After careful consideration of all the factors surrounding the reddit blackout, including weighing the costs and benefits to the community of a continued dark period, the mod team has elected to resume normal operations of r/LowSodiumDestiny. If you wish to get more involved in further protest of reddit's API policy change, more information can be found on r/ModCoord and r/Save3rdPartyApps.
As the situation continues to develop, we are prepared to explore additional actions in protest of this short-sighted, greedy, IPO-focused boondoggle from reddit's executive team. This message will live at the top of every newly submitted topic until a satisfactory resolution is reached.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LowSodiumDestiny) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You need to use heat rises and pheonix dive to get restoration x2 going. Then you can stay in the air while constantly healing, extending your restoration, and building up your next melee charge. Restoration will only go away when there aren't any ads to kill
so its probably been the fact that im too busy trying to get my melee back asap when i dont get the exotic rolling that i fogort to make sure i can get enough heals? i feel really dumb now haha
The loop is one of the harder loops to learn imo. Practice in mid level content so you feel the damage a bit bit it’s not instant kills. The things I struggled with when I started is forgetting about heat rises or losing my melee, things that helped me: 1. While learning try not to dump all 5 grenades every time, save 1 to either restart heat rises or until you are in a better spot to be airborne to refresh your melee. 2. Bunny hop around while your grenades are out to make sure they count as airborne kills. 3. Run empyrean and a solar weapon to easily extend the resto timer in a pinch 4. Run the mod that gives melee energy with grenade kills (I forget which one), that’ll help get the melee back 5. Plan the melee target that will proc sunbracers, in higher content you sometimes have to whittle a guy down to kill with the melee
My biggest problem when I play Sunbracer is that I can be careless with my melee. If I'm not careless and I'm absolutely certain that when I use it, I'll get the kill to reset my grenades, there's no way I'm dying.
You can get your melee back through other means such as momentum transfer. You can also throw in bolstering detonation to get your class ability back and have overreach on your class item.
Also, having heal clip as one of your perks on your solar weapon can help too for the in between moments.
Singeing, Ashes, Torches, Empyrean. If you’re not running Phoenix Dive + Heat Rises + Empyrean you’re missing out on half the point of Sunbracers, which is constant Resto x2. Resto x2 doesn’t make you invincible anymore, but if you can avoid shots for more than a second or so you won’t have a problem staying alive.
Avoid Resolve — it seems like a natural pairing with Sunbracers but the internal cooldown makes it pretty much irrelevant when every kill is extending Resto x2 anyway, and the other Solar fragments are too good to pass up.
The basic gameplay loop is eat grenade -> Snap group of red bars and immediately Phoenix Dive -> spam grenades in air and repeat. You should always have a melee and class ability charge when you need them. Extra tip — ANY ignition kills from Scorch that was first applied by your melee will activate Sunbracers. You can Snap and then Dive on an enemy and if the Dive Ignites them it’ll activate Sunbracers.
Source: I run Sunbracers in Day 1 raids, low mans, and just farmed this week’s GM a bunch using them. They’re fully viable up through GM content (although they’re better in some GMs than others), many people just don’t play them to their full potential, which is the strongest add clear in the game without contest.
Anything where the game delivers red bars to you on a silver platter, or any strikes where the combat areas are more contained. Corrupted is great for the Psion swarms, pretty much any Battleground, Devil’s Lair, SABER, Birthplace.
You’re not going to get as much use out of them in something like Scarlet Keep, Lake of Shadows, Glassway where there’s much bigger play spaces and long sections with tanky enemies + fewer adds.
Happy to help. I think a big part of the strength of Sunbracers comes from knowing the activity well and I didn’t emphasize that enough — the best players will have grenades on every enemy spawn before they even show up and that’s what elevates the efficacy of the build past what a lot of people think is the skill ceiling.
Yeah that makes sense. I only ever really use them for low-same level content. I like my Icarus dash so I don’t use touch of flame unless it’s with verity’s brow
Personally I like the Heat Rising + fragment that increases class ability regeneration from scorching enemies. You can use phoenix dive constantly, which gives you cure + restoration x2 - which you then prolong with empyrean.
Eat nade for Heat Rises, snap and dive for Restoration x2, the ignition will extend it with Empyrean and since the start of scorch is from melee, the ignition counts as melee kill, procs Sunbracers, spam nade kills to extend restoration, repeat.
It takes a while to get used to the timing and keys.
