Since HoW dropped, I've noticed that my Shadow Price is once again King of all Guns in PvP. I'm ripping through people like crazy with it. The damage appears to be the same, but... Was stagger increased? Especially against hand cannoneers, it seems as if they can't hit me at all while I'm blasting them. Or was auto-aim assist increased? Doesn't feel like it, but there's got to be some explanation, right? Maybe it was a small RoF buff? Enemies are definitely dying much more quickly than I expected.

Was the last time, by chance, back when the debuff happened and everyone thought auto rifles were a worse fighting option that taking your shoe off and throwing it?

I never found the auto rifle debuff all that bad, and more often than not unnoticeable. What I noticed far more was that before all the changes, I could kill a silly guy using a ulse rifle 9 out of 10 times with my shadow price, and that dropped to more like 50%.

But then I also gave up auto rifles for scout rifles + shotty a while ago.

Was the last time, by chance, back when the debuff happened and everyone thought auto rifles were a worse fighting option that taking your shoe off and throwing it?

I never found the auto rifle debuff all that bad, and more often than not unnoticeable. What I noticed far more was that before all the changes, I could kill a silly guy using a ulse rifle 9 out of 10 times with my shadow price, and that dropped to more like 50%.

But then I also gave up auto rifles for scout rifles + shotty a while ago.

I think the biggest thing that debuff did was make people realize that other weapons might be more viable than the auto-rifle they were using. It wasn't necessarily that auto's got worse: it was that more players found more optimized loadouts, and with a larger pool of good scout/pulse rifle users out there, auto's suddenly seemed less effective just by virtue of not being the only thing that killed you anymore.

I think the biggest thing that debuff did was make people realize that other weapons might be more viable than the auto-rifle they were using. It wasn't necessarily that auto's got worse: it was that more players found more optimized loadouts, and with a larger pool of good scout/pulse rifle users out there, auto's suddenly seemed less effective just by virtue of not being the only thing that killed you anymore.

This. For the most part, the outcomes of my 1 on 1 battles generally follow my expectations: I know when I'm too close with my Pulse Rifle or too far away with my Hand Cannon. In general, I've experience a reduction in the frequency of WTF deaths over the last 2-3 months. I attribute most of it to the balancing of other primaries. Prior, it felt like I lost every battle with an AR.

I think Bungie has done a pretty good job of balancing primaries. Secondaries and Heavies seem pretty balanced as well, although my Invective feels like cheating sometimes.

The very first Vanguard gift package I ever got had a Shadow Price with Field Scout, Reactive Reload, and Outlaw. It was a chainsaw in vanilla Destiny. Then it was a worthless piece of worthlessness back in February (and March, and April). The only reason I didn't shard it was because of the memories. It is now, once again, amazeballs, and I'm so glad I didn't shard it. Here's how my experience went:

Vanilla: I win 1v1 against any enemy. I can get 2-3 kills easily without reloading.
Post nerf: I lose 1v1 against most enemies. I can theoretically get 2 kills without reloading, but more realistically I only get 1.
Now: I win 1v1 against most enemies. I can get 2 kills without reloading.

It really feels dramatically more powerful since HoW than it did before the expansion. RoF, stability, or just stagger... but something improved and I highly doubt it was me.

I just got pest control matrix from a dragon strike (needs rerolling) but its base stats are amazeballs in crucible, when I get some decent perks on it then jeeeezz

Edit: just reforged this. Got focused fire, glass half full and flared magwell. Bretty gud roll? Shame about the sights though. Red dot-ors1, sure shot is, ranged rls3. I hate all of these sights :(

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I picked up the Summoner over the weekend (and a half dozen other 431/465 auto rifles that have been thrown at me) and while it isn't outright bad, it's inferior in a metagame dominated by weapons that frontload damage like hawkmoon and thorn, especially in Trials where stats aren't normalized.

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That stagger *wrecks* hand cannoneers. I've had hawkmoon guys fire 4 times while I was blasting them down and they didn't hit me once. Granted, that's the opportunity to kill me twice over with that gun, but I think the flinch is a bigger deal in HoW than it was previously.