Ranking Every Warlock Exotic in Destiny 2 for Endgame PvE
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
- Warlocks are second in our armor exotic tier list queue! After the Starfire nerf, the default exotic pick is a little less straightforward, so here's my list.
Tier list: tiermaker.com/list/destiny-2/...
Scoring sheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
D2 data compendium: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Projects folder: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Twitch: / theaegisrelic
Twitter: / theaegisrelic
Speedrun server: / discord
Personal server: / discord
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:55 Aeon Soul
02:07 Apotheosis Veil
03:24 Astrocyte Verse
04:31 Ballidorse Wrathweavers
06:31 Boots of the Assembler
08:21 Briarbinds
09:59 Cenotaph Mask
11:56 Chromatic Fire
13:11 Claws of Ahamkara
14:12 Contraverse Hold
15:52 Crown of Tempests
16:55 Dawn Chorus
17:57 Eye of Another World
19:00 Fallen Sunstar
20:07 Felwinter's Helm
21:50 Geomag Stabilizers
23:15 Getaway Artist
24:12 Karnstein Armlets
25:17 Lunafaction Boots
26:25 Mantle of Battle Harmony
28:00 Necrotic Grip
29:43 Nezarec's Sin
30:56 Nothing Manacles
31:34 Ophidian Aspect
32:53 Osmiomancy Gloves
34:08 Phoenix Protocol
36:04 Promethium Spur
37:27 Rain of Fire
40:08 Sanguine Alchemy
41:25 Secant Filaments
42:40 Skull of Dire Ahamkara
43:50 Starfire Protocol
45:43 Stormdancer's Brace
46:58 Sunbracers
47:54 Swarmers
49:05 The Stag
50:16 Transversive Steps
51:35 Verity's Brow
55:07 Vesper of Radius
56:30 Wings of Sacred Dawn
57:11 Winter's Guile
58:26 Outro - Ігри
I stopped doing disclaimers in front of my videos to avoid bulking the intro but it seems like there are plenty of comments abound that remind me that it's warranted. So here it is:
This list (and this channel) is designed around optimal endgame play, meaning that all of these exotics are ranked based on their overall viability assuming you are playing optimally with other optimal players. That means that options like Contraverse see next to no use, despite being pretty decent exotics that offer good uptime and survivability. Similar comments were made about exotics like Briarbinds and Boots of the Assembler, with people bringing up their neutral potency when other options overshadow them in neutral gameplay, whereas their only niche in optimal play is debuff extension cycling and an on-cast 35% damage buff. Hope this clears things up!
the "optimality" of this tier list makes it more niche. not everybody has groups of friends to do endgame content "optimally". for people like me who does lfg gms all the time, putting phoenix protocol to B tier is sacreligious. putting down the well far away from enemies and killing them all with wish-ender may not be optimal, but it's safe and reliable(especially if you have another phoenix protocol user). sunbracers is a lot more unforgiving if you fuck up, like your teammate getting your melee kill. just having to be close to enemies to get the melee kill is already making it risky for an lfg group. thunderlord is praised for the same reason, safe and reliable, but far from optimal. i think majority of the player base don't have friend groups to play because this game made it impossible to make friends. d2 just doesn't deserve the MMO title. there are no social spaces, only patrol zones with very small number of players who don't any way to communicate, like why tf can't i just enter and type something and everyone gets to see it, and this is why matchmade activities that are even a tiny difficult is so much pain, if your teammates don't KWTD, you can't tell them. i have spent around 700 hours playing this game, and the number of people that i can play this game with is still ZERO. i've tried so many clans and discord servers, either they're inactive or don't give a damn about any new members. i've started to play an mmorpg about a week ago, literally on the second day i made a friend who was really eager to teach me the game and spend time with me, it was that easy. i disliked this video just for emotional reasons, and you're probably right about nearly all of the placements of the items in this video. there's no d2 content creator who talks about this topic, i only saw one or two old videos. would love to see you make a video about this if you have any thoughts or ideas.
