One idea that I liked (and this is based off an old Maxter suggestion, iirc) was that the skybolt would act as a 'Interrupt'. Basically if you successfully hit an opponent, the opponent would be unable to fire his weapon, activate his overdrive ability, or be knocked out of his overdrive if he had it activated when hit for a brief amount of time (approximately 2-4 seconds).
This would increase the utility of the weapon for both offensive and defensive scenarios. Offensive use could be using the weapon to interrupt Regen players active regeneration, hitting a HoF with it to take down their active shield, etc. Defensive use could be hitting a capper that's near the flag stand, messing up their chance to use their respective overdrive (be it warp, stream, what have you.)
This change would also level the playing field against chaingun wielding players. A skillful skybolt player could dramatically lower the dps of the chaingun just by being accurate with their own weapon. As the chaingun relies mostly on its high rate of fire and not individual strength, being 'interrupted' would really impact them, and switching to a weapon with a lower rate of fire, but more powerful projectile might be a better choice to combat their enemy (read Blaster or RL).
I would also recommend that the length of the interrupt be based on the armour type that the player is wearing. Say, a Outrider would receive the maximum amount of 'interrupt' at 3 seconds, a Raider would receive an 'interrupt' of 2 seconds, and a Sentinel receiving an 'interrupt' of 1 second. The reasoning being to allow the slower moving armour types at defending themselves from the Skybolt utility (because they're likely to take more hits) with the fictional reasoning being that "due to the thickness/strength of the armour, the concussive blast of the Skybolt is less jarring."