Best Destiny 2 Warlock Builds Today (Episode 1 Meta)

Are you a Warlock main and want to take your game to the next level? These are the best Warlock builds in Destiny 2, including builds for endgame, Solo players, and PvP content. Whether you’re into Solar, Void, or are into the brand-new Strand subclass, these builds have you covered.

And by the way, as any great Destiny 2 build, these will guide you every step of the way, including essential Exotics, Mods, and more.

Best Warlock PvE builds

Updated as of Episode 1: Echoes. See Updates.

--	Name	Subclass	Rank	Excels in	Gear	Area	Class	Status
	Prismatic Blizzard	Prismatic	1 🥇	Endgame		PvE	Warlock	Top 3
	Radiant Sunbracer	Solar	2 🥈	Endgame		PvE	Warlock	Top 3
	Prismatic Flame	Prismatic	3 🥉	Endgame		PvE	Warlock	Top 3
	Blinding Vesper	Arc	4	Endgame		PvE	Warlock
	Void Leech	Void	5	Grandmasters		PvE	Warlock
	Mindspun Suspender	Strand	6	Endgame		PvE	Warlock
	Masked Navigator	Strand	7	Endgame		PvE	Warlock
	Stasis Engineer	Stasis	8	Grandmasters		PvE	Warlock	Best in Class
	Frostmaker	Stasis	9	Solo Content		PvE	Warlock
	Speaker’s Support	Solar	10	Casual & Endgame		PvE	Warlock

💠 PS: We cover in detail the top Warlock Prismatic Builds here.

Best Warlock Builds: Top 3

Prismatic Blizzard

Excels In: Endgame (Dungeons & Raids)

Goal of the Build: Utilize both Bleak Watcher and Getaway Artist turrets to dominate the battlefield while also having access to Devour and Transcendence.

Mandatory Gear: Getaway Artist and Khvostov 7G–0X.

Name: Getaway Artist

Class: Warlock Slot: Arms

Source: Exotic Engrams Requires: Forsaken Pack

Exotic Perk: Convert your Arc Grenade into a supercharged Arc Soul. The Arc Soul functions as an autonomous turret.

Khvostov 7G-0X

Auto Rifle

Primary

Kinetic

The Pale Heart

• Aspects: Feed the Void and Bleak Watcher.
• Fragments: Facet of Grace, Facet of Devotion, Facet of Dawn, Facet of Purpose, and Facet of Protection.
• Abilities: Song of Flame, Phoenix Dive, Arcane Needle, Storm Grenade.
• Stats: Resilience → Discipline.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Kinetic Siphon, Heavy Ammo Finder.
  • Arms: Impact Induction, Focusing Strike.
  • Chest: Relevant reserve/resist mods.
  • Legs: Relevant ammo scavenger/surge mods.
  • Class Item: Distribution, Time Dilation.

Gameplay Loop

Swallowing your grenade not only provides an Arc Soul and Amplified from Getaway Artist but also places a Bleak Watcher turret at your feet. This (potentially bugged) interaction is the centerpiece of the build, allowing you to double-dip on things whenever your grenade is charged.

Feed the Void grants Devour on ability kills (including your Arc Soul!), increasing survivability. Beyond that, the majority of our fragment choices are focused primarily on building Transcendence quickly, which is assisted by the use of Khvostov since it lacks an elemental affinity.

Radiant Sunbracer

Excels In: Endgame (Dungeons, Raids, Legend content)

Goal of the Build: Rain terror from above by throwing an infinite amount of Solar Grenades. It provides excellent ad clear and can give you a seemingly infinite damage buff via surge mods.

Mandatory Gear: Sunbracers. A Solar weapon with Incandescent is recommended.

Name: Sunbracers

Class: Warlock Slot: Arms

Source: Exotic Engrams Requires: Free-to-Play

Exotic Perk: Increases the duration of Solar Grenades. Solar melee kills grant unlimited Solar Grenade energy for a brief time.

