The Masterwork Pistol does way too much damage

The handgun has cleave, to quote.

What you’re forgetting about the the piston pistol is it’s designed for CQC, the handgun is good at all ranges. If your nerf its damage potentional at close range then honestly what would be the point of bringing it? It does not have a lot of ammo at all. You can argue the pistol is good good on RV from the ammo sustain and 50% ult damage buff, but if you nerf the piston pistols ability to effectively handle what is thrown at the player at close range you destroy its personality, it’ll be like nerfing the blunderbuss for being too strong at close range.

The handgun is good at all ranges, it doesn’t have the rapid alt fire the piston pistol has, but it doesn’t suffer damage fall off either, allowing you to snipe dangerous specials at long ranges, which is the main role of range weapons anyway, to deal with specials, not elites, even still, most range weapons delete SV quite easily anyway, but their main function is to deal with specials, so if SV are your biggest concern on Cata that you need to rely on the pistol then no wonder you think it’s OP… Now on cata, the piston pistol really suffers at sniping things like blightstormers as it has a slow fire rate and they often teleport before you finish them off. Again, the handgun does not suffer from this.