Solar 3.0 failed warlocks. (a 4.7k word essay about Support-lock) (tl;dr included)
Edit: Solar warlocks are objectively really really good in both PvE, and PvP but a lot of what I'm here writing about is the clunky gameplay of the class as a result of it's design; not it's balancing. I'd edit the title if I could, sorry.
hi.
I've spent two or three months working on this essay on and off. Solar warlock has always been my favorite class, and I think while the reaction to it was justified, the problem is ultimately misunderstood. I hope this can clear things up.
This Essay was written, and is meant to be read in Google Docs. So I'd much rather you read it there because it's much prettier
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wVAm2qDNjrom1QX0qY6W9KaysOQig13EqNPrhaqGHE8/edit?usp=sharing
Below is a list of all 3 Warlock trees pre-Season 17, and how each ability was changed. Just so we can be on the same page
Before Solar 3.0
Attunement of Sky
| Celestial Fire | Winged Sun | Heat Rises | Icarus Dash |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send out a spiral of three explosive Solar energy blasts. | Fire weapons, send Celestial Fire, and throw grenades while gliding. Airborne final blows extend the effects of Heat Rises and grant melee energy. | Hold [Grenade] to consume your grenade energy to extend Glide time and improve in-air accuracy. | Activate while midair to dodge. |
| Celestial Fire stayed exactly the same. Now it’s a melee option. It also scorches enemies dealing damage over a short time. | This was combined with Heat Rises. | Everything about this is completely unchanged on a base level. Now consuming your grenade heals both you, and your teammates in a small radius. | This is also completely untouched on a base level. But in addition to its former properties, it also gives you (slightly worse) unrelenting when you kill enemies in the air using either your weapons or your super. Instead of triggering health regen like unrelenting, you get a single stack of cure. |
Attunement of Grace
| Divine Protection | Guiding Flame | Benevolent Dawn | Well of Radiance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hold to convert your grenade into a Blessing that heals ally targets and drops overshields that you and your allies can pick up. Activate Divine Protection while Gliding to hover in mid-air. | Strike an enemy with this melee ability to inflict burn damage and empower yourself and nearby allies. | Healing or empowering your allies regenerates your grenade, melee and Rift energy. | Thrust your Daybreak sword into the ground. The sword continuously projects a powerful aura that heals and empowers nearby allies. Replaces Daybreak as subclass Super. |
| This is gone almost completely. It’s been replaced by a grenade ability that exclusively heals. It doesn’t grant overshields, just one stack of cure, and one stack of restoration which (usually) won’t heal you to full if you’ve taken a lot of damage. The trajectory and everything was also changed completely to be significantly more forgiving, so it takes a minute to get accustomed to. This was also slightly added to Heat Rises, because you can consume your grenade of choice to create a healing burst. | This was replaced by a fragment called ‘Ember of Torches.’ The damage boost from it (radiant) is the same. 25% pve, 10% pvp. However, the radius was changed from ~24m, to 8m*.* | So for specific numbers, this would give half of all your ability energy back over the course of about 6 seconds, regardless of your recovery, discipline, or strength stat. Now, the duration is the same but instead of giving you half your energy back, it doubles the speed at which your abilities recharge. For example: the base cooldown of the healing grenade is 88s. Every second, you’re getting about ~1.14% of the charge. With Ember of Benevolence, you’re boosted up to ~2.3% every second, for 6 seconds. So assuming that you have it up constantly, you can get your grenade back in half the time However, the original perk would have granted you about 7.3% every second for 6 seconds instead which is about 3 times better. So this effectively got a 300% nerf. | This stayed completely the same, except it no longer gives overshields to the people standing in it, and it has much more health. The over shield granted an extra +70 health bringing everyone up to about 255-270 health depending on their resilience. Guardians also received 40% reduced damage in pvp. Now there is no longer an overshield, and guardians inside get a 50% damage reduction in pvp to everything that isn’t a primary weapon. So in total, we’ve gone from what was approximately a 1.9x reduction (200 -> 378) to a 1.5x damage reduction (200 -> 300). This isn't terrible, but things like adaptive frame sniper rifles can now kill because there’s a ~78 hp difference. |
