Ork melee seems to be entirely broken on both ends. Neither side can the RPS even slightly consistently. Also, the extra health Orkz get really wasn't necessary. Bolt based weaponry isn't use-able now that players have their gear.
Its bad since it is inconsistent. If a SM biased writer is in charge, (which most of the time is the case). We get the renowned SPEHS MEHREENS that are unstoppable killing machine bad-asses. Yet in my Dark Eldar codex it stated that the Eldar move so fast that they had to slow the camera footage to even see them. Plus in Path of the Warrior, the Eldar pretty much danced around marines and kicked their ass. Yet in some fluff, Eldar are arrogant dumb-asses that get outwitted because SMs are just that good. I like the fact that SMs aren't that great most of the time. Shows that even though they are so much better than a normal human, they still get pwned by other, older more powerful races. (Necrons, Eldar...) makes the plight of the Imperium seem more dark and hopeless. EDIT: and as stated before, Avatars are a "this marine is awesome" plot device
Yes and no, different chapters, different strengths, different weaknesses and different characters. No different from any other series of novels, hell in the Night Lords trilogy...the book in which Jain Zar is defeated...it's emphasized that the marines are not exactly the best fighters in the world, especially compared to other chapters. The Night Lords all but have to cower behind a group of Red Corsair terminators, when a squad of blood angels board their ship several of them are slaughtered on their home turf and barely survive, when confronted with the Ultramarines and their successor chapters the protagonists all but have a mental breakdown trying to survive. But there's balance there, nuance. There's merit to the Night Lords way of fighting, hitting with overwhelming force and employing widespread terror tactics that decimate anything that has an ounce of fear in their body. When fighting the Eldar it's made clear that while the Eldar are good, and inflicting grievous injuries, their style of fighting holds up a lot better when fighting an Xenos race then another superhuman force. There's nothing inconsistent about that, the characters play off their strength, had it been the Iron Hands they might of never even touched Jain Zar as she danced circles around a slow moving mechanized force. People don't give Black Library enough credit because it's easier and more fun to accentuate the negative, ignoring that Astartes...like any other race...can be balanced out, people prefer to attach themselves to the silly tabletop rules instead under the belief that they somehow represent the universe better because Matt Ward and C.S Goto existed, that a couple bad examples of writing should be used to crucify an entire monolithic body of work. It's kind of ridiculous to be honest, and at a point feels like people just trying to compose a defense for their favored factions having flaws and weaknesses, or even denying the very nature of characters. The Phoenix Lords are immortal constants throughout their entire existence, but they were never made to be like a Primarch is, that's not the point of them, they aren't built for brute forcing the conquest of the universe, they are divine teachers and icons that represent the epitome of warfare in their society that exist no matter what happens to them, a pool of knowledge that remains a constant throughout their species history, only emerging in times of great peril, they are mythic like a Primarch but in a much different way compared to Demi-gods that, except for Chaos, have faded away or even died for good. That's how they always have been written, and how they should always be written, because if the only thing you like about your phoenix lords is that they are god-tier fighters then in my humble opinion you've completely missed the point. 1d4chans memes about the state of fluff might be amusing, but they are also the most casual and shallow reading of the lore imaginable.
To be fair, isn't Asurmen almost on Primarch levels... Purely due to the fact that he cannot be killed? Also regarding races in fluff, generally whoever is the central race wins... can't have your main characters be weaklings (even if it makes no sense for them to be that good).
