To be fair, there haven’t been very many metas where a pulse rifles haven’t either been second place or top of the lineup. They aren’t the best guns in PvP, but they are the best overall. Good range, good damage, good stability chance, and usually a decent array of perks. They have more aim forgiveness than a scout or hand cannon, less on the dot aiming than an AR, and no ammo requirements. They aren’t on top of everything, per se, but they have enough positives to them that knocking them out of contention in the meta is hard. And balancing them is nearly impossible: they are and generally have been in a great place for performance. Bumping them up at all will make them dominant, bumping them down at all will make them no longer compete. The other weapon classes need some adjustments to make sure they are as functional as pulses, IMO, and this is coming from someone that has always used pulses or hand cannons.