I have to disagree, I find it much more balanced then swift is letting on. Sure the minigun is godly, but a good nade by a light allows for him to get cloak-owned. I also find the ion cannon to work much better at the beginning of a round, and it's also good if you can aim well(so I take minigun later). The rocket launcher owns hardcore, thank god it takes 14 seconds to reload, duck and cover! Swift you forgot to bitch about the spidermines, I mean you can't even shoot them and you've gotta run from em.
I would also have to say that light seems much better for punks and heavy much better for corps, defenders don't need speed attackers do! I've never even bothered with any other light gun than the shotgun because I usually just katana people, so I can't say much about them. I've never played medium either because heavy and light have always worked out so well for me(lol).
What I have noticed is that the team with the better players always seems to win, just like NS, which is in essence balance! I mean I was playing 10vs10 and most the people were basically "HOW DO I SHOT?" and not very good. One guy on the other team had very good aim and rarely missed with the ion cannon(jumping + strafing = lol netcode, YOU MISS ME!). Myself and this one other guy on punks always got us a win in under 20 minutes once we started working together, on corps they would never get the next spawn up from docks(minigun is awesome as a door defense, tough when you get six stun nades thrown at you though). Of course on corps the guy I teamed up with always went medium.
On punks it doesn't seem to matter as much if everyone dies, the worst that happens is you lose a spawnpoint. On corps if you all die, the punks get the next spawnpoint or they destroy the core. With an hour to play, it's real easy to take your time as punks and take down the corps all at the same time and hack the next spawn. On corps you need your guards and you need your ninjas to hassle their hackers/take back the spawn.