Yes, I finally got my hands on the most iconic Weapon of Sorrow. It took quite a bit of work to get Thorn, but was it worth it? Yeah. I think so. I've only had a little while to play with the gun, but so far I'm liking it quite a bit. In PvE activities, it does well since each kill you get creates a little floating sickly green soul remnants that you can pick up. These increase the damage of the poison effect, but perhaps even more interestingly they add some round back into the magazine. With good shooting and low to mid level enemies, you can fire a lot of rounds before ever having to reload. And you don't even need to move much as Thorn will draw in the remnants from a little ways away. I've been using The Last Word on my Hunter almost exclusively for the last few weeks, I even used it to get Thorn in the final amped up Strike, but it was always clear that The Last Word is really a Crucible gun, where Thorn certainly can handle the PvE aspect of Destiny.

But what about the Crucible? Well... once you throw out all your The Last Word fueled instincts, Thorn actually does pretty well! It has a bit more range and zoom than The Last Word, it's sight is nicely raised and just sorta a joy to use, and once you remember to keep pulling the trigger quickly, it can actually hold its own:

Here's four kills as I flanked a team: (Note that the Hunter did seem to burn out!)

Here's more of a combined arms kill that I was proud of:

Thorn's poison might seem to be a strong point, but it's really not. Bungie has leaned its lesson from the Destiny 1 days. You won't be burning many people to dead from around the corner. That said, Thorn's damage output is kinda odd. The Last Word does 51 damage on a body shot and 68 on a headshot. Thorn does 43/68 and then adds roughly 8 points of damage on top of that in the form of a few 2 point damage ticks. This makes Thorn slightly more powerful if you land all headshots, but less powerful at the time of impact if you are getting mostly body shots. The extra 8 points of damage per shot might let The Last Word finish a wounded enemy off one shot sooner or prevent the enemy returning fire which they might be able to do before Thorn's weaker shot + poison finished them off.

All in all, I found I could use Thorn effectively, even though I'm probably more confident with The Last Word. Still, someone with better aim than me who is used to longer ranged hand cannons can probably compete decently well using a Thorn.