That's no longer the case. As someone already said, looks like xp numbers were tuned quite a bit. I did half the quests for Institute already, did like 40% of Expedition and still 29 lvl on classic/dom. It's faster progression than oddity yes but by narrow margin.
That was me, and it does seem to have been tuned. I'm on the same track. I imagine I'll have hit level 30 very shortly before there's virtually no content remaining before DC. The real issue remains that it's not terribly difficult to hit 12 prior to Depot A.
On a different note, I finally understand why people are ho-hum on most of the special ammunition types.
The 5mm shock and 9mm acid special rounds simply add more damage per round—a straight upgrade to standard ammo—except that JHP and W2C will always be better versus lightly and heavily armored targets, respectively. Special ammo is also even more precious than W2C and JHP. Furthermore, if you're fighting trash mobs, there's no sense in wasting special ammo on them. That leaves these special ammo types with one true niche that I can see: ablating energy shields more quickly if you lack EMP capability or your EMP is on cooldown. I suppose robots are weak versus electricity and various things are weak to acid, but is that enough to be superior to W2C or JHP?
The 7.62mm ammo is somewhat pointless unless you also have synergy with melee plus Eviscerate and/or Taste for Blood; their residual damage over time doesn't lend itself to focus-firing one enemy at a time. Perhaps they'd be good for Dominating bosses. Micro-shrapnel rounds also require an entire advanced repair kit's worth of metal scrap per 35.
The 8.6mm incendiary rounds deal fairly minor residual damage, but can cause ignition-induced panic potentially affecting multiple targets, which makes them the VIP of special ammo types. They truly offer something above and beyond straight damage, and unlike micro-shrapnel rounds, they're comparatively easy and cheap to craft.
I have no experience with 12.7mm contaminated, but I would guess that the straight damage it adds is, as with the smaller-caliber rounds, not enough to compensate for what JHP or W2C could do. Still, those clouds of gas could be slightly handy. However, although you can obtain dozens of barrels of toxic waste over the course of a long playthrough, they're rare enough that this is still one of the most (if not the most) precious special ammo crafting recipes in the game.
