Weapons and powers feel terribly weak and generic compared with ME3

Oh, don't get me wrong, Pull is mediocre at best. It's just that being mediocre makes it better than nearly every other power.
A similar situation exists with the Vanquisher and all other weapons.

For tech and biotic combos you do not need a level X manifest to maximize their damage.  The only thing we are missing at this point would be equipment that increases power damage and even that would only affect the power itself, not the combo.  I understand that the game was just released but please do not dismiss this problem when you obviously do not know anything about how the combo mechanic works.

My point is that all you need to maximize a combo is a level 6 primer and a level 6 detonator, and then any combo damage bonuses.  It's not rocket science and it does not require grinding for weeeks/hundreds of hours to test.  What exactly is ill-conceived about the facts as they are presented in-game?  Seriously, how is leveling a Soldier or weapon to X going to increase my combo damage?  Please enlighten me and everyone else since that seems to be something that makes us ignorant to the facts as you see them.

So I'm ignorant because I'm not waiting for balance changes?  Please go white knight somewhere else.

Does anyone here think about combo's in me3 at launch?
Tech combos were so subtle you didn't even notice them, and did almost no damage.
Cryo explosions never happened, and even by the end required you to use the one power that actually allowed them to detonate on reasonable enemies.
Flame explosions were rare, and required you to detonate in 1 second windows on most powers.
Only biotic detonations were usable, but back then the fastest combo was still slow, and most biotic detonators only worked on enemies who were actually lifted.
There was also reason not to be a simple primer, and that was that the detonator got all the points, so to do well in a game you had to detonate, discuraging mass primers and detonators from working together compared to a single person who could do both on their own.

This game has two huge advantages.
Combos are clear, easy, and reward both parties involved.
And armor-less enemies are not useless. This is huge, because on high difficulties in the last game you had high difficulties where any lift and freeze effects did next to nothing, as the only guy they worked on was not a threat to anyone. In this game even the lowly troopers have a part to play on the battlefield, and there are groups of them even on gold who push and threaten your flanks. You have targets that powers work on, so the game is overall more fair towards powers that aren't pure damage, which is what me3 turned into. DAMAGE, DAMAGE, DAMAGE. Every new character was more damage, and CC powers like pull got Frankensteined into damage dealing through the game's life. Which made strategy in me3 somewhat boring towards the end.

Absolutely agree, 100% nail on head.

ME3 turned into a boring damage fest due to enemy design - but here in MEA even health only targets are dangerous and due to longer power cooldowns, crowd control is far more useful and fun to play.

Sure I'm sad things like Stasis have gone, but overall things like Cryo Beam, Pull, Singularity are a lot more fun to use - disabling enemies is a lot more rewarding.

This is also another reason I won't go back to ME3.

The best thing about this game is the Ascendant having only health and the immunity bubble - makes powers like Pull useful on it encouraging thoughtful play rather than pure dps spam (sure you still need burst damage to kill it).

It's a shame. Had so much fun in ME3MP. Thought this would be a step forward, with more depth, modes and so forth. Yet they managed to deliver an inferior experience in almost every way and the only thing of substance that showed any form of creativity is the jump jets. No other effort into expanding or improving.

Bland characters.. Many boring redundant characters with overlapping powers.. Tiny character roster which when combined with their blandness is a big disappointment. Criminally low number of maps, and they are plain and uninteresting.

Unlocks are coming in so damned slow with 3/4ths of boxes being consumable garbage. Purely random unlocks is a colossally bad idea. Just stagnating with the same small selection of items. I feel burnout setting in already because of the glacial pace of gear progression (just like DAI) and how it doesn't feel any different. Part of me wants to go back to playing ME3MP. At least the characters were fun.

I'm gonna disagree with you on this one.

First of all ME3 may be 5 years old, but the last DLC to MP was released about a year after release. So you're exaggerating this. Secondly, ME:A MP isn't a whole new mode but a reiteration of ME3 one. It's a TPS horde mode with powers, now with different cover system and mobility. It SHOULD be a refinement of the game we all got into 5 years ago. Bigger, better, more fleshed out. But, as I see on the forums and judging from gameplay I watched, it underdelivers.

When playing ME3MP for the first time with both vanilla and each new MP DLC, you had this sense of amazement at something new. Vanilla gave you (first time in series) an ability to play as an Asari/Krogan/Turian/Salarian and even Drell. You had a set of new awesome weapons. This factor is heavily diminished in ME:A, with a just a handful of new powers and weapons and lots of ME3 stuff coming back (weapons, powers and especially species; only Angarans are a new playable race and they aren't that exciting to begin with). One of three factions are (mostly) Milky Way foes that could easily be a "mercenary" faction in ME3MP.

Some fan favorite stuff from ME3MP didn't come back, other things don't feel familiar enough. That adds to the disappointment.

This game isn't gonna magically evoke the same feelings we have for ME3MP, because it's a refinement that doesn't refine. With closing of the old BSN and (as far as I know) no simple mechanics like 'weekly challenges for weapons you can only unlock during those challenges' in sight (remember the first one? it was about killing Brutes) I don't see this game getting significantly better in a couple of months. 

in a way ME:A isn't "2 weeks old". Why shouldn't people with hundreds (if not thousands) of hours in ME3 horde mode be somehow unable to make judgement about a slightly different horde mode with very similair mechanics, guns and powers? 

They decided to go with a longer ttk in this game, you don't one shot things as easy as in me3, and in return things don''t kill you as fast as they used to.

This does result in a slower overall pace, and things don't feel as devastating because they aren't. But this means there is a lot more room for the dev team to work with, they can make enemies that take strategy to kill like the ascendant, rather than brute force.

They can always double the damage of everything across the board to make the game feel like mass effect 3, where only dps matters and crowd control is just a novelty if it doesn't kill things.

Stysiaq, you nailed it.If U look at the title of my thread, I was refering mostly to WEAPONS, and my biggest complain from MEA is that after using TALON or Black Widow on ME3, the exact same gun on MEA feels weaker.The GUNPLAY on a 5 year old game shouldnt be better, but it actually is, and I wasn't expecting that

Has anyone even seen mention of an upcoming balance patch anywhere? News? Twitter? Facebook? Or is everyone under the assumption that there will be one just because ME3 had them. If you have, please share source, because as far as I am aware, the devs have gone dark since March 21. At least in what can pass for a semi-official capacity.