I'm looking at the official forums and damn, vanu can't stop complaining about their pistol. Charge up lasher type area damage shot? Complain until it gets changed to a charged burst mode (because the lasher and ppa are so terrible.) Then complain even more and suggest really outrageous things like:
They should make the charge functionality do something special that is worth the time spent charging, or remove it entirely.
My ideas for a decent charge-up mechanic would be (pick one): overvoltage shot that kills the enemy shields completely but does no damage to health [or] superheated shot that is always an instant kill if it hits the head, but has slower bullet speed [or] electro-paralyzer shot that nails the enemy in place, disabling movement (but not rotation) for 2 seconds. Of course the charge-up time and potentially a cooldown after firing a charged shot would need to be adjusted/added based on the power of these effects.
It's silly because that guy is asking for a pistol that either does 500 damage with the first (single) shot, has the effect of an emp grenade, a 'root spell' from fantasy games, or a close range sniper rifle.
Charge mechanics aren't necessarily bad; in fact they can be very good if the shot is powerful. A good example of this is back in the old Legends of Might and Magic game. One of the cheaper purchaseable weapons with ingame gold was the charge rod. At full charge it did area damage and one direct hit killed all but the heaviest armored players. The charge could be held indefinitely and it was blatantly overpowered. It was still very strong after the charge could not be held indefinitely as you could pop out and blast that charge down a narrow hallway.
Basically if the charge shot is too strong, it makes the weapon better than all alternatives. As much as the VS love their stronger weapons, and who can blame them, weapons like this really need to be balanced carefully and I for one am glad to see they may be erroring on the side of caution.