Auto rifles were intended to be really good weapons at close range and fall off against pulse/scout rifles at longer ranges. However at the beginning of destiny's history they were basically the all around rifle that worked at every range; they were better than every other primary weapon type. The problem is that bungies solution was to decrease auto rifle dps across both game types. They still work well at practically every range they just take longer to kill someone; this is bad because every other weapon type has a much short ttk now. What you should have done was add a damage falloff to autos so they weren't better than the other primaries at their proper distances. Autos should be the best primary weapons to use at close distances having high sustained dps at the cost of ranged useability. They need to have their dps increased as every other primary has higher dps. Most auto rifles can kill very quickly when you get all headshots but this relies on player skill and situationalism for the weapon type to be useable whereas none of the other primaries do to this level. They should only rely on this at longer ranges where their damage falls off. There are many situations in cqc where headshots aren't viable and auto rifle bodyshot ttk is much shorter than all other primaries at all ranges. Finally auto rifles should be the counter to shotguns due to their ease of use in cqc and their usefullness outside of point blank range, but this isn't the case due to their low relative dps to all other primaries. You could argue that hand cannons could counter shotguns just as well & you would be right but they shouldn't be better than autos in this regard as they currently are. Autos punish missed shots much less and are more stable in close quarters. Auto's should be the go to on shotgun infested games or when you need to burn down the shield of that fallen captain rushing you. tl;dr, Auto's have no purpose in the current metagame; they need to have their damage increased to pre nerf levels and have a damage dropoff at range to compensate so that they are good at cqc but don't dominate everywhere else. better tl;dr, Increase their damage at close range, either leave the damage numbers alone for all other ranges or only slightly buff them... slightly.