As someone who uses Gas extensively, if someone from DE wants to buff gas beyond its visual aspects I would suggest them to play to it's strengths which is being a specialized status effect.
Right now gas has 3 requirements:
- Armor strip.
- Grouping
-Steady (ideally AOE) application of gas across those who are grouped to reach the cap
This is also accompanied by multiplicative gun CO so that the damage dealt to the previous enemy can be stored as a gas cloud.
My suggestion would be just let gas "spread it's status" upto, say, twice. Once per damage tick. Keep the gas status cap upto 10 but give it higher range at base. While the above mentioned grouping + armor strip combo gets a decent buff I think it's fair because you are letting go of both toxin and heat, which are some very important base elements.
My actual idea behind the change is to have it carve out a new niche for single target high damage guns who can now spread their damage around through gas itself. This should open up more specialized gas builds.
Again, I might just be wrong and this might be a terrible idea >.> But I feel gas a few changes away from actually being great. If anything I would at least love some increased duration for clouds after death