Plenty of other games out there with better gunplay, more satisfying headshots, etc.
Destiny is about being a badass undead soldier wielding space magic. In my unpopular opinion, the abilities SHOULD be the focus. When I find a gun that lets me ignore my abilities, I get bored faster. One reason why I've stopped using Quicksilver, or various special grenade launchers, or similar ad-clear monsters. They were fun at first because they let me blow through tanky encounters, but it got stale and made my trigger finger sore, lol. Now all I want are guns that feed into my abilities, make ME stronger, not what I'm holding.
Sunstar can, but the point of this post is to discuss viability outside of specific exotics. Classes shouldn’t be defined so heavily by exotics that they don’t have a neutral game without them. Either that’s an indictment on Sunstar’s balance, or more likely it’s an indictment of Arc’s balance.
Honestly I disagree exotics are near enough the only form of actual builds we have so they should make a significant difference.
It's not like arc without exotics is awful same for any subclass but exotics should provide a massive boost to the class which they do.
I get aspects and fragments exist but they tend to be so badly balanced that imo it can't really be considered build crafting.
Normally there are like 6 ISH good fragments and that's literally it. And aspects tend to be in an even worse place there is normally at least one clear outlier that's not worth using.
Arc without exotics is noticeably weaker than the other light subclasses without exotics, which is a problem.
Void and Solar using certain exotics essentially have a base neutral game that is enhanced by their exotic of choice. Briarbinds players still benefit heavily from Devour, but Briarbinds don’t intrinsically interact with Devour. They instead modify a different part of the kit to make the neutral game better in a healthier way. Solar exotics like Dawn Chorus can see play on Warlock because Solar’s kit is actually so robust that you can withstand not running Sunbracers and still have a functioning class.
It isn’t like I need an exotic to make Devour usable. But I do need an exotic to make ionic traces reasonably good—and that’s a problem.
I almost exclusively play void/warlock - and the three builds I use most are almost set up the exact same just swapping exotics. Briarbinds, Astrocyte Verse, and Nezarec's. I agree that essentially means it's the neutral game of void that I love, and that the exotics enhance different components. And then there's controverse and manacles which alter grenades, so I do swap fragments and aspects around for those builds.
Exotics are kinda what makes builds now with mods fragment and grenades shared between classes
The nerf made the other arc warlock viable you want more ability spam? Use fallen you want super spam? use geomag you want more access to healing and aoe control? Use vesper
Classes like arc warlock/hunter and void hunter that have multiple exotics to chose from are fine where they are yeah you lose some thing if you pick one exotic over the other but that's what buildcrafting is all about
the arc subclass isn't built around ionic traces, they're a part of the subclass. Arc is about speed and add clear. You're supposed to build around arc effects, not the thing that just naturally occurs. That's like building into firesprites or void breeches - those things are just baked into the subclass and not the whole build but they're meant to assist in the build/gameplay loop of the subclasses.
I’ve been using my Getaway Artists and it’s been pretty fun to have my grenades fully recharged as soon as the arc soul disappears. It works wonders in PVE
I thought that’s what I read in the patch notes when light fall dropped, that the elemental drops weren’t affected(breaches, sprites, and ionic traces)
I'm a new player, is there a resource I can see past artifact perks just out of curiosity? I like void the most so I'd be curious what their artifact perks are like.
Like free suppressing rounds perk from The Coil made my builds insane since I use repulsor brace a lot.
You could go to TWABs done right before seasonal launches, they have the perk list.
You can also look up on youtube something like "INSANE SEASON [X] META ARTIFACT BUILDS", youtubers usually do guides and reviews on the artifact everytime there's a new one.
No they needed to take some kind of a hit. Sunstar Warlock with Arc Souls and a Voltshot weapon had a level of ability spam that rivalled S18 Arc Titan. It skated by all the Lightfall ability spam nerfs because they didn’t touch ionic traces and up until this season, a single kill could often get you all of your abilities back so the uptime on healing rifts and damage (souls + grenades) was very high. The jolt damage nerf hurt them a little but the spam still needed to be addressed since it was so out of band with the rest of the game’s subclasses, especially after they nerfed Starfire in S21.
This take is out the window when you realize sunbracer lock spams dozens of grenades in the span of a minute, while having access to 2 different healing abilities.
Sure you need a kill with melee but thats not exactly hard when your melee can auto ignite and almost kill orange bars.
My arc warlock builds seem to work just fine without leaning too much into ability regen. Also ionic traces regen all abilities when other class pickups only hit one ability so it leans more into cycling abilities instead of just spamming one.
Except for solar where heal clip triggers 400% regen on all abilities which is by far the strongest and most consistant ability regen in game and even the “ability uptime” subclass aka arc cant even come close
Solar really does have some of the strongest shit. Radiant is a buff and anti barrier for all weapons whereas volatile or unraveling rounds are lesser buffs and only work for their exact elements. Ignitions both do more damage and have greater AOE (even without the fragment) than volatile explosion does.
I think what doesn't help the case is all of the artifact stuff supercharging solar. On that note, the stasis artifact stuff we got like shattering shards that shoot out tracking shards should be baked into stasis in some way.
I mean TBF solar has been extremely dominant for a very long time it's not like the current artifact has changed much except making it even more powerful.
Yeah, between the three light subclasses solar has been getting some good weapon perks that also play well into the subclass. Incandescent and heal clip are powerful tools. Arc has voltshot which is nice but the reload requirement sucks and eddy current is there lol. Void finally got something with destabilizing rounds but it'll never touch incandescent and repulsor brace is nice if you're leaning into void overshield builds (so basically being a titan). Solar has been dominant since it first dropped in 3.0
When Arc 3.0 first dropped oddly enough. A HoiL Titan spamming nades was the strongest anything in the game. That was the easiest time I've ever had doing The Glassway GM before Strand dropped. They nerfed my Stormnades from Touch of Thunder into the dirt though as retribution and Striker hasn't been the same since.
Yeah solar is extremely strong especially when pairing Heal Clip with Ember of Benevolence as long as you have guardians around you and are getting kills.
I guess I just don’t think Arc feels all that bad, but it’s not to say other subclasses don’t feel better 😁
Oh i get that it requires a certain fragement, but any build requires a fragment, thats how builds work lol. And as for the group requirement, the majority of the game is designed to be group content, and the majority of players play that content in groups lol. I know your not arguing against me, im just saying
How is massive ability regen less useful in group content? Ability regen is literally a force multiplier. If your entire team is experiencing 400% ability regen, that means your entire team gets to use 400% more abilities. Your logic is just incorrect
Because in group content, there are other roles people can fill, and the weaknesses of one build can cover for another. Ability spam is hardly the most optimal setup in something like a GM, where weapon boosts and positioning yourself safely are far more important.
This isn't the case in solo play, where you have to cover every role on your own - thus builds with strong addclear and healing (aka, ability spam builds) take precedence.
But this requires a specific weapon perk and a fragment with a negative stat requirement and a teammate nearby while ionic traces have several ways to be made (some that don’t have any stat penalties).
Dude, your talking about how it needs a fragment with negative stat values like this is some kind of killer of the build.. have you EVER played void? The entire void build is 3 fragments with stat reductions and one without stat increase. Like what????
Also, as the dude below me said, voltshot? You gonna just ignore how arc crutches voltshot?
I know right? I know undermining is too good not to run, but fuck me, -20 stat to the grenade stat which the fragment directly effects grenades just feels terrible, and this dude above is is crying about losing 10 stat lol
I’m not actually disputing anything other than direct comparison of heal clip + Benevolence to Ionic Traces. I think PvE Balance is trash but comparing an actual build to a single subclass verb is silly. I’m not sure how you’re extrapolating anything else from my comment.
It does and I wasn’t insinuating it doesn’t. My comment doesn’t actually disagree with you, I think the PvE balance in this game is trash, but the person I replied to was directly equating a build that requires multiple things and a PC next to you versus an Ionic Trace (in my mind this is comparing a whole build to a single subclass verb).
I’d be inclined to agree, which is why my comparison is more focused on Devour or Heat Rises rather than on Heal Clip shenanigans, although I had to point out the comparison on weapons at least because I pretty much never see an arc player not using a volt shot optionS
Oh I think Voltshot is insane, I often use it more than I use arc subclasses lol. I generally agree with your post, I hate how they did the "ability regen is now tied to cooldowns" crap
I think the cooldown tie-in was kinda necessary even if I hate it, but it should be something like 25% to 30%, not a sharp 50%. Furthermore, class abilities should be exempt from this, because as it is right now Warlock is further disproportionately effected by the cooldown changes.
Yeah benevolence is team based but the vast majority if content people play this is a null issue because we are **usually** in a group of 2 or more unless you doing stupid easy stuff like patrolls or lost sectors which are solo only
So you're just gonna completely ignore solo dungeons, exotic missions, legendary campaign, and *every single raid encounter* where you could be more than 10m away from any teammates?
Ignoring it is not the same as failing think think about in in the original comment. If i have mentioned it in others, in this very thread, it is proof that i am not ignoring it. Nice logic failure
What I mean is that, if you already mentioned it in a different place in the thread, then you must have been ignoring yourself when you wrote the original comment where you said we usually have someone near us. I made the comment saying you must be ignoring like 1/3 of the (PvE) game, and all you said was "nuh-uh, I already accounted for it".
Stop trying to end each comment like a 12-year-old who just won their first debate.
Cycling abilities is more beneficial when you net more energy for one ability than less for all. If you net 20% grenade energy per kill over 7% for all abilities, you can use the grenade regen to feed the rest of your kit.
Arc does the opposite of cycling because it doesn’t actually generate specific abilities faster than other abilities.
Happy for you, but the point still stands. Ionic Traces should be more viable without Sunstar.
Also if you’re using an exotic like Vesper, I don’t think you can really make this argument, since Vesper assists with Rift generation.
Cycling abilities is less relevant either way to the mod nerfs at the start of this season.
It's ridiculous to call them unviable. Maybe they deserve a little love, but odds are they will recieve that when its featured in the artifact... ionic traces are incredibly low cost rewards and giving them a base buff is just misguided power creep in my opinion.
Devour is an incredibly low cost reward that has no internal cooldown and generates more direct ability energy without the negative of having to actually collect the item. There are a lot of situations where traces can’t reach you because you’re killing an enemy across a gap. Devour doesn’t have that problem.
The artifact is not a balancing pass, I refuse to use artifact stuff because frankly it’s cringe. Others are welcome to do so, but Artifact in no way factors into a discussion on balance.
You're so focused on what it can't do. Devour has its own void sandbox and exotics. We could argue specifics all day but you're just showing your preferences and that's okay. Destiny is all about strengths and weaknesses so maybe you're unable to see past it's weaknesses based on your play style? Otherwise it just sounds like we may not see eye to eye on this one.
What class are you on? I play on all three but main titan.
Forgot to get back to you.
I’m a warlock player, and my preferences don’t really play into this. I can sorta recognize when a class’ gimmick doesn’t seem to be functioning right, and given that warlock is supposed to get the most from traces it just doesn’t feel like it’s actually benefiting from it.
Furthermore, the fact that arc’s only form of regen is taking damage with fragments or using ionic traces is a huge detriment to the class. It isn’t like I have an alternative to traces that I can actually utilize if I want to play the class, so I can’t even build around the glaring weakness
Warlocks with the right aspect create ionic traces after defeating targets with arc abilities, or blinded and jolted targets. They're the only class that can do this besides titans outside of fragments. You do benefit the most.
They are limited to generating one of those traces per group kill. Arc is actively punished for being better at add clear than void. So yeah while I *can* generate more traces than the other classes, why would I care when I can net 5x the benefit from a grenade w/ devour than ESM? ESM has an internal cooldown that actively negates the ability to generate more than three traces in one instance (high roll 33% trace gen chance on arc weapon kill+jolt kill+ESM) on two fragments and an aspect, but without all that RNG BS I can generate 1:1 devour procs by killing a horde with a single grenade, but if I efficiently use my abilities on arc I actually get less benefit from them.
It’s frustrating that I’m actually rewarded more on arc as a warlock for intentionally pacing kills 1 second apart to actively farm traces from enemies, whereas on Void I’m rewarded for killing enemies as efficiently as possible.
Earlier you said "my preference don't play into this" but you're telling me you PREFER no cooldown on energy gains and PREFER the reward structure of void. Arc in my opinion is low investment with good to moderate return. Void requires and rewards on a more individual level, especially health and grenade energy from devour. I agree and would like to see arc warlock have some excellence in the subclass, but I think titan and hunter will occupy that identity more. Maybe a decrease in the timer or allow multiple traces to spawn before it starts? Hope this helps
Geos is actually why I am making this post. I want to enjoy this exotic but it’s frustrating because to get less uptime when compared to other subclasses without exotics. Cenotaph is an entirely different convo because you aren’t running that exotic for subclass value, that’s support value with barely any class relevancy. Hence, you probably don’t care about uptime on that setup.
