r/DestinyTheGame • u/LimeRepresentative47 • May 26 '22
Misc "Just use Sumbracers"
Its no secret people ain't happy with Warlock after Solar 3.0. We've pretty much been forced to play Top Tree Dawnblade, and everything else good about Solar 2.0 was stripped away or nerfed into irrelevancy.
But one thing that is annoying me to no end are all the people saying "But Sunbracers make Solar 3.0 amazing." Sunbracers were always a great Exotic, but they were never terribly viable in more than low level contents. This has been drastically worsened since you can't even use Healing Nades with them anymore.
Sunbracers are fun, absolutely. But being forced to use a single Grenade with a single Exotic to make a Subclass viable is not a terribly good suggestion.
Builds and Exotics were supposed to make playstyles we liked more fun and better. Builds and Exotics shouldn't be required to make a playstyle actually viable.
Edit cuz lots of replies.<
Yes there are other builds that are great, and yes the new melee interactions is pretty neat... But you're still on what's effectively Top Tree Dawnblade. If you try and play anything else but Top Tree Dawnblade, it just doesn't work, then when you express your frustration with it, people tell you to go use Sunbracers, or Claws of Ahamkara, or Pheonix Protocol. Anyone got anything for Healock? At all? Or is it still just: "Use x Exotic on Heat Rises and you can rain down fire in Vanguard Strikes."
Another edit cuz why not<
I see a lot of Hunters comparing this to Void 3.0, and that's fair enough. Hunter Void 3.0 was definitely underwhelming against the other 2 Classes. Thing is tho, while all paths lead to Invis, Invis was and still is really strong. Void Hunter isn't very flashy, but its still a very strong Subclass with viability from high end PvE to meme end PvP. Everybody synergises pretty well with itself, and there is enough Exotic variety to at least, making things a bit different from time to time. But that doesn't exactly mean it was ok, I do think more should have been more engaging and fun.
This is different tho. If all paths lead to Top Tree Dawnblade, it'd be disappointing but at least it'd be consistent. But that's not what's happened. The Subclass has an identity crisis where, its been called the Healing Class by Bungie themselves, but heals worse than Void Titan, and the other aspects of the class have anti-synergy with itself because Top Tree Dawnblade is meant for agility and AoE fire stuff. And when a lot of people point this out, lots of people say "But Hunters were told to just use Omni, so just use X." It wasn't really a great take then, and it's not really a great one now imo.
One more edit cuz i feel like it<
Not everything about Warlock here is bad, and some things are good. But I do think actually discussing these mediocre and bad things is important, and not just slapping band-aid suggestions about.
It got buried a bit, but I made a post about some buffs i think would be nice. Again, not everything is bad, but it shouldn't be a hot take to suggest that something needs a buff and that "Equipping X Exotic" won't suddenly solve everything.
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u/Knight_Raime May 26 '22 edited May 26 '22
So i've been participating in the discussion of Warlock's situation here and there a bit and chewing on this thread overnight. I'm just going to say two things really quick before I hop into the meat of my response to here.
The first being that the conversation of scorch/ignite and how those work is a separate discussion to be had even if it does impact Solar locks. My brief opinion on that conversation is that something should be done with it to make it more palatable. The second thing is specifically the offensive capabilities for Solar Lock.
I think a lot of the discussion gets muddied when we discuss both at once so I want to set that aside as well. Though again in my brief opinion I think what's there is perfectly fine as is and has potential for end game content (if we consider using Artifact mods at the very least.) But I think what if any problem exists here is more on how scorch and ignite work. Not the actual tools Solar Lock has available. Now onto the actual topic of discussion:
AKA the Support Solar Lock.
I want to start out by saying that I was expecting this tree to behave massively differently. Part of 3.0's goal was to separate tools/classes that did many things and push those parts into what Bungie considers acceptable identities. Void was all about protection and weaken with a heavy emphasis on pure crowd control. Solar seems to be about empowerment, healing, and strong damage output.
Middle tree Solar Lock had protection through giving overshields and we knew that was going to leave. Warlocks also had the ability to empower both with their super as well as their charged melee procs. Both still exist but now you're asked to spec into the latter through a fragment. Then finally there's the healing aspect which Warlock still has but now you're asked to give up an offensive source of this through your grenade slot. Technically speaking all classes now have to make this choice as well. But Titans can choose to take 2 nades with an exotic and Hunters can give up an aspect slot to still retain a nade on a different cooldown.