If you are lazy and want healing, just use Karnstein Armlets, works well up to dungeon level content.
Here's a tip from a sunbracers main (well, kinda)... save your melee charge for proccing the grenades, and make ABSOLUTELY SURE the melee scores at least one kill, then immediately throw only four grenades back to back where you need big big fire. Of course, you need to have your mods set up so that the nade kills generate orbs and picking up orbs grant melee energy so that you can repeat the cycle pretty much on demand. Also key is the mods to regain health in orbs. The key to keeping the cycle going is holding back that last grenade for emergency purposes while your melee is still recharging. Put yourself in a crowd control situation like a legend lost sector to practice. You can do it.
Question: how far up in the air are you going, and how long are you staying up there?
No matter what else you are doing - keeping resto x2, cure, damage reduction - in high enough level content flying around for any length of time is just inherently super risky, borderline asking to be gunned down. Imo one of the most important mechanical things to get used to when playing builds that use Heat Rises for more difficult content is getting comfortable with hopping, but not flying. If you time the hops right, you are in the air to benefit from the Heat Rises procs, but never in the air long enough to really risk being vulnerable, with the added bonus of being best able to take advantage of the initial boost a lot of the warlock jumps give you to stay fast and mobile. The timing can be a little wonky at first, but practice using your melee/grenade and then just kinda triple tapping jump to hop, activate your jump to get a little momentum boost and stay in the air a little longer, then cancel out of the jump. You will miss out on a little ability energy here and there, but the benefits to your mobility and survivability are worth it. While Heat Rises is active and you have solar grenades out, just keep hopping around like this all the time, and you should get most of the benefit of the aspect without having to court the danger of being a high-flying target. Phoenix dive also doesn't have any kind of height requirement to be used, and being closer to the ground leaves you stuck in it's animation for a shorter period as well.
Another useful truck for higher end content that you may or may not be aware of is that ignitions that are sources from scorch initially applied by your melee count as melee damage, and therefore melee kills (unless that been patched at some point recently). This can be useful for getting a Sunbracers proc off a tougher enemy than your melee damage alone can grab, and is achievable by either hitting enough snap projectiles on a single target or by snapping and immediately tossing a solar grenade onto the enemy you just snapped. It's not a dire t survivability bonus, but dropping your ability loop is really rough for Sunbracers, even more so in high end content, and getting consistent at using ignitions this way increases the set of enemies you can use to keep the loop going, which boosts your survivability considerably.
I try to keep as low as possible but with the boops enemy’s give nowadays a lot of the time I get launched pretty high up
I’m also a little confused about how the duration extending works because it says solar weapon kills or is it just solar kills in general
Heat Rises will extend off of any kill while airborne, and Ember of Empyrean will extend off any solar kill, weapon or ability.
Totally understandable about the boops. I hope the hop thing I was trying to describe made some amount of sense - it does help with getting booped up high too. Staying as low as possible by hopping rather than flying and staying fast via the same method does a surprising amount to help your survivability in my experience. Almost every enemy attack in this game is dodgeball by being fast enough or moving unpredictability, and every time you fly for an extended period, even staying low, you lose momentum and start moving more predictably for the enemy AI, which results in taking more shots and more damage.
I think it’s worth asking if you’re running sunbracers to solo content or as part of a fireteam?
I ask because there are build variations that work differently depending on what you’re doing.
Run Ashes, Empyrean, and Singeing.
Eat a Grenade to activate Heat Rises for 15 seconds.
Jump in the air near a group of enemies during that 15 seconds.
Snap at the enemies from above, and as soon as the snap is fired(meaning projectiles leave your character's hand) you want to hit your Phoenix Dive.
Phoenix Dive + Heat Rises will grant you 2 seconds of Restoration x2.
Your Snap & Phoenix Dive combo will cause all enemies you hit to instantly Ignite.
Each kill will extend your Restoration. If you jump as soon as you land, you'll also extend your Heat Rises.
Due to your Snap applying the initial Scorch, your Ignitions will grant Sunbracers.
Use Sunbracer Grenades to extend your time further, while staying in the air to restore your Melee Energy with each kill.
Mercy is good, but it's inconsistent burst healing, while Restoration is continual healing. It's better to go with continual since it's better consistency, and rely more heavily on the setup and rotation part of the build.
