The discussion reviews the new Festival Flight area-denial Strand grenade launcher introduced during the Solstice event, evaluating its perks, origin traits, seasonal mod synergies, and offering recommendations for optimal perk combinations and builds.

Solstice Event Changes and Weapons

• Solstice returns without Bonfire Bash but introduces new gear up to Tier 5 and visually unique weapons.

• Festival Flight is the first Strand area-denial frame grenade launcher, competing with Lost Signal (Stasis), Velocity Baton (Void), and Psycho Pump (Arc).

Festival Flight Weapon Overview

• Area-denial launchers outperform wave frame archetypes for ad clear and single-target tick damage.

• Festival Flight excels at building up the transcendence meter and can proc Unraveling Routes for additional damage.

• Obtainable from Solstice portal activities that drop Distorted Solstice Engrams.

• Higher Guardian rank and power levels increase drop tier, with Tier 5 Holofoil versions being especially rare.

Festival Flight Perks (Third Column)

• Blast Distributor: Grants up to +65 grenade stats for explosive damage; notably increases grenade damage.

• Demolitionist: Generates grenade energy on kills; reloads weapon from reserves upon using grenade.

• Envious Arsenal: Refills weapon from reserves after dealing damage with other weapons; enhanced version boosts ammo generation.

• Ambitious Assassin: Overflows magazine after rapid kills; maxes at two rounds.

• Slice: Casting class ability causes hits to sever targets; enhanced version extends sever duration.

Festival Flight Perks (Fourth Column)

• Binary Orbits: Grants 25% damage buff for opposite-element Phenom Blows; enhanced increases duration.

• Frenzy: 15% damage, 100 handling/reload for 7.2s after combat; no enhanced effect currently.

• One For All: 35% damage buff for hitting three targets; easily procced with area denial.

• Vorpal: 15% boss/vehicle damage; less preferred due to better alternatives.

• Attrition Orbs: Sustained damage creates power orbs; nerfed for area-denial frames but still offers utility with surge/font mods.

• Hatchling: Spawns Threadling on precision or rapid kills; synergizes with Strand subclass.

• Elemental Honing: Up to 35% stacking damage buff for unique elemental usage; 20–23s duration, strong but situational.

Origin Traits

• Dreamwork: Assists or assisted kills partially refill ammo and increase reload speed; benefits team play and can be enhanced.

• Surrow Synergy: Reloading boosts handling and reduces flinch; can be enhanced but less vital than Dreamwork for PvE.

Seasonal Mods and Synergies

• Temporal Blast: Stores damage to create a blast on next shot after five charges; highly effective with Festival Flight.

• Temporal Armaments: Passive 15–17% damage boost vs. Cabal and Vex.

• Temporal Loader: Reloads on damaging slowed, frozen, or suspended targets; one round per proc with a 2.5s cooldown.

• Strand subclass synergies (e.g., via Dringer's Lash, Tangle Web, Ensnaring Slam) enhance crowd control and reload options.

• Threaded Blast mod boosts Tangle explosion damage/radius.

Recommended Perk Combinations (God Rolls)

• Third column: Flexible; Blast Distributor for stat boosts, Demolitionist with Starfire builds, or Slice/Ambitious Assassin based on playstyle.

• Fourth column: Elemental Honing for damage rotations, One For All for general use.

• Emphasizes prioritizing Festival Flight due to its limited-time availability and strong potential.

Recommendations / Advice

• Aim for Tier 5 or Tier 5 Holofoil versions and lock rare drops.

• Build around key perks and mods for enhanced ad clear, damage, and survivability.

• Engage with the event during its availability for unique rewards.

Festival Flight Grenade Launcher Overview

This year, Solstice has returned to us a bit differently. We don't have Bonfire Bash, but Bundy's dropped a ton of new gear that can go all the way up to Tier 5 and some pretty crazy looking weapons. Now, if you want to check out our guides on how to get started farming for everything, we'll have that link down below.

