Destiny 2 has seen some major changes over its lifespan, and as such, there are more Guardians than ever learning how to wield the Light and Dark. Warlocks are a special breed in the realm of Destiny 2, with the ability to mend their team's wounds or warp the elements into devastating abilities.
With such versatility and diverse playstyles available, Warlocks have been the favorite class of many Guardians, but the choices don't stop at the subclass menu. Exotics can shape a build as much, sometimes more, than any subclass or mod could. For those looking to make the strongest Warlock, here are ten Exotics you should consider using in Destiny 2.
Updated January 27, 2023, by Charles Burgar: Now that all subclasses have been reworked and Lightfall is near, we've figured this is the perfect time to reflect on the Warlock's Exotic armor choices for PvE and PvP. We've updated this list with new entries, rewrote some sections that were no longer accurate, and reranked a few entries to reflect recent sandbox changes.
10 Karnstein Armlets
Vampire's Caress: Melee kills instantly restore a large amount of health and continue to restore health afterwards for a short duration.
Karnstein Armlets cause all melee kills to grant a large chunk of health and a buff named Vampire's Caress. While active, this buff will grant a constant, uninterruptible health regeneration effect.
PvE
Health regeneration is an incredibly hard effect to find in Destiny 2. Karnstein Armlets not only make this effect easy to trigger, but the health regeneration itself is immense. With Celestial Fire or even Glaives, this effect is surprisingly easy to activate, giving you constant health regeneration for six seconds. If you can build your character to have short melee cooldowns, you can maintain this effect for a rather long duration, making you significantly harder to kill. When paired with DR sources, you can survive an onslaught of projectiles in dungeons, raids, and even Master Nightfalls.
PvP
You'll have to use a subclass with a good melee ability to get the most out of these gloves. Fortunately, Dawnblade is a good choice and has some solid melee abilities. The heal this grants can come in clutch in 3v3 playlists such as Trials of Osiris, allowing you to win 1v2 and even 1v3 engagements with a well-timed melee attack. And if that doesn't sell you, equip a Glaive and go on a killing spree. Smart Glaive usage with Karnstein Armlets makes you nigh-invincible. Don't underestimate this Exotic.
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9 Verity's Brow
The Fourth Magic: Weapon final blows with a damage type matching your subclass energy grant Death Throes, which provides a bonus to the damage of your grenades and grants you grenade energy. When you have Death Throes and throw a grenade, nearby allies gain greatly increased grenade regeneration for a short time.
Verity's Brow can provide one of the most powerful builds in the entire game if used correctly. This Exotic grants increased grenade energy and grenade damage whenever a weapon that matches your subclass element kills an opponent. Your allies also gain increased grenade energy, which makes this a perfect Exotic for six-player activities.
PvE
Death Throes is a fantastic buff in PvE, granting a dramatic boost to your grenade regeneration rate and grenade damage. Warlock grenades are already quite powerful, so this Exotic is great for giving them more uptime.
The bonus damage is 100% at x5 Death Throes, allowing overcharged grenades from Voidwalker to deal a ludicrous amount of damage. Most will use this helmet for the grenade regeneration boost, allowing you to summon multiple Bleak Watchers as a Shadebinder or throw multiple overcharged greandes as a Voidwalker. With how grenade-centric some Warlock subclasses are, these helmets serve as a perfect complement to a Warlock's overall kit. Just be sure to use a weapon with either Osmosis or a Stasis weapon if you're going to play Shadebinder.
PvP
Similar to Nezarec's Sin, Verity's Brow is somewhat tough to maintain in PvP. This buff lasts ten seconds, so it is possible to chain its effect in 6v6 playlists. Even then, you'll need to be on your A-game and rely exclusively on your Energy weapon. If you can manage that, you can do some amazing things with this Exotic like make Magnetic Grenades one-tap Guardians with little setup. Overall, this is a solid PvP Exotic if you build around it.
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8 The Stag
Dearly Departed: Your Rift provides damage reduction to allied Guardians standing in it. Grants Rift energy when you are critically wounded. On your death, creates a healing rift on your corpse.
Talk about a 180. The Stag was considered by many as the worst Warlock Exotic in the game just a season ago. With Season of the Lost, Bungie made one change to this Exotic that made it extremely powerful in PvP: it now gives damage resistance while in a Rift. You and allies in your Rift will gain a 15% damage resistance buff.
PvE
The Stag's benefits in PvE are rather lackluster. A 15% damage resistance buff is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but you can stack it with other DR sources like Resilience. If you're playing difficult content and need to stay alive, consider pairing The Stag with 100 Resilience to give yourself constant 50% damage resistance while in a Rift. This can be incredibly useful in Grandmaster Nightfalls or Master raids. For more casual content, however, The Stag is lacking.
PvP
This is why The Stag made the list. A Healing Rift, The Stag's DR buff, and Stormcaller's Arc Soul all work together to create one of the strongest defensive playstyles you can find in Destiny 2 currently. Constant healing and 15% damage resistance allow you to win virtually any Primary duel.
