Its more that your exposure is less (Destiny)

by Durandal, Sunday, May 17, 2015, 00:10 (3318 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

In PVP, Auto Rifles are as good as anything else if you can't reliably get head shots. They only lose out to other weapons due to headshot multipliers.

In PVE, it isn't so much that they do less damage. Arguably they are only 4 points less per bullet then pulse rifles which are the new hotness. It is that in PVE, head shots are much easier to come by and the headshot damage per bullet is an AR's weakest stat. It takes 3 bullets to match one Hand Cannon or Scout Rifle headshot. It's harder to land those three head shots, it takes roughly half a second of sustained fire.

Looking at what I can find on PVE and weapon DPS, the auto rifles as a group are on the low end of the spectrum, but not by much. Given that the class in general has higher reload speeds and larger mags, they are far more forgiving to use. They just don't reward skilled use as much as SR/HCs do. So players will gravitate towards the SR/HCs as they become more skilled. That doesn't make the ARs bad as a class, just different. I've taken the Abyss Defiant and Necrochasms through dailies, weeklies and nightfalls. They can do the job and have a high up tempo.