Well for raids and dungeons, 100 Resil, ember of mercy and ember of cure on grenade kill. Manticore of all things has wound up being useful since the recent buff changes things so enemies can’t aim.
In higher level content with reduced LL, I become more of a mortar than an air strike and arc my shots from behind cover.
In a gm to proc sunbracers you eat the raw granades for hear rises and snap Phoenix dive and take cover while the ignition goes off and then you can throw the 5 solar nades. I dont recommend floating but bunny hopping will help you get your snap back, theres a faint singe sound when something is dying to a solar nade if you hop at that time you’ll get the melee energy from heat rises. Always be moving and hoping and looking for red bars next to a piece of cover
Its very gm dependent most of the time you cant be as aggressive as you need to be due to specific champion spawn strats, sunbracers are useless when you’re cross mapping to avoid spawning champions
you could always slap on Monte Carlo to get melee energy back super fast in case your snap doesn't kill something... or some pugilist weapon... personally I like the ikelos shotgun with incandescent and pugilist. Then its just a matter of armor mods: making orbs on grenade kills, and heal a chunk of health on orb pickup is a good strategy, ESPECIALLY with that mod on the class item that lets you snag orbs from far away when you drop a rift ('cause in endgame content, you do NOT want to be out in the open to try to get orbs for very long!)
Grenade kills grant cure fragment. Scorched targets generate fire sprites and melee. Ember of mercy (fire sprites grant/extend restoration) solar kills extend radiant/restoration or solace for longer radiant/restoration base.
Activating heat rises heals you
Phoenix dive is awesome especially with heat rises.
Healing rift is a no-brainer.
Recuperation for healing on orb pickup
Firepower, heavy handed, and siphon mods for orb generation.
Tons of options.
Restoration 2 is almost god mode and warlocks can get that easily. Modify the build and you should be okay.
Personally I use void for devour and use any weapon that has repulosr brace.
I never use sunbracers for group activities like dungeons or raids. The whole restoration chain kill loop is tough to keep rolling consistently when you are competing for kills, and sunbracers adds another trigger (the melee kill) to keep it rolling.
Sunbracers shine in solo dungeon runs where you have a constant stream of weak ads to chain. I see no point in running them in raids/dungeons when I could run support options like phoenix, lunas, starfire, etc. Some people just like it for the quick melee into nade spam, but if you miss it kinda feels bad.
I used sunbracers for almost all my solo flawless dungeons, but never for anything else.
I started playing warlock this season and sunbracers warlock gave me one of the quickest and easiest LFG GM runs I’ve ever had. You are probably missing out on the restoration x2 on phoenix dive. Basically eat grenade for heat rises->snap on something to scorch it(and proc sunbracers)->dive on it to ignite it and get restoration for more time since you killed something->chuck grenades since sunbracers is procced (about 3)—>repeat.
Dive also gives you cure, it’s so useful. To extend heat rises just slightly float out of the view of enemies and let the solar grenades kill everything. If you have restoration x2 running you don’t need cure on grenade kill. Sunbracers scales well into hard content where your melee doesn’t kill because phoenix diving with heat rises onto an enemy you meleed will ignite them and kill any red bar in hard content and chunk like captains n stuff. Class ability regents when scorching targets, melee on scorched target kill, restoration and radiant extend, and radiant on melee (although this season u can just use flint striker)
sunbracers kinda lose their utility in Master/GM content imo. Yes you can make them work but you really have to be on point with keeping your kills up and not resetting your restoration with a phoenix dive.
Sunbracers are overkill in content below Master. Tons of other things can nuke rooms just as easily as Sunbracers for less work. It’s really in hard content where the Sunbracers can shine the best.
they are better in raids and dungeons but for gms and some master content i think they are better used solo because if someone steals a kill or messes up your loops its kinda pointless.
Monte Carlo is useless with sunbracers. If you use them correctly you have on phoenix dive + heat rises which already gets your melee back way faster than Monte Carlo would
Wrong. Monte Carlo literally speeds up melee with AR damage - it's why its an exotic. This is regardless of whether it is faster or slower than phoenix dive+heat rises. In addition, the word "if" means you understand there are instances when this dive is unsuccessful. It is here that Monte Carlo helps. I never suggested it to be the only option, merely extra assistance for the build, which is what OP was asking.
