Off the top of my head,
-Sniper.
People complain about warriors being able to lunge at edge of screen, when a sniper can instakill T1’s from god knows how far. Can take almost the entire health of most T3’s with certain ammo types and shots.
-Flak ammo
-.22 hornet rounds
Xenos rely on hit and run tactics, the slow from some munitions is so overbearing you rob them of the “run” part and they get melted, particularly T3’s and Queen. Only real counterplay is to not push I guess, but that’s not really much of a play
-Sadar
Can instagib most xenos, or permastun T3’s till you get gunned down to death, literally no counterplay if you get hit. Maybe unless you have a godly warden prae or something.
-Grenadier spec
Grenade spam and pounce-proof armor make it very difficult to fight for many castes short of queen, hedge rav, crusher or a good warrior that got a lucky pounce.
-Mortar
Practically infinite ammo, with a well coordinated team staying anywhere outside of caves is sometimes impossible. Closest thing to counterplay is dodging.
-CAS
Screenwide CAS runs that can also gib most xenos and permastun T3’s long enough to get gunned down to death. Has happened to me more than once as a rav. If you have OT ammo, it can sometimes rival an OB
-Stims
Powerful research stims that can now be acquired with literally no counterplay since xenos can’t drag xeno corpses anymore, and once marines get the stims the abilities of most castes are almost useless; speed stims hamper the necessity of xenos being faster than marines, since again they rely on hit and run. Antistun stims hamper the fact that most of ss13 combat revolves around stun, and it cripples most xeno abilities.
-Nuke
Nuke is meant to have counterplays like “map control” and “controlling both towers” and “killing IO’s”. In practice though, when marines need the nuke they can’t actually deploy it, because they can’t fulfill these requirements. The only time they can use it is when they have 100 people sitting in FOB the whole round and xenos don’t have the numbers to push or siege anything. At that point there is literally no counterplay, I’ve seen too many rounds where 90 marines sit on beach doing nothing for an hour instead of pushing to kill 11 xenos. It’s boring and a waste of everyone’s time.
You could say a lot of things I’ve mentioned have counterplays like “dodge” or whatever. Sure, sometimes you get time to dodge a mortar or CAS, or take cover from a sniper, but that still doesn’t mean it’s balanced in the long run. It would be the same as me telling you to “just push harder” when you complain about ravs pouncing away.
I know a lot of things I’ve listed above are also considered core game elements, and most marine mains are probably scoffing at anyone ever even bringing up the notion of nerfing any of these things. You might think it’s ridiculous, and that all of these things should remain untouched.
But that’s what a lot of players thought about many of the core xeno mechanics, like 2 larva, or lurker capping, or warrior lunge, or shields. But those things have and are being whittled away nonetheless.
While we’re at it, other things I personally think are unbalanced; maybe not without counterplay but still annoying:
-Baton slugs
This one’s just cope, they’re very annoying. Also doesn’t make sense why a marine would use nonlethal riot ammo against xenomorphs, or why ammo meant to be nonlethal on humans can stun, fling and lock abilities of most xenos.
-Buckshot
Too much damage or AP, not sure which. All I know is it melts through T3’s now, you can melt a rav with like 2 PB’s which is ironic considering xenos are the caste that rely on CQC to do damage :tro: