I think Plasma is mostly fine, but I think the Charged Shot needs a buff though, it’s rarely worth using over spamming the normal shots.
I’d say give the Charge Shot a +50% damage increase against Ogryns/Bosses, basically making charged shot into a big un’ killer, kind of like a ranged thunder hammer. I’d say also make Charged Shots cleave double that of a normal shot to show the clear power difference in the 2 shot types.
In what situation would you even utilise 200 cleave lol. It still won’t penetrate crushers because they have a checkbox for can or can’t penetrate and plasma is reasonably set to “can’t”. I think it makes much more sense to just nerf the cleave of primary fire to disincentive m1 spam somewhat and let the charged shots retain 100 cleave so you bust them out when things are really dense.
I really don’t think buffing plasma further is the right way to go about things.
The Plasma Gun’s heavy charged attack already does what you describe well enough. The Plasma Gun doesn’t one-shot any Ogryn enemies on Damnation, but that’s probably a good thing for… you know… balancing it. One-shotting Ogryn enemies shouldn’t be possible for the highest difficulty.
If anything, the light attack spam needs a slight nerf and the heavy charged attack should stay the same - that way they both have a nice little contrast that encourages using the heavy charged attack for Ogryn enemies, whilst the light attack is still viable for the other Elite/Specialist enemies but it won’t kill, like, 8 of them in under 3 seconds (which I have done) - you could always just use a Shovel to make up for its vulnerability like I do, my personal favourite is the Mk VII 
I ran several games on plasma today. I recant my statement on the cleave nerf, but not the hitbox nerf. The 100 cleave barely ever came up in practice now that I was actually looking for it.
The fast charge shot having a regular size raycast would effectively cut its cleave indirectly anyways.
Charged would remain unchanged.
I think that small change would be an effective enough rebalancing.
I probably should clarify, but the double cleave on charged shot would be after the normal shot cleave gets nerfed a bit. Like probably make normal shot cleave 60 and the charged shot 120. So normal shot can still go through a wall of targets, but if it gets bogged down then a charged shot will clear that up easy.
I don’t see what’s wrong with letting charged shots 1 shot the Ogryn enemies on damnation, also the Plasma can 1shot Ogryns already if you hit there head with a charged shot. The change I suggest would allow for center mass kills as well.
You got to remember there’s other weapons that can already 1shot Ogryns, like the Helbore III, Ogryn Shovel Special, Thunderhammer II etc.
Lastly the Plasma Gun is already a specialised elite killer, so why not let the charged shot act as a Ogryn-be-gone attack and also be more effective against bosses?
Because it typically knocks all of the Ogryn enemies on their arse with anything that isn’t a headshot, effectively staggering them and giving you access to an easy shot on them? No Ogryn enemy should be susceptible to a charged one-shot on Damnation because that’s just utterly broken in every sense of the word.
I’ve also never seen a Mk III Helbore one-shot an Ogryn unless other teammates have already shot at it which renders that moot - it’s also inferior to the Mk II Helbore in virtually EVERY way, as the Mk II fires faster, has higher base damage for non-charged attacks, a faster charged attack AND a significantly better bayonet attack.
Thunder Hammers and Ogryn Shovels are irrelevant because they’re designed for Zealots and Ogryns, but I’ll bite. Mk II Thunder Hammers can one-shot Crushers on Damnation with Fury of the Faithful, but that’s because they’re using an ability specifically designed for hitting enemies where they’re weak and destroying them. This all comes at an extremely high vulnerability cost, something that the Veteran can more easily negate with (as I mentioned) Shovels.
For the Ogryn, Mk V Shovels are (admittedly) a bit broken and the Mk XIX Shovels are supposed to be the single-target THWOMP Shovel that they are - but you have to risk getting close if you aren’t built to stagger the enemies.
Edit: Grammatical fixes. 
Ok that makes more sense, but I think you achieve the same thing with just lowering primary fire to somewhere around 20-40 cleave (which is still hugely more than any other gun). It’s pretty hard to use 100 cleave as is. Generally making you choose more between charge shots and primary spam seems like the right direction for adjusting the weapon.
I don’t think it needs more Ogryn damage. You should have to take a risk by going into melee against them to get the best damage output.
Absolutely not.
