Like, Plasma overperforms? Yes, but just a tad bit over Bolter and Recon
Is that an issue? That depends of who you ask of course, but Plasma doesn’t really need “harsh” nerfs in itself
Primary fire needs to be nerfed against Unyielding and also have a limited cleave, and that’s it. Whatever FS wants to do to buff the secondary attack that’s up to them, but simply make plasma not be a Reaper/Bulwark/Boss destroyer by spamming primary fire in difficulties lower than Havoc and it should be fine, people like the special killing ability of the weapon (and because cleave would be nerfed, it wouldn’t be an instant special destroyer in high density hordes either)
What NEEDS to be looked at however, is Survivalist and/or the ammo efficiency of all other Vet weapons, it’s kinda silly that Survivalist helps plasma so much more than the other options
But have you considered how much worse plasma is ammo-wise from pickups? Plasma gets essentially half ammo from boxes and bags because they give a percentage of reserve ammo, not total ammo.
How so? As pointed out by @zagyar ammo drops scales off reserve ammo, not total ammo, and plasma has the worst reserve to total ammo ratio of any gun. To my knowledge Survivalist also still works like this, scaling off reserves not total.
I assume you mean because of the cleave it gets more value per shot, which is true but hence nerfing primary shot cleave already addresses this. No reason to double dip a nerf on ammo efficiency.
Interesting, I always found that the Plasmagun boss damage was uninspiring – especially compared to Bolter/Recon. Is this mainly for Bulwarks due to shield pierce?
Two body shots? That would put it on a level with Dreg Gunners which also take two body shots typically. Which does sound strange to me.
Two head shots and I’m alright with that breakpoint tbh. When you can have half a dozen spawn, and maybe be Nurgle’d… seems reasonable to me. Two shots to the bare face from an anti-tank weapon should ruin somebody’s day lol.
I felt like Reapers were a big enough threat that weapons with faster TTK against them were mostly fine, since you can’t melee them when they’re posted up and will shoot through themselves if you attempt to get behind them.
That one I understand where it came from, plasma weapon changes in 6th ed is the reason that only overcharged shots Gets Hot, but in return the primary fire should be 20-30% weaker than the charged shot.