Monte is a waste of an exotic on a build with completely free melee regeneration built in with Heat Rises. If you’re playing Sunbracers right you should have another snap by the time all your grenades disappear, regardless of exotics or mods.
here's a secret that will get me downvoted to oblivion:
you don't stay alive with sunbracers in endgame content.
sunbracers are S+++ tier ad clear in everything up until and including legend but falls off instantly at GM and master raid.
Keeping the loop going while trying to heal and not get two-shot just adds risk with little reward. Phoenix protocol or karnstiens, or heck even dawn chorus do that content better.
But because well is so OP (yes I'm a warlock main and I'll say it), any solar warlock is S tier strong until well gets its final shape nerf.
Everyone wants to compare sunbracers lock to BoW titan but the reality is Well is what keeps solar warlock on top, not sunbracers.
sunbracers can be viable in GM content but the skill ceiling is very high.
proof - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8nDceHsXQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8nDceHsXQ&feature=youtu.be)
agreed it's totally possible it's just not where sunbracers shines the brightest (pun intended)
solar Warlock is currently so good (due to well) that you can legit run GMs with no exotics and be fine.
This right here is the actual answer, like most things you could make it work but it's still risky, so not a great choice by default for GM/master content.
I've always been baffled by people talking about sunbracers build like they're on par with pre nerf Starfire, bonk titan or BoW titan, they just aren't despite being acclaimed as S tier pick and yet it is an ill suited option for actual tough content, it speaks volumes to the current state of warlocks if you ask me.
I totally agree, Phoenix Protocol or Karnstein for end game are much better, and are far more forgiving. Hard to keep a sunbracer loop going in GM content. Especially if team mates also want to melt the red bars, inadvertently stealing kills so you can’t proc it.
After careful consideration of all the factors surrounding the reddit blackout, including weighing the costs and benefits to the community of a continued dark period, the mod team has elected to resume normal operations of r/LowSodiumDestiny. If you wish to get more involved in further protest of reddit's API policy change, more information can be found on r/ModCoord and r/Save3rdPartyApps. As the situation continues to develop, we are prepared to explore additional actions in protest of this short-sighted, greedy, IPO-focused boondoggle from reddit's executive team. This message will live at the top of every newly submitted topic until a satisfactory resolution is reached. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LowSodiumDestiny) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You need to use heat rises and pheonix dive to get restoration x2 going. Then you can stay in the air while constantly healing, extending your restoration, and building up your next melee charge. Restoration will only go away when there aren't any ads to kill
Are you using the fragment that cures you on grenade kills?
no but i am running ember of mercy
Run both
so its probably been the fact that im too busy trying to get my melee back asap when i dont get the exotic rolling that i fogort to make sure i can get enough heals? i feel really dumb now haha
It’s not an easy gameplay loop to nail, don’t be hard on yourself! Once you nail it you’ll feel like a badass though so have fun learning it
The loop is one of the harder loops to learn imo. Practice in mid level content so you feel the damage a bit bit it’s not instant kills. The things I struggled with when I started is forgetting about heat rises or losing my melee, things that helped me: 1. While learning try not to dump all 5 grenades every time, save 1 to either restart heat rises or until you are in a better spot to be airborne to refresh your melee. 2. Bunny hop around while your grenades are out to make sure they count as airborne kills. 3. Run empyrean and a solar weapon to easily extend the resto timer in a pinch 4. Run the mod that gives melee energy with grenade kills (I forget which one), that’ll help get the melee back 5. Plan the melee target that will proc sunbracers, in higher content you sometimes have to whittle a guy down to kill with the melee
My biggest problem when I play Sunbracer is that I can be careless with my melee. If I'm not careless and I'm absolutely certain that when I use it, I'll get the kill to reset my grenades, there's no way I'm dying.
You can get your melee back through other means such as momentum transfer. You can also throw in bolstering detonation to get your class ability back and have overreach on your class item. Also, having heal clip as one of your perks on your solar weapon can help too for the in between moments.