But it gets even better. You can pair The Stag with Shadebinder's Whisper of Chains Fragment, granting another DR buff while near a Stasis crystal. Throw on the Frostpulse Aspect to freeze targets in place, granting DR while you close the gap and slap them for an easy one-hit kill. Smart use of this Exotic can let you swing 1v2 or 1v3 duels in your favor, and the constant Rift energy you'll be getting will help you and your entire team. This is a fantastic PvP Exotic that more defensive players should consider using.
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7 Fallen Sunstar
Ionic Conductor: Ionic traces you create move faster and grant you additional energy. Nearby allies also gain ability energy when you collect an ionic trace.
All Ionic Traces you create move about twice as fast and give double the energy. Allies close to you will also gain 12.5% ability energy when you collect an Ionic Trace, acting as a roundabout way of giving allies Ionic Traces you create. This Exotic works for all Ionic Traces created and has no cooldown.
PvE
Fallen Sunstar is arguably better than Crown of Tempests for most Arc 3.0 Warlock builds. Creating Ionic Traces is quite easy in the current sandbox, so the double energy received by traces is something you'll benefit from dozens of times in a given mission. And since your allies get this buff as well, Fallen Sunstar is an excellent pick for all content. Spec for Ionic Traces in your build, and enjoy the infinite ability energy.
PvP
Stormcallers can benefit from stronger Ionic Traces in the Crucible, although it's somewhat tougher to make traces in PvP. Since most Ionic Trace sources are from slain targets, you won't have the same uptime as in PvE unless you're a good Crucible player. Even still, getting faster Ionic Traces and increased energy is only a good thing. Does it make Stormcaller the best PvP spec? No, but it's more than capable.
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6 Contraverse Hold
Chaotic Exchanger: Resist incoming damage while charging your Void grenade with Chaos Accelerant, Feed the Void, or Handheld Supernova. Charged Void grenades return a random amount of grenade energy on a hit.
Contraverse Hold is a criminally underused Exotic in PvE. These gloves provide a random amount of grenade energy every time your grenades damage a target. They also provide 20% damage resistance while you're overcharging a Void grenade.
PvE
Every tick of damage provided from a Vortex Grenade procs Contraverse Hold's regeneration boost. Warlocks can have an infinite supply of grenades if they can land their Vortex Grenades, allowing for a consistent boost to your damage output in any activity. Pair this with Feed the Void and the Ashes to Assets mod to make every pinnacle PvE activity a complete joke.
PvP
These gloves aren't as strong in PvP as in PvE, although they still have use. Voidwalker pairs surprisingly well with these gloves, giving you enough damage resistance to absorb a few shots while you release a charged grenade. If you make a build around using grenades in PvP, these gloves might prove useful. For most, Contraverse Hold isn't strong enough to warrant using over meta Exotics currently.
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5 Starfire Protocol
Fusion Harness: Fusion Grenades have an additional charge and recharge from empowered weapon damage. Fusion Grenade kills grant Rift energy.
While playing Dawnblade, your Fusion Grenades have a second grenade charge and recharge 20% of their energy every time you deal damage inside an Empowering Rift or Well of Radiance. This effect has a 0.3s internal cooldown. If you get a kill with a Fusion Grenade, you'll fully replenish your class ability—including non-Rift abilities like Phoenix Dive.
PvE
We avoided adding this Exotic to our list for so long because we were sure this was going to get nerfed. Starfire Protocol gives you infinite grenades if you have a Rift and a source of constant damage. Most Dawnblade builds use this Exotic with Witherhoard to constantly refresh their Fusion Grenades during a boss fight, giving you some absurd DPS numbers all without needing Heavy ammo. Weave Demolitionist Rocket Launchers into the mix, and you have yourself arguably the strongest DPS Exotic in the Warlock's arsenal.
For optimal results, we highly recommend using Touch of Flame and Ember of Ashes with this Exotic. This will cause your Fusion Grenades to always Ignite, creating a massive explosion that deals even more damage. While it may not be the most interesting or gameplay-defining Exotic in the game, it's certainly an S-tier pick for PvE Dawnblade builds.
PvP
If you're using this in the Crucible, you're likely running this for the second grenade charge and Rift refresh on Empowered Rift kills. It's not a bad Exotic by any means, but the opportunity cost of not using a movement Exotic just isn't worth it for most players. Only use this in 6v6 playlists where enemies bunch up.
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4 Rain Of Fire
Soaring Fusilier: 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. Provides a moderate benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat of Fusion Rifles and Linear Fusion Rifles.
The description of this Exotic can be broken down into three parts:
- Icarus Dash reloads all of your weapons.
- Final blows with Fusions/LFRs make you Radiant for seven seconds.
- Your Fusions have increased Airborne Effectiveness.
