Best Destiny 2 Warlock Builds: Strand and Solar loadouts for Season of the Wish

With Season of the Wish going into a long hibernation, we know which Warlock builds are excelling in Destiny 2. We’ve got a couple of suggestions for the best loadouts including an incredible Solar build that makes everything go boom.

Destiny 2 Guardians are settling in for an almighty wait ahead of The Final Shape. Thanks to a delay to the expansion, we now have a five-month wait until we get to finish Destiny’s central fight. There are some benefits though.

Thanks to the delay, it means, you can set your builds up across your characters and subclasses, and be relatively certain things aren’t going to change too much for a while. Buildcrafting has seen an upgrade in Destiny’s most recent expansion, Lightfall, but it can be a whole production to have to change them overly frequently.

With Season of the Wish, that didn’t change, and the meta has moved around a decent amount. It’s understandable if you’re feeling a little lost with what is currently doing best in Destiny 2 for Season 23. We’re here to help. If you’re a Warlock, we’ve got a couple of build recommendations for you to check out.

Destiny 2 Warlock Build Contents

• Warlock Necrotic Grips Strand Build
• Warlock Strand abilities, Aspects, and Fragments
• Warlock Strand Weapons and Exotic
• Warlock Strand Armor Mods
• Warlock Strand Stat Priority
• Warlock Strand Build: How to use
• Warlock Solar Dawn Chorus Build
• Warlock Solar Abilities, Aspects, and Fragments
• Warlock Solar Weapons and Exotic
• Warlock Solar Armor Mods
• Warlock Solar Stat Priority
• Warlock Solar Build: How to use

Warlock Necrotic Grips Strand Build

Like Hunter and Titan classes, Warlocks have a very strong Strand build that is excellent at dealing with most combat situations. You’ll want to use what’s new and exciting, and luckily this Strand build is one of the strongest in the game currently.

Unfortunately, while Threadlings are the major focus for many of the Warlock’s abilities with Strand, they are inconsistent, unpredictable, and you have to play around them in different ways.

Instead, this new build is all about suspending, unraveling, and poisoning enemies, giving you complete control of any room. Here’s how to make the Warlock Necrotic Grips Strand build in Destiny 2, from the Aspects and Fragments to the armor mods and weapons to use.

Warlock Strand abilities, Aspects, and Fragments

• Super: Needlestorm
• Class ability: Healing Rift
• Jump: Strafe Glide
• Melee: Arcane Needle
• Grenade: Shackle Grenade

Aspects

• The Wanderer:  Tangles you throw attach to targets and detonate into a suspending burst. Destroying a Tangle creates a suspending burst after a short delay.
• Mindspun Invocation: Cast your Rift to weave three Threadlings and deploy any Threadlings you have perched.

Fragments

• Thread of Isolation: Landing rapid precision hits emits a severing burst from the target.
• Thread of Warding: Dealing damage generates grenade energy (-10 Discipline).
• Thread of Generation: Dealing damage generates grenade energy (-10 Discipline).
• Thread of Continuity: Suspend, unravel, and sever effects applied to targets have increased duration (+10 Strength).

Warlock Strand Weapons and Exotic

• Kinetic:.  We like Thron in this slot, especially with its new catalyst. Its intrinsic ability to poison enemies is extremely effective and can even spread to large groups of enemies with the combination with Necrotic Grip. However, Osteo Striga is also a fine choice too.
• Energy: A flexible slot that should be adjusted based on what content you are completing. Realistically, just about any strong or meta Energy weapon can work here so feel free to try out different options. We like Fusion Rifles, but you might want a Sniper or Shotgun for different content. 
• Heavy: Similarly to Energy, this build doesn’t require a specific Heavy weapon. Although we recommend either a Rocket Launcher or Linear Fusion Rifle to improve boss damage as that is one area that this build doesn’t necessarily excel in. A Machine Gun can work just fine if you want something more versatile.

Warlock Strand Armor Mods

Helmet

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• Kinetic Siphon x2 (4)
• Powerful Friends(1)

Note: Consider trading one Kinetic Siphon for a Heavy Ammo Finder in content where you need more ammo.

Gauntlets

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• Focusing Strike (2)
• Font of Vigor (3)
• Impact Induction (1)

Chest

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• 2x Momentum Transfer (4)
• Bolstering Detonation (2)

Legs

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• Kinetic Weapon Surge x2 (6)

Note: If you can get away with not using a Stat Armor Mod here, you may find more value in swapping it out for Stacks on Stacks, which will make many of your other armor mods more consistent.

Class Item

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• Time Dilation (3)
• Outreach (1)
• Bomber (1)

These Amor Mods make this build go wild and cement it as one of the strongest in Destiny 2.

Warlock Strand Stat Priority

Resilience, despite getting nerfed in Lightfall still remains very important. Your Woven Armor will help here too, but it never hurts to have more tanky and harder to kill. Especially in higher-level content.

After that Discipline is going to be important. You will be dealing with a -20 Discipline penalty. You will want your grenade as much as possible too to keep your Weaver’s Trance up as much as possible. After that, you are going to want to get anything left into Recovery, though the stat has had less prominence after recent nerfs.

Warlock Strand Build: How to use

There is a fairly simple rotation here, and once you’ve got it going, it will chew through enemies largely without your input. To maximize this, the rotation looks like this:

• Press and hold your grenade to consume it to trigger Weaver’s Trance.
• Use Weaver’s Trance for a whopping 25 seconds, during which enemies nearby defeated combatants will be automatically suspended.
• Throw any Tangles you find to further suspend enemies.
• Use Melee Ability on a low-level enemy to start Unravelling, which spreads on kills.
• Shoot your Thorn to spread the poison.

