While is true that the Painboy melee isn't as bad as some people claims, the truth is that they have to choose between healing or poison grenades, while the Apothecary always has a long range AoE heal, a similar melee weapon (that can be enhanced with poison), a pistol and a boltgun/ chainsword/ crozius.

So you can't ignore the fact that the Paiboy has less and worse options in combat to be an effective support.

Right now the Apothecary is probably the best class ingame as it can do almost anything than both a tactical or a ground assault can do, but better (well, they can't cap) in a time where tacticals are kings, while the Painboy is very different to a Shoota and more similar to a Slugga.

I honestly have no idea why you people think that dots are the be all end all damage and they make a class op... You can shoot and kill a player long before a dot kills you and even heal yourself before the dot kills you... Yea painboy has high poison damage but really if you let him hit you enough to kill you that's on you. It's really easy to break a painboys weapon with just a chain sword since his weapon is on par with a knife.

If you let a painboy get into melee with you in the first place that's on you they are squishy just like other supports.. At this point I feel like you're just whining for the sake of whining.

Ranged is the dominant thing in game right now and the apoth is leaps better than the painboy at range. The dakka slugga out performs the sicky slugga in most situations so I really don't see the poison being enough for you to classify it as boarderline op.

You want reasons that have already been provided fine then I will list em out for you since you sorely can't see them
1) Asyymeatrical balance so that the 4 factions aren't mirror reflections of each other for all their classes and play style. ( gear being different types or niches one being able to do something another cant etc)
2) eldar and chaos use warp powers to heal whike LSM and orks use chems to heal. This means that one is a active healer type and another is a passive healer type.
3) without the gernades being able to revive the orks and LSM only option is to run up to the downed player, hope the anamations work (it doesn't always work even still in my experience, 95% works others dose t) as in it targets the down player and not yourself. While all this is going on you are open to fire, can't focuse on anything else and are in a big slow anamations process. Why not do it behind cover you ask? Simple unless it's a wall or a big metal box you can be seen and even then it realies on the one you need to revive coming to you, staying still and having enoufgh people to support you so you don't get intrupted mid way and have it count for nothing.

That's they orks and LSM have revive nades. Orks are fine it's just LSM nades that need to be bigger.

I agree with most of your post but apothecary has to play LSM side so it is quite a challenge outside Guilds... joke but true.

Yes range is dominant actually it had not been true all time and may still change.
But as melee fighter Pain boys are the best, and why DoT are lethal? Because Painboy can apply a fucking tons of them, it is true that DoT need to be massive to be effective, but Painboy deal massive DoT damage with 2 or 3 shot (21 DOT) and a SA with base 33 (up to 50 i guess with poison mod) and your enemy already get 70+ poison DoT.
If you choose tio take poison grenade you won't be able to have a Healing station but in attrition match as attacker i don't care the more enemy go down the quicker i win, so throw grenade in a narrow passage and ambush in the middle of the gaz cloud you will see how quickly poison work.
And i use both loadout as Ork Pain boy and go toe to toe with melee loadout and come out most of the time winner.
Maybe melee isn't your cup of tea dear, try something else.

And just to tell you whinning is what you do, personnaly i support pain boy efficiency in melee and don't cry about it being (falsely) under powered.

Ok, that's a fair point, I'll have to concede that one.

Have you ever actually tried the Poison Painboy out in clanmatches, full guildstacks clashing? I did, dozens of times, because I really tried to see what the Poison Dok can do. After playing an untold number of pugmatches where I consistently topped the scoreboard with preserver and over 20 kills. My judgement is: It's a playstyle that sacrifices supporting-power in favor of being a gimmick that works as long as the enemy doesn't know how to react to it quickly.

The counterplay to the poisongrenade is simple as fuck: Realise you are in a poisoncloud, press space to roll out, turn towards the center, shoot wildly into it. That last step can be delayed for however long you want if the grenade is not preventing allies from passing. The grenade has the same hitbox as the dok healing stein, while having less hitpoints, meaning it dies to 3 boltershots or 1 melee attack. It is a viable strategy for a melee-class to run into the cloud and sprint-attack the grenade, only a single tick of poison will be applied and deal around 20 HP in total.

The jankiness of the ork animations come into play rather painfully: During the grenade-throwing-animation, even the slightest movement will cause the throw to deviate, meaning that trying to accurately throw the grenades (a necessity if you don't want to accidently catch allies in the cloud) requires you to sit still, in the open for several seconds. As one of the squishiest classes in the game (Apothecary easily beats the Dok in effective EHP with the Survival Vial).

The poison grenade can be quickly neutralised, doubly so since the dok will usually only have 2 (unless he shells out a maximum of 300 lp just to carry 3), and only 1 can ever be active, as throwing another will cause the oldest to self-destruct.

It is certainly fun and feels rather empowering to behold as pugs stumble through the cloud blindly as their health rapidly depletes, but that's all the playstyle really is: It relies on the enemy's lack of knowledge, their panic. As soon as that cluelessness is gone, the gimmick simply ceases to be worth the risks. Risks such as, an ally running in front of you just as you throw the grenade, which causes it to promptly land at your feet and bathe your entire team in poison, which can easily disrupt an entire assault.

Overall it's mediocre at best and not worth it. Fun in pugs, not all that useful in actual competitive matches, unless the team decides to go for a full dok-poison rush on maps like Maggon, Zedek or Harkus, which can work.

You're combining 2 different effects there bro.

LSM has two types of healing nades.

Healing Beacon (which has a long duration and short duration version at differing point costs) functions identically to the Dok Bomb for Orks. I think its literally a carbon copy of the effects just with LSM having the small grenade and and Orks having the big green glowing thing.
This doesn't leave a hot on the target or otherwise linger, besides its basic stationary AoE effect.

Then you have the Medicae Grenade. This is a seperate healing grenade type (it takes the same slot) this throws a grenade that pumps out healing juices which actually linger on the affected allies. Its a very strong HoT but most people tend to use the Healing Beacon, this is because the Medicae Grenade is more of a panic button and less of a "pump out heals to these braced heavy weapon guys while I go do other shit" button.

The Dok Bomb isn't bad. Its just not good. Instead of the Medicae Grenade that lives the lingering hot Orks have the Sicky Bombs which are a poison cloud generating thing. I think they are underwhelming in their performance, but this is a clear design/balance decision one gets a hot, the other gets poison... in theory its even somewhat balanced the problem is most people choose to use neither and arguably the sicky bombs underperform in direct comparison to the medicae grenade.

TL;DR I play healers too much and think the Apoth is bullshit strong, but you also should be accurate in what you are saying/complaining about.

EC fourms means that
Opinions > accuracy and facts

The painboy is currently the worst support class but it's not that far behind.

How I would start to balance the Painboy is to simply the do following

1) Poison cloud does not do friendly fire damage
2) Increase health from 225 to 250, armor from 50 to 75.

Makes sense from an asymmetrical balance viewpoint that Orks would have the most durable support class since it is lacking either spells, a sword or a bolter.

Agree with 2nd but not the 1st as all one has to do then is just have 2 or 3 docks spam a whole room with it near a cap point and have a friendly cap while enemies are dieing from posting overloads and can't tell if they are being caped or not with sufficient posion clouds