OH! don even get me started on regular items i believe that legendaries should not be more than 100% better than their purple counter parts but that aside there is massive imbalances
for example:
1.Pistols: COV outperform other repeaters by a mile vladof has either too low of a damage or too low of fire rate to match their cov counterparts dahl is offset by burst fire and semi auto that is not representative of actual fire rate you can use their full autos struggle to reach above 4 bullets per second. meanwhile jacobs mashers and cov x2 x3 pistols are ahead of the field and regular jacobs psitol does more damage per shot than other non elemental non jackobs snipers. and then there is torgue and tediore… generally all pistols outside of cov and jacobs and certainv ladofs (big mag abysmal dmg) need magazine size buff especially dahl maliwan and torgue, maliwan is solid middle ground but nothing remotely as pwoerful as hellshock. make torgue match jacobs in performance, make dahl vladof and maliwan match cov out of these i think maliwan is closest to good spot but melters are bad atomizers and blasters just need mag size, which is general trend with pistols. needs about 1500 or even same as SMGs.
2.snipers as a general class need i say more than non elemental jacobs pistol with ammo pool of 1000 out damages every manufacturer aside from jacobs in non elemental variation? all snipers including jacobs snipers need a hefty buff further more hyperion and jacobs require fire rate increase. maliwans burst needs tighter spread on particle rifles and proton rifle needs better damage since it’s splash is not very “realistically” useful. sniping generally is very hard in this bl game as A.I is scripted to move and hide much more than in previous games and also they are way more animated with both body and head movements. make snipers better than jacobs pistols for lord’s sake. general trend is bigger damage and fire rate for some. proportional to ammo pool snipers need to hit much harder than pistols.
3.SMG’s these have the best parity across the board with DAHL and maliwan being ahead of hyperion. once again hyperion needs bigger fire rates to match competition, for maliwan nebula needs fire rate buff and pulsar needs recoil reduction. AS to dahls low mag size high fire rate variants outperform other options and generally i feel like wolfhound is ahead of the field. as general address low performers and bring them in line with legendaries.
4.Rocket launchers, they are mostly great for torgue and cov with vladof being terribly behind, adjust vladof to match peers and upscale them to match the game’s difficulty. torgue stickies need a closer look one’s that consume more than 1 ammo are usually worse option which they should not be.
5.AR’s these are far behind top performers of other gun classes outside of few exceptions like atals Q (should consume 2 ammo per shot) and N systems and notably dahl PUMA’s , vladof’s that should be shining in this department are only decent if you find shotgun or double barrel attachment, and even then they eat too much ammo for their dmg output. jacob’s are far behind their pistol and behind their sniper counter parts even the masher variants of repeater. AS a class overall i can see lack of fire rate in a lot of them, jacobs needs mag size and dmg buff. dahl needs fire rate, vladof needs more fire rate and dmg, COV are okay if you find x2 x3 variants but generall they need damage buff. Torgue stands apart here if you get enough stickies it gets ridiculous but it is slower than their shotgun capabilities. These AR’s are generally good maybe torgue shall overall do more splash/main bullet damage to discourage always using sticky mode.
6.Shotguns these are some of the best and most balanced gun class in game per manufacturer. how ever for jacobs and torgue high pallet count variants far outperform medium and low pallet count counterparts and for maliwan terminator is ahead of shockwave and cyclotron. i think key here is to speed up some of the maliwans and also make spread wider for torgue and jacobs, all these shotguns are way too accurate to ever consider low pallet count variants. only one better off with small pallet count is again terminator until you get mag size boosts in end game.
i could be writing all day naming guns name by name but i am still not well aware of parts and differences especially for vladof. Vladof has been overall best manufacturer in bl2 but this game i practically never find using anything but underbarrel shotguns and their OP legendaries n AR department. there is something missing with vladof in everything they manufacture, rockets are weak outside of few mortars and big boy rocket attachments, their AR’s are not the best dps machines, their pistols are a bland nerf gun hoses or half dps of COV counterparts. their snipers are also bold average but then again sniper are terribly lacking in this game and vladof is definitely better than hyperion.