As things die, everything will start to cascade. The Poison from your Necrotic Grips, the Unravelling from your Melee, and the Weaver’s Trance will deal immense damage to surrounding enemies and string them. Just keep all of these abilities procced and you will bring rooms of enemies crashing down.

Warlock Solar Dawn Chorus build

Warlocks will be well aware of the Solar Sunbracers and Starfire Protocol builds that have been prominent this year. However, Starfire got a deserved nerf, and Sunbracers have had their time in the… well, sun. Season of the Wish requires something else.

Luckily a new Solar build has appeared, and it is a fantastic all-around with excellent survivability. It’s also a ton of fun and very active in your input. This isn’t sitting back and spamming grenades at something, but instead going out, causing a ton of ignitions, which means a lot of explosions. 

What’s even better is that you are not stuck on Well of Radiance duty, and lets you use the Daybreak Super for enormous amounts of damage. This build is great for endgame, and even solo content – so rise damage-minded Warlocks, your time has come.

Warlock Solar Abilities, Aspects, and Fragments

Abilities

• Super: Daybreak
• Class ability: Healing Rift
• Jump: Burst Glide
• Melee: Incinerator Snap
• Grenade: Healing Grenade

Aspects

Touch of Flame: Your Healing, Solar, Firebolt, and Fusion Grenades have enhanced functionality.

• Solar Grenade: Increases linger duration. Periodically emits blobs of lava around its perimeter.
• Healing Grenade: Improves the strength of cure and restoration effects applied.
• Firebolt Grenade: Increases target search radius and maximum target count.
• Fusion Grenade: Explodes twice.

Heat Rises: You can fire weapons, melee, and throw grenades while gliding. 

• Press Grenade: Hold to consume your grenade, gaining Heat Rises and releasing a bust of healing energy that cures nearby allies. The strength of the burst is increased when Healing Grenade is consumed

Final blows while airborne increase the duration of Heat Rises and grant melee energy. 

Fragments

• Ember of Torches: Powered melee attacks against combatants make you and nearby allies Radiant (- Discipline)
• Ember of Ashes: You apply more scorch stacks to targets.
• Ember of Singeing: Your class ability recharges faster when you scorch targets.
• Ember of Empyrean: Solar weapon or ability final blows extend the duration for restoration and radiant effects applied to you (-10 Resilience).

Warlock Solar Weapons and Exotic

• Kinetic: We like using this slot for our special weapons. We’re fond of the Scatter Signal Fusion Rifle, Supremacy Sniper Rifle, and Supercluster Shotgun depending on the situation. 
• Energy: Technically speaking, just about any strong Solar Primary weapon can work here. Although one with Incandescent definitely provides more value. Some great choices include Calus Mini-Tool, BxR-55 Battler, Trustee, & Ammit AR2.
• Heavy: For this, you are going to want to use the Season of the Wish Battle Pass exotic Dragon’s Breath. This should be easy to obtain, and it does a lot of damage. Even better if you can complete the catalyst but it is not necessary to have this still hit like a truck.

Warlock Solar Armor Mods

Helmet

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• 2x Harmonic Siphon (2)
• Heavy Ammo Finder (3)

Gauntlets

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• 3x Impact Induction (6)

Chest

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• Solar Ammo Reserves (3)
• Harmonic Resistance (1)
• Void Resistance (2)

Legs

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• 2x Solar Weapon Surge (6)
• Recuperation (1)

Class Item

• +10 Stat Mod of choice (3-4)
• 2x Bomber (2)
• Time Dilation (3)

Warlock Solar Stat Priority

Unsurprisingly, Resilience and Discipline are both incredibly important to this build. Resilience is important, as while we should be recovering constantly, being able to make that threshold to death tougher to meet. We are also going to want our Healing Grenade back on cooldown too if we lose our Restoration at any point.

Recovery is nice to have in case we lose our loop of Restoration and need a reprieve. It does also get us our Healing Rift back quicker – however, since the stat has been recently nerfed, it’s less important.

Warlock Solar build: How to use

Dawn Chorus mixed with this potent loadout is one for people who like explosions and a lot of damage. The exotic helmet makes ignitions happen exceedingly frequently with a mix of incandescent, your powered melee, Super, and Dragon’s Breath. 

What’s nice is this build has great survivability, excellent ad clear with ignitions as well as exceptional solo boss damage. 

To make the most of this Solar build, you’ll want to use the following rotation:

• Throw a Healing Grenade to get your restoration going. Try to kill a couple low health enemies to get your timer high so you are constantly restoring health. 
• Use your powered Melee to gain Radiance to clear low-health enemies. 
• Drop your healing rift if you need extra survivability.

For general engagement, this is all you need to do. As you kill enemies and cause ignitions, your restoration timer will replenish and you become very hard to kill. However, boss damage requires a special touch. Here’s the rotation when it comes time to do big damage. 

• Shoot a Dragon’s Breath rocket at the boss.
• Pop your Daybreak Super, and throw flames until it is done.
• Shoot another Dragon’s Breath shot after, then switch to a special weapon.
• Once you hit the end of a clip, shoot another Dragon’s Breath. Repeat.

So, there you have it — those are the best Warlock builds you should be using right now for Lightfall in Destiny 2. For more great Destiny 2 content check out the following guides:

Deepsight Harmonizers: How to farm, use, and what weapons to convert | How to fish in Destiny 2 | Best Exotic weapons | Best PvP Weapons | Best PvE Weapons | How to get Infinite Prismatic Pride emblem | Season of the Deep Season Pass: Rewards & ranks | How to get Epochal Integration | Best Titan Builds | Best Hunter Builds | Best Arc 3.0 Builds | Best Solar 3.0 Builds | Best Stasis Builds | Best Void 3.0 Builds