Attunement of Flame
| Igniting Touch | Fated for the Flame | Everlasting Fire | Phoenix Dive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strike an enemy with this melee ability to burn them and cause them to explode when killed. | Daybreak projectiles seek targets as they travel and, upon impact, launch a streak of deadly flames. | Killing an enemy with Daybreak increases its duration. | Activate while midair to quickly descend and restore your health. When Daybreak is active, descent causes explosive damage. |
| This is pretty much how scorch and ignite work. The difference being that the ignition/explosion was triggered when the enemy was killed while burning; regardless of how they were killed or how much they were burning (i.e. Ticcuu’s). | Okay so this is weird, because it was split into two things. The tracking part was turned into a fragment called ‘Ember of Beams.’ Additionally, Daybreak now intrinsically has ‘a streak of deadly flames.’ (It’s equivalent to a wave frame grenade launcher). | Okay to be fair, it probably would have been a little broken, but I still miss it. ;~; | This is now a class ability, which means that Skylock players finally have a class ability. It also heals your teammates, albeit in a pretty small radius. When you use it while in Daybreak, you deal a small amount of damage and inflict burn (notice how I didn’t say scorch). The damage it does is pitiful, but it will scorch 40 stacks if Heat Rises is active. While you're in daybreak, this is increased by 50% for a total of 60 stacks; which still isn’t as much damage as I’d like it to be, which is to say that it’s practically nothing. Also, Daybreak doesn’t affect the cooldown of Phoenix Dive at all. So you can only really use it once per Daybreak. |
After Solar 3.0
Aspects
| Heat Rises | Icarus Dash | Touch of Flame |
|---|---|---|
| Fragment Slots: (2) | Fragment Slots: (2) | Fragment Slots: (2) |
| You can fire weapons, melee and throw grenades while gliding. [Grenade]: Hold to activate Heat Rises, consuming your grenade and releasing a burst of healing energy around you. Consuming a healing grenade increases the strength of the burst. Final blows while airborne increase the duration of Heat Rises and grant melee energy | [air movement key]: Dodge quickly while airborne. While Heat Rises is active, you have an additional dodge. While airborne, rapidly defeating targets with your weapon or super grants Cure to you. | Your Healing, Solar, Firebolt, and Fusion Grenades have enhanced functionality. Healing Grenade: Improves the strength of cure and restoration effects applied. Solar Grenade: Increases linger duration. Periodically emits blobs of lava around it’s perimeter Firebolt Grenade: increases target search radius and maximum target count. Fusion Grenade: Explodes twice. |
Class Abilities
| Healing Rift | Empowering Rift | Phoenix Dive |
|---|---|---|
| Conjure a well of power that continuously heals those inside it. | Conjure a well of power that increases weapon damage for those inside it. | Dive to the ground to create a burst of Solar Light that cures nearby allies. While Heat Rises is active, you gain restoration while diving and scorch targets upon landing. |
| Base Cooldown: 1:22 | Base Cooldown: 1:22 | Base Cooldown: 1:22 |
Melees
| Celestial Fire | Incinerator Snap |
|---|---|
| Send out a Spiral of three explosive Solar energy blasts, scorching targets with each hit. | Snap your fingers to create a fan of burning sparks that explode and scorch targets. |
| Base Cooldown: 1:40 | Base Cooldown: 1:30 |
Grenades (available to everyone)
| Tripmine Grenade | An explosive grenade that sticks to surfaces and detonates when targets pass through its laser trigger, dealing damage and moderately scorching them. | Base Cooldown: 1:31 |
|---|---|---|
