Prometheus Lens — Bonfire (Solar Hunter)

Centerpiece: Prometheus Lens (Trace Rifle · Special · Solar) · Subclass: Gunslinger · Role: Add-clearing scorch-spreader + ignition engine Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Updated 2026-07-03

Hold the trigger and the beam swells into a heat field that paints scorch on everything it touches; the catalyst sprays that scorch on every kill, so one sweep across a pack lights the whole room. Dawn Chorus makes each scorch tick hit harder, builds bigger ignitions, and refunds melee off all of it. The gun is a flamethrower with a sniper's reach, and the subclass is built to turn its scorch into chained ignitions.

The weapon

Prismatic Inferno (intrinsic, verbatim): "Fires a Solar trace beam that creates a field of heat energy that grows as the weapon is fired. Sustained damage applies scorch to the target."

Catalyst — Incandescent (verbatim): "Defeating a target spreads scorch to those nearby. More powerful combatants and opposing Guardians cause scorch in a larger radius."

What it does: a continuous Solar beam on Special ammo that applies scorch by sustained fire, not a per-shot proc — hold it on a target and the stacks climb on their own, while the heat field widens the longer you fire, so it bleeds onto adjacent enemies. Scorch stacks tick damage and, once they stack high enough, ignite — an AoE Solar detonation. The catalyst closes the loop: every kill sprays scorch to neighbours, so a single beam-sweep daisy-chains scorch to ignition to catalyst-spread to more scorch across a whole group. This is an add-density weapon — its output scales with how many bodies are packed inside the beam's field, which makes it a room-clearing fire-hose rather than a single-target gun.

Loadout

Why it works (the mechanics)

• Scorch is the whole economy, and the beam is a scorch fire-hose. Most Solar guns apply scorch per shot; Prometheus applies it by sustained fire and widens its field as it goes. It stacks scorch faster and on more targets than any other weapon — exactly the input every Solar Hunter verb wants.
• Dawn Chorus double-dips both things the gun produces. Its Rites of Ember buffs scorch damage (Clarity: Scorch deals +200% [50%] increased damage) — the beam's main output — and builds to more powerful ignitions — the beam's payoff. One exotic multiplies both halves of the weapon's loop, and nothing else pairs this tightly.
• Incandescent + Ember of Char make the chain self-propagating. The catalyst spreads scorch on kill; Char re-applies 40 (60 with Ashes) scorch to everything caught in an ignition. So one ignition re-seeds scorch on the survivors, the beam tops them to threshold, they ignite, and the spread repeats — in a dense room it cascades.
• The melee loop never goes cold. Three independent feeds refill the Lightweight Knife: scorch/ignition damage grants melee energy (Dawn Chorus, 5% per tick), defeating scorched targets grants melee energy + a Firesprite (Ember of Searing), and Gambler's Dodge near enemies returns melee. The knife's precision kill makes you Radiant, which ramps both the beam and Golden Gun.
• Gunpowder Gamble is a second, aimed ignition. The beam farms the add kills that charge it; you throw it into the densest cluster and shoot it mid-air for an ignition the rest of the kit then chains off. Two ignition sources feeding off one gun's kill-feed.
• On Your Mark compounds the beam. Class-cast or precision hits stack reload (trace rifles burn Special fast) and Weapons stat up to ten times — and the 9.7.0 Weapons stat adds flat PvE weapon damage, so the beam ticks harder purely from playing the loop.

Stats & mods

Weapons 200 → Melee → Class. Weapons maxes the beam's tick damage and stacks with On Your Mark; Melee (~100+) keeps the knife — the Radiant source — on a short fuse; Class (~100) keeps Gambler's Dodge live for the knife refund and Singeing regen. Health is the dump stat — Restoration (Empyrean/Healing Grenade) plus Radiant cover survivability. Lean into a Gunner/Powerhouse archetype favouring Weapons + Melee.

Mods:

• Boots: Solar Weapon Surge ×2 (Solar weapon damage straight onto the beam) · Orbs of Restoration (orb pickup → ability energy).
• Arms: Melee Font (drive Melee toward ~100) · Heavy Handed (melee kill → melee energy).
• Chest: Solar Resistance · a second elemental resist of choice for survivability.
• Class item: Class Font (drive Class toward ~100) · Powerful Attraction (Dodge vacuums orbs) · Bomber.
• Surge: Solar Weapon Surge — the whole kit is Solar, so it always applies.
• Anti-Champion: route through the artifact and the paired weapons — the Lens has no intrinsic champion breaker (see Where it shines).

Artifact — Implement of Curiosity

The Solar-Radiant-scorch artifact: it turns the beam's own outputs into Radiant uptime and a spreading payoff, then layers Unstoppable and elemental-stun coverage onto a kit whose trace-rifle frame has no native champion breaker.

Picks (2/3/2):

• Tier 1: Fever and Chill · Semi-Auto Striker
• Tier 2: Elemental Daze · Energy Acceleration · Elemental Coalescence
• Tier 3: Radiant Shrapnel · Elemental Overdrive

• Fever and Chill grants Radiant on rapid precision hits with the Solar beam — free uptime for the ramp the whole build leans on.
• Semi-Auto Striker tops up the Armor Charge that the boots and orb economy pay off.
• Elemental Daze turns stunning a Champion with the Solar beam into a spreading matching debuff — makes champion damage AoE.
• Energy Acceleration supplies Unstoppable coverage for the Heavy slot the build can't natively stun.
• Elemental Coalescence seeds Solar elemental pickups from Golden Gun and Solar-Super kills.
• Radiant Shrapnel spreads extra damage from sustained beam damage while Radiant or from killing scorched targets — paying off both core verbs at once.
• Elemental Overdrive buffs the beam's Solar damage off those elemental pickups, stacking with the boots' surge.

Where it shines

• Add-dense PvE — Vanguard Ops, Battlegrounds, Lost Sectors, and the trash waves of GMs and dungeons: the beam + catalyst spread + chained ignitions clear packs faster than the Special-ammo cost drains. This is the build's home.
• Ability-spam elite control — chained ignitions stagger and delete the yellow-bar swarms that pressure a fireteam, while Gunpowder Gamble handles the densest single cluster on demand.
• Not a boss/champion DPS weapon — single-target output is mediocre; route priority damage through Golden Gun, Gunpowder Gamble and your Heavy.
• Champion coverage: the Lens breaks nothing intrinsically (weapon_facts lists no champion breaker; trace rifles carry no bespoke stun in its perk text). Cover champions through the artifact (Energy Acceleration = Unstoppable, Elemental Daze off any stun) and the paired weapons — bring an Unstoppable/Barrier frame or Eriana's Vow in the other slots for Barrier/Unstoppable duty.

Mod selection (masterworked — full allocation)

All 15 sockets used, 10 energy per masterworked piece; costs from the manifest. Core mods are the build's engine; fill mods are strong defaults — swap freely (chest resists should match the activity's damage types). Flex/loadout-dependent: so it always applies. - **Anti-Champion:** route through the artifact; the paired weapons — the Lens has no intrinsic champion breaker (see Where it shines).