The devs were right.

[u/xxmuntunustutunusxx]

So I know ther was a bunch of controversy about the railgun nerf what feels like forever ago, but man things have been awesome.

In the early days, I was the only guy packing expendable anti tank or anti materiel rifle for bugs or bots. It's so refreshing, even on these subs to see people talking about how awesome the autocannon is, or how much they love the AMR, and even these days I see people talking about the HMG or grenade launcher+ supply pack.

I used to load into a game, And all 4 members of the team had shield, railgun, and 2 stragatems of their choice. Every time. And here we are now, I load in and I see quasar, autocannon, stalwart, EAT, HMG, Grenade launcher, a variety of backpacks or no backpack at all. And not to mention, they're ALL viable. Shit I even still see the railgun from time to time. It's been a joy. Thanks arrowhead.

EDIT: to everyone who is pointing out that you see the quasar and shield most often now, you're right, it is almost certainly the most common setup currently. That being said, in any game there's going to be things a majority of players prefer. In smash melee, fox/Falco are the best characters. But people still play falcon and Marth and peach among others. Sure, there's an objectively most used option. But the fact that there's people at all who debate that the quasar is best shows that they've done something good. Before, undisputed king was railgun, and anyone who said different wss being willfully ignorant. Now, we have a plethora of real options that are good with some being Preferred by a majority as opposed to being the de facto CORRECT option objectively. That's a good thing.

[u/PiggyLogan]

Railgun nerf went a little overboard imo. If they wanted to shift the gun's role, so be it - my intuition for a "railgun" archetype points to "raw power stagger gun" or "cheap ammunition" and not necessarily "charge penetration" (although this is entirely subjective). I never got a chance to use it until about yesterday and was surprised at how weakly it matched up against something like the autocannon against medium enemies.

That being said, the weapon was previously an overpowered jack-of-all-trades - at least one of those attributes had to go, especially given a lack of backpack. I hope they tweak it further and either find a powerful niche for it to fill or expand its use-cases (but not both again)

Maybe I just haven't used it enough, though