So, anyone want to tell me how to use a Fusion Rifle correctly?

To get an effective kill with one you have to find the right range and hit with almost every shot it fires. Most Fusion Rifles pull up as they fire, so that means you either want to start at the chest and let it travel to their head, or pull down ever so slightly with the stick as you fire. Even though it doesn't turn yellow it appears headshots with the Fusion Rifle does do a little more damage, so if you get good with the aim try and keep it on their head the whole time. The biggest challenge you have is people will weave to try and avoid the full blast, which if they noticed you charging early enough will usually save their lives, so predicting enemy movement as the Fusion Rifle fires is also very important.

So, anyone want to tell me how to use a Fusion Rifle correctly?

The fusion rifle is pretty much like a shotgun crossed with a railgun. I found that in most encounters if you are accurate with the fusion rifle and have a good sense of the effective range you could kill an enemy in 1 shot. Occasionally I would kill an enemy with two shots. Very rarely did I survive long enough to try a 3rd shot. I found the fusion rifle very effective for getting a kill on an enemy by waiting for them to come to you around a corner. When they get close, you just start charging the weapon until they round the corner.

When fighting an enemy with a shotgun I found that I usually won because I could keep just outside their effective range long enough to get my 1 shot off and kill them. If I missed, then they were usually able to close and kill me with their second shot before I could recharge.

So after reflecting on my beta experiences, I want to mention the following.

Basic Weapons:

1. Auto Rifles: The auto rifle is the go too weapon on PVP and very good in PVE. Perhaps too good. Excellent damage, high rates of fire, and very little kick. Short bursts are very accurate even at medium range. Long bursts at close range eat though guardians quickly. Unlike the Halo Assault rifle this weapon is good at many ranges and in many situations. It really seems to outshine the other options in the basic slot.

I didn't find them quite as good. All but the best had a good amount of kick and were hard to hold on a target at anything beyond short-medium range. Even my best Auto Rifle, with high impact and stability ratings, had a point where it just wasn't much use, especially on the longer sight lines of First Light.

2. Pulse Rifles: The kick seems to be the same as auto rifles, and the spread and damage is comparable. There really doesn't seem to be much differentiation between the two other then full auto is better at close range. You would think this would be like the halo burst rifle and occupy a more mid to long range band, but that didn't appear to be the case.

I never found a pulse rifle I liked for any game mode. In PvE I felt I could pump out more, consistent damage with an Auto Rifle or just go for easy headshots with a Scout Rifle. Pulse Rifles didn't do enough damage with body shots, they all drifted above the head if aiming for headshots, and I think all of them had terrible sights, and they always seemed to run out of clip. Maybe I just never found a good enough one?

3. Scout Rifles: Like the Halo DMR, this is the long range option. In PVE it worked well for precision shots on those enemies hiding back and shooting. In PVP the maps tended to be either too long (Last Light) and the enemy had time to hide, or too short (Shores of Time) and the auto rifle would overpower it. There were a few places in maps where you could use it, but a good hand with an auto rifle is just as effective in those zones.

I was sucking it up in the Crucible until I got my hands on a Scout Rifle. From then on I started doing well. Accuracy + firepower + range = success. My particular Scout Rifle had an impact rating as high as everything but my shotguns. It fired slow-ish, but when all you need is three to five shots that was fine. I was routinely out shooting snipers at mid ranges! It was great fun to take a body shot from a sniper and confidently keep shooting. 8 or 9 times out of 10 I'd win the engagement. You do give up the mid-close range a bit to the good auto rifles... but even on Venus and Mars I found spots where it didn't matter and I could win. Close range was reserved for shotguns or Fusion rifles.

4. Heavy Pistols: These seemed awesome at first. The aim seemed very forgiving and the head shots are very powerful. However the reload is long and the sights are limited to medium/short range. It is a precision weapon with a small clip and tough to use at long range, yet there didn't seem to be any reward to using it. The Scout Rifle is as precise and gets a better scopes and clips. Pulse and Auto Rifles rule the short range and are far more forgiving of misses. I ended up only using mine in PvE just for fun. When things got serious it was usually back to Scout or Auto Rifles.

