Not really. In PvE activities, average hand cannons that don't have massive range buffs are [i]almost[/i] where they need to be. They just can't hit consistently at medium range. For that, a simple buff to initial accuracy is all that's needed. It's PvP where they really suffer, for a few reasons. The first is latency issues. A high rate of fire weapon that spits bullets like a hose suffers less from lag. If you have to fire 12 bullets with a high RoF pulse to kill, and 2 or 3 miss due to latency problems, you still did a lot of damage, and a quick followup burst is all you need to finish off your target. If it takes 3 shots from a hand cannon to kill, and 2 or 3 miss because of lag, you've done very little to no damage to the target player, and by this point you are very likely dead. The second reason they suffer in the Crucible is blooming accuracy. Now in theory, I'm fine with bloom, because it keeps you from spamming a weapon that should have a slower pace. And in PvE, this isn't really an issue. But in Crucible, this leads to hand cannons having a significantly slower practical time to kill than faster firing weapon types, because you have to wait so long for the bloom to reset between shots. By the time you're getting your third shot off, someone has already sprayed you down with an auto or pulse rifle. In year 1, the actual recoil of the weapon was what kept you from spamming the trigger, just because you couldn't really aim while your gun was kicking back (some people found ways around this, unfortunately). But once the gun model came all the way back down and the sights lined up again, you were ready to fire. That's not the case anymore. Even once the gun has fully settled, bloom has not, and if you fire again too quickly, you are almost guaranteed to miss. That's a problem. The third big reason they are less than optimal for PvP is flinch. Now if I recall correctly, hand cannons and scouts have a higher flinch modifier than auto and pulse rifles do, meaning they shake the target's screen more with every bullet. The problem is they fire much more slowly. So a high RoF pulse may cause less flinch with each bullet, but puts out 5 times as many bullets in the same time span, leading to an overall greater flinch effect. And hand cannons are supposed to award a steady hand that can take time to line up the perfect shot. That's not really possible when your screen is shaking like crazy because someone is spamming you with a GoM or DoP. So no, average legendary hand cannons aren't in a great place. That doesn't mean they are unusable. I still rock my Lord High Fixer on smaller maps where a scout is impractical. But the last Iron Banner was torture for me on those occasions. So so many shots just missing for no apparent reason.