That's fine if the profit is not so severe that the other team can find themselves 30 kills down, trapped inside their base with little to no retort. The punishment for not acquiring the Laser was far too steep. The weapon in and of itself is unique in the Halo sandbox in that it not only grants you power weapon advantage (at least five easy kills if you hit all your shots) but layers near exclusive access to the vehicle sandbox on top of that.
Your Pit analogy doesn't work either. There is a difference between a team securing ALL the power weapons on a map as opposed to securing one Laser. One team holding the power weapons on the Pit doesn't preclude the other team using newly spawned power weapons; the Laser entirely prevents the opposing team even using their base spawn vehicles, so rapid and effective it is in obliterating them.
You claim that people who decry the Laser's power only do so because they want to go on easy vehicle rampages yet the very existence of the weapon allows teams to do just that while the other team cannot even use their own vehicles to try and combat them.
The analogy does work for what it was... the idea being discussed was a team having the laser AND vehicles... such that they essentially have ALL the powerful items, and that leading to dominating the the other team... and THAT being unbalanced because of how powerful the laser was. Comparing it to a team on The Pit with all the power weapons is directly analogous in the vein it was discussed... that the weapons were won or lost based on the merits of the team and that had nothing to do with the weapons themselves.
To use your words...
One team holding the vehicles and the laser doesn't preclude the other team using newly spawned power weapons either.
I'm not sure how it's possible people miss what I'm saying, since I've repeated it so many times... but comments like the above seem to suggest they are not... so here:
The laser had 5 shots, correct? That's a kill on a tank, a wraith, and a hog... or 5 infantry kills (misapplied but possible). However you mix and match... and say the respawn on Valhalla was 180s... interestingly they spawned Wraiths at 180s and Warthogs at 90s... but I digress a bit...
So - take that laser and place 3 shots in it, and have it spawn every 240s and spawn it by the antenna rather than top of the hill... keep the Wraith at 180 and increase the hog to 120... what does that then look like?
Now - one has a powerful weapon to fight over, that's worth having, that cannot be wasted on infantry lest one waste shots that would end a vehicle, and it is not always on the map and in play. It means that both teams will in all probability have vehicle on vehicle combat during multiple phases of the game. It means the other "power weapons" for infantry to use against vehicles are more important as well. It also means teams will have to shift in order to control the next spawn and cannot as easily sit on top and automatically secure the laser.
My point remains the same... it's not the power of the weapon that's a problem and those that typically hate on it suggest that it is. All of the support given for why it is bad centers around it's power and how easy it is to gain kills with it. The only issues that weapon had were in its frequency of spawn, location of spawn, and amount of ammo.
