Swords in Destiny: Is there a place for them?

Before The Taken King expansion, rockets, particularly the Gjallarhorn, was the indisputable choice for a heavy weapon. However, the Gjallarhorn like many other exotic weapons, was not brought forward into Year 2 of Destiny in an attempt to add more diversity into players choices for weapons and to have them give new weapons a try. Among those new weapons, was the new heavy weapon class swords, which contains three legendary swords, one for each element, and three exotic swords also of each element but with their own special attack. Many people have taken a liking to using a sword, myself included, but it is a weapon class that is lacking in end game content.

The Attacks of a Sword
Swords come with the risk of getting up close to do massive damage to the enemy. This of course puts you in an extremely vulnerable spot where you can be gunned down. Legendary swords have a guard mechanic which slowly drains your ammo charge from your sword to gain some damage resistance and help you reach those kills. Exotic swords, who also have the guard mechanic, also have a special attack to make up for this weakness. For two of the swords, solar and void elements, the attacks are capable of one-shotting many higher health enemies. The exotic arc sword is different from the others, its special attack is ranged and involves throwing arc bolts across rooms at your enemies. The attacks from the arc sword are just as powerful as those from the solar and void swords, provided that your aim is accurate.

Swords in End Game Content
This is the shortcoming of swords and I doubt there is a scenario where this will change. They have no place in end-game content. For Iron Banner & Trials of Osiris, which are PvP end-game content, they are obviously at a clear disadvantage to rockets and machine guns. In end-game PvE content, i.e. the raids or high-level strikes, using a sword works well when clearing the weak enemies. Bosses in strikes, with the exception of Dust Palace, all have a ground-attack which will automatically be used when a guardian is within a certain radius of them. These attacks are extremely powerful and will take more than half your health requiring you to immediately retreat and look for cover if you are hit by one. In raids, it is often times that the mechanics of the boss fight simply do not allow for you to realistically use swords. The exotic arc sword is the only one that can be used in several fights, because of its ranged special attack, but the projectiles are relatively slow, and the rate at which you use ammo when using the special attacks, makes it un-ideal for multiple rounds of damage to bosses.

Possible Sword Changes
Unfortunately for swords, I cannot see any changes that will change their major shortcoming. Sword mechanics in Destiny had been around since the base game released over a year ago through the Sword of Crota mission, and also in the Crota's End raid that was released with The Dark Below. It would be rather diffcult for them to change the way swords work in Destiny so sword enthusiasts will have to wait until Destiny 2 to see any drastic changes. The only change they can make for legendary swords is have a new set of three that either vary in attack speed/damage from the original three or come up with new special attacks for a few new exotic swords.  These changes will not address the underlying problem with swords, as those problems stem from the game's mechanics, but could bring a nice change of pace for sword users.