So, my friends like 40k, I grew tired of the game favouring "new" armies, and having a one way spin on tournament and "cheese" armies. I grew sick of seeing obliterator armies, speed freak trukk jenga, fish of fury, and twin whip princes, it took the fun out of it! Now the rules have changed, the models are a BIT better, the prices are ludicrous, and my friends still play it and tell me i should join them. I don't know whether i should, it seems i can paint fantasy, I like the feel of the system better, and to be honest 40k just seems to be "who can power game the most" I like my armies to have fluff, the 40 k fluff is awesome, it dosent translate well into an army as far as im aware? Should I bother? Should I go through the pain of even attempting to paint power armour? I would go eldar but I tried to paint them once upon a time and all ican say is EEEWwwww! Shoul I part with my hard earned money some kid in a games store can beat me with a supersmurf army thats only 10% painted thats probably just been chucked in a pot of ultramarines blue? And if I did, do i fish for salamanders list themed around a dreadnought and land speeder assault, or a really fluffed up night lords slaver force? Minds would be nice, but I have a hard time painting 20 skinks so forget 32 gaunts!
I've been playing 40k on and off since 3rd and I can say it's definitely starting to even out. 5th edition was a joke to me, where power creep was not only present but it was blatantly obvious. 6th edition is much better, although I still feel like there isn't enough focus on balance and some armies are still hugely favoured by GW (or so it seems) than others. If I were starting 40k right now, I'd have a very different army. New-is-better is still prevalent (mostly), although it seems to be internal codex balance that's off more than inter-codex balance. That said there are still the standard "power builds" although most you mentioned are replaced with something new and/or worse and fluffy/thematic armies are practically non existent. I've pretty much given up on the "theme" of my army because in a practical sense it just couldn't deal with enough threats. I really like the new random occurrances in terrain/objectives etc and the cover rules are a little smoother than 5th but I will always hate "True line of sight" with a passion. To me the game feels easier to play than it has in previous incarnations, so depending on how you feel about that it could be good or bad (good for me, since I'm fairly casual and infrequent a player). Not sure if my rambling has helped your decision at all, but if it has I'm content with that!