Today, though, we are going to be looking at the first weapon that jumped out to us, and that is Festival Flight. This is the first of its kind. An area-denial frame grenade launcher, but strand. Now, this makes this the fourth area-denial grenade launcher in the game, but it is the first strand one we have ever gotten. It resides in our top slot.

It competes directly with Lost Signal, which is a stasis grenade launcher. But let me just say, the competition here is stiff. You got Velocity Baton, which is Void. You've got Psycho Pump, which is Arc.

You've got the OG with the horde, which I know isn't quite an aerial denial frame, but let's just be real. It's the father to all of these. Now, let me just say, these frames are some of my favorite grenade launchers, and they have essentially killed off the wave frame archetype.

You can launch their damaging pulls over an area. It's great for ad clear, as well as just tacking on tick damage for single targets. Now, what I love about having another area denial frame in our top slot is the fact that these do a great job of building up the dark side of our transcendence meter. And along with that, since it's Strand, you have the ability to proc Unraveling Routes, which provides fantastic extra damage and contributes a ton to add clear. Now, to acquire this weapon, you just need to run the portal activities during Solstice that have the distorted Solstice Engram under the bonus rewards.

And as we talked about in our Sosa's Guide, if you have a high enough Guardian rank and power level, these can drop as tier fours and even guaranteed tier fives, granting you access to enhanced perks, enhanced mods, and even enhanced origin traits. Now what's even cooler about these Sosa's weapons is that they have access to hollow foil versions. So let me just say, guys, if you find yourself with not only a Tier 5 version of these weapons, but also a Tier 5 Holofoil, fellas, that right there is the rarest of the rare. The cream of the crop.

The best of the best. And whatever you do, lock that thing. Don't want to accidentally delete it one day thinking it's another Tier 5. I know it's blue, but it's a different kind of blue. Now, before we dive into our favorite perks, let's just go over all the perks that we have on this thing.

And let me just say, guys, it's stacked. In our third column, we have Blast Distributor. Demolitionist.

Recycled Energy. Transcendent Moment. Envy as Arsenal.

Ambitious Assassin. And Slice. In our fourth column, we have Binary Orbits. Frenzy. One for All.

Vorpal. Attrition Orbs. Hatchling. And Elemental Honing. Now, our first perk of note is going to be in the third column.

and that is Blast Distributor. Now this is a new perk introduced in Edge of Fate, and it says that dealing explosive damage grants a stack of Blast Distributor for five seconds. Now each stack of Blast Distributor that is gained will provide you 10 grenade stats, up to a max of five stacks. That means it will give you a total of 50 stat points for free.

And the enhanced version adds one stat point per stack, bringing that final stat total to 55. Now, one thing we wanted to take note of is that this is actually providing plus 65 grenade stats, at least when we calculated our grenade damage buff. When at 100 grenade stats, our base suppressor grenade deals 898 damage, but when activating blast distributor, our damage goes up 42% to 1,278 damage, which is exactly what we would be receiving if we were sitting at a 165 grenade stats. And this perk is perfect at pushing your grenade stat up, allowing those grenades to hit with higher damage without specking directly into your grenade stats.

Literally just damaging enemies with the AOE blasts from our grenades will proc stacks of this perk. Now this does have to be the initial blast from Festival Flight. This will not proc from the tick damage itself. Despite that though, it's still a very easy way to boost our grenade stats. And as long as your grenade launcher shots are dealing damage, you're gonna be receiving that +65 grenade stats.

That's pretty crazy guys. This is one of those perks that you 100% want to lock in on this geo. It's a great way to top off that grenade stats, boosts our damage substantially.

Another great perk in the third column is Demolitionist. Nothing new here, but it's still a great perk. Kills with this weapon generate grenade energy, and activating your grenade ability reloads the weapon from reserves.

Each kill will grant 10% grenade energy when we're around 70 grenade stats. But get this, that percentage scales with our grenade stats. And when you use that grenade, Festival of Flight will get reloaded.

Now, if you have the enhanced version, kills within proc, giving you 11% grenade ability energy. Overall, Demolition is very solid. Now, moving over to a more reload-centric perk, we have Envious Arsenal.

