Ever since season 4 of destiny 2 i have always been fascinated with pvp. In the beginning (season 1 - season 3) i was never much of a pvp player. I normally kept myself in the pve aspect; playing vanguard strikes and the occasional leviathan raid. I did however play pvp with a couple of friends. Double primary being the main and only way to play back then with a 2.0+ ttk advrage. This means that battles, 1v1 and so on, were more based on weapon skill more than hit luck or ability spam. This is also when supers were roughly 1 per match and ability spamming, such as grenade spamming, was not a thing. people would camp next to heavy spawn to grab the heavy, but this is also when heavy was more so acting like a super kill. Back then weapon metas were defined by single named weapons: mida, urials, last hope, etc. Now a days metas are defined by the type of weapon instead of the named weapon. This with many other reasons is causing pvp to considerably go down in intrest, as well as proceed down in overall game intrest: pvp and pve. For me pvp is a staple in any game. Without a pvp, the game can become stale and boring. In seasons 1 - 3, my pvp kd/kda advrage was around a 0.6 or so. It wasn't untill season 4 where i began my long hard journy to reach my peak pvp skill. by the time season 10 or 11 came around, i grew from a 0.6 to a 2.5, seeing metas shift in and out season to season. However, in those seasons (seasons 4 - 16), 2 weapons became very clear that they will never be taken out of the meta and it hardens me to a humble degree. These weapons are Handcannons and Shotguns. Both weapons have been apart of the meta ever since the weapon change back in season 4. This means that no matter how oppressive they get, they will never be nerfed out of the meta like other weapons. Some examples are auto riffles and pulses. Auto riffles were heavily apart of the meta for about 3 seasons (8 months) before being pushed out by snipers and more handcannons. To be specific, the next weeks meta, after week 35 on trials report, 6 handcannons were top 10 compared to week 35's 1 handcannon. Now with the whole backstory out of the way lets get into the juicy bit. I am proposing that the sandbox team should nerf and tune the top 2 weapons to "out of the meta" status. What are these two weapons? Handcannons and Shotguns. If you don't believe me, look at the information below. All info is pulled only from trials from week 1 (03/13/2020) to week 91 (03/15/2022). All totals equal up to 910 weapons used and a percentage of 99.3% (this is not rounded up or down which is why there is a missing 0.7%) handcannon - 280 / 30.7% shotgun - 202 / 22.1% sniper - 128 / 14.0% auto - 101 / 11.0% fusion - 83 / 9.1% scout - 32 / 3.5% linear fusion - 28 / 3.0% pulse - 27 / 2.9% grenade launcher (special) - 15 / 1.6% sidarm - 10 / 1.0% sub-machine gun - 3 / 0.3% bow - 1 / 0.1% trace riffle - 0 / 0.0% Handcannons and Shotguns alone make up 52.8% of these games from week 1 - week 91. Meaning out of every weapon in the game, handcannons and shotguns made up over half of the weapons chosen. Trying to form any other combo would lead to a less than half combo/pick rate. handcannon sniper - 44.7% handcannon fusion - 39.8% handcannon auto - 41.7% I could keep going on with this however i feel like you guys understand the point. However usage is only the bare hair on the skin with why these two weapons should be nerfed and tuned for "out of the meta". They are both extremely forgiving, 2 head 1 body or 3 body 1 head, or a melee after firing. Being some of the fastest ttk with ranges battling those of scouts, pulses and bows. Ontop of the fact that anytime a weapon outpaces it, the auto meta by the way, those weapons that are outpacing it get nerfed so hard, they become almost unusable in any pvp state. Another example is of the upcoming bow nerf. out of all 91 weeks, only 1 bow has ever showed up in the meta. To be specific, 0.1% of showing. And now because of this showing, it is now getting nerfed. If this is the case, Handcannons and shotguns need to get drastically changed to compensate for the lack of primary variety over the past 91 weeks: 2 years. I feel doing this will help pvp in the long term. maps with close range won't as oppressive and demanding of cqc weapons. people will be more open to using what they want instead of being forced to run the same 2 weapons over and over again. this will also help push for a more even usage spread between weapons. (this dose not mean fusions shouldn't get nerfed as well, however this needs to be addressed one step at a time). If you would like to check my work, Trials report is open for everyone to see. however i will worn it took over 2 hours to tally each weapon type, count and math out the numbers. And i know these numbers aren't pure since the auto meta was only realistically for 8 months then died off faster than cayde-6 during the first mission. however even just ignoring those 8 months, the numbers don't change much except for autos going from 101 showing to 1 or so showing.