If I had to take a serious crack at this, I kinda don’t want to. I’m a marine main player and hear much whining on our side, too. But here’s a kind of point.
The game is changing on both sides. Some things will be more popular than others, and at the very least, I DO trust Morrow to be paying close attention to what his changes mean.
The Warriors can be freaking crazy, especially as a T2. Before the Nerf, even I played it and managed to take out 9-10 marines before I admittedly got overly cocky, and I think Matt or Talon was nearby someone I made the funny lunge to, leading to my death. The fact that it wasn’t that difficult to stack bodies with to the point that even I COULD do it, let alone someone good with the caste, showed me at least some nerf might be needed. I don’t think Morrow is done with warriors, and granted, while I don’t fall under the group of people who NEVER play Xeno, I can’t comment on it now. But I wouldn’t expect it to return to what it was.
I can’t speak on the Lurker changes. It’s never really a caste that interests me.
Burrowers being able to burrow on the DS is dumb as hell. At least runners and Lurkers must depend on the FOB crew screwing up to subvert their defenses. Burrowers, on the other hand, get a very short cooldown teleport. As someone who ground out engineering a lot for his synth app, I spent most of my time hunting the funny burrowers. While I did stack a decent kill count on PIG and a couple of others, it doesn’t change that many of my kills on this one involved them doing something stupid that I could exploit. It’s a caste that can teleport in. Pop tremor, and teleport out. Again here, too. I also love playing burrower when I get the chance. But maybe, just maybe, the magical teleporting Xenomorph probably shouldn’t be able to teleport into a dropship. The amount of chaos they can do by just hitting two buttons is high as hell, and I can’t think making them take the risk to get on a dropship where they can make an ungodly amount of chaos is bad for the game.
The fact that the queen could build on top of a resin node was straight-up stupid.
But that said, for the rest, I’ll go with what I said for Lurker. Unlike Warrior and Burrower, I haven’t had time to make much of an opinion on it, and I do respect you as you are a Xenomain who’s usually a pretty good dude. I won’t even waste your time pretending to have a complete understanding of a subject that I don’t yet!
Also not sure if this “balanced” buff was to make up for a bunch of nerfs on marine end; don’t think so but if it was, what update have xenos gotten lately that has been in their favor to compensate for all the nerfs? (Only thing I can think of right now is tunnel tracking, which doesn’t really count…I’d rather have increased AP or slash damage tbh)
We’re not owed compensation. Again, here the game is changing.
As of late
Marines
Lost Bicardine OD and now have surgery to fix IB and keep splinted to avoid massive blood loss on the battlefield.
Following the IB changes certain chems became nerf’d, especially in regards to blood loss countering chems forcing medics to carry blood bags which take MUCH longer to refill a grape marine.
A couple of guns become rarer (HPR becoming the most recent one with it becoming just a req-only item)
Smart guns now use a dedicated battery forcing significantly more attrition onto them, making it quite a bit harder to maintain their DPS over an operation.
M2C is supposedly getting a rework and or leaving the arsenal too.
There are more, but in general, if you want a better idea, just look on discord and look for people bitching who aren’t Swarmer. (They bitch about EVERYTHING it’s crazy.)
But back to my point. The game is changing. You might like some changes more than others. That’s perfectly okay to do! But it would help if you always remembered that you’re not the only side being changed; we’re all not really owed any real compensation. I wouldn’t even walk into any encounter expecting that historically in CM, that’s NEVER worked. We’re not victims here. We’re playing a funny 2D game that’s constantly changing.