Bungie loves Warlocks, and these Destiny 2 Warlock builds prove that. As a life-long Hunter main, it’s been hard to come to terms with the fact that Warlocks are the best class in the game – but it’s undeniable at this point. While certain subclasses do struggle (Stasis being the primary example), the sheer power of Solar and Void alone is enough to put the class leagues ahead of the others.
Don’t believe me? Try these builds out for yourself and prove me wrong.
Void Warlock – Grenade Excellence
This Destiny 2 Warlock build has been my default go-to ever since Void 3.0 launched. It’s all about making your grenades as powerful as possible and keeping them online as often as possible. That process starts with a Vortex grenade, which I recommend combining with the Aspects and Fragments I’ve recommended.
Chaos Accelerant is going to make our Vortex nades bigger and last longer, which synergizes with Echo of Remenants, which makes it last even longer again.
To give that powerful, long-lasting nade some utility, we’re using Feed the Void to make grenade kills give us Devour, Echo of Instability which makes grenade kills give our Void weapons Volatile Rounds, and Echo of Cessation which generates a Void Breach for every Volatile Round kill. Stack all that with Nezerac’s Sin for faster grenade regen rates or Verity’s Brow to enhance your nade damage – either will work.
Void Warlock – End Game Grenade Engine
My other Void Warlock build is great at smashing through regular content. When you start hitting Legendary, though, it slows down a bit. Not by too much, but your grenades won’t kill nearly as fast as they otherwise would. This take on a Void nade build is to compensate for that, in exchange for some of the efficiency we utilized in the other build.
We’re keeping both our Aspects, and Echo of Remnants. However, we’re swapping our other two Fragments out for Echo of Persistence and Echo of Undermining. That has the effect of removing our Volatile and Void Breach engine, but empowering our Grenade with Weaken, and increasing our survivability with longer Devour. Exotic-Wise, Contraverse is a decent option, as are the other two I recommended in the build above.
Solar Warlock – Starfire Protocol
Everybody and their Grandmother know this build, and it deserves that reputation. This is the best Warlock build in Destiny 2, and it’s not even close, at least until Starfire Protocol gets nerfed. In case you don’t know what this build is all about – it only really needs two things. First, Starfire Protocol. This Exotic gives you two Fusion Grenades, and crazy rift and grenade energy regen. Second is Touch of Flame, the Aspect that makes your Fusion Grenades explode twice. The rest of your Aspects and Fragments are just there for flavoring.
Your gameplay loop here is pretty simple. First, throw your Fusion Grenades. Then, throw down your Empowering Rift. Hit an enemy with a couple of shots in the Rift, and you’ll get your grenade back. Kill an enemy with that grenade, and you get the Rift back. Chain this with the fact that each nade does upwards of 100k damage, and you can see why it’s so good. You just spam these mini-nukes and watch everything die.
Solar Warlock – The New Starfire Protocol
Starfire Protocol is getting nerfed, when that’s happening I don’t know – but it has to be at some point in the near future. When it does, all of you Solar Warlock mains are going to need a new build, and this is the one I recommend. Modifying your Starfire Protocol build slightly to focus on Solar grenades won’t net you the same kind of carnage Fusion Grenades do, but it comes pretty damn close, and it’s better for Add-clear, anyways.
Solar Grenades with Touch of Flame will turn them into minuscule suns of death. They erupt lava, and Scorch on contact. I’ve built into that Scorch with my Fragment setup, maximizing my regen (which this build can struggle with), and pushing my Solar Grenade’s lethality through the roof. If you want a different setup for more survivability or Firesprite generation, though, feel free to try those setups out.
The only thing you can’t flex out is Sunbracers. This Exotic is replacing Starfire Protocol and increases the duration of our Solar nades. More importantly, though, is that it gives us unlimited nade energy when we get melee kills.
Arc Warlock – Arc Soul DPS
Destiny 2 Arc Warlock builds aren’t in a good place right now. Chaos Reach sucks, and the subclass lacks the kind of firepower that the others provide. That being said, it’s a monster in PvP, and can put up surprising numbers in high-end PvE thanks to Arc Souls. These little balls of fun will constantly peck your enemies with chip damage.
