Ey,

I've noticed that, by switching factions for a few hours and playing Apothecary, that the healing for Apothecary is much easier and much less awkward than the Painboy heals.

For an example, if I hold F on a fellow Sphess Mahrine, both of us will stop moving regardless of the movement and direction either of us was going. With the Painboy, the person you're trying to heal is still able to move and run past your needle, meaning they manually have to stop in order to be healed. This creates several irritating instances in battle where the Slugga you're trying to heal is constantly running away from you as he doesn't realise I'm trying to heal him.

Additionally, the Painboy heal somehow has to release the F key in order to 'complete' the heal, whereas with the Apothecary, F only needs to be held down once and it will complete itself without having to even release the F key. If you don't release the F key with the Painboy, you'll be stuck in the 'Needle Applying' animation for a few seconds.

Is it just me that's been noticing this?

I had the opposite experience. When playing Apoth I could almost never get to heal whoever I wanted to heal, and the Marines acting stupid and running everywhere when at low life instead of looking for medical attention didn't help. Whereas, when playing as Painboy, other Orks seem to always -gasp - come to you for help.

Eh, Weird.

Maybe it's got something to do with the Latency issues?

I have tried Sorcs, Ap, and Painboy, all three have their drawbacks, but concerning the OP is comparing Ap and Painboy, i have notice neither one has much difference. It does not matter which class u play, if the Ork or LSM dont realize u healing them and they run off, well u screwed. There is no difference, it may of a Lag issue on your side, bc I been a founder for 2 yrs and messed around with these classes for awhile now and ppl will be dumb ppl. Its not a bug or lag issue its players not realizing their surroundings and paying attention.

Drawbacks shouldn't be focused on "frustrating to use". I'd rather the painboy heal be an instant heal, but with a cooldown of some sort to prevent spamming. Presumably apothecaries should work the same way, but I confess I've never played one. Bottom line is that making things non-user-friendly is not the way to go.