In 4e/5e, both Guardians and the standard IG Infantry were WS3 BS3 S3 T3 W1 A1 with a 5+ armor save. The only differences were I4 vs I3, which only meant that Guardians took the first turn in melee (but they had the exact same chance of hitting/missing/blocking), and LD8 vs LD7, which only comes into play if IG's LD8 sergeant dies. So as you can see they're already using a Sergeant to make up for what would other wise be a (small, but still present) disadvantage.

These small advantages were counterbalanced fairly well by IG's longer range.

In 6e Guardians were buffed to WS4 BS4, otherwise all the same. So they got buffed to the Veteran's level, basically.

And to give more of an idea how much more the IG gets out of their officers than other factions, one of the "Orders" an officer can issue on the tabletop is "First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire!"

Depending on the range, this increases the squad's damage-per-turn by 50%-100%. If you translate this to a 50%-100% DPS buff, that's fairly significant. For other factions oh nice I might do slightly better on Pinning rolls or one of my models actually has 2 wounds. For IG though, a 50-100% DPS buff is serious business.

Of course this is also why Commissars were OP in DoW.

Guardians are basically like guardsmen for eldar, but with their requirements to actually have someone in a warhost, I would put them closer to veterans or even stormtrooppers.

Also, if we look at TT, they are pretty good against guardsmen since they can fire a volley and then fall back for cover with Battle Focus.
They are pretty close to Dire Avengers now but they have less variety for upgrades to make them more survivable in the mid-field, so they are usually better off with a heavy weapon platform, sitting at the back. And if someone comes close to them, they can use their catapults.

I think differences turn up when comparing tt stats and what is considered to be the lore, even if that seems rather strange at first as the lore should mostly be based on the tt. Guardians, when you read up on them, have the usual Eldar physiological advantages over humans and also much better equipment than most Guardsmen. Guardsmen don't have psychically reactive full-body armor, plasma grenades, hovering weapon platforms, lightning fast reflexes... when reading about them you'd get the impression that they at least should be somewhat superior. Of course, tt is set up the way it is. We could actually argue about whether tt is the final over-rule on this topic or whether my interpretation of the lore has merit, but let's not. It isn't that important for the topic at hand, I suppose.

Anyway, I'd like to ask you some questions:

If IG as a faction would depend overly on their squad leaders...

What about solo-play?

What about opponents targeting and killing SLs off having a much greater impact than for other factions?

What about solo play?

You're not Marbo, if you want to have any real impact on the battlefield you're going to have to exercise at least *some* teamwork. The closest you can even really get to "solo play" in a game like this is not being in a squad and following another group of players around, which you can do as any number of classes that are intended to exist outside the squad structure (Commissars, Psykers, Priests) or drive a Sentinel.

If you try to play an ordinary Guardsman outside a squad, of course you will be at a disadvantage compared to people who are in a squad. You'll just have to use your head and make the most of it.

As for focusing fire on high-priority targets, that's called using tactics. You counter that with your own tactics by keeping your squad leader alive (medics are useful for this) and as a squad leader you try to make the most out of each life by giving your squad as much help as possible.

I wanna play as kasrkin! my fav unit in the whole 40k universe, too bad they got replaced in the minitures.

Solo play is always a part of MMO games. I doubt it will be an important aspect of EC, yet I can still presume that 1v1 fights will happen. If nothing else as part of a larger engagement that broke down into players running aimlessly.

Balancing the game around such encounters is obviously unnecessary, but is it still not somewhat problematic if you play a faction/class that is guaranteed to lose such encounters out of hand? It just feels a bit awkward to have such gaps in power between players in such a way.

Also, are you missing my point about targeting IG Sargeants on purpose?

Take a look at these two scenarios:

A group of Imperial Guardsmen and a group of CSM are engaged in a firefight. Both factions try to stay in cover while attempting to take the opposing group's sargeant/champion, heavy fire support and other support units to gain an advantage quickly.

1. The Guardsmen manage to kill the Aspiring Champion. The Chaos Marines are thus weakened but not defeated as they are still more than capable of continuing the fight, because a substantial part of their strength isn't coming from the Champion. In the end, the may win or lose depending on how they play it out.