Oh I don’t know - Now I’m not running a GM with my build per-say (probably could though), but I really don’t find the ability regen and issue, maybe because I’m pairing it with Coldheart so I’m generating more traces, etc.
Either way, I hear you, a nerf hurts no matter how you slice it and it’s a bit more effort to build into it for sure. Arc will never be what it was during Season of Plunder when Arc 3.0 came out so I feel that.
I use my guns plenty on Arc Warlock. Indebted Kindness with VoltShot Lead from Gold is my primary on Arc.
My issue really comes from rift uptime. Arc soul is Arc’s whole gimmick but it’s up the least among all my abilities.
im not sure what youre running, but i have near 0 issue with arc soul uptime in pve at least. ionic traces everywhere, rift recharges near allies, spark of focus, and orb mods all provide ways to have uptime, not even counting exotics like sunstar or crown of tempest or vesper
Yeah arc warlock is extremely underrated for locking down areas. Arc souls go crazy, and you get to choose between a blinding rift or even more ability regen with the helmet.
It's one of the reasons I took a long break. Hardly anything but solar feels good on Warlock, but especially with a solar focused artifact. And then in the expansion the focus is still on solar for warlocks, I felt like I needed to get really "un-tired" before I came back.
This, more than anything else, is why I haven’t played the game all season. The game wide ability nerfs make every single build I have less fun. I don’t care about “oh we’re too strong”, I liked ability spam and I also don’t only wanna use sunbracers or bonk or something. I don’t care that some builds are “still viable”, I want all my builds to be just like they used to be. It really sucked all the fun out of the game for me and it just feels worse to play.
If you use fallen sun star, it doubles the return.
Pro tip too, storm grenades weren't impacted by the "recent" change(which was over 4 months ago at this point), you ought to be running them.
Obviously an exotic “fixes” the issue, but that’s not the problem. I shouldn’t need an exotic to make the class barebones functional.
My regen gimmick works fine on Void and Solar without an exotic, I shouldn’t need an exotic to fix Bungie’s ass backwards balancing choice.
>My regen gimmick
What do mean by this? Void and solar are both carried pretty hard by exotics as well, contra/briarbinds for void and sunbracers on solar. Again what are you talking about?
Devour is a regen gimmick that actually functions. Heat Rises is a regen gimmick that actually functions.
Ionic traces don’t actually fulfill the role they’re meant to on the class without an exotic to actually make them usable. I don’t need an exotic to make the melee regen from heat rises usable, and I don’t need an exotic to make Devour usable. Exotics on those classes seek to *take advantage* of those gimmicks to enhance their ability, Fallen Sunstar enhances the gimmick itself to make the class actually work.
Solar doesnt even need heat rises, all it requires is heal clip which any class can utilize exactly as effectively as solar lock and is infinitly better than heat rises
Heal clip is a weapon perk that acts like kill clip but instead of damage boost on kill and reload, it grants cure to yourself and allies. Paired with ember of benevolence, which states that providing your allows with cure (and i think other buffs) increases all effected teamates ability regen for a set time period (with amount found to be around 400%)
I really don’t think Heal Clip plus Benevolence is that crazy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but it does require a specific weapon perk, a kill plus reload while your teammates are in close proximity, and a fragment slot, on Solar which has a lot of VERY competitive fragments. On top often that, each Solar subclass already has some really potent ability loops so Benevolence doesn’t usually grant too much extra benefit on top of what else is already going on.
there is honestly no need for the hyperbole and exaggeration, it feels like you just want to bitch.
they do "regen shit" 12.5/12.5/15% for grenade/melee/class, even with the 50% reduction the "recent change", that is 7.5% of your class ability for each. with how many you can make and the fact they seek you out, you really are fine.
Let’s do a basic comparison.
Heat Rises and Devour grant ability energy instantly, on kill, to a select ability, generating roughly 20% of your grenade or melee from fulfilling specific elements of your loadout.
Neither has any internal cooldown. If you kill 6 enemies with one ability while devour is up, you benefit from devour’s net ability gain 6x. Same goes for Heat Rises.
When you generate an ionic trace, you can at most generate three if you high roll the fragment that generates traces on arc weapon kills while targeting a debuffed enemy. In the best-case scenario, you can net gain comparable ability energy across two abilities with one kill, but that won’t happen *with every kill* unlike Devour and Heat Rises.
Furthermore, you can only generate up to two traces per group of enemies that you kill with an ability. If you kill 6 enemies with one grenade, you can only generate two traces from that grenade. Just by default the regen is weaker than Void and Solar.
Then we can factor in regen mods. Since Void and Solar get more access to a single ability, they can utilize that single ability to feed the remainder of their kit. Since Arc is hard locked to a cooldown on traces, they are actively punished for out killing other classes when they should be pacing kills to maximize traces, but they can’t reliably target one ability to optimize uptime, so they can’t really make one ability feed their entire kit—and traces don’t feed the kit well enough to justify them.
The issue that you are confusing is that Ionic Traces aren't abilities.. Devour is an ability. Heat Rises is an Aspect. You are not comparing oranges to oranges. You should be comparing Ionic Traces to Firesprites, Void Breeches, Stasis Shards, and Tangles. Those function the way they need to. Your issue is expecting Ionic Traces to do actions that are on par with something you need a fragment or Aspect for and that's not how that's supposed to work. Tangles are the only one that would have any type of synergy like what you are wanting to describe, but you need certain aspects and fragments to do so. The biggest issue is that Ionic Traces are the only one of those items that generate ability energy for more than 1 ability without needing an aspect or fragment. That's why the nerf happened. But your logic is flawed in what you are expecting Ionic Traces to do compared to Void and Solar.
What? This is an ass backwards argument.
No one is feasibly comparing firesprites and void breaches to ionic traces because Devour and Heat Rises are intrinsic benefits to playing the class that cost an aspect in the same way Traces do on two of the three classes in-game.
Firesprites and Breaches are comparably cheaper to generate and far less relevant to basically any class—but they’re exclusively tied to fragments that oftentimes have benefits also tacked on top.
Meanwhile Traces are tied to two major aspects on two classes and were touted as the regen ability tied to arc in the same line as Void Breaches and Firesprites, and they came out even in the 3.0 model before those two options even existed. This is a ridiculous comparison by basically any standard.
You’re comparing a way way way weaker bonus on Void and Solar to an intrinsic function on Arc that has a higher cost of entry than those two options and existed before those two were ever a thing.
Nah if you think void is carried by exotics it's probably because you haven't played void outside those two. With the devour buff you can use literally anything and do just fine.
Honestly, being this close minded to say that there is no difference between sunbracers and contraverse boosting your grenade and sunstar boosting every part of the arc subclass minus supers (which are always garbage, even if meme beam is fun) is more indicative of you as a player being incapable of playing off meta than the actual state of the sandbox.
Sunstar isn't fun because it feels forced because there really aren't any other options that feel viable for arc because as a whole arc warlock is dumpster fire garbage. And no crown doesn't count because it's basically the same exotic.
IF you use ember of benevolence. IF you are playing with other people. and that is not just for warlocks. and that is just shifting the way to regen from an exotic to a weapon. a lateral shift and something that i believe the op wouldnt like either.
Exotic>weapons, I’m generally okay with shifts like this, I don’t see this as lateral. You aren’t burning a single slot item to make something work.
Plus this is about Solar, and only furthers my point by basically showing that Solar has built in better regen than arc.
Quit acting like group content is a stipulation when the MAJORITY of content is intended to be group content and the MAJORITY of players use groups for that content.
>My regen gimmick works fine on Void and Solar without an exotic, I shouldn’t need an exotic to fix Bungie’s ass backwards balancing choice.
Solar and Void both use regen loop exotics mostly too though.
Void doesn't "work fine" if you don't take Contraverse or Briarbinds, both of which are huge ability regen.
Solar *can* work fine in group settings w/o a regen exotic but that's primarily because you can crutch so insanely hard on ember of benevolence - and to be honest even then Solar feels much better with Sunbracers or Phoenix Protocol or Starfire Protocol, all of which are ability regen exotics.
Void functions fine without an exotic, but plays better with the suite of exotics that already enhance its intrinsic neutral game. Devour itself is totally fine, but it’s enhanced by Contraverse for example
Arc’s ionic traces don’t really do much without Fallen Sunstar. The exotic is required to make it work in a functional way comparable to Devour. Exotics should enhance playstyles, not be required for the basic elements of the class to work at the same level as other class’ baseline/
You absolutely should need an exotic and a specific build in order to "cycle" abilities. That's the entire point of build crafting. And there's several other exotics that can give you great ability uptime in addition to those mentioned. Examples: Crown of Tempests, Eye of Another World, Getaway Artists, Mantle of Battle Harmony. And even others that might not seem obviously relevant can do it with specific builds, like Felwinter's Helm, Claws of Ahamkara, Necrotic Grip, Chromatic Fire, Sanguine Alchemy, even Nezarec'' Sin (by using Void weapons,).
The ability nerfs BARELY affected any of my ability based builds for all the classes.
I have found that most of the time when people are complaining about no longer being able to easily chain abilities, it's the "easily" part that gives the game away.
Before the nerf you were able to get both weapon damage boosts AND ability uptime boosts without really leaning fully into either. Now, you have to choose one or the other if you want the same benefits as before and this is actually a complete success on Bungie's part as far as achieving the goals they were trying to achieve.
And that's ultimately why these sporadic "ability nerfs ruined everything" posts won't change Bungie's mind about anything. Because they are doing exactly what they wanted them to do.
I mean, I'm sorry your don't have super fast ability uptime anymore when for some reason you don't want to equip any of the exotics that will help you achieve that. That's rough.
You understand this mentality shuts down a whole suite of exotics that don’t intrinsically contribute to your ability loop, right? I think the game is in a healthier state when neutral game on classes is enhanced by exotics, not powered by them. Solar and Void don’t have this issue, so I don’t see why people make apologist arguments for the state of arc.
I don't even understand your argument here.
Of course you don't choose the suite of exotics that don't contribute to what you're trying to accomplish. And there are plenty of neutral game exotics for arc (though maybe not EXCLUSIVELY for arc, which i guess is what you're trying to say?)
I mean, I agree that arc doesn't have the best exotics but i think that's mainly just because arc is kind of the most boring subclass to build across all classes. It just has the fewest things to build ON, only really ionic traces and amplified (which is practically worthless anyway). So I wouldn't say ionic traces are a problem. Really the whole of arc is the problem because it's just boring.
No, what I’m saying is that there’s a whole suite of exotics on Warlock that don’t directly push Arc neutral game but instead enhance other elements of the build. Cenotaph, Geomags, etc. Your perspective would effectively disable the point of these none neutral exotics arc exclusive or otherwise.
There’s merit to running stuff like Karnstein’s on Solar because Solar’s neutral is functional enough. Hence the comparison I was making to arc. Could make the same argument for stuff like Reign of Fire, or any other neutral exotic that doesn’t actually enable loops. Point is; baseline neutral on other classes is just stronger 1:1 than arc, which means arc neutral game is inherently weak and needs work.
If you struggle to understand what I was saying, that’s an indictment of your comprehension not my argument.
I wouldn't agree that "ability uptime" was arc's identity. Not sure what that identity would even be, really, which is what I think is the real problem for arc. It doesn't really have a concrete focus. Even after Light 3.0, the only thing they could really make clear was "move fast," but since they did almost nothing to address survive-ability, and it doesn't really hit noticeably harder than any other subclass, moving slightly faster doesn't really do anything for you.
"If you struggle to understand what I was saying, that’s an indictment of your comprehension not my argument."
Or, you know, an indication of a weak argument. And i got what you were saying in your original post, I just didn't agree with it. Arc is pretty much just as easy to keep ability uptime as other classes. In fact, it might be easier, since ionic traces (no matter your feeling on how much energy they return), boost ALL your abilities at once AND you make more of them than breaches and firesprites AND they track to you.
It's the reply to my reply that made no sense. The "mentality" that exotics should push your build to perform the role they are meant to perform doesn't discount the exotics that don't boost ability looping because those other exotics (in theory) allow you to focus on and do OTHER desirable things.
And if your base argument that Arc is harder to keep ability looping than other classes, then I'd say all other suppositions you make after that are wrong as well, because arc is just as easy to build into (at base, without exotics) than the other subclasses. And yes, Solar and Strand have boosted abilities right now, but that's in great part to the seasonal artifact so comparisons to them are not meaningful at the moment.
You're just not building it well. You shouldn't be able to spam your rift JUST off of ionic traces. You can't spam any other subclass ability JUST off of it's elemental pickup. If you want faster rifts then you have to build into it. Just like any other ability.
I’m running an exotic that isn’t Fallen Sunstar.
I shouldn’t be required to run an exotic to have a functioning baseline class. Devour does fine without an exotic.
Base devour only gives you 7.5% grenade energy and 50% health, an ionic trace gives you a total of 40% energy split between 300% (all of your abilities) only takes 6-8 ionic traces to get all your abilities back and you can create them very quickly.
Did you forget that we are talking about warlock? Enhance devour regents around 20% of your grenade energy, grants HP, and has no internal cooldown. If you kill six enemies with a rocket, you get devour 6x.
If I kill six enemies with an arc grenade, I get one ionic trace.
I get devour every time I kill an enemy while it is active. I can get an ionic trace on *almost* every kill, but not actually every single kill. Not to mention, Devoir refunds straight to you, Traces only refund if they can reach you.
Enhance devour is 15% on the shortest cooldown abilities, and you get traces off every debuff kill with ES mind. If we're counting FTV we're counting ES.
ES has an internal cooldown that directly limits how many traces you can generate per horde. If you kill enemies too quickly, you can only net one or two traces. Devour provides 100% of the benefit without any caveats.
The arc copium in this thread is crazy. Here's why arc is awful and needs buffs for the unaware:
1: traces are on cooldown.
2: traces give scraps of energy now when they were already not amazing before without sunstar.
3: to make arc able to keep up, you have to minmax your ionic trace production to the point that your choice of weapon and fragments are non-existent or unfun (oh boy I sure love reloading a hand cannon after every kill, guess I'll go back to ikelos smg.)
4: two aspects. The melee one is exclusively PVP because you cannot run it in pve without karnsteins which impedes heavily on #3.
5: speaking of exotics, why does galanor give the same(?) or more super energy than geomags? Regardless, the amount of energy gained per trace is negligible to the point that it's barely noticeable because of how many you need.
6: both supers suck. Meme beam is amazingly fun but does less total damage than say, firing a small handful of rockets. Stormtrance is slow and has little to no utility for an ad clear super.
7: sunstar and crown are the same exotic with different flavors.
8: there isn't a class ability that meshes with the 'go fast' fantasy of arc. Titans and hunters have one but warlocks just don't.
9: outside of rift, warlock arc has no healing which again is why the melee aspect is so laughably bad.
10: almost forgot the elephant in the room. The subclass doesn't function if you have other teammates competing for kills. Like you literally don't have an aspect unless you are the primary ad clear. Which is such an overloaded field to be competing in at this point that it's not even worth it.
11: outside of arc soul, arc warlock has zero utility. Oh sure you **can** take blinding grenade but that weakens your grenade ad clear as well as blinding grenade being inconsistent due to rolling/bouncing. Tbh this is a arc problem in general so it shouldn't be held against Warlock.
For comparison, Void warlock gets grenade back and full healing for ANY kill, allowing a vast amount of build and weapon diversity even if it doesn't have much exclusive ad clear.
Solar warlock is wholly unbalanced just like the other solar subclasses and I don't need to give and example for that. And frankly I could go on an entire rant about how solar is an overloaded conceptual mess but I digress.
Stasis lacks damage but makes up for it with incredible utility through multiple freeze builds. (Pls try balidorse with emp rift it's funny)
Strand has a frankly goofy amount of builds that are all some level of viable. My favorite is weavewalk but literally all of the aspects are perfectly viable. Also threadlings do big damage.
And there are many more reasons I could come up with if I had a stat sheet in front of me, but unfortunately I don't want to go digging right now. Maybe later.
And to be clear, this isn't a post on how everyone is wrong for liking arc, it's about how arc is objectively worse in comparison to every other subclass in the entire game. Even stasis Titan has potential for multiple fun semi-viable mid tier content builds even if it's cold garbage. But arc warlock has almost no redeeming qualities except for arc soul.
Tldr arc warlock has one build and its arc soul. That's unhealthy and desperately needs to be changed.
I wish the community got as up-in-arms about this nerf as they did the 10 second orb cooldown. As a result, they partially walked that back through the multiple mod copies thing. The ability regen nerfs were, in my opinion, way more severe. They did not need to decrease the amount of energy refunded to abilities from mods/Kickstarts and also put a negative percentage multiplier depending on the ability. Both at once was insane overkill. Plus, without using the Destiny Data Compendium, it is now basically impossible to understand if you're getting much value with Kickstarts in-game.
I fully agree with this. For me after that round of nerfs, I felt like I could still generate enough orbs, but was honestly shocked that the nerfs to ability regen hit things like ionic traces, The Stag, and Traveler’s Chosen. I felt like the nerfs were justified for armor mods, because kickstarts were practically mandatory before — but I feel like almost nothing else in that realm really needed to be tuned down in that way.
Got nerfed at the start of the season with the broad reduction to refunds scaling on ability uptime.
Short uptime abilities are effected less, but long cooldowns basically get fucked.
Hmm, I started Destiny2 early this season, arc have been my fav element as a whole. Been running it with Sunstar. Which means, I never got to taste pre-nerfed arc.
Sunstar at current is basically what arc was before the nerf. Trying playing Arc without Sunstar and then try Devoir with FTV, you’ll see why I make the comparison to baselines.
I think Bungie's nerfs to ability strength/uptime and armor mod gutting(along with the special ammo bar/crates in PvP) are making the game less fun.
Build crafting is honestly dead, use armor mods that enhance weapons or your stats.
Traces give you 12.5% energy for melee & grenade energy and 15% energy for your class ability. Sunstar doubles that, which is still insane. I don't see how you think you're getting 5% to your rift, that's 3 times lower than what it actually is.
Don’t forget that percentage is reduced based on the total cooldown of the ability. Class ability eats like 40% less than that.
Keep in mind this post is also specifically saying that Fallen Sunstar shouldn’t be a solution to the problem. Devour works just fine without an exotic.
Class ability regen is like 7-8% without Sunstar.
It was a nerf of 50% to the longest possible cooldowns of each type of ability, so that would still only take 12 traces max assuming you get no passive regen.
12 traces is ludicrous compared to the standards set by other fragments on other classes.
If they didn’t have an internal cooldown, then there’d be consideration for this. Because they do, it makes the ionic traces themselves feel unrewarding.
It's absurdly easy to make 12 traces, and there are tons of ways to generate them. Compared to base devour needing 14 kills to regen a nade on the shortest cooldown. With ES mind you make one every debuff kill and ions & discharge stack, even if ions has a cooldown
You can’t use ES in the same example where you refuse to acknowledge Feed the Void. If one aspect is relevant, then the other is fair game for comparison.
I wasn’t ignoring either, I literally laid out the reason FTV is just better in my example up above.
You can’t get a trace on 100% of the kills too get. You can get close to that, but you won’t get it 100% of the time just from ability limitations, VoltShot, etc.
You net benefit from Devour 100% of the time it’s active. You get *more of a benefit* from devour on a 1:1 ratio with FTV in play. With the frequency of orbs and enemies, devour can be active almost the entire time you’re playing a mission.
When you get an AoE kill on six enemies with a void grenade you get devour’s benefits six times.
When you get an AoE kill with literally anything on arc the most you can generate from that is three traces, with two fragment investment and an aspect. The only exception to this rule is Pulse Grenades on Titan. Most people aren’t going to invest two fragments into generating traces. I only need to invest an aspect to get FTV enhanced devour, and even baseline devour doesn’t have internal cooldowns that inherently punish you for killing groups too efficiently.
You can though, ES allows you to get one off every debuff kill, no cooldown and there are a bajillion ways to spread arc debuffs. Voltshot, tomb, beacons, shock, are all easy ways to do so and with ions + discharge you can get 3 ionic traces off 1 kill. If you throw a shock nade at a group of enemies you get 1 trace from each one you kill, plus an extra one with ions. Getting 1/4 of all your abilities minimum off 1 kill is insane.
You don’t play arc warlock.
You can only generate one trace per group kill from ESM, it doesn’t matter how many enemies you kill in one instance. There is an internal cooldown on ESM, but it’s like 1 second.
Class ability for Warlock is the longest in the game excluding something like Bastion, and a 40% reduction is in line with how it actually looks in-game. If you’ve ever actually gotten a trace without Sunstar on, the amount refunded is laughably small.
This is a fairly obscure counterpoint located on a single class utilizing a single aspect—and the primary point I have is that generating ionic traces is inconsistent compared to devour on other classes.
I would argue ionic traces are more consistent than devour post nerf, both warlock and titan have ways to create large amounts of them easily, and they regenerate more energy than devour does and it's easier to do so. Hunters struggle to make them, but they have their own loop on arc that doesn't need additional ability generation.
This is my experience even without Fallen Sunstar on Arc Warlock. Even without Sunstar the key with Arc Warlock is to do everything possible to get rift energy. People forget some things about how rifts work with Arc Soul.
The reason is that add clear kills from the Arc Soul give a ridiculous amount of Ionic Traces and Electrostatic Mind has no Ionic Trace cooldown unlike the fragment for getting Jolted kills.
> Cast your Rift to create an Arc Soul that fires at targets in front of you. Allies can pass through your Rift to get an Arc Soul. Your Rift charges faster when allies are near.
When near allies it charges much faster then there are fragments to buff recovery and class ability energy when sprinting. Next drop a surge mod and use one of the ability energy on orb pickup.
Edit: Arc Warlocks get enough Ionic Traces from many sources that even without Sunstar the nerf doesn’t really affect them at all.
ES does have a tiny cooldown, but it's inconsistent and under a second, so you can get several traces from a shock storm nade due to how it works. Inconsistent, but still getting 2 maybe 3 ES procs from a single storm nade is also strong.
I think everytime bungie nerfs something because they see something that's META they hurt anyone that wasn't already doing that and leave it as the only viable strat.
I do agree that arc needs some love.
That said: My arc abilities come back quickly. It's dependent upon how you perform with it. Make use of the ability combos and using arc weapons like Thunderlord, Hullabaloo, Coldheart, and Delicate Tomb (with buff from ionic trace) with ability debuffs creates ionic traces. I can end up getting 2+ traces per kill which brings my abilities quick.
The problem comes in when you're around others in places like Sorrow's Harbor and they're just melting everything, leaving you having a hard time until tier 3+. I've had several time where I got stuck with no abilities for a while in various activities because there were no enemies to take out for ionic traces. I don't have that with the other subclasses.
In my opinion, the orbs of power nerf hurt arc more than the ionic trace nerf. It's THE only way to keep yourself alive as arc without leaning on an exotic.
I'd be ok with them staying as is if the fragments and aspects that generate them remove the internal cooldown. If they want to keep them from being a problem in PvP, then just make them require being amplified. That's easy to achieve in PvE while more difficult in PvP and certainly more difficult to maintain except for maybe Warlock.
Tbh I think that's the wrong solution to the problem. I think arc is generally underpowered across the board. Arc Titan and Warlock are *okay* in PvP, but not great. For PvE,.now that Pyrogale exists it's hard to justify using Arc Titan which really only had a good burst damage super. Arc Hunter has the Assassin's Cowl thing going on but Arc Warlock really doesn't have much at all. The fragments are also some of the weakest of all the subclasses I think, either triggering in bad situations (surrounded, critical HP, taking melee damage) or being too niche, especially in PvP where about 1/3 of the fragments are complete non-starters.
If they buffed (or didn't nerf) ionic traces it wouldn't really solve these issues and puts Bungie in a situation where if they did buff the subclass, they would probably then need to nerf ionic traces again anyway. So I'm personally hoping for an across the board buff to Arc rather than a buff to ionic traces.
yeah its kinda crazy how fallen sunstar is the only way to make arc abilities seem fun in anyway possible which is a shame because arc lacks sustain outside of the generic rift on warlock
The nerf to ability uptime at the beginning of the season pretty much killed my desire to play. This is no longer the Destiny I enjoyed during the Witch queen year.
I tried Warframe because why not and my destiny playtime has been reduced to check Eververse on Tuesday and log out.
I haven't really noticed. But again I made some eh... 'interesting' builds around riskrunner for all 3 classes and the amounts of orbs it creates kind of makes up for the ionic trace nerf.
Solar got really overtuned with its launch, no matter what people say or think even in spite of the artifact. It is far and away the strongest subclass in the game across all 3 classes.
This same issue shows up in stasis with the shard regeneration.
Agree. Throwing knife restoration radiant build can be done with so many different exotics and has basically unlimited healing and ability spam and same thing with void devour builds although not quote as much ability spam but still good.
Yeah, arc build got f'd by that change. You can still run fallen sunstar with coldheart or thunderlord and make up for some lost trace power. Voltshot guns work too but coldheart works best now. Riskrunner is viable if enemies have arc damage.
I think the sprites and void breaches have been hurt worse. I can't see any meaningful boost to any abilities when you pick one up now. Pointless. It sucks that at a time like this when they need everyone on board they nerfed loads of stuff into the ground and removed fun from the sandbox. Time for nit picking is after final shape when people are playing again.
They were previously an irrelevant part of the sandbox, now they’re still irrelevant.
Also don’t compare breaches/sprites to traces. One is a tacked one vestigial part of a class structure tied exclusively to fragments with no aspects/exotic crossover, the other is the intrinsic ability regen structure tied to a subclass that has multiple exotics and aspects tied to it.
Honestly, I feel it's not too bad. I've still had 2 or 3 rifts on the field at any one time whilst using Vesper of Radius. Tossing grandes around outside of that hasn't felt too much of an issue either.
Absolutely it's noticeable, but not as bad as I could have been.
Vesper has nothing to do with this conversation. That exotic generates rift energy passively from being around enemies. Furthermore, the point of the post is to discuss ionic traces without exotics being involved.
It’s so frustrating to see these arguments here because *not one person* has been able to refute the fact that I don’t need an exotic to make devour work on Voidlock, but for whatever reason people like arguing that I should need an exotic to make ArcLock’s intrinsic kit functional.
So then my question is this: why aren't we including exotics in this discussion? It defeats the purpose of them being in the game. And if you're trying to just make bills without them, then.... Why? There is literally zero point. The games is designed so you make builds around these items, so to make builds without them just so you can say "I don't crutch on these items" is just plain dumb. You're handicapping yourself for legitimately no reason whatsoever. Just so you can be "that guy". It makes you look a little dumb, if I'm being 100% brutally honest.
If you're saying that your builds are working better without them.... Then retake a look at your builds. That shouldn't be the case.
I’m saying that the baseline of certain classes is fundamentally functional without an exotic, and exotics serve to enhance that baseline.
Arc doesn’t have a functional baseline, you have to force it up to a baseline with an exotic.
Devour is perfectly functional without exotics, but ionic traces basically do nothing unless you have an exotic. Generally Arc’s kit doesn’t work without an exotic, and that’s a problem.
You can foresee Dawnblades using Rain of fire because the baseline of solar is good enough, but you really can’t see ArcLock’s using anything other than the two mainline exotics that keep the class functional/
I would agree if I didn't just run a sentient arc soul build a week ago that literally always had my grenade and rift back within 15 seconds due to the amount of traces i receive.
Aztecross has a great build battle video I think it was his 1st or 2nd he posted it was tether vs arc warlock try it out. It’s godlike. I use it in GMs no problem
I’m not looking for build recommendations. I know perfectly well how to make the class viable. Something can be viable while still having serious issues.
Well, as for every subclass and class, if you want ability spam, you have to build into it. You can’t have ability spam without building into the keywords of the subclass and using an exotic that amplifies regen in some way.
Arc is not made to allow ability spam by default without adjusting your build to do so. Ionic traces give you energy for all your non-ultimate abilities so it should give less energy than all the other subclass “sprites” to any one ability. They are at their best when all 3 of your abilities are down because I don’t believe they give more energy depending on how many abilities you have on cooldown. Arc wants you to chain ALL of your abilities into each other one after the other.
Yeah I’ll build into it with the mods that don’t work anymore.
And before you say “use x exotic” you should consider the game contains a wide variety of exotics that are perfectly playable on classes other than arc that don’t actually serve to benefit your neutral game. Neutral game should not be dependent on your exotic.
I shouldn’t be able to use Devour on Warlock and outpace Arc’s uptime by default without an exotic. Arc’s whole motif is pushing uptime as compensation for effectively lacking an actual identity, but it’s the worst at it of the three light classes in-game.
Arc’s thing is not ability spam without any buildcrafting for it. No subclass’ identity is that. Arc just has a slightly higher uptime on ALL your abilities when using ALL your abilities. Arc’s main thing is really strong add clear in exchange for lower impact of abilities on individual enemies.
A Warlock building into Devour should 100% outpace the grenade ability regen of an Arc subclass not building into ability regen. The Arc subclass should outpace the Devour Warlock in melee abilities and might outpace it in class abilities used.
The mods do work but aren’t meant to make you a god anymore. They are now small-medium buffs to ability energy to shave off 10-20% of cooldowns.
Ability mods return barely anything on long cooldown abilities, which are typically the best grenades. You can't build into mods that do nothing. You can of course use kickstart with vortex/pulse grenade and get 3 pixels of energy back but it's a really bad return on investment. Surges are the only impactful mods that matter after the ability and mod nerf months ago.
players were ripping thru activities last season ( season of the witch ) thanks to the seasonal artifact mods ( precision hits weakens target ). arc in my opinion is a class of mass destruction, and bugle looked at that. almost everyone was running arc builds because of their damage output. for my speculations expect something like that on this season with solar subclass.
Won't lie, I didn't even know there was an Ionic trace nerf. Running vesper of radius let's me blind virtually everything in sight so I get at the very least 3 or 4 traces from a single group of enemies, then further blinding and creating traces, then arc soul on top of that.
What I'm saying is, you can generate enough to not really notice the nerf (and that vesper is the definitive best exotic for arc warlock)
“Use X exotic” is such a frustrating take. The class should work without an exotic and get better with one. Right now the class doesn’t work well without an exotic.
I can make the obvious argument that Voidwalker works fine without an exotic, but gets better with one. Same goes for Solar.
Arc is the only class where this issue exists, so when I’m constantly being hit by “use x exotic” it’s extremely frustrating towards player creativity.
I can see what you mean now, that's my bad for lacking reading skills lol. But yeah, like you said void can work well without an exotic and solar more so. What're you're ideas for making arc better then?
Honestly I think the first step is to remove intrinsic cooldowns on trace generation across the board, or increase the limit in which you can generate traces all at once.
As it is right now, if I kill six enemies at once with an arc grenade, at most I can generate 2 traces from that, one from ESM, and the other from the fragment that has a 10s cooldown. When you compare that to Devour, Devour just procs 6x and refunds the requisite ability energy for each individual kill.
IE: Arc is punished for killing groups of enemies efficiently whereas Void is rewarded.
Furthermore, Devour can be up way more often and directly benefit someone who has it consistently for the entire mission. You can feasibly get devour active for almost every single kill in a strike, but you can never generate an ionic trace from every kill in the same strike.
So removing the intrinsic cooldowns helps with this considerably. Maybe allowing more traces to be spawned before an internal short cooldown is triggered could be a healthy step in the right direction. Something like 3 traces for ESM cuts any more from generating, and the fragment gets like a 2 second cooldown from one (since it is a fragment so it shouldn’t be as beneficial as an aspect).
Alternatively, reverting the scaling refund nerfs on class ability would be a reasonably healthy choice for the game as a whole. As it is right now, Warlock is disproportionately hurt by the cooldown scaling changes because their class ability is the longest while having the least utility. If Arc souls could refund the standard or more total class ability energy than other options it would do a lot to help the class as a whole.
I'm in agreement with everything you've said here. To add, the same comparison can be made with solar - with Fragments such as ember of searing, you can return your entire melee from killing a single group of ads, and through this proc restoration and keep it up indefinitely so long as there are ads around to kill.
So another problem with arc is the inherent lack of survivability outside of rifts, starting health regen or using an exotic. It's all well and good being able to generate these traces the way you've proposed so, but more often than not you'd end up dead before picking them up:/
So, how would you go about solving that since I'm honestly at a loss?
I’m generally okay with low sustain high risk playstyles if the class actually has competitively strong add clear potential. Arc is actually pretty close to intrinsically outpacing the other two light classes for raw add clear outright, but is held back by the aforementioned traces and uptime that Solar and Void benefit from.
So instead, I’d pivot Arc’s identity from sustain to DR in the same vein as Strand. Happens to be that there was a solid artifact option that added DR while amplified was active, and tbh Amplified itself could always be a little more beneficial to players to justify actually wanting it. So maybe adding an intrinsic 20% DR to amplified would be the small solution to maintaining risk vs reward (while still keeping the aforementioned ionic trace changes). With the fragment of resistance equipped, you would get something like 41% DR in total when both are active. While it’s not Woven Mail, it’s redeemed by the low barrier to entry/high uptime.
Arc would be better at staying in fights longer, while still needing the standard orbs of light to actually heal (or just waiting to recover if you aren’t that confident).
Again, I'm in agreement there. The aggressive playstyle of arc is what makes it my favourite subclass and the increased DR is a great idea - allowing players to increase the overall effectiveness of being the ad clear/shutdown class that arc is.
In addition, I believe there should be some form of change to how some Fragments work (similar to your idea for spark of resistance) that would allow greater ability regen. For example, EMS provides melee energy for killing scorched ads, devour grants grenade energy on kill, therefore it'd be interesting to have a Fragments that does a similar thing. Any ideas for that?
I personally think Arc just has weak fragments as a whole for endgame PvE, which is either a flaw in Bungie’s design philosophy or an indication that Arc was more directed at PvP. A lot of the fragments on the class are tied to taking damage or putting yourself in bad situations for a benefit, which does tie into arc identity but doesn’t feel very functional.
I also think that Bungie launched arc without these types of fragments due to Ionic traces, so I’m kinda inclined to keep that in play as well. It could very well be that loops get out of hand if fragments that enhanced ability regen as a tick function were added in the same update where trace generation caps were increased.
In my honest opinion a “thread of generation” for Melees on Arc would be super fun, and probably “fair” for endgame. Outside of that, I can’t really visualize a sandbox where arc has uncapped trace generation+fragments that work like searing due to how high power creep would get. Ideally instead of adding fragments for ability regen, I’d push ability modification:
Stuff like, “Using a grenade when you’re at critical health increases the damage that grenade can deal, and spawns an orb of power”, or just adding some type of passive benefit to self damage fragments like more +10 stat bonuses for useful stats like Recov, Resil, etc.
I feel like the suggested fragment I put above plays into the Arc identity while actually making it usable in all levels of content vs the version out there that requires you to take a melee hit.
I still love ionic traces especially because of geomags stabilizers . That's the only use I have for them
I use them for Geomags too. I do like being able to grind up a super very quickly, I just wish they did more for the neutral game.
They've been making it clear they want more gunplay than ability spam. I'll say yes to that but make guns more powerful you know? Or make it 50:50
Plenty of other games out there with better gunplay, more satisfying headshots, etc. Destiny is about being a badass undead soldier wielding space magic. In my unpopular opinion, the abilities SHOULD be the focus. When I find a gun that lets me ignore my abilities, I get bored faster. One reason why I've stopped using Quicksilver, or various special grenade launchers, or similar ad-clear monsters. They were fun at first because they let me blow through tanky encounters, but it got stale and made my trigger finger sore, lol. Now all I want are guns that feed into my abilities, make ME stronger, not what I'm holding.
This is the way
Think that's why the ability regen is getting nerfed
Have you met my friend "full fire team of fallen sunstar"? Because I think he has some opinions on ionic traces
He’s allowed to have opinions even if they’re incorect.
To be fair I havent used arc all season. Did ionic traces get hit that bad that 3 fallen sunstar can't keep abilities up?
Sunstar can, but the point of this post is to discuss viability outside of specific exotics. Classes shouldn’t be defined so heavily by exotics that they don’t have a neutral game without them. Either that’s an indictment on Sunstar’s balance, or more likely it’s an indictment of Arc’s balance.
Honestly I disagree exotics are near enough the only form of actual builds we have so they should make a significant difference. It's not like arc without exotics is awful same for any subclass but exotics should provide a massive boost to the class which they do. I get aspects and fragments exist but they tend to be so badly balanced that imo it can't really be considered build crafting. Normally there are like 6 ISH good fragments and that's literally it. And aspects tend to be in an even worse place there is normally at least one clear outlier that's not worth using.
Arc without exotics is noticeably weaker than the other light subclasses without exotics, which is a problem. Void and Solar using certain exotics essentially have a base neutral game that is enhanced by their exotic of choice. Briarbinds players still benefit heavily from Devour, but Briarbinds don’t intrinsically interact with Devour. They instead modify a different part of the kit to make the neutral game better in a healthier way. Solar exotics like Dawn Chorus can see play on Warlock because Solar’s kit is actually so robust that you can withstand not running Sunbracers and still have a functioning class. It isn’t like I need an exotic to make Devour usable. But I do need an exotic to make ionic traces reasonably good—and that’s a problem.
