Good lord that exotic is bad, its hidden stat is that the first 2 shots do virtually no damage and the explosion isn't even comparable to D1 Voidwalker Bloom. So how might one fix this? Well in order to fix it there needs to be a nerf to the 3rd shot damage because it has a significant increase in damage. But how would this help? Because the next way to improve the gun is to make the base damage equal to pulse rifles of the same stats. Exotics shouldn't be weapons of their own type (Except coldheart) why would Eyasluna so good if it weren't for the fact that Hawkmoon had good stats in general? So if Graviton lance was to receive a normal damage that would make it better automatically, but to keep it balanced the 3rd shots damage would need to be nerfed to make the damage fair. Then comes the explosion, how would you fix that? I'd say there are 2 ways. One would be to make the explosion bigger, maybe about the size if not bigger than bloom from D1. The other would be to make it so that precision kill with the gun cause a brief Vortex grenade causing damage to all around it for a couple seconds. Graviton lance has the capacity to be one of the games best exotics, if Bungie bothers to fix it.
Re; Graviton Lance generally: my appreciation for Graviton Lance rose significantly when one of the other forum-dwellers advised me to treat it like a scout rifle. I append that to include treating it like a very fast charge linear fusion rifle - in other words, ignore the first two shots, don't take them into account in your shooting.
Aim like you intend to land only 1 bullet, but 0.2 seconds later than you pull the trigger. There is no effective climb between bullets 1, 2 and 3. All the recoil is AFTER the third bullet. Just aim for the crit spot and pull the trigger, and you'll get an entire pulse rifle's worth of crit damage in that third shot, with no damage falloff.
I agree the explosion is underwhelming. It ought to be a bigger explosion, like sunshot's explosion. That would be awesome. Also, the sight kind of stinks considering how you're supposed to shoot the weapon. Given that it's largely crap firing it from the hip, and given that there's no damage falloff, it ought to have better glass.
If the explosion isn't made bigger the orb should lock on and [i]gravitate[/i] towards the closet enemy to it.
The other 2 shots in the burst need budding as it makes the weapon useless for bosses especially if you miss the critical 3rd round.