Really? What activities do they "put in work?"

Strikes, Nightfall, Gambit, Crucible. You know the usual stuff.

So most of the stuff where it doesn't really matter? Try using one in like the menagerie. It uh...its not pretty.

So everything else is irrelevant now except Menagerie? They would do just fine in there too.

The point I was trying to make is, is that in higher end game content, which is all of the content we are getting, autos don't do well. In crap like strikes where we outlevel the activity anything will feel good, even if they actually suck. The damage and time you have to spend to kill a single enemy isn't worth it and no other weapon has as few benefits as autos. I can hold the trigger for consistent damage...wow... In gambit, since there are no light levels, the weapons base damage is what matters, but after doing personal damage tests against the same trash mob, the numbers on autos are saddening. Especially when you compare them to handcannons. Autos not only do less damage per bullet, but also less damage per magazine, and I made sure to pick the general average magazine on autos, and with increased magazine capacity the difference in damage becomes even greater. 450s do like no damage per magazine, roughly 25-40% damage difference between the other auto archetypes. 720s, certain 600s, and 360s struggle with accuracy without perks to boost stability and damage usually leaves more to be desired. My ether doctor has a pretty solid roll as well as a stability masterwork, and it still doesn't shoot as accurately as it should. It's stupid that most year 1 guns are better than year 2 variants with a roll almost literally for nothing but stability. My 720s are ok for accuracy, but their damage takes a while for it to amount to anything, and certain ones like misfit without a good roll shake too much. It's not me making stuff up either, misfit ACTUALLY has terrible stats and so does ether doctor. 360s just shake too much. Their damage is ok but I'd like to be able to control it more. Anything can feel like they put in work, but what matters is what's actually used. I never see autos in pve or PvP except for breakneck, but I see a bunch of pulses, handcannons and scouts. It's not a coincidence that they are unused. Same thing happened to fusion rifles until this recent patch. Putting in work will never mean it's good to me, because you could make anything "put in work" in activities where you don't have to worry half as much about dying or killing the target in front of you.

I have a variety of good rolls on every auto from year 2 and I don't have any issue with stability or hitting precision shots. This is key since Bungie increased the precision damage modifier and lowered body shot damage on all weapons at the start of Forsaken. Unfortunately this impacts auto rifles more than other weapon types but they also lowered the shots needed to stagger the enemy with an auto rifle too. I think that's a fair trade off. I thought at the start of Forsaken the majority of auto rifles were slightly underperforming but since they buffed the base damage on 360s, 600s, and 720s back in January they have felt strong to me. I also want to address your point about auto rifles "strength" in year 1 versus year 2. This was entirely because of the weakness of every other primary in the game compared to 450 RPM auto rifles for the first eight months of D2. Bungie simply made 450s the easiest weapon ever in Destiny to perform well with and made every other weapon type worse. Using this as your basis for showing auto rifles year two weakness is like comparing every hand cannon to D1 Exotic hand cannons and saying they are bad now because they don't have scout rifle range and accuracy.

Dude, they buffed their base damage by 6%. On a weapon that does low damage per bullet, you would never notice it unless you started doing damage tests. That number is way too insignificant to make them go from feeling "slightly underwhelming" into a strong weapon type. If we used gambit as our example, 600s only do 14 damage to the head to trash mobs, but 6% would only add a decimal amount to it. In normal pve, 6% wouldn't make a difference because the number is so low that it wouldn't reduce the amount of rounds it would take to kill a single trash mob. In menagerie, at around 715 my gnawing hunger hits for around 4600 damage (it might be 4300 but I forget). Now a 6% increase to that: 4876. That's literally nothing. Our enemies are dealing with thousands of health but yet autos only got that much of a buff? That number on a handcannon that does 12,000+ damage per shot would have a more noticeable amount because the base damage is significantly higher. There is a lot wrong with autos that I don't think should be there, and it all starts with the base weapon and how the rolls affect the weapon itself. Whether it's hard to hit crits or not doesn't matter, because there is a much higher chance to hit bodies, whether it be accidentally or not,than any other weapon in the game because of their spread. Compare autos to literally any other weapon that performs so much better without rolls, without needing to stack damage perks to kill a single enemy quickly, that one trigger pulls trash mobs and no real difficulty in control. There's nothing autos do good that the other weapon types can't do. No matter how many autos I get, they never feel as accurate as the other weapons and you should know that with your near hundred thousand kills with the various weapon types. My numbers don't come close to yours, but I'm actively seeking better weapons while farming activities using these weapons to see which are best. Handcannons never lose to anything unless the target is far away, pulses have virtually no recoil, and scouts have incredible range (that you never really need)...but autos just do low consistent damage, and if they were as strong and as accurate as you believe they are...nobody would have supported my post as much as they would. I couldn't get this much similar feedback on pretty much anything. I couldn't get it on fusions before they got buffed where they ACYUALLY were trash, but some people kept telling me they "tore stuff up with them" when nobody else used them and for good reason. Whether or not you feel the burden of using them matters not to me because I think they suck and so do a lot of other people. Everything else performs so easily and so comfortable no matter the roll, but autos can't even hit a 90% accuracy with stability galore. They feel like bungie designed them to be spray guns like in halo, but then forced precision on them. Even in d1 they were the exact same way. Most literally couldn't Even function without counterbalance on them, and of the few lucky ones, they were never good. Destiny 2 is too dependent on crits for them to perform like garbage, and even on pc where accuracy is pretty much a non issue, still nobody uses them because they aren't worth the effort. Those extra seconds you waste trying to kill a single enemy vs literally everything else becomes annoying and makes using them frustrasting when it isn't even most users fault they aren't accurate. Their design is terrible and I will never accept it as is, because even in a perfect world where everything performs the best (pc) they are still the worst. Smgs are used more than autos on pc, that should really tell you something.

Auto Rifles are tweeners putting them in a really tough spot. They are supposed to contend with everything at close to mid range without the lethality of OHK weapons or fast ttk weapons like Sidearms and SMGs. Then they still have to hit 90-100% precision hits to achieve optimal ttk at mid range just to contend with a hand cannon or pulse rifle needing the same precision hit ratio with double the inherent stability. They need some forgiveness or some other X factor that can help them contend better in this situation. I think they should increase the flinch value so that even if you can't land 100% precision that you can still be competitive in a 1v1, or stun adds or majors faster.

How do we increase flinch value enough to where it feels useful though? Damage would at the least tip flinch more in their favor as a lot of weapons with higher base damage are more likely to flinch. That's why when you patrol, a single auto bullet might flinch some dregs in a single shot, but at higher levels they don't. It's never been stated if the health value changes when flinch occurs, but I'd say it's with a build up of damage in mind or at least it's part of the equation.

If it's not already it could simply be tied to the type of Frame it is without messing with damage numbers. Or start flinch earlier based on the number of consecutive shots landed. Or even just make body shots flinch nearly as much as precision shots. I think that if they start re-tuning damage then they are going to become smgs with 2-3 times the range.