I only play my Warlock now, and I’m pretty much 50/50 on Sunbracers and Chromatic Fire.
Sunbracers are very flexible with weapons, and I mainly use Conditional Finality, Hollow Denial (Lead From Gold + Killing Tally), and The Other Half for well skating.
For Chromatic Fire, I just use Wish Ender and arc. Wish Ender is already insanely powerful, and the added blinding explosions are just so good. I usually pair it with Forbearance or Techeun Force (Rewind Rounds + Controlled Burst), and Apex Predator (Reconstruction + Bait and Switch).
What is everyone else here rocking this season?
Contraverse vortex nades have been my go to for several seasons now, and now I get an extra fragment slot and useful artifact perks, feels quite nice. I’ve been mostly going with the one fragment that got buffed this season that makes an orb and a void breach on kills on weakened targets to fill that empty slot, though it’s been fun to have that flexibility.
The new dungeon also feels like it was made for contraverse holds, lots of orange bars with slightly different health values due to the moths, it’s beautiful.
In terms of weapons, I’ve been using deathbringer or leviathan’s breath for a while, but I might swap my heavy to the dungeon rocket with envious assassin, 4 rockets in a row is indeed rather funny. My energy is almost always my frenzy demo unforgiven, so I guess I’ll start experimenting with kinetic exotics to pair with what I’ve got.
On the pvp side, the new strand hunter aspect is hilarious and I can’t stop using it, especially with bombardiers. Threadrunner in general is also really cool, I love all the aspects so much.
I’m mainly rocking the Necrotic Grips + Osteo Striga on Strand Warlock. I nom the shackle 'nades to gain Weaver’s Trance to suspend everything.
Another Build I’ve been rocking like you is a Chromatic Fire + Arc build. But I use either Malfeasance or Outbreak Perfected
Arc CF is just so solid. Been meaning to try out Outbreak with it; Malfeasance also sounds fun!
Popping all red bars in an AoE and then hammering down all majors and bosses, especially taken, with the explosions is really satisfying!
I main Titan and switch between Strand suspend spam build and Arc titan.
Arc Titan with HOIL and and Ikelos SMG is still just stupid strong. I’ll slap on Conditional Finality or one of the Stasis fusions then round that out with an Adept hothead. If we’re doing DPS I try to switch to Curiass before damage starts.
Quicksilver has quickly become one of my all time favorite weapons in the game and that’s what I use on Strand. Having the option to do some good damage with the GL mode and create tangles is fun. I’ve also the Techeun force and Apex Pred you mention on my strand build.
I want to get my hunter and warlock void builds using the new seasonal void mods we have but haven’t gotten around to putting something together.
I really need a Riptide, speaking of stasis fusions. I’ve got a Vow one with Chill Clip, but it’s so slow, especially since you need two shots for it to work.
Point-Contact, Fallen Sunstar w/Coldheart, or No Backup Plans. The gameplay loops of these three builds really makes me question the point of nerfing HOIL. Fallen Sunstar genuinely gives a ridiculous amount of ability energy after picking up an ionic trace.
Sunstar is insane. Traces already give solid ability uptime on my Wish Ender + Chromatic Fire setup that doesn’t even really focus on them. Sunstar and Delicate Tomb or Coldheart (I have yet to try Coldheart) give insane uptime. It’s so fun!
Warlock - I’m mostly addicted to Osmiomancy Gloves. This build is even better after the buffs/fixes to Coldsnap Grenades and Iceflare Bolts.
Titan - hard to beat a good Sunbreaker build. I’ve been alternating between Synthos (which I find more personally useful) and Phoenix Cradle (when I want to be a better teammate). Honorable mention for Sentinel with Bastion because everybody loves overshields, but I haven’t finalized a build yet.
Hunter - Gyrfalcon with Telesto makes a better combo than most people realize. Because of the charge time and the delayed detonation from Telesto, volatile rounds are extremely easy to keep up.
On my Titan, I’m running solar with Synthoceps. 3x Synthoceps Solar Titans + Tractor Cannon vs Ecthar is a big meme. I’ve also been trying out Strongholds recently for a nice change of playstyle.
For my Warlock, it’s an arc ability spam build with Crown of Tempests. Arc just feels really good with the artifact mods this season, and arc warlock makes the new dungeon almost trivial. While I’m kinda glad to be free of Starfire, I’m struggling to find a decent build for running well on solar. I find Sunbracers to be inconsistent to proc. Do you have a decent Sunbracers/welllock build to recommend?
On my Hunter, I’ve been enjoying one of Plunderthabooty’s builds for Threadrunner. Constant suspend uptime and woven mail uptime by using Radiant Dance Machines. Super fun build!
Sunbracers is pretty simple. Heat Rises and Touch of Flame, obviously. For fragments, the one to apply more scorch, regen class ability energy from scorched targets, apply radiant on powered melee hits, and extend restoration and radiant with solar kills. Use snap and phoenix dive.
Your loop is just activate Heat Rises, melee, dive, spam nades. Then alternate between melee and nades, saving your dive to refresh restoration.
Heat Rises is important because it gets you melee energy back super easily, and it buffs your dive; diving with it active gets you three seconds of restoration x2 as well as scorches. The restoration is self-explanatory; sometimes it’s a good idea to throw a grenade, then get restoration to get an immediate timer extension. Phoenix Dive also lets you get melee kills; as long as you apply scorch with your melee first, diving will stack onto that, ignite, and count as a melee kill because the scorch was applied by a melee initially. This lets you essentially melee healthier targets.
Weapons are up to you. I enjoy double special with Conditional Finality and Acasia’s Dejection, and Other Half for skating, but you’re mainly reliant on your Sunbracers for everything; your weapons are fairly supplemental to the build.
Thanks for the advice! I think I just need to commit the game loop with Heat Rises -> Melee -> Phoenix Dive -> Nades to muscle memory. The window in which you can extend your Restoration is very small.
By the way, thanks for the tip about Phoenix Dive’s scorch proccing your melee via scorch, that will go a long way to making it more reliable. I didn’t know that.
The Phoenix Dive too was a game changer for me. I usually don’t have any problems getting restoration rolling; snap, dive, throw, and I’m usually up and running. If you have Heat Rises already active and need to proc restoration, throw your grenade first and then start the combo. It’ll get you a head start on extending the timer. Once you play with it a bit, you’ll learn how it all flows together.
Another thing to keep in mind is boss damage. Only one solar grenade can damage a target at once, so you can’t just stack damage over time on a boss, but the lava blobs from Touch of Flame can stack up. So, depending on the enemy and arena, you can either landmine grenade directly and surround them with others, allowing the lava to possibly hit them, or widen the actual grenade area so they’re still taking damage as they move. Or you can stack a bunch of grenades on a ceiling or wall high above the target, allowing the blobs to all group up and do massive damage. This is kinda tricky and is reliant on the boss standing somewhat still underneath a perfect spot to stack them. There’s some good videos showing this out there that I can’t link at the moment at work.
Hunter: double special arc hunter with combination blow and assassin’s cowl. Usually a one-two punch ragnhild-d, legendary trace, and leviathans breath.
