I was going to write a ranty shitpost last week, but I realised that a) many of the people reading here didn't deserve it, and b) my energy was better spent trying to educate than berate. So, based on my own experiences and observations, I've written a Steam Guide that covers the things I see people doing/not doing that lead to victory/loss: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=851353503. I've also copied it in here, below. Please let me know what you think, and if you agree with it even a little, rate it up so that it gets in as many faces as possible. -------------------------- The Loyalist Space Marine faction has a history of not doing as well as it should. It has some of the best armour, and arguably the best armoury in the game, especially in terms of mods for its basic weapon, the Bolter. And yet it struggles to do well in terms of win/loss ratio, and spends much of its time at a negative territorial balance to the other factions. While it is definitely lacking in certain powerful weapons and options, a lot of performance issues can be traced to how players choose to play during matches. The following are things that I have observed making the difference between a win and a loss. Teams that do these things often win, while those that don’t do these things always lose. Aim your weapon The Bolter is a decent weapon that becomes good when aimed and excellent when modded and aimed. Aiming is the key here though. The difference between aiming and hipfire is specifically designed to advantage aimed fire. If you’re not aiming, you are deliberately playing counter to the design of the weapon, and are choosing to be less effective. Stack with your squad With some of the highest Toughness and Armour values available, our advantage is in combined weight of armour. One Space Marine is easy to put down, even two or three, but a large group of them attain a critical mass that allows you push into a room, or hold one. This advantage is completely neutered if you immediately leave a transport or spawn and string into a point in ones or twos, or split up on your way there. If you’re not stacking up, you are deliberately not working as a team, and are choosing to be less effective. Make use of Squad Leaders Squad Leaders grant an XP bonuses near to their waypoints. Most importantly, they grant a buff to nearby players, by default this is 5% less damage taken. Staying close to your Squad Leader makes you more durable, more accurate, or do more damage. Note to Squad Leaders: YOU DO NOT GET THIS BUFF. If you hold on to Squad Lead because you think you get an advantage, you’re wrong. Squad should be following their Squad Leader, and the Squad Leader should be placing Waypoints and keeping the squad together. If you are a Squad Leader and you’re not placing Waypoints and keeping your Standard Buff near your squad, you’re deliberately withholding XP, buffs, and cohesion from them, and are choosing to make your squad less effective. If you are not a Squad Leader and you are not following your Squad Leader, you are deliberately avoiding a buff and the ability to provide and receive support in combat, and are choosing to be less effective. Flank the enemy Even with all of our armour, we cannot sustain a frontal assault for long. Instead of using the same doorway over and over again, or meeting an assault head-on, use the large number of doorways and alternative entrances to attack the enemy from the sides or behind. If you see someone flanking by themselves, follow them (see Point 2 above). If you’re not flanking, you are deliberately ignoring the tactical situation, and are choosing to be less effective. Kill their Transports He who controls the spice transports controls the universe match. Everyone should have one AV loadout, and 2-3 of the team should be dedicated to the role. On ticket defences, this cannot be a solo ground based operation or you’ll just waste lives getting out their vehicles and failing to kill them. Support and protect your tankhunters. If you’re not killing transports, you are deliberately letting the enemy spawn wherever they wish, and are choosing to be let them be more effective. Protect your Transports Do not park a transport and all leave it immediately. There is a good chance that an enemy is nearby, waiting for you to all leave so he can destroy your transport. Secure the area, leave a guard, or keep the transport moving. With no transport, your attack will lose momentum unless it succeeds first time. If you’re not protecting your transports, you are deliberately cutting yourself off from reinforcements, and are choosing to be less effective. Against Eldar A well played Eldar team, pug or not, are the masters of flanking and outmaneuvering. You really need to be watching your back, your flanks, and the skies. Protecting your transports becomes even more critical against their Fire Dragons, and moving them is probably better than trying to kill the Fire Dragons. Every loss I’ve seen to the Eldar has been the result of letting them dictate when and how we fight. Against Chaos With a lot of their armoury matching ours, the major points of difficulty are the Autocannon and their ranged heals. The Autocannon requires us to take more long range and heavy weapons, especially Heavy Bolters for suppression. Fielding lots of tacticals with standard bolters will not fare well against multiple Autocannons. You will need to pay attention to their fields of fire in order to avoid them. Aimed fire and flanking are critical to countering the AC, along with Heavy Bolter suppression to limit casualties. As for Sorcerers, they need to be priority targets, even if they’re reviving someone. The person they have just revived will be weaker, and will go down easily so you can wait the extra time to kill the Sorcerer first. Many sorcerers will try and finish the channel, whereas if you kill the person they’re reviving the Sorcerer will just run off to heal someone else. Against Orks Orks, like LSM, perform best in large groups, so it becomes even more important for us to stack with our Squad and Squad Leaders, or we get outnumbered. Orks are often quite good at flanking too, so don’t get too focused on one direction. Their hip-fire capability can be better than ours, so aiming is important too.
Nice guide, pretty basic but enough for newcomers. I would like to point out that depending on the map, against Chaos is works much better to dump a squad worth of Jump Assaults on their favourite spots to keep them from sniping our battlebrothers defending the point itself. The same tactic can be applied to all races but against Chaos autocannon madness it seems more imperative than in other cases, since those Jump Assault could be more useful in another spot.
The best I can do is write it and make it available. Rate it up if you want it to be more visible, it's currently buried like all new guides.
You know, I don't think it can simply be "Oh, every faction is bad but the SM have more baddies". That can't be it. There has to be a reason why the players of our faction are so much immensely worse than the others. IT makes no sense whatsoever, why would our faction have the absolute least amount of skill? Shouldn't every faction have roughly the same number of low skill players? If anything, the Orks and Eldar should have more unskilled players because of how much easier their weapons and vehicles are to use (You don't need to worry about aiming with them because their spread sucks anyways, but they have immensely higher fire rates and far higher raw DPS), but it seems the opposite is actually the case. Why is our faction the worst?
Simple really. Everyone wants to be a Badass-Super-Warrior-Monk that is rich with variety such as the following: Edgy-Emo guys with hoods. Vampires with anger issues. Smurf village. Tower Defense Pros. And lastly..... Furries with axes.
I think it's partially what @AuKitsune said. But also, I don't think we necessarily have a higher proportion of bad players, but we do have a higher proportion of new, inexperienced players. They won't know about the things I've described like we do, which is what prompted me to write the guide.
Plasma rifle, plasma pistol, grenades, and fists for Orks. Power Swords, JPA, Chainsword Apoth/Fire Wolf priest builds for Eldar. Bolters and Power Axes for CSM. When in doubt, get a high position and rain hell with the plasma cannon on an enemy melee blob.
