I generally like the current weapon balance. It allows a lot of viable builds. After having played the game with this patch for quite a while here's a rating of the current weapons ranging from 0 (absolutely useless) to 10 (absolutely overpowered) based on my guts. I won'm mention nor discuss weapons I think to be in the well balanced 4-6 area and elaborate the issues I've got with the other ones.
Harpoon ( 1 ):
broken mechanics - a pretty much useless weapon as it has always been since I've picked up the game. I can see some utility usage for it on a support Galleon but that's about it. Fix the physics for it already to unfold the potential this gun concept has got!
Flamethrower( 2-3 ):
Currently flames provide decent balloon damage, okayish hull damage (with max stacks), almost neglectable damage to engines and weapons and they can kick people off their guns, which can be useful. Flame intensive builds can be rendered useless with organized chemspray usage - that's a big and unique disadvantage. In general I consider the damage output of the flamer too low to compete with gatlings, mines or even carronades.
I think it might be a good idea to shift the role of the flamer a bit towards the disabling.
Smollets idea might be a good approach to step into this direction. Also it might be worth to consider increasing the flamers damage to engines and weapons while reducing the damage inflicted to the hull armor.
Light Carronade ( 3 ):
They are decent balloon poppers, okaish disablers (with heavy) and okaish hull strippers. I personally like carronades - they can do a lot of jobs, but unfortunatly barely any proper. When I think about which close range light weapon to use I'll much rather end up with the hull ripping gat or the mine-launcher as a serious disable weapon. I'd like to see this weapon outright buffed. A bit more flanchette damage to make it more useful for balloon popping ( as well as disabling and hull stripping to a lesser degree) should do the trick.
Light Flak( 3 ):
Arming time and a rather limited max. range significantly constrain the usefulness of this weapon significantly and in my opinion the damage output of this weapon rarely justifies these limitations. A spread reduction and increase of the max range (by 25-50%) would probably make this one more attractive in comparison to mortar, artemis and banshee.
Heavy Flak ( 3-4 ): I just consider it a bit underpowered since the lesmok nerf. It's a highly specialized weapon which requires a relatively high amount of teamwork to be useful in the first place. Imo It should be better at the job it's supposed to do.
Banshee ( 3-4 ):
Another one of these 'stuck in the middle' weapons. decent explosive damage + some fires for mid-close range. I use banshees occasionally but think artemises or mortars to be better replacements for it in most builds.
Artemis ( 8 ): powerful, pin point accurate disable power combined with okayish hull damage with an insanely wide field of operation and long range while not even having an arming time. We see them way to often these days. There are probably many approaches for a fix elaborated in one of the threads dedicated to this weapon already. Here are three ideas anyway: reduce the hull damage inflicted by this weapon or cut it entirely. This would force players to bring a true longrange explosive weapon (which should be the flak, imo). Also consider an arming time for it (600m-ish). This would make close range disablers (like carronades) more attractive. Last but not least drastically reducing the projectiles speed could make aiming with the artemis significantly harder - justifying the devastating effect their impact have.