All you had to write as disclaimer is "All of this is just my personal opinion"
@@nihilitysAll I’m reading is someone who doesn’t understand the scenarios or the fundamental logic of how this guy places his items. He’s one of the very few highly educated on the topic of D2 endgame having multiple speed run records and takes into account people of his caliber. It’s not his fault you literally cannot understand what his perspective is. If you’re looking for an LFG Tierlist for gear then find someone who cares about that subsection, or not. Point is you’re criticizing someone on your standards that aren’t even what he’s referring or analyzing.
@@nihilitysYou good bro? That was the weirdest rant I’ve ever seen.
@@nihilitysare you ok bro
I love how Aegis is describing an exotic and its like "so basically this thing is dogshit, its completely useless. Its only for one thing and it's not relevant anymore" "and lets go ahead and drop it into the A tier. Or the "i actually really like this thing, I think its very underrated and a useful effect" "and into the D tier"
I think that's because he's speaking from the perspective of someone looking at the community's perception of the exotic. For example say that "X" is overrated by the community could mean that he sees it being used all the time and while it may be strong it doesn't warrant the usage rate in endgame content. Like when he talked about Pyrogale in Titan Exotic video. Edit: He also often cites previous metas. That plays into the overrated thing too, I guess.
@@parsus7797 who cares about the general community perception when the video is about endgame.
Hahaha yeah I get that a lot, I do like to talk about the exotic's historical use but at the end of the day the rankings themselves are simply based on the overall viability of the exotic in optimal endgame play
My original plan for the video was to try and keep the void soul on the minotaur for a whole hour but he was just moving too much man 😭
:sob:
A crazy good rework for swarmers would be for threadling final blows to spawn a additional threadling, up to a cap. Make this feel like you are the flood from halo.
Still annoyed that Cenotaph Mask didn't get a Xenotaph ornament for festival of the lost.
Like a Xenomorph ornament for a Halloween event.
Way too good of an idea to Bungie
Unfortunately we have never gotten any exotic armor ornaments from an event.
Sunbracers have basically been glued onto my Warlock's hands since season of arrival.
same. I love sunbracers so much they're extremely fun
They could literally give skull of ahramkarah 100% super generation if you get enough kills and it would still be very niche. I know because of obsidian mind in D1 was niche
plus eyes of tomorrow literally exists
Nah, OM was around in a time where builds barely existed, especially for Warlocks. No healing or anything past your guns and natural regen, no fancy chaining abilities, etc., so having your Super up a lot was very important back then.
I do admit that there are some exotics that have their worth up in S and A, while a few like Tsteps isn't as effective in endgame, even with benefits it provides (though, that part might be opinionated more so than objective).
Otherwise, a majority of this list is agreeable, and as a Warlock, I can see this being useful for Kinderguardians who want to get into Endgame content more. I'll definitely be sharing this with a returning player who'd be happy to learn your opinions over builds and speedrunning.
Cheers as always!
Stag is an exotic I've ignored for its entire history until this season. But in solo play on arc, it's so useful I never take it off now. If you're stacking other resistance modifiers from armour etc., you can become nearly indestructible in your rift - like, straight up tanking lost sector boss blasts etc. And unlike orbs or firesprites, ionic traces will come to you, so as long as you're getting arc kills in your rift you can have constant uptime on it. I've soloed every master sector this season with it. And in team play, having a healing rift on your ghost every time you need a revive, and sharing the constant damage resist and healing with teammates makes it super useful in any PvE content, especially with randos where you don't have communication.
I’ll use Briarbinds, Contraverse and Nez anyways because void supremacy.
Aegis you was right about them rain of fire them boots hella fun. Currently running a Vex build with it and man the way I could just gain grenade energy is insane plus I’m always radiant so I deal with any champ. I definitely my favorite build at the moment!
