I’m going to run you through what I consider to be the best Solar Warlock build in Destiny 2 Lightfall. It’s a tried and tested build that’s been dominating the META for some time now, and is my default when I choose to play on Warlock. It does have quite a high skill ceiling involved with it, but that only means it’ll perform better the more you use it.
This Solar Warlock Lightfall build is a Starfire Protocol build. If you don’t want to run Starfire, this isn’t the build for you. If that doesn’t bother you, let me show you the highest DPS build you’re capable of crafting in Destiny 2.
Destiny 2 Lightfall – Best Solar Warlock Build
Before I jump into this build, I do want to go through its gameplay loop because it’s quite unique.
Your primary focus is going to be on balancing your Fusion Grenade usage with your Empowering Rifts. With Starfire, your Fusions will refund your Rift, and kills in your Rift will refund your Fusions. This infinite loop is going to be your main source of damage.
When you set up a rift, get a Witherhoard shot down on a beefy target and toss your grenades. The tick damage from Witherhoard should almost infinitely refill your grenade. Use those grenades to get at least one kill, and your Rift will refund so that you can do it all again.
If you don’t have Witherhoard, just swap to your primary of choice and lay down a few shots. Even if you do little damage, it’ll only take a handful of bullets in your Rift to fully refund a nade.
The timings here are tricky to get down – but once they click, this build goes from being incredible to being outright broken. Bungie hasn’t tried to nerf it so far, though, so fingers crossed that doesn’t change anytime soon.
Aspects
- Icarus Dash.
Icarus Dash isn’t too important to this build, the other Aspect we’re running is. Despite that, I would highly recommend you take it over Heat Rises. The whole point of this Destiny 2 Lightfall Solar Warlock build is to take advantage of our Fusion Grenades – so we don’t want to have to consume them.
Beyond that, Icarus Dash is a great movement-tech tool. If you put the time into mastering Warlock movement, it can – and will, save your life. I have countless examples of Icarus saving my skin in the likes of Master Spire of the Watcher, Grandmaster Nightfalls, and more. You don’t need it, but you do want it.
- Touch of Flame.
Touch of Flame is actually necessary – though. The whole aim of this build is to make your Fusion Grenades as powerful as possible, then abuse the hell out of them. Touch of Flame is the first step in doing this.
Its effect is simple – but mandatory for making this work. It buffs your grenades, with each nade getting its own unique amplification. In the case of Fusions, it makes them explode twice. This increases your damage substantially, and pairs with Starfire Protocol to make Fusion Grenades capable of single-handedly taking down Champions on end-game difficulties.
Beyond your aspect, there are two other parts of your kit that are mandatory – Fusion Grenades (obviously), and an Empowering Rift. I know Healing Rifts are great, but Empowering ones synergize with Starfire and single-handedly maintain your grenade uptime. They’re non-negotiable, so don’t even try.
Related: Best Void Warlock Build for Destiny 2 Lightfall
Fragments
- Ember of Char.
Honestly, the Fragments are actually the least important part of this entire build. You don’t need any of them to make it work – and that grants you a remarkably rare amount of flexibility. The setup I’m recommending is a typical Incandescent loadout, aimed at maximizing the effectiveness of Scorch and Ignitions. If you’re not an Incandescent fan, though, then feel free to run literally whatever you want.
For my build, Ember of Char is important because it allows Ignitions to spread Scorch to other targets. This, in turn, enables chained Ignitions, which amplifies our add-clearing potential by quite a bit.
- Ember of Resolve
Ember of Resolve is a Lightfall Solar Fragment, and it solves one of this build’s most notorious problems – survivability. You have to forgo Healing Rifts for Empowering Rifts, and Healing Grenades for Fusion Grenades. This leaves you with no real defensive tools – to the point I was even running Heal Thyself with this setup until the mod rework.
Ember of Resolve, well, resolves that issue by making your Solar grenades Cure you. In other words, your Solar nades will heal you when you use them, and you’ll be using them a lot with this build.
- Ember of Eruption.
This is another super simple Fragment, and again completely unnecessary to make this Solar Warlock Ligthfall build work. All it does is increase the size of your Ignition explosions, and that’s all it really needs to do.
Of course, if you’re not running Incandescent, then all of these Fragments are useless. If you are a Calus Mini-Tool fan like myself, though, then you’ll be squeezing as much value out of that perk as you can, benefiting your overall add-clearing potential.
- Ember of Ashes.
Likewise, Ember of Ashes is super simple. It lets you apply more Scorch to targets, which means quicker Ignitions, which means more things die faster.
If you didn’t want to go with an Incandescent setup, you could swap these out for the likes of Benevolence and Torches – feeding into a Radiant system, instead. I have no way of generating Radiant in that build, so there is some lost damage potential for you to explore there.
Gear
Gear-wise, you only need one thing to make what I consider to be the best Solar Warlock build in Destiny 2 Lightfall work. That piece of gear is Starfire Protocol. If you’re a Warlock main and haven’t heard of this Exotic – then you’ve been living under a rock.
Starfire will empower your Fusion Grenades, and give you two of them. Combine that with Touch of Flame and you have two pocket mini-nukes, and I mean that in no uncertain terms – these things can solo bosses. On top of that, your nade kills will completely refund your Empowering Rift, and kills in your Empowering Rift will refund your grenade energy.
This infinite feedback loop should allow you to maintain a literal 100% uptime on your nades, especially if you combine it with Witherhoard.
Witherhoard deals tick damage and that damage counts for refunding grenade energy off of Starfire. So, if you pop a Rift or a Well and throw a Witherhoard shot down on a boss – the passive damage will constantly keep refilling your grenade.
The general loop you’re looking for is to combine Witherhoard with its Auto-Loading Catalyst, a primary with Incandescent, and an Auto-Loading Rocket.
The combination of both Auto-Loading weapons means you can juggle between them – throwing Fusion Grenades during the downtime while you wait for Auto-Loading to trigger.
You can solo two-phase the Spire of the Watcher boss with this build, that’s how much total damage it’s capable of outputting.
Mods
We don’t have too much to talk about mod-wise until we have some new additions later on down the line. What I’ve been leaning heavily towards, however, is Weapon Surges. These have effectively replaced Font of Might – but they’re so much better.
You can run up to three copies of this mod, with the following efficiency:
- 1 Copy – 10% more damage.
- 2 Copies – 17% more damage.
- 3 Copies – 23% more damage.
It’s worth running at least two of these, just make sure they complement the weapon element that you’re using.
These buffs passively drain your Armor Charge while they’re active. However, each charge lasts 15 seconds, and you can have upwards of five charges at any given time. That means it’s possible to maintain your Font of Might for over a minute – and that’s insane.
What’s more, any other mods you use that drain charges don’t impact the rate of drainage. So, you can run Font of Wisdoms on top of this for no added downsides.
On top of those, I also recommend the following mods:
- Time Dilation.
- Stacks on Stacks.
- Charged Up.
These three complementary mods will make sure you get as much out of your Surge mods as possible. Time Dilation acts similarly to how it used to. Rather than making the Surge last longer, it makes each of your Armor Charges last longer before depleting.
Stacks on Stacks is going to give you an additional Armor Charge every time you pick up an Orb of Power, although it does share the same armor slot as your Surge mods.
Lastly, Charged Up will let you hold additional charges, but it’s not too necessary to make this setup work. Five total charges are more than enough to work with.
Utilize this Destiny 2 Solar Warlock build in your game – and I promise you you’ll see results. Follow Gamer Journalist on Facebook for more build guides like this. If something’s breaking the META, we’ll let you know about it.
