Honestly, I think everybody is falling back on a conservative fallacy to complain about things changing. Look at the goals for weapon usage patterns, and consider the company's history and design philosophy. Halo's competitive balance revolved around the battle rifle, a weapon that rewarded tracking and precision (3 body shots, 1 headshot to finish). When used properly it beat out the assault rifle, but when used improperly (5-6 hits) the assault rifle/SMG/whatever became competitive with its time to kill, while being much easier to use. In Destiny things are obviously different, but we expect the same philosophy to apply to archetypes. Handcannons should generally have the best time to kill, because if you miss you increase time to kill significantly. The best players should be using them. Pulse rifles should be somewhere in between, easier to use for tracking and less punishing when you miss, but still relying on precision damage to beat auto rifles and compete with handcannons. Overall, theoretical TTK should be: handcannons < scout rifles < pulse rifles < auto rifles, with ease of use following the opposite trajectory, and increased range favoring scout rifles over handcannons and pulse rifles over auto rifles. Because advantages depend on range and operator performance, and some are easier to use than others, you have a really great system where understanding of the advantages helps you set up the right confrontation, and skilled execution is rewarded, while unskilled execution is punished. A good player can manipulate situations to suit his loadout. Overall, the best players will generally choose a precision weapon, because their execution is perfect. Realistically, auto rifles should be the worst in terms of potential time to kill, while pulse rifles really should be the most flexible. Handcannons should be the best, but with miss-and-you're dead consequences. Exotics change that formula up. The guns are supposed to look and feel overpowered, but not break the game, and to challenge your play style with their strengths and their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they're supposed to provide advantages in certain situations, but also have drawbacks to balance that out and introduce some gamesmanship into the equation. Unfortunately, balancing the basic archetypes previously discussed against these further differentiated niches becomes very difficult, and while 80% of them are fine, another 20% are out of balance with everything else. In the context of the nerfs, there are a couple relevant weapons to discuss, and not necessarily in a particular order. Suros Regime, then, is first. 1.0 Suros simply didn't have drawbacks. At any range it was ridiculously deadly. It rewarded tracking or precision. It simply had the best stats and a perk that just increased damage even further and could arbitrarily induce life-saving health regeneration. The first auto rifle nerf was necessary, because Suros best time to kill did not match up with the difficulty of achieving that time to kill. The same was basically true of the vanquisher and the shadow price; they worked far too well relative to how easy it was to maximize their effectiveness. TLW followed a similar trajectory. TLW has always been top tier for one on one fights. It had a ridiculous RoF, and was reasonably accurate. You could spam the heck out of it at short or medium range and outgun anybody. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to hit straight headshots with, and the 8 rounds mag meant you couldn't miss too much, but overall the time to kill was still unbeatable out to long range, and it could compensate for poor accuracy with spamminess and still have a very good TTK. This nerf has made TLW more reasonable, with a major advantage preserved at close range, but much more inaccuracy at medium range. It can still be used effectively, but you have to pace out your shots to the range you're at, and you can't spam without risking a miss and having to reload, which will get you killed. This is better overall, and better accomplishes the goals Bungie laid out for the weapon. Thorn follows a different trajectory. Thorn started out pretty good. After all, it could always 2 hit. However, people were upset that it was so hard to make it work the way that they wanted it to. It makes sense; up against TLW, Suros and the Mythoclast 1.0 versions it was difficult to use, punished failure, and even at its best could still lose to the others. It then got buffed, and became overpowered. Thorn needs 2-3 hits max, has a high RoF, is accurate, stable, and generally doesn't have drawbacks. More importantly, however, its competitors have been taken down several notches. The current Thorn might have fit with 1.0 Suros and the mythoclast, but with the current weapons it's broken. Thorn's 2 hit kill should have a commensurate penalty for missing; frankly, I think they had it right in the first place when it had a smaller mag (miss too many times and you are screwed) and lower stability (operator really needs to be on point to re-aim second shot). It would still be deadly in the hands of a capable operator, but it would punish the unworthy and create more opportunities for a talented other-weapon user to force the Thorn user into making a mistake, and capitalize on it. I am an avid Thorn user myself, but I'll go ahead and say that this thing probably needs a nerf. Last, I'm going to address Red Death. It's now a very flexible weapon, with a pretty quick 2 hit kill within short-medium range, and a very consistent 3 hit at most combat ranges. I'd say that it's now top tier. With perfect accuracy it is just barely beat out by handcannons in time to kill, but it can't do it at quite the same variable range because of the stability. The fact that it went from a novelty to a top tier weapon so abruptly is striking, but I would argue that it actually fits the intended usage pattern better than ever. It's supposed to be flexible and relatively easy to use, but hard to master, and the Time to Kill increase (2 bursts with headshots, 4 with body shots) actually reflects your mastery. It should get beat out by handcannons, but only when they're on top of their game. If a handcannon user misses, they should be ready to get killed by the 2nd or 3rd burst, because that's the price of using the handcannon - you miss and you're dead. Anyway, the moral of the story is this: overall, I think balance is actually improving and moving toward a better theoretical model that has reasonable risk/reward relationships for all of its weapons. Not all weapons should be equal. It's not interesting when the time to kill is the same for every weapon and the only variable is operator accuracy; situational advantages and risky but rewarding usage patterns actually increase the degree to which the game focuses on planning and strategy, which is ultimately better for competitiveness. If Thorn (and I guess hawkmoon, I'm xbox) get a more reasonable nerf, I would say Red Death should be calibrated a bit so it's a consistent 3 hit kill. However, as it stands, I think Red Death is doing what it should be doing. Auto rifles might have been hit a little bit too hard, but I think it still makes sense that they be at the bottom of the totem pole. There SHOULDN'T be a reason for any top players on destinytracker to use an auto rifle over a precision weapon, because top players are the kind of people who strategize and maneuver well to leverage their narrow advantage.