This perk says that dealing damage with other weapons before readying this weapon refills it from reserves. Now this is a great perk for damage rotations and using this in conjunction with other weapons that also has Envy's Arsenal allows you to basically never manually reload. A very fun combination run, not just for boss encounters, but even for just normal encounters as well. Now what makes this perk even stronger is that when it's enhanced, it grants passively 20 ammo generation to our stats, which is perfect for creating more special ammo to use.

Now another ammo center perk here on Festival Flight is Ambitious Assassin. This perk says that it overflows the magazine based on the number of rapid kills before reloading. Now, this will max out 150%, which ends up being two rounds in one mag.

Now, the sad thing here, at least compared to Psycho Pump, is that we don't have Runneth Over. Runneth Over is present on that area denial frame. It was a great origin trait that when combined with Ambitious Assassin, would allow us to push up to 3 shots in a single mag, which was a crazy combination.

Now last but not least, we have our Strand Synergistic perks, that being Slice. Casting your class ability allows this weapon to sever targets on hit for a brief duration. This is a great survivability perk, along with providing more strand debuffs onto targets, which we do have a few artifact mods this season that we can take advantage of when using this. So don't write this one off guys, severing targets can be very helpful. And considering this is an area denial frame, this will allow you to sever multiple targets fairly easily.

Now for the enhanced version, the buff duration is actually increased by one second, allowing a total of nine seconds to proc slice on a target, which would then refresh the buff until you hit a total number of five targets. So those are our third column perks. Now let's talk fourth column. Now let me just say right out the gates, the majority of these are going to be solids.

Yes, there are some use cases for each, but considering these can drop at two to three perks per column, depending on the tier, you should have a pretty easy time getting the option that fits best for you. Now let's start with Berserk. binary orbit. This is a new perk in Edge of Fate, which says that elemental Phenom Blows that are opposite this weapon increases damage for a short duration. Darkness Phenom Blows boosts Arc, Solar, and Void weapons.

Light Phenom Blows boosts Stasis, Strand, and Kinetic weapons. Now this is a very easy 25% damage buff to proc, with a pretty long duration of 8.5 seconds, which can also be increased by two seconds when enhanced. And we also have Frenzy, not a new perk, but still a solid one.

Gives you a 15% damage buff, along with 100 handling and 100 reload speed for 7.2 seconds while in combat. Now, the only issue I find with this perk is the fact that the enhanced version doesn't seem to have any effect in our current sandbox. Hopefully Bungie has a look at that. Then we have One For All.

This perk is so easy to proc on an aerial denial frame. When you hit three separate targets, you'll get a 35% damage buff, which lasts for 10 seconds. And the beautiful thing is that you don't have to hit them directly. Literally, spit it on the ground, man.

Let the enemies walk into it. Those lingering pulls that do tick damage, When it tags those groups of enemies, boom, one for all procs, and there you go. 35% more damage. Then we also have Vorpal in that fourth column as well, which grants Vestal Flight a 15% damage buff against many bosses, bosses, and vehicles. Out of all of the fourth column perks, this one's probably the worst option considering some of the other damage buffs we can get can also apply to other enemies and their higher damage buffs.

Now moving on to a perk that people went nuts over for Velocity Baton. but it got a bit of a nerf in Edge of Fate, and that's Attrition Orbs. This perk states that dealing sustained damage creates an orb of power.

So when scoring multiple hits against enemies within 5 seconds of each, this will spawn an orb of power that grants 0.8% super energy. And these hits can count while stowed, along with the hits not having to be direct. Now the big change here was the fact that our area denial frames got targeted specifically specifically when using attrition orbs. Bungie stated that, quote, attrition orbs is currently too powerful on area denial grenade launchers, but it's somewhat underwhelming on other weapon types.

