How should we nerf the calli?

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[Smokaz]

Calliope is in badly need of a nerf. This is beyond discussion. Every player I talk to admit either unwillingly or bastantly exclaim that its extremely powerful. Although I dont think its really neccessary, I will just shortly state why the calli is damn OP because this is related to the nerf it HAS to get.

9 POP (LOLOLOL)
Can take way more shots than any other arty piece
Faster than everything except the stuka (arty)
Hits fuckign everything, damages everything, enormous spread makes targeting a click-n-laugh

I try sending panthers after it, my storms die to support around it etc.. we all know its fucking hilarious to try to counter it, its just a joke everythign you try to kill it when a good player or team protects it. And every time I ask the calli player how he would counter it I get some "duuuh...." or "you just shoot it with shrek" type of answer. -.- I ask killer, I ask schultz.. I ask everyone. But nobody has a counter that doesnt involve any of these:

1) calli player being a noob
2) calli player being lazy
3) massacre of your own units to get it
4) insane rushes
5) luck

So.. I personally think raising to 12 pop, reducing its ability to take more than 3 shrek/faust hits or affecting its speed could be the way to go. Pop is a must at any rate to reduce the insane amount of support spam the same player wielding the calli can have. This is not much, barely reducing one mg team or at gun around the static position which the calli is always defended by.

Another way to make it more ineffecient, would be to severely increase the recharge or disallow veterancy to affect recharge. This might sound very special, but the calli is also very special as it breaks all the rules of countering that the other artillery abide by.

Must happen:
Popcap increase (12?)

One or more alternative:
- Increase recharge (I think this is not the way to go, cause when it is not countered it should be good)
- Nerf vet (vet adds no rockets, vet affects recharge very modestly) - also too much
- Nerf survivability (armor, hp) - yes please
- Nerf speed - yes please

Another thing I just thought of, what if the calliope needed to lock down and remain static around 10 seconds after it fired. This is a severe nerf, but its also a extremely overpowered unit which any dumbass can use to grotesque effectivity atm.

We should aim to nerf it in a way that makes it possible to counter without throwing half your company at it, because the difficulty of countering it is what makes it so overpowered not the damage or amount of rockets atm. It should still be good at breaking up pakspam and overlapping mgs, but you should be able to counter the damn thing if you send the correct counters. Currently I feel there are no paper to the calliope rock.

[Dnicee]

I dont agree with you much smokaz but in this case....you got a point. Sadly but true maybe the allies need a "op" unit lol

[jackmccrack]

The Calliope is actually 10 pop.

I agree that the pop should be raised to 11.

[sgMisten]

Wiki:

The weapon's maximum range was shorter than desired, and it could only reach that range if the tank was angled upwards on a slope. The launcher was connected to the main gun, using it to traverse the launcher up and down, so the gun couldn't fire until the launcher was ejected. Reloading was a laborious process, and the tank crews required significant retraining to act as competent artillery.

[Smokaz]

How will 1 pop alone make it easier to counter? 

I think its self-evident why the calli needs to be the same pop as the hummel or the priest

[CafeMilani]

first of all: the calli is so OP because of the amount of units ppl waste to kill it.

in my opinion it needs a survivability and a speed nerf and its vet is tooo good compared to other units - why does arty units get speed buff at vet1 ?!

[Tymathee]

why not do what I did whwen I played against a player with a callie? if you got pe, wait 'til it fired, hit it with a LAT HT, which will cripple it, and then it's speed is cut down and its easy to kill, which i did on its next barrage.

also some people forget to realize that its best to sit in one spot if the callie is firing at you, moving just cause you to get hit more.

[RikiRude]

One problem I see is often people will attack the calli at random times, if you want to make an effective attack, wait til the very moment you hear it firing, then move in. Also pak sniping can get a cheap shot or two on it.

If you want to take away it's current vet, what would you replace it with?

It's pop cap could be raised to 12. I dont think it needs to be frozen for X amount of time after it fires, because no other arty piece does that, unless you include hummel, which is at the other end of the spectrum, the worst arty piece in the game.

I think it's speed decrease would be good, only if you got the speed back through vet, making it easier to kill before it gets vet. But I've seen grens keep pace with the calli with it's current speed, so it would be incredibly easy for them to kill callis if it got a speed decrease.

An armor decrease would help balance, but wouldn't make much sense, why should it have less health then an other sherman?



Oh, one good counter is P4 rushing the calli, I rarely see this fail, 2 P4s do very well. Or a sniper and some stugs, sniper decrews AT guns right before an assault.

[CafeMilani]

lol "some stugs"

just try thus cool plan out

[Smokaz]

@ Riki

Balance != Sense/realism.. it doesnt make sense that howie bounces p4 shots either but it happens, or that a huge ass rocket rack on top of a tank takes more than 1 shrek or tank hit to completely disables..  and when the calli is firing, I am trying to dodge or do other stuff as well. So its not some grand opening in the defense to KO the calli.

As for being frozen, tons of other arty is frozen permanently and nobody complains about 25 pounders, howitzers etc. Also veterancy should not reinstate the problem the calli had in the beginning. I guess to some people the Hummel is weak because it can be countered, but a natural downside of the artillery should always be that you actually have to protect it.

