OP-ness has been resolved in the past by increasing PS, lets add about 400ps to them. Since the issue is mostly PS based.
They changed the tier of items before so it is not like it is unprecedented. Items like the jawbreaker, piercers etc were changed to specials. They can leave the weapons as is and change them to relics or give it massive massive nerfs and keep it’s legendary status for any resemblance of balance. Can’t be no baby step nerfs with this, it is all or nothing with this weapon and to think it has already been nerfed and was even more op than what it is currently is absolutely ridiculous. Nerfing the photon a little bit lets say down to 20% can help too.
I personally think it’s the high boosting bonuses on top of the heating effect that makes the lasers in general op. The original Aroura laser only has the heating effect and you don’t see as many people complain about those.
You get a big bonus from that cab though.
Nothing compared to the Photon Hertz, getting the charges on the Catalina is actually super hard for Athenas
It’s still large damage increase. Do we have an exact calc in mathematical order for how they do the dmg for these laser heating weapons? Most of the ones that we say are op have this huge blast dmg increase at the end. Like the destructors are 800% more damage. That’s a huge amount of increase.
I really think they double dished out rewards on some of these…
Retchers also take a bit more skill with moving targets & plus distance factor. They are super strong also but they are far from perfectly accurate too. Plus they need cooler / radiator and ammo boxes.
Where you point the Athena it shoots right where ya aim. It feels like a starwars weapon 
Yeah Destructors hurt lots too, and can rip you a new one also. Also have to hold your aim much longer too and they are much easier to blast off then the Athena. An Destructors range I pretty sure is way less then Athena. Also there recharge time.
Testing some weapons is eye-opening. I remember testing unfused release Parsers, it was bonkers.
Almost like letting certain types of weapons be hitscan is a bit broken…