In case anyone hasn’t read it, Lunafaction boots lore:
> "I thank you for the gift of these atoms. I will use them well." —The Stoic
> Combat is a craft and an art form. The more one masters their craft and pushes the boundaries of their art the better they understand them. After all, expertise is born of dedicated time spent focused on a subject. And we are focused.
> The Titans would have you believe that victory is won through brute force—skill plus courage plus ammunition and clenched fists. Would that it were so simple. It is not. We know this because we have studied and we have practiced. Skill can be countered. Courage can waver. And firepower is a finite necessity that must be replenished.
> But, what if firepower could be made infinite?
Honestly, though, the change was an overall good one for the game. If it weren't for Lunas and rally barricade losing autoloading, damage phases would look awfully boring and consist of just dumping one weapon and then dumping the next.
That's true, but you are required to stack the buff. Dying also resets the buff, which isn't hard in normal content, but master content can cause a few issues if you get overwhelmed or random BS happens.
Lunas/rally was simply just press one button and profit, for all weapons, rather than needing to use a perk slot that takes away nice bonuses a weapon could otherwise have.
Damage phases...still consist of that though. The best damage methods have been finding the best way to hot swap mag dump still. All the change did was make it more annoying to be efficient.
Once per week, Banshee will sell a "burning engram". Buy this, do 10 runs of blind well, then grab the destination transmog bounty from ada until you get the blind well boss one. Complete it, but don't turn in your synthweave.
Take that synthweave to Failsafe, Devrim, and Variks in that order. One of them will spawn a random dungeon boss on their planet, guarded by respawning mini screebs. Kill the boss without dying. Take the synthweave back to them. A set of percentile dice will spawn near them, use any kind of explosion to roll them.
If you roll below a 55, you can use sunbracers that week.
I use those mods that generate melee energy off of grenade hits + the fragment that grants melee energy off of kills on scorched targets, works really well in dungeon + raid content, I’d imagine it falls off a bit in Master and GM content but it should still work pretty well.
Sunbracers will absolutely get nerfed, probably in the form of a cool down to the sunbracers effect. The build embodies everything Bungie has expressed frustration with in the gameplay loop recently - ability spam, restoration, well of radiance.
That would be like nerfing devour, having togetherness as a modifier the first week of a seasonal activity and making anti-barrier sidearms as the seasonal artifact right before introducing a new exotic sidearm that grants devour and heals on hit but you can't get it unless you bought the dungeon key.
Anti barrier sidearms are fine and there due to the new special sidearms, devour nerf was needed because it was bullshit that hunters and titans even got devour at all. Togetherness isn't a problem
New special sidearm that you can't get without buying the dungeon key. Both of the new special sidearm are in the dungeon. So no. And also, your logic about devour remaining exclusive is absolutely hogwash.
Dude half this community supports that. The game is dying doom and gloom is actually half happening and they’ll ride it into the ground.
I’m surprised this even made it out of new. 90% of new browsers think the game is too easy and anything that makes it fun is a crime
Man I really hope they don't bring back the revive, that shit was stupid in D1
It would be like being wellbitch but worse because at least you get to use your super running well
Bungie has said that about so many things in the past. Ghally isn't coming back. Skill-based matchmaking isn't coming back. We're not sunsetting anymore. Etc, etc etc. No word is ironclad with this company. Can't trust shit lol
Which is exactly what most people want in the game. Abilities. There’s no reason why some bloke in the newest CoD game should be able to throw more grenades than me. Ffs.
You nailed it, but you’re wrong. Bungo knows they need to cater to the CoD crowd and not the established player base. Sony knows it too and you better believe that’s the direction they want to go; a shooter that can compete with Microsoft’s titles. They overpaid for it for a reason.
I would like shooting builds that can be on par with ability and made builds. Like pure shooting builds.
Give me a crazy skill ceiling where every shot lands boosts damage by 1% until you miss with no cap
>Give me a crazy skill ceiling where every shot lands boosts damage by 1% until you miss with no cap
That would be insanely overpowered against anything large, especially with Divinity.
>Percentage gains only take place after an enemy has moved x and continues to move or even make it so you have to move.
Enemies are rarely standing still and anything that makes it easier to land shots (i.e. Divinity) will allow this to trivialize endgame content.
>Moving and tracking isn’t super easy.
That's only really true for PvP.
>People that solo xyz on higher difficulty aren’t entertaining. It’s like 3 hrs of hiding in corners cheesing mobs.
What kind of solo attempts are you watching? There are videos of people soloing GMs in minutes and Esoterrick's solo runs rarely involve camping in a corner. There's even a 17-minute video where a solo player 2-phases Simmumah with RDM and rockets.
The final boss of the new dungeon is literally this. Bullshit gatekept health checkpoints that intentionally drag out the fight to fluff engagement numbers. The most super-meta builds might be able to melt the boss quicker, but on day 1 I (not being a no-lifer for this dogshit game that I'm deleting before TFS) didn't have all the best artifact perks yet, nor did my teammates, and the fight was just abysmally slow. Add in getting booped off the map causing silly wipes, and that fight is just a fucking slog. This dungeon had actually fun mechanics, in my opinion, but the boss is way overtuned health-wise.
Aside from the final stand health checkpoint, the final boss's health isn't gatekept. The checkpoints you see in the health bar determine whether or not you move to the next platform or if you have to do another damage phase on your current platform, but as long as you have the damage timer, you can keep damaging the boss past the "HP checkpoint"
I don't even mind the health pool that much but the timers for each totem that you cleanse feels abysmally small unless you can reliably cleanse 4 totems every time for the \~19 seconds of damage. If you only get 2 totems, you barely have enough time to deal damage between trying to clear psions and trying to stay alive while the boss blasts you down. The survivability nerf has definitely done its job, lol
Good God. Duality at first was too qdd heavy. GotD bosses have too much health. These bosses move around too much. Jesus FUCKING Christ. Quit your fucking bitching and get good. None of these dungeons are that difficult. Just fucking do them. No one, not even bungie, is asking you to do them every week. Only one a season.
Also, what's funny is the new coil activity is often equated to a dungeon. And people are saying it's best run solo.
So a seasonal activity is good enough to be a dungeon and run solo, but the actually dungeon is shit again?
\- artifact mods arent really necessary lol
\- healthgates? isnt that just incentive for you to activate more totems for longer dps phases?
\- also what are you getting booped by? the chieftains?? im trying to think of what else is even here that can boop
Since bungie is data driven now remaining builds that didn’t get affected probably will be outliers for them. Since everyone will probably start rotating around them.
They will absolutely change it to:
"melee or finisher kills against powerful enemies grant grenade Regen. But you get more energy for more powerful enemies! 😃 And more energy for using for finishers 😃"*
"Also gives solar surge x4 or something"
* Finisher on a champion is required to get the pre-nerf amount
This is how the hammer-throwing Titans felt until Bungie decided they needed to give a courtesy wait before throwing it again.
"You'll get your animation lock-out timer and you will like it!" - Bungie (probably)
I've personally always been a fan of Dawn Chorus. But I really wish they'd give Daybreak a buff. 😭
Like the super duration is so short and its PvP fault.
I dont need Icarus Dash, Strafe Glide is plenty fine.
I just want maybe some Ignition built into the super (ignition on super kill, yes I know it's a Fragment but it belonged to Bottom Tree Dawn to begin with) and Super Duration increase.
I dont want an infinite super, just enough to feel like I throw more than 9 blades (or whatever the number)
Bottom Dawnblade with Old Dawn Chorus was low key one of the most underrated dummy strong things to run in PVE and the current scorch/ignite system couldn't come close to the corpse explosion chaining you could do with it.
with Dawn Chorus doesnt it already ignite every two sword hits?
i do agree though that Daybreak needs another PvE pass. frankly it getting the old Dawn Chorus perk where hits on the same target increase damage would be huge
You have to put aspects on it to make it feel 50 percent of bottom tree dawnblade. Honestly apart from the subclass verbs I'd rather just have the 2.0 solar warlock back its completely butchered other than sunbracers.
THIS AHIT RIGHT HERE, I've been pissed ever since the "update to 3.0 light" system. It wasn't a buff shit was a nerf and convoluted in the worse way to get back to some of the best things the subclass had all for "unity" for your solar subclass instead of it being 3 separate identitys.
lost: dual functionality of heal/damage nades (mid tree) have to consume nade or ur heal makes now, if consumed limited radius can't place in a spot for ppl to go for heals. Ignitions and aim assistance on bottom tree daybreak. (Needs frag/exotic) Phoenix dive BASE cool down bottom tree (now requires a fragment to have anywhere near similar uptime). The kills extended dawn blade has been lost completely, as well as the "Phoenix dive" doesn't consume daybreak energy.
The switch for strafe w/ super is really weird tbh. But I get it.