Swap Apotheosis Veil and Dawn Chorus. Dawn Chorus has been used for Solo GMs where it performs pretty well with a good setup.
Dawn Chorus will likely get a tier shift next season
@@TheAegisRelicwhy is it getting a tier shift?
I discounted its regen capability a little too much
I think there are some definite play style differences coming into effect here to. I disagree with a lot of what was ranked but I'm a solo player more often than not so I have to play differently than Guardians who have dependable fireteams. Appreciate the vid!
Extremely based for pointing out how OP RoF is. I have been using it since the 9th day it came out and haven't taken it off in both PvP and PvE except for solo content where I want to use sunbracers and swap to felwinters.
With Cenotaph vs Aeon, I’m pretty sure the boxes that Aeons drop have more ammo in them than Cenotaph. I think it should be in A for that. Higher risk but higher reward Aeons than the safe distance Cenotaph.
They do, but don't support multiple bricks per finish
19:43 The fact that you said this make me trust you SOO much more with your evaluations. I love your videos. As someone who loves build-making and looking at the exact numbers behind exotic armors I'm glad you realize how STUPIDLY GOOD this exotic is. Everything about it just works so well with arc: it buffs your rift defensively by increasing the recharge (by a stupid amount) and offensively by making it a high damage blinding machine (Even in GMs the damage is significant like what 15-17k damage per pulse). And the fact that arc warlock has an aspect where killing blinded enemies creates ionic traces and also the fact there's a fragment that let's you take less damage when surrounded. Triple Dynamo on your helmet with this exotic is probably the fastest super generator i know of especially in GMs where you're forced to hide behind cover surrounded by enemies. The one thing that the arc subclass needed was survivability and this ONE exotic perfected the Arc subclass for me
Edit: My bad if I repeat some stuff you say later on in the video. I'm commenting as I watch and you're hitting all the right marks
55:38 Just got to this part 🤣
I'm glad someone said it
Crown of tempests >
@@Zarrakon A good Vesper build feels like Restoration x2 for Arc. Survivability for me is all that matters and other than Solar warlock and strand titan there’s not much else
This video and the Titan video really hits on something that I try to tell my friends, which is that a lot of their exotics are either focused on a niche, but their niche doesn’t do much anywhere in the game, have very bland and vanilla effects that aren’t linked to a subclass, or have another exotic that fills the same role but better
I’ve ran stag for like the last 3/4 days ones, very underrated.
i love transversive and any movement exotics but placing them on b tier in endgame pve?!bro u are copium,they are almost useless,unlike sunstar,which is OP on arc builds
Yeah I'll probably rethink movement exotic rankings, just remember that I consider speedrunning part of endgame content
One more note on Boots of Assembler for endgame. The seekers proc ember of benevolence, basically giving constant massive ability Regen to your whole team. So you get a Well every 1:10 or so, everyone can spam abilities, and 35% damage for free every time with Lumina.
They do, but so does someone standing in your healing rift
@@TheAegisRelicTrue, but when is the whole team standing stacked in your rift? The big thing is hitting everyone where they are at, bang bing boom. It practically fills the whole team's abilities with each rift.
Not saying it's S, but way stronger than just good DPS rotations. 35% damage buff almost all the time for you and your team, a well every minute or so, and on demand ability for the whole team. It's pretty undervalued
@@misterguitargeekthe whole team doesn’t need to be stacked in your healing rift. Someone just has to pass through it every 6 seconds.
apotheosis veil in d and dawn chorus in f???
someone sure doesn't know the power of dawn chorus
You can use Dawn Chorus with well perfectly fine. It buffing Daybreak is just a very nice bonus on top of the increased scorch and ignition damage. Pair it with something like Polaris and you can wipe out entire groups in GMs with an ignition.
It's not as in your face as Sunbracers, but those can struggle in harder content especially if you aren't using Phoenix Dive and Heat Rises.