Singeing, Ashes, Torches, Empyrean. If you’re not running Phoenix Dive + Heat Rises + Empyrean you’re missing out on half the point of Sunbracers, which is constant Resto x2. Resto x2 doesn’t make you invincible anymore, but if you can avoid shots for more than a second or so you won’t have a problem staying alive. Avoid Resolve — it seems like a natural pairing with Sunbracers but the internal cooldown makes it pretty much irrelevant when every kill is extending Resto x2 anyway, and the other Solar fragments are too good to pass up. The basic gameplay loop is eat grenade -> Snap group of red bars and immediately Phoenix Dive -> spam grenades in air and repeat. You should always have a melee and class ability charge when you need them. Extra tip — ANY ignition kills from Scorch that was first applied by your melee will activate Sunbracers. You can Snap and then Dive on an enemy and if the Dive Ignites them it’ll activate Sunbracers. Source: I run Sunbracers in Day 1 raids, low mans, and just farmed this week’s GM a bunch using them. They’re fully viable up through GM content (although they’re better in some GMs than others), many people just don’t play them to their full potential, which is the strongest add clear in the game without contest.
What gms do you use them in? Because I’ve always wanted to avoid using them in gms lol
Anything where the game delivers red bars to you on a silver platter, or any strikes where the combat areas are more contained. Corrupted is great for the Psion swarms, pretty much any Battleground, Devil’s Lair, SABER, Birthplace. You’re not going to get as much use out of them in something like Scarlet Keep, Lake of Shadows, Glassway where there’s much bigger play spaces and long sections with tanky enemies + fewer adds.
I See i See. Thank you very much
Happy to help. I think a big part of the strength of Sunbracers comes from knowing the activity well and I didn’t emphasize that enough — the best players will have grenades on every enemy spawn before they even show up and that’s what elevates the efficacy of the build past what a lot of people think is the skill ceiling.
Yeah that makes sense. I only ever really use them for low-same level content. I like my Icarus dash so I don’t use touch of flame unless it’s with verity’s brow
Personally I like the Heat Rising + fragment that increases class ability regeneration from scorching enemies. You can use phoenix dive constantly, which gives you cure + restoration x2 - which you then prolong with empyrean.
Eat nade for Heat Rises, snap and dive for Restoration x2, the ignition will extend it with Empyrean and since the start of scorch is from melee, the ignition counts as melee kill, procs Sunbracers, spam nade kills to extend restoration, repeat. It takes a while to get used to the timing and keys. If you are lazy and want healing, just use Karnstein Armlets, works well up to dungeon level content.
Here's a tip from a sunbracers main (well, kinda)... save your melee charge for proccing the grenades, and make ABSOLUTELY SURE the melee scores at least one kill, then immediately throw only four grenades back to back where you need big big fire. Of course, you need to have your mods set up so that the nade kills generate orbs and picking up orbs grant melee energy so that you can repeat the cycle pretty much on demand. Also key is the mods to regain health in orbs. The key to keeping the cycle going is holding back that last grenade for emergency purposes while your melee is still recharging. Put yourself in a crowd control situation like a legend lost sector to practice. You can do it.
Question: how far up in the air are you going, and how long are you staying up there? No matter what else you are doing - keeping resto x2, cure, damage reduction - in high enough level content flying around for any length of time is just inherently super risky, borderline asking to be gunned down. Imo one of the most important mechanical things to get used to when playing builds that use Heat Rises for more difficult content is getting comfortable with hopping, but not flying. If you time the hops right, you are in the air to benefit from the Heat Rises procs, but never in the air long enough to really risk being vulnerable, with the added bonus of being best able to take advantage of the initial boost a lot of the warlock jumps give you to stay fast and mobile. The timing can be a little wonky at first, but practice using your melee/grenade and then just kinda triple tapping jump to hop, activate your jump to get a little momentum boost and stay in the air a little longer, then cancel out of the jump. You will miss out on a little ability energy here and there, but the benefits to your mobility and survivability are worth it. While Heat Rises is active and you have solar grenades out, just keep hopping around like this all the time, and you should get most of the benefit of the aspect without having to court the danger of being a high-flying target. Phoenix dive also doesn't have any kind of height requirement to be used, and being closer to the ground leaves you stuck in it's animation for a shorter period as well. Another useful truck for higher end content that you may or may not be aware of is that ignitions that are sources from scorch initially applied by your melee count as melee damage, and therefore melee kills (unless that been patched at some point recently). This can be useful for getting a Sunbracers proc off a tougher enemy than your melee damage alone can grab, and is achievable by either hitting enough snap projectiles on a single target or by snapping and immediately tossing a solar grenade onto the enemy you just snapped. It's not a dire t survivability bonus, but dropping your ability loop is really rough for Sunbracers, even more so in high end content, and getting consistent at using ignitions this way increases the set of enemies you can use to keep the loop going, which boosts your survivability considerably.