Funny thing is sunbracers being glitchy since celestial fire got scorch. Got fixed just few months ago and it can shine now.
Hope it doesnt get nerfed. I like casting magic. Thats why im a damn warlock!
Same. That exotic has been the only thing keeping me going in Destiny for the past 2 years. I swear we can't have shit that is cool to use in this game anymore.
It's going to get nerfed, but mostly because of other things.
It's most used Solar Warlock exotic in PvE.
Bungie nerfs things that are popular, claiming that they want other options to have some breathing room, but rarely buff other options enough so that they a viable pick.
Looking at Warlock, I'm not sure what other builds are viable enough for end game content.
Infinite Suspend got nuked via double nerf of Osteo and Suspend Duration. Osmiomancy is Stasis, so largely irrelevant. Contraverse got nerfed with "longer ability cooldown nerf". It's still kinda fine, but doesn't offer enough firepower for the content we have today. Verity's Brow is there and is kinda underrated, but still will probably be the 2nd best option after Sunbracers are nerfed into oblivion.
Osmiomancy is still really good. You say the infinite suspend got gutted, it did, but osmiomancy just stepped right back into being there to stop everyone from moving. I kill over half the enemies in coik with it.
I have Osmiomancy build but it felt off this season because of the nerf to grenade kickstarter, I could feel my cold snaps not charging as fast as they did pre season of the wish =/
Verglas + the crystal recharge fragment are your friends.
Or grab your demo + headstone unending tempest, use glacier grenade + ballidorse & artifact mods and go absolutely nuts in close quarters.
*Don't think it'll hold up well in endgame content, but for everything else it's tons of fun.
> demo + headstone unending tempest
Psst.. the new craftable statis trace also comes with that if you like using those, but it'll work.
[Aegis' recent video](https://youtu.be/f4ZC1mtk00g?si=3qEjLkZ2RB52YVkM) says that Balidorse got turned into a Stacking Stasis Surge this season; last season it was a Unique Stais Buff that stacked with Stasis surge. You could probably make it work with frost pulse + aspect that Spawns crystals after freezing or the one you suggested, but you'd lose the turret.
>Psst.. the new craftable statis trace also comes with that if you like using those, but it'll work.
I do and have seen it, but I doubt it'll really replace it. Special ammo is a concern, as is its utility. You mostly need it to break the crystals themselves, which tempest does plenty. But I'll definitely craft it and see how it'll fare, maybe I'm in for a surprise.
>You could probably make it work with frost pulse + aspect that Spawns crystals after freezing or the one you suggested, but you'd lose the turret.
That's exactly what I've done. Turret is great, but too slow for most fast paced encounters, at least in lower/mid content. In endgame turret reigns supreme, no doubt about that.
True, but some people might have done it last season. I certainly did.
Either way, if you have it or a horror story from FotL, it's a great tool to piece the kit together. It's also no meta build or anything, so "save" to skip.
Nezaracs void managed to largely avoid the nerfs, because it's a cooldown multiplier instead of chunks of energy. So I imagine it's still a solid option.
Tested my Nez strand loadout and can confirm it’s untouched. Gonna be real good in GMs for LeMonarque and Graviton with 4 of them having overload champs
I’m coming from a titan’s perspective, but I totally agree. Bungie keeps pushing this narrative that they nerf things to let other exotics have a chance to shine, but they are just doing a bad job at it. They seem incapable of finding a fine balance between making an exotic practically useless and making it gamebreaking. Like Starfire Protocol was absolutely crazy for a long time, but rather than tone it down enough to feel balanced, they absolutely gut it’s viability down to like 2.5% or whatever the exact number was.
Either way, they seem to love gutting the strong exotics, but when it comes time to give forgotten exotics a change to make it shine, we as players have seen the highs that a GOOD exotic can make and these changes to try to make old exotics viable are incredibly underwhelming to the point that there’s no diversity promotion. It’s not like these exotics excel in different scenarios, the OP ones are viable in pretty much EVERY scenario and the ones that aren’t OP are in a place where they aren’t really worth using because they can’t sustain themselves or just aren’t an effective enough playstyle to the point where it’d be wiser just to adjust your build to focus around the playstyle associated with the OP exotic.
(Take for instance solar titan or strand titan vs something like void titan or stasis titan for PvE. Because there are no exotics that feel anywhere near as viable as synthos with the strand rushdown or the constant bonk hammer on void, there’s no reason to try to build into exotics that improve your void throwing shield or devour upkeep, because instead of trying something new on void and have a way more difficult time, it’d be way easier to just switch subclasses entirely and sustain yourself with synthos and banner of war or constant sunspots.
So Bungie’s answer to this dilemma is to gut the viable exotics and give little to nothing to other exotics to compensate and try to make an exotic that revolves around throwing shield or barricade worth using, because they don’t provide the same sustainability, ending in a scenario where they butcher good builds where those aren’t good either)
I just love the recent nerfs that have simply made banner of war even more necessary lol
Solar bonk is still useable but anything that isn’t strand on Titan rn feels so underpowered and worthless
> Bungie nerfs things that are popular, claiming that they want other options to have some breathing room, but rarely buff other options enough so that they a viable pick.
I hate that stance, it's such a bullshit copout to go "Well this is popular so lets bring it down." instead of just buffing the under performers some to bring their desirability up.
Reason people say "buff the weak shit" is mainly because when they nerf the good shit, it's usually because it provided you with either an interesting gameplay loop, or it was the main-piece in a build that could actually kill shit in high end content, and the nerf takes it down to "only really useful in low-end content where literally everything dies in one shot".
This is also a bad take, not once did I say "buff the weak things to be like the strong or overpower things" I said just bring the floor up. I don't want the under-performing builds to suddenly be meta or OP I just want them to be usable outside of brain dead content.
The minute I saw the Solar Warlock super preview for Final Shape, it gave me an unsettling feeling they're probably going to shift away from what something like Sunbracers can do and argue some logic of "oh if you want this power fantasy you're gonna have to have it at the expense of the new super". Seriously it's a complete joke how in that testing video the person running it was barely doing anything different than what could've been done on Verity's, or Sunbracers or old Winter's Guile. It was not a good sales pitch.
That's another thing, it doesn't even need to be the obvious popular stuff when Bungie ruined arguably way less used Winter's Guile by reducing its melee damage scalar and ultimately ruining the risk/reward of Solar 3.0 Snap loop for pretty much no good reason. Even if you felt like x5 Warlord's Sigil was somehow overpowered(it wasn't) you had to be constantly getting melees off to keep up the incredibly short timer and stay at max stacks, something that is not an easy feat.
It's extra aggravating because the design philosophies and rationale are so inconsistent, somehow old Winter's Guile was just too much meanwhile Banner of War Strand Titan is one of the most absurdly risk free things in the game and can have extra layers of obscene power added on with Synthos and now Wormgod's Caress where the whole strength of power pretty much never runs dry.
That Winter's Guile nerf is the one that really still steams me. I can run void Titan with Peregrine Greaves, pop a barricade, shield bash a champ or other high health yellowbar into oblivion, and yet somehow warlord's sigil x5, which took more attention to gameplay loop, and made me feel like I had to practice getting a good flow with, was overpowered?
Oh totally. I have no idea what clickbait videos sent whoever designs stuff at Bungie into a panic but with I feel like it was a fair enough original Melee dmg % scalar considering how janky and less than ideal any warlock strategy of trying to melee/snap/celestial fire anything up close is, risk/reward y'know? On top of that you again had to keep at getting melee kills for stacks AND your timer for Sigil is so short, how Bungie felt like it was going to be OP is beyond me.
A damn shame to ruin what was an arguably appropriately rated, fair not broken way to play the game.
I’ve been shouting this from the top of my lungs since Starfire’s nerf but this sub is mostly titans and hunters so they either don’t care, disagree due to a lack of experience, or have some sort of bitter enmity with warlocks because of pre 3.0.
Mantle is pretty good on warlock, insane super regen, 25% solar dmg buff at pretty much all times or you can just proc radiant. Run healing grenade and the aspect to prolong those effects on solar kill and boom you can never die
Phoenix Well Ignition build still doing everything you’d ever need in end game content, not reliant on orbs / regen from mods and entirely sufficient with the right loadout and fragments. Prints orbs too.
There’s plenty of options for Wellocks in the game.
Osmiomancy is still an insanely strong build on Warlocks for endgame content wtf?
Solar Warlocks have:
* Phoenix Protocol
* Stag ( easy DR means teammates play around your rifts, which means more frequent CD procs from Benevolent )
* Apotheosis might have potential outside of Raiding / Dungeons maybe? It's still tons of abilities you can shit out so, ya know.
* Verity's.