| Thermite Grenade | A grenade that sends forth a burning line of fire, dealing damage and scorching targets in its path. | Base Cooldown: 1:45 |
| Incendiary Grenade | A grenade that explodes in a fiery burst and heavily scorches nearby targets | Base Cooldown: 2:01 |
| Solar Grenade | A grenade that creates a flare of solar light that continuously damages and scorches targets trapped inside | Base Cooldown: 2:01 |
| Swarm Grenade | A grenade that detonates on impact, releasing multiple drones that seek nearby targets. Each drone slightly scorches affected targets. | Base Cooldown: 1:31 |
| Fusion Grenade | An explosive grenade that attaches to targets, and moderately scorching them on detonation. | Base Cooldown: 1:13 |
| Firebolt Grenade | A grenade that unleashes bolts of damaging Solar Light at nearby targets and slightly scorches them. | Base Cooldown: 1:04 |
| Healing Grenade | A grenade that cures allies on impact and creates an Orb of benevolent Solar Light, granting restoration to allies when picked up. | Base Cooldown: 1:22 |
Fragments (available to everyone)
| Ember of Singeing | Your class ability recharges faster when you scorch targets. | |
|---|---|---|
| Ember of Benevolence | Applying restoration, cure, or radiant to allies grants increased grenade, melee, and class ability regeneration for a short duration. | -10 Discipline |
| Ember of Beams | Your super projectiles have stronger target acquisition. | +10 Intellect |
| Ember of Empyrean | Solar weapon or ability final blows extend the duration of restoration and radiant effects applied to you. | -10 Resilience |
| Ember of Combustion | Final blows with your Solar Super cause targets to ignite. | +10 Strength |
| Ember of Torches | Powered melee attacks against combatants make you and nearby allies radiant. | |
| Ember of Searing | Defeating scorched targets grants melee energy. | +10 Recovery |
| Ember of Char | Your Solar ignitions spread scorch to affected targets. | +10 Discipline |
| Ember of Tempering | Solar weapon final blows grant you and your allies increased recovery for a short duration. Stacks 3 times While Ember of Tempering is active, your weapons have increased airborne effectiveness. | -10 Recovery |
| Ember of Blistering | Defeating targets with Solar ignitions grants you grenade energy. | |
| Ember of Solace | Radiant and restoration effects applied to you have increased duration. | |
| Ember of Eruption | Your Solar ignitions have an increased area of effect. | +10 Strength |
| Ember of Ashes | You apply more scorch stacks to targets. | |
| Ember of Wonder | Rapidly defeating multiple targets with Solar ignitions generates an Orb of Power. | +10 Resilience |
The Reason I Wrote This
Before Solar 3.0 and Season 17 came out, I talked about Void 3.0 and I had a lot to say. I primarily just wanted to vent, because I was really anxious about what would happen to my favorite class. A major source of my anxiety was the diversity and incompatibility of the three trees; Attunement of Sky, Grace and Flame. I think my anxiety was justified, because Solar Warlocks are suffering an identity crisis for the same reason.
Attunement of Grace was dissected and repackaged into fragments that anyone could use, regardless of their class. I don't have an issue with this conceptually. Every class had supportive pieces before, and so there's no harm in giving everyone the tools they need to be even more supportive because this is a game about teamwork after all, and I’m not going to complain about free healing or free damage buffs. However, in order for the fragments to be balanced, they had to be nerfed.
- Benevolent Dawn
- ⬇ Less ability energy
- Turned into ‘Ember of Benevolence’
- Guiding Flame
- ⬇ Smaller radius
- Turned into ‘Ember of Torches’
- Divine protection
- ⬇ Less healing
- Turned into a grenade option
If this whole issue were as simple as, 'give Warlocks stronger healing' or 'give Warlocks more supportive options' then I wouldn't have written this, and you wouldn't be here reading it. Because on paper, Warlocks already have both the most, and the best supportive options. After all, Touch of Flame makes the healing grenade the strongest on Warlocks; and the same is true for Heat Rises. The rift abilities are constant sources of either healing, or damage. Not to mention, Well of Radiance is still incredibly strong.
But as much as I hate to say this, the problem is Skylock.
