Arc 3.0 has introduced some new and exhilarating options for Warlocks that want to rain lightning down on enemies.
One of the best parts of Destiny 2 is experimenting with its Exotics, armor mods, and subclass setups to find interesting loadouts for your Guardian. For Season of Plunder and the overhauled Arc subclass, some of the builds available can produce shocking results, pun fully intended. Warlocks have some great loadouts to tinker with, and you can easily live out your Emperor Palpatine fantasy with builds that channel pure “unlimited power” energy with Arc 3.0.
For Season of Plunder, one of the first Warlock builds that we’ve started playing with is a combo of new Exotics that’ll turn your space wizard into a force to be reckoned with. Echoing the Solar 3.0 grenadier build that was popular in Season of the Haunted, combining these two Exotics and fine-tuning your armor mods, Aspects, and Fragments can create a Guardian that disintegrates entire waves of enemies with relative ease. Here’s how you can turn your Warlock into an elemental force to be reckoned with.
Key Exotics
Expect Sunstar Exotic to become your best friend.
First up, you’re going to want to unlock the Fallen Sunstar Exotic helmet for your Warlock. If you haven’t gotten it yet, you can grab one by farming a Legend Lost Sector when helmets are available in that activity. Secondly, you’ll want the new seasonal Exotic weapon, Delicate Tomb. If you’re on the premium season pass, it can be obtained from Level 1 on that track, and on the free track it can be grabbed when you reach Level 35.
Season of Plunder’s Exotic fusion rifle is a beast.
To fill out your arsenal, the new Legendary weapons available in Season of Plunder also work quite well with this build and some of its melee-focused attacks. The Kinetic weapon category has options for a terrific Stasis shotgun and the Planck’s Stride machine gun is a fun Power weapon that unleashes a storm of Arc bullets.
If you’re unfamiliar with these Exotics, Fallen Sunstar’s key perk is that it makes any Ionic Traces generated move towards you more quickly and regenerate more melee, grenade, and class ability energy. Delicate Tomb has a chance to generate Ionic Traces when it eliminates an enemy, but as you’ll see with the Arc 3.0 Fragments and Aspects, we can go from “maybe” to “definitely” using the options available to all players.
Arc 3.0 Aspects and Fragments
The right tools for the job.
For the Thunder Wizard build, you should use these two Aspects:
- Electrostatic Mind
- Lightning Surge
With Electrostatic Mind, any enemies defeated with Arc abilities will create Ionic Traces and apply the Amplified buff to your Warlock. Targets that have the Jolt or Blind debuff applied will also produce Ionic Traces when they’re defeated. As a reminder, Jolted targets will chain lightning to nearby enemies when damaged, and Amplified increases your movement speed and weapon handling. Sprinting for a few seconds also increases your speed tremendously.
Lightning Surge is a fun Aspect that allows you to use your charged melee to cause some devastating damage. When sliding, you can activate your melee ability to teleport forward and call down lightning strikes around you when you rematerialize. It’s a fun way to take out a wave of enemies while minimizing risk thanks to the teleport ability, and as you’ll see, you’ll be able to spam this attack often.
For Fragments, you should use these four items:
- Spark of Resistance – While surrounded by combatants, you are more resistant to incoming damage.
- Spark of Discharge – Arc weapon final blows have a chance to create an Ionic Trace.
- Spark of Recharge – While critically wounded, your melee and grenade energy regenerates more quickly.
- Spark of Beacons – When Amplified, Arc special weapon final blows create a blinding explosion.
The core idea here is that you’ll be generating Ionic Traces more regularly and effortlessly. You’re also looking to add some additional damage resistance to your Warlock, the glass cannons of Destiny 2, and use your Arc 3.0 perks to create some overwhelming firepower. It’s worth noting that we’re still early into Season of Plunder, and there are other Fragments that have yet to be unlocked. Once they are available, the options to build your Warlock into a lightning-flinging machine will have even more Fragments to experiment with.
Useful armor mods
The new Arc melee is lethal and fun to use.
With Delicate Tomb playing a vital role, you’ll want to equip a Fusion Rifle Ammo Finder mod in your helmet and a Fusion Rifle Scavenger mod in your leg armor to keep those green ammo bricks flowing in. Elemental Time Dilation and Bountiful Well mods pair well, and with the seasonal mods available, Focusing Strike for gauntlets will also grant you class ability when you land a melee attack. This build won’t fall apart if you’re missing a few of these mods, but they’ll certainly help you get the most out of it. Otherwise, some high Resistance mods will always come in handy.
The Thunder Wizard strategy
Everyone gets zapped with this build.
Now that you’re locked and loaded with Arc energy, it’s time to run wild with this build. This is a setup that rewards aggression, as you’ll be able to unleash all of your abilities, eliminate targets with Delicate Tomb, and quickly recharge your ability energy. The beauty of this build is that you can use Delicate Tomb to melt the health bar of a single enemy and then watch them chain lightning to anything around them, or you can annihilate a mob with hip-fire attacks (which causes the gun to shoot a wide spread) as you’re bound to hit something.
An Arc healing rift is never far away, and you’ll find that the new melee Arc slide attack can be delightfully destructive when you land it on a squad of conductive enemies. You’re essentially a storm of activity, dropping grenades, jolting enemies, and dealing absurd levels of damage with abilities that recharge in a flash. If you’re looking to save this build for yourself and tweak it to suit your own tastes, you can download it here through the Destiny 2 Item manager.
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