The Final Shape brought many new things to Destiny 2, but none has impacted the gameplay experience more than the new Prismatic subclass. It allows us to mix and match abilities from all the other subclasses, giving us more freedom than ever before when it comes to buildcrafting. For Warlocks, especially, we’ve already seen some incredibly powerful builds. In this article we’ll take a close look at three Prismatic Warlock builds for PVE!
Build 1 – Infinite Healing (Speaker’s Sight Build)
Exotic Armor – Speaker’s Sight
Speaker’s Sight has completely changed how Warlocks play. Now, instead of putting a Well down and standing by it, you can throw down a Healing Grenade and stand around by it instead! Sure, it might not be all that exciting, but it’s genuinely one of the best strategies in the game right now. The amount or Restoration you get from just throwing a single Healing Grenade with Speaker’s Sight on is unbelievable, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Fragments, Aspects, Abilities
- Aspects: Feed the Void, Hellion
- Fragments: Facets of Hope, Balance, Dawn, Blessing, Purpose, Ruin
- Abilities: Healing Grenade, Song of Flame (Super)
With this build, the absolute most important thing is the Healing Grenade. Without it, the Exotic doesn’t do anything. Other than that, most of the rest is ultimately up to you, but we have a few generally great options. Feed the Void is the most powerful aspect right now for general use on Warlocks in my opinion, as having Devour up whenever you want it makes surviving trivial (especially on a build that already does that better than most). Hellion is a good second pick because it gives you some bonus free damage, which is always nice.
The super ability and melee are both open enough that you can kind of pick whatever you want. Song of Flame is fantastic for survivability and ad-clear, but if you feel comfortable enough with Healing Grenades, you can always go for Nova Bomb instead. Fragments are the same way, but the most important one for this build is Facet of Hope, which grants increased ability regeneration cooldown when you have an elemental buff active. Radiant is almost always up anyway on this build, so why not take advantage of it?
How to Use This Build
I like this build in just about any content right now. From Grandmaster Strikes to Gambit, Healing Grenades with Speaker’s Sight are so powerful it’s hard not to use them constantly. I also really like this build in raids, especially whenever the Well nerf feels most impactful. There’s really nowhere not to use this build when it comes to PVE, unless you’re worried about having too many people running the same build. Even then, though, too many Healing Grenades are still better than the alternative.
Build 2 – Threadlings
Exotic Armor – Swarmers
With Swarmers, you get two really helpful bonuses. The first is the ability to spawn Threadlings by destroying Tangles, and the other is that your Threadlings unravel targets. This is more than enough to make Threadlings a genuinely viable option in endgame PVE, where they’re usually quite mediocre there. When paired with the various Strand and Threadling synergies in the Prismatic subclass, we have the potential for some really fun stuff here.
Fragments, Aspects, Abilities
- Aspects: Weaver’s Call, Bleak Watcher
- Fragments: Facets of Awakening, Blessing, Purpose, Defiance, Generosity, Protection
- Abilities: Threadling Grenade, Needlestorm (Super)
Since this build is all about Threadlings and utilizing other Strand effects, Threadling Grenade and the Weaver’s Call aspect are both obvious. More Threadlings is the priority, and these are two of the best ways to do that. Since Threadling Grenade doesn’t do a ton of damage or impact the game instantly very much, though, I like Bleak Watcher as the second aspect. Stasis Turrets are invaluable, and they really work well in any PVE activity.
Picking the super is also easy here since Needlestorm synergizes with Threadling effects. Needlestorm also does a ton of damage, even though Nova Bomb is better for burst DPS anyway. For your melee ability, you can really choose any you want honestly. Arcane Needle will synergize with everything in this build, but doesn’t do much itself. The Stasis melee is my favorite since it handles so many Champions and other threats with ease, but they’re all viable.
How to Use This Build
Using Threadlings right is really all about consistency. You want to be consistently making Threadlings and sending them all over the place. The more you spam, the better. Make sure you have a Strand weapon to go with this build so you’ll be able to synergize even better, and also make use of Artifact mods. You can use this build in any content as long as someone else is already on a support role, so I highly recommend trying it out.
Build 3 – Getaway Artist + Bleak Watcher
Exotic Armor – Getaway Artist
Getaway Artist is one of my all-time favorite Warlock Exotics. It allows you to consume you Arc Grenade (so make sure not to forget it) to spawn an empowered Arc Soul that acts as a turret on your shoulder. With it, you really don’t have to fight ads at all since it takes care of almost all of them. It’s one of few Exotics that’s equally as strong in PVE and PVP, and it really shines even more now that it isn’t relegated to the sadly still-underpowered Warlock Arc subclass.
Fragments, Aspects, etc.
- Aspects: Bleak Watcher, Hellion
- Fragments: Facets of Hope, Balance, Awakening, Blessing, Purpose, Ruin
- Abilities: Storm Grenade (required for Exotic armor)
Since this build just wants to sit around and do as little as possible while letting various abilities do it all for us, Hellion and Bleak Watcher are the easy picks for aspects. Bleak Watcher, in particular, has a unique effect here. Since Getaway Artist and Bleak Watcher both give you something when you consume a grenade (specifically an Arc grenade for Getaway Artist), you can combine both for double effects. Consuming just one Arc Grenade gives you both an Arc Soul and a Stasis Turret, which makes staying alive as easy as possible. Then you can also cast your class ability for the Hellion buff (another turret-like effect). It’s tons of fun, and in content like Gambit, seasonal activities, or maybe even some raids, it’s really efficient too.
How to Use This Build
The main objective here is to spawn Arc Souls, Hellion effects, and Stasis Turrets. All of that can be accomplished by just consuming Arc Grenades and using your class ability, so there isn’t much too it technically. This build stands out to me because it’s honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in PVE in a while. Again, it’s not the overall 100% best build for endgame PVE specifically. Speaker’s Sight is probably the best in terms of consistency, but this one is my favorite by far if I just want to have fun while also destroying everything in sight.
