In PVE there is no use for musket that isn’t accomplished in a better way by another weapon. Single target damage is surpassed by AOE and cleave abilities, when fighting bosses its better to use weapons that more effectively apply debuffs.
On the flip side, PVP, musket is the most broken weapon. It can effectively deal three shots in a fraction of time that doesn’t allow for a proper response. Shots from musket can achieve 5-6k in damage which means your health pool, 10-12k for most players, vanishes from existence before you can complete a potion animation or effectively dodge the incoming damage. This problem is amplified by things like mortal empowerment.
A decrease in reload time and removal of instant fire or reload mechanics should be considered, or at the very least reworked. This would still allow for muskets to deal high damage to single targets, the only thing its good at, and allow for players to respond to being shot from across the map.
The hit scan and lack of damage fall of should be considered also, these two things make it far to easy for musket users to sit far off on the battle field unchallenged.
Without range or mortal empowerment, the musket is relatively weak.
Go try the musket in arenas. You will likely just get slaughtered.
Shots from the musket do not hit for 5 to 6k without nearly full stacks of mortal empowerment or you are attacking ungeared players. A light armor target with 5 pieces of resilient will take about 3k headshots, medium will take about 2.2-2.5, and heavy will take 2k or less. Mortal empowerment is a major problem with the musket. A musket without mortal empowerment stacks cannot kill someone standing still in sacred ground.
The range might be toxic in OPR/wars. I don’t know. If ME was changed, you’d probably see less muskets over night because they won’t be nearly as effective.
If people still cannot handle the musket range, they probably should just cap the range of the musket (and bow) at 75m, which is 25m further than the fire staff, or cap the range at 50m the same distance as the FS. Then they should either change the musket’s abilities, so they work well in close range and/or buff the scaling on the damage attributes that 100 to 200 con builds are viable.
For PvE, I would just add +50%-100% headshot damage. It would allow for like 10k headshots, which would be useful in a few boss fights.