Destiny Sunsinger Basic Guide

Destiny Sunsinger Basic Guide by Lucky_Number_Steven

Anyways, I just want to start by saying that I love being a Sunsinger. The Sunsinger is a Warlock subclass that offers tons of utility in exchange for raw damage output. Many of the nuances of the class; however, are either poorly explained or misunderstood, so I decided to make this post to help debunk some myths and maybe teach you something new about your fellow Sunbros.

As always, feel free to add to this discussion. While I can point out certain aspects generally, actual specifics and hard numbers are going to be a bit sparse, so I encourage you to test them yourselves and share what you learn.

And now, what you came for:

Touch of Flame: All grenades ignite enemies, causing damage over time.

• This does exactly as it explains – 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. This is actually an amazing touch and with the right weapon can be very useful in PvE and devastating in PvP (think if Thorn had a baby with your favorite Solar weapon). For example, the Ice Breaker becomes a guaranteed kill regardless of where you hit an enemy in the Crucible when paired with Viking Funeral.

Scorch: A powerful melee attack that ignites enemies, causing damage over time.

Scorch has two parts:

• The Strike: The damage dealt by the melee itself is actually no more powerful than a standard melee. It does apply a Solar modifier to your attack, so it will be more powerful against shielded enemies, but otherwise, it deals the exact same damage as a standard strike.
• The Ignite: This is actually a separate mechanic from the actual strike, and as such, you can apply the Ignite without ever landing the strike. From my observations, 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 or, if the homing feature of the melee doesn’t kick in for some reason, Ignite as many enemies as you can hit with the flames.

Viking Funeral: Enemies you ignite burn longer and take more damage.

• Contrary to what the tool-tip might have you believe, it does not increase the damage of each tick of Ignite. The damage dealt by Ignite appears to be based on the enemy’s level and, as of now, has no way of being modified in itself. Instead, itdoubles the duration of the Ignite. Whereas it will tick 5 times without Viking Funeral, the burn effect will tick 10 times.

Radiance: Fill yourself with Solar light, dramatically increasing the effectiveness of all your abilities.

This is probably the least helpful tool-tip given to Sunsingers, so I’ll try to explain what this actually means.

• All kills produce orbs of light. Nothing fancy here. Basic mobs give 1-2 orbs; Majors and Ultras drop around 4-8. You have to deal the final blow, though.
• 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 -> 1119. In the Crucible, a Radiant Scorch will one-shot an enemy at full health. Grenades receive no damage improvement.
• Kills do not count as kills with a Super for bounty purposes. Gonna have to run Voidwalker to complete that bounty.

Radiant Skin: While active, Radiance reduces incoming damage.

• This is vague, and as a result, it’s easy to ignore this modifier in favor of the others. However, the damage reduction is actually really powerful and makes a “tanky” Sunsinger very viable. Tested against the Knight in “The World’s Grave” with the same armor, it took 6 shots to take my shield down normally and 12 shots to take my shield down while Radiant. Obviously, there is some slop in that measurement as it’s hard to tell exactly how much “spilled over”. But from inspection, the bar looked to rest at the same place. This means that Radiant Skin approximately doubles the amount of damage you can take. Mix this with Flame Shield and you can make Defenders feel even worse!

Fireborn: Radiance can now be activated from beyond the grave. Doing so returns you to life.

• 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 in spite of your self-resurrection. This does; however, give you a much-needed “panic-switch” should things take a nasty turn during a Strike/Raid and a great surprise for your enemies during a Crucible match (remember, Scorch instantly kills while Radiant, so show those Titans who actually hits hard).

Gift of the Sun: Gain an additional grenade.

• This ability does exactly as it states: It provides a second grenade. Once your first grenade recharges, a 2nd cooldown will begin which, upon completion, will provide a small bar under your grenade icon indicating that you’ve got two fully charged grenades.
• The second grenade recharges half as quickly as the first grenade. At 100% cooldown on grenades, the 1st grenade recharged in 28 seconds and the 2nd grenade recharged 56 seconds after that. This cooldown goes back to normal if you throw your 1st grenade.

Myths!

• Ignited targets do not take extra damage from other sources. Sorry!
• Radiance does not boost weapons skills (like reload, swapping, or aiming).

With that said, every other tool-tip is fairly self-explanatory, but if you have any other questions or if you’d like to add something I missed, feel free to post and I’ll edit accordingly.

Now get out there and start some fires, Guardians.