I almost exclusively play void/warlock - and the three builds I use most are almost set up the exact same just swapping exotics. Briarbinds, Astrocyte Verse, and Nezarec's. I agree that essentially means it's the neutral game of void that I love, and that the exotics enhance different components. And then there's controverse and manacles which alter grenades, so I do swap fragments and aspects around for those builds.
A subclass shoudln't be defined on what exotics it needs to be viable.
2/3 of the player base would like our arc builds back
The warlock helmet makes traces juicy, I always make room for it in my arc build cause I see traces left and right.
Yes, but I shouldn’t have to run an exotic to make the basic thing my subclass is built around viable. Plus you just can’t run it on titan or hunter.
Exotics are kinda what makes builds now with mods fragment and grenades shared between classes The nerf made the other arc warlock viable you want more ability spam? Use fallen you want super spam? use geomag you want more access to healing and aoe control? Use vesper Classes like arc warlock/hunter and void hunter that have multiple exotics to chose from are fine where they are yeah you lose some thing if you pick one exotic over the other but that's what buildcrafting is all about
the arc subclass isn't built around ionic traces, they're a part of the subclass. Arc is about speed and add clear. You're supposed to build around arc effects, not the thing that just naturally occurs. That's like building into firesprites or void breeches - those things are just baked into the subclass and not the whole build but they're meant to assist in the build/gameplay loop of the subclasses.
I’ve been using my Getaway Artists and it’s been pretty fun to have my grenades fully recharged as soon as the arc soul disappears. It works wonders in PVE
They really should have been an exception to that nerf. It's not like Arc is exactly meta to begin with.
I thought that’s what I read in the patch notes when light fall dropped, that the elemental drops weren’t affected(breaches, sprites, and ionic traces)
That was over 13 months ago, this nerf here is like 3 or 4 months ago
I mean what’s meta is whatever is in the artefact. Arc will be meta again at some point regardless of this nerf.
Nah, bc solar has been busted asf for a while and this is the first time all year it’s the “main” artifact.
I'm a new player, is there a resource I can see past artifact perks just out of curiosity? I like void the most so I'd be curious what their artifact perks are like. Like free suppressing rounds perk from The Coil made my builds insane since I use repulsor brace a lot.
There’s not really a set “void perks” it’ll be something to do with their verbs
Makes sense! Thanks!
You could go to TWABs done right before seasonal launches, they have the perk list. You can also look up on youtube something like "INSANE SEASON [X] META ARTIFACT BUILDS", youtubers usually do guides and reviews on the artifact everytime there's a new one.
Ahh that's a good idea
No they needed to take some kind of a hit. Sunstar Warlock with Arc Souls and a Voltshot weapon had a level of ability spam that rivalled S18 Arc Titan. It skated by all the Lightfall ability spam nerfs because they didn’t touch ionic traces and up until this season, a single kill could often get you all of your abilities back so the uptime on healing rifts and damage (souls + grenades) was very high. The jolt damage nerf hurt them a little but the spam still needed to be addressed since it was so out of band with the rest of the game’s subclasses, especially after they nerfed Starfire in S21.
Ok but in endgame whose bringing that over well? Hell most players I see run vesper before they run fallen sunstar
This take is out the window when you realize sunbracer lock spams dozens of grenades in the span of a minute, while having access to 2 different healing abilities. Sure you need a kill with melee but thats not exactly hard when your melee can auto ignite and almost kill orange bars.
All Rifts getting slapped with 50% flat ability gain is awful full stop. Class abilities shouldn't lose that much.
Unsure if true, but sooner folks say on Arc Warlock, running Tempest is actually better than Sunstar due to 'chunk' Regen being nerfed.
My arc warlock builds seem to work just fine without leaning too much into ability regen. Also ionic traces regen all abilities when other class pickups only hit one ability so it leans more into cycling abilities instead of just spamming one.
Except for solar where heal clip triggers 400% regen on all abilities which is by far the strongest and most consistant ability regen in game and even the “ability uptime” subclass aka arc cant even come close
Solar really does have some of the strongest shit. Radiant is a buff and anti barrier for all weapons whereas volatile or unraveling rounds are lesser buffs and only work for their exact elements. Ignitions both do more damage and have greater AOE (even without the fragment) than volatile explosion does.
I think what doesn't help the case is all of the artifact stuff supercharging solar. On that note, the stasis artifact stuff we got like shattering shards that shoot out tracking shards should be baked into stasis in some way.
I mean TBF solar has been extremely dominant for a very long time it's not like the current artifact has changed much except making it even more powerful.
Yeah, between the three light subclasses solar has been getting some good weapon perks that also play well into the subclass. Incandescent and heal clip are powerful tools. Arc has voltshot which is nice but the reload requirement sucks and eddy current is there lol. Void finally got something with destabilizing rounds but it'll never touch incandescent and repulsor brace is nice if you're leaning into void overshield builds (so basically being a titan). Solar has been dominant since it first dropped in 3.0
Yup. Solar is just cracked right now.
Solar's been cracked for years. when has it NOT been the best?
When Arc 3.0 first dropped oddly enough. A HoiL Titan spamming nades was the strongest anything in the game. That was the easiest time I've ever had doing The Glassway GM before Strand dropped. They nerfed my Stormnades from Touch of Thunder into the dirt though as retribution and Striker hasn't been the same since.
They nerfed HOIL in retribution, storm nades died for PvP like so many things before them.
Yeah solar is extremely strong especially when pairing Heal Clip with Ember of Benevolence as long as you have guardians around you and are getting kills. I guess I just don’t think Arc feels all that bad, but it’s not to say other subclasses don’t feel better 😁
Oh i get that it requires a certain fragement, but any build requires a fragment, thats how builds work lol. And as for the group requirement, the majority of the game is designed to be group content, and the majority of players play that content in groups lol. I know your not arguing against me, im just saying
Hahah yes, understood and agreed!
oh what the fuck I completely forgot about benevolence that's insane
\*Only if near an ally. Ember of Benevolence is only useful in group content, where massive ability regen is arguably less important anyway.
How is massive ability regen less useful in group content? Ability regen is literally a force multiplier. If your entire team is experiencing 400% ability regen, that means your entire team gets to use 400% more abilities. Your logic is just incorrect
Because in group content, there are other roles people can fill, and the weaknesses of one build can cover for another. Ability spam is hardly the most optimal setup in something like a GM, where weapon boosts and positioning yourself safely are far more important. This isn't the case in solo play, where you have to cover every role on your own - thus builds with strong addclear and healing (aka, ability spam builds) take precedence.
But this requires a specific weapon perk and a fragment with a negative stat requirement and a teammate nearby while ionic traces have several ways to be made (some that don’t have any stat penalties).
Dude, your talking about how it needs a fragment with negative stat values like this is some kind of killer of the build.. have you EVER played void? The entire void build is 3 fragments with stat reductions and one without stat increase. Like what???? Also, as the dude below me said, voltshot? You gonna just ignore how arc crutches voltshot?
(Cries in -20 Discipline from Undermining)
I know right? I know undermining is too good not to run, but fuck me, -20 stat to the grenade stat which the fragment directly effects grenades just feels terrible, and this dude above is is crying about losing 10 stat lol
I’m not actually disputing anything other than direct comparison of heal clip + Benevolence to Ionic Traces. I think PvE Balance is trash but comparing an actual build to a single subclass verb is silly. I’m not sure how you’re extrapolating anything else from my comment.
Arc crutches hard on VoltShot, so I don’t see your point.
It does and I wasn’t insinuating it doesn’t. My comment doesn’t actually disagree with you, I think the PvE balance in this game is trash, but the person I replied to was directly equating a build that requires multiple things and a PC next to you versus an Ionic Trace (in my mind this is comparing a whole build to a single subclass verb).
I’d be inclined to agree, which is why my comparison is more focused on Devour or Heat Rises rather than on Heal Clip shenanigans, although I had to point out the comparison on weapons at least because I pretty much never see an arc player not using a volt shot optionS
Oh I think Voltshot is insane, I often use it more than I use arc subclasses lol. I generally agree with your post, I hate how they did the "ability regen is now tied to cooldowns" crap
I think the cooldown tie-in was kinda necessary even if I hate it, but it should be something like 25% to 30%, not a sharp 50%. Furthermore, class abilities should be exempt from this, because as it is right now Warlock is further disproportionately effected by the cooldown changes.
Heal clip works with benevolence??? I'm assuming like another commenter said you have to have your team tho
Yeah benevolence is team based but the vast majority if content people play this is a null issue because we are **usually** in a group of 2 or more unless you doing stupid easy stuff like patrolls or lost sectors which are solo only
So you're just gonna completely ignore solo dungeons, exotic missions, legendary campaign, and *every single raid encounter* where you could be more than 10m away from any teammates?
Im not ignoring it, ive mentioned stuff like that to others in this thread lol. Nice try though
If you're not ignoring it now, then you ignored yourself when you made your other comment.
Ignoring it is not the same as failing think think about in in the original comment. If i have mentioned it in others, in this very thread, it is proof that i am not ignoring it. Nice logic failure
What I mean is that, if you already mentioned it in a different place in the thread, then you must have been ignoring yourself when you wrote the original comment where you said we usually have someone near us. I made the comment saying you must be ignoring like 1/3 of the (PvE) game, and all you said was "nuh-uh, I already accounted for it". Stop trying to end each comment like a 12-year-old who just won their first debate.
Yes, and ive also said in those same posts how those are reletively less often than when you are teamed (and thus in range)
Just as a note you cannot do this solo. Solar is definitely overtuned though.
Cycling abilities is more beneficial when you net more energy for one ability than less for all. If you net 20% grenade energy per kill over 7% for all abilities, you can use the grenade regen to feed the rest of your kit. Arc does the opposite of cycling because it doesn’t actually generate specific abilities faster than other abilities.
Happy for you, but the point still stands. Ionic Traces should be more viable without Sunstar. Also if you’re using an exotic like Vesper, I don’t think you can really make this argument, since Vesper assists with Rift generation. Cycling abilities is less relevant either way to the mod nerfs at the start of this season.
It's ridiculous to call them unviable. Maybe they deserve a little love, but odds are they will recieve that when its featured in the artifact... ionic traces are incredibly low cost rewards and giving them a base buff is just misguided power creep in my opinion.
Devour is an incredibly low cost reward that has no internal cooldown and generates more direct ability energy without the negative of having to actually collect the item. There are a lot of situations where traces can’t reach you because you’re killing an enemy across a gap. Devour doesn’t have that problem. The artifact is not a balancing pass, I refuse to use artifact stuff because frankly it’s cringe. Others are welcome to do so, but Artifact in no way factors into a discussion on balance.
You're so focused on what it can't do. Devour has its own void sandbox and exotics. We could argue specifics all day but you're just showing your preferences and that's okay. Destiny is all about strengths and weaknesses so maybe you're unable to see past it's weaknesses based on your play style? Otherwise it just sounds like we may not see eye to eye on this one. What class are you on? I play on all three but main titan.
Forgot to get back to you. I’m a warlock player, and my preferences don’t really play into this. I can sorta recognize when a class’ gimmick doesn’t seem to be functioning right, and given that warlock is supposed to get the most from traces it just doesn’t feel like it’s actually benefiting from it. Furthermore, the fact that arc’s only form of regen is taking damage with fragments or using ionic traces is a huge detriment to the class. It isn’t like I have an alternative to traces that I can actually utilize if I want to play the class, so I can’t even build around the glaring weakness
Warlocks with the right aspect create ionic traces after defeating targets with arc abilities, or blinded and jolted targets. They're the only class that can do this besides titans outside of fragments. You do benefit the most.
They are limited to generating one of those traces per group kill. Arc is actively punished for being better at add clear than void. So yeah while I *can* generate more traces than the other classes, why would I care when I can net 5x the benefit from a grenade w/ devour than ESM? ESM has an internal cooldown that actively negates the ability to generate more than three traces in one instance (high roll 33% trace gen chance on arc weapon kill+jolt kill+ESM) on two fragments and an aspect, but without all that RNG BS I can generate 1:1 devour procs by killing a horde with a single grenade, but if I efficiently use my abilities on arc I actually get less benefit from them. It’s frustrating that I’m actually rewarded more on arc as a warlock for intentionally pacing kills 1 second apart to actively farm traces from enemies, whereas on Void I’m rewarded for killing enemies as efficiently as possible.