(sort of\***)*
More accurately, the problem is an incompatibility between the required playstyles for both Skylock, and Supportlock. The best example of this is Touch of Flame; and to be honest,
I hate Touch of Flame
Touch of Flame is an aspect that we saw last season with Chaos Accelerant, and with Stasis Hunters in Beyond Light with Touch of Winter. Because Chaos Accelerant is the closest equivalent to Touch of Flame, I want to compare the two because it’s the best way to explain why Touch of Flame is as bad as it is.
| Touch of Flame | Chaos Accelerant |
|---|---|
| Fragment Slots: (2) | Fragment Slots: (1) |
| Your Healing, Solar, Firebolt, and Fusion Grenades have enhanced functionality. Healing Grenade: Improves the strength of cure and restoration effects applied. Solar Grenade: Increases linger duration. Periodically emits blobs of lava around it’s perimeter Firebolt Grenade: increases target search radius and maximum target count. Fusion Grenade: Explodes twice. | [Grenade Button]: Hold to overcharge your grenade, making it deadlier and more effective. Vortex Grenade: Increases the size and linger duration of the vortex. Axion Bolt: Creates an additional seeker. Scatter Grenade: Has submunitions track to nearby targets. Magnetic Grenade: Releases a short-range Void Blast. |
Without the context of the classes that these two aspects are from, Touch of Flame would seem objectively better. You don’t need to charge it up, you get an extra fragment slot, and the effects to the grenades allow for more damage. But Chaos Accelerant is the better aspect, because it was designed with, not for the class.
I spoke about Void 3.0 before, but as a really short recap it’s worth talking about the other two Warlock aspects from Void 3.0.
| Child of the Old Gods | Feed the Void |
|---|---|
| Fragment Slots: (2) | Fragment Slots: (2) |
| Cast your rift to create a Void Soul. When you damage a target with a weapon, your Void soul flies to them and drains them, doing damage and weakening them, When a target is being drained, you are granted grenade and melee energy (if running healing rift) or health (if running empowering rift). Defeating a target who is being drained by your Void Soul grants class ability energy. | Defeat a target with a Void ability to activate Devour. While Devour is active, final blows restore health and extend Devour. |
For whatever reason, Bungie doesn't tell you this, but while Devour is active, you get grenade energy back for each kill you get in addition to the health and timer extension. This means that when you pair Feed the Void with Chaos accelerant, you have powerful grenades that give you Devour on kills. As you continue to get kills, you get your grenade back again. Child of the Old Gods also gives you grenade energy by siphoning enemy health. Regardless of how you build things, Chaos Accelerant will fit in perfectly. There’s an implicit synergy that exists between each aspect in a way that makes build crafting much more diverse.
Then there’s Touch of Flame. Solar Warlock doesn’t have Devour, or a Devour equivalent; which is to say that they can’t generate grenade energy in a meaningful way. There isn’t a flow, or a cycle to how you use your grenade on Solar. Once you’ve used it, you’re at the mercy of your cooldown, or external factors like exotics.
(I’m fully aware that there are two fragments that generate grenade energy, but neither of them are impactful enough to compete with Devour in a way that matters\***)*
Additionally, its sister aspects, Heat Rises and Icarus Dash, both have explicit synergies between one another. For example, activating Heat Rises will give Icarus Dash a second charge. That said, Touch of Flame has an explicit synergy with Heat Rises which makes the healing from Heat Rises much stronger if you’re using an enhanced healing grenade. The problem is that while that synergy exists explicitly, it doesn’t exist implicitly. Heat Rises and Icarus Dash go together implicitly because they’re both about being in the air. They both encourage you, if not require you, to play in the air. Touch of Flame replacing Icarus Dash just makes things feel awkward, because Heat Rises practically relies on Icarus Dash to feel whole.
With all of that said, Touch of Flame is still incredibly strong. It’s essential to almost every Solar Warlock build. I’m not complaining that Touch of Flame is bad in endgame content. I’m complaining because I think it was poorly designed. It’s an attempt to condense both Attunement of Flame, and Attunement of grace together into a single aspect that doesn’t fit in with the other two aspects. Besides, almost all of Touch of Flame’s strength relies on two exotic armor pieces; namely, Starfire Protocol and Sunbracers.
But what frustrates me the most is that Touch of Flame never even needed to exist. There was never anything in the old Solar trees that improved or affected grenades at all outside of Divine Protection on Attunement of Grace which, if you remember, turned your grenades into healing grenades. But now that healing grenades exist as their own grenade type, I have to ask, why was Touch of Flame implemented at all?
