Summons aren’t to blame for Warlock’s current problems. Bungie’s handling of grenades in general is the problem.

Warning: This is a long post, but there is a TL;DR at the bottom.

Recently, there has been an increase in discussion criticising Warlocks getting summons, especially with the reveal of Ionic Sentry(Ignoring the fact that it doesn’t even look or behave anything like a summon and that no one would think of it is as one if Bungie didn’t refer to it as one). Many are blaming the increased prominence of summons on the decline of Warlock’s grenade identity.

But the fact is that this isn’t the case. Bungie has been actively nerfing grenade builds for years and pretty much all the grenades they do add to the game are utility based.

Stasis:

Stasis was introduced with three grenades and still has three grenades. None of them are damage focused. They are utility based, designed for crowd control. Warlocks have builds that allow them to spam either Coldsnap grenades or Bleak Watchers, but as I said, Stasis grenades are designed for crowd control, not damage.

Void 3.0:

Voidwalker has Chaos Accelerant, Feed the Void and Child of the Old Gods. Chaos Accelerant is a grenade focused aspect, designed to enhance grenades. Feed the Void grants Devour, which grants grenade energy. Child of the Old Gods has nothing to do with Voidwalker’s grenades falling behind. Bungie nerfed Chaos Accelerant with Void 3.0, removing its damage increase, and has refused to buff it outside of Handheld Supernova since. In fact, they have actively nerfed it more than anything, by nerfing Contraverse Holds significantly, despite Chaos Accelerant being reliant on it. The changes made to ability regeneration at the start of Season of the Wish made things even worse. Bungie can give Chaos Accelerant its increase damage back and allow Voidwalkers to spam more powerful grenades again, they just refuse to do so.

Solar 3.0:

While Dawnblade did got Touch of Flame, which significantly increases the potency of some its grenades, those upgrades out Starfire Protocol and Sunbracers on the path to being nerfed, reducing Dawnblade’s ability to spam those grenades. Bungie messed up Dawnblade’s Solar 3.0 rework by making Heat Rises, an aspect that consumes your grenade to provide an in-air focused playstyle, and Heat Rises, an in-air dash. People wanted three things, a Burning focused aspect, a Healing focused aspect and a summon(Anti-Summon discussions are relatively recent). Healing was added to Heat Rises and Icarus Dash, as well as focused on with Speaker’s Sight. Hellion provided a burning focused summon and a way to ditch the forced in-air playstyle. Solar 3.0 also saw Healing grenade be changed from a Dawnblade ability to modify an existing grenade into a healing grenade into an independent utility grenade, continuing the trend of Bungie making non-damage focused grenades.

Arc 3.0:

Stormcaller had Arc Web as its grenade modification ability prior to Arc 3.0. Bungie then reworked into a fragment available to everyone. Did Bungie add a new grenade aspect to compensate for Arc Web being given out? No. They gave Stormcaller a melee focused aspect because Bungie wanted to push Arc as a melee focused element, a melee aspect that is significantly weaker than Sunbreaker’s melee aspect, despite Solar being a stronger element overall, having greater survivability and Sunbreaker being a Titan subclass, which has significantly more ways to build into melee builds than Warlock. All grenades were shared, so Stormcaller had nothing special about its grenades. On the other hand, Striker’s pre-Arc 3.0 grenade modifications got updated into Touch of Thunder, which Bungie randomly decided to add Storm grenades into, despite it previously being exclusive to Stormcaller and it being Stormcaller’s signature grenade.

Strand:

Similar to Stasis, Strand has three grenades. Grapple is a movement focused “grenade” that requires you to get close to use a Grapple *Melee, which compliments melee builds and ignores the range aspect of the grenade focused builds. Shackle grenades are utility based. The Threadling grenade is damage focused, but Threadlings are incredibly weak and inconsistent and that is on top of it being reliant on Thread of Evolution, which still doesn’t make them good.

