Hello and respect to you and your post as it must have taken some time to put thought in to it. I want to address thorn on your post as its title is about. I have a thorn and have used it to compete in the trials. It has taken me to the light house many times over. Hand cannons are not my thing and I enjoy using other guns way more like pulse rifles that are my favorite. The thorn is the only gun I have a big issue with and feel its needs a balance extremely bad. The gun can snipe you from a very long rang. I have used it to out gun snipes all the time due to I can take a body shot from a sniper and land two thorn shots that will most likely kill my target. You cant out gun thorn at any range that's the problem I think you missed by stating you can out gun it in the open with is far off from the truth. At best you will tie someone using the thorn out in the open due to the dot damage that's why you see all the rage on the forums about it. Landing one body shot followed by a head shot will down your target for sure and or hurting them by a grenade then lading one shit from the thorn will kill your tagger no matter what. This is a issue having players use the fire bolt nade or the arc bolt as well that can hit you with out it being on target. The gun need tuning bad. If they change it to where the dot and activated when lading a head shot I would be OK with the gun but having that dot just for lading anything should not be. No other gun can kill you after your target has been Killed no other at all. I use it to compete but this should not be the legacy of this game to have to do. Your feather reference is cute at best but no in anyway fact as the guns you talked about in your post are indeed over the top at one point in time. They have addressed the guns for a reason and that's cuz they were scaled way over the top. Like with fel winters they introduce two new shot guns that have the same stats instead of nerffing the gun they just put others to balance to save everyone crying they -blam!-ed up their beloved gun. They cant do that with thorn due to the dot value. The last word has issues as well and that's the fire rate and damage it dose plus the hip firing perk to go along with it is way over the top. Every gun has its place I understand that but in a player vs player environment where competition is at steak its not a working game play for anyone. Thanks for your post but we all have to see what it is and fairy tails won't cover that up.