Arranged teams shouldn't be the alfa and omega for balance. The game shouldn't be balance primarily upon pre-determined combination of players because we see where we are today, with a faction that stand on one leg and people saying its fine because when its combined with another faction providing a second leg they can walk.
I don't think AT should be the guideline either. My point was more that AT can work around shortcomings, implicitly suggesting that randoms probably won't. I did not clearly type out the latter, so yes, easy to misunderstand my post in that regard.
Balance team arguments about Relic denying stock Caliope is just an excuse, it didn't stop them to butcher USF late game, make Pakhowi and Scott irrelevant at the same time and later revert some of the nerf on the Scott.
If Path&Scott happen to be nerf again then we would see USF go down where it was before the strat came to light. With a balance team saying a mix between they can't do anything about it and its fine because arranged teams!!
As I said, I am not happy with all indirect changes that USF got either.
We have to be realistic: There will 99,9% be no larger patch with hotfix for CoH2 anymore. Even this whole discussion about an ever so tiny Pathfinder/Scott nerf might already be futile. There is no sense in saying "if this strategy gets nerfed, then USF needs to get buff X as well". I think what we need to discuss in this thread and where also Sturmpanther's previous thread fell a short is whether this strategy is actually OP or just "cheesy".
If it is OP, it needs nerfing to a "competitive" level, even if the rest of USF were not healthy. Having only one single strategy somehow work does not make the whole faction great, and conversely nerfing that one strategy does not make the faction as a whole shit. It's a one trick pony, and you can only do this trick so often until it gets boring anyway. If this strategy is the only one that is viable, there is no real "USF gameplay" anyway. And again, the nerf should be to a "competitive" level. It should be okay and viable, but not unfair to the Axis factions.
If the strategy is just "cheesy" but not OP, well then it is already in a "good" spot balance wise. Shitty for gameplay, but as I said, there will be no larger patches, maybe not even a smaller one. Hence, no gameplay patches as well. If there are proper counters to the Path+Scott strategy that don't force the opponent to overly invest resources, leave it be.
At some point, USF players will probably get bored of it enough and start playing UKF and SOV, at which point the problem "fixes" itself.