We can invest in them to turn that chip damage into not-so-chip damage. Our Arc Soul Aspect is obviously going to be the center of this engine, giving us free Arc Buddies when we enter our Rift.
That’s all well and good, but we supplement that with Electrostatic Mind, which makes our Arc Soul kills generate Ionic Traces. Collecting those traces with this Aspect makes you Amplified, and when you’re Amplified, your Arc Buddies are superpowered thanks to Arc Soul.
Fragment-wise, you can use whatever you want – the only other piece of mandatory equipment is a pair of Getaway Artists. These let you consume your grenade for an Amplified Arc Soul on command, further adding to this build’s firepower.
Arc Warlock – HOIL 2.0
If you’re a Destiny diehard, then you know all about the old Arc Titan Heart of Inmost Light build that dominated the META pre-Lightfall. Well, it turns out there’s a similar build for Arc Warlock, and it revolves around the Fallen Sunstar Exotic – a helmet that buffs your Ionic Trace’s speed, ability regen, and also gives your allies ability energy for picking up a trace.
To make the most of that, we’re obviously using Electrostatic mind to generate Ionic Traces with all of our ability kills. Arc Soul pairs with that incredibly well as kills your Arc Buddy gets also generates Ionic Traces.
Fragment-wise, your choices here are a little more important than the previous Arc build. Spark of Ions is going to be mandatory. It gives you an extra Ionic Trace for killing a Jolted target, with a 10-second cooldown.
Pair that with Shock and Magnitude to make your grenades Jolt and last longer. Your last Fragment is your call, but all of this together means your abilities practically refund themselves with your Ionic Trace generation – letting you clear rooms with ease.
Stasis Warlock – Turret Control
Stasis may be in a weak spot right now, but Stasis Warlock builds are still as powerful as they’ve always been. It’s a support subclass, with a heavy emphasis on Add-control, and that’s what we’re leaning into with this turret build. Osiomancy Gloves combined with Bleak Watcher will mean we have access to two Stasis Turrets at any given time, so you should be able to maintain 100% uptime on at least one turret with the right mods.
Iceflare Bolts supplement those turrets nicely by spawning seekers that track and freeze enemies anytime you shatter a frozen enemy.
In terms of Fragments, Whisper of Fissures and Whisper of Durance will increase your Freeze potential by increasing the Stasis burst from defeating Frozen targets, and by keeping your turrets on the field longer.
Your last two Fragments are up to you, but I’ve gone for Chains and Shards for damage resistance and grenade regen paired with my Exotic weapon of choice in the Verglas Curve. If you’re not using that bow, swap these two out for something more suited to your setup.
Strand Warlock – Threadlings
You shouldn’t need me to tell you that this Destiny 2 Warlock build is all about Threadlings – it’s the entire Strand Warlock identity. We’re starting off with Weaver’s Call, obviously, as it’s going to give us three Threadlings anytime we cast our Rift, and it’ll deploy any Threadlings we have perched. Mindspun Invocation compliments that, but not in the way you think.
Rather than running that Aspect with Threadling nades, we’re running Shackle Grenades. The Suspend Mindspun gives you with Shackle is far too powerful to ignore – especially at endgame.
Given our focus on Threadlings, we’re going to be running Thread of Evolution, Thread of Generation, Thread of Warding, and Thread of Transmutation. Thread of Evolution is a no-brainer, given that it increases the range and damage of our Threadlings.
Warding and Transmutation go hand-in-hand to increase both our survivability and class synergy, while Thread of Generation helps keep our Suspend online – but it’s the least-important Fragment in this build. Top all of that off with Swarmers, which increases the lethality of our Threadlings, and ties in with our Fragments to keep our Threadling generation active.
Conclusion
Those are what I consider to be the best Warlock builds in Destiny 2. The META may shift and turn, but one thing will always remain the same – Warlocks are overpowered, but that’s okay. If you’re a Warlock main, you already know that. If you’re not, try them out. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
