Morning Guardians,
Just this weekend, I was lucky enough to acquire a gun I have been searching for since day one of Destiny: Hawkmoon. In less than a few hours, I brought it to max and started hitting strikes and crucible. Now, I've been an avid scout rifle user since the beginning, and I've done several hours of play with hand cannons. Before all the stat changes, The Devil You Know was my primary until it became obsolete in The Dark Below (later again made viable by House of Wolves to my dismantling dismay). Since then, weapons have seen all sorts of changes, tweeks, nerfs, and buffs.
Out of all the weapons I've used thus far, I've been somewhat offput by Hawkmoon's seemingly tiny hitbox. I've been playing around with all my hand cannons including The Last Word, Thorn, Red Hand IX, and Regulator Mk. 56. Out of all of them, Hawkmoon seems the most difficult to land. Now, from reading patch notes, it was targeted by our community as being too powerful at range, therefore nerfed in its ability to acquire targets and maintain acquisition over repeated shots. This seems noticeably different compared to the other HCs.
On my Warlock, I run Thorn in PvE and can drill crit boxes all day. On my Titan, she rocks The Last Word, and mops up mobs with both ADS and Hipfire crits. My hunter and her Hawkmoon on the other hand, are hit and miss on the critbox (specifically against the Fallen and Cabal). Even with the Gunslinger's trance aiding in Stability, I'm still struggling to hit a crit even with a calm focused red dot, square over the crit zone at a distance. This shot would proc on Thorn, TLW, and my non-exotics, but I feel there is a significantly less chance on the elusive PS Exclusive.
Now, understanding the preview for the new weapon reworks, this "accuracy" is intended to be decreased once more. While I'm on board for a strength & weakness "balance" across all weapons, I'd like to have some additional sandbox attention on hitboxes. Thorn's hitbox needs a little decreasing, TLW feels just right, and Hawkmoon is a little underwhelming. On my Red HandIX (with hidden hand and Zen movement), I feel it behaves similar to TLW with a natural response to reticule and registered hit. Making these marksman weapons harder to handle is understanding by increasing recoil or target acquisition aid as one goes into ADS. They should be pinpoint accurate in close, to medium engagements with slight deviation in long range engagements, yet still rewarding for a calm and steady hand.
TL:DR - Hawkmoon's hitbox and accuracy seems to have suffered a bigger hit than intended compared to other HCs in its class on the last update. I'd like to either see some attention to this on the next update, or regulate the noticeable difference across all High Impact HCs.
[b]Update:[/b] It is quite possible that the comparison to Thorn is imbalanced considering the visually larger projectiles of the Thorn. Perhaps those projectiles aid in the shot registering withing the associated hitboxes.