It's not a bad weapon as it is, there's just no reason to use it over the Forge Gun or Swarm Launcher except for "badass" points.

My vote goes to removing the firing arc and increasing the damage and also increasing the projectile speed (change the skill from charge up timer reduction to projectile velocity bonus) and you have yourself an honestly mean AV weapon that still fills a minor anti-infantry role.

The single shot clip, low ammunition, and charge-to-fire attitude more than justify the change. It's not a bad weapon as it is, there's just no reason to use it over the Forge Gun or Swarm Launcher except for "badass" points.

The only other reason being that it's a light weapon, so you don't have to be a heavy.

I found the blast radius and damage of blast radius fine with 2 complex damage mods on an advanced amarr medium frame. The reload and 1 fire clip was also fine with me. It replaced my locus grenades and then I finished shield based infantry off with advanced pistols. I used advanced packed AV grenades to help kill vehicles. However the plasma cannon does feel like it needs an increase in direct damage and increased velocity. It just doesn't do a good enough job against shielded vehicles. Probably a 600 - 900 damage increase would be fine. The swarm launcher does more damage over time because of its larger clip size.

It doesn't really fill a role that isn't filled already.

It has been released in an over nerfed state.

It requires an unreasonable amount of player skill due to the amount of difficulty variables required for its use.

For example:

Forge gun

Difficulties: Requires a heavy suit, has a charge timer and a moderate range. You have to lead moderately for infantry.

Plasma Cannon

Difficulties:

Has a charge timer, has a reload timer (between shots) effectively giving it double the length of time on it second shot. It has the lowest damage of all the AV weapons (hence the first difficulty is exaggerted). It requires a player to time a shot, judge angle AND lead the shot due to its slow firing making it unfeasable for DS3 users to hit fast moving targets.

There are also reports of it being buggy and and having hit detection issues.

Solutions: One or more of these difficulties has to go.

1. Remove the fire arc.

Or

2. Increase damage.

Or

3. Remove charge timer

Or

4. Increase clip size. And give it a ROF (less than the time it takes to reload).

Only one of these has to be implimented in order to make it usuable at least. At the present state you would have to be bonkers to use and invest SP in it.

One shot is fine, but it needs to have less arc, more range, a faster projectile, and do the damage that Swarms do now, to allow for Swarms to finally be nerfed.

Guided weapons should always do less damage than unguided weapons. You should have to compensate for the lack of aiming with a reduction to damage output.

One shot is fine, but it needs to have less arc, more range, a faster projectile, and do the damage that Swarms do now, to allow for Swarms to finally be nerfed.

Guided weapons should always do less damage than unguided weapons. You should have to compensate for the lack of aiming with a reduction to damage output.

I agree with your points, however, Swarms are "fine" as is RIGHT NOW due to where vehicles are at. It's difficult to balance with so many vehicles and weapons planned-but-not-here. Once the game comes closer to a finished state I think we can begin to decide that swarms should have more ammo capacity but less damage to compensate for the guided aspects, etc.

But if we were to nerf swarms right now there'd be too much forum rage and vehicles would just start overrunning maps.