Well, the thing is they wanted to make pulse rifles competitive against all weapon types, including scouts. Though, due to flinch mechanics, the long damage falloff allows pulse rifles to be more consistently effective at scout range than scout rifles are. The inate flinch of being hit by 3 rounds is bad enough, add hcr, and scout rifles become useless. The only two scouts that are really working in pvp right now are Mida/distant star, and JR. I don't think that pulse rifles need a nerf, I think it's more that scouts need to be reimagined for pvp so that they more adequately match the pulse rifle. So here's a controversial pov....This game should have only had 3 primaries... Or else abandoned there being "special" and "primary" weapons and worked on just trying to make all non heavy weapons balnced to each other... There are ways of doing this... But for current system, just 3 primary weapons would have allowed a real sense of balance. Hand cannons for point blank to mid close range, AR for mid close, to mid long, and scout rifles for mid long to long. Autorifles compete okay with cand cannons at very close range but patience under fire rewards the hand cannon. To compete with the scout rifle at long range, the AR is equipped with focus fire, allowing to fire higher impact rounds at longer range at a cost to fire rate. To allow Scouts to compete up closer to the mid or close range, the scout could be equipped with burst fire, allowing a set number of rounds to be fired with each pull of the trigger at higher fire rate, penalty to range and stability. By very clearly carving out the intended use of each weapon, you can balance them very easily... But as it stands, having four different weapon types, each with multiple archetypes of varying impact and stability and rate of fire, you quickly reach a position where effectively balancing all, or frankly any of these weapons becomes impossible. As a result, we are forced to rely on enforced "meta"s. You cannot balance all weapons, so you just create one with a clear advantage