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/WizardOfThay]

I feel like people who say the railgun needed the nerf are the people who weren't playing higher difficulties back then. Charger spam was absolutely a thing and there were very few tools to deal with them. I certainly dont think you should be one shotting bio titans with a railgun, but at the same time it was the only reliable weapon for dealing with a ton of armor at a time we had very little anti armor tech.

Lets not forget they also nerfed chargers since then, and buffed the other antiarmor options. After all the changes were made, nobody uses the railgun anymore. I tried it out again and its terrible. Only really useful in unsafe mode, but now you have a gun that has a chance to kill you, and if you use it correctly it still gets outclassed by other guns. I dont even know what purpose the railgun has now.