I still think Vanu is the noob faction.
Note that Woodman is dominated by two Vanu clans, almost all alerts are won by Vanu. Any NC or TR will tell you ZOE needs to be destroyed and forgotten.
One server, there are other served where it's completely dominated by TR, and at times I've even seen NC dominate Woodman. That's just the amazing imbalance in player populations and/or skill imbalances between Factions. IMO if any of them were a noob Faction I'd say TR, their guns are the easiest to use in Close Quarter Combat, large clips and high ROF make spraying into enemies a lot more beneficial than either of the other two Factions, easy for a noob to rush in and spray. Not that I think any of the Factions really are a "Noob" faction, just that the TR guns are easier to use in street fights which is where a lot of the real fighting takes place.
But TBH having played all of the Factions, it seems to me that none of them are as difficult as people on the PS2 forums tried to make out they were, like tons of whiners claiming NC being underpowered, when I had the opposite experience in that I loved the damage their guns do. I think there were definitely less OP things on the NC faction and more so on the TR and VS faction, but time will nerf all. But yeah as I said before it's pretty obvious the imbalances in population and skill have more of an effect on who is dominating a server, than what weapons the Faction has.
For instance the TR striker was OP as fuck, because for a long time there was a bug where the Striker missiles could go through Terrain, now when you're playing a tank in either of the other Factions that gets really frustrating. Infact they're still pretty powerful for a lock on launcher, but at least not OP now. The ZOE will be nerfed, that's a fact, then TR will have no excuse when they get their get asses kicked by guys in Spandex. I think the issue with NC is that it seems to be the Faction that most 14 year olds would choose to main on, so many good players choose either of the other two. I guess they also have the lamest background story and quite possibly the ugliest uniform I've seen in a game, so that might put some people off.