Did you look at the spreadsheet or read the numbers I posted? I don't mean that insultingly, I mean honestly what you're saying doesn't make sense in the face of the facts. It's true that your passive abilities develop more as you push toward those prototype weapons, but it still remains that using what passive abilities you have unlocked in doing so and applying them to lower tier weapons results in practically the same performance as they would had you equipped the prototype weapon you now have access to.

You have reason to upgrade your skills, but no reason to upgrade what weapon you use. In equipping that higher level gun, you're sacrificing CPU and PG, which equates to you sacrificing something like HP, so much in fact that the difference in amount of HP you could fit with a lower weapon outweighs the amount of damage done with a higher tier weapon. You would win a fight against someone using a proto weapon if you used a standard weapon purely because you out-HP their almost negligible higher damage.



I'm not aware of if efficiency ratings change per tier of weapon, and if they don't, it doesn't change anything. The comparisons were all across the normal variants of each gun across std/adv/pro tiers. They're the same guns with the same firing mechanics, and there's hardly any performance difference.

That's part of the sacrificing needing to be made that I mentioned. Losing your equipment or sidearm when you would otherwise have it makes you less effective in a number of cases. This largely depends on things like how often you use them, but if you have to get rid of your nanohives? You're now dependent on other people for ammo and can't readily get it right when you want it. If you can't get it, you've sacrificed long-term potential, when you're now running around with no ammo, for in a number of cases negligible increased killing power.



It's not really so much about looking at it as a you vs someone else perspective and comparing having that edge. It's more along the lines of (let's grab an example, max SP AR shooting at someone with 400 hp), you pick up your standard gun, you'd have killed him in 11 bullets. You change to advanced gun, find him again, this time you kill him in 10 bullets. That's kinda cool, but really, one bullet difference with an AR is 80 milliseconds of firing time. Some people won't notice the difference between that and lag. But anyway, you've now got enough money for your sexy prototype gun. You put it on, find the same poor guy with 400 hp, and you kill him in... 10 bullets. You've just upgraded, potentially sacrificing fitting space, wasting a ton more ISK, and you kill no better. That's the problem that's a result of the damage flattening. What reason is there to equip a higher gun if in many cases it gives you no benefit, especially if on a number of suits you have to sacrifice things in order to fit it? I'm not sure where to rate a "bonus" to upgrading like accuracy, either, because that'd be on a case-by-case basis, I think accuracy only really affects hipfiring (I haven't noticed bullets not going where I aim when zoomed in, even on militia rifles).