CALUS Mini-Tool

Submachine Gun

Primary

Solar

Presage

Incandescent

• Aspects: Touch of Flame and Heat Rises.
• Fragments: Ember of Ashes, Ember of Searing, Ember of Empyrean, and Ember of Resolve
• Abilities & Stats: Well of Radiance, Solar Grenade, Phoenix Dive, and Incinerator Snap.
• Stats: Max Resilience 🡒 Max Recovery.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: x2 Ashes to Assets, Harmonic Siphon.
  • Arms: Firepower, Bolstering Detonation, Momentum Transfer
  • Chest: Relevant Resistance and Reserve Mods.
  • Legs: x2 Solar Weapon Surge
  • Class Item: -

Gameplay Loop

Get a kill with your charged melee ability to start the gameplay loop. If you’re struggling with this step, try binding your charged melee to a unique button so you can send it off at a more specific time.

Getting that powered melee kill will proc Sunbracers, granting you five seconds of ‘infinite’ Solar Grenades. Realistically, you can only fire a maximum of five during this time due to the time it takes to execute the animation. Swallow your first grenade to get Heat Rises, then take to the skies and watch everything below burn via your other Solar Grenades. Any kills in the air (including those from the grenades) will give you 30% of your melee energy, allowing you to repeat this loop infinitely.

If you ever fail to kill something with your melee, just get kills in the air with your weapons—you’ll get it back soon after due to Heat Rises. As a nice bonus, casting Phoenix Dive while Heat Rises is active grants Restoration, which you can extend with Solar kills via Ember of Empyrean.

Prismatic Flame

Excels In: Endgame (Dungeons & Raids)

Goal of the Build: Control the battlefield with both Hellion and Getaway Artist turrets, while also taking advantage of Prismatic Warlock’s kit and inherently potent weapon options.

Mandatory Gear: Getaway Artist. We highly recommend The Call with Strategist coupled with a potent Energy-slot Primary such as Sunshot, Trinity Ghoul, etc.

Name: Getaway Artist

Class: Warlock Slot: Arms

Source: Exotic Engrams Requires: Forsaken Pack

Exotic Perk: Convert your Arc Grenade into a supercharged Arc Soul. The Arc Soul functions as an autonomous turret.

	Sunshot	Hand Cannon	Primary	Solar	Exotic Engram
	The Call	Sidearm	Special	Strand	The Pale Heart

• Aspects: Feed the Void and Hellion.
• Fragments: Facet of Hope, Facet of Sacrifice, Facet of Balance, Facet of Dawn, Facet of Purpose.
• Abilities: Song of Flame, Healing Rift, Arcane Needle, Storm Grenade.
• Stats: Resilience → Recovery.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Heavy Ammo Finder and a Siphon matching your primary weapon.
  • Arms: Impact Induction, Focusing Strike.
  • Chest: Relevant reserve/resist mods.
  • Legs: Relevant ammo scavenger/surge mods.
  • Class Item: Time Dilation.

Gameplay Loop

Swallowing your grenade offers an Arc Soul and Amplified through Getaway Artist while casting your rift summons Hellion. The former regenerates easily with Devour through Feed the Void, while your class ability can be quickly regenerated through Facet of Hope and your Strategist weapon.

Beyond this, there isn’t much of a “loop” for this build. Rotate your grenade and class abilities as frequently as you can while also attempting to build Transcendence through weapon kills and Arcane Needle hits.

More Destiny 2 Builds:

Blinding Vesper

Excels In: Endgame (Dungeons, Raids, Legend content)

Goal of the Build: Blind and Jolt hordes of enemies through both your rift and weapons, allowing you and your allies to easily control the battlefield.

Mandatory Gear: Vesper of Radius. Coldheart is recommended as well.

Name: Vesper of Radius

Class: Warlock Slot: Chest

Source: Exotic Engrams Requires: Free-to-Play

Exotic Perk: Rifts periodically release Arc shockwaves. Final blows with these shockwaves create an Arc explosion. While an Arc subclass is equipped, the shockwaves and subsequent explosions blind nearby targets. Rift energy recharges faster when you are surrounded by targets.