Because of this, Bungie increased the perk progress by 20% across the board, but they reduced the perk progress by 80% on area denials, which they said wouldn't be super noticeable. In our testing, though, if you were to use Festival of Flight here on Coral in one round, you're only going to create 1%. one orb, compared to some of the clips that were going around before these changes. You can see right here, guys, Attrition Orbs was an orb printer. Not saying it's a complete waste, but definitely a nerf.

I think where you could still use this perk is on groups of enemies. You could still proc a decent amount of orbs. And I would say now more than ever, Attrition Orbs can actually be used in a more passive way by granting us armor charges for our surge mods, along with providing a charge for font mods that we're using, which are an absolute must when it comes to pushing your stats into the upper limits of the enhanced tier.

So I wouldn't write off Attrition Orbs just yet. It's still great for utility. And for those that didn't get a Velocity Baton, then Festival of Flight might be for you.

Now moving on to our second to the last perk that I wanted to talk about, and that's Hatchling. I know a lot of people don't really like this perk, but when you set it up right, Threadlings can provide great support in combat. Hatchling states that precision final blows or rapidly defeating targets with this weapon spawn a Threadling at the target's location, with the enhanced version giving us plus five handling.

It's pretty solid by itself, but even better when you run it with a Strand subclass. Now last, but certainly not least, we have Elemental Honing, the king of damage rotations. This perk says that dealing unique elemental damage grants this weapon a stacking damage bonus. This bonus is increased for kinetic weapons. Now how this works is that by dealing elemental damage, you're granted a stack bonus.

elemental honing for 20 seconds for each unique element use up to a maximum of five stacks and gaining a stack refreshes the buff duration now keep in mind though that when at five stacks the buff has to be fully stacked once again now despite those hoops damage buff it's very nice guys you get a 2.5 at one stack 10 of two stacks 20 at three stacks 30 at four stacks and 35 at five The other thing that's really beautiful is that the buff lasts for 20 seconds, which is actually increased to 23 seconds when enhanced. Personally, it's been my go-to perk on our rocket-assisted pulse rifle mint. Which, by the way, if you haven't checked out the review, we'll have that link down below. TLDR, it's literally the best weapon you can get this season.

Now, Elemental Honing is very good, but it does require you to jump through hoops. One for all, it's the same damage buff, you just gotta hit three different enemies. Both have their pros and cons. But before talking god rolls, we need to first discuss these origin traits.

Festival of Flight has two of these. One is tied to the Solstice event itself, and the other is tied to its foundry. Now, the Solstice origin trait is called Dreamwork, which says that once per reload, assists or assisted final blows partially refill the weapon from reserves and increase reload speed for a short duration.

Bows receive faster draw time. Now, this is a very easy way to get some free ammo when playing with the Fire and team. The only downside here is the fact that we can only take advantage of this when playing with other allies. Now, one thing of note here is that these origin traits can be enhanced, with DreamWorks stating that when activated, the amount of ammo from reserves that's reloaded is improved, along with the reload speed of the weapon itself. Now, let me just say, this is a very good origin trait.

In this case, you're not going to get more than one round loaded back into the weapon, but it's still very nice, especially if you can get back-to-back procs, which I'm not really sure if this is an internal cooldown, but I did seem to notice back-to-back or close to back-to-back procs with Dreamwork. Now, along with Dreamwork is our origin trait, Surrow Synergy, which says that reloading grants this weapon bonus handling and reduces incoming flinch for a short time. Now, this one can be enhanced, which is pretty nice, but again, not really something necessary for an area denial frame.

As in Dreamwork here is clearly the winner guys for PvE. Granted if you're running solo, I guess you can use Serial Synergy. Now that we've covered our most notable perks and origin traits, we now need to talk synergies. First up, we have our new seasonal mods, which are called volatile mods.

These mods are the equivalent of mods that we had back in Heresy that only last for that season. Now, there are three here that work pretty well with Festival Flight. First, we have Temporal Blast, which says that the weapon stores a portion of its damage dealt into charges. At five charges, the weapon's next shot creates an explosive blast on impact that damages nearby combats.

