As a whole I think 343 did a great job balancing weapons in this game. The AR is relevant again, the pistol is effective and there are no useless weapons in this game. Melees are not auto lock anymore either and you don’t have a ridicules lunge. People forget though Halo is not about and has never been “I win this fight because I have this weapon verse that weapon”. That’s COD where you see a Rock Paper Scissors game being played out with guns. Halo has been about having one multipurpose weapon that can be used at any range and compete with any weapon depending on the players skill. Halo CE=Pistol Halo 2-3=BR and Halo Reach and 4=DMR. Weapons are added to give slight advantage over the utility weapon but only in a key circumstances and are almost useless if they are used outside of their designated task/range. Power weapons are strong but can still be beat if they are used incorrectly or the user is outplayed and they are given limited ammo so that you cannot relied upon throughout the entire game. Other weapons are used to complement the utility weapon giving them small advantages in certain niche areas like having a shotgun for close quarters, or a Plasma Pistol to drop shields or disable vehicles. But at the end of the day Halo is and has always been dominated by a utility weapon which is maximized by the players individual skill.
The DMR is what everyone has asked for since Halo 2 as far as the utility weapon is considered. In Halo 2 people wanted a single fire weapon since burst weapons are more forgiving with misses and don’t require all shot to hit, in Halo 3 people wanted the BR to lose its spread to give more constancy in shots and in Reach people want the bloom to be gone since it lead to spamming and inconstant kill times. We got all the at with the DMR in halo 4 a constant, accurate and aim rewarding gun. The problem with Halo 4 though is that every gun has a ridicules amount of aim assist and bullet magnetism. I know it has the same amount of assist and magnetism as Halo 2 but it was a complaint and problem in that game as well. By adding the large amount of aim assist it lessens the value of the individuals aim(It is still a requirement) and make head shot weapons easier to use. Couple that with open maps and not getting knock out of scopes you have a faster average kill time over distance than any other halo game.
Aim assist need to be dropped across the board making weapons harder to kill with and widening the skill gap. Look at how easy it is to no scope with the Beam Rifle. Only a player with perfect aim should beat an AR close range with the DMR. 343 almost got the balancing perfect but didn’t drop the aim assist low enough. For example the BR at close to mid has a much larger amount of aim assist/bullet magnetism than any other rifle. Go play swat, it is almost impossible to miss with. To combat how easy the BR is to aim it was given one of the longest kill times. The DMR is harder to aim because it is not a burst weapon and has a lower amount of aim assist but will beat the BR depending on the persons ability to hit all their shots since it has a faster rate of fire. But because the amount of aim assist is so large even if it is lower than the BR’s the requirement of player individual ability to aim is not as important and the gap between the difficulty in aiming the BR and DMR is not that large.
I’m not saying everyone walks around five shoting because of how much aim assist/bullet magnetism there is in this game. I still miss at times and I see other people missing. But how often it occurs is what makes people think these guns are overpowered. The CE pistol is a perfect example of a balanced utility weapon. It only took 3 shots to kill someone and fired incredibly fast. What balanced it was that it was much harder to aim because of faster player movement speeds making strafing effective and low amount aim assist. People missed much more often in that game. The majority of the players couldn’t 3 shot consistently and the ones that could where given a deserving advantage over others.
Halo 4 cant have the low of a level of aim assist that Halo CE had because it is played online but it could be lower than what it is now. With the DMR requiring 5 shots instead of 3 it would also adds to the difficulty it takes to use. In order to drop the aim assist/bullet magnetism of the DMR though, you need to do that with every other weapon proportionally or the DMR will become useless. Fully auto guns will still be easier to use because they are full auto, their kill times are still quite fast and they are not head shot reliant. The BR will still have more aim assist than the other rifles but have an significantly longer kill time than most guns. Keeping the rate of fire and damage the DMR has while making it more difficult to aim will make it a gun that rewards people for having great aim with quick kill times and widens the skill gap.
To balance the Bolt Shot just remove it as a starting weapon. We had the same problem in Halo 3 when it first came out with the maulers. It seemed that on every map there where at least 4 and they respawned extremely quickly. People would just camp snipe tower on guardian or O3 or C3 on construct, crouching and duel wielding Maulers. Weapons that are OSK shouldn’t be so accessible let alone be allowed to be spawned with or they will be abused. Bungie updated all the maps lowering the number of maulers or out right removing them from maps and the issue went away. As a stand alone weapon the bolt shot isn’t over powered. It is weaker than the shotgun and scatter shot and it also has to charge, which can’t be held. Making the bolt shot an ordnance weapon on the map would balance it out.