‘Destiny 2’: How Good Is The Incandescent Perk?

New armor ornaments featured in Season of the Haunted

There’s no shortage of Solar 3.0 builds in “Destiny 2,” and while most of the aspects, fragments and abilities are enough to stand by themselves, there’s one perk in particular that elevates all of these to new heights.

The Incandescent perk was recently introduced together with a handful of the new weapons from “Season of the Haunted.” It seems like a simple perk on paper, but there’s much more that it can do behind the scenes.

For the unaware, Incandescent causes targets to spread Scorch stacks to nearby enemies when defeated. Despite the way the perk’s effect is worded, targets don’t need any Scorch stacks on them for the perk to spread any.

In simpler terms, Incandescent causes victims to explode and burn everything nearby, like a supercharged version of Dragonfly.

This has two major advantages. First, Incandescent allows players to take advantage of fragments like Ember of Searing, Singeing and Char. Second, the perk can let players chain Solar Ignitions without spamming abilities or outright killing targets.

Incandescent’s scorching explosion deals less upfront damage, but it causes all affected targets to take damage over time. Since targets hit by the explosions don’t die immediately, they are more vulnerable to Ignition procs from other Scorch-applying sources. This means that effects from Ember of Eruption and Solar Fulmination get more value from Incandescent weapons.

As a side bonus, this makes bounties that require Solar Ignition kills much easier to finish.

The main benefit of Incandescent still lies in its ability to synergize with the Solar subclass as a whole. It helps players constantly loop their abilities, and when used with effects that boost Scorch and Ignition, this perk alone makes weapons like Drang and the CALUS Mini Tool significantly more effective in PvE.

Repulsor Brace for Void weapons somewhat fill the same niche as this perk, but its focus on defense and lack of synergy with abilities ultimately led to it getting overshadowed.

Incandescent may have just set a new standard for elemental weapon perks for the future of “Destiny 2,” and it's exciting to think about what other effects Bungie can come up with in the coming seasons leading to the “Lightfall” expansion.