Give Rifles Some Love?

[Xaruul]

So lately when trying to theory craft some builds, ive failed to make rifles feel good to use. Currently it feels like there is a very stream lined meta in weapon preference these days.( I.E use 2-H melee, or use Heavy weapons) otherwise the DPS required to make proper successful builds (not just a singular meta build) is difficult. I propose maybe rifles get a dps bump or make them higher in elemental proc chance. For example weapons like darksting assassin is fun to play in pve for its .4 speed but it pales in comparison to normal rifles and pretty much isnt worth it over all. Then rifles in general vs heavy weapons lets say, you can do everything save sniper shot from rifleman with a heavy weapon defeating any real desire to play rifles other than appearances. So in conclusion my ideas to make rifles a little more on par competitively for both pve and pvp... make the option for rifles to have really high elemental proc/penetration but lower range (lets say it scales.. 35m like darksting would have max elemental and really fast but low dmg per hit, 45m so under a carbine range would have .6 speed and medium elemental) then normal rifles ranges get bumped up to 80m (instead of 75 to compensate for server lag amongst players to server connections) giving an edge to rifles over a heavy weapon and add some more diversity to playing fields for both pve (elemental dmg on npcs) and pvp. Further more legendary rifles or future heroic rifles would have the option maybe as well for either increased range and normal stats or 64m with high elemental furthering the fact they are legendary.

[Rezerian]

Certainly agree rifles can use some love as well, although there is a few smuggler abilities I also saw unavailable to use while using a heavy weapon but your right in almost every way a heavy weapon is just better overall. It also shows as there are far more people rocking heavies than rifles.