So how do we fix it?

The gun needs a few things. First and foremost, fix the stupid effective range bug. That's something that should have been fixed with the bolt pistol and will act as a massive buff in and of itself.

Next fix the false positives. If the gun isn't actually firing a round, I don't want to see a round.

If you believe a damage buff is in order, it should only be a fairly minor one. 55, 57.5, 60 tops. Although that's only a 5 damage per shot increase, it adds a potential 60 to the mag, and just under 39 extra damage for a full charge shot.

Next decrease the dispersion slightly and I do mean ever so slightly, no more than 10%. After you put this on a fully pimped Gallente assault and throw a couple levels into the dispersion, it's actually quite manageable. However if you guys at CCP decide to change the Gallente assault bonus to not include a dispersion bonus, then whatever you remove should absolutely be added to the base level of the Ion Pistol. Having that bonus is paramount to making the Ion Pistol a viable weapon.

Finally you -need- to change the operation skill of the Ion Pistol. In my opinion it would be best to change it from the current -5% charge up time, to a new -5% heat build up per charge. Let me explain how this would function.

Let's keep the overheat at 100 and the full charge at 100. But let's change the quick fire heat build up to a base 10. This means that at level 0 operation, (should CCP implement a militia variant) the gun will overheat either after a full charge, or 10 shots.

Let's add operation 1. Now a full charge only does 95 heat and allows for a follow up quick shot which now only cost 9.5 and allows for 11 shots to be fired otherwise.

Operation 2: Full charge is 90, allows for 2 follow up shots at 9 per piece and you can finally fire off the full 12 without overheating.

Operation 3: Full charge is 85, still only allows for 2 follow up shots at 8.5 per shot.

Operation 4: Full charge is 80, allows for 3 follow up shots before overheating at 8 per shot.

Operation 5: Full charge is 75, allows for 4 follow up shots at 7.5 per shot.

So now with the new bonus you actually -get- a decent return on your investment by being punished less from the overheat and actually incentivising the use of the charge rather and getting rid of the current thought process of, "Oh god no I accidentally charged it, I'm screwed..."

What do ya'all think of this, thoughts and other ideas are absolutely welcome, I'd love to hear from other ion pistol users and CCP folks on the matter. :)

The damage really shouldn't be touched all that much because you never actually deal that base damage. Even those tiny charges add small damage multipliers to each shot. Watch this video.

They found that on average, even the basic Ion Pistol does 80 damage with a quick shot because of the tiny charge multiplier. After the 5 gained from the 10% bonus to shields, that's an extra 25 damage or basically a 50% bonus from the original base. The more you increase the base damage, the more monstrous it becomes.

My suggestion would not affect the mini-charges, it would only affect the amount of heat they produce when fired. Take the 68 damage suggestion. it becomes 74.8 after the shield bonus, add 45% for a mini charge and you now have a shot dealing between 89 and 109 damage. At 72 base it becomes 94-115. That's some serious power to be dealing out at a rate of 375 ROF. That's just under 590 DPS just against armor in fact. 718 vs shields.