I never understood why bungie was okay with raze lighter but never wanted to bring gjally to year 2. Sure, I understand the balance philosophy for RL vs. Gjally (melee close combat spam vs spam from far away). it's difficult to use RL on bosses without dying unless your fireteam is constantly stun locking but it cuts everything else up like fucking butter. If I'm ever looking to feel "y1 powerful" I'm always using razelighter regardless of whether the boss is curb stomping me or not =P
The issue with Gjallarhorn wasn't just how much damage it did, but how damn easy and automatic it was. The problem was further compounded when a full team ran it.
Sleeper Simulant actually does more damage (significantly) than Gjallarhorn ever did. But only to a single target, if you aim, and land the crit. This is a key difference. Whereas Sleeper will shit on any enemy with a crit spot even more quickly than Gjallarhorn could, it's not as easy to have a full team landing crits from a distance on a moving target. Gjallarhorn? Hit the feet, hit the head, it's all the same. If it moves? It'll track. If it was a bad shot and you missed? All good, it's got proximity detonation.
Sleeper (because it requires crits) and Raze (because you need to be super close) don't offer the same potential to just sit back and blow up the room from a distance.
It'll be interesting to see how it's balanced. It'll still be useless in the Raid, but OG Gjallarhorn would be super effective against Shield Bros, Darkblade, SABER, CoE/CoO bosses...