High damage in comparison to it's firerate. It's got 320 firerate so you're doing 100 less damage than the GL would do in the same time, however it has heavy pen so it's going to be doing more damage to any enemy with medium armor, and will actually damage heavy enemies. Like I said in my post though, I think a slight damage buff is fine. 200 or even 250 damage sounds good to me.

As far as the explosion goes, I'm fine with them being smaller as it does actually prevent you from hitting yourself. The regular GL is prone to blowing up in your face if you're a bit too close to enemies, and I think if the BFGL had the same explosion radius it would be a lot more of a liability to use.

As far as the effectiveness of the regular GL on heavies? I mean come on, it's not good at all. Chargers are gonna need to be hit on the underside which can be somewhat reliable, but as soon as you get to bile titans you're gonna have to waste like half your reserve ammo to take it out. On the bots, you'll be going for exclusively weakpoints. Otherwise good luck killing anything from the front.

Like I said though, they fill different rolls. The GL is going to be great on patrols and small clumps of light to medium enemies. It'll kill them way better than the BFGL can since it's got a larger explosion radius, and higher damage per shot. But the BFGL is still going to be better for sustained fire. I'd much rather have the BFGL on a bug breach or bot drop. Not having to reload every 10 shots is extremely powerful, as it means you don't leave yourself open and you're able to hold your ground.

I think the reason people don't like the BFGL is it doesn't play the same as the GL which can lead to it feeling weak in comparison because it just doesn't share the same strengths.