Pulse nerfs? Its all Handcannons that make you look at the sky when you get hit by them

I’ve played a hell of a lot of Iron Banner this week; I haven’t seen anything to suggest that Hand Cannons are truly as powerful as the better pulse archetypes or that they’re as dominant across such a large fraction of encounter ranges. Could I be missing something due to lower usage rates? Sure, and I don’t have enough of the good ones myself to give ‘enough a comparative test drive like I have pulses.

Personally I've seen a pretty even usage of the two weapons.

Could just be I’m not dying enough to hand cannons comparatively, especially from medium range, to really notice. It’s pretty clear though as someone who likes to use scout rifles just how much Pulses are able to out damage scouts, and they’re a fairly low risk weapon, so they can work their game reliably out to all but the longest map ranges, situations where they can usually just walk away or behind a wall if they don’t want to deal with a scout rifle matchup. It’s not something close-range advantaged situations really have to worry about it. Don’t like your CQC matchup once it happens? Too bad; it’s probably too late to do much but shoot back, try to act evasively, and hope they shoot poorly. You can’t just not fight as a reliable “answer” to the encounter like you can with a ranged engagement, which makes having scouts slightly better at only a very narrow part of the overall practical battlefield problematic. Sorry to rant. It bugs me.

[quote] Could I be missing something due to lower usage rates? Sure, and I don’t have enough of the good ones myself to give ‘enough a comparative test drive like I have pulses.[/quote] Most the weapon types are fairly well balanced right now... Except maybe shotguns. BUT there are traits on certain gun types/perks which could do with an increase/tweak. Such as recoil on pulses, precision damage on scouts and a reduction in flinch-power on 110 handcannons.

Someone had called out handcannons as more OP than Pulses, which is what I was commenting on. At the moment it looks like their remark has disappeared into the aether.... I don’t agree with you though that the weapons are in a well balanced spot. Pulses are clearly in a better position overall than other primaries, even though sure, SMGs and sidearms are probably fairly okay within their regime, obfuscated though that may be by Shotguns. I think the special ammo situation is a mess, and I’ve been against the increased heavy ammo since they first made that change, and snipers have long needed significant QoL work across the game.