Hi Kyp,
Thanks for the reply, and I understand that you put a lot of effort into balancing the game. This is definitely a huge achievement on your team to get the game to where it is today. I worked in programming for 8 years before switching to hardware, so I understand your concerns in making changes.
From my perspective, most of the needed balance is already in place for implementing the weapons change. Most of the good lv9 weapons are already marked as race-specific. Most race skills already aid the race's preferred weapon.
PW with lv9 beam will not get combat cloak, thus will never outdamage JD.
PW kiting with lv9 missile will be out of range for shield sap, inversion and gravity link, thus actually lowering damage output.
Even if the PW can use all lv9 weapon types, all the other classes will function just fine. You will always need TE for rally, hacking and suppression.
The point is, no one will be harmed by the changes.
As for raid difficulty balance, in all honesty the current raids are already on the easy side, everything dies if you throw enough PW at it. So ramp up the difficulty while giving more weapon choices will be quite fun.
The larger point is that it will take a lot of effort after reaching 150 to get the skill points and gear to max all 3 weapon types. Having big goals and working hard to achieve them is part of the enjoyment of MMO. Having big goals keeps people glued to each character longer and adds to enjoyment.
I will go read up on the dev documents you mentioned and report back.