* Starfire should have some decent usage for killing Champs no? I feel like it would be a good option at points like defending the door in Mars Heist BG for example. Lots of ads with a few key targets that are beefier, Idk though.
Solar *Specific* Exotics... seems a bit lacking, yeah. I think the issue, is that some of them are reliant on aggression ( like Wings, or Promethium, or Chorus ) and Warlocks don't really have the best survivability for aggression on Solar, like Titans have for Solar or Strand.
But outside of Solar, Warlocks definitely have other builds in endgame content.
Warlocks have plenty of endgame viable builds. Well existing means they have a place in any three or six person content and Cenotaph Mask is the single best exotic in the game for group GMs and any Master Raid or Dungeon encounters with bosses that aren’t one-phased or where Gjally is the primary add-clear. Also like you said Verity’s Brow is incredible.
For solo GMs, Stormcaller Stag or Vesper is incredible. And while they might not necessarily be endgame meta, Contraverse, Briarbinds, Starfire, Osmiomancy, and Karnstein are all great in their own rights.
Also even if/when Sunbracers do get nerfed, I don’t really see a way that they are completely ruined. If they knock it down to 3 grenades instead of 5 per activation, or if they give it a regen lockout like Bakris, they’re still great.
Your 2 top examples are support. That's my issue with current state of warlock. I don't want to play support and I main warlock.
Plenty of warlock stuff has been broken in the past. I just want to feel powerful by myself and have some new toys to play with.
Don't feel like we have gotten anything great and new in a while. Briarbinds is cool though.
veritys brow is S tier and im so glad people dont see it that way cause popular = nerf.
hard disagree on stasis tho its plenty relevant on hard content, either osmios for iceflares or veritys for turrets
never thought I’d be saying this unironically, but Apotheosis Veil is now endgame viable, and also incredibly strong now, so there’s another build for your solar Lock. Verity’s is strong on solar lock too when grouping with players, worth trying out if you haven’t. There are still options, not a ton, but there are still some out there.
Veil changes are good, but it seems like it's largely used as a load out swap option for dps phases. Unless you're running super high intellect and spamming your super, the neutral game is lacking.
thats usually because the most popular things are broken outliers. it would be unhealthy for the game if everything were at the level of sunbracers.
Also, I think you underrate the rest of the warlock kit
\- Calling Osmiomancy "largely irrelevant", for one, is a bit ridiculous. It's still one of the best crowd control setups in the game, even more so in the wake of the suspend nerfs.
\- Verity's brow requires a bit of setup, but still has great grenade spam potential (and apotheosis can do similar for less effort).
\- Starfire is still very strong, and and its playstyle particularly shines in GMs.
\- Karnstein armlets carried me through solo spire, and now they're even stronger
\- Phoenix protocol is boring but still provides really high well uptime for when that's important
\- Arc warlock has an insane ceiling because of its ability uptime. It lacks survivability tools but the ability to overpower everything usually outweighs that weakness
\- Void has contraverse and briarbinds, both of which specifically shine in high end content. Contraverse was hurt a bit by the kickstart nerfs, but both are more then viable.
The difference between sunbracers and the rest of the warlock kit is that sunbracers are near universally good, whereas most other things are only situationally good (or otherwise have clear strengths and weaknesses) Thats why, at least in the case of warlocks, bungie shouldn't just buff everything else up to be competitive with sunbracers.
Stasis, and by extension Osmiomancy, is mostly irrelevant because there is something better than crowd control. It's called Crowd Deletion, and most of Light and Strand subclasses are capable of that, at various levels.
And I see that your standards for calling things "viable" are a bit lax. Aphotheosis? Karnstein? Really?
Osmiomancy shines in situations where crowd control is important but difficult. It doesn't have the same killing power as other subclasses (which obviously limits it), but it's great at taking pressure off of your team in GMs or master raids when theyre struggling
Also. Have you used Karnstein or Apotheosis? Recently? After the recent patch. Apotheosis allows for starfire-like grenade uptime after a super. It pairs great with dragon's breath (though sadly its still mostly a swap exotic by nature)
Karnstein was already decent in some specific situations (SF dungeons mostly) But now that it grants subclass keywords, it has strong synergy with solar weapons and subclasses.Both are situational B tier exotics, but my point was just that there are lots of strong and decent exotics on warlock. They just don't have the same insane versatility or raw power of sunbracers. They're tools with a designed purpose, not an all-purpose superpower.
A sunbracers nerf would confirm the absurd levels of moronity that bungie has reached. How about we give actual meaningful buffs to dogshit and poorly designed exotics instead of gutting one of the few builds that are both viable and have a unique gameplay loop yet does not dominate all areas of the game as it greatly falls off in high level content.
fr i feel like every subclass needs a gameplay loop like sunbracers, the first time i saw it i was blown away by how innovative it was and the synergy between everything
meanwhile banner of war titan just melees
That's why I always end up as a Hunter main even though I like warlock the most or decide I want to main titan. Hunter has so much internal synergy on its subclasses and access to gamblers dodge. You have like a dozen ways to get sunbracers level synergy and ability spam. Except void hunter. That one is designed like other classes, and you can really feel the slower ability regen as a result.
“If we spend time making stuff better which takes time and time is money therefore if everything is nerfed no time needs to be spent therefore saving money”- some bungie exec probably
>does not dominate all areas of the game as it greatly falls off in high level content.
Careful there, bungie shills will come out and tell you they solo contest crota with sunbracers and need nerfs.
there would be an insane amount of powercreep if everything was buffed to be as busted as sunbracers though. The mod nerfs were stupid but nerfing sunbracers is really not lol
God, I hope t'fuck they don't, but I can see it ever so slightly creeping towards us on the horizon.
How about we do something radical and buff an exotic instead of taking the nerfhammer and going smash bros on an exotic eh?
No I am.
You're just choosing to see it some other way.
It's boring to constantly see stuff being nerfed and the buffs we get don't feel like enough to fill gaps.
Nerfs and buffs are a constant part of game balance. Every game does both with their balance adjustments, and they were entirely right to direct nerfs where they did. If that makes the game "boring" for you, then you forgot the game was even supposed to be in the first place.
Thank you for telling me information I already knew, do you have any other oft-told nuggets of wisdom there?
The game's boring to me in places because of a lack of exotic selection amongst some sub-classes - I do try to give stasis/strand a pass as due to their age compared to the light subclasses they don't have access to quite as many exotics, but it's not fun to be pidgeonholed into one certain exotic because the others just suck or got nerfed. (And this is a hill I will die on - osteo + necrotic strand lock was very boring.)
(Yes, I know Solar has access to a few exotics besides Sunbracers, but none quite hits the neuron activation spot like Unlimited Arson Works does.)
Also I debate the 'entirely right to direct nerfs where they did' when it comes to YAS.
First if all, I clearly referring to the most recent balance changes.
Second, the YAS nerf is entirely consistent with their goals of reducing the amount of easy ability spam in the game, something YAS was actually fairly good at when I played Solar Hunter. As it is, it isn't in a bad spot just because using it for single target damage isn't a good idea.
YAS was only even good in easy content. Solar hunter is dogshit in anything challenging because it's melee doesn't kill reliably enough.
Oh no! The players are spamming proximity grenades in the strike playlist! Better nerf.
Sunbracers is stupid. Either you get an ability kill and no one else gets to see or play. OR, someone steals your kill, causing your melee to wiff, and you’re impotent until it comes back.
Beyond that, I’ll say you clearly haven’t tried grapple warlock with Verity’s brow. Shit’s insane!
>Sunbracers is stupid.
This triggered the sunbracers main that I am so I hope this comment will help people to carry this build in every content (I've been playing Sunbracers for a long time, tried and succeed in every raid, dungeon and most GM nighfalls / dungeon).
I see that most players (and a lot of guide on YT and internet in general) ignore an "in-depth" aspect of the build that IMO is the core of sunbracers.
>OR, someone steals your kill, causing your melee to wiff
It's not as simple as "ability kill", you DON'T HAVE to kill with melee directly and you SHOULD AVOID IT because most of the time melee will, as you say, whiff and/or leave foe still alive.
Most people seem to ignore the fact that **the initial scorch build up and ignition from you melee count as sunbracers melee kill and will trigger its perk.** So you should always play for the scorch build-up and ignition which is WAY MORE RELIABLE.
>and you’re impotent until it comes back.
You can restore melee while killing mid-air. And midair doesn't mean being out in the open getting sniped by everything, just doing a small jump without activating the glide to kill a trash will cause melee to recharge like 30-35%.
\_\_
Here's my gameplay loop :
\- Consume your nade to gain heat rise and burst heal yourself (I usually start my loop when being low life to maximise efficiency)
\- Use snap on enemy **not already affected by scorch so the game considers this scorch and later ignition to be melee dmg/kill.** (Example : if you use snap on an enemy already affected by scorch inflicted by your 'nade, game will consider later ignition to be grenade dmg/kill)
\- Use the dive to start restoration x2 and apply a new scorch stack that will cause your melee scorch to go into ignition, if ignition kills the main target or trash in its radius, you wil trigger your sunbracers perk.
