Sturm Tiger Giap blew 480 Munitions on nothing, 3 Bombing runs that killed absolutely nothing when he could have just built 8 teller mines and killed any attempt for Shermans to flank.
Why do the top players always refuse to build Teller mines where are they floating so so much munitions? The 1 teller mine he built killed a Sherman, you think he would draw the connection that teller mines are a good idea.
Kholodny East really needs to have the cutoff moved closer to their base, so it's easier to defend and Langres North needs to somehow make their cutoff easier to hold or harder to decap.
I haven't watched the replay but there is such a thing as intuition and deduction to predict movements, positioning and tech. Mine spots can also be pretty easily predicted.
Where the hell were the teller mines? Kharkhov is literally the best map to use Teller mines on. 3 Strafes achieved nothing more than decrewing a mortar and throwing away 360 munitions. Tigers will always beat T-34's head on, they have to flank. But you can't flank when there is 360 munitions worth of Teller mines on every chokepoint.
Also, a fast Ostwind would have just won the game, absolutely punishing the Sniper/t2 play I have no idea why the new meta involves everyone just going straight into tiger when T3 play would be so so punishing.Not only would Jesulin have had enough fuel to go Ostwind into Tiger in time for the T-34's, but even if he didn't He would have had ~6 Teller mines to bait into with the Ostwind. It's very hard to use mine sweepers because Ostwinds just snipe Engies so fast.
The ISU is just a case of over performing which can be toned down and fixed, the Elefant however is a cause of the absolutely broken faction design.
The problem is with the stale meta is that there is no counter to Elefants. Not to say they are unbeatable, but rather no counter. For some absolutely absurd reason Soviets don't have an infantry-based AT solution, and Zis AT guns are just slow and don't penetrate so the only way to kill the tank destroyer is with vehicles. Except there aren't even any good flanking vehicles, only the T-34. The rest are Commander specific. If the Elefants was a Soviet unit, it would be absolutely no problems because Germans have Shreks, P4's and Panthers.
They can bandaid the problem but really so many issues are being caused by the huge gaping wholes in the counter system. Soviets need Infantry based AT on the base faction. Give Penals a Bazooka upgrade after unlocking Tier 3 or 4. Or Give the Bazooka upgrade to Guards and replace them on Tier1 instead of Penals. Making then Penals better to compensate for being commander specific. Or perhaps make it so the Guard Commander unlocks instead gives the option for Guards to upgrade to DP's, where normally if say Guards were on T1 there they can't get DP's. There's just absolutely no good reason to give Soviets no infantry AT, it also causes problems with Panthers and Tigers. Especially this stale Elefant ISU situation we have here.