I'm still on team bolter
. Your per-full-ammo-load damage is through the roof, your per-magazine damage is frankly silly, every shot staggers (and damages) MULTIPLE enemies if you hit them with it, to the point that if you spray a 15-round mag into a horde you'll kill 15-20 targets and leave the rest stunned on the ground, single target fire lets you just wipe the floor with anything no matter how much armor it's wearing, and if you're in trouble or just get up relatively close to a tough target or boss you can just depress the giggle switch and watch your troubles disappear in a hail of minirockets and heretic-flavored shrapnel.
Plus, I love the feel of the bolter and its slow and authoritative reload animation and sound (admittedly mine has an absolutely garbage 27% reload rate which plays into the feel). Also thank goodness that I might not have to rack the bolt every time I arm the bolter...because that's not how guns work and it really bothers me, even if I do understand and agree with the idea that the bolter shouldn't be a fast weapon to draw.
And yeah, the bolter does struggle a bit, theoretically speaking, with hordes, but I mostly play Zealot right now and so I only use it on hordes when a teammate needs time to recover since, again, it will stagger/knock down everything in the horde with a good burst. Everything else is just heavy eviscerator melee.
I really like the idea that the plasma gun might become a more specialized antimateriel weapon that just wipes out single targets even behind cover but doesn't do as much to hordes. Hopefully they continue to lean more and more into differentiation rather than by-the-numbers balancing.