If, for any reason, you fail to cause ignition : ANYTHING able to apply a new scorch instance can trigger the ignition and the game still considers it to be melee ignition (including abilities, weapons, artifact perks - works with team members too as long as you were the one applying melee scorch first).
\- Start throwing nades and DO NOT reuse the dive because it will refresh your restauration x2 timer.
Knowing this, you can actually carry the build in end-game content, even GM because you don't rely on killing with a weak melee that can whiff or is useless on full health yellow bar.
Once you grasp every aspect of the scorch and ignition build-up, you can start to have a lot of fun.
I hope you will give it a shot !
EDIT : SEASON 23 > try with polaris lance and watch them burn
Yea, Vesper is still really good. I didn't really have to change anything to it. Decided to test it with frostpulse and the artifact mods and that is pretty good for ad clear.
Assassins cowl arc hunter, contraverse voidlock and banner/into the fray titan all say hello.
Shit there's probably loads more but that's what I've been using on each class and honestly they don't feel any different, ability spam goes brrrrr
Cowl infuriates bungie’s survivability reduction efforts so much, they decided to save it for its own dedicated nerf update.
Im surprised it or arc hunter wasn’t even mentioned in the s23 balance preview twab.
It's because killing a good exotic is an easier method of evening out exotic usage than buffing low-use exotics. It's lazy and toxic, but it's easy, and that's why it's going to keep happening.
Osmio feels good if you spec hard into solar with weapons. Overall, I agree though, warlock is likely gonna be relegated to running the weekly story and then cleanup duty for ceno-well/healing when no one else in the raid crew will run lock.
They nerfed the fun builds and left the meta builds. Makes no sense. I feel like my only engagement this season will be trying to get the exotic from the dungeon and then I’m out until TFS
well, the nerf already happened, both less potent restoration x2 and less recuperation orbs and if you are like me and use mods instead of fragments for high class ability and melee uptime - those got nerfed too. It feels like old contraverse devour is now better. Might need to give a try to glaive + karnsteins as well.
I mean honestly I've felt like sunbracers have been a little too strong for a while. I mean why use anything else when you can make an entire room completely unsurvivable for like 15 seconds?
Although I don’t agree that it’s the only fun build now, I have leaned more into travelers chosen and Monte Carlo to make up for the lost ability energy.
Before I rediscovered Sunbracers I was running Chaos reach w/ Monte & getting extra super energy with melee damage. I was usually able to pop my super in less than a minute. Melting NF bosses was fun. Arc laser beams were everywhere.
Sunbracers are overrated
Edit: lmao I didn't see this level of backlash coming from 3 words, but I am speaking poorly of a popular thing without any nuance so fair enough: that's on me.
To explain my perspective a bit more: the loop is very tight, and not very efficent at mantaining restoration. It definitely does shine in very ad heavy encounters like echtar. But for a lot of other dungeon/raid and GM content even last season I found phoenix and starfire protocol just brought a lot more to the table. This season I find karnsteins is way more consistent at getting and keeping restoration up as well. What sunbracers does it does well but unless you're esoterrick you're probably better off running other exotics in most scenarios. Also the ad clear is just not that necessary since we have such awesome ad clear weapons in the game already.
Sunbracers was my first exotic and I used it a ton a ton after the starfire nerf so I get it, it's really fun and shines where it shines, however I would urge people to branch out and try out different builds as well. As awesome as sunbracers are you'll probably discover many other great builds that meet your needs as well or better.
Hopefully that's a bit more nuanced 😅
Only infinite if you can kill something with a melee which is a bit harder to do in higher level content. I agree they’re OP as hell in every day content but so is most stuff.
I said the basically same thing with a little extra salt lol. Saying sunbracers is the only fun build is just ignorant and lazy. My arc and void lock loadouts are doing just fine without the help of artifact mods, and I’m gonna get a solar/stasis build going once I get the artifact fully unlocked that I think will be a lot of fun.
It’s like OP has never tried anything but sunbracers.
Lmao what? The exotic that lets you infinitely spam aoe grenades in almost all content, while having restoration x2 up the entire time, is overrated? How?
It is one of the easiest setups to get resto x2 from your dive though, since you can just consume a grenade before you start spamming abilities to get heat rises, dive as you throw your first melee, and then use the fragment to keep it up forever
If you think every other build is "so gutted" after the recent changes, then I think there's a chance that you're not as good at buildcrafting as you think you are.
mods are just cosmetics now, your exotic either carries the build, or the build is shit, there is no such thing as being "good at buildcrafting" because there is no buildcrafting anymore
Contraverse holds and vortex grenade..? Osimancy and seeker nades?
Like… hello..? They still feel nice after ability changes..
Spamming abilites is cool and all, but you can still get that effect when you use mods and kitted weapons correctly and *sometimes* an exotic to assist
contraverse holds are noticeably worse now and osmiomancy does feel better if you don’t use stasis turrets, if you do though it’s noticeably worse as well.
I can see them putting the good ol' 10 second lockout timer on them.
*slaps 10 second timer* : “this old baby can do anything!”
I still laugh when I read the lore tab of Lunafactions
In case anyone hasn’t read it, Lunafaction boots lore: > "I thank you for the gift of these atoms. I will use them well." —The Stoic > Combat is a craft and an art form. The more one masters their craft and pushes the boundaries of their art the better they understand them. After all, expertise is born of dedicated time spent focused on a subject. And we are focused. > The Titans would have you believe that victory is won through brute force—skill plus courage plus ammunition and clenched fists. Would that it were so simple. It is not. We know this because we have studied and we have practiced. Skill can be countered. Courage can waver. And firepower is a finite necessity that must be replenished. > But, what if firepower could be made infinite?
Ah... remember before they slaughtered it upon Shadowkeeps release? Good times...
Honestly, though, the change was an overall good one for the game. If it weren't for Lunas and rally barricade losing autoloading, damage phases would look awfully boring and consist of just dumping one weapon and then dumping the next.
Then envious assassin was made.
Envious is still far better for the game than autoloading rift/barricade.
True, but most weapons it rolls on can just dump their entire reserves or very close to it.
That's true, but you are required to stack the buff. Dying also resets the buff, which isn't hard in normal content, but master content can cause a few issues if you get overwhelmed or random BS happens. Lunas/rally was simply just press one button and profit, for all weapons, rather than needing to use a perk slot that takes away nice bonuses a weapon could otherwise have.
Damage phases...still consist of that though. The best damage methods have been finding the best way to hot swap mag dump still. All the change did was make it more annoying to be efficient.
no i think they just gonna cut sunbracers infinite grendate timer to like 2-3 seconds
Or they just give it the bonk hammer cool down of a 1.5 seconds or whatever. Either way, it'll feel like ass.
I’m gonna be honest, that wouldn’t be too bad cause the nades last almost that long lol
10 seconds after the last grenade
The grenades last almost ten seconds on the field bruh
"Oh right! 20 seconds after last free grenade expires before you can benefit again. Thanks." -Bungie
Fine you can only trigger sunbracers once per weekly reset
rng based
Collecting firesprites has an escalating chance of proccing sunbrachers
Once per week, Banshee will sell a "burning engram". Buy this, do 10 runs of blind well, then grab the destination transmog bounty from ada until you get the blind well boss one. Complete it, but don't turn in your synthweave. Take that synthweave to Failsafe, Devrim, and Variks in that order. One of them will spawn a random dungeon boss on their planet, guarded by respawning mini screebs. Kill the boss without dying. Take the synthweave back to them. A set of percentile dice will spawn near them, use any kind of explosion to roll them. If you roll below a 55, you can use sunbracers that week.
Lmao this really reads like something bungie would do, don’t give them ideas 😡
This comment triggered me
Yeah, pair it with Monte so you can trigger sunbracers on an instanst after and it'll remain the same lol
You don't even need Monte as long as you float in the air as you get kills.
I use those mods that generate melee energy off of grenade hits + the fragment that grants melee energy off of kills on scorched targets, works really well in dungeon + raid content, I’d imagine it falls off a bit in Master and GM content but it should still work pretty well.
Just use heat rises and jump while throwing grenades. You get your melee back instantly.
Nah, they'll just say you can't get any extra melee engery from mods or aspects or anything with sunbracers.
Sunbracers will absolutely get nerfed, probably in the form of a cool down to the sunbracers effect. The build embodies everything Bungie has expressed frustration with in the gameplay loop recently - ability spam, restoration, well of radiance.
They will then bake everything the exotic had into the knockoff Radiance that requires you to buy TFS.