Now, a great thing about this mod in Festival Flight is that one round can proc the Which then allows for the next grenade launcher round to proc the blast. A technique that you can use with this, though, is that if you shoot one round and then halfway through proccing the stacks, you shoot another round, you can proc the blast along with starting to gain more stacks for your next shot. You can literally do it back-to-back. Now this does do a considerable amount of damage, dealing 948 damage here to Coral at the shooting range. Guys, I cannot stress just how good Temporal Blast is on this GL.

Watch me do damage to this Brig. I literally drop my Rift and go to Pound Town on this guy. Look at his health. It immediately chunks it down. I was running through Onslaught and this Grandmaster Devil's Lair, and yes, the GL is good, but it's the combination of Festival with Temporal Blast.

So what I'm trying to say, guys, take advantage of this mod. Another one of the volatile mods that we can take advantage of is Temporal Armaments, which says that this weapon gains bonus damage versus Cabal and Vex targets. This is a 15% passive damage bump against those targets. And if you have a tier four or tier five of this weapon, the enhanced version of this provides a 17% damage bump. So literally just slot it in and you're good to go.

Now, lastly, we have Temporal Loader. And this one takes a bit to get set up, at least to take full advantage of it. But when you do, it's a very solid mod.

It says that this weapon loads ammo from reserves when dealing damage to targets that are slowed, frozen, or suspended. Now in our testing, this was only one round into the magazine, even with the enhanced version of this mod. And it also has a 2.5 second cooldown between procs. Still a pretty solid mod though considering the amount of slow and suspending that can go on currently.

You've got Tangle Web, which is in our last column of the artifact, which suspends enemies when creating tangles. And considering Festival Flight is a strand weapon, we can easily create tangles via our abilities or when killing an enemy that has a strand debuff. Along with spawning them in that way, we also have the artifact mod Elemental Coalescence, which says that defeating targets has the chance to create an elemental to pick up matching your equipped super elements.

Now using that in combination with Tangle Web is going to suspend enemies that are near that tangle, which then allows us to deal damage and reload our grenade launcher. Take this even further by leaning into our subclass. You can use things like Dringer's Lash and Ensnaring Slam on our Titans and Hunters for that easy suspension, or hell, you can even take it further with Mind Spun and wander on warlocks and suspend everything with your tangles and weapons. Now, another artifact mod here that Festivale can take advantage of is Threaded Blast, which increases the damage and radius of the tangle explosion. Definitely a lot here that you can build into, guys.

And we're very excited to start putting builds together, taking full advantage of this grenade launcher. Now, if you had to sit down and say, Cross, give it to me now. What do you want? What is your god role?

It kind of depends on the situation. For instance, I was actually running a Starfire build, and I like Demolitionist with it. At the same time, I would love to just use blast distributor, roll that direction, top off my discipline, and I can utilize those stats for something else. In that fourth column though, elemental edge for damage rotations, one for all, pretty much for anything else.

I feel like in the fourth column, I know exactly what I want to use. It's the third column that's a little more perplexing for me and that's really just going to depend on what i'm using like i could see myself fully taking advantage of slice or even leaning on ambitious assassin there's just so many different ways you can go with this gl i think for me personally i'm just happy we finally have a strand aerial denial frame we've been waiting for a long time guys and considering that this event only comes once a year i'm not trying to give you guys fomo but please at all the weapons you see from this event. Get this one.

Fellas and ladies, thank you all for coming and watching. And as always, slap that like button like your mama told you, right?

Today we are looking at another new Solstice Event weapon, that being the Strand Area Denial Grenade Launcher, Festival Flight. This is an incredibly good grenade launcher, perhaps even the best weapon from Solstice, with a ton of great perks, and synergies. If you are going to farm for anything throughout Solstice, I highly recommend locking down a good roll of this new weapon. This may be the best weapon to get a god roll from Solstice.

#destiny2 #bungie #solstice

Solstice Guide:    • The COMPLETE Solstice 2025 Event Guide (Ti...  

Perk Overview 10:41

Origin Traits 12:01

Volatile Mods 14:11

Artifact Synergies 15:10

God Rolls 15:49