I’ve seen an increase in Dawnblade users for this week’s Trials map, and I’ve had a few games where I could not peek without getting deleted by a floating scout rifle player, so I decided to look further into what makes this subclass so good, and, as it turns out, it’s because it can do everything for little to no cost. First, the supers: all 3 supers are viable in 3v3: Daybreak has the quickest movement out of all supers, Well of Radiance makes Stasis completely useless and gives teammates their supers, and Song of Flame has a ton of damage resistance on top of healing, increased weapon damage, and 1-shot abilities with obnoxious tracking. Second, Scorch: this verb alone can delay healing, revives, and ammo pickups for seconds at a time. Even a firebolt tag is enough to back someone off a res, which is just too much power for an ability that is essentially ready to go every round. It’s essentially like a hunter smoke that follows you around, and the only way to combat it is with healing of your own, which is scarce for the other 2 classes. Third, Hellion: it power crept the arc soul completely, making Stormcaller even less relevant. It can also feed into itself with one extra fragment, and its projectiles track too aggressively for how much uptime it has. Fourth, Heat Rises: this aspect gives +20 AE for free, while removing the forced tradeoff between jumping and ADSing. When consuming a grenade, the bonus is 70, enough to push past the accuracy break point for MnK, making all weapons shoot straight while in air on its own. Combined with the high uptime of Solar grenades Dawnblade has access to, this aspect allows the player to float every round in Trials, which makes muscle memory and good crosshair placement almost detrimental from an opponent’s perspective. It also overlaps with Strand’s subclass identity. The only downside is that it gives away your position to the opponent a bit more accurately on the radar, which does not matter when they are kept 60 meters away by a scout rifle. Fifth, Icarus Dash: it’s a hunter dodge on a 4 second cooldown. It also removes the downside of Heat Rises when paired together, it’s essentially free movement. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that it used to be exclusive to an exotic for titans, now it’s just an added bonus to the strongest subclass in the game. Sixth, Ignition Chaining: it’s incredibly frustrating waiting behind a corner for the 90 stacks of scorch from an incendiary grenade to go away only to be ignited anyways because a teammate decided it would be a good idea to peek into the incoming Celestial Fire melee. This technique alone can win rounds within the first 15 seconds. TL;DR: Solar warlock overlaps with the identities of other subclasses and even classes, having both strong neutral gameplay and playmaker potential while offering no downside other than being slightly more noticeable on the radar when floating with Heat Rises, a downside nullified by the limited radar range. That's all for now, take care!