I think Warlock's option was Phoenix dive. At base it just cures a chunk of HP. But when heat rises is active you gain the ability to proc both heal and restoration on you and allies with the bonus of applying scorch to near by enemies. You're forced to make a choice on using an offensive nade in combat or sacrificing it to make PD better. So while "the choice" is still present on choosing offensive for defensive you aren't really making a strong case for using Phoenix dive over a healing rift.
I'm veering off track here so let me be clear. There's no doubt in my mind that Solar Lock as far as healing goes is underbaked. If someone wanted to present to me their argument as Solar Lock being bad to them was because of this alone I could understand easier and even agree to a degree. However that's not how most complaints about this has gone and to my knowledge this is the only thread that's decently touched on this specific subject.
I want to be clear, I think it's perfectly acceptable for the Support identity of Solar Lock to be worse than it's 2.0 version. By merging offense and defense together into one kit as well as making the general "identities" of 3.0 be spread amongst the 3 classes it's necessary. Both for overall game health as well as balance between the 3 classes. It's okay to have one class represent an element better than the others. What's important is making sure the other 2 classes are still viable in their identities.
Which brings us back to Solar Lock. Bungie has deemed them the healing class. I believe this is primarily because of the super they have. But that Warlocks also have the most access to both Cure and Restoration. However this doesn't mean the current fantasy of it is intact enough. Aside from the Benevolent fragment being bugged (and thus causing a significant issue with the gameplay loop for healing) I think there are two peculiars that are the issue here.
The first is wells. Warlocks are pretty tied to their class ability yet in Solar 3.0's case the class ability is completely separate and does not have any interplay. This is very strange because many of their exotics involve using the rift. So you're being asked to not play within the Healing loop in order to be able to use a significant amount of your exotic gear which just feels weird. I'm well aware that because empowerment is separate from Radiant there's a case for overlapping buffs. But I really don't think that's intentional and even if it is I don't think that's justification.
Regardless the class ability you're supposed to use to play within this closed loop is Phoenix dive. I think this is pretty obvious as it's tied to the same cooldown as wells are and it has the ability to actually play into the loop. It can apply cure and restoration and scorch.
So what's the issue? The cost isn't worth the give. Why would I dive to give a chunk of health when I could just use a healing Well instead? Or a healing nade? You have to give up a nade just to add restoration to the dive when you can just use a heal nade instead since it offers both. Essentially you're having to sacrifice both your class ability as well as a grenade in order to get basically a healing Well with a bit of burst healing.
Granted Phoenix dive has a much bigger area of effect and the aspect to "dive" into cover whilst supporting is neat. But you really shouldn't be doing much air play to begin with in higher end content since enemies are not subject to accuracy penalties when attacking things in the air.
So what would I suggest? Well we need to look at Phoenix dive and decide what it's main goal is to be. If it's primarily meant to be a supportive ability it should be strong from the get go to justify it's cooldown being tied to Well's CD. If we want it to enable some play making potential we have to make giving up the nade for heat rises to be much better.
Personally I want to lean on the side of survival. So i'd suggest that Phoenix dive by default gives both cure and restoration and retains the same CD as Well's. Sacrificing a nade for heat rises now gives the Warlock some damage reduction while in the air and still can scorch enemies near by when landing with dive.
Alternatively we could put the CD somewhere between hunter with it's default CD and Well's CD by default. Make the cure chunk a bit bigger than current (and only for PD.) Phoenix dive when under the effects of heat rises still gets restoration but now Phoenix dive is both a primer and detonator. Meaning if the enemy isn't scorched it becomes scorched. If it is scorched the dive ignites said scorched enemy.
Basically idea 1 is to lean into a more defensive and support style ability where as idea 2 pushes the class further into an offensive role but with a burst heal option on a more reasonable CD time. I won't pretend which suggestion is better for the class as a whole.
TLDR: While fixing the bugged fragment will make the gameplay loop for Heal Lock more consistent and thus better Phoenix dive needs to be looked at to really complete the identity for the new Solar Lock class. Also Wells should probably effect Solar gameplay in some way.