Yes, I agree, Thorn is -blam!-ing OP as shit. But its perk is what makes it the gun. If you remember doing the Exotic Bounty, it's a Weapon or Sorrow for a reason. You killed it's former master to fully complete it. Guess what the master was? A Hive Wizard. Guess what ability Wizards have? Poison Clouds. Guess what Thorn has? Mark of the Devourer (DoT). Can you see the connection? I personally find the perk fitting to the gun. Hell, all the Exotic Bounties tell a better story than the damned game itself. All the people who are saying "omg thorn doesnt need Dot wtf its op" are morons. That's the point of the gun. You can't just nerf the gun because it kills you too many times in Crucible, because the Thorn is a practically average gun to use in PvE. Look at what happened to Auto Rifles and the Vex Mythoclast. The Suros Regime was sold by Xur within the first month of Destiny, and while I won't go as far to say that the Suros was OP, I will say that it was an extremely good gun that was easily accessable. That's why it became the "bane of the Crucible". The hard nerf to ARs wasn't extremely necessary, it's just that Xur sold a really good gun too early on. Everyone had it and everyone who didn't were screaming "TOO OP PLS NERF". Same thing applies to the Vex Mythoclast for those who were cheesing Atheon. 3 chances to easily cheese the best gun in the game for a whole month gave a maximum of 12 chances(or more with character resets) in one month that took less than 5 minutes each. However when Bungie applied the AR nerf, I don't think they realized what they were doing. This nerf applied to ALL auto rifles, including everyone's favorite peashooter: Atheon's Epilogue. Guns that followed the Epilogue with extremely high RoF and terrible Impact became practically worthless in the game. And considering this was the only Void Primary before Word of Crota came along, this made the Epilogue your only choice for your void primary needs. However, then Bungie nerfed ARs again, and Word of Corta came out, making the Epilogue officially the "sit in your vault" weapon. All other Auto Rifles soon joined this category, even the highly used Shadow Price was eventually washed away. Handcannons and Scouts had their time to shine, and later on, Bungie went ahead and buffed Thorn as well. So here we are now. Thorn and it's famous two-shot precision which have made over 40% of the Destiny community use it as a go-to in Crucible, and that's a problem. However, taking the DoT out of Thorn like like removing the jelly/jam from a PB&J sandwich. It's what makes the gun Thorn, as without DoT it is easily beaten by a Red Hand IX with a Range perk. Thorn isn't outstanding in PvE besides it's ability to halt shield regenertion, so there are two somewhat easy ways to balance out Thorn with the rest of the Crucible. Option 1: Reduce the RoF. As simple as this may seem, this actually has a significant affect on the gun. Thorn can fire off shots pretty quickly, so by reducing this slightly this will force players to time out their shots if they are aiming for that delicious two-shot kill. This will also stop people from killing a Shoulder Charger at close range, as I believe this should only be an option to shotguns or The Last Word(I main a hunter for you all who will complain about this). I suggest a RoF that should be a bit higher than that of Timur's Lash. If you wanted to compensate for the low RoF, you could boost the Impact a bit. *** Option 2: Make Crucible-only Range changes. For those who complain about the Range, I believe Bungie can make a PvP-only range effect to Thorn. When the cursor locks on(red) to a Guardian entity, the game should instantly decrease the Range by 5% until your cursor is off of the Guardian. Also, the more you keep your cursor locked on a Guardian entity, the accuracy of the gun starts to decrease. This could work on a cooldown mode, where however long you lock down on a guardian, your accuracy will slowly start to decrease and your cooldown will be that long. Example: Guardian 1 holds down his Thorn on Guardian 2 for 3 seconds before Guardian 2 notices and runs away. This means Guardian 1's accuracy will be 3 inches off of their cursor and it will slowly go back to normal within 3 seconds. If the Guardian tries to lockon again during the cooldown, the accuracy throwoff will start were it was in the cooldown. This will make users have to plan out their aim and learn to snapshot and give users 3 - 4 shots before they start to have a hard time hitting anything. I find this to be the best change to Thorn and Bungie has proven to us this is in their power due to the Shotgun buff to non-Guardian entities. In all, Thorn should still be a good choice for shield halting in PvE, but it needs to come down to Earth(or whatever planet your own) in PvP and let players choose a weapon the actually want to use and not because they want to win. [b]TL;DR:[/b] You really should read the whole thing as I took the time to type it out. :/ Anyways, lower Thorn's RoF, affect its accuracy and range, or just buff ARs back. [spoiler]I have a Thorn and I main a Hunter for you all who are wondering. And if your comment is either "ur just a noob", "thorn is still op", or "what about TLW nub" then just don't bother commenting as I won't reply.[/spoiler] EDIT 1: Added Tags. EDIT 2: Thanks to user TheKillJoy, he reminded us of how Bungie said ARs dominated the Iron Banner event, yet a previous Iron Banner bounty required Guardians to get 20 headshot kills with Auto Rifles. Having to master the precision needed for this, it would led to players easily making an Auto Rifle their first choice. Just some food for thought.