​About the "prestige perks being too weak" part - I feel like the key point that leads to this sentiment is that the core perks themselves have a lot of issues, which led people to expect the prestige perks to fix them.


 For example:


 - Perks tied to specific weapon types are not a choice, but are dictated by the weapon. 

"Choice" perks of this type might as well be a single perk that provides different bonuses based on the weapon, effectively leaving several spots in the perk tree unoccupied. This is true for all ranged-centric classes.


 - Some perk builds take a lot more effort to use to any effect, while taking up a big opportinuty cost in terms of perks. Basically higher effort, same reward. 

Namely Jump Pack Dash build for Assault, which feels unnecessary clunky due to how dodge detection works in the game and how often (or rare) do the opportunities to pull it off emerge during gameplay. 

Imo the whole perk set related to jump pack dash should be reworked to include the jump pack dash as baseline dodge for Assault (even if it is shorter range than currently, up to balancing) and build the rest of the perks around that, like giving the jump pack dash some interaction with melee weapons for lvl 25 (special attacks at the tail end of the dash? melee "gun strikes"?).


 - Classes are poorly balanced in terms of survivability. 

Sure the classes that lack it get something in return, but in the absolute majority of cases survivability some classes get is a much better tool. For example mobility is much less reliable for survival on Absolute, compared to being able to block ranged attacks with a shield.


Addressing these points should fix the perception of the perks in general, which in turn frees prestige perks to be what they're currently designed to be - a "cherry on top", instead of how a lot of players hoped they'd be solving existing perk issues.