I was surprised at how effective my Hunter was with my uncommon revolver. It just had one of those little dot sights floating above the gun, but with a little concentration I used it as a short-mid ranged gun fairly effectively. Reload, even with the gun's fast reload when clip was empty perk, was always an issue, but overall the stopping power was pretty good. I generally sucked at getting headshots with it though, aiming up with the pistol was hard for me for some reason. Fortunately body shots and maybe the occasional headshot were all I needed. Especially combined with my Hunter's seeker drone grenades. A bit of nearly guaranteed damage + a good pistol worked well for me. With this setup I used a Sniper Rifle for medium-long range engagements.

Of all the basic weapons, the Auto Rifles and Pistols are the most in need of retuning. If anything, I would like to see a larger stun effect on the pistols and larger groupings at range on the auto rifles. The Shingen and the Cadence were very easy to get head shots with even when scoped and on full auto. I rarely saw anything else used during the Iron Banner to as great effect. Pistols were just the opposite, I didn't see anyone using them at all.

I had a Shingun-C and yes, it was great. Still beatable with a good Scout Rifle at the right ranges though, in my opinion.

Special Weapons:

1. Sniper Rifles: These were great. I don't think any changes are needed. They dominate long range but are not so good close in. People rarely stand still so it does take some skill to use.

I was actually surprised at how good I was with a sniper in Destiny. Maybe... I think this might have been it... it was the relative abundance of ammo compared to Halo. In Destiny I was always fairly sure I could get more ammo, no non-respawing snipers or anything like that and that let me be far more free with my shooting. I still generally went for body shots but did fairly well. I never had a special uncommon sniper rifle but my bog standard 4 shot sniper combined with my good pistol served my Hunter very well.

2. Fusion Rifles: I can't use these effectively, but I did see them effectively used against me. They seemed tied with shotguns as the most common Special, and are deadly when they hit.

To me, a Fusion Rifle was a slightly harder to use Shotgun with an appreciably longer range. I could often one shot people coming through the door at Zone A on First Light from within Zone A's circle. The key with the Fusion Rifle is good anticipation of its charge up time + the willingness to work extra to stay on target throughout the burst. It's not really a shotgun and getting it to fire is only step one. If you drift off target during its firing you won't get a kill until the next shot... if at all. I highly enjoyed my various Fusion Rifles but eventually traded them out for good Shotguns.

3. Shotguns: Just like Halo. They worked great. Perhaps they could round out the ammo but it wasn't a huge issue.

Yep. As stated, I ended up with Shotguns for my close range work. Simpler than a Fusion Rifle, but you had to be careful because a good Fusion Rifle player would easily disintegrate you beyond your effective range if you didn't know they were coming and didn't move to make them miss some shots.

Heavy Weapons:

1. Missile Launchers: Yes please. If we find one called the SPNKR I will be most happy.

The missile launchers were great. Pretty reliable one shot kills with the chance for an easy double kill if people bunched up.

2. Machine Guns: These seemed a little too accurate and the individual rounds don't seem to hurt as much as some auto rifles sometimes (I'm looking at you Sahara). I would prefer something that can flack an area with lots of shells and keep people from trying to move through it then a more powerful Auto Rifle.

I had a nice slow firing heavy machine gun for one character and it worked great. A rocket launcher provided a quicker / easier kill, but a machine gun was good for five or six kills easy before it ran out of ammo. I was very much outdamaging any auto rifle although I'm sure my range was a bit shorter. You'd have to get a lot of double kills with a rocket launcher to make as effective use of ammo. I had another machine gun with the worlds highest rate of fire but never used it in the Crucible. I could barely keep it on target when firing at a Spider Tank much less a moving human player! It only did like 15 damage a bullet but filled the screen with 15s as it fired. :)

So, anyone want to tell me how to use a Fusion Rifle correctly?

Use The Force and Stay On Target, mostly.