Part of it is definitely just Bungie way overtuning the difficulty as usual, but I think a big part of why they overtuned it more than usual this expansion is because of heat weapons. Heat weapons are just straight up better than normal weapons in every way: better reloading, built in auto-loading holster, and most importantly, about 30%-40% more damage than regular weapons (depending on the archetype). My guess is that when Bungie tuned the sandbox for this expansion, they balanced everything all around the new powercrept heat weapons. Now I'm not calling for heat weapons to be nerfed or anything (at least not the primary ones), but I think if Bungie does decide to eventually address the near obsolescence of primary weapons in D2, they should start by just buffing normal weapons to be at least as powerful as their heat weapon counterparts. Personally I've always thought normal weapons should deal slightly more damage than heat weapons, since they don't have all the improved reloading mechanics or built in auto-loading holster, like heat weapons do, but it would be nice if Bungie could buff them enough to at least match the damage of heat weapons, so that we don't have a whole bunch of our gear effectively sunset for the second time in this expansion year.