Destiny 2’s Solar Subclasses Suffer from a Longstanding Restoration Bug

Starting in late May of 2022, the solar subclass rework dubbed “Solar 3.0” made its explosive debut, which expanded the solar subclasses with aspects and fragments that players could mix and match for that next level of customizable builds. Unfortunately, a minor restoration bug has kept some solar subclass users annoyed with no concrete fixes yet deployed. Come along as we detail how Destiny 2’s solar subclasses suffer from a longstanding restoration bug.

Before we break it down, it’s important to remember that some of the best solar builds revolve around keeping yourself healing at all times via the restoration buff. Typically, a solar subclass Guardian can gain six seconds of restoration through the solar healing grenade. Alternatively, the Ember of Resolve fragment grants cure and restoration on solar grenade final blows. However, one of the more popular methods of gaining restoration is generating Firesprites and picking them up for a stack of restoration.

Players do this by combining the Ember of Searing and, or the Ember of Tempering fragments and combining those with the Ember of Mercy. Both searing and tempering fragments generate Firesprites, and mercy makes picking up Firesprites what grants you restoration.

The part that ruins it for end-game solar subclass players is that restoration reverts to a lower timer when reapplying the original source of the buff. This means that if the original source of your restoration is from a Firesprite, your restoration timer will be reduced to two seconds. This happens even if your remaining restoration duration is maxed out from using Ember of Empyrean’s duration-extending effects.

I did some testing of my own and confirmed this bug indeed still exists. However, while using Ember of Empyrean, my restoration timer would reset to four seconds instead of two. Still, that is far from optimal in endgame PvE scenarios and feels unintuitive, especially when attempting to maintain 10 to 12 seconds of restoration amidst challenging combat encounters.

Bungie has known about this bug for over seven months, despite thread after thread on Reddit making it continually known. Looks like I’ll be maining Strand until Bungie gets around to fixing it.