Destiny 2: Celestial Nighthawk Solar Hunter Build Guide

Celestial Nighthawk Overview

Celestial Nighthawk is a very simple Exotic. It increases the damage done by the Golden Gun Supers by 650%, at the cost of only firing one round. Kills with this supercharged Super will return 33% of the user’s Super energy instantly. 

Precision kills with this super will grant additional Super energy based on the Tier of enemy killed. Basically, I use this Exotic to nuke Champions in one shot and it refunds enough energy that I’ll likely have my super back by the next Mini-Boss, Champion, or Boss encounter.

Abilities

This build wants abilities that can be looped very quickly because we want to generate Orbs and Super energy as frequently as possible. 

• Golden Gun (Marksman): This Super works best with Celestial so I recommend it over the other Golden Gun variant. Blade Barrage won’t work at all with this Exotic.
• Gambler’s Dodge: This is my personal go-to for the refreshed melee on demand, but the Radiant Dodge is also pretty good if you want to save a Fragment slot.
• Knife Trick: Another one of my go-to abilities. Knife Trick is easy to hit, Scorches targets, and has the potential to hit multiple enemies in one throw.
• Fusion Grenade: Has great damage and a short cooldown time, perfect for this build. You can also run the Solar Grenade here if you want something with a bigger area of effect, I just don’t like the longer cooldown timer.

Aspects

Knock’em Down is a must-run for this build because it is what allows us to loop our melee ability almost infinitely. It also enhances our Golden Gun Super with damage resistance, giving us more time to line up our precision shots.

All of On Your Mark’s benefits are just a coincidental bonus for this build. We want to get precision kills with our Golden Gun and that will trigger this Aspect’s effects but really we only want this for the 3 Fragment slots it provides us.

Fragments

• Ember of Tempering: Spawns a Firesprite from Solar weapon kills, and also grants a bonus to our Recovery stat alongside improved airborne effectiveness to our solar weapons.
• Ember of Mercy: Provides this build with its main source of healing by picking up Firesprites. It’s only tier 1 Restoration but it’s good enough to keep you alive in most end-game content.
• Ember of Searing: Grant’s melee energy and spawn a Firesprite when you defeat scorched targets. You can never have too many sources of Firesprites.
• Ember of Ashes: Applies more Scorch stacks to targets, helps with triggering Ignitions.
• Ember of Empyrean: Allows us to keep our Radiant and Restoration buffs up for really long periods of time, as long as we are killing enemies with Solar weapons/abilities.

Armor Mods

All I want to focus on when it comes to armor mods are super-generating mods. That includes Orbs of Power. Here are my recommendations: 

• Harmonic Siphon or the Artifact Siphon mods: Solar weapon final blows generate Orbs of Power. Orbs of Power grant Super energy on pickup.
• Hands-On and Ashes to Assets: Grants Super energy on Melee and Grenade kills.
• Heavy Handed and Firepower: Generates an Orb of Power on Melee and Grenade Kills. Orbs grant Super energy.
• Innervation/Orbs of Restoration/Absolution: Grants ability energy whenever you pick up Orbs of Power
• Reaper: Class ability spawns an Orb of Power on your next weapon kill.