​Figured after seeing so many posts with the same problems i had. 

To fix stutter, freezing, crashing, and massive FPS drops after 4.1 patch and optional 4k texture pack...Delete the game...reboot your pc... then reinstall game.

 The game was absolutely unplayable for me before. My thermals went down, stutter was gone, resolution back to 4k, the the psychotic fps drops have stopped.

 Bolter balancing. For those who are not aware.. the bolters are difficult to balance because multiple classes have access to certain ones. If you balance them to one class, another class could break the whole meta with it. For example take the stalker bolt rifle. I believe the sniper and the tactical get access to it. In the snipers hands, i believe that it takes 5 headshot to kill a majoris enemy. In tactical hands it takes nearly the whole magazine. Seeing as the regular bolt sniper can headshot an enemy in 4 (i believe) with the sniper.. to make the stalker stronger, it would invalidate the bolt sniper completely as the stalker has faster fire rate and more ammo. However buffing it would make it work better for the tactical. 

Now that the explanation for the difficulty the devs are facing is out of the way. Here is my suggestion to the devs. 

Bolters fire mini rockets... according to the lore.. they are explosive at close range (as there is more propellant left in the shell) and are armor piercing at range (as shell has achieved its max velocity). Make all the bolters do significantly increased headshot damage but add a range component to it. If the enemies are at mid range the headshot bonus is decrease. However at close range the rounds are explosive and hit one "cell" around the target. You'll have to play with the damage, but 10-25% would make the auto bolt weapons much better, as they are not very accurate and make them more viable when getting overrun. You might actually have to lower their damage a bit. The result to this would make the Bolter weapons more powerful and useful in the thick of the swarms... but also reward technical play. These changes would introduce a need to be aware of range, enemy armor (majoris and above have some damage resistance i believe), and ammo consumption (because if you are about to spray a bunch of explosive bullets... you'll want to hit as many mobs as possible). This would also allow the devs to balance the different types of bolter weapons without messing with their damage. For example you could balance the stalker bolt by making it hit its peak armor penetration and head shot damage at mid range unlike the full bolt sniper which could hit harder at longer range.  Same for pistol weapons (that for some reason do more damage then nearly all the bolt weapons).  You could make the bolt pistols ideal range be close range and do less explosive damage. 

What i believe would be the result of these change would be full auto weapons would reward spay and pray close range fighting and reward accuracy(which is difficult with some of their spreads) at longer ranges.  More single shot or slower semi auto weapons would reward playing to their ranges.  You'd do more damage but be forced to switch weapons once in the thick of it.  I feel this would make bolter play much more technical but reward skill.  On lower difficulties the spray and pray mentality would work fine.  On higher difficulties the spray and pray would only work on mobs.  You would still have to be more technical to take out majoris and above as they would eat all your ammo.  Would also help with zoanthropes since they will force you to be at range... so players would hit them harder at distance.

What do you all think?

I never tried the stalker bolter but why should sniper be able to kill with 4-5 shots while tactical needs whole magizine when the sniper has only +10% headshot damage?

That makes no sense. I believe you, that is not my point. The question is how can this be? This sounds like a bug on either of the two.

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a_user wrote:

I never tried the stalker bolter but why should sniper be able to kill with 4-5 shots while tactical needs whole magizine when the sniper has only +10% headshot damage?

That makes no sense. I believe you, that is not my point. The question is how can this be? This sounds like a bug on either of the two.

My testing with this was down when i was leveling the stalker pre patch 3.0  I had a team with me watching the whole thing.  For some reason the ai for the majoris didnt do anything other then dodge side to at the range i was engaging so i was able to line the shots up pretty consistently.  My stalker weapon was artificer tier.  We were all shaking our heads.  In the hands of a sniper.. it was significantly better for the head shots

Bolters are still not as great as they should be lore wise.  The recent buff is barely noticable.  Please buff them sum more devs!  The game has so many enemies anyway and the little ones should pop much easier.