It is balanced in a way that doesn't make too much sense for a FPS. The notion is that the overheat mechanic keeps it from being too powerful despite having some incredibly "efficient" (Rattati's word) stats for damage, range, a charge shot mechanic, and an increases headshot multiplier. "We averaged it all out and it turns out that the DPS is about the same as most other weapons" is my guess on how it was balanced. Obviously, in an MMO where play is really quite slow such as EVE, that works relatively fine. For DUST, where TTK is about 1-2 seconds, having a high front peak means potentially being able to factor eliminate someone before the overheat mechanic happens meaning that the balancing factor never comes into play. IE, "If Rogues had every cooldown for every fight they would be absurdly overpowered" and then Arena happened.

Is it too powerful? I dunno. I will say this: it is a weapon that is highly skewed towards shields (+20/-20) and is still used quite heavily despite the fact that Armor is generally superior to Shields or is at least used more extensively than Shields. When it was the Bumblebee of death, Explosives and Grenades disappeared in favor of Flux Grenades. The weapon is at least good enough to still be used in an environment that doesn't fully support it, which is nice, but I am still not sure if it is too good.