remove all damage mods and skills that increase damage.

i know i must be insane or something but bare with me.

are damage mods and damage skills really necessary. every weapon has a damage increase from basic to proto anyway so having a double damage buff is not needed. all this does is widens the gap between proto and basic and creates weapons which cannot be balanced properly.

how do you balance a swarm launcher with 5 damage mods against a tank and compare that against a swarm launcher with no damage mods against the same tank.

the same could be said for laser rifles and MD's and any weapon for that matter that has seen the nerf hammer to "balance" it. for example:

laser rifle + damage mods brought it to the nerf hammer where it became almost useless without them
MD + damage mods brought it to the nerf hammer where it became almost useless without them

simply fitting more and bigger damage mods should not be the next step to beat another player. it should be fitting better weapons and gear to match or beat them with skill.

i know this would bring up concern for some classes but rather than damage mods they should get role related skills such as range,sight,clip size, rof, critical damage.

we have swarms being only effective with maximum damage mods, we have snipers only effective with maximum damage mods, we have forge guns only effective with maximum damage mods. we have AR's currently with people running basic weapons with maximum damage mods just trying to compete. there are people also using militia shotguns with max damage mods nuking 1500+ ehp heavies in 2-3 hits. its only a matter of time before these weapons are "balanced" wrongly when simply removing the route cause would be balance enough.

also as a side effect this allows players to fit more tank, electronics modules and promotes more teamwork to take out others rather than relying on pure dps.