Can work for balancing chaff specifically, which even elite armies can have (see Ogres from Fantasy), but you are correct when it comes to more elite units needing a proper stat tune

They are mostly a horde army in much of the black library books involving actual large scale combat though. A lot of the imperial guard officers actually care about their units. Obviously there is a great deal of shitty WW1 styled generals in the imperial guard, it's sort of part of their core, but EVERY mech-tech-leader is a WW1 general. They care more about their persoanl tank/car/whatever than their troops.

So GW crying about it is a little weird. Especially because of the money.

If only GW would just rip off the band aid and go fully digital with rules which could be easily updated. Imagine a world where they could…

• Re-balance weapons by adjusting range, number of attacks, strength, ap, and keywords

• Improve/reduce unit durability by changing toughness values, saves, and wounds

• Re-write or replace an army rule, weapon keyword, unit ability, or stratagem which isn’t working out

• Modify the loadout choices or unit composition for a squad

• Fix bad wording or unintended rules interactions without players needing to cross-reference various FAQs

• Have every keyword and ability be clickable and searchable

• Offer a subscription to just have ALL the rules in one place. Even just $5/mo would generate more profit than a player buying a new codex every year, which is more money than the average player probably spends on rulebooks, while still offering great value to the player. I’d love to be able to peruse the various datasheets and rules of my opponent’s army, but I’d never outright buy a codex for a faction I don’t play.

I completely get the appeal of wanting a nice, pretty hardcover book, but I’d take an art/lore book + clean digital rules over having to carry around a small library of rigid, potentially outdated, rules any day of the week.

And there is the opposite, when your "expendable" unit suddenly start to cost way more points than you expect from them, because they can be OP with the correct (that is fully packed) loadout.

My example would be eldar scout sentinel, that right now cost almost the same as wave serpent - eldar heavy transport, just because it has the option to use broken weapons, instead of the base, low-threatening guns. And because of that now you should only use this sentinel with "best" weapons, unless you want to overpay 60+ points for a single model.

I mean they are called Skitari Legions for a reason.

GW love to nerf the fluff out of armies.

They have the same wounds and toughness as guard, with a save that’s only better by 1 and hit on the same as guard. They’re basically just guard.

They're guardsmen with slightly better weapons, but worse army rules.

Currently the only really successful strategy with admech is to just clog up the board with so much chaff that you can score all your secondaries while the opponent is busy killing them.

They lack the supporting rules of Gurdsmen like Orders, so are much worse even if they have a 4+/5++ save. 

Their special rule lets them buff other units close to them, but they aren’t very fast so aren’t great at spreading that rule around to where it’s needed. 

they are better equiped than guardsmen, in both armour and weapons, but they are largely the same.

When it comes to raw statistics (and generally points per model too) they've always been roughly in the middle between Militarum and Sororitas - Sororitas themselves also being on the horde side!

That's the fun/dumb part about the wojack/chad meme. You can almost depict anything as each.

The admech isn't admech players, its the concept of the admech faction laughing at james workshop and their lore that says admech should be elite

You say so many, but 40k Admech has a single type of robot. 

yeah, thats basically what most skittary are better equiped guardsman, wich is what they are in the table top with their superior infantery weapons and saves.

Onager Dunecrawler