Am I missing something or are marksman rifles just worse assault rifles?

As someone who has mostly mained recon the SVD feels terrible to use compared to any AR I've looted with half decent mods. It's extremely long and cumbersome in confined spaces, has high recoil bounce between shots, routinely takes 3 body hits to kill... I thought the point of this thing was to run more aggressive plays with the team, but it feels balanced around sitting in a bush prone with the bipod deployed and I'm unsure why I wouldn't just run a bolt action at that point. As is I'd rather run the starter pistol with 33 mags over taking the SVD into close combat, and a tap fired AR with a 4-6x optic feels infinitely better at fulfilling the designated marksman role while running with a squad.

I'm sure I'm just going to get called a shit player, but I am genuinely mystified to see people calling the SVD overpowered and assault rifles weak. I feel like a majority of my engagements against assaults are me plinking them twice before they return fire and melt me in a quarter second.