Broodweaver does have a grenade modification aspect, but it isn’t really damage focused. Mindspun Grabble just shoots out three Threadlings at the end of a Grapple Melee. Mindspun Shackle grenades are consumed to get Weaver’s Trace, which causes killed enemies to suspend nearby targets. Mindspun Threadling grenade just consumes the grenade to grant five Perched Threadlings, which have less range than regular Threadlings and don’t count as grenades for grenade focused mods, perks and exotics.

As for the rest of Broodweaver’s aspects? Weaver’s Call continued the trend of class ability modification aspects being underwhelming and even its buff hasn’t moved the needle much. The Wanderer’s main purpose is to suspend targets by throwing Tangles. Weavewalk grants you a lot of damage resistance sure, but you can’t do anything while it’s active and it’s also eating away at your melee charges.

Prismatic:

Prismatic has a super, melee, grenade and aspect from each elemental subclass. The problem with the grenade part? Stasis has no damage focused grenades, so its representation is Coldsnap, Shadebinder’s signature grenade. Threadlings are weaker and do little damage, but they are Broodweaver’s grenade representation, except they are worse on Primsatic as Prismatic doesn’t have a fragment to stand in for Thread of Evolution. What is Solar’s grenade representation? Is it its signature Solar grenades that it has had since the beginning of Destiny and was exclusive to it until Solar 3.0? Is it the famous and powerful Fusion grenades? It’s the utility focused Healing grenade.

The only two actual damage focused grenades Prismatic Warlock has is Vortex and Storm grenades. Chaos Accelerant can’t work on any grenade other than Vortex. Touch of Flame can’t work on any grenade other than Healing grenade. Warlocks don’t have the enhanced versions of Coldsnap(On Hunter through Touch of Winter) and Storm grenades(Randomly on Striker thanks to Touch of Thunder). Threadlings don’t have an enhanced version at all. Bleak Watcher is the only grenade aspect that could work. And let’s be honest, most people would rather have Bleak Watcher on Prismatic than Frostpulse and Glacial Harvest.

Let’s look at Solipsism. It has access to Spirit of Verity and Spirit of Osmiomancy. Osmiomancy gloves are great, so of course it would be perfect for grenade focused builds on Prismatic. Guess which grenades Bungie specifically nerfed Spirit of Osmiomancy’s effect on. Vortex grenades and Storm grenades, the only real damaging grenades on Prismatic Warlock. Spirit of Verity only has the damage part of Verity’s Brow, which doesn’t work on Healing and Coldsnap grenades and still isn’t enough to make non-Thread of Evolution Threadling grenade worth using.

Solipsism has Spirit of Starfire too, but it dictates your rift to be Empowering Rift, which is inferior to Healing rift and significantly worse as an option than Phoenix Dive, which Prismatic has access to.

Bungie crippled Prismatic Warlock’s ability to use grenade builds before it even came out and then nerfed the ones it could make.

Final:

This is all on top of grenades being universal. Part of Warlock’s pre-Light 3.0 grenade dominance was having the 2 best grenades of each element on top of their grenade modifications and access to ability regeneration. Nightstalker had Vortex grenades, but Voidwalker had those and Scatter grenades, on top of access to Devour, Chaos Accelerant or Handheld Supernova. Sunbreaker had Fusion grenades, but Sunsinger/Dawnblade had those and Solar grenades, plus either D1 Touch of Flame or Healing grenades after Forsaken. Striker had Pulse grenades and Bladedancer/Arcstrider had Arcbolt, but Stormcaller had both and Storm grenades on top of access to either Arc Web or Ionic Traces. Light 3.0 removed that.

The changes to ability regeneration made in Wish has also been a plague on Warlock’s grenade focused builds, disproportionately effecting Warlock builds.

TL;DR:

Grenades being made universal, changes to ability regeneration during Wish, nerfs to grenade aspects such as Chaos Accelerant and exotics, the pushing of melee focused builds and the transition from grenades being damage focused to utility focused since the start of Subclass 3.0 has been the driving force behind the decline of Warlocks, not the addition of summons.