Profile of Blovski

Watch high-level play. Of recent tournaments here, both all 5 games of the TFN tourney final and all 3 of the Langreskaya tourney final were won by Soviets.

Personally, I play both sides a roughly even amount. Playing as Soviets with snipers + guards -> SU-85 on some maps you'll basically win a game if you keep stuff alive, which is not tremendously hard to do. There's a little specific German b/s around but nothing quite so resilient as that combo in a 1v1.

I'd note that the % searching function (which doesn't show 75% for me very much) doesn't actually indicate whom people are playing as (since it doesn't include everyone in game already - who are naturally on a 1:1 ratio). I'm sure relic have some proper metrics on it somewhere.

You didnt understand me , i know what is fear propaganda i played lot of vCoH but what i meant was make Strafe in CoH2 so useless that dropping pictures of disneyland and mickey mouse would have greater result... cuz when some1 doesnt like ability , ok 1 nerf (atm strafing is good but there is much better abilities , i dont use strafe doctrine anymore) but now make another nerf just cuz it has annoying factor in it atm , or better yet remove the ability so we can all dance to puppeteer orders
There is a lot important issues that need adresing and nerfing strafe run (again) is rly lowest priority atm imo

The first nerf was because it was obviously insane. The fix is a big improvement but it still seems rather out of line with the other off-map abilities for its very low cost and very early arrival. Yeah, it's not nearly as bad as when it was the sniper-mincer but I think it still needs a cost increase so as to be less spammable.

Do you guys remember the V1 and how absurdly powerful it was for ironically around 120 munitions as well? Why wasn't it spammed? Well the only reason it wasn't used in every engagement was because of the 5 minute long cooldown, I don't want strafe to have a 5 min cooldown but it shouldn't be non existent like it is now. It's a get out of jail free card ability just like propaganda war with additional benefits and it should be left at that, except for the fact it's available too often. If it was like the V1 the ability would require a lot more preemptive "do I use strafe now or do I wait for a better opportunity?" thinking just like what happened to htd after the nerf so it's not used in every engagement. I'd like it being used as an alternative support when your mg42s fail to pin and get flanked themselves and not a "hit it and forget" ability like it is now but that's just what I think would improve the game.

The V1 was 150 munitions (in the remit of about, I admit), IIRC. It was also at the end of a tree, and required going the non-King-Tiger direction, so people tended to only get it either very late game or lateish game if they had a specific target for it (howitzer or occasionally brit blob, normally). So, there's more than the cooldown as a reason people didn't spam it. (also, if a V1 missed it'd do nothing, while strafe is kind of guaranteed area denial).

I would sort of like a higher cost (say, 200ish, so it's a bit cheaper than the damaging strafes) for how beneficial strafe is and so a bad use of it is somewhat punitive for the strafer. A longer cooldown would also help it a bit, I agree, but I think the munitions cost is problematically low for the effect.

@Rasha... I'd more like to see the cost increased to the point where you can't use it in just about every engagement. Given it can't be effectively dodged and affects a very big area for a substantial amount of time, that doesn't seem unreasonable.

Ha!

If they were able to use strafe continuously like you said, you already lost before that point.

The map was pretty fifty/fifty at that point. I think I was marginally ahead in kills as well. A combination of Minsk Pocket's pinched design and gren blobbing just meant that after the first strafe hit it was incredibly hard to actually get onto the map (i.e. you get denied from more or less a whole side or the centre at any given time - if you move out in force, you get strafed into a retreat; if you move out without the double snipers, four gren squads roll whatever's there).

@Tristan, the best because it instantly pins several squads infantry AND can't be dodged (say, an Incendiary Barrage stuck at a random point without any units to follow through, you can just move out of the radius of... you cannot do that with strafe) AND lasts a substantial amount of time. Retreating would be OK if the ability was expensive enough not to be spammable. As it is, it tends to be available again soon after you get back out on the map, which is really problematic on a horrible chokey map with slow base exiting like Minsk.

An off-map refers to artillery or air strikes coming from off-map as opposed to on-map artillery (like the howitzer). I am comparing strafe to other such 100-240 muni abilities rather than to manpower and fuel call-in units which are a different thing entirely.

240 munitions spent on any other off-map (except possibly the much later-game heavy strafes... I haven't seen much of those yet) won't force two retreats of all your squads in an area and protect those areas from infantry or capping for that whole period of time.

I agree the tiger needs a buff.

Opels give you both munitions and fuel, while a cache does not. They're also a little easier to keep alive despite being squishier because you can put them wherever in a sector. I don't object to them at the moment but the synergy with strafe's low cost and serious effectiveness is pretty silly.

@Cyridius, I've always found it pretty random whether propaganda actually does anything. As I understand there's a random chance between suppression, pin and retreat per shell and it seems to affect a smaller area than strafe, IIRC. Either way, I'm not seeing it very often.

Somehow having managed to avoid the worst of the strafe of doom era, I'm still finding this ability very popular and maddening to deal with. 120 munis for easily the best anti-infantry off-map in the game in the doctrine which has Opel Blitz trucks as well... in my last game someone was using it just about every single time it came off cooldown, made it agonising to actually get back onto the map. Doesn't help really that the Soviets have no anti-air if they go for Tier 4.

Personally, I think the cost needs to be increased radically. In particular, it is way more effective than propaganda artillery, which is a similar ability for only 20 munis less and not linked to a doctrine with bonus munitions income.

However, my beef may just be that I've had a few bad games against it (especially on Minsk Pocket, where you're suddenly just unable to go to one side of the map and Opel hunting is very hard indeed but that map is just terrible in general). How does everyone else think it stands at the moment?

Edit: will say the current iteration is *way* better than the previous one.