Kinetic weapons as a whole have fallen behind every dmg type and almost aren't even considered if there's nothing buffing it in the artifact or a super synergistic roll like rewind/tremors. Low dmg is a start, they don't have many kinetic centered perks (till EOF the only kinetic dmg perks we had was Kinetic tremors and Fire-fly technically), they also have 0 champion stunning options outside of the artifact, and lastly we JUST got our first legendary kinetic weapon. A way to make them equally viable is to give a small flat dmg buff, give kinetic tremors overload stunning capabilities, make the disorient debuff on par with blind and stuns unstoppables, and adhesive ordinance benefit anti barrier the same way armor piercing rounds does (another 5-10% dmg buff to shields/barriers). Any of those could work honestly. For gear however why haven't we gotten WAY more kinetic heavies, a rocket/grenade launcher or even an LMG (not sweet business) could open a LOT of doors for possibilities like new heavy archetypes that could be brought about by Tex-Mechanica, Hakke, even Ada (since shes's back to handling weapons now)