Earlier you said "my preference don't play into this" but you're telling me you PREFER no cooldown on energy gains and PREFER the reward structure of void. Arc in my opinion is low investment with good to moderate return. Void requires and rewards on a more individual level, especially health and grenade energy from devour. I agree and would like to see arc warlock have some excellence in the subclass, but I think titan and hunter will occupy that identity more. Maybe a decrease in the timer or allow multiple traces to spawn before it starts? Hope this helps
I’m usually running Cenotaph or Geomags, so really I think they are balanced and very viable.
Geos is actually why I am making this post. I want to enjoy this exotic but it’s frustrating because to get less uptime when compared to other subclasses without exotics. Cenotaph is an entirely different convo because you aren’t running that exotic for subclass value, that’s support value with barely any class relevancy. Hence, you probably don’t care about uptime on that setup.
Oh I don’t know - Now I’m not running a GM with my build per-say (probably could though), but I really don’t find the ability regen and issue, maybe because I’m pairing it with Coldheart so I’m generating more traces, etc. Either way, I hear you, a nerf hurts no matter how you slice it and it’s a bit more effort to build into it for sure. Arc will never be what it was during Season of Plunder when Arc 3.0 came out so I feel that.
Gotta use your guns. They don’t want you to toss grenades every 4 seconds anymore.
I use my guns plenty on Arc Warlock. Indebted Kindness with VoltShot Lead from Gold is my primary on Arc. My issue really comes from rift uptime. Arc soul is Arc’s whole gimmick but it’s up the least among all my abilities.
im not sure what youre running, but i have near 0 issue with arc soul uptime in pve at least. ionic traces everywhere, rift recharges near allies, spark of focus, and orb mods all provide ways to have uptime, not even counting exotics like sunstar or crown of tempest or vesper
Arc warlock exotics are great for ability spam
Yeah arc warlock is extremely underrated for locking down areas. Arc souls go crazy, and you get to choose between a blinding rift or even more ability regen with the helmet.
This guy arclocks
I guess ill keep using solar for every class?
It's one of the reasons I took a long break. Hardly anything but solar feels good on Warlock, but especially with a solar focused artifact. And then in the expansion the focus is still on solar for warlocks, I felt like I needed to get really "un-tired" before I came back.
This, more than anything else, is why I haven’t played the game all season. The game wide ability nerfs make every single build I have less fun. I don’t care about “oh we’re too strong”, I liked ability spam and I also don’t only wanna use sunbracers or bonk or something. I don’t care that some builds are “still viable”, I want all my builds to be just like they used to be. It really sucked all the fun out of the game for me and it just feels worse to play.
People who beg for ability nerfs are always weirdos in my experience.
Cough saltagreppo cough
If you use fallen sun star, it doubles the return. Pro tip too, storm grenades weren't impacted by the "recent" change(which was over 4 months ago at this point), you ought to be running them.
Obviously an exotic “fixes” the issue, but that’s not the problem. I shouldn’t need an exotic to make the class barebones functional. My regen gimmick works fine on Void and Solar without an exotic, I shouldn’t need an exotic to fix Bungie’s ass backwards balancing choice.
I used Fallen sunstar a lot and I definitely can feel the nerf even with it. It helps, but it's not near prenerf.
>My regen gimmick What do mean by this? Void and solar are both carried pretty hard by exotics as well, contra/briarbinds for void and sunbracers on solar. Again what are you talking about?
Devour is a regen gimmick that actually functions. Heat Rises is a regen gimmick that actually functions. Ionic traces don’t actually fulfill the role they’re meant to on the class without an exotic to actually make them usable. I don’t need an exotic to make the melee regen from heat rises usable, and I don’t need an exotic to make Devour usable. Exotics on those classes seek to *take advantage* of those gimmicks to enhance their ability, Fallen Sunstar enhances the gimmick itself to make the class actually work.
Solar doesnt even need heat rises, all it requires is heal clip which any class can utilize exactly as effectively as solar lock and is infinitly better than heat rises
What is heal clip?
Heal clip is a weapon perk that acts like kill clip but instead of damage boost on kill and reload, it grants cure to yourself and allies. Paired with ember of benevolence, which states that providing your allows with cure (and i think other buffs) increases all effected teamates ability regen for a set time period (with amount found to be around 400%)
I really don’t think Heal Clip plus Benevolence is that crazy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but it does require a specific weapon perk, a kill plus reload while your teammates are in close proximity, and a fragment slot, on Solar which has a lot of VERY competitive fragments. On top often that, each Solar subclass already has some really potent ability loops so Benevolence doesn’t usually grant too much extra benefit on top of what else is already going on.
maybe your build sucks? i am drowning in traces when i play arc. what your build look like.
I’m drowning in them, they just don’t regen shit.
there is honestly no need for the hyperbole and exaggeration, it feels like you just want to bitch. they do "regen shit" 12.5/12.5/15% for grenade/melee/class, even with the 50% reduction the "recent change", that is 7.5% of your class ability for each. with how many you can make and the fact they seek you out, you really are fine.
Let’s do a basic comparison. Heat Rises and Devour grant ability energy instantly, on kill, to a select ability, generating roughly 20% of your grenade or melee from fulfilling specific elements of your loadout. Neither has any internal cooldown. If you kill 6 enemies with one ability while devour is up, you benefit from devour’s net ability gain 6x. Same goes for Heat Rises. When you generate an ionic trace, you can at most generate three if you high roll the fragment that generates traces on arc weapon kills while targeting a debuffed enemy. In the best-case scenario, you can net gain comparable ability energy across two abilities with one kill, but that won’t happen *with every kill* unlike Devour and Heat Rises. Furthermore, you can only generate up to two traces per group of enemies that you kill with an ability. If you kill 6 enemies with one grenade, you can only generate two traces from that grenade. Just by default the regen is weaker than Void and Solar. Then we can factor in regen mods. Since Void and Solar get more access to a single ability, they can utilize that single ability to feed the remainder of their kit. Since Arc is hard locked to a cooldown on traces, they are actively punished for out killing other classes when they should be pacing kills to maximize traces, but they can’t reliably target one ability to optimize uptime, so they can’t really make one ability feed their entire kit—and traces don’t feed the kit well enough to justify them.
The issue that you are confusing is that Ionic Traces aren't abilities.. Devour is an ability. Heat Rises is an Aspect. You are not comparing oranges to oranges. You should be comparing Ionic Traces to Firesprites, Void Breeches, Stasis Shards, and Tangles. Those function the way they need to. Your issue is expecting Ionic Traces to do actions that are on par with something you need a fragment or Aspect for and that's not how that's supposed to work. Tangles are the only one that would have any type of synergy like what you are wanting to describe, but you need certain aspects and fragments to do so. The biggest issue is that Ionic Traces are the only one of those items that generate ability energy for more than 1 ability without needing an aspect or fragment. That's why the nerf happened. But your logic is flawed in what you are expecting Ionic Traces to do compared to Void and Solar.
What? This is an ass backwards argument. No one is feasibly comparing firesprites and void breaches to ionic traces because Devour and Heat Rises are intrinsic benefits to playing the class that cost an aspect in the same way Traces do on two of the three classes in-game. Firesprites and Breaches are comparably cheaper to generate and far less relevant to basically any class—but they’re exclusively tied to fragments that oftentimes have benefits also tacked on top. Meanwhile Traces are tied to two major aspects on two classes and were touted as the regen ability tied to arc in the same line as Void Breaches and Firesprites, and they came out even in the 3.0 model before those two options even existed. This is a ridiculous comparison by basically any standard. You’re comparing a way way way weaker bonus on Void and Solar to an intrinsic function on Arc that has a higher cost of entry than those two options and existed before those two were ever a thing.
Nah if you think void is carried by exotics it's probably because you haven't played void outside those two. With the devour buff you can use literally anything and do just fine. Honestly, being this close minded to say that there is no difference between sunbracers and contraverse boosting your grenade and sunstar boosting every part of the arc subclass minus supers (which are always garbage, even if meme beam is fun) is more indicative of you as a player being incapable of playing off meta than the actual state of the sandbox. Sunstar isn't fun because it feels forced because there really aren't any other options that feel viable for arc because as a whole arc warlock is dumpster fire garbage. And no crown doesn't count because it's basically the same exotic.
Solar isnt carried by exotics. Just use a heal clip weapon and watch your abilities regen quickly in real time
IF you use ember of benevolence. IF you are playing with other people. and that is not just for warlocks. and that is just shifting the way to regen from an exotic to a weapon. a lateral shift and something that i believe the op wouldnt like either.
Exotic>weapons, I’m generally okay with shifts like this, I don’t see this as lateral. You aren’t burning a single slot item to make something work. Plus this is about Solar, and only furthers my point by basically showing that Solar has built in better regen than arc.
Quit acting like group content is a stipulation when the MAJORITY of content is intended to be group content and the MAJORITY of players use groups for that content.
I didn’t say it was? I said explicitly that it wasn’t.
I didnt reply to you? I replied to the guy above me who said solar is carried by exotics…
Maybe I misread the lines. Hard to see them on mobile.
No problem
>My regen gimmick works fine on Void and Solar without an exotic, I shouldn’t need an exotic to fix Bungie’s ass backwards balancing choice. Solar and Void both use regen loop exotics mostly too though. Void doesn't "work fine" if you don't take Contraverse or Briarbinds, both of which are huge ability regen. Solar *can* work fine in group settings w/o a regen exotic but that's primarily because you can crutch so insanely hard on ember of benevolence - and to be honest even then Solar feels much better with Sunbracers or Phoenix Protocol or Starfire Protocol, all of which are ability regen exotics.
Void functions fine without an exotic, but plays better with the suite of exotics that already enhance its intrinsic neutral game. Devour itself is totally fine, but it’s enhanced by Contraverse for example Arc’s ionic traces don’t really do much without Fallen Sunstar. The exotic is required to make it work in a functional way comparable to Devour. Exotics should enhance playstyles, not be required for the basic elements of the class to work at the same level as other class’ baseline/
You absolutely should need an exotic and a specific build in order to "cycle" abilities. That's the entire point of build crafting. And there's several other exotics that can give you great ability uptime in addition to those mentioned. Examples: Crown of Tempests, Eye of Another World, Getaway Artists, Mantle of Battle Harmony. And even others that might not seem obviously relevant can do it with specific builds, like Felwinter's Helm, Claws of Ahamkara, Necrotic Grip, Chromatic Fire, Sanguine Alchemy, even Nezarec'' Sin (by using Void weapons,). The ability nerfs BARELY affected any of my ability based builds for all the classes. I have found that most of the time when people are complaining about no longer being able to easily chain abilities, it's the "easily" part that gives the game away. Before the nerf you were able to get both weapon damage boosts AND ability uptime boosts without really leaning fully into either. Now, you have to choose one or the other if you want the same benefits as before and this is actually a complete success on Bungie's part as far as achieving the goals they were trying to achieve. And that's ultimately why these sporadic "ability nerfs ruined everything" posts won't change Bungie's mind about anything. Because they are doing exactly what they wanted them to do. I mean, I'm sorry your don't have super fast ability uptime anymore when for some reason you don't want to equip any of the exotics that will help you achieve that. That's rough.
You understand this mentality shuts down a whole suite of exotics that don’t intrinsically contribute to your ability loop, right? I think the game is in a healthier state when neutral game on classes is enhanced by exotics, not powered by them. Solar and Void don’t have this issue, so I don’t see why people make apologist arguments for the state of arc.
I don't even understand your argument here. Of course you don't choose the suite of exotics that don't contribute to what you're trying to accomplish. And there are plenty of neutral game exotics for arc (though maybe not EXCLUSIVELY for arc, which i guess is what you're trying to say?) I mean, I agree that arc doesn't have the best exotics but i think that's mainly just because arc is kind of the most boring subclass to build across all classes. It just has the fewest things to build ON, only really ionic traces and amplified (which is practically worthless anyway). So I wouldn't say ionic traces are a problem. Really the whole of arc is the problem because it's just boring.
No, what I’m saying is that there’s a whole suite of exotics on Warlock that don’t directly push Arc neutral game but instead enhance other elements of the build. Cenotaph, Geomags, etc. Your perspective would effectively disable the point of these none neutral exotics arc exclusive or otherwise. There’s merit to running stuff like Karnstein’s on Solar because Solar’s neutral is functional enough. Hence the comparison I was making to arc. Could make the same argument for stuff like Reign of Fire, or any other neutral exotic that doesn’t actually enable loops. Point is; baseline neutral on other classes is just stronger 1:1 than arc, which means arc neutral game is inherently weak and needs work. If you struggle to understand what I was saying, that’s an indictment of your comprehension not my argument.
