The reason you see so many TAR is because it's the current king of the hill...and the majority of people either don't know CCP well or ignore their past history ;)

To give you an example: When they launched EVE, you could fly around in a medium sized ship (Thorax) with 8 heavy drones and obliterate much larger battleships easily. That went on for a good while until they hit it with the nerf hammer and suddenly a completely other race ships (Minmatar) started to excel in comparison with that drone ship (Gallente). In short, going with the FOTM and putting all your eggs in one basket is never a clever idea when it comes to CCP...they will smash your basket to pieces sooner or later. Always better to go with what's most fun for you.

As for the laser rifle, aside from all the other stuff, the thing that makes it unusable for me is the crosshair...too clunky and tough to aim correctly. That alone makes me not wanna use it no matter its damage. The only reason people are using the scrambler rifle over the TAR is because of a better crosshair. It's worse in every other respect.

Laser Rifle - Nerfed into Oblivion?

The difference is heat build up. Viziam has lower heat build up than the STD laser, so it will do more damage than the STD because you can keep firing for more time till overheat. Continuous fire = damage increase. The 3 lasers where supposed to be like this, same damage. Now they have 17 damage instead of 15, but twice the heat build up (now the STD overheats at 40 ammo instead of 20). IDK at which # of ammo the Viziam overheats with an Amarr assault suit. If it's overheating at 12-20 ammo then it's good, weaker than in Chromosome though. The thing here is the range, they're useless at anything below 100m (rooftops were our friends).

Laser rifles were way overused in Chromosome because of the borked skills. You could primary a sidearm and then strap a STD laser onto your fits and melt people from the rooftops for only 12,000 SP. (Maybe a couple of points into LW Sharpshooter, too.)

Now they actually require some investment to be effective, in addition to being rendered completely obsolete by Tac ARs.

I played Oblivion recently...didn't see a single Laser Rifle...

You don't have laser light shows anymore because easy mode LOL no skillz merc's have gone TAC AR.
Such cute little Kitten Bears all running in packs with their TAC AR's.

I love when they are in groups makes easy targets for my Death Taxi.

calling out players for not have skill... then proceeds to run them over with an LAV, which I'm guessing requires "skill"?

It will be interesting to see how my laser gank fits perform with this final 3% damage bonus. The real bugger of it is my respec fallback plan is logibro, another role without a job in PC..

Yea.

You got to go really fast and make sure not to roll over.

That alone, makes LAVs require more skill than TAC ARs and pre-nerf Viziams.

Yea.

You got to go really fast and make sure not to roll over.

That alone, makes LAVs require more skill than TAC ARs and pre-nerf Viziams.

QFT

But it sounds like bacon sizzling...how is that NOT OP? :)

The only gun in the game that makes me hungry enough to log out and leave my squad to flounder while I whip out my skillet!
Truely devistating!

blah blah blah blah lolz no skillz scrubs blah blah blah protobear blah blah blah i haz truck!!!!

I played Oblivion recently...didn't see a single Laser Rifle...

Yea the range is crap for lasers. Tact. AR's still have more range than a weapon specifically designed to be effective ONLY at range.

Balance in this game is lulz to say the least.