Okay, so the stats proposed by the devs of this item, in case you aren't aware, are as follows:

Positives:

Damage scales up with distance, for a maximum of 20% extra damage
Mini-crits on cloaked players

Negatives:

-50% damage penalty
No random critical hits
-82% max secondary ammo on wearer (200 > 36 shots reserved)
(Not listed, but kind of self-evident) -50% clip size (12 > 6 shots per clip)

I have some concerns about these. First of all, the clip size and max secondary ammo are drastically reduced. This means ammo management will be especially harder, unless you add a firing speed penalty too. But I'm worried that this might make the weapon pitifully weak, as it already has a -50% damage penalty, and from what I can tell, can only be scaled up to -30% less damage. Unless I read the stats wrong, and it instead scales up to normal Pistol damage, and keeps increasing to 20% more damage than the stock Pistol can deal. But here's another question, assuming that's the case. Would it be 20% more damage than the Pistol can do at a max (i.e. Point Blank), or is it 20% more damage than the Pistol can do if fired at an enemy of the same distance away? If it's the latter, then the ammo and firing speed problem might be too crippling for the niche situation that the weapon is useful, especially because I don't see any '+X% more accurate' buffs, indicating this thing will have Pistol accuracy, which I remind readers is notoriously poor, meaning situations that it WOULD be useful are instantly negated by the fact that most-all of your shots will most likely miss at med-long ranges. And because of the low total ammo count, you won't be able to just keep firing until you hit them and they die.

Here are some of MY proposed new stats instead:

Positives:

Damage scales up with distance, with a maximum of +20% more damage than the stock Pistol point-blank
Mini-crits cloaked targets and targets at long range (to further strengthen the damage scaling and also to negate damage falloff)
+30% more accurate

Negatives:

-30% less damage than the stock Pistol at close ranges
No random critical hits
-50% clip size (12 > 6 shots per clip)
-82% max secondary ammo (200 > 36 shots in reserve)
-100% slower firing speed (0.17 > 0.34 seconds between each shot) (Not just to balance out the positives, but also to act as a sort-of positive by making sure it takes longer to run out of ammo)

Do these new stats balance the weapon completely? I have no idea. Are they more balanced than the original stats? Well, I sure think so, at least. Give me your thoughts and opinions on the matter, such as whether you agree with me or not. And if not, why not share your OWN stats as well? You may have noticed that a lot of my proposed stats borrow from the original. That's because I like the concept of a more long-range focused weapon for the Engineer, besides the Rescue Ranger, Wrangler or stock Pistol. A weapon more dedicated to that specific firing line I think would be especially helpful for Engineers trying to fend off Snipers trying to get to a specific building location, or a weapon to check for any Spies trying to cloak past, besides the Short Circuit, or more rarely, the Southern Hospitality. I also tried making them more clear as to give an idea as to what it can do, when, and how. I felt the original stats were simply too vague to keep them as they were.