izigame.me

TL;DR: Overpriced and slightly overpowered, but good class that doesn't bring enough actually new mechanics to the table. On the assumption that this might be just a first stumble towards greatness and not a step towards damnation, I am giving this a thumbs up...for now. If the next updates and next dlc are similarly bland and possibly overpriced. I'll come back here and change it to a thumbs down.
Ok, I really wanted to like this class and I do. But I can't shake the feeling of being disappointed and slightly robbed. The class is powerful, probably a bit too powerful and feels good to play. But after waiting several years for new classes, this feels like it falls short. The class has a lot of recycled mechanics from other classes (frag grenade now with impact detonator, psykers smite in a handy mine, buff yourself like a zealot or rush headlong into battle like a zealot). The weapons are good but again nothing ground-breaking (we already had shield weapons, though the shotpistol and shield is cool as it is rare to see a ranged shield combo in games, that is not just a troll or op weapon in a pvp game). Lastly the companion...I like it most of the time and then I see Kruber's confused face staring back at me as I lie in the dirt pinned by a hound. By that I mean, it usually does its job and does it quite well. But you can't really rely on it or trust it as you can pretty much every other part of your kit, as the AI sometimes decides mauling 3 random guys at the side is more important than getting that hound off you or just pinning any of the 5 armored elites rushing at you. On that note, I also wish that the "pin-tag" would work a bit differently. As it stands you have to ping an enemy twice to order your hound to pin them. So, if that is a ranged enemy in cover, you get to ping him once now, then he ducks back into cover and you can't ping him again for a few seconds, even though you can clearly see him thanks to the normal ping. I wish they made it so you could ping on any already pinged enemy, including through walls, to order your hound on them. That would make it more of a fire and forget system, as it should be. You already have to worry about enough things on Atoma, so controlling your hound should not be one of them.
Overall, the class feels like it is heavily leaning towards the tank direction with strong crowd control and good defenses, but it doesn't necessarily sacrifice much damage for that survivability. Sure, it can't melt bosses as fast as other classes, but a good Arbites can certainly beat the heresy out of an entire pack of maulers and crushers, thanks to his liberal use of electrocute and stagger damage buffs and the ability to easily stunlock them. So, it feels a bit more like a jack of all trades in the end. You want to support your team with buffs? Nuncio Aquilla got you. You want to slaughter groups of enemies in melee like a juiced up zealot? Go ahead. You want to snipe specials like a veteran? You got a predator missile on 4 legs, an ability that makes the 20 las shots per second currently hitting you feel like a warm breeze and a revolver shotgun with the tightest spread of anything shooting buckshot I've seen in a video game so far and a shield, so you can calmly take your shot while a horde is beating you and those aforementioned 20 las shots a second are raining down on you.
Here's hoping we get something like Skitarii next with more unique weapons and class mechanics.