The Issue of Distance
(I could write so much about Skylock, but for now I’ll try and keep things as brief as I can. All I ask is that you trust what I have to say, because I've been playing with it almost exclusively since the beta.\***)*
Skylock isn’t a class about speed; it's a class about movement. Movement is about going from point A to point B; speed is about doing that as fast as possible. Skylock is one of the fastest classes in the game, but that’s almost entirely the byproduct of Icarus Dash canceling. It was never intentional. Heat Rises was designed to get you in position, and to keep you in that position.
Only half of the abilities actually support that kind of play style, which you're forced to use because two of the three aspects are designed for Skylock.
The healing and empowering rifts aren't just exclusively grounded abilities, but they're also completely stationary. And as much as I love pretending to be Colonel Mustang, the Incinerator Snap melee feels awkward and clunky at best. Its range isn't significant enough to let you actually be far away from anyone, and if anything, it's spread heavily encourages you to be right in front of your target(s) to get the most out of it. Not to mention the two super options, one of which being the most mobile super in the game, and the other being Well of Radiance.
At the very least, you can use any grenade that you want. But if you plan on healing anyone with Heat Rises, you need to be right next to them. I don't know if I can express just how small the radius is on that healing burst.
This pattern isn't exclusive to the class abilities either, it also exists with the fragments.
- Ember of Tempering
- 12.5 meter radius
- Ember of Torches
- 8 meter radius
For perspective, the radar in game has a radius of 25m, meaning that if you can see your teammates as dots on the radar, they’re within 25m. It goes without saying, but the radar doesn’t have the best range at base, and things like the healing from Heat Rises, and the damage buff from Ember of Torches are less than half of that.
All of this results in binary class builds. If you're in the air, you use Phoenix Dive, Daybreak, Celestial Fire, Heat Rises, Icarus Dash and whatever grenade you want. If you want to play support, or anything remotely grounded, then you use either rift, Incinerator Snap, Well of Radiance, and Touch of Flame. There isn't any room for 'mixing-and-matching' abilities. If you plan on being in the air, then you're limited to roughly half of the class. There isn’t a way to play Supportlock and Skylock at the same time in a way that feels good. Believe me, I've tried. No matter what, you'll be throttled by the range requirements of the abilities and the fragments.
Dawnblade builds exist on a binary, not a spectrum.
Where we go from here
Truthfully, I don’t know.
Normally this would be the part where I propose some grand solution to all of this, but as I said, I don’t know what to do or where to go from here. I don’t make games, I never have. I don’t program, and I’m not going to pretend like I can. I’m not writing this because I think that I can do better than Bungie because I can’t. I’m here because this is an issue that I’m passionate about, and I want to contribute my perspective. But it's not fair of me to complain about a problem, and suggestions to fix it without presenting any of my own.
So here are a few ideas. Some of them are my own, and some of them are ones that I’ve seen or heard elsewhere.
A Fourth Aspect
One of the most popular suggestions that I've seen is the introduction of a fourth aspect. It's a popular idea for a reason. Right now there's 3 combinations of aspects that you can have, but a fourth aspect would double the number of potential combinations to 6. Instead of having to use Icarus Dash or Heat Rises alongside Touch of Flame, a fourth aspect would let you play entirely grounded without any waste. A fourth aspect would also present the opportunity to bring back some of the missing pieces from the old subclass trees. Benevolent Dawn, or something similar would be great.
But a fourth aspect won't entirely fix the problem. On paper, you would have many more opportunities to craft your builds, but in practice you'll continue to be limited by the incompatibility between Skylock and anything else. Heat Rises and Icarus Dash are inseparable without making something that feels clunky and awkward. And even if this hypothetical fourth aspect worked well with Icarus Dash or Heat Rises, the distance requirements from the fragments would still throttle any potential builds.
Combining Heat Rises with Icarus Dash
I hear people say that Heat Rises and Icarus Dash should be combined into one aspect a lot. The benefits of this would be similar, and arguably better, then making parts of Heat Rises intrinsic. As a diehard Skylock player, I would absolutely love this but that’s because there’s no way that it would be balanced.
Bungie would have to make a third aspect if this were to happen, and I would personally prefer to just have 4 because that would allow for more diversity. But even if Bungie did make another aspect, and this was somehow balanced in both PvE and PvP, that new aspect would have to address the shortcomings of Skylock, and fragments like Ember of Torches.
