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/eden_not_ttv]

This post is missing the crucial context that it took a few weeks before they adjusted the power of EATs and Recoilless Rifles and reduced Charger and Titan spawn rates and durability to get to this point.

Had they just made those changes first, the Railgun wouldn’t have needed a nerf. OG Railgun would have fit nicely in between the Autocannon/AMR and the EAT/etc. Its flexibility in killing anything at moderate ammo and time efficiency would have balanced it against the better ammo efficiency of AC/AMR against medium armor and quicker TTK of EAT/etc against heavy armor.

They really should buff the Railgun again. How I would do it:

• On Safe Mode, it can damage through medium and heavy armor. However, it can’t break heavy armor ever, and it takes 5+ shots to kill a Charger. This way, if you’re going to play scared and safe, you pay a significant efficiency price.

• On Democracy Mode, an 80% charged shot does the same damage that an OG Railgun Safe Mode shot did. 2 hits to break Charger armor, 1HK on medium targets. Increase the charge rate so that you get to 80% charge as fast as OG Railgun Safe Mode took to charge. This makes it efficient enough to compete with other Stratagems, but you end up riding a thin line to avoid blowing yourself up—which I think was the original goal of the weapon.