What type of justification is that?

So if the RR does the best at some of the most ideal engagement ranges, why complain about the nerf? If you say it wasn't over performing in CQC, then clearly you were using it in ADS situations most of the time, and a nerf to it's CQC abilities only gimps you a small percentage of the time.

Every weapon needs to have it's weakness. If you can point out a different weakness the rail rifle has then be my guest, but as of right now the only one I can think of is its CQC ability; and, before you say that it was not good in CQC before, the rail rifle before this change was nearly as good in CQC as the AR, but with an optimal range 20-30 meters farther than the AR the minor difference in CQC abilities was not enough to offset the advantage it has.

If its unbalanced at long range, why nerf its short range?

Unbalanced on long range..UNBALANCED ON LONG RANGE GTFO LIKE FOR REAL MINA

I hope it worked, because the numbers I was looking at today were worse than I thought, the RR has been OP for far too long, eluding me like a hobbit

I think a lot of people are misinformed about what happened to the RR and ARR and its impact. For what it's worth, I did some testing last night. Here's my post from the rifle data thread used to justify the nerf.

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With apologies to the Asia players on my team for whom I was no help, I played around a bit more between PCs and queue-syncing FW tonight....

The ARR kick is different from the RR kick -- less vertical and more side to side. Making it even harder to control in CQC in relation.

My test was as follows:

Take ARR, aim at a spot on a wall, rip through entire clip of 58 rounds with hipfire, note where cursor landed.
Repeat with RR clip of 42 rounds.
Repeat with BrAR clip of 36 rounds.
Repeat with AR clip of 60 rounds.
Repeat with CR clip of 54 rounds (basic combat rifle).
Repeat with ACR clip of 54 rounds (AUR BK-42 ACR).

I did all this with proto versions of the weapons (except the CR as noted above) and repeated the tests a few times as kick has some random elements to it.

Here's what I found:

The RR kicked to vertical (about 120 degrees total, and I actually had to aim down in order to measure it). The kick was mostly vertical but had some small, random left to right kick (a few degrees).
The ARR kicked to about 45 to 60 degrees, less than the RR. However, the kick was much more side-to-side than the RR, often going 15 or more degrees off target. (note this is MUCH more difficult to correct for as it's also seemingly random left or right versus the mostly-vertical and much-more-predictible kick of the RR -- I suspect that's why this weapon preforms as poorly as it does in CQC and is underperforming)
The BrAr kicked about half the height of its hipfire dispersion (less than 5 degrees) and about the same left to right.
The AR kicked about the height of its hipifire dispersion (about 5 degrees) and about half of that little left to right.
The CR had about five pixels of rise (rapid button pushing was required and total rise was a degree or two), and a pixel or two of left to right.
The ACR had about five pixels of rise (same as CR) and the same left-to-right.

I think I finally understand why rifle CQC is dominated by the CR in PC, why I've preferred the BrAR since I picked it up a few weeks ago, and why the RR is so hard to control after a few shots -- the hell with DPS, it's all about the recoil profile and the resulting effective DPS. I was also a bit surprised to find the kick of the ARR even worse than the RR once I tested it and used it for a few rounds focusing on CQC encounters. ADS it's the same as it always was, but wow, the ARR may be even worse than the RR in terms of ability to put DPS on a target in CQC without stopping shooting for a third or a half of a second and allowing the gun to settle. That side to side kick is in random directions and very difficult to react to and control. No wonder I was the only one using it. lol

I think I'm going to finally bite the bullet and add a CR to my proto rifle collection once I receive the sidearm event points. Even the basic one rocks if you time the bursts. Kind of reminded me of the Burst AR from way back....

edit:
I personally run DREN 90% of the time, because I want to help foster fun and not grief. When needed I could swap my RR for my CR, but last night I reverted back to use my DREN/AR and GEK38, because my DREN Caldari assault/RR combo is "useless" in any CQB situations.

Thanks for this. I'm really interested in seeing how people think it's balanced for 2 rifles to kick 60 to 120 degrees, when almost every other either functionally doesn't kick, or kicks/disperses less than 5 degrees.

Now that all suits will have native passive armor regen, there is nothing wrong with Cal Sentinels.

And that's quite possibly true. Nobody ever accused CCP of being overly subtle about things.

On the flip side, though, I think NextDark's statement that "well, it's just popular so they want to nerf it" is probably the biggest fallacy in the history of the Dust forums. CCP does a lot of things, but nerfing weapons based on forum QQ and nothing else is not one of them.