PvE
Rain of Fire lets you share a few qualities of the Hunter's Gunslinger class. Your Icarus Dash becomes a better Marksman's Dodge that can be used in-air every four seconds, reloading all of your weapons. The Radiant buff you get from these boots works on all weapons, although you must land a Fusion kill to trigger the Radiant buff. It lasts only seven seconds instead of ten for the sake of balance, but that hardly matters in PvE.
The DPS combos you can achieve with this Exotic are nothing short of absurd. You can fire a rocket, dash, fire another rocket, switch to your Special weapon, and repeat. More importantly, the Radiant effect procs on any subclass, not just Dawnblade. This gives Warlocks access to a 25% damage buff on every subclass. If you aren't playing a support or ability-centric build, use Rain of Fire.
PvP
Getting a Radiant buff so easily inside the Crucible is quite useful. You'll have great uptime on this buff in PvP. Far more important is the auto-reloading aspect of this Exotic. If you're tired of having to reload your Special or Primary in duels, just dash. It's game-changing just how much more aggressively you can play.
A clear pairing with these boots is Vex Mythoclast, an Exotic Fusion Rifle that uses Primary ammo. Use that weapon with Rain of Fire, Quick Charge, and High-Energy Fire for a rather potent 6v6 build.
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3 Transversive Steps
Strange Protractor: Sprint speed increased. After a short time sprinting, your currently equipped weapon is automatically reloaded.
Highly regarded as the best Warlock Exotic in PvP, Transversive Steps provide benefits that enhance aggressive players. Not only do Transversive Steps give increased run speed for the wearer, but after a few seconds, they reload your current equipped weapon from your reserves.
PvE
Transversive Steps are admittedly not the best Exotic choice for PvE, but they still serve as a solid choice for players that hate swapping their gear around between missions. The increased sprint speed is useful for retreating into cover, and the auto-reloading effect when your sprint is excellent for mitigating the long reload times on most Heavy weapons.
PvP
The effectiveness of these boots in PvP is why they're number one on our list. Movement is king in Destiny 2, and these boots provide a means of capitalizing on that movement. You'll be sprinting quite a bit in the Crucible, something that is faster and grants auto-reloading while these boots are on. When paired with Dawnblade, your movement as a Warlock is absurd and can rival Hunters with St0mp-EE5. If you can get used to the aggressive playstyle that these boots encourage, you'll have a hard time switching to another Exotic.
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2 Osmiomancy Gloves
Fervid Coldsnap: Your Coldsnap grenades have an additional charge that recharges quicker on direct impact. The seeker spawned from Coldsnap grenades travels further.
Osmimancy Gloves let you double down on using Coldsnap Grenades as a Warlock, giving you a second Coldsnap charge while refunding grenade energy for each enemy your grenade hits.
PvE
The energy regained from this Exotic is impressive, granting an entire charge if your Coldsnap chains between a group of enemies. It's important to note that direct impacts with the grenade grant a ton of energy, capable of granting a whole grenade off a single Champion. This makes Osmiomancy Gloves fantastic for high-level content.
Of course, you can use this ample grenade energy to give yourself an infinite supply of Bleak Watcher turrets. Throw a Coldsnap, create a turret, rinse and repeat. The level of crowd control you can achieve with a build like this is unmatched, making this the definitive crowd control Exotic for Warlocks. Paired with some Firepower mods, you can throw infinite Coldsnaps and Bleak Watchers with these gloves.
PvP
These gloves are a hard counter to Shotgun rushers and invisible Hunters. Throwing this grenade at someone will grant an immense amount of energy, allowing you to throw nearly a dozen grenades a game with some practice. A frozen target is incredibly easy to kill as well, making these gloves perfect for 6v6 objective modes and even Trials of Osiris. If you play Shadebinder at all, give these gloves a try.
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1 Ophidian Aspect
Cobra Totemic: Weapons ready and reload very quickly. Melee range is extended. Provides a small benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat for all weapons.
Many Warlocks mains agree that Transversive Steps and Ophidian Aspect are the best PvP Exotics, and for good reason. While it might not offer auto-reloading, Ophidian Aspect enhances your neutral game in almost every way. These gauntlets grant one meter of additional melee range, grant a major boost to handling for your guns, and increase your reload speed substantially. Your weapons are also slightly more accurate while in the air.
PvE
Increased weapon handling and reload speeds are very powerful with the right loadout. You can quickly swap to a Rocket Launcher, damage a target, then swap to your Special weapon to damage a boss or Champion. If you don't like swapping between guns for DPS, you can use Ophidian's excellent reload speed buff to unload many more rockets and Shotgun shells into bosses. It might not be as strong as other PvE Exotics, although it is by no means a bad choice.
PvP
With the nerf to Quickdraw, handling is more important than ever. Ophidian Aspect gives you a massive boost to handling and reload speed, two important stats for any gun. You can panic swap to your weapons much faster, spend less time reloading, and you can chain a Shotgun shot with a melee strike much more easily with your extended melee range. It even gives a slight bump to Airborne Effectiveness on all weapons. Simply put, these gloves are S-tier for PvP.
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