Talking about engine damage as a precursor to pwning it is kinda stupid .. how does suciding a unit to engine damage it help at all? In the game we just had, the calli was engine damaged by nebels .. did it in any way do anything for my ability to counter it? No sir.

Also, please explain more in depth how rushing 24 pop of tanks to kill a cally is balanced. This is exactly the king of proposals people come with other than the enigmatic "sneak in 300 munitions of shreks kamikaze it" which HELP prove the point that its almost impossible to counter for cost.

I actually thing the Hummel-Priest are great units to balance the calliope against.. they are both high damage motorized artillery. Why should the calli be any better than either of these units?

[gamesguy1]

Its simple.  Pop cost should match the hummel/priest, and reduce the hp to 400(same as hummel/priest).

There, done.  Sherman armor doesnt really matter anyways, since shreks hardly ever bounce off it.

[Pak88mm]

just mod and make one in an M10 chassie and then give it hummel speed.....oh wait thats a hummel ROFL

[ChevalierNoir]

Calli need a nerf, i couldnt agree more. At least its speed and pop..

Yes, its schultz, caught between accounts.

[puddin]

The Cali A nerf? 

A unit thats eats pop cap for 4 mins while it does nothing?  So if there is one on the field early game, thats 30% of the mans army in pop cap in 1 unit that can;t do a damn thing? 

Right now, without duel rocket racks, the cali is a glorified motar. 

It gets blocked by hedgs, and buildings, alongwith the back side of hills..... 

How abpout this, Don;t blob, cali countered.

All a calli does is provide blob control, but most of the time it provides not much mroe then a counter to the axis motar.

[Smokaz]

No maps have an infinite number of houses or hedges, a good calli player will not fire on such a target.. (destroyed houses will not block) and having a pak covering a mg is hardly blobbing.. its combined arms. Nobody clams that the calli should stop being a blob counter or not punish people that have their units tightly grouped.. or its damage reduced. 

The main argument is that even if you are lucky enough to somehow ambush the calli, it will escape damaged to repair or just throttle out of there. But maybe the majority of us are all missing some kind of secret counter to it like the 24 pop double P4 rush? In fact I think armor needs the calli very much to break up tight pak/88 positions camping when doctrinal powers and sherman support stuff is implemented because they have no fireup.. but again, this is not the point. The point is that its not counterable for cost or by the same rules that OTHER arty in the game is..

[RikiRude]

hmm good point on everything, though, I don't know what the dmaged engine thing had to do with anything.

in reference to the damaged engine thing i didnt say anything about damaged engine. though when I thought about the P4s, i was thinking resource wise not pop wise, so you make more sense then I did (well in all your counter arguments) .

I'm starting to think, maybe the problem with the calli isn't how vulnerable it is, maybe it's how much people protect it, you said there is always an MG or 2 AT guns guarding it, how often is a howie guarded like that.


I'm trying to come up with something that would properly nerf it, but it truly is such a different unit, hmm gotta think outside the box.


and i have a problem with balance vs realism, it's not even realism in a sense, but my mind is pretty one track in thinking something  

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It's more than reasonable that the calli's pop needs to match the Hummel and the Priest.  The other complaints are a little overblown I think. 

[MannfredvonRitter]

Calliope is easy to keep alive.

Fire rockets, move back to spawn. No good player will risk sending units after it, it's a suicide mission which often doesn't pay off. You send two P4's after my calliope, unfortunately for you I sit there with 2 ATG's and an M10 and I did this recently also. The calliope is so survivable that you can simply protect it with a few units and rape anything that comes after it. A panther came for it, instantly the calliope made back it's cost, that's without the 40 infantry kills, 3 tank and 4 light vehicle kills it had also.

I've used it a lot, it's massively OP. You barely have to try when using it, it's the perfect counter to everything they have and when fighting PE it's even easier because nothing they have withstands a calliope barrage from close range, except a panther and p4  IST.

[Malevolence]

Set pop = 12
Increase cooldown by 20 seconds
Reduce speed by .5 units

There we go, pretty balanced in my book.

[Scyntos]

Have I been the only one with a vet 3 calli?

Personally I think it needs a huge nerf to its vet bonuses... Not really the unit itself.
-At vet 0 and vet 1 it's pretty lame.
-At vet 2 when it gets it's 20% damage increase and -30s cooldown it gets stronger, you definitely see a change in it's ability to level the playing field.
-At vet 3 when it gets +10 range(stupid) and another -30s to cooldown.. you're looking at a refire rate of 110s.

(Suggestions without knowledge of upcoming doctrine abilities.)
The calli has never needed more damage.. it's still perfectly capable of performing its duties as a disruptive force. At most the calli should get -15s at vet 2 and 3 totaling -30s.

The calliope is a must... as puddin' put it.. it's a glorified mortar. And most games you'll see it get as many kills as most axis mortars. But the majority of axis players fail to see that all the calliope does is even the playing field, it's not a win button. Yes it's a little bit too strong when its vet starts accumulating. You're looking at what? 50-60dmg per rocket at vet 0? So 60-72dmg at vet 2? That's a little harsh considering the HP per unit.

I think we should all just consider the veterancy it gets instead of the type of unit it is. I believe 10 popcap is fine as it is.. It may be a sherman... but I believe it to be less useful than a sherman in its combined role to actually win a game.