Well...I was going to make a post about how the painboy could use a stronger syringe so that he was a more effective melee fighter. After writing up a long post I decided to double check the numbers in game before posting to make sure my suggestions were reasonable. Much to my surprise I found that not only is the syringe above the narthecium in terms of damage, but it is near equivalent to the choppa and chainsword.

So now I'm confused as to why the ork community seems to be under the impression that painboys are too weak in terms of their equipment. They have less armor than either space marine gfaction but compensate that difference with an amount of health equal to their missing armor. They have a huge assortment of pistols that allow them access essentially to smg's, an automatic pistol that is kinda like a mini shoota, poison pistols, rokkit pistols, the basic slab pistol, and the six shoota (needs work, I know).

So now I'm at a loss...I hear repeatedly that the painboy's faults need to be addressed but when I look for them I don't really see any in his options. Sure things get stuck to windows or railings because of throwable size, but that doesn't change the fact that aside from not having s straight up shootah he seems fine in terms of melee capability and survivability in comparison.

So what is it orks? Is it just iffy melee animations that make him appear so weak? I thought I knew why he needed help, but now I'm lost...

Update: LEEST of possible buffs
-speed buff vial
-damage mitigation vial (feels to much the same to the apoth, but still a viable buff)
-smaller poison and dok bombs
-more hp for poison and dok bombs
-larger radius for poison bombs
-elevating the syringe to be closer to choppa tier
-giving the painboy a shoota (as against this one as I was against giving them to priests)
-giving the painboy a choppa (also against this one, but still a viable buff)
-make poison bombs immune to melee (seems to suffer from the old meltabomb melee issue)
-modded syringe should have a higher poison application than a modded narthecium
-dok klaw alternate primary
-regenerating poison bombs (iffy on this one)
-shorter cooldown between individual dodge rolls
-having the ability to evade attack like other melee primary supports

To make it short, because this topic has been done to death on our part and we are sick and tired of reiterating the basics over and over to people that enjoy the novelty:

Painboy has no buff on par with the Apothecary's 30% damage mitigation or 30% increased melee damage. The HoT and 30% lifesteal buffs are sub-par in every situation compared to what the Apothecary has. The 30% damage resistance vial alone confers more effective EHP than any armor tier in the game, and it goes on top of whatever additional survivability the Apothecary chooses to strap on.

The selection for sidearms is deceiving, almost all of them are blatantly inferior to the Dakka Slugga or Slab Slugga in every situation. And even as powerful sidearms, they are simply not on equal grounds with as powerful a main armament as the bolter is.

Camera problems, melee animation problems pertaining to the 'bunny-hop' the Painboy does, which only allows him to hit a single target, whereas the Apothecary's sidewards-sweep attack allows the latter to hit more than one target with each lunge.

On the subject of the syringe's damage: The Apothecary's mastercrafted syringes deal the same damage as the Painboy's. If both are modded for poison, they deal the same amount of poison. Again, Painboy has no advantage.

Size of the healing beacon. Apothecary's is again far superior.

In short, there is never a single situation where the Apothecary isn't far superior to anything the Painboy can do. This is no 'asymmetrical balance', the Painboy is basically a clone of the Apothecary except worse in almost every regard.

The Narth Also gets a Chainsword equivalent Narth (Thankfully, without poison, and still with knife impact.) In addition to being able to take a bolter. Painboys get the choice of a pistol and two syringes.

Let's also not forget, that it's a knife equivalent weapon. Meaning, if you go in to melee, the only thing your beating is maybe other knives, and anyone with a sword class would break it pretty quick. And as your far more likely to be in the middle of a group of boyz, sure. That may to an extent be protection, but if any melee JPA or GA singles you out, your not able to defend yourself properly. You may get the kill from poison or fire damage ticks. (Unless There's an Apoth nearby that can cure poison, which is also something Painboyz can't do.)

Apoths however, have two ways of migitating this. Either, taking a chainsword. (Mork forbid.) Or, taking a bolter. In the latter case, the Narth is an uprgade of the combat knife due to poison. The Painboy gets no upgrades, just choose what ailment his syringe does, with the ability to chose one of the two on par pistols.

I find this doubly weird since the Wolf Priest got a bolter. Yet, The painboy can't take a Shoota, or a choppa. Any situation a painboy finds himself in, an Apoth could do a way better job.

Captain planet ( yes iz speaks in tha third person ) still like pain boying, its still fun and possible to do, the only things i would say im un alright with when it comes to painboy is the weak armor, as well armor is one of the best things to stack for survivabilty and the lack of armor dose make us one hit able. ( Also at an unserious point, pain boys should give an active speed buff to orks that face em with their backs and are runing away from em, no boy wants tha needles )

And yea we got nice side arms, im pretty alright and content on useing the dakka slugga ( i like the direct damage instead of tha poison bullets) would kinda be fun to have a shoota as a painboy but ehh, still can have fun without em c:

But yeah when it comes to the vials, the life steal buffs ehh... not really something too usefull in the grand scheme as the time to kill anything is so quick. XD would be happy if we had a protection syringe too, but big vail its alright. gives some lasting regenration buff. its not useless just requires the boy to let his life regen.

then to the size of our throwables, yeah that is, well more of an anoyance in my opinon, if yer creative you could still work with it, and it calls to put em in more defensive areas, maybe give it a lil bit more hp to blance out the big hitbox, its really hard not too see thanks to the fungus cloud and glowingness.

and then poison granades? XD hahahah, yeah 1 face palm to every ork with em, its a good idea on papper, but the granades are incredibly easy to deal with as you have to just find it and bam it and poof poison gone, tho it can last longer then a chaos poison granade, so it can kinda do area denial. but it can in most cases acctully poison your own boys. ( the so many times orks run infront of eachothers XD it stops tha granades and puts em on the floor. )

But yeah. i can see why you are a bit Less confused. ( but all in all painboy is the most fun healer to play thanks to this as, it just feels good to sucseed )

wut, we can cure poison, it at least works with the big vail and healing battery

Well, I'll try to address what I can then. The painboy's does not have survivability buffs like the apothecary, point conceded, but looking at his equipment I question if he is even meant to be that kind of support. His unique equipment, specifically the sikky bombs and sikky slugga seems geared towards uprooting strong positions and loosening formations for an incoming ork force more than it seems to specifically be about buffing up everyone he can, self included. The lifesteal vial...well perhaps it is lacking, but I couldn't say for sure since I've yet to get it.

