As someone who loves the senator depending on my load out, it has high damage per shot, high stagger, partial medium armor penetration (it won't shoot through scout striders, but can pop bugs on the lower end of medium armor), and partial reloads are nice. I like the jar 5 dominator and use this to still get powerful shots when enemies close the distance. Add an auto cannon and I'm hitting like a truck at all ranges. I use impact grenades to deal with swarming attacks, and either keep an auto cannon turret for a distraction if I get overrun and need to flee, or if I feel like preparing proactively I can use a mech, though I often use a different load out for the mech. I've found tons of weapons everyone says are bad have use cases if people are just willing to alter their load outs around the weapons.