Shooting in the Air
Heat Rises does a lot to say the least. Other than its titular buff, it can heal you, generate melee energy and let you shoot in the air. But its main purpose is to let you shoot, melee, and throw grenades in the air. If that became intrinsic to the class, it would allow for more diversity in the aspects. Heat Rises would still be good because while you could hypothetically shoot in the air without it, Heat Rises gives you a +70 to airborne effectiveness along with buffs to glide in terms of movement.
But this is also a fairly tall ask. This would be the first, and only class to have an intrinsic ability which would set a precedent for other classes to have one, and lead to a lot of power creep. Additionally, it could pose challenges for PvP balancing. Solar Warlocks are already one of, if not the most popular classes in Crucible right now, and a change like this would only make that worse.
Ember of Torches
One of my biggest issues is that currently, there isn’t a way to make someone Radiant if you’re in the air. In fact, the only way to make anyone Radiant on Warlock, is by using Ember of Torches. But because the range is so small, it’s completely unusable when you’re in the air. Being able to hit someone with your melee, like Celestial Fire to make them Radiant would help a ton.
I don’t think there are too many downsides to this outside of the difficulty of implementing it. But because this is a fragment, other melees on both Hunter and Titan would be affected as well and that may require extra balancing and tuning. For example, the throwing hammer on Titan can be thrown and picked up repeatedly. If you could just throw it at the floor, or at a teammate to make either you, or yourself Radiant, then things would get a bit messy.
Ember of Benevolence
Ember of Benevolence doesn’t feel good to use. Other than the stat penalty of -10 Discipline, Ember of Benevolence doesn’t feel effective, or worth using. Before, it was super obvious when Benevolent Dawn was active, but that was a bit broken after all. I think that Ember of Benevolence should stack based on how many allies you support. I don’t know what this would look like exactly, but I imagine that if you made someone Radiant, then you would get a stack of Benevolence. After getting a stack, you could then heal another ally, and get a second stack which would further increase the effectiveness of the ability regeneration.
But similarly to Ember of Torches, this would be a change to a fragment; meaning that it would affect both Titans and Hunters as well. Warlocks still have the best ways to support their teammates, so they would likely benefit from this fragment more than the other two classes, which is perfectly fine. If anything, that’s how it should be.
The logistics of this also pose an issue. If you could support the same ally multiple times by juggling abilities, should you be allowed to get multiple stacks from them? If so, then you could just pocket someone to build up tons of momentum and ability energy.
You could do this before using Benevolent Dawn, but I’m willing to admit that Benevolent Dawn was a little bit overpowered.
Ideally, this change would encourage players to bounce between teammates, managing their resources among 5 people that all need to be healed, and buffed.
bye.
I know that this has been a lot, and if you’ve made it this far then I want to say ‘thank you.’ It genuinely means a lot to me.
I wrote all of this because this is something that I’m passionate about. I like this game a lot, and I like Solar Warlock a lot. There was a lot of misinformation on this topic on Reddit when the season first launched. I felt like a lot of it was emotionally charged, which is why it was misleading. I hope that all of this acts as a clear, and comprehensive explanation of the problem as a whole.
TL;DR
Solar warlock builds have been forced into a binary rather than a spectrum of player creativity and freedom that we had hoped for. This is because the playstyles for Attunement of Sky and Attunement of Grace are inherently opposed to one another. One requires you to be in the sky, far from your enemies and your teammates, while the other demands the exact opposite. For example, two of the three Aspects are directly from Attunement of Sky, which projects an expectation on the player to ‘fly around’ despite only half of the abilities actually supporting that type of playstyle. This dichotomy is further exacerbated by things like Ember of Torches, which require you to be within 6m of a teammate in order to make them radiant.
Edit: because I keep seeing this in the comments.
I'm not asking for buffs. I know that solar warlock is arguably the strongest class in the game. I don't care about that. The kit isn't cohesive. That's my problem with it, not that I think it's "underpowered" or that it "can't preform." Please just read the whole thing. Or at least the tl;dr.