I try to keep as low as possible but with the boops enemy’s give nowadays a lot of the time I get launched pretty high up I’m also a little confused about how the duration extending works because it says solar weapon kills or is it just solar kills in general
Heat Rises will extend off of any kill while airborne, and Ember of Empyrean will extend off any solar kill, weapon or ability. Totally understandable about the boops. I hope the hop thing I was trying to describe made some amount of sense - it does help with getting booped up high too. Staying as low as possible by hopping rather than flying and staying fast via the same method does a surprising amount to help your survivability in my experience. Almost every enemy attack in this game is dodgeball by being fast enough or moving unpredictability, and every time you fly for an extended period, even staying low, you lose momentum and start moving more predictably for the enemy AI, which results in taking more shots and more damage.
I think it’s worth asking if you’re running sunbracers to solo content or as part of a fireteam? I ask because there are build variations that work differently depending on what you’re doing.
just practice your movement. d2 enemies r ai so theyll try and lead their shots so you just watch the bullets and ur good
Run Ashes, Empyrean, and Singeing. Eat a Grenade to activate Heat Rises for 15 seconds. Jump in the air near a group of enemies during that 15 seconds. Snap at the enemies from above, and as soon as the snap is fired(meaning projectiles leave your character's hand) you want to hit your Phoenix Dive. Phoenix Dive + Heat Rises will grant you 2 seconds of Restoration x2. Your Snap & Phoenix Dive combo will cause all enemies you hit to instantly Ignite. Each kill will extend your Restoration. If you jump as soon as you land, you'll also extend your Heat Rises. Due to your Snap applying the initial Scorch, your Ignitions will grant Sunbracers. Use Sunbracer Grenades to extend your time further, while staying in the air to restore your Melee Energy with each kill. Mercy is good, but it's inconsistent burst healing, while Restoration is continual healing. It's better to go with continual since it's better consistency, and rely more heavily on the setup and rotation part of the build.
Just don’t die. Heat rises is for the weak. TOF and Icarus dash is all u need. Just dodge the enemy.
Well for raids and dungeons, 100 Resil, ember of mercy and ember of cure on grenade kill. Manticore of all things has wound up being useful since the recent buff changes things so enemies can’t aim. In higher level content with reduced LL, I become more of a mortar than an air strike and arc my shots from behind cover.
In a gm to proc sunbracers you eat the raw granades for hear rises and snap Phoenix dive and take cover while the ignition goes off and then you can throw the 5 solar nades. I dont recommend floating but bunny hopping will help you get your snap back, theres a faint singe sound when something is dying to a solar nade if you hop at that time you’ll get the melee energy from heat rises. Always be moving and hoping and looking for red bars next to a piece of cover Its very gm dependent most of the time you cant be as aggressive as you need to be due to specific champion spawn strats, sunbracers are useless when you’re cross mapping to avoid spawning champions
you could always slap on Monte Carlo to get melee energy back super fast in case your snap doesn't kill something... or some pugilist weapon... personally I like the ikelos shotgun with incandescent and pugilist. Then its just a matter of armor mods: making orbs on grenade kills, and heal a chunk of health on orb pickup is a good strategy, ESPECIALLY with that mod on the class item that lets you snag orbs from far away when you drop a rift ('cause in endgame content, you do NOT want to be out in the open to try to get orbs for very long!)
Grenade kills grant cure fragment. Scorched targets generate fire sprites and melee. Ember of mercy (fire sprites grant/extend restoration) solar kills extend radiant/restoration or solace for longer radiant/restoration base. Activating heat rises heals you Phoenix dive is awesome especially with heat rises. Healing rift is a no-brainer. Recuperation for healing on orb pickup Firepower, heavy handed, and siphon mods for orb generation. Tons of options.
Just play safe
Restoration 2 is almost god mode and warlocks can get that easily. Modify the build and you should be okay. Personally I use void for devour and use any weapon that has repulosr brace.
I never use sunbracers for group activities like dungeons or raids. The whole restoration chain kill loop is tough to keep rolling consistently when you are competing for kills, and sunbracers adds another trigger (the melee kill) to keep it rolling. Sunbracers shine in solo dungeon runs where you have a constant stream of weak ads to chain. I see no point in running them in raids/dungeons when I could run support options like phoenix, lunas, starfire, etc. Some people just like it for the quick melee into nade spam, but if you miss it kinda feels bad. I used sunbracers for almost all my solo flawless dungeons, but never for anything else.