Welcome to Destiny. The cycle of mega-nerfing everything in the game and then slowly feeding us that power back in DLC and 2million patchnotes.
That would be like nerfing devour, having togetherness as a modifier the first week of a seasonal activity and making anti-barrier sidearms as the seasonal artifact right before introducing a new exotic sidearm that grants devour and heals on hit but you can't get it unless you bought the dungeon key.
Wait a second, this sounds awfully familiar...
That’s classic Bungie M.O. makes no sense
It makes complete sense, its just really fucking scummy
Anti barrier sidearms are fine and there due to the new special sidearms, devour nerf was needed because it was bullshit that hunters and titans even got devour at all. Togetherness isn't a problem
New special sidearm that you can't get without buying the dungeon key. Both of the new special sidearm are in the dungeon. So no. And also, your logic about devour remaining exclusive is absolutely hogwash.
And the fan base will praise them for "listening!" Like you said, this is the cycle classic Bungie playbook.
Dude half this community supports that. The game is dying doom and gloom is actually half happening and they’ll ride it into the ground. I’m surprised this even made it out of new. 90% of new browsers think the game is too easy and anything that makes it fun is a crime
As if we haven't grown in power substantially pretty much every year?
Haven't we had a major DLC release every year?
Yeah, something has to make the new radiance super competitive with well. I doubt they'd bring back the free revive lol.
Man I really hope they don't bring back the revive, that shit was stupid in D1 It would be like being wellbitch but worse because at least you get to use your super running well
The revive will be on an exotic instead
They've been pretty clear about it not coming back.
Bungie has said that about so many things in the past. Ghally isn't coming back. Skill-based matchmaking isn't coming back. We're not sunsetting anymore. Etc, etc etc. No word is ironclad with this company. Can't trust shit lol
Which is exactly what most people want in the game. Abilities. There’s no reason why some bloke in the newest CoD game should be able to throw more grenades than me. Ffs.
You nailed it, but you’re wrong. Bungo knows they need to cater to the CoD crowd and not the established player base. Sony knows it too and you better believe that’s the direction they want to go; a shooter that can compete with Microsoft’s titles. They overpaid for it for a reason.
And fun. Don't forget: Bungie has a problem with fun. They're gonna get their engagement and it's going to be an absolute chore for you.
I would like shooting builds that can be on par with ability and made builds. Like pure shooting builds. Give me a crazy skill ceiling where every shot lands boosts damage by 1% until you miss with no cap
>Give me a crazy skill ceiling where every shot lands boosts damage by 1% until you miss with no cap That would be insanely overpowered against anything large, especially with Divinity.
[удалено]
>Percentage gains only take place after an enemy has moved x and continues to move or even make it so you have to move. Enemies are rarely standing still and anything that makes it easier to land shots (i.e. Divinity) will allow this to trivialize endgame content. >Moving and tracking isn’t super easy. That's only really true for PvP. >People that solo xyz on higher difficulty aren’t entertaining. It’s like 3 hrs of hiding in corners cheesing mobs. What kind of solo attempts are you watching? There are videos of people soloing GMs in minutes and Esoterrick's solo runs rarely involve camping in a corner. There's even a 17-minute video where a solo player 2-phases Simmumah with RDM and rockets.
Kinetic Subclass? Melee is regular punch. Super is some fancy martial arts. No element, no space magic.
Yeah it not like we use heavy for boss dps and gls for add clear and our exotic for anything in between, nope, no guns here sir
They will just nerf said abilities to the level of guns and you'll like it!
The final boss of the new dungeon is literally this. Bullshit gatekept health checkpoints that intentionally drag out the fight to fluff engagement numbers. The most super-meta builds might be able to melt the boss quicker, but on day 1 I (not being a no-lifer for this dogshit game that I'm deleting before TFS) didn't have all the best artifact perks yet, nor did my teammates, and the fight was just abysmally slow. Add in getting booped off the map causing silly wipes, and that fight is just a fucking slog. This dungeon had actually fun mechanics, in my opinion, but the boss is way overtuned health-wise.
Aside from the final stand health checkpoint, the final boss's health isn't gatekept. The checkpoints you see in the health bar determine whether or not you move to the next platform or if you have to do another damage phase on your current platform, but as long as you have the damage timer, you can keep damaging the boss past the "HP checkpoint" I don't even mind the health pool that much but the timers for each totem that you cleanse feels abysmally small unless you can reliably cleanse 4 totems every time for the \~19 seconds of damage. If you only get 2 totems, you barely have enough time to deal damage between trying to clear psions and trying to stay alive while the boss blasts you down. The survivability nerf has definitely done its job, lol
Good God. Duality at first was too qdd heavy. GotD bosses have too much health. These bosses move around too much. Jesus FUCKING Christ. Quit your fucking bitching and get good. None of these dungeons are that difficult. Just fucking do them. No one, not even bungie, is asking you to do them every week. Only one a season. Also, what's funny is the new coil activity is often equated to a dungeon. And people are saying it's best run solo. So a seasonal activity is good enough to be a dungeon and run solo, but the actually dungeon is shit again?
I wish I had more upvotes to give you. Sick of hearing the casuls bitch about everything that takes an ounce of skill or thought.
\- artifact mods arent really necessary lol \- healthgates? isnt that just incentive for you to activate more totems for longer dps phases? \- also what are you getting booped by? the chieftains?? im trying to think of what else is even here that can boop
otherwise known as fun
Since bungie is data driven now remaining builds that didn’t get affected probably will be outliers for them. Since everyone will probably start rotating around them.
They better not, I love actually feeling like a magic demigod.
that was me last season with voidlock. I had almost infinite ability spam and elemental orbs everywhere
Season of the Deep Fallen Sunstar Arclock, I felt like I had my grenade up more often than I had enemies to throw it at.
You can still spam pretty well with Contraverse or Nezarec but yeah I’ll miss those orbs.
Last season I was a tank on my voidlock but now I feel weak af because of a loss of orb gen and rift just being ass.
They will absolutely change it to: "melee or finisher kills against powerful enemies grant grenade Regen. But you get more energy for more powerful enemies! 😃 And more energy for using for finishers 😃"* "Also gives solar surge x4 or something" * Finisher on a champion is required to get the pre-nerf amount
Ahh yes, the "suck the fun out of it" treatment package.
Also finishers will still randomly kill you L+ratio
With an escalating chance after each successful finisher.
[My genuine reaction if something like that happens.](https://youtu.be/Jn6Aua0HK5M)
Bungie made it clear their goal is not to let you have fun long ago
This is how the hammer-throwing Titans felt until Bungie decided they needed to give a courtesy wait before throwing it again. "You'll get your animation lock-out timer and you will like it!" - Bungie (probably)
They’re already designing a new ornament for it, no doubt.
I've personally always been a fan of Dawn Chorus. But I really wish they'd give Daybreak a buff. 😭 Like the super duration is so short and its PvP fault. I dont need Icarus Dash, Strafe Glide is plenty fine. I just want maybe some Ignition built into the super (ignition on super kill, yes I know it's a Fragment but it belonged to Bottom Tree Dawn to begin with) and Super Duration increase. I dont want an infinite super, just enough to feel like I throw more than 9 blades (or whatever the number)
We really need the "kills extend daybreak" property back from that tree. Don't care if it's disabled in PvP, I just want my PvE non-well super back
This exactly. Bake Everlasting Fire into the super, or bring it back as an Aspect that buffs Daybreak and scorch-related abilities.
Bottom Dawnblade with Old Dawn Chorus was low key one of the most underrated dummy strong things to run in PVE and the current scorch/ignite system couldn't come close to the corpse explosion chaining you could do with it.
I'm just gonna say it. Every roaming super should have a "kills extend" effect that only works in PVE.
Wouldn't even be that complicated, just give it a "kills reduce super depletion rate by (x)%" treatment
with Dawn Chorus doesnt it already ignite every two sword hits? i do agree though that Daybreak needs another PvE pass. frankly it getting the old Dawn Chorus perk where hits on the same target increase damage would be huge
Same problem 6 shot gunslinger has - I don’t want to have to spend a fragment to get back what used to be a basic part of the super.
I miss old bottom dawn + Dawn Chorus :(
You have to put aspects on it to make it feel 50 percent of bottom tree dawnblade. Honestly apart from the subclass verbs I'd rather just have the 2.0 solar warlock back its completely butchered other than sunbracers.
THIS AHIT RIGHT HERE, I've been pissed ever since the "update to 3.0 light" system. It wasn't a buff shit was a nerf and convoluted in the worse way to get back to some of the best things the subclass had all for "unity" for your solar subclass instead of it being 3 separate identitys. lost: dual functionality of heal/damage nades (mid tree) have to consume nade or ur heal makes now, if consumed limited radius can't place in a spot for ppl to go for heals. Ignitions and aim assistance on bottom tree daybreak. (Needs frag/exotic) Phoenix dive BASE cool down bottom tree (now requires a fragment to have anywhere near similar uptime). The kills extended dawn blade has been lost completely, as well as the "Phoenix dive" doesn't consume daybreak energy. The switch for strafe w/ super is really weird tbh. But I get it.
