Well, hand cannons are mostly effective in Crucible PvP, especially Control maps. In control maps, the flags are usually in an enclosed space with a few doors, so when an enemy comes in you can kill them with one shot.
I wouldn't recommend using them in Story missions, though.
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Lolz hand cannons suck in pvp... to slow. Auto rifles are op in pvp. However, hand cannons are op in pve. They do a ton of damage and if you get extra clip size passive and extra round buffs you can do so much more damage than any other gun. My hand cannon does 1.2k crits. I get 8 shots and have a reserver size of 110.
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If you camp, they're good.
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Or if you have any reload speed enhancements. Gloves with reload speed, faster reload after precision kills, chain of woe. With the right stats it barely takes longer than the natural time between shots to reload.
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In my opinion it's the exact opposite, hand cannons are good at first in pvp but later when they have smaller mags and stuff if you miss one shot the other person will be able to kill you. Hand cannons are great for story though. I also struggled on which to use, but now that I've seen the blade dancer in use I can say as long as you have a shotgun as a special you should be fine with the scout rifle