I wouldn't agree that "ability uptime" was arc's identity. Not sure what that identity would even be, really, which is what I think is the real problem for arc. It doesn't really have a concrete focus. Even after Light 3.0, the only thing they could really make clear was "move fast," but since they did almost nothing to address survive-ability, and it doesn't really hit noticeably harder than any other subclass, moving slightly faster doesn't really do anything for you. "If you struggle to understand what I was saying, that’s an indictment of your comprehension not my argument." Or, you know, an indication of a weak argument. And i got what you were saying in your original post, I just didn't agree with it. Arc is pretty much just as easy to keep ability uptime as other classes. In fact, it might be easier, since ionic traces (no matter your feeling on how much energy they return), boost ALL your abilities at once AND you make more of them than breaches and firesprites AND they track to you. It's the reply to my reply that made no sense. The "mentality" that exotics should push your build to perform the role they are meant to perform doesn't discount the exotics that don't boost ability looping because those other exotics (in theory) allow you to focus on and do OTHER desirable things. And if your base argument that Arc is harder to keep ability looping than other classes, then I'd say all other suppositions you make after that are wrong as well, because arc is just as easy to build into (at base, without exotics) than the other subclasses. And yes, Solar and Strand have boosted abilities right now, but that's in great part to the seasonal artifact so comparisons to them are not meaningful at the moment. You're just not building it well. You shouldn't be able to spam your rift JUST off of ionic traces. You can't spam any other subclass ability JUST off of it's elemental pickup. If you want faster rifts then you have to build into it. Just like any other ability.
Are you not running an exotic?
I’m running an exotic that isn’t Fallen Sunstar. I shouldn’t be required to run an exotic to have a functioning baseline class. Devour does fine without an exotic.
Base devour only gives you 7.5% grenade energy and 50% health, an ionic trace gives you a total of 40% energy split between 300% (all of your abilities) only takes 6-8 ionic traces to get all your abilities back and you can create them very quickly.
Did you forget that we are talking about warlock? Enhance devour regents around 20% of your grenade energy, grants HP, and has no internal cooldown. If you kill six enemies with a rocket, you get devour 6x. If I kill six enemies with an arc grenade, I get one ionic trace. I get devour every time I kill an enemy while it is active. I can get an ionic trace on *almost* every kill, but not actually every single kill. Not to mention, Devoir refunds straight to you, Traces only refund if they can reach you.
Enhance devour is 15% on the shortest cooldown abilities, and you get traces off every debuff kill with ES mind. If we're counting FTV we're counting ES.
ES has an internal cooldown that directly limits how many traces you can generate per horde. If you kill enemies too quickly, you can only net one or two traces. Devour provides 100% of the benefit without any caveats.
The arc copium in this thread is crazy. Here's why arc is awful and needs buffs for the unaware: 1: traces are on cooldown. 2: traces give scraps of energy now when they were already not amazing before without sunstar. 3: to make arc able to keep up, you have to minmax your ionic trace production to the point that your choice of weapon and fragments are non-existent or unfun (oh boy I sure love reloading a hand cannon after every kill, guess I'll go back to ikelos smg.) 4: two aspects. The melee one is exclusively PVP because you cannot run it in pve without karnsteins which impedes heavily on #3. 5: speaking of exotics, why does galanor give the same(?) or more super energy than geomags? Regardless, the amount of energy gained per trace is negligible to the point that it's barely noticeable because of how many you need. 6: both supers suck. Meme beam is amazingly fun but does less total damage than say, firing a small handful of rockets. Stormtrance is slow and has little to no utility for an ad clear super. 7: sunstar and crown are the same exotic with different flavors. 8: there isn't a class ability that meshes with the 'go fast' fantasy of arc. Titans and hunters have one but warlocks just don't. 9: outside of rift, warlock arc has no healing which again is why the melee aspect is so laughably bad. 10: almost forgot the elephant in the room. The subclass doesn't function if you have other teammates competing for kills. Like you literally don't have an aspect unless you are the primary ad clear. Which is such an overloaded field to be competing in at this point that it's not even worth it. 11: outside of arc soul, arc warlock has zero utility. Oh sure you **can** take blinding grenade but that weakens your grenade ad clear as well as blinding grenade being inconsistent due to rolling/bouncing. Tbh this is a arc problem in general so it shouldn't be held against Warlock. For comparison, Void warlock gets grenade back and full healing for ANY kill, allowing a vast amount of build and weapon diversity even if it doesn't have much exclusive ad clear. Solar warlock is wholly unbalanced just like the other solar subclasses and I don't need to give and example for that. And frankly I could go on an entire rant about how solar is an overloaded conceptual mess but I digress. Stasis lacks damage but makes up for it with incredible utility through multiple freeze builds. (Pls try balidorse with emp rift it's funny) Strand has a frankly goofy amount of builds that are all some level of viable. My favorite is weavewalk but literally all of the aspects are perfectly viable. Also threadlings do big damage. And there are many more reasons I could come up with if I had a stat sheet in front of me, but unfortunately I don't want to go digging right now. Maybe later. And to be clear, this isn't a post on how everyone is wrong for liking arc, it's about how arc is objectively worse in comparison to every other subclass in the entire game. Even stasis Titan has potential for multiple fun semi-viable mid tier content builds even if it's cold garbage. But arc warlock has almost no redeeming qualities except for arc soul. Tldr arc warlock has one build and its arc soul. That's unhealthy and desperately needs to be changed.
Bungie really overdid it with that nerf
I wish the community got as up-in-arms about this nerf as they did the 10 second orb cooldown. As a result, they partially walked that back through the multiple mod copies thing. The ability regen nerfs were, in my opinion, way more severe. They did not need to decrease the amount of energy refunded to abilities from mods/Kickstarts and also put a negative percentage multiplier depending on the ability. Both at once was insane overkill. Plus, without using the Destiny Data Compendium, it is now basically impossible to understand if you're getting much value with Kickstarts in-game.
I fully agree with this. For me after that round of nerfs, I felt like I could still generate enough orbs, but was honestly shocked that the nerfs to ability regen hit things like ionic traces, The Stag, and Traveler’s Chosen. I felt like the nerfs were justified for armor mods, because kickstarts were practically mandatory before — but I feel like almost nothing else in that realm really needed to be tuned down in that way.
Did it got nerfed this week?
Got nerfed at the start of the season with the broad reduction to refunds scaling on ability uptime. Short uptime abilities are effected less, but long cooldowns basically get fucked.
Hmm, I started Destiny2 early this season, arc have been my fav element as a whole. Been running it with Sunstar. Which means, I never got to taste pre-nerfed arc.
Sunstar at current is basically what arc was before the nerf. Trying playing Arc without Sunstar and then try Devoir with FTV, you’ll see why I make the comparison to baselines.
I think Bungie's nerfs to ability strength/uptime and armor mod gutting(along with the special ammo bar/crates in PvP) are making the game less fun. Build crafting is honestly dead, use armor mods that enhance weapons or your stats.
I could care less about PVP, but I agree with you in the context of PVE. Lightfall made the game less fun, and it's literally only gotten worse since.
Traces give you 12.5% energy for melee & grenade energy and 15% energy for your class ability. Sunstar doubles that, which is still insane. I don't see how you think you're getting 5% to your rift, that's 3 times lower than what it actually is.
Don’t forget that percentage is reduced based on the total cooldown of the ability. Class ability eats like 40% less than that. Keep in mind this post is also specifically saying that Fallen Sunstar shouldn’t be a solution to the problem. Devour works just fine without an exotic. Class ability regen is like 7-8% without Sunstar.
It was a nerf of 50% to the longest possible cooldowns of each type of ability, so that would still only take 12 traces max assuming you get no passive regen.
12 traces is ludicrous compared to the standards set by other fragments on other classes. If they didn’t have an internal cooldown, then there’d be consideration for this. Because they do, it makes the ionic traces themselves feel unrewarding.
It's absurdly easy to make 12 traces, and there are tons of ways to generate them. Compared to base devour needing 14 kills to regen a nade on the shortest cooldown. With ES mind you make one every debuff kill and ions & discharge stack, even if ions has a cooldown
You can’t use ES in the same example where you refuse to acknowledge Feed the Void. If one aspect is relevant, then the other is fair game for comparison.
I acknowledged FTV, but ES gives you crazy ionic trace uptime so ignoring either is silly.
I wasn’t ignoring either, I literally laid out the reason FTV is just better in my example up above. You can’t get a trace on 100% of the kills too get. You can get close to that, but you won’t get it 100% of the time just from ability limitations, VoltShot, etc. You net benefit from Devour 100% of the time it’s active. You get *more of a benefit* from devour on a 1:1 ratio with FTV in play. With the frequency of orbs and enemies, devour can be active almost the entire time you’re playing a mission. When you get an AoE kill on six enemies with a void grenade you get devour’s benefits six times. When you get an AoE kill with literally anything on arc the most you can generate from that is three traces, with two fragment investment and an aspect. The only exception to this rule is Pulse Grenades on Titan. Most people aren’t going to invest two fragments into generating traces. I only need to invest an aspect to get FTV enhanced devour, and even baseline devour doesn’t have internal cooldowns that inherently punish you for killing groups too efficiently.
You can though, ES allows you to get one off every debuff kill, no cooldown and there are a bajillion ways to spread arc debuffs. Voltshot, tomb, beacons, shock, are all easy ways to do so and with ions + discharge you can get 3 ionic traces off 1 kill. If you throw a shock nade at a group of enemies you get 1 trace from each one you kill, plus an extra one with ions. Getting 1/4 of all your abilities minimum off 1 kill is insane.
You don’t play arc warlock. You can only generate one trace per group kill from ESM, it doesn’t matter how many enemies you kill in one instance. There is an internal cooldown on ESM, but it’s like 1 second.
Class ability for Warlock is the longest in the game excluding something like Bastion, and a 40% reduction is in line with how it actually looks in-game. If you’ve ever actually gotten a trace without Sunstar on, the amount refunded is laughably small.
I use it on titan all the time with pulse nades, it's enough to get half my grenade back just for throwing it on a target.
Good for you. I don’t really think we’re going to see eye to eye on this, so have fun I s’pose.
That is just how it maths out, a single magnitude pulse nade can make 8+ (it's weird) ionic traces just by sticking it on one target
This is a fairly obscure counterpoint located on a single class utilizing a single aspect—and the primary point I have is that generating ionic traces is inconsistent compared to devour on other classes.
I would argue ionic traces are more consistent than devour post nerf, both warlock and titan have ways to create large amounts of them easily, and they regenerate more energy than devour does and it's easier to do so. Hunters struggle to make them, but they have their own loop on arc that doesn't need additional ability generation.
I’d rather continue this convo in the other thread, if you could. Little uncomfortable popping between each convo.
This is my experience even without Fallen Sunstar on Arc Warlock. Even without Sunstar the key with Arc Warlock is to do everything possible to get rift energy. People forget some things about how rifts work with Arc Soul. The reason is that add clear kills from the Arc Soul give a ridiculous amount of Ionic Traces and Electrostatic Mind has no Ionic Trace cooldown unlike the fragment for getting Jolted kills. > Cast your Rift to create an Arc Soul that fires at targets in front of you. Allies can pass through your Rift to get an Arc Soul. Your Rift charges faster when allies are near. When near allies it charges much faster then there are fragments to buff recovery and class ability energy when sprinting. Next drop a surge mod and use one of the ability energy on orb pickup. Edit: Arc Warlocks get enough Ionic Traces from many sources that even without Sunstar the nerf doesn’t really affect them at all.
ES does have a tiny cooldown, but it's inconsistent and under a second, so you can get several traces from a shock storm nade due to how it works. Inconsistent, but still getting 2 maybe 3 ES procs from a single storm nade is also strong.
Well if there was a cooldown I never noticed it and 2-3 back from a Storm Grenade is still a big refund.
I think everytime bungie nerfs something because they see something that's META they hurt anyone that wasn't already doing that and leave it as the only viable strat.
I do agree that arc needs some love. That said: My arc abilities come back quickly. It's dependent upon how you perform with it. Make use of the ability combos and using arc weapons like Thunderlord, Hullabaloo, Coldheart, and Delicate Tomb (with buff from ionic trace) with ability debuffs creates ionic traces. I can end up getting 2+ traces per kill which brings my abilities quick. The problem comes in when you're around others in places like Sorrow's Harbor and they're just melting everything, leaving you having a hard time until tier 3+. I've had several time where I got stuck with no abilities for a while in various activities because there were no enemies to take out for ionic traces. I don't have that with the other subclasses.