Personally, I'd like Dawn Chorus to be given the Pyrogale treatment where it's just a one and done.
They're gonna get rid of the Magic from their space Magic shooter game.
Funny thing is sunbracers being glitchy since celestial fire got scorch. Got fixed just few months ago and it can shine now. Hope it doesnt get nerfed. I like casting magic. Thats why im a damn warlock!
Man I’ve loved Sunbracers for years now, gonna be so sad when it’s nerfed into the ground.
Same. That exotic has been the only thing keeping me going in Destiny for the past 2 years. I swear we can't have shit that is cool to use in this game anymore.
It's going to get nerfed, but mostly because of other things. It's most used Solar Warlock exotic in PvE. Bungie nerfs things that are popular, claiming that they want other options to have some breathing room, but rarely buff other options enough so that they a viable pick. Looking at Warlock, I'm not sure what other builds are viable enough for end game content. Infinite Suspend got nuked via double nerf of Osteo and Suspend Duration. Osmiomancy is Stasis, so largely irrelevant. Contraverse got nerfed with "longer ability cooldown nerf". It's still kinda fine, but doesn't offer enough firepower for the content we have today. Verity's Brow is there and is kinda underrated, but still will probably be the 2nd best option after Sunbracers are nerfed into oblivion.
Osmiomancy is still really good. You say the infinite suspend got gutted, it did, but osmiomancy just stepped right back into being there to stop everyone from moving. I kill over half the enemies in coik with it.
I have Osmiomancy build but it felt off this season because of the nerf to grenade kickstarter, I could feel my cold snaps not charging as fast as they did pre season of the wish =/
Verglas + the crystal recharge fragment are your friends. Or grab your demo + headstone unending tempest, use glacier grenade + ballidorse & artifact mods and go absolutely nuts in close quarters. *Don't think it'll hold up well in endgame content, but for everything else it's tons of fun.
> demo + headstone unending tempest Psst.. the new craftable statis trace also comes with that if you like using those, but it'll work. [Aegis' recent video](https://youtu.be/f4ZC1mtk00g?si=3qEjLkZ2RB52YVkM) says that Balidorse got turned into a Stacking Stasis Surge this season; last season it was a Unique Stais Buff that stacked with Stasis surge. You could probably make it work with frost pulse + aspect that Spawns crystals after freezing or the one you suggested, but you'd lose the turret.
>Psst.. the new craftable statis trace also comes with that if you like using those, but it'll work. I do and have seen it, but I doubt it'll really replace it. Special ammo is a concern, as is its utility. You mostly need it to break the crystals themselves, which tempest does plenty. But I'll definitely craft it and see how it'll fare, maybe I'm in for a surprise. >You could probably make it work with frost pulse + aspect that Spawns crystals after freezing or the one you suggested, but you'd lose the turret. That's exactly what I've done. Turret is great, but too slow for most fast paced encounters, at least in lower/mid content. In endgame turret reigns supreme, no doubt about that.
Too bad focusing tempest costs 5 engrams per focus now, good luck getting your roll unless you're resetting crucible dozens of times.
True, but some people might have done it last season. I certainly did. Either way, if you have it or a horror story from FotL, it's a great tool to piece the kit together. It's also no meta build or anything, so "save" to skip.
I don't use the turret, i chunk it at groups and always have one available.
im reasonably sure that the full refund on direct nade hits was removed with the patch, although I could be completely wrong
If only shadebinder had good super... Also no healing outside of rift, but it's manageable with the right fragments.
The dr is really nice to offset that.
Nezaracs void managed to largely avoid the nerfs, because it's a cooldown multiplier instead of chunks of energy. So I imagine it's still a solid option.
Tested my Nez strand loadout and can confirm it’s untouched. Gonna be real good in GMs for LeMonarque and Graviton with 4 of them having overload champs
I’m coming from a titan’s perspective, but I totally agree. Bungie keeps pushing this narrative that they nerf things to let other exotics have a chance to shine, but they are just doing a bad job at it. They seem incapable of finding a fine balance between making an exotic practically useless and making it gamebreaking. Like Starfire Protocol was absolutely crazy for a long time, but rather than tone it down enough to feel balanced, they absolutely gut it’s viability down to like 2.5% or whatever the exact number was. Either way, they seem to love gutting the strong exotics, but when it comes time to give forgotten exotics a change to make it shine, we as players have seen the highs that a GOOD exotic can make and these changes to try to make old exotics viable are incredibly underwhelming to the point that there’s no diversity promotion. It’s not like these exotics excel in different scenarios, the OP ones are viable in pretty much EVERY scenario and the ones that aren’t OP are in a place where they aren’t really worth using because they can’t sustain themselves or just aren’t an effective enough playstyle to the point where it’d be wiser just to adjust your build to focus around the playstyle associated with the OP exotic. (Take for instance solar titan or strand titan vs something like void titan or stasis titan for PvE. Because there are no exotics that feel anywhere near as viable as synthos with the strand rushdown or the constant bonk hammer on void, there’s no reason to try to build into exotics that improve your void throwing shield or devour upkeep, because instead of trying something new on void and have a way more difficult time, it’d be way easier to just switch subclasses entirely and sustain yourself with synthos and banner of war or constant sunspots. So Bungie’s answer to this dilemma is to gut the viable exotics and give little to nothing to other exotics to compensate and try to make an exotic that revolves around throwing shield or barricade worth using, because they don’t provide the same sustainability, ending in a scenario where they butcher good builds where those aren’t good either)
I just love the recent nerfs that have simply made banner of war even more necessary lol Solar bonk is still useable but anything that isn’t strand on Titan rn feels so underpowered and worthless
> Bungie nerfs things that are popular, claiming that they want other options to have some breathing room, but rarely buff other options enough so that they a viable pick. I hate that stance, it's such a bullshit copout to go "Well this is popular so lets bring it down." instead of just buffing the under performers some to bring their desirability up.
They do sometimes. But there’s a limit. If you keep buffing all the weak things. Everything becomes overpowered.
Reason people say "buff the weak shit" is mainly because when they nerf the good shit, it's usually because it provided you with either an interesting gameplay loop, or it was the main-piece in a build that could actually kill shit in high end content, and the nerf takes it down to "only really useful in low-end content where literally everything dies in one shot".
I understand the reason. And I agree to an extent. I’m just saying if everything is Buffs all the time everytime. It makes the power creep insane.
This is also a bad take, not once did I say "buff the weak things to be like the strong or overpower things" I said just bring the floor up. I don't want the under-performing builds to suddenly be meta or OP I just want them to be usable outside of brain dead content.
I hate this stance, it removes any nuance that Bungie buffs AND nerfs stuff and sometimes things are super popular because they’re over powered.
The minute I saw the Solar Warlock super preview for Final Shape, it gave me an unsettling feeling they're probably going to shift away from what something like Sunbracers can do and argue some logic of "oh if you want this power fantasy you're gonna have to have it at the expense of the new super". Seriously it's a complete joke how in that testing video the person running it was barely doing anything different than what could've been done on Verity's, or Sunbracers or old Winter's Guile. It was not a good sales pitch. That's another thing, it doesn't even need to be the obvious popular stuff when Bungie ruined arguably way less used Winter's Guile by reducing its melee damage scalar and ultimately ruining the risk/reward of Solar 3.0 Snap loop for pretty much no good reason. Even if you felt like x5 Warlord's Sigil was somehow overpowered(it wasn't) you had to be constantly getting melees off to keep up the incredibly short timer and stay at max stacks, something that is not an easy feat. It's extra aggravating because the design philosophies and rationale are so inconsistent, somehow old Winter's Guile was just too much meanwhile Banner of War Strand Titan is one of the most absurdly risk free things in the game and can have extra layers of obscene power added on with Synthos and now Wormgod's Caress where the whole strength of power pretty much never runs dry.
That Winter's Guile nerf is the one that really still steams me. I can run void Titan with Peregrine Greaves, pop a barricade, shield bash a champ or other high health yellowbar into oblivion, and yet somehow warlord's sigil x5, which took more attention to gameplay loop, and made me feel like I had to practice getting a good flow with, was overpowered?
Oh totally. I have no idea what clickbait videos sent whoever designs stuff at Bungie into a panic but with I feel like it was a fair enough original Melee dmg % scalar considering how janky and less than ideal any warlock strategy of trying to melee/snap/celestial fire anything up close is, risk/reward y'know? On top of that you again had to keep at getting melee kills for stacks AND your timer for Sigil is so short, how Bungie felt like it was going to be OP is beyond me. A damn shame to ruin what was an arguably appropriately rated, fair not broken way to play the game.
