4 AP shot turboplazma with low damage would allow cretion of builds with 13 AP which means "almost" three shots a turn but that kind of build would have to be sniperlike with low hp and resists which is huge handicap in closerange combat.
either tier 1 laser rifle (inferior in range to sniper rifle) or underpowered plasma rifle.
Laser Rifle is completely different weapon to Sniper Rifle, it's quite good kill weapon, but compared to Rocket Launcher it has no CC effect and it's completely dwarfed by huge random factor of critical hits.Plasma Rifle is basically the same, yet with shorter range and little less randomness.
Both weapons would be fine if the damage spread were less than 100-200%, for laser rifle it's not impossible to see 10-20 hits with correct build, as well as as high as 200, meaning the spread is 2000%, that is incredible number.
I think weapon balance is great as it is now. When i fight in hinkley for example, in huge teams, scenarios are a little bit same always: i could get killed by few bursts, or rockets == i could get killed by single insta shot of energy guys == i could get crippled by some sg sniper. After n battles you can see, that every group of players has smiliar chances in fight.
The point is, there are very few usable energy weapons.
Its problem of armor/crit hits balancing rather than pure damage of those weapons
The only exploit involved abusing your intelligence
The pulse rifle currently has penetrate perk btw.How about making the tbp a burst weapon? Its pretty hard to get across the fact that it fires faster without making it broken, but if you made it like a plasma combat shotgun 3 rounds in a straight line it would have a distinctive flavour whilst playing a different role to the current plasma rifle.