If it was for throwing away excess essence then there shouldn't be a character buff that requires the same essence to apply, cause I assure you most people are saving excess essence for the grenade buff not to open boxes. Cause if you don't have that buff but actually care about pulling your weight in a fireteam, well lets just say you gonna look like a hippo.

The only real place I see the buff actually mattering is crucible while in other places it just isn't really necessary to do good in PvE. The packages are still for throwing away excess essence if you haven't really got anything else to spend it on. But the actual stuff you get from those packages is not worth the actual essence cost if you are actively seeking the ornaments and what not.

are you kidding? if you are running a stormcaller with getaway artist gauntlets, you absolutely shred in PVE. pair that with riskrunner and you complete Strikes, Forest, public events, etc WAY faster and easier. it's continuous arc soul... and if you throw a rift, it doubles the number of attack bubbles (whatever you call those things). so... maybe if you haven't tried warlock, running bottom tree and the gauntlets, you might want to try it... with risk runner... lightning EVERYWHERE.

Don't have the gauntlets and after the event ends that won't be as viable as it is now so. I don't really need to do that anyway since you can complete stritkes in 8 mins and the Forest is just too easy with 1 novabomb with skull.