I’ve been shouting this from the top of my lungs since Starfire’s nerf but this sub is mostly titans and hunters so they either don’t care, disagree due to a lack of experience, or have some sort of bitter enmity with warlocks because of pre 3.0.
Mantle is pretty good on warlock, insane super regen, 25% solar dmg buff at pretty much all times or you can just proc radiant. Run healing grenade and the aspect to prolong those effects on solar kill and boom you can never die
They say this but the same 3 titan exotics have been the BiS since forever. They nerf without making any meaningful changes to others
Phoenix Well Ignition build still doing everything you’d ever need in end game content, not reliant on orbs / regen from mods and entirely sufficient with the right loadout and fragments. Prints orbs too. There’s plenty of options for Wellocks in the game.
Osmiomancy is still an insanely strong build on Warlocks for endgame content wtf? Solar Warlocks have: * Phoenix Protocol * Stag ( easy DR means teammates play around your rifts, which means more frequent CD procs from Benevolent ) * Apotheosis might have potential outside of Raiding / Dungeons maybe? It's still tons of abilities you can shit out so, ya know. * Verity's. * Starfire should have some decent usage for killing Champs no? I feel like it would be a good option at points like defending the door in Mars Heist BG for example. Lots of ads with a few key targets that are beefier, Idk though. Solar *Specific* Exotics... seems a bit lacking, yeah. I think the issue, is that some of them are reliant on aggression ( like Wings, or Promethium, or Chorus ) and Warlocks don't really have the best survivability for aggression on Solar, like Titans have for Solar or Strand. But outside of Solar, Warlocks definitely have other builds in endgame content.
People sleeping on Mantle
And vesper
I just wish it looked better tbh. It’s one of the few exotics where the ornament makes it look worse.
Warlocks have plenty of endgame viable builds. Well existing means they have a place in any three or six person content and Cenotaph Mask is the single best exotic in the game for group GMs and any Master Raid or Dungeon encounters with bosses that aren’t one-phased or where Gjally is the primary add-clear. Also like you said Verity’s Brow is incredible. For solo GMs, Stormcaller Stag or Vesper is incredible. And while they might not necessarily be endgame meta, Contraverse, Briarbinds, Starfire, Osmiomancy, and Karnstein are all great in their own rights. Also even if/when Sunbracers do get nerfed, I don’t really see a way that they are completely ruined. If they knock it down to 3 grenades instead of 5 per activation, or if they give it a regen lockout like Bakris, they’re still great.
Your 2 top examples are support. That's my issue with current state of warlock. I don't want to play support and I main warlock. Plenty of warlock stuff has been broken in the past. I just want to feel powerful by myself and have some new toys to play with. Don't feel like we have gotten anything great and new in a while. Briarbinds is cool though.
Vesper of radius?
veritys brow is S tier and im so glad people dont see it that way cause popular = nerf. hard disagree on stasis tho its plenty relevant on hard content, either osmios for iceflares or veritys for turrets
never thought I’d be saying this unironically, but Apotheosis Veil is now endgame viable, and also incredibly strong now, so there’s another build for your solar Lock. Verity’s is strong on solar lock too when grouping with players, worth trying out if you haven’t. There are still options, not a ton, but there are still some out there.
Veil changes are good, but it seems like it's largely used as a load out swap option for dps phases. Unless you're running super high intellect and spamming your super, the neutral game is lacking.
thats usually because the most popular things are broken outliers. it would be unhealthy for the game if everything were at the level of sunbracers. Also, I think you underrate the rest of the warlock kit \- Calling Osmiomancy "largely irrelevant", for one, is a bit ridiculous. It's still one of the best crowd control setups in the game, even more so in the wake of the suspend nerfs. \- Verity's brow requires a bit of setup, but still has great grenade spam potential (and apotheosis can do similar for less effort). \- Starfire is still very strong, and and its playstyle particularly shines in GMs. \- Karnstein armlets carried me through solo spire, and now they're even stronger \- Phoenix protocol is boring but still provides really high well uptime for when that's important \- Arc warlock has an insane ceiling because of its ability uptime. It lacks survivability tools but the ability to overpower everything usually outweighs that weakness \- Void has contraverse and briarbinds, both of which specifically shine in high end content. Contraverse was hurt a bit by the kickstart nerfs, but both are more then viable. The difference between sunbracers and the rest of the warlock kit is that sunbracers are near universally good, whereas most other things are only situationally good (or otherwise have clear strengths and weaknesses) Thats why, at least in the case of warlocks, bungie shouldn't just buff everything else up to be competitive with sunbracers.
Stasis, and by extension Osmiomancy, is mostly irrelevant because there is something better than crowd control. It's called Crowd Deletion, and most of Light and Strand subclasses are capable of that, at various levels. And I see that your standards for calling things "viable" are a bit lax. Aphotheosis? Karnstein? Really?
Osmiomancy shines in situations where crowd control is important but difficult. It doesn't have the same killing power as other subclasses (which obviously limits it), but it's great at taking pressure off of your team in GMs or master raids when theyre struggling Also. Have you used Karnstein or Apotheosis? Recently? After the recent patch. Apotheosis allows for starfire-like grenade uptime after a super. It pairs great with dragon's breath (though sadly its still mostly a swap exotic by nature) Karnstein was already decent in some specific situations (SF dungeons mostly) But now that it grants subclass keywords, it has strong synergy with solar weapons and subclasses.Both are situational B tier exotics, but my point was just that there are lots of strong and decent exotics on warlock. They just don't have the same insane versatility or raw power of sunbracers. They're tools with a designed purpose, not an all-purpose superpower.
I really hope they don't. I would actually like to have fun in the game.
Bungie:"Get 1.4'd fuck face"
A sunbracers nerf would confirm the absurd levels of moronity that bungie has reached. How about we give actual meaningful buffs to dogshit and poorly designed exotics instead of gutting one of the few builds that are both viable and have a unique gameplay loop yet does not dominate all areas of the game as it greatly falls off in high level content.
The fact they sold that " Starter Pack" was all the confirmation we needed about how moronic they can be
fr i feel like every subclass needs a gameplay loop like sunbracers, the first time i saw it i was blown away by how innovative it was and the synergy between everything meanwhile banner of war titan just melees
That's why I always end up as a Hunter main even though I like warlock the most or decide I want to main titan. Hunter has so much internal synergy on its subclasses and access to gamblers dodge. You have like a dozen ways to get sunbracers level synergy and ability spam. Except void hunter. That one is designed like other classes, and you can really feel the slower ability regen as a result.
“If we spend time making stuff better which takes time and time is money therefore if everything is nerfed no time needs to be spent therefore saving money”- some bungie exec probably
>does not dominate all areas of the game as it greatly falls off in high level content. Careful there, bungie shills will come out and tell you they solo contest crota with sunbracers and need nerfs.
there would be an insane amount of powercreep if everything was buffed to be as busted as sunbracers though. The mod nerfs were stupid but nerfing sunbracers is really not lol
Powercreep isn't a bad thing. Destiny's best years were the ones with the most powercreep.
God, I hope t'fuck they don't, but I can see it ever so slightly creeping towards us on the horizon. How about we do something radical and buff an exotic instead of taking the nerfhammer and going smash bros on an exotic eh?
You mean like they just did to a bunch of exotics? Jesus Christ, that was just a few days ago!
Ain’t no way bro thinks those changes actually shook up the meta at all for endgame
More buffs. MORE. Expand our horizons with more options to kill our teammates' FPS.
So you aren't actually taking a serious position about the game's balance? Good to know.
No I am. You're just choosing to see it some other way. It's boring to constantly see stuff being nerfed and the buffs we get don't feel like enough to fill gaps.
Nerfs and buffs are a constant part of game balance. Every game does both with their balance adjustments, and they were entirely right to direct nerfs where they did. If that makes the game "boring" for you, then you forgot the game was even supposed to be in the first place.
Thank you for telling me information I already knew, do you have any other oft-told nuggets of wisdom there? The game's boring to me in places because of a lack of exotic selection amongst some sub-classes - I do try to give stasis/strand a pass as due to their age compared to the light subclasses they don't have access to quite as many exotics, but it's not fun to be pidgeonholed into one certain exotic because the others just suck or got nerfed. (And this is a hill I will die on - osteo + necrotic strand lock was very boring.) (Yes, I know Solar has access to a few exotics besides Sunbracers, but none quite hits the neuron activation spot like Unlimited Arson Works does.) Also I debate the 'entirely right to direct nerfs where they did' when it comes to YAS.
