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With Destiny 2: The Witch Queen introducing new avenues to customize a Guardian’s Subclass, players have been looking towards the current sandbox and creating new builds to farm the hardest content, both in PvE and the Crucible.

Out of every class, Warlocks have some of the strongest options. Great Subclasses and Exotics allow for powerful build combinations that can be taken further with certain weapons or seasonal mods. Ranging from aggressive dashes to chaining grenades infinitely, here are ten Warlock builds that are sure to impress in either PvE or PvP.

Foreword

Before we begin, each build guide is rather long and covers Combat Style mods—seasonal mods that offer powerful effects. If you aren’t familiar with these mods, you’ll want to read our guides on each Combat Style mechanic. We also have a guide on Armor 2.0 if you haven’t played with Destiny 2’s mod system yet. Each guide is linked below:

  • A Complete Guide To Armor 2.0 Combat Style Mods Explained Charged With Light Explained Warmind Cells Explained Elemental Wells Explained

Updated January 28, 2023, by Charles Burgar: Lightfall is just around the corner. While Warlocks didn’t see many changes this season, a ton of sweeping buildcrafting changes are coming soon, and all players now have access to every buildcrafting mod. We’ve updated our build guides to be easier to follow, updated DIM links, and reformatted all build guides in preparation for Lightfall. We’ve also replaced a PvE build with an S-tier support/add clear build that Dawnblade mains will love.

  • Charged With Light Explained Warmind Cells Explained Elemental Wells Explained

PvP: Firing Squad

Why Play This Build?

Are you tired of playing with teammates that can’t aim? Say hello to No Time to Explain, an Exotic Pulse Rifle that creates a time portal that fires at enemies with incredible accuracy. With the Stormcaller subclass, you can also summon an Arc Soul or “Arc Buddy” to team-shot every enemy that dares approach you. Who needs teammates when you can make a weapons platform at will?

Time-to-kill values are extremely low when your portal and Arc Soul are active, and you have access to a fantastic Super in the form of Chaos Reach. If you hate PvP but need to complete 6v6 weeklies, give this build a try.

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PvP: Umbral Shadebinder

Shadebinders are incredibly strong in PvP, capable of stopping opponents in their tracks using their grenades, melee ability, and Super. This build enhances ability uptime by using Osmiomancy Gloves and numerous ability-enhancing armor mods. You’ll have the ability to shutdown Supers, Shotgun rushers, and swing 1v1 gunfights in your favor with the power of Stasis freezes.

PvP: Devouring Rift

Void 3.0 removed the Warlock’s ability to consume their grenade to gain Devour. That’s a rather major loss in the eyes of many, yet there’s a way to bring back that functionality: Secant Filaments. These boots turn your Empowering Rift into a “Devouring Rift,” granting you Devour when cast and Overload Rounds while inside the Rift.

This build focuses on short ability cooldowns to ensure that you have constant Rifts and grenades. You’ll be able to play aggressively, throw grenades quite often, and benefit from some of the Voidwalker’s best Aspects and Fragments.

PvP: Echo Of Magnetism

Abilities in Destiny 2’s Crucible rarely one-shot and focus more on weakening targets than outright killing them. Not this build. Thanks to Verity’s Brow and a few Fragments, it’s possible to turn your Void grenades into one-shot killing machines that activate Devour and Volatile Rounds, making you the ultimate slayer in 6v6 modes. If you want to crank up the lethality of Void 3.0 to 11, this is the build for you.

PvP: Mending Embers

This build combines the excellent movement capabilities of Dawnblade and pairs them with the Rain of Fire Exotic. Dashing around the battlefield will reload all of your weapons, and every Fusion Rifle kill will give you a damage buff. Paired with Vex Mythoclast, Rain of Fire’s Radiant buff is almost always active.

Thanks to Solar 3.0 buffs partway through this season, you also have amazing healing capabilities with this build. Throw a grenade at your feet to gain a constant healing effect. Consume your grenade to heal yourself and nearby allies, granting a ton of Airborne Effectiveness in the process. Use your melee to give allies the Radiant buff, and slay out to gain up to three damage buffs at once. Excellent movement, multiple healing methods, and constant damage buffs make this one of the best PvP builds you can use in the current sandbox.

PvE: Cleansing Flame

Heavily inspired by YouTuber Imagine’s Sunbracers build, this setup morphs the Dawnblade spec from a support kit into a walking inferno with infinite grenades, infinite melee charges, constant Radiant, x2 Restoration, and the ability to heal teammates at will. It almost sounds too good to be true, but this build is truly capable of all these things if you play it right. This build also charges Well of Radiance absurdly fast, making this an excellent pick for raids and other endgame activities. If you’re attempting to solo endgame content and find this build’s DPS lacking, we recommend our Fusion Priest build instead.

PvE: Ionic Tomb

Arc 3.0 has made Warlocks the masters of creating Ionic Traces, energy surges that can be collected to gain ability energy. This lets Warlocks spam their abilities if built around, something this build focuses on. Thanks to the Falling Sunstar helmet and certain Aspects, spamming your abilities has never been easier.

Use a grenade to spawn Ionic Traces. Use your charged or slide melee to spawn Ionic Traces. Even using Arc weapons will spawn Ionic Traces. All traces you create will also be incredibly fast, regenerate a quarter of all ability energy, and your allies will gain energy as well. Spam infinite grenades, melee attacks, and create a torrent of Elemental Wells with this rather simple Arc 3.0 build.

PvE: Chaotic Hold

Have you wondered what most top-tier players use to solo dungeons and other pinnacle content? It’s this build. In essence, you’ll be using Contraverse Hold and Voidwalker to throw constant supercharged Vortex Grenades, turning even the toughest of enemies into stardust. It’s a low-risk, high-reward build that virtually every player can use.

You can take this build even further with Combat Style mods. This build can take full advantage of Elemental Wells, allowing you to enhance your ability cooldowns. It’s easy to build, deals immense amounts of damage, and can be used in Destiny 2’s toughest activities.

PvE: Fusion Priest

Turn the battlefield into a hellscape of explosions and Elemental Wells with this rather simple Solar 3.0 build. This build uses the Starfire Protocol Exotic to give grenade energy whenever you deal damage inside an Empowering Rift. Shoot a few bullets, throw a grenade, and repeat.

Your grenades will explode three times instead of once, deal absurd damage to fodder enemies, have competitive DPS in raids, all while having excellent survivability. If that wasn’t enough, your grenades can spawn four Elemental Wells at a time, giving you constant health regen and nearby allies 40% ability energy.

PvE: Bleak Flame

Raw firepower isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, all you need is a little bit of crowd control to turn the tide. That’s what this build focuses on. By using the Bleak Watcher Aspect, Shadebinders can turn their grenades into Stasis turrets that reliably freeze enemies. This build focuses on fast grenade cooldowns so you can spawn as many of these turrets as possible, making this an excellent build for Grandmaster Nightfalls, Master Lost Sectors, and raids.

Bungie might have nerfed the cooldown rates of Bleak Watcher in the 30th Anniversary Pack, but there are still a few ways to enhance the cooldown of your turrets. So long as you’re willing to farm for a good Stasis weapon, this build is still more than viable for all Destiny content, including raids and GM Nightfalls.