So obviously we got a new exotic quest yesterday, and the reward is the Lumina hand cannon. Most of us know this by now, but in case you're out of the loop: its basically the opposite of Thorn, where killing an enemy generates a charge you can pick up that loads a "Noble Round". You can hold 5 noble rounds at a time, and when you hip-fire the gun with a noble round loaded, it shoots a charge that seeks a teammate and heals them, while also buffing both your and their damage (tests so far say this is a 35% damage buff in PvE, which lasts for 10 seconds). A lot of people have been calling the gun lackluster, saying that it is "close to being great", but not useful since its damage buff doesn't stack with a lot of other stuff. This is the point of my post--I think that's entirely the wrong way to look at the weapon, and when used properly it could be a game changer. Lumina is a [i]support[/i] weapon. The whole purpose of it is to lift teammates up (as well as a slight boost for yourself). It is [b]not[/b] designed to be a god-slaying machine (although I would love this type of performance in the future :P). People are getting caught up in "Boss DPS", saying the weapon isn't viable because it doesn't outperform current options, but I have to ask--Why does Lumina [i]have[/i] to be good for DPSing bosses in order to be useful? Look at the current layout of endgame PvE content--of all things that need an increase, is boss DPS truly one of them? You could make a case for heroic Menagerie, but I don't think any reasonable damage buff will fill the gap caused by a 20 power-level deficit. Outside of that, we can already one-phase each raid boss from year 2, and we can do it without the need for exotic heavy weapons! Because of the current state of certain archetypes (looking at you, grenade launchers), mixed with an effect like Tractor Cannon, we have all the DPS we need. Gahlran is a fairly easy one-phase if you have one tractor, and a bunch of good GL's, as is Riven and even Insurrection Prime. What I find to be the more difficult part in the raids (mainly SotP and CoS) is [i]getting to damage phase[/i]. Players need to run around and fend off ads (especially in CoS), and this can lead to some untimely deaths. Lumina is exactly the type of addition to the game that would help with this! If your doing CoS, and your partner gets pinned by an Ogre, you can hit them with a noble round to keep them alive, as well as ease the burden of the ogre. A similar scenario could be found with Berserkers in SotP. Like I said, Lumina is a [b]support[/b] weapon, and most of the community agrees with this. Let's judge it based on its ability to support people then, as opposed to throwing it out because it can't take our boss melt time from 15 seconds down to 7. TLDR; With grenade launchers and tractor cannon, we don't need to use our Exotic slot on heavy weapons to melt bosses. This opens up the opportunity for Lumina to assist the team in [b]getting to damage phase[/b], where the others weapons can finish it off. I just wanted to leave my two cents on this. Eye's up!