My question is, a) why would plasma be as slow as it was, and
if it's that slow how does it keep it's trajectory for the entire length of the shot
I don't care for balancing out how a weapon works just because you need to for gameplay, if you are going to balance do it by making it harder to obtain or less cost and time effective to fire or some other variable outside of the guns actual abilities. I want guns to perform how we would expect them to, not be balanced out for the sake of gameplay.