I think that fact that exotics are being compared to their "counter parts" is a mistake the community is making. For example, before the april update eyasluna was "better" than hawkmoon because it had more range and accuracy than hawkmoon. But... if you are looking at the pure stats then you are missing the unique functionality of hawk moon... hawk moon had and has the highest damage output in a magazine across all hand cannons. THAT is what made it exotic. It was made to kill teir 2 enemies in pve better than any other hand cannon. It wasnt meant to be super accurate because of its high DPS.