Here I play with the hand canon and wreck face so I think its fine

The hand cannon does not need sympathy. It is a beast that few understand.

3 bullets is all it takes to take down a Guardian. It's pretty accurate and if you can upgrade it, it's quite fast too. They're just extremely tough to handle. That's all

Its not the weapon that suck, its generally the player who uses it.

The problem with the HC is that body shots don't count for crap right now and all other guns having such a high rate of fire aren't as hindered by this obstacle of body shots VS head shots. To my recollection, a HC head shot does something like 2.5 or 3x the damage of a body shot which is fantastic if you can consistently land head shots. In PvP, the lack of stability and high rate of player movement in conjunction with massive kick makes landing head shots incredibly difficult, much more so than every other primary weapon. The HC has about as much body shot damage as the scout rifle and that isn't very realistic / balanced. The penalty for landing body shots on a scout rifle isn't very severe at all since you can spam bullets as you zero in on the head. With enough spam and time, body shots alone will kill someone/something with a scout rifle. The kick and rate of fire on a HC doesn't allow for that kind of gun play, even so if it did, the clip capacity kicks you in the nuts if you're spending something like 4-5 bullets for a body shot kill (and that's very unlikely due to the rate of fire before someone spins around and kills you). The weapons most closely compared to the HC is the sniper rifle. Two body shots will down anyone. (save for the toughest of Titans) It has 30-50% smaller clip capacity (depending on your clip size) but easily over 50% more body shot potency. The true strength of the sniper rifle is it's range. Damage fall off is a non issue for most sniper rifles and that is how it should be. But the lack of body shot damage given the clip size and rate of fire on a HC is unacceptable. All primary weapons provide some kind of panic fire solution to close encounters that still give you a chance of winning an encounter without emptying your clip other than the HC. In my experience, all primaries other than the HC can down enemies (players) with roughly 50-60% of a clip without landing a head shot. This isn't the case for HC, it's not even close. I think to kill even the softest of targets an HC requires at least 4 body shots (5 in many cases). That basically leaves you high and dry when facing multiple combatants because, unlike the sniper, 1 head shot does not kill a player in PvP from a HC. It takes at least 2 shots. I'm totally OK with that formula for head shots, but the body shot damage is far too weak to allow players to use the HC as a viable primary in PvP. If the body shot damage was bumped up around 30-50% per bullet and allowed players to essentially kill someone with 3-4 shots, the HC would see more use. Keep in mind that since the HC is so slow, 3 shots still takes a long time, not to mention the skill it takes to reacquire the target after the kick of the previous shot. Currently, HCs can 2 shot people if both shots are head shots. I'd like to see the HC tailored so that a kill can be made with 1 body shot + 1 head shot on anything but the toughest players. (max armor / tricked out Titans). Requiring a bare minimum of 1 head shot and at least 2 more body shots on players who opt for high defense is OK imo. Even in this ideal scenario, you still aren't very likely to see many triple kills that commonly happen with all other primary weapons. To net triples with a HC you'd need to head shot + body shot only low defense players and still double head shot a Titan before your mag is empty. (or 1 body + 1 head + grenade / knife) I think this buff would still fall in line with goals Bungie set for requiring high accuracy with this weapon and allow it to be a contender with other primaries. Even with this buff, you still are incredibly unlikely to see players going on a PvP killing spree and beast moding without heavy investment into armor / perks that fully support a HC build, whereas all other primaries require no investment of the sort.

Theoretically they're the fastest killing guns in the game. But the problem is you'd have to be crazy skilled to use them to their full potential. So frankly bungies mistake is thinking their players are better then they are

The hand cannon is a revolver, which would be fine if it was a match trigger. But it ain't, so there's 2-6 seconds between shots

Great training for Hunters who want to get better at Golden Gun. That's what I used it for.

I love the HC, I went in thinking I would never like them, but I tried it once and fell in love instantly. I admit they do take a bit of skill to use, but they are so damn rewarding. My main concern with them is that in PvP, they aren't as good as other primary weapons. I do alright with them in PvP, but I do so much better with an AR. The reason being, is that the AR is SO -blam!-ing easy to use, IMO the AR is a -blam!-ing noob weapon. I'll be staying away from ARs in the full game, when I play PvP I like taking the hard route, that way when I do good I can actually say I didn't use some noobish weapon that a child could do good with.

Bungie, hand cannons are stupid and do -23 damage please buff, then nerf cause it will be OP. And make it so I can hold two hand cannons but not anyone else, and give them +999 damage. And make me a sandwich...hold the pickles