2. The Chaos Marines manage to kill the Sargeant. The Imperial Guardsmen lose a substantial part of their power which is yielded by the Sargeants leadership abilities. Their chances to still win the fight go down drastically.

Again, compare this to LSM fighting against CSM or some other combination. If a faction is sub-par without their SL they depend on keeping them alive, while the other factions don't depend on it as much because they can make up for it by simply being stronger. And SLs are going to die in such a game despite any effort to keep them alive. So how is it ok for one out of numerous factions to be extremely weakened by this twist of fate or that accident while the others won't?

There are multiple factors that can help with that. Not only will each individual squad leader be less important as the size of the fight grows (the decapitated squad can fall back and play support for other squads while waiting for their SL to respawn), but keep in mind that independent classes like Commissars can act as interim leaders for squadless players or squads who have lost their leader.

Obviously having both an SL and a Commissar is a good deal better than just one or the other, but you can get by.

Additionally, the loss of a squad leader has no negative effect on any vehicles that may be supporting them.

This is a situation Imperial Guard players are used to dealing with.

If you really want to challenge people to 1v1 honor duels as IG there *are* options for you. Like I said you could pilot a Sentinel. If you want to win in melee you could play an Ogryn. Additionally Stormtroopers will still exist, they just won't form the entirety of the army. They'd likely be close-quarters assault specialists, while ordinary Guardsmen fill more supportive roles like Medic and Heavy Bolter crew.

Because quite frankly, the only things that are really special about stormtroopers from a gameplay mechanics viewpoint are their hot-shot lasguns and grav chutes. So if you're not going to be using the grav-chute and you're taking any weapon besides the hot-shot lasgun, you don't really gain anything from being a Stormtrooper because ordinary Guardsmen can get Carapace armor too.

In a massive PvP game like this though it's extremely rare to be truly alone, and if you are you're probably about to die no matter how strong your character is because your enemy isn't alone.

Ok, so you are making up even more complicated scenarios? Scenarios that are not bound to work, too. It doesn't matter how many fail-safes such a implementation might have, it will always create situations where the faction in question will be negatively impacted by the differences in stats you are suggesting. So why bother? Why put a ton of work unto yourself to create something that will bring so many problems with it if you can simply take the simpler and easier path. And I'm not always for taking the easier path, but sometimes it simply is the way to go.

Anyway, Stromtroopers (and by that I mean the general category into which Grenadiers and Kasrkin fall) might be more acceptable than regular Guardsmen because of their superior training and equipment if you want to reduce the jump between them and Astartes, Aspect Warriors and Orkz. That is simply all their is to it.

I understand why you would want to have regular Guardsmen as well and I actually am not trying to push for Stormtroopers or trying to make you accept them as a superior choice. It is my opinion that if the reduction of such a jump is required Stormtroopers (plus Grenadiers and Kasrking) are the most viable option for an IG class. But if the devs deem that it is not necessary I'd happily accept regular Guardsmen (obviously not Whiteshields though) as a playable option.

What I would not accept easily are such overly complicated mechanics to explain something that doesn't need to happen.

After all, Guardsmen could hypothetically work without any power up, be that turning them into Stormtroopers or creating mechanics similar to what you suggested. They can have less hp, less melee damage, more range, a smaller hit box and different weapon choices (e.g. sniper rifles) to be different, but they don't have to be sub-par compared to LSM, CSM, Aspect Warriors or Orkz.

Is there something on what the IG Terminator-esque elite class should be?

Honestly the closest thing IG has to an "infantry-sized tank" is an Ogryn. Between the Ripper and the Ogryn's own impressive melee capability they should cover the door-breacher role adequately. But it's entirely possible that the IG could operate with no direct equivalent, and simply have a different type of "super-unit" instead.

It could simply be a case of trading off weakness in some areas for strength in others: the Ogryn may be a poor man's Termie, but the Baneblade makes the Land Raider weep. You win some, you lose some.

It's kind of like how in the game Allegiance, the Belters don't have shields at all. At first glance that's crazy! Your shields are over half your HP, and most importantly they regenerate! It'd be such a pain having to hunt down someone with a repair gun every time you scratch your paint.

Except Belters have twice as much armor as anyone else, and Belters can stick a repair gun on *any* ship.

Instead of expecting all factions to be the same and have direct equivalents for everything, instead try to understand what makes the factions different and adapt accordingly.