The key word was "interpretation" (Destiny)

by BeardFade , Portland, OR, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, 16:20 (3776 days ago) @ Earendil

This is specifically why I chose the word "interpretation", because I have no doubts that they are great at collecting data, but all data requires interpretation, and some interpretations are more accurate or responsible than others.

As you point out, the quantity of kills via ARs would justify a nerf, however, this doesn't take into account who is doing the killing. Let me illustrate. 100% is the amount of people playing Crucible in destiny. Of this 100%, a bell curve would tell us that a small percent of players will be absolutely amazing (5-10%), and a few players will be incredibly bad(5-10%), with most in the middle (80%). I think Bungie made this assumption with their data, saw that this 80% uses ARs and had fast TTK's and adjusted accordingly. The issue with this, though, is that players theoretically will increase in skill over time. The bell remains the same, but the ability to use a said weapon adjusts. As a player improves, their choice of weapons likely change. Anecdotally, almost everyone in here has said they use something else because they adapt as a good player would. Thus, we should more heavily weight the gun choices of the better players as this will be the trend of those players in the middle to move, too. This is why I think the Hand Cannon nerf was acceptable, because the better players were using it really well. The average player doesn't have the thumb coordination to hit a target 200m away with Thorn, but they may improve in that direction given the right amount of time.

That all being said, I'm willing to say that maybe Bungie made the right statistical interpretation and I just disagree. I'm just bummed because now my ARs all sit in the vault because they are pointless to use in PvE (except Atheon's Epilogue against Oracles and that's a maybe). I'd rather they be a viable playing option rather than gathering virtual dust.