It's intentional. The safe zone in the middle was added as an alternative to having to jump around in circles to get past it.

To expand, standing in the middle prior to this patch would pretty much instakill you. They are still powerful, but require a bit more finesse to be deployed properly.

honestly i think a smidge longer on the lazer nade would benefit it as right now with all its weeknesses i think ali8ttle more staying power would help not much just a tweak.

also the ability to stand on it because that would be fucking awesome. :D

I think it's fine as is. Although I found the ability to stand on it when it was broke in beta pretty awesome. Could throw it up in the air and then rocket jump on it. Would ruin the point of the safe zone though.

The problem with the center damage is it becomes a single point extended damage nade instead of a nade with moving lasers as it was intended. In practice the lasers weren't being used at all, but rather the the nade would go on the flag or button or a choke point, and the center would be what does the damage. Combine this with the duration of the nade, and you can do things like laser the flag, suicide, laser the flag, suicide, and so on. It was pretty effective and not at all fun or interactive or as intended. With the center damage free the soldier has to use the moving lasers instead of the center; it's no longer a single point damage grenade.

If you're having trouble making use of lasers I would suggest using them in combination with rockets. It's much harder to dodge rockets with the lasers spinning around, so your chances of hitting prediction shots increases hugely. It's not apparent by "number of laser nade kills" on the scoreboard, but frankly that's irrelevant.

That sounds awesome, bring this back...it would open a whole new world of trick map possibilities.