They're okay, but the hand cannon is a pathetic excuse of a weapon, so is the auto. VoG - fatebringer, vision of confluence, praedyths timepiece, Atheons epilogue a full set of amazing weapons. All I'm comparing

They kinda screwed up with VoG weapons though. They made them so incredibly good that there was never a reason to use anything else. When Crota's End rolled around, nobody used the primaries except the occasional Fang of Ir Yut because the Vault of Glass weapons were that good. It isn't necessarily the elemental damage that reduced gun variety, it's just that the weapons were so amazing.