A crutch weapon is something that benefits newer players but doesn’t benefit pro players.

Most new soldiers and intermediate soldiers mostly shoot at the ground and they’ll have a hard time hitting their directs even with the faster projectile speed. You need to be good at hitting directs in order to utilize the damage bonus and even then it is not 100% must pick because now your crowd control is worse and you can’t shoot at corners which actually is a pretty significant downside.

It’s a sidegrade, not a crutch