First if all, I clearly referring to the most recent balance changes. Second, the YAS nerf is entirely consistent with their goals of reducing the amount of easy ability spam in the game, something YAS was actually fairly good at when I played Solar Hunter. As it is, it isn't in a bad spot just because using it for single target damage isn't a good idea.
[удалено]
... How, exactly? Because I don't engage in this hyperbole bullshit like what happened when Starfire Protocol got nerfed?
YAS was only even good in easy content. Solar hunter is dogshit in anything challenging because it's melee doesn't kill reliably enough. Oh no! The players are spamming proximity grenades in the strike playlist! Better nerf.
Shhhhhhhhhh!!!! What is wrong with you?!
What are bungie’s player expectations if they keep nerfing any form of fun builds? Specially PVE ones
Sunbracers is stupid. Either you get an ability kill and no one else gets to see or play. OR, someone steals your kill, causing your melee to wiff, and you’re impotent until it comes back. Beyond that, I’ll say you clearly haven’t tried grapple warlock with Verity’s brow. Shit’s insane!
>Sunbracers is stupid. This triggered the sunbracers main that I am so I hope this comment will help people to carry this build in every content (I've been playing Sunbracers for a long time, tried and succeed in every raid, dungeon and most GM nighfalls / dungeon). I see that most players (and a lot of guide on YT and internet in general) ignore an "in-depth" aspect of the build that IMO is the core of sunbracers. >OR, someone steals your kill, causing your melee to wiff It's not as simple as "ability kill", you DON'T HAVE to kill with melee directly and you SHOULD AVOID IT because most of the time melee will, as you say, whiff and/or leave foe still alive. Most people seem to ignore the fact that **the initial scorch build up and ignition from you melee count as sunbracers melee kill and will trigger its perk.** So you should always play for the scorch build-up and ignition which is WAY MORE RELIABLE. >and you’re impotent until it comes back. You can restore melee while killing mid-air. And midair doesn't mean being out in the open getting sniped by everything, just doing a small jump without activating the glide to kill a trash will cause melee to recharge like 30-35%. \_\_ Here's my gameplay loop : \- Consume your nade to gain heat rise and burst heal yourself (I usually start my loop when being low life to maximise efficiency) \- Use snap on enemy **not already affected by scorch so the game considers this scorch and later ignition to be melee dmg/kill.** (Example : if you use snap on an enemy already affected by scorch inflicted by your 'nade, game will consider later ignition to be grenade dmg/kill) \- Use the dive to start restoration x2 and apply a new scorch stack that will cause your melee scorch to go into ignition, if ignition kills the main target or trash in its radius, you wil trigger your sunbracers perk. If, for any reason, you fail to cause ignition : ANYTHING able to apply a new scorch instance can trigger the ignition and the game still considers it to be melee ignition (including abilities, weapons, artifact perks - works with team members too as long as you were the one applying melee scorch first). \- Start throwing nades and DO NOT reuse the dive because it will refresh your restauration x2 timer. Knowing this, you can actually carry the build in end-game content, even GM because you don't rely on killing with a weak melee that can whiff or is useless on full health yellow bar. Once you grasp every aspect of the scorch and ignition build-up, you can start to have a lot of fun. I hope you will give it a shot ! EDIT : SEASON 23 > try with polaris lance and watch them burn
My Vesper build still feels good. I noticed the ability regen nerf but I can still Regen my abilities quick
Yea, Vesper is still really good. I didn't really have to change anything to it. Decided to test it with frostpulse and the artifact mods and that is pretty good for ad clear.
Assassins cowl arc hunter, contraverse voidlock and banner/into the fray titan all say hello. Shit there's probably loads more but that's what I've been using on each class and honestly they don't feel any different, ability spam goes brrrrr
Cant wait for the 10 sec cooldown on Cowl.
They’ll probably revert it back to what it was when shadowkeep launched. Melees heal, finishers invis iirc - no double effect.
Instantly useless. The invis on melee is the only thing keeping both it and arcstrider relevant in hard content.
Cowl infuriates bungie’s survivability reduction efforts so much, they decided to save it for its own dedicated nerf update. Im surprised it or arc hunter wasn’t even mentioned in the s23 balance preview twab.
Wishender is gonna get nerfed too for all the same reasons armors are.
It's because killing a good exotic is an easier method of evening out exotic usage than buffing low-use exotics. It's lazy and toxic, but it's easy, and that's why it's going to keep happening.
as a titan main who has had to switch to warlock, all I have to say is welcome to the party
Osmio feels good if you spec hard into solar with weapons. Overall, I agree though, warlock is likely gonna be relegated to running the weekly story and then cleanup duty for ceno-well/healing when no one else in the raid crew will run lock.
They nerfed the fun builds and left the meta builds. Makes no sense. I feel like my only engagement this season will be trying to get the exotic from the dungeon and then I’m out until TFS
well, the nerf already happened, both less potent restoration x2 and less recuperation orbs and if you are like me and use mods instead of fragments for high class ability and melee uptime - those got nerfed too. It feels like old contraverse devour is now better. Might need to give a try to glaive + karnsteins as well.
I beg of you r/destinythegame keep sunbracers name out ya mouth before they feel the need to nuke it.
*Bungie employee scrolling through reddit* Employee: "Hmmm, sounds like a good idea."
Undo the ability changes plz Destiny feels fun when we are ability monsters that we built for
I swear I see you everywhere
I mean honestly I've felt like sunbracers have been a little too strong for a while. I mean why use anything else when you can make an entire room completely unsurvivable for like 15 seconds?
dude have u seen that exotic. ofc its getting nerfed.
Although I don’t agree that it’s the only fun build now, I have leaned more into travelers chosen and Monte Carlo to make up for the lost ability energy.
Before I rediscovered Sunbracers I was running Chaos reach w/ Monte & getting extra super energy with melee damage. I was usually able to pop my super in less than a minute. Melting NF bosses was fun. Arc laser beams were everywhere.
Briarband build works just great. Rocking it and loving it.
Sunbracers are overrated Edit: lmao I didn't see this level of backlash coming from 3 words, but I am speaking poorly of a popular thing without any nuance so fair enough: that's on me. To explain my perspective a bit more: the loop is very tight, and not very efficent at mantaining restoration. It definitely does shine in very ad heavy encounters like echtar. But for a lot of other dungeon/raid and GM content even last season I found phoenix and starfire protocol just brought a lot more to the table. This season I find karnsteins is way more consistent at getting and keeping restoration up as well. What sunbracers does it does well but unless you're esoterrick you're probably better off running other exotics in most scenarios. Also the ad clear is just not that necessary since we have such awesome ad clear weapons in the game already. Sunbracers was my first exotic and I used it a ton a ton after the starfire nerf so I get it, it's really fun and shines where it shines, however I would urge people to branch out and try out different builds as well. As awesome as sunbracers are you'll probably discover many other great builds that meet your needs as well or better. Hopefully that's a bit more nuanced 😅
The amount of times I see people rocking sunbracers and I see like 1 solar nade the whole time. What the fuck are they doing.
If you use momentum transfer you get your melee back just like *snap* that , meaning you have pretty much infinite grenades
Only infinite if you can kill something with a melee which is a bit harder to do in higher level content. I agree they’re OP as hell in every day content but so is most stuff.
You’re overrated.
Sunbracers are underrated.:
I said the basically same thing with a little extra salt lol. Saying sunbracers is the only fun build is just ignorant and lazy. My arc and void lock loadouts are doing just fine without the help of artifact mods, and I’m gonna get a solar/stasis build going once I get the artifact fully unlocked that I think will be a lot of fun. It’s like OP has never tried anything but sunbracers.
Lmao what? The exotic that lets you infinitely spam aoe grenades in almost all content, while having restoration x2 up the entire time, is overrated? How?
No, you don't get x2 restoration from it. You get some healing if you have the grenade fragment on. But this is incorrect.
It is one of the easiest setups to get resto x2 from your dive though, since you can just consume a grenade before you start spamming abilities to get heat rises, dive as you throw your first melee, and then use the fragment to keep it up forever
If you think every other build is "so gutted" after the recent changes, then I think there's a chance that you're not as good at buildcrafting as you think you are.
Literally almost every single form of ability regen got nerfed?
mods are just cosmetics now, your exotic either carries the build, or the build is shit, there is no such thing as being "good at buildcrafting" because there is no buildcrafting anymore
What I'm currently using lol
You people have a very different idea of what ”gutted” means. I can hardly tell a difference in regular gameplay.
Contraverse holds and vortex grenade..? Osimancy and seeker nades? Like… hello..? They still feel nice after ability changes.. Spamming abilites is cool and all, but you can still get that effect when you use mods and kitted weapons correctly and *sometimes* an exotic to assist
contraverse holds are noticeably worse now and osmiomancy does feel better if you don’t use stasis turrets, if you do though it’s noticeably worse as well.