In Infinite we were given two attempts at a plasma-based precision rifle. The medium ranged Pulse Carbine, and the long range Stalker Rifle. And while the Pulse Carbine is an utter failure outside of Campaign, where it is actually pretty cool. The Stalker actually turned out to be a very effective weapon, but failed to actually function recognizably as a plasma weapon, instead basically just being reskin of the Light Rifle, without the unscoped fire mode.
I think the Pulse Carbine can be tweaked in a way that is way more satisfying for anyone who really wants the series to have a good Plasma spin on the precision weapon archetype. But I actually think the Stalker should literally just be reskinned, renamed, and replaced entirely with the Needle Rifle. Tack on a Supercombines if 5 shots hit, and a traditional reload style, and literally nothing else about the weapon would need to change.
As for how the Pulse Carbine can be tweaked. Speed up the projectiles to something a just a little slower than Halo 3’s BR, tweak bloom so it fully resets between bursts, completely remove the tracking, and finally replace the 4 shot bursts, with 6 shot ones that fire in the same amount of time (damage tweaked so that it still does the same total damage per burst).
The result here should be a weapon that is capable, in good hands, of dishing out real hurt at mid-long range, though is more effective that far away for body-shotting a player down, or supporting your team with a full on one-burst shield strip, than actually trying to 2-burst with precision damage. Commandos, BRs, Stalkers, and even Sidekicks will likely beat you 1v1 here thanks to their ability to get a clean headshot farther away, provided they land the headshot. But it would be an actual contender as you close the gap and start actually being able to consistently land those 2 burst kills.
If you really want to keep the current tracking-style of Pulse Carbine in the game, just don’t change the Rapid-Fire variant. As it stands right now the Rapid-Fire Pulse Carbine is actually pretty lit. So if this change was only made to the regular version, we would lose one utter failure of a weapon, get to keep the objectively better balanced version of it, and get another objectively better weapon with its own unique sandbox elements out of the deal.