I will say on my current testing with the nerfed EM rifle that it has not been severely nerfed if you have any skill with aiming. It's now just like the longarms or, more accurately, the railgun.
If you think that it's useless because it doesn't auto-aim and has a 10% lower high damage chance, you are completely wrong. In some situations (say against a stealth mech next to a non-stealth mech) the lack of aim assist makes it even MORE powerful.
Yes, they still hit hard, PC users can sure hit easily with it, mobile does require some help. If I was going to do a slow fire range weapon I'd use railgun, the auto lock was the gimmick for em rifle, now it's a slower firing, barely harder hitting, visual railgun instead of something unique. Test all you want but you're not using the info that makes the em less wielding, cover shooting couldn't be countered because you couldn't aim correct, balancing the weapon. Your tests don't factor in the loss of overall control needed for close ranged targets to even hit them with the delay to shoot. Testing for a skill based weapon when the meta isn't skill based is absurd, everything outside of snipers had autolock, meaning the one set on niche weapons in the meta, tracking of some kind. I've got railgun and em rifle, I liked the unique use of each but they aren't unique anymore which sucks.