As primarily a hand cannon player, I'm really feeling the hand cannon nerf in PvE; I think Bungie overdid it (I don't play much PvP, so I can't speak to that). I used to use the hand cannon/sniper rifle combo for a lot of missions; now there's a gap between HC max effective range and sniper minimum useful range, which kind of cripples HC effectiveness, since as a short-range primary weapon it needs to be coupled with a long-range special. It's also a lot harder to get head shots with a hand cannon now. It took me a ton of practice, but I reached the point where I could get quick head shots probably 75% of the time on anything mid-range or closer, and with a bit of aim time at longer range. Now I have to take much more careful aim on mid-range shots, and even carefully aiming long range shots it's a crap shoot as to whether I'll even hit, much less get a head shot. I just completed the nightfall (Omnigul); a couple weeks ago I did this strike using the cheese nook and got head shots around 75% of the time; last night I was probably closer to 25% head shot accuracy, and that's at pretty close range. I'll be the first to admit I'm likely far from the best with a hand cannon, but I've practiced it a lot and it's certainly the weapon I'm most used to. I'd hate to be a beginning player trying to get used to a hand cannon; it would feel impossible to hit anything. Subjectively speaking, HCs have gone from fun to frustrating. Objectively speaking, due to the range gap between HCs and sniper rifles, I've switched to auto rifle for certain missions. Driving people to use auto rifles MORE probably wasn't Bungie's intent, but there you go.