I am also worried. Although the AP cost of the Spearhead is still the smallest, since we can only shoot twice per turn now with or without psi, Spearhead is not reduced to be on par with othe rifles (was there before the nerf), not slightly below, it is now completely wortless in comparison. Still shots twice with all the buffs, but deals considerably less damage due to the gun being weaker even with the same (lowest) caliber of bullets. So what's the point? It's weakness was the reason why it had that low AP cost, why should anyone use a Spearhead now that it shoots as much as any other rifle?
I mean what's the point in using Contraction and shooting the lowest caliber 7.62mm bullets with a rifle that has the lowest damage by far, minimizing the damage output as much as possible, when you can perform the same amount of attacks with the highest damage, so with a Rapid 12.7mm Corsair? Same two attacks per turn and in the end, all that matters is how many attacks you can pull off per round. Firing a Spearhead now costs nearly as much as shooting with a Reaper, but the latter not just have higher minimal base damage, but a huuuuge boost to crit damage too. So why would anyone bother with a Spearhead now?
With the previous AP cost of 24, having the specialized Temporal Acceleration allowed us to fire this gun EXACTLY 3 times with that 72 AP, now spending that 4 specialization point to that feat become really questionable as it doesn't affect your dps in any way with this rifle. You'll be shooting 2 times either way - the nerf of the rifle also indirectly made the Contraction spell itself kinda redundant too for snipers, so it's really hard to decide if it even worth to use psi at all now for characters with this weapon. Because other that that spell there's really not that much benefit to be had for all the losses involved for dipping into psi. Increment is still ok, but nowehere near validates the HP loss. And since Contraction has a negative effect after it's use, it is now prevented to be used consequently. So it doesn't matter how long is the reuse time, it a one spell per battle thing now and that reduces the usefulness of Increment too and the Temporal related feats. There's simply no reason to go psi after issuing the fatigue after-effects of Contraction. If there will be a fatigue state afterwards either way, then using psi is stupid. You get the same AP bonus with Adrenaline Shots and save a good deal of skill points, 25% HP and possibly several feat slots with specialization points. This update will only bring more pure psi-less characters, which is exactly the opposite of what it proclaims to accomplish. Nerf fireballs, forcefields and mind manipulation all you want, but Temporal school was exactly right - for the cost it took to have it.
For snipers, there were builds made from strong synergies directly connected to each other, between spells and equipment, even between spells and other spells, everything worked so well, one thing led to another, all were in connection like a delicate machinery. Now with altering a single cog, it all fell apart. One can only assume, that the devs simply overlooked this and failed to see the actual effects of their careless meddling and how deep the consequences can be. I sincerely hope they correct this later.
