would people be ok with the medic's primaries trying to rival the crossbow by being better weapons with less utility? like as a hypothetical: if the medic had the shotgun as a primary (and no passive healing), would you use it? Would something at that level of practical DM be worth giving up utility for? I think that'd still be a hard call to make for a lot of players, and the shotgun is a pretty fuckin good gun, so its worth considering what exactly you'd need to actually do to the other medic primaries to make them worth using, because I don't think anyone is going to stop using the xbow as long as it has any of its 3 good attributes (ranged healing, 80 damage spam shots, ranged uber building). I also don't think most people are in the camp of saying that the xbow is bad for the game though either.
so yeah, maybe we should consider championing needle gun buffs rather than xbow nerfs, so that medic can have multiple actually interesting options rather than one that is insanely fun to use and play with and 3 that are boring as shit