Coldheart

Trace Rifle

Special

Arc

Exotic Engram

• Aspects: Electrostatic Mind and Arc Soul.
• Fragments: Spark of Amplitude, Spark of Beacons, Spark of Resistance, and either Spark of Brilliance or Spark of Magnitude.
• Abilities: Chaos Reach, Ball Lightning, Storm Grenade, and Healing Rift.
• Stats: Max Resilience 🡒 Recovery 🡒 Discipline.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Harmonic Siphon, Special Ammo Finder.
  • Arms: Bolstering Detonation, Focusing Strike.
  • Chest: Relevant resist/reserve mods.
  • Legs: Elemental Charge, Arc Weapon Surge.
  • Class Item: Distribution, Special Finisher, Powerful Attraction.

Gameplay Loop

To begin the loop of this build, simply place a rift near a group of enemies. This should both blind the enemies (thanks to Vesper of Radius) and grant some rift energy back (from Distribution).

Defeating any of these blinded targets will generate an Ionic Trace, which will then make you amplified. Becoming amplified allows you to then blind even more combatants with your Arc special weapon of choice. Using your other abilities in addition to your weapon will generate more Ionic Traces and ability energy, allowing you to begin the loop again.

If you ever run out of special ammo, you should be making enough Orbs of Power to do special finishers whenever you need them. Also remember that you have additional avenues to synergies as well, like with Arc Soul.

Void Leech

Excels In: Grandmaster Content

Goal of the Build: Be able to debuff everything in sight while maintaining Devour for survivability.

Mandatory Gear: Secant Filaments. Collective Obligation is recommended.

Name: Secant Filaments

Class: Warlock Slot: Legs

Source: Lost Sectors Requires: The Witch Queen

Exotic Perk: Casting an empowering rift will grant you Devour. Damage dealt by you and your allies from within your empowering rift will disrupt combatants.

Collective Obligation

Pulse Rifle

Primary

Void

Vow of the Disciple Raid

• Aspects: Feed the Void and Child of the Old Gods.
• Fragments: Echo of Undermining, Echo of Instability, Echo of Domineering, and either Echo of Expulsion or Echo of Harvest.
• Abilities: Nova Bomb: Cataclysm, Suppressor Grenade, and Empowering Rift.
• Stats: Resilience 🡒 Recovery 🡒 Discipline.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Harmonic Siphon.
  • Arms: Bolstering Detonation.
  • Chest: Relevant Reserve and Damage Resist mods.
  • Legs: Surges matching your equipped Special/Power ammo weapons.
  • Class Item: Bomber.

Gameplay Loop

Because there are so many moving parts to this build, there’s no one “loop” you’ll need to execute. You have multiple ways to debuff enemies: Weaken and Suppression with a grenade, Volatile from melee and Volatile Rounds, and more Weaken from Child of the Old Gods. Plus, you’ll get Devour by placing your rift or getting an ability kill.

After debuffing an enemy with any of these sources, shoot them once with Collective Obligation. Holding reload will cause the weapon to fire bullets that debuff enemies with any effect you shot earlier. After the chaos subsides, you should have most abilities recharged and ready for a second round.

Going further...

• Warlock Strand Builds
• Warlock Stasis Builds

Mindspun Suspender

Excels In: Endgame (Dungeons, Raids, Legend content)

Goal of the Build: Dominate the battleground with both Suspend and Threadlings, immobilizing and damaging combatants with little effort.

Mandatory Gear: Necrotic Grip. The Call with Demolitionist is highly recommended (another Strand weapon with Demolitionist can be a decent replacement).

Name: Necrotic Grip

Class: Warlock Slot: Arms

Source: Lost Sectors Requires: Beyond Light

Exotic Perk: Damaging combatants envenoms them with poison that deals increasing damage over time. Defeating a poisoned combatant spreads the condition to nearby targets.

The Call

Sidearm

Special

Strand

The Pale Heart

• Aspects: Mindspun Invocation and The Wanderer.
• Fragments: Thread of Mind, Thread of Generation, Thread of Continuity, and Thread of Warding.
• Abilities: Needlestorm, Shackle Grenade, Arcane Needle, and Healing Rift
• Stats: Discipline 🡒 Resilience 🡒 Recovery.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Harmonic Siphon, Special Ammo Finder.
  • Arms: Impact Induction.
  • Chest: Relevant reserve/resist mods.
  • Legs: Elemental Charge, Strand Weapon Surge.
  • Class Item: Bomber, Outreach.

