So I played my first few games in the new Beta last night. I gave up the game for a month or two after 1.3 came out due to a frustration over balance issues. I’m a marine player, my TrueSkill™ is around 20 and I played against each of the other races a few times. I was pretty excited about the new patch, and overall I do like Relics intentions with the new patch. They are changing things up a lot, but it’s just not working out so far.

Marines suck now. Nids are crazy overpowered, Eldar banshees are retarded, and orks… well, they’re alright.

I kind of like the new scouts, but they just aren’t effective enough. They are billed as a Marine’s player best and only defense against the crazy amount of Close Combat units in this game now, but they just can’t cope. A single unit of Banshees, Gaunts, or Boyz can just make any Teir 1 Marine unit evaporate. The new Scout Shotgun ability does help when a CC unit is running at you, but it only knocks the charging unit back for a second before they are back on their feet and in your face with maybe 1 or 2 shots each with the shotgun. This *maybe* gets the charging unit down to half strength, if you’re lucky. But this is still enough to destroy your squads.

And what the hell did they do to the Force Commander? I had a level 5 Commander with Thunder Hammer an a fully charged Iron Halo run into a level 1 unit of nobs capping our victory point and he almost instantly died. 1 hit from each of the nobs took down the shield, and another hit or so each killed him. What the hell.

Generators also die WAAAAAAY to quickly. If a single unit of anything makes it past your lines and onto your power, it’s impossible to get something there in time to stop them from taking out all 3 generators. At least in 1.3 you could run a unit there and save 1 or 2 generators… but no longer. This makes a marine player sad as we rely on power sooo much and to effectively defend a power station you need to dedicate at least 2 units. Which really hurts your offense.

The Upgraded Predator is pretty awesome though, if you can make it to Tier 3… (which I only did in 2 of my 5 games last night)

So in the end, I have to say, Relic is taking a step in the right direction but then they fell down and shat themselves. Maybe they can get a change of pants, get up, and release another patch to even things out a bit more. Or maybe I’ll just start playing Nids. Haha!