So, now that we've all had some time to test out the new weapon stats, what are people's thoughts? Prior to the update, there was a broad consensus that high-ROF was king (a consensus I largely agreed with). Do people think this has changed?
My feelings, having done some testing with the new weapons;
1) Against novices, high-damage, low ROF weapons and high-ROF, low Damage weapons seem pretty pleasingly balanced. Sally Sniper with her long-las kills a Traitor Guardsmens with every hit while Dan Desperado sometimes takes out two at a time with his trust paired Autopistols, but sometimes doesn't kill any. It all seems pretty satisfactory.
2) Against Elites, the serious firepower like Plasma Guns and Meltaguns are now beefy enough to cause serious pain on the first hit, tending quickly towards death on later hits. High ROF, as ever, is effective at whittling them down, one wound at a time, while Bolt weapons and Sniper Rifles having Tearing and Vengeful respectively to increase the likelihood of taking them out in a single Critical Hit. However, against Elites, the long-las seems a little lack-luster; it doesn't do enough extra damage to do horrific wound effects, it doesn't have anything to improve its odds of Critting and it doesn't have the rate of fire to whittle Elites down. The Sniper Rifle, by contrast, seems far too good against Elites, having a better than 50/50 chance of one-shotting them every time it scored a hit.
3) Against Masters, only weight of fire will do the trick, but that's probably OK because Masters will have Defences formidable enough that you'll need the high-damage weapons to whittle them down. They're also likely to do enough Evading that the high DoS results that make high ROF weapons so good are less frequent.
I think, for the most part, I feel the weapon-balance is much better now.
However, one new problem that seems to have cropped is the long-las and the Sniper Rifle. The Long-las kicks all kinds of ass against novices and becomes much less useful against Elites. The Sniper Rifle is actually worse than the long-las against novices, but murders Elites. I think a happy medium would be to have both sniper weapons as d10+(something between 7 and 10, once Overcharge is included for the long-las) weapons with Vengeful. There are a couple of ways to distinguish the two; one can have higher damage and the other a better Vengeful or the Sniper Rifle could simply have a higher damage, since it's a rarer weapon and needs to be braced. In any event, I think these two pretty similar weapons should probably work more similarly.
As a more minor point, the Bolt Pistol is still a bit lacklustre compared to the other bolt weapons and even to the Autopistol (especially if the Autopistol is loaded with fragmentation bullets). I think it probably should have the lower damage or the lower rate of fire compared to the bolter, not both.