Gameplay Loop

Consuming your Shackle Grenade with Mindspun Invocation grants you 25 seconds of Weaver’s Trace, making all final blows create an explosion of Suspend. Killing these Suspended targets will create a Tangle and grant class ability energy.

Throwing that Tangle at another group of enemies will Suspend them, starting the process over again. All of these Suspend instances also last longer due to Thread of Continuity. To top it all off, collecting Orbs of Power from your Siphon mod will give you Woven Mail, allowing you to tank shots from enemies who aren’t affect by Suspend.

Masked Navigator

Excels In: Endgame (Dungeons, Raids, Legend content)

Goal of the Build: Support allies on the battlefield by spreading Woven Mail, providing heavy ammo, and severing enemies.

Mandatory Gear: Cenotaph Mask and The Navigator.

Name: Cenotaph Mask

Class: Warlock Slot: Helm

Source: Lost Sectors Requires: Lightfall

Exotic Perk: Steadily reloads a portion of your equipped Trace Rifles's magazine from reserves. Damaging a vehicle, boss, or champion with a trace rifle marks them as the target. When an ally defeats the marked target, generate special ammo for yourself and heavy ammo for your allies.

The Navigator

Trace Rifle

Special

Strand

Ghost of the Deep Dungeon

• Aspects: Weaver’s Call and Mindspun Invocation.
• Fragments: Thread of Rebirth, Thread of Evolution, Thread of Continuity, and Thread of Generation.
• Abilities: Needlestorm, Threadling Grenade, Arcane Needle, and Healing Rift.
• Stats: Resilience 🡒 Recovery.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Harmonic Siphon, Special Ammo Finder.
  • Arms: Focusing Strike, Impact Induction.
  • Chest: Relevant Resistance and Reserve Mods.
  • Legs: Strand Scavenger, Strand Weapon Surge.
  • Class Item: Outreach, Bomber.

Gameplay Loop

Because it relies on weapon and armor perks instead of abilities, Masked Weaver doesn’t have a specific loop. Basic knowledge of both Exotics is all you’ll need to succeed here.

Shooting an ally with The Navigator grants you and them Woven Mail, equating to 60% damage resistance. If you hit an enemy instead, you’ll Sever them, reducing their outgoing damage by 33%. Damaging combatants will also regenerate your grenade ability, and Navigator kills have a chance to spawn a Threadling.

When you’re ready to use your abilities, start by swallowing your grenade. After doing so, casting your rift will immediately send out eight Threadlings, providing substantial burst damage.

Lastly, damaging a vehicle, boss, or champion with The Navigator will mark them. Marked enemies will drop heavy ammo for allies upon death, providing even more support to your fireteam.

Stasis Engineer

Excels In: Grandmaster Content

Goal of the Build: Slow and freeze large groups of enemies using countless Bleak Watcher turrets.

Mandatory Gear: Osmiomancy Gloves and a Primary or Special weapon with Demolitionist.

Name: Osmiomancy Gloves

Class: Warlock Slot: Arms

Source: Lost Sectors Requires: The Witch Queen

Exotic Perk: Your Coldsnap grenades have an additional charge that recharges quicker on direct impact. The seeker spawned from Coldsnap grenades travels further.

Deliverance

Fusion Rifle

Special

Stasis

Vow of the Disciple Raid

Bait and Switch

• Aspects: Iceflare Bolts and Bleak Watcher.
• Fragments: Whisper of Refraction, Whisper of Durance, Whisper of Torment, and Whisper of Fissures.
• Abilities: Coldsnap Grenade.
• Stats: Discipline 🡒 Resilience.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Harmonic Siphon
  • Arms: 2x Grenade Kickstart, Bolstering Detonation
  • Chest: Charged Up
  • Legs: x2 Innervation
  • Class Item: Bomber

Gameplay Loop

The primary loop of this build is just to throw turrets onto the field whenever you get them. Whisper of Torment and max Discipline will hopefully carry you to your next grenade charge without a problem.

If you do end up experiencing downtime, be sure to take full advantage of your Demolitionist weapon. Once you gain another grenade charge, continue through turrets for as long as enemies survive!

