It might have been fine with less of a dmg nerf. (Destiny)

by iconicbanana, C2-H5-OH + NAD, Portland, OR, Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 00:08 (3775 days ago) @ Durandal

ARs share the same range profile as HCs and be comparable in TTK. The issue is that the range bands don't seem as important in Destiny as they did in Halo or COD. You can still be effective in most maps with a HC or AR except at extreme ranges.

You can't really include the special weapons in the analysis, since they are meant to be clearly superior at their chosen range.

Prior to the change, as I said earlier, the ARs were too easy to use. You could kill in about the same time with body shots, and you could easily have ammo to kill 5 guys in a row without reloading. The best HCs can get is 3 people. Instead of dropping the damage I would have widened the spread on the gun, but that would highly penalize the "precision" ARs like the Suros, Shadowprice and Cydonia, and not really adversely effect the spray and pray models like Dr. Nope. Dropping the damage pretty much equally penalizes both the accurate and the spray class archetypes. The alternatives, like having a larger range drop off in damage or reducing clip size have their own major drawbacks and would also elicit complaints.

I've got anecdotal reports from IB that it is much more diverse this time around, which we should all consider a win. I hated the first IB where 4-5 of the people on each side would have a Suros. That was a clear indication of something being off, and if everyone is toting a Thorn in the next few IBs there will need to be another adjustment.

I think this may all be moot until we get some post-patch numbers on the player base. I'm not seeing many anecdotes from people saying they're still content to run AR's in this thread. Kinda hard to kill 5 guys in a row if you can't get past the first one.