How many times have we been down this stupid nerf road since release? There are SO many other things that NEED work in Darktide, that devoting time and resources to nerfs is beyond trivial.
Furthermore, the kack-handed way in which nerfs have been implemented in past have been pretty much without exception, so poorly done that it’s left nothing but resentment in its wake, and just leaves the game experience feeling lamer as result. We just finished getting the Vet to a functional state, and even then, there are very few things that truly make the class shine in comparison to the others. Plasma is one of them. Leave it be for fück’s sake.
If left spam and charge should be more of a choice, there are better ways of doing that.
Nerf overall body damage to crusher, and dont make left clicks break Bulwarks plus damage them in the same hit. Open them like the Bolter, or knockback would, unless you charge it. The charge can still do both at once. Even a nerf to swap speed would be better than a damage or cleave nerf at this point. One of the strengths of the PG is how great it works with VoC and Infiltrate.
People might throw “lore!” at this Idea, but we are way past that argument already. Otherwise anything that is not enhanced by warp sorcery would melt the moment the plasma ball comes close to it.
To make it clear. I dont think the PG needs any change at all in the first place. It has its downsides, unlike a couple of other guns. Leaving the charge as is would open up future variation with a focus on it.
I strongly disagree with this suggestion. The plasma gun is one of the strongest and deadliest weapons available to the Astra Militarium and Astartes. It shoots plasma that is as hot as a sun’s solar flare. It is supposed to be powerful. If anything, lore-wise, it is underpowered.
Source from the Lexicanum:
"When fired the fields dilate open and the plasma is ejected via a linear electromagnetic accelerator in a bolt of superheated matter akin to a solar flare in appearance and temperature.
The weapon is useful against both heavily armoured infantry and light armoured vehicles. In combat, a plasma gun is capable of heavily damaging Tau Battlesuits, Tyranid assault organisms, Ork Meganobs, APCs, and light tanks"
TL;DR/In Short: I want the plasma gun to be as close to the lore as possible, it’s not supposed to be on par to a lasgun.
Knowing Fatshark, “slight nerf” means turning it useless (as it already was before patch).
So here’s a future prediction:
Bolter gets a buff, everyone dumps nerfed Plasma Gun.
The Bolter as it stands in the game right now: “Barely rapid, empty now”
ye keep nerfing hi tech weapons, untill every toothpick and butter knives perform the same
I notice that it’s usually the same crowd who want nerfs to strong range weapons. (Melee centric players)
They are starting to remind me of the Germans in WW1 demanding that the use of shotguns should be a war crime.
The weapon was literally only garbage when venting did HP damage. After that singular change it was in a way better spot than 80% of ranged, and they kept going.
a charged shot does penetrate 1 crusher, but doesn’t do damage to one behind it. Kinda weird, that is. The charged shot really does need something ‘more’ to make it worthwhile though. It’s nearly always worse to use it. Perhaps a blessing that increases crit chance 50% on charge level, so it can synergize with high heat crit, and create a bit of a high risk high reward synergy.
I feel like all the weapons have serious drawbacks. It takes 3 revolver bodyshots on my zealot to drop a gunner. Very punishing without reload talets in the vet tree. Headshots basically make it from passable to awesome, rewarding skillful use. With a 5 round magazine if you remove the punch through or the ability to one tap with headshots you dumpster the thing outside of niche vet use. Its a 3 class gun.
I thought trauma was fine. Whats the issue with it?
Isnt the limited ammo reserve and long reload the inherent drawback on the kickback? How is it overpowered?
Columnus too? Which one?
Is your big goal just to make the game harder?
Have you looked at the kickback in the past few months?
The reload is pretty quick and it has a massive amount of ammo.
How is it overpowered?
It just deletes everything with zero effort.
I literally asked my buddy (who is not great at the game and had not played in months) to play a round of damnation with me, and do nothing but spam the kickback at everything.
Just to see how broken the kickback is.
And he beat me and everyone else on the team in damage.
Sadly, the game crashed during the end event so i do not have the scoreboard of the mission.
I’ve topped damage + special/elite kills vs max level people on kickback ogryn while sub 20.
It wasn’t a rare scenario either for this to happen.
It’s an ok weapon.
If you ever have to tell someone how good DT is and if they should buy it, this quote says it all lmao