Frostmaker

Excels In: Solo Content

Goal of the Build: Slow and freeze everything in sight, giving you tons of super energy and, eventually, a weapon damage boost.

Mandatory Gear: Mantle of Battle Harmony and Ager’s Scepter.

Name: Mantle of Battle Harmony

Class: Warlock Slot: Chest

Source: Lost Sectors Requires: Beyond Light

Exotic Perk: Takedowns with weapons that have a damage type matching your subclass element grant you Super energy. While your Super energy is full, you instead gain a temporary bonus to weapon damage of the type matching your subclass element.

Ager's Scepter

Trace Rifle

Special

Stasis

Exotic Kiosk

• Aspects: Iceflare Bolts and Glacial Harvest.
• Fragments: Whisper of Chill, Whisper of Fissures, Whisper of Rime, and Whisper of Conduction.
• Abilities: No specific abilities are required.
• Stats: Discipline 🡒 Resilience 🡒 Recovery.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Harmonic Siphon, Special Ammo Finder
  • Arms: Stat, reload, and dexterity mods
  • Chest: Charged Up
  • Legs: Stacks on Stacks, Innervation
  • Class Item: Special Finisher, Empowered Finisher

Gameplay Loop

There isn’t a specific gameplay loop here; just use Ager’s Scepter and your abilities to freeze and kill as many enemies as possible. Mantle of Battle Harmony will provide super ability energy from said kills, while Glacial Harvest and our selected fragments will grant Frost Armor through Stasis Shards.

Once you reach full super energy, you have three options that are all very strong. The first is to use your super to kill a large group of ads (or even damage a boss!). Assuming you have excess Ager’s ammo, a second option is to use the firing mode from Ager’s Scepter’s catalyst, making the weapon freeze everything and do more damage. The third and final option is not to use either and instead take advantage of Mantle of Battle Harmony’s second perk, giving you extra Stasis weapon damage after a Stasis weapon kill (as long as you keep full super energy).

Unlike other builds, the Frostmaker is extremely potent while not having a super specific gameplay loop, meaning it can be effective anywhere.

Speaker’s Support

Excels In: Casual & Endgame (Dungeons & Raids)

Goal of the Build: Constantly heal allies through Speaker’s Sight while also granting yourself worthwhile buffs.

Mandatory Gear: Speaker’s Sight. A Special ammo weapon with Demolitionist is highly recommended (such as The Call paired with Sunshot).

Name: Speaker's Sight

Class: Warlock Slot: Helm

Source: Master Rahool Requires: The Final Shape

Exotic Perk: Healing grenades spawn a Restorative Turret. Healing allies occasionally spawns an Orb of Power.

	Sunshot	Hand Cannon	Primary	Solar	Exotic Engram
	The Call	Sidearm	Special	Strand	The Pale Heart

• Aspects: Touch of Flame and Icarus Dash.
• Fragments: Ember of Empyrean, Ember of Solace, Ember of Benevolence, Ember of Torches.
• Abilities: Song of Flame and Healing Grenade.
• Stats: Resilience → Discipline.
• Mods:
  • Helmet: Heavy Ammo Finder, Harmonic Siphon.
  • Arms: Impact Induction, Focusing Strike.
  • Chest: Relevant reserve/resist mods.
  • Legs: Relevant ammo scavenger/surge mods.
  • Class Item: x2 Bomber.

Gameplay Loop

Utilizing this build is as simple as throwing your grenade, which will be a healing turret through Speaker’s Sight. This turret generates Orbs of Power, recharges your abilities (Ember of Benevolence), and grants you x2 Restoration (Touch of Flame).

Beyond this constant healing for you and allies, Ember of Torches offers Radiant upon using your melee ability. Both this and Restoration can be extended through Ember of Empyrean, granting you seemingly infinite buff uptime while also benefitting allies. The only trouble you may encounter is if your grenade doesn’t recharge in time, in which case you can use the equipped Demolitionist weapon we recommended earlier.

