Face the Sun and praise it! The Warlock’s Sunsinger subclass is often misunderstood and unappreciated.
Sunsingers channel Solar power through their bodies, embracing the pure energy to infuse themselves and their allies with rejuvenating power… and burn their foes to the ground.
A Sunsinger’s Radiance is a unique super ability that provides you with powerful offensive and defensive bonuses. It can even bring you back from beyond the grave!
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Given Radiance’s unique power, focusing on Intellect is often a wise choice, but you can also focus on Discipline for your array of Solar grenades. This spec can be built to ignite your foes, and burning damage plus grenade spam from a Radiance and Discipline/Intellect build can be very dangerous.
The Sunsinger’s ability to revive after death can also save your Fireteam from a wipe in a Nightfall mission or Raid, giving this specialization similar PvE mission importance alongside Defender Titans and Bladedancer Hunters. And, of course, surprising someone who thought they had you down in PvP is always satisfying…
Recommended Setup for PvP
| Movement Mode | Grenade | Melee | Super | Stat Perks | Perks | Character Stat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Air Movement: Focused Burst Glide | Crowd Control: Firebolt Grenade | Tankiness: Scorch + Flame Shield | Tankiness: Radiance + Radiant Skin | Recovery/Armor: Arcane Spirit & Divine Order | Aggressive DPS: Viking Funeral & Touch Of Flame | Favor Grenade: ~90-100% Discipline |
[divider]Recommended Exotics
Helmet
- Apotheosis Veil is a good choice if you don’t run with Fireborn. Being able to come back from near death with increased abilities is useful in both PvE and PvP.
- Light Beyond Nemesis is an OK subclass-neutral helmet for team-based activities in PvE and Skirmish, as it gives you the ability to revive and be revived faster.
- The Ram is coming out in the House of Wolves expansion, and it will disorient all nearby enemies when you activate Radiance.
Chest
- Heart of the Praxic Fire further decreases all ability cooldowns while Radiance is active, letting you spam even more grenades. An excellent choice for PvE and PvP.
- The Purifier Robes are going to be released in the House of Wolves expansion, and they will explode any enemy killed by an Ignite effect.
- The Starfire Protocol robes give you an additional Fusion Grenade, a very handy perk for the Crucible.
Gauntlets
- Everyone’s favorite, the Sunbreakers increase the duration that your Solar Grenades remain active. Good for keeping ahold of areas in Control, especially when combined with Radiance.
- New with The Dark Below, Claws of Ahamkara give you an additional charge for Scorch. If you find yourself in melee combat a lot, these are the gauntlets for you.
[divider]Sunsinger Analysis
Touch of Flame
- All grenades ignite enemies, causing damage over time. This causes all grenades to now deal additional damage over time (DoT). Great for keeping shields down in PvE and snagging a Postmortem in the Crucible.
- While Radiant, it also causes all Solar weapons to ignite – causing additional DoT. With the right weapon, this can be very useful in PvE and devastating in PvP (think of Thorn having a baby with your favorite Solar weapon).
Flame Shield
Killing an enemy with Scorch reduces incoming damage for a short time and provides +1 Armor.
- Killing an adversary with Scorch maximizes your Armor and grants you a +55 health shield.
- Flame Shield can increase your durability substantially. Warlocks often run lower Armor values in favor of Recovery, so Flame Shield can help you emerge victorious in multi-target melee situations.
Scorch
A powerful melee attack that ignites enemies, causing damage over time.
Scorch has two parts:
- Strike: The damage dealt by the melee itself is actually not much powerful than a standard melee. It does apply a Solar modifier to your attack, so it will be much more powerful against shielded enemies.
- Ignite: This is actually a separate mechanic, and as such, you can apply the ignite without ever landing the strike. It appears that the flames that are shown when Scorch is active aren’t just for show – anything caught within those flames gets ignited. This means you can ignite multiple enemies who are close to each other; ignite as many enemies as you can hit with the flames.
Viking Funeral
Enemies you ignite burn longer and take more damage.
- This actually doubles the duration of the ignite; the burn effect will tick 5 times without Viking Funeral, and 10 times with it.
- It doesn’t increase the damage, but enemies will obviously end up taking more damage by being burned longer.
Radiance
Fill yourself with Solar light, dramatically increasing the effectiveness of all your abilities.
- All kills (where you deal the final blow) produce orbs of light. Nothing fancy here. Basic mobs give 1-2 orbs; Majors and Ultras drop around 4-8.
- All grenades have a massively lower cooldown; Scorch has a slightly lower cooldown. The reduced cooldown is probably the most notable feature of this Super. While you may not be able to hit as hard as the Voidwalkers, your ability to clean up tons of small mobs while generating orbs and helping your team is rivaled only by the Bladedancers.
- Scorch deals ~1.7x the damage. When tested on a Minotaur, the base damage of Scorch jumped from 668 to 1119. In the Crucible, a Radiant Scorch will one-shot an enemy.
Radiant Skin
While active, Radiance reduces incoming damage.
- Radiant Skin increases the damage resistance of Radiance further, making you even tougher to take down while it is active. This is a good choice when you’re soloing in PvE or PvP.
- Radiant Skin approximately doubles the amount of damage you can take
Fireborn
Radiance can now be activated from beyond the grave. Doing so returns you to life.
- This can be considered a “panic-switch” should things take a nasty turn during a Strike/Raid and a great surprise for your enemies during a Crucible match.
- Scorch instantly kills while Radiant, so show those Titan’s who actually hits hard!
- This still counts as a death, so bounties that require you to not die will be failed and the enemy team still gets the score in the Crucible despite your self-resurrection.
[divider]Passives
Tier 1
Arcane Wisdom
Training focused on battle Recovery and speed. +2 Agility, +2 Recovery
Arcane Spirit
Training focused on battle Recovery and toughness. +2 Armor, +2 Recovery
Arcane Force
Training focused on toughness and speed. +2 Armor, +2 Agility
Tier 2
Ancestral Order
Training focused on all attributes. +2 Armor, +2 Agility, +2 Recovery
Chaos Order
Training focused on raw speed. +5 Agility
Divine Order
Training focused on toughness at all costs. +4 Armor, +2 Recovery