Best Destiny 2 Warlock Solar Builds for PvE and PvP

Updated as of Episode 3: Heresy.

Top Solar Warlock builds

--	Name	Class	Area	Subclass	Excels in	Element	Status
	Radiant Sunbracer	Warlock	PvE	Solar	Endgame	Solar
	Speaker’s Support	Warlock	PvE	Solar	Casual & Endgame	Solar

Best Warlock Solar builds for PvE

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.

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
	Refusal of the Call	Glaive	Special	Strand	Heresy Activities
	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.

Don’t miss our: Best Destiny 2 Warlock Prismatic Builds

Warlock Solar PvP build

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.

Subclasses

While there is usually a meta Warlock 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

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).

Solar-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.
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.

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.

Before you go…

You can find all the top builds for Titans, Warlocks, and Hunters here.