Best Warlock PvP builds

PvP Essentials

Because of its competitive nature, stats are significantly more critical in the Crucible than in PVE. For Warlocks, high Recovery is a must as it is tied to your health and rift regeneration speeds. Additionally, because of Destiny’s ability-focused nature, high Discipline is irreplaceable too. Lastly, while it’s more important on Titan, mid-high Resilience can also be helpful. Some things (such as two-shot kills with Thorn) depend on the enemy’s Resilience stat, so having around Tier 6 or 7 is always useful.

Generally speaking, the most potent PvP mods come in the form of stat, unflinching, targeting, and dexterity mods. These all provide passive buffs that are strong enough to notice in moment-to-moment gameplay.

Warlock Subclasses: Ranked

While there is usually a meta subclass or general setup to run for the Crucible, every element has unique strengths and weaknesses.

Dawnblade

Beginning with Solar, Dawnblade primarily focuses on giving you and your allies various buffs. Radiant, a 10% damage bonus, can be easily activated using something like Ember of Torches. Restoration is the second primary Solar buff, giving you constant regeneration—even while taking damage. There are various ways to activate this, including Healing Grenade and  the combination of Phoenix Dive and Heat Rises.

These buffs can be enhanced using fragments such as Ember of Solace and Ember of Empyrean. You can also use Ember of Benevolence to boost ability regeneration when benefitting your allies.

Pros: 

• Great healing/support potential
• Various movement options
• Numerous choices for all abilities

Cons:

• Generally weaker abilities compared to Voidwalker/Shadebinder
• Weaker debuffs
• Less desirable fragment options

Prismatic

Prismatic Warlock, by nature, offers little that other subclasses do not. However, as is the case in PvE, Prismatic’s strength and novelty come from unique interactions created by pairing abilities and aspects together.

From Lightning Surge and Arcane Needle to Bleak Watcher and Getaway Artist, many of the synergies dominating the PvE scene also make their way into The Crucible. While some of the more popular abilities and aspects like Icarus Dash are still locked behind other subclasses, Prismatic Warlock has found no issue cementing a solid place in the meta early on.

Pros:

• A multitude of Super ability options
• Access to the majority of elemental buffs/debuffs
• Access to Transcendence

Cons:

• Lack of various meta-defining aspects and abilities
• Little intrinsic power and instead relies on the creation of specific builds/synergies
• Takes on many of the nerfs/changes to individual abilities and aspects from other subclasses, even if they aren’t warranted on Prismatic

Voidwalker

Moving onto the next element, Voidwalker is functionally the opposite of Dawnblade, focusing on debuffing opposing Guardians. Echo of Undermining is the most direct way of doing so, weakening your enemies when hit with your grenade. You can also use Echo of Instability if you have a void weapon, granting you Volatile Rounds on grenade kill.

Voidwalker also provides some survivability with the Devour buff, most easily triggered on Warlock via the Feed the Void aspect. This makes Void widely considered the most well-rounded Warlock subclass as of the writing of this article, but that’s bound to change.

Pros:

• Powerful abilities at base
• Powerful buffs and debuffs
• Numerous super options and a unique jump ability (Blink)

Cons:

• Lacks movement compared to Dawnblade
• Weaker super abilities
• Able to do everything other subclasses can do, but significantly less well (jack of all trades, master of none)

Stormcaller

Inarguably the weakest of the three light subclasses before the Light 3.0 updates, Stormcaller now has a surprising amount going for it. Being all about speed and mobility, this subclass can grant you movement and weapon handling speed without the need to equip popular neutral exotic armor pieces such as Transversive Steps or Ophidian Aspect.

All three aspects are powerful here, but Lightning Surge is the stand-out, allowing you to close the gap between you and your opponents while also unleashing a substantial amount of damage. Arc Soul (and by extension, Getaway Artist) is also a popular pick, granting a good amount of chip damage to make kills more consistent. Lastly, while the Arc fragments available don’t have too much build potential, some (such as Spark of Resistance, Recharge, or Magnitude) provide very potent neutral buffs that can work anywhere.

Pros:

• Extremely good neutral game
• Potent aspects
• Superior movement

Cons:

• Weak super abilities
• Lacks build potential
• Weaker-than-average fragments

Broodweaver

Broodweaver functions as a mix between Stormcaller, Dawnblade and Shadebinder, providing strong crowd control in combination with useful movement abilities.

