In general, buffs are always better. It's nice to see such an intelligent discussion, and I hope the devs at least look at this. The real problem is understanding the game at all levels. Most players don't (including the devs themselves) leading to poor or completely irrational choices. I could personally point to your own examples(no offense) - Gunslinger has never been the best PvP subclass. In year 1 it was Blade and Sunsinger, and obviously that changed with TTK. However your general philosophy of buffs is a much better choice then what they've been doing. - After hand cannons were nerfed (which was a mistake considering only the exotic 3 were the problem) pulse rifles took over. Did they have exceptionally fast TTK? No, they really didn't, get Bungie nerfed them too instead of buffing auto rifles and hand cannons. - Blink shotgun was another highly mis-analyzed problem. The problem was shotgun effective range, not blink, yet both got hit very hard. We could point to a million other examples, but I must say that there's only two weapons that have correctly been nerfed in this game: Thorn, and The last word. Both are still very strong even now, yet not overbearing beyond their intended range. I wish Bungie would treat everything else the same way.