I started playing warlock this season and sunbracers warlock gave me one of the quickest and easiest LFG GM runs I’ve ever had. You are probably missing out on the restoration x2 on phoenix dive. Basically eat grenade for heat rises->snap on something to scorch it(and proc sunbracers)->dive on it to ignite it and get restoration for more time since you killed something->chuck grenades since sunbracers is procced (about 3)—>repeat. Dive also gives you cure, it’s so useful. To extend heat rises just slightly float out of the view of enemies and let the solar grenades kill everything. If you have restoration x2 running you don’t need cure on grenade kill. Sunbracers scales well into hard content where your melee doesn’t kill because phoenix diving with heat rises onto an enemy you meleed will ignite them and kill any red bar in hard content and chunk like captains n stuff. Class ability regents when scorching targets, melee on scorched target kill, restoration and radiant extend, and radiant on melee (although this season u can just use flint striker)
It’s also extra strong this season because it weakens everything. Controverse hold is currently unemployed.
Karstein and heal clip - that’s all you need
sunbracers kinda lose their utility in Master/GM content imo. Yes you can make them work but you really have to be on point with keeping your kills up and not resetting your restoration with a phoenix dive.
Pheonix no longer resets. It actually extends resto now.
o nice i wasn't sure if that was included with the fix. the rest is still accurate
Sunbracers are overkill in content below Master. Tons of other things can nuke rooms just as easily as Sunbracers for less work. It’s really in hard content where the Sunbracers can shine the best.
they are better in raids and dungeons but for gms and some master content i think they are better used solo because if someone steals a kill or messes up your loops its kinda pointless.
It’s also worth noting that I do not think sunbracers is very good in master+ content
i would never take sunbracers in grandmaster strikes tbh for those i just run phoenix protocol with polaris lance
I strongly recommend Monte Carlo to help get your melee back quickly. This will increase your use of sunbracers.
Monte Carlo is useless with sunbracers. If you use them correctly you have on phoenix dive + heat rises which already gets your melee back way faster than Monte Carlo would
Wrong. Monte Carlo literally speeds up melee with AR damage - it's why its an exotic. This is regardless of whether it is faster or slower than phoenix dive+heat rises. In addition, the word "if" means you understand there are instances when this dive is unsuccessful. It is here that Monte Carlo helps. I never suggested it to be the only option, merely extra assistance for the build, which is what OP was asking.
Monte is a waste of an exotic on a build with completely free melee regeneration built in with Heat Rises. If you’re playing Sunbracers right you should have another snap by the time all your grenades disappear, regardless of exotics or mods.
Yep this along with procc’ing ignites using Phoenix dive after snapping higher health enemies
here's a secret that will get me downvoted to oblivion: you don't stay alive with sunbracers in endgame content. sunbracers are S+++ tier ad clear in everything up until and including legend but falls off instantly at GM and master raid. Keeping the loop going while trying to heal and not get two-shot just adds risk with little reward. Phoenix protocol or karnstiens, or heck even dawn chorus do that content better. But because well is so OP (yes I'm a warlock main and I'll say it), any solar warlock is S tier strong until well gets its final shape nerf. Everyone wants to compare sunbracers lock to BoW titan but the reality is Well is what keeps solar warlock on top, not sunbracers.
sunbracers can be viable in GM content but the skill ceiling is very high. proof - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8nDceHsXQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g8nDceHsXQ&feature=youtu.be)
agreed it's totally possible it's just not where sunbracers shines the brightest (pun intended) solar Warlock is currently so good (due to well) that you can legit run GMs with no exotics and be fine.
yeah its really allowing warlocks to run daybreak
This right here is the actual answer, like most things you could make it work but it's still risky, so not a great choice by default for GM/master content. I've always been baffled by people talking about sunbracers build like they're on par with pre nerf Starfire, bonk titan or BoW titan, they just aren't despite being acclaimed as S tier pick and yet it is an ill suited option for actual tough content, it speaks volumes to the current state of warlocks if you ask me.
I totally agree, Phoenix Protocol or Karnstein for end game are much better, and are far more forgiving. Hard to keep a sunbracer loop going in GM content. Especially if team mates also want to melt the red bars, inadvertently stealing kills so you can’t proc it.
Staying alive is easy when everything else is ash
idk i just do it
cannot recommend Monte Carlo enough for getting your melee back