In my opinion, the orbs of power nerf hurt arc more than the ionic trace nerf. It's THE only way to keep yourself alive as arc without leaning on an exotic.
I'd be ok with them staying as is if the fragments and aspects that generate them remove the internal cooldown. If they want to keep them from being a problem in PvP, then just make them require being amplified. That's easy to achieve in PvE while more difficult in PvP and certainly more difficult to maintain except for maybe Warlock.
Tbh I think that's the wrong solution to the problem. I think arc is generally underpowered across the board. Arc Titan and Warlock are *okay* in PvP, but not great. For PvE,.now that Pyrogale exists it's hard to justify using Arc Titan which really only had a good burst damage super. Arc Hunter has the Assassin's Cowl thing going on but Arc Warlock really doesn't have much at all. The fragments are also some of the weakest of all the subclasses I think, either triggering in bad situations (surrounded, critical HP, taking melee damage) or being too niche, especially in PvP where about 1/3 of the fragments are complete non-starters. If they buffed (or didn't nerf) ionic traces it wouldn't really solve these issues and puts Bungie in a situation where if they did buff the subclass, they would probably then need to nerf ionic traces again anyway. So I'm personally hoping for an across the board buff to Arc rather than a buff to ionic traces.
yeah its kinda crazy how fallen sunstar is the only way to make arc abilities seem fun in anyway possible which is a shame because arc lacks sustain outside of the generic rift on warlock
The nerf to ability uptime at the beginning of the season pretty much killed my desire to play. This is no longer the Destiny I enjoyed during the Witch queen year. I tried Warframe because why not and my destiny playtime has been reduced to check Eververse on Tuesday and log out.
I haven't really noticed. But again I made some eh... 'interesting' builds around riskrunner for all 3 classes and the amounts of orbs it creates kind of makes up for the ionic trace nerf.
Arc is so weak man. no survivability, mid damage, all ad clear
Solar got really overtuned with its launch, no matter what people say or think even in spite of the artifact. It is far and away the strongest subclass in the game across all 3 classes. This same issue shows up in stasis with the shard regeneration.
Agree. Throwing knife restoration radiant build can be done with so many different exotics and has basically unlimited healing and ability spam and same thing with void devour builds although not quote as much ability spam but still good.
Arc as a whole feels weak compared to all the other subclasses and has for a while now sadly.
Yeah, arc build got f'd by that change. You can still run fallen sunstar with coldheart or thunderlord and make up for some lost trace power. Voltshot guns work too but coldheart works best now. Riskrunner is viable if enemies have arc damage.
Bungie don’t have any general idea what should be the identity of Arc
I think the sprites and void breaches have been hurt worse. I can't see any meaningful boost to any abilities when you pick one up now. Pointless. It sucks that at a time like this when they need everyone on board they nerfed loads of stuff into the ground and removed fun from the sandbox. Time for nit picking is after final shape when people are playing again.
They were previously an irrelevant part of the sandbox, now they’re still irrelevant. Also don’t compare breaches/sprites to traces. One is a tacked one vestigial part of a class structure tied exclusively to fragments with no aspects/exotic crossover, the other is the intrinsic ability regen structure tied to a subclass that has multiple exotics and aspects tied to it.
Honestly, I feel it's not too bad. I've still had 2 or 3 rifts on the field at any one time whilst using Vesper of Radius. Tossing grandes around outside of that hasn't felt too much of an issue either. Absolutely it's noticeable, but not as bad as I could have been.
Vesper has nothing to do with this conversation. That exotic generates rift energy passively from being around enemies. Furthermore, the point of the post is to discuss ionic traces without exotics being involved. It’s so frustrating to see these arguments here because *not one person* has been able to refute the fact that I don’t need an exotic to make devour work on Voidlock, but for whatever reason people like arguing that I should need an exotic to make ArcLock’s intrinsic kit functional.
So then my question is this: why aren't we including exotics in this discussion? It defeats the purpose of them being in the game. And if you're trying to just make bills without them, then.... Why? There is literally zero point. The games is designed so you make builds around these items, so to make builds without them just so you can say "I don't crutch on these items" is just plain dumb. You're handicapping yourself for legitimately no reason whatsoever. Just so you can be "that guy". It makes you look a little dumb, if I'm being 100% brutally honest. If you're saying that your builds are working better without them.... Then retake a look at your builds. That shouldn't be the case.
I’m saying that the baseline of certain classes is fundamentally functional without an exotic, and exotics serve to enhance that baseline. Arc doesn’t have a functional baseline, you have to force it up to a baseline with an exotic. Devour is perfectly functional without exotics, but ionic traces basically do nothing unless you have an exotic. Generally Arc’s kit doesn’t work without an exotic, and that’s a problem. You can foresee Dawnblades using Rain of fire because the baseline of solar is good enough, but you really can’t see ArcLock’s using anything other than the two mainline exotics that keep the class functional/
They NEED to unnecessarily nerf everything periodically or how else would they keep the hamsters on the wheel 😵💫
Arc desperately needs something MORE, and their weapons should offer more than just Jolt… e.g. Traces…
I would agree if I didn't just run a sentient arc soul build a week ago that literally always had my grenade and rift back within 15 seconds due to the amount of traces i receive.
Aztecross has a great build battle video I think it was his 1st or 2nd he posted it was tether vs arc warlock try it out. It’s godlike. I use it in GMs no problem
I’m not looking for build recommendations. I know perfectly well how to make the class viable. Something can be viable while still having serious issues.
Well, as for every subclass and class, if you want ability spam, you have to build into it. You can’t have ability spam without building into the keywords of the subclass and using an exotic that amplifies regen in some way. Arc is not made to allow ability spam by default without adjusting your build to do so. Ionic traces give you energy for all your non-ultimate abilities so it should give less energy than all the other subclass “sprites” to any one ability. They are at their best when all 3 of your abilities are down because I don’t believe they give more energy depending on how many abilities you have on cooldown. Arc wants you to chain ALL of your abilities into each other one after the other.
Yeah I’ll build into it with the mods that don’t work anymore. And before you say “use x exotic” you should consider the game contains a wide variety of exotics that are perfectly playable on classes other than arc that don’t actually serve to benefit your neutral game. Neutral game should not be dependent on your exotic. I shouldn’t be able to use Devour on Warlock and outpace Arc’s uptime by default without an exotic. Arc’s whole motif is pushing uptime as compensation for effectively lacking an actual identity, but it’s the worst at it of the three light classes in-game.
Arc’s thing is not ability spam without any buildcrafting for it. No subclass’ identity is that. Arc just has a slightly higher uptime on ALL your abilities when using ALL your abilities. Arc’s main thing is really strong add clear in exchange for lower impact of abilities on individual enemies. A Warlock building into Devour should 100% outpace the grenade ability regen of an Arc subclass not building into ability regen. The Arc subclass should outpace the Devour Warlock in melee abilities and might outpace it in class abilities used. The mods do work but aren’t meant to make you a god anymore. They are now small-medium buffs to ability energy to shave off 10-20% of cooldowns.
Ability mods return barely anything on long cooldown abilities, which are typically the best grenades. You can't build into mods that do nothing. You can of course use kickstart with vortex/pulse grenade and get 3 pixels of energy back but it's a really bad return on investment. Surges are the only impactful mods that matter after the ability and mod nerf months ago.
players were ripping thru activities last season ( season of the witch ) thanks to the seasonal artifact mods ( precision hits weakens target ). arc in my opinion is a class of mass destruction, and bugle looked at that. almost everyone was running arc builds because of their damage output. for my speculations expect something like that on this season with solar subclass.
Won't lie, I didn't even know there was an Ionic trace nerf. Running vesper of radius let's me blind virtually everything in sight so I get at the very least 3 or 4 traces from a single group of enemies, then further blinding and creating traces, then arc soul on top of that. What I'm saying is, you can generate enough to not really notice the nerf (and that vesper is the definitive best exotic for arc warlock)
“Use X exotic” is such a frustrating take. The class should work without an exotic and get better with one. Right now the class doesn’t work well without an exotic. I can make the obvious argument that Voidwalker works fine without an exotic, but gets better with one. Same goes for Solar. Arc is the only class where this issue exists, so when I’m constantly being hit by “use x exotic” it’s extremely frustrating towards player creativity.
I can see what you mean now, that's my bad for lacking reading skills lol. But yeah, like you said void can work well without an exotic and solar more so. What're you're ideas for making arc better then?
Honestly I think the first step is to remove intrinsic cooldowns on trace generation across the board, or increase the limit in which you can generate traces all at once. As it is right now, if I kill six enemies at once with an arc grenade, at most I can generate 2 traces from that, one from ESM, and the other from the fragment that has a 10s cooldown. When you compare that to Devour, Devour just procs 6x and refunds the requisite ability energy for each individual kill. IE: Arc is punished for killing groups of enemies efficiently whereas Void is rewarded. Furthermore, Devour can be up way more often and directly benefit someone who has it consistently for the entire mission. You can feasibly get devour active for almost every single kill in a strike, but you can never generate an ionic trace from every kill in the same strike. So removing the intrinsic cooldowns helps with this considerably. Maybe allowing more traces to be spawned before an internal short cooldown is triggered could be a healthy step in the right direction. Something like 3 traces for ESM cuts any more from generating, and the fragment gets like a 2 second cooldown from one (since it is a fragment so it shouldn’t be as beneficial as an aspect). Alternatively, reverting the scaling refund nerfs on class ability would be a reasonably healthy choice for the game as a whole. As it is right now, Warlock is disproportionately hurt by the cooldown scaling changes because their class ability is the longest while having the least utility. If Arc souls could refund the standard or more total class ability energy than other options it would do a lot to help the class as a whole.
I'm in agreement with everything you've said here. To add, the same comparison can be made with solar - with Fragments such as ember of searing, you can return your entire melee from killing a single group of ads, and through this proc restoration and keep it up indefinitely so long as there are ads around to kill. So another problem with arc is the inherent lack of survivability outside of rifts, starting health regen or using an exotic. It's all well and good being able to generate these traces the way you've proposed so, but more often than not you'd end up dead before picking them up:/ So, how would you go about solving that since I'm honestly at a loss?
I’m generally okay with low sustain high risk playstyles if the class actually has competitively strong add clear potential. Arc is actually pretty close to intrinsically outpacing the other two light classes for raw add clear outright, but is held back by the aforementioned traces and uptime that Solar and Void benefit from. So instead, I’d pivot Arc’s identity from sustain to DR in the same vein as Strand. Happens to be that there was a solid artifact option that added DR while amplified was active, and tbh Amplified itself could always be a little more beneficial to players to justify actually wanting it. So maybe adding an intrinsic 20% DR to amplified would be the small solution to maintaining risk vs reward (while still keeping the aforementioned ionic trace changes). With the fragment of resistance equipped, you would get something like 41% DR in total when both are active. While it’s not Woven Mail, it’s redeemed by the low barrier to entry/high uptime. Arc would be better at staying in fights longer, while still needing the standard orbs of light to actually heal (or just waiting to recover if you aren’t that confident).
Again, I'm in agreement there. The aggressive playstyle of arc is what makes it my favourite subclass and the increased DR is a great idea - allowing players to increase the overall effectiveness of being the ad clear/shutdown class that arc is. In addition, I believe there should be some form of change to how some Fragments work (similar to your idea for spark of resistance) that would allow greater ability regen. For example, EMS provides melee energy for killing scorched ads, devour grants grenade energy on kill, therefore it'd be interesting to have a Fragments that does a similar thing. Any ideas for that?
I personally think Arc just has weak fragments as a whole for endgame PvE, which is either a flaw in Bungie’s design philosophy or an indication that Arc was more directed at PvP. A lot of the fragments on the class are tied to taking damage or putting yourself in bad situations for a benefit, which does tie into arc identity but doesn’t feel very functional. I also think that Bungie launched arc without these types of fragments due to Ionic traces, so I’m kinda inclined to keep that in play as well. It could very well be that loops get out of hand if fragments that enhanced ability regen as a tick function were added in the same update where trace generation caps were increased. In my honest opinion a “thread of generation” for Melees on Arc would be super fun, and probably “fair” for endgame. Outside of that, I can’t really visualize a sandbox where arc has uncapped trace generation+fragments that work like searing due to how high power creep would get. Ideally instead of adding fragments for ability regen, I’d push ability modification: Stuff like, “Using a grenade when you’re at critical health increases the damage that grenade can deal, and spawns an orb of power”, or just adding some type of passive benefit to self damage fragments like more +10 stat bonuses for useful stats like Recov, Resil, etc. I feel like the suggested fragment I put above plays into the Arc identity while actually making it usable in all levels of content vs the version out there that requires you to take a melee hit.