Worthless now.
I need to test them in PVP still, but I am fairly certain they will suck there as well.
I was testing my fully maxed out, Vendor purchased, Vanquisher 7. Diddums and I did a ton of Roc's last night and I kept swapping between Thorn, and the Vanquisher. Thorn's range was noticably shorter, but it was easier to compensate for it.
The Vanquisher was doing around 500 points of damage at range against level 30 vex in the Divisive Mind mission.
In CQB I was doing around 600 when hitting the crit spot.
Not joking, I literally hit one of the Precursor Minotaurs for 1 point of damage from the bottom of the ramp with it at the midpoint where the shield spawns (The section that is all precursors that spawn in waves) 1 damn point of damage with its shields totally down.
From reading on Reddit and Bungies site, it looks like all the high Impact AR's took a 15% hit across the board to stats.
Meanwhile Thorn(Not maxed), Polite Denial(Not maxed), Hawkmoon(Fully Maxed), and my other Hand Cannon were all hitting at 1200+ against the same level mobs when at Range, and 1500-1700 in CQB.