Each grenade does something unique but powerful: Grapple can either close the gap or give you space, Shackle can stop opponents in their tracks, and Threadling can seek down low health enemies to kill.

Pros:

• Has a nice variety of abilities and uses
• Area control, shutdown, and movement abilities
• Powerful subclass verbs (Suspend, Woven Mail, etc.)

Cons:

• Few options for Super, Melee, and Aspects
• Little access to subclass verbs compared to other Strand classes
• Acts as a jack of all trades, master of none

Shadebinder

Shadebinder is primarily used to counter your enemies by slowing or freezing them.

All three grenades have some slowing or freezing capability, and the Iceflare Bolts and Frostpulse aspects can grant more opportunities. Fragments are simple here; most simply buff your abilities or give you stat boosts. Whisper of Hedrons and Whisper of Chains are some of the more popular picks, but you can easily build into unique ones like Whisper of Rime as well.

With the addition of the Light 3.0 subclasses, Stasis has slightly fallen out of the meta. However, it’s still potent and is sometimes unfairly disregarded by the community.

Pros:

• Excels in close quarters combat
• Various shutdown and area control abilities
• Amazing dueling super
• Exceptional fragments and debuffs (Freeze/Slow)

Cons:

• Extreme lack of movement
• Less Grenade, Melee, and Super ability choices
• Mediocre grenade options at base
• Little to no intrinsic buffs (compared to Devour, Restoration, etc.)

Best PvP Warlock Exotics

General Exotics

Armor	Class	Type	Requirements	Source	Released	Requires	Exotic Perk
Ophidian Aspect	Warlock	Arms	Free-to-Play	Exotic Engrams	Season 2	Free-to-Play	Weapons ready and reload very quickly. Provides a small benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat of all weapons.
Transversive Steps	Warlock	Legs	Free-to-Play	Exotic Engrams	Season 1	Free-to-Play	Sprint speed increased. After a short time sprinting, your currently equipped weapon is automatically reloaded.

Because of their ease of use and 24/7 activation, neutral exotics are the most common for general PVP. Ophidian Aspect has always been an S-Tier pick, passively boosting the snappiness of your weapons. Transversive Steps excels for a similar reason, providing quicker and more fluid movement (plus the ability to get a free reload).

Subclass-specific Exotics

Armor	Class	Type	Requirements	Source	Released	Requires	Exotic Perk
Boots of the Assembler	Warlock	Legs	Beyond Light	Lost Sectors	Season 14	Beyond Light	Standing in a healing rift creates Noble Seekers that seek out allies that are not in a rift and heal them. Noble Seekers from Empowering rift grant both you and your ally a damage bonus. Each time a Noble Seeker finds one of your allies, the duration of your rift is briefly extended.
Osmiomancy Gloves	Warlock	Arms	The Witch Queen	Lost Sectors	Season 16	The Witch Queen	Your Coldsnap grenades have an additional charge that recharges quicker on direct impact. The seeker spawned from Coldsnap grenades travels further.
Rain of Fire	Warlock	Legs	The Witch Queen	Lost Sectors	Season 17	The Witch Queen	Air dodge reloads all of your weapons and improves the airborne effectiveness of Fusion Rifles and Linear Fusion Rifles; final blows with these weapons make you radiant.

As for subclass-specific exotics that you can build into, Osmiomancy Gloves are one of the stand-outs. Coldsnap Grenades are already extremely strong, and the increased travel distance and extra charge make for an unparalleled shutdown option. Rain of Fire, the Season of the Haunted exotic, is highly beneficial when using a Solar subclass and a fusion rifle (especially Vex Mythoclast). Boots of the Assembler also isn’t a terrible option to run on Dawnblade, allowing you to embrace the support role.

You can find more complex and in-depth builds online with niche exotics such as Verity’s Brow. My favorite two content creators for PvP builds are Coolguy and Apathettic, but you can find numerous fantastic community members creating builds frequently on all social platforms.

Before you go…

The new Warlock Exotic is definitely worth chasing this season. We cover how to get the Briarbinds in Destiny 2 here.