They seem to be able to armor themselves better if that is their goal than the apothecary can (not counting the vial as it would never fit on a pure health and armor build for either of them). A total of 60 extra health from wargear alone, and the combination of the gob and armor(if the golden armor is 400 lp like the space marine one) are any indicator they can reach a toughness stat greater than the apothecary's while only having slightly less armor.

The pistols. I feel like I want to disagree on this point, but I find myself leaning more towards the fact that it could just be personal taste. I will agree that the pistols are not on terms with the bolter. I don't believe they're supposed to be given how melee centric the character seems to be in design. The sikky slugga works wonders, not only diminishing a targets armor but cutting straight down to the health as well. In this regard I see the painboy as the second most capable ranged support in the game given the shortcomings of the psychic supports when it comes to how far the can operate from. I feel like they aren't as powerful a main armament because they aren't supposed to be a main armament. The syringe is since it's stats are near analogous to a poison chainsword.

Camera problems and melee issues I see more weight in as to why the painboy is perceived as too weak. a chainsword apothecary would have more reach, but I'm uncertain if the narthecium and the syringe share the same hit area or not. As for syringe damage that only seemed to occur with the mercy stroke narthecium, an unresolved bug. No narthecium aside from the war narthecium outdamages the syring on hit, not counting the fact the war narthecium trades away additional poison damage which the urty syringe does not. I cannot tell for certain about poison modding, though logic would say that since the base poison is higher on the syringe it would have a higher poison stat when modded for extra poison when compared to a narthecium also modded for extra poison. But no proof, no point.

As for the size of the beacon. Maybe it could stand to be smaller, but I feel that also ties into what the painboy was designed for. He can heal, but it almost feels like a design decision geared more towards encouraging poison heavy loadouts for their area denial and disruption characteristics.

I am not certain I agree with the assessment that there are no situations in which the painboy is superior to the apothecary as I see them focusing down two separate paths. The apothecary given more flexibility in strengthening allies and himself while sacrificing armor relegating him to helping from the back whereas I see the painboys design lean heavily towards make them scatter and chase them down.

That is merely conjecture though. Regardless, thank you for telling me the why.

True, I had forgotten it was a knife equivalent weapon. Perhaps then making it closer to a choppa in tier would be more of a step in the right direction? And to my knowledge painboys can heal targets from being poisoned.

Wouldn't it be smarter to stack health as a painboy? It is cheaper than armor and you can get wargear in two slots that buff it. Add the fact of self injecting to heal and it feels like a cheaper but superior stat unless we are factoring in the toughness that comes from 2nd and 3rd tier armor. Even then the apothecary cannot max out his armor stat, even if not taking anything but required equipment since he lands at 10 over the lp limit.

A speed buff syringe sounds like an interesting idea.

The poison build is unviable for anything but light-hearted PuG-matches for several reasons: Every single enemy faction has ways to negate most of its damage. LSM healing beacons neutralise the poison-buildup, CSM Mark of Nurgle confers a 50% flat poison resistance, all Eldar have an inherent 30% poison resistance. On top of that, all veterans of every faction have an inherent 50% poison resistance, MoN veterans in particular are completely immune to any sort of poison damage.

In addition to that, the poison beacon has the same massive hitbox as the dok's healing bomb, while having the low HP of the Apothecary's healing grenade - the worst of both worlds, meaning that it is a massive target that dies to 3 boltshells. And that doesn't even begin to mention the fact that a single roll will completely clear any character of the poison cloud's radius, making it extremely easy to avoid if the user isn't inclined to simply destroy it.

Melee characters in particular are free to simply run into the cloud and strike its middle once, if they do it right they will only suffer a measly 20 hp of damage while destroying the limited poison beacon. It is completely possible to sprint through the entirety of the poison beacon and only suffer a single tick of the poison. So much for area-denial.

It's a gimmicky playstyle at best that only really works in pug-matches because there the players rarely know how to react to the poison cloud. A good number simply freeze up for a second or two as they try to figure out what to do. In Clan-matches, that completely falls apart because people are far less likely to panic and usually know what to do about the cloud, rendering whatever effect it might have had null.

Also, both Apothecary and Dok syringe deal a fixed amount of 50 poison when modded with the appropriate attachment. We tested that, and had it confirmed by the devs.

Huh...I wasn't aware vets had a poison resistance passive. Interesting.

As for the rest, they do share the same large hitboxes, and I can see where that could cause issues considering their health. So I would ask what would your solution be? Greater health, or smaller hitboxes? The clearance distance of rolls and the low health of the bombs does reflect poorly on it's area denial capacity, so I can concede that now that you put those two together. Should it have a larger area of effect then as well?

If it's been confirmed then that's definitely something I feel should be addressed. The two have different base ailment levels and that should be maintained even after the addition of equivalent mods.