The Dawn Chorus exotic helmet in Destiny 2
The Dawn Chorus exotic helmet in Destiny 2

It’s not often that an exotic item in “Destiny 2” gets reworked, but once one does, the results tend to be magnificent. Such is the case with the Dawn Chorus helmet for Warlocks, which got updated along with the entirety of the Solar subclass.

The new Dawn Chorus now passively buffs all Scorch effects that its wearer applies to enemies on top of making Daybreak break burn targets on-hit. While this may seem like mere flavor, the Scorch buff actually opens up tons of potential for Dawnblade builds in PvE. Here’s one of them.

Recommended Gear

For players who don’t have one yet, Dawn Chorus can be obtained by farming legend lost sectors during days when helmets drop. The activities must be done alone, and each run won’t guarantee a Dawn Chorus drop.

This exotic helmet bumps Scorch damage up to 200%, and it lets Daybreak inflict 60 Scorch stacks on hit (90 with Ember of Ashes).

The passive Scorch damage bonus greatly increases the value of grenades and melee abilities, but it truly shines when paired with a weapon that has intrinsic Scorch properties like Skyburner’s Oath and any legendary with the Incandescent perk.

Much of this build’s damage will be spread between weapons, abilities, Scorch and ignitions.

Dawn Chorus greatly buffs the effects of Scorch while also granting Daybreak extra effects

Dawn Chorus greatly buffs the effects of Scorch while also granting Daybreak extra effects Photo: Destiny 2

Class and Mod Setups

Players will want all aspects and fragments that buff either Scorch or Solar Ignitions. Heat Rises and Touch of Flame with Fusion Grenades seems to be the go-to combo for PvE due to how quickly the aspects can regenerate ability energy, which leads to more Scorch procs and ignitions.

Use the following fragments to maximize damage output:

  • Ember of Ashes
  • Ember of Searing
  • Ember of Eruption
  • Ember of Torches

This setup can easily light an entire room’s worth of enemies on fire while also priming them for ignitions.

As for armor mods, consider the following:

  • Ashes to Assets
  • Impact Induction
  • Melee Wellmaker
  • Bountiful Wells

The Scorch effects and Heat Rises will make melee ability recharge near-instantaneous, which allows for constant elemental well spawning. In turn, this will reduce the cooldown of grenades and rifts for more ability spam.

Keep scoring grenade and melee ability kills and spread Scorch to gain Super energy, then use Daybreak to deal big damage to tough targets like yellow bars and bosses.