@@sayarimamani3605I understand this logic but it's really flawed. By the same logic, we can say every exotic other than sunbracers or ceno are F tier because you're not playing well or aren't as good as those 2. Dawn chorus is a decent exotic considering it boosts a super's damage by 90% (not even counting the scorch and ignitions it now also applies) and increases scorch damage by 200%, which is a great neutral effect considering most people have incandescent on their solar weapon
Dawn Chorus will likely be tier shifted up next version
@@TheAegisRelic my reasoning as to dawn chorus deserving a higher rating.
it's main effect is tripling all scorch damage. while that doesn't sound like much at first, most people use incandescent weapons and you apply sorch in so many different ways all the time.
it is essentially a free damage boost for using meta weapons
you also get 5% melee back per scorch tick allowing for more radiant amd scorch uptime. if done right, this can give you infinite radiant
the 90% increased damage to dawnblade is compareable to cuirass in terms of damage increase. in dps terms it's obviously bad as dawnblade is a roaming super by default. however you also apply 30-40 scorch with your dawnblade so you get free ignitions on top.
overall it will not able to compare to sunbracers, but it still has a lot of uses where it passively boosts your gameplay. especially in solo content where you aren't required to use a well. for example solo gms or general day to day destiny gameplay
Nezarec's Sin is such a delightfully fashionable helmet that it pains me dearly to see it placed so low, but I can't really dispute its actual efficacy...
Nezzy's sin would be alot better if Intellect mattered in PvE, and if Voidlock had a half decent melee. Warlock melees already suck, and Voidlock melee is the worst of all of the Warlock melee's
Your timing is impeccable.
A game changer for felwinters is a finisher rework where a finisher doesent debuff it charges a debuff melee either base or charged. While based charge melee can also still apply
That would be insane but way too strong. One player on well, felwinter helm and gally would take care of everything. A personal debuff or buff would be cool, but then kill it in fireteam use.
I can't believe he put 7 (seven!) whole exotics as *worse than* Apotheosis Veil. I mean, shit, I'll take a "my kinetic weapon blinds, weakens, slows, or scorches targets with a damaging explosion" over "lol I can get a single grenade charge but only when I cast my super".
The base class regen aura + nade super nade combo is imo more useful than an incredibly low damage kinetic precision kill-only explosion (most optimal endgame loadouts do not involve weapons that get frequent precision kinetic kills besides Wish-Ender)
That being said these will be reranked next season :)
@@TheAegisRelic Well "besides wish-ender", isn't that a viable reason enough? I'd sure like my Wish-Ender to become a simultaneous Blinding GL or Weaken Smoke Bomb on every headshot too. I get it, it ain't no Sunbracers, but definitely feel like that's just one out of 7 for what is essentially a swap exotic (another being Dawn Chorus, which is definitely also more deserving than Apotheosis IMO, it bumps the damage of any scorch effect into pre-nerf Osteo-levels of DoT). Looking forward to the reranking, this list definitely felt a tad bit more off than the Titan one. As always, appreciate the effort put into these and I understand it's optimal scenarios only.
This is an endgame tier list ... I kind of expected better from you specifically than a youtube-comment-tier take.
You are basically throwing if you're not using the top ~5 exotics on this list so I don't see why you care what the bottom of the list looks like anyway. That being said, I don't personally care if somebody in my group wants to be a goofy lil guy and run dawn chorus or chromatic fire. Just don't act like you are doing anything beyond memeing.
dawn chorus on F makes no sense. C tier at least
Maybe D
Mantle used to have that GM viable niche with Ager's that allowed near 100% uptime on Will Given Form (which may I remind people is a STACKABLE 80% damage buff and quickly ramping slow on hit) as long as you had ammo, but then they just...nerfed the super regen fragment on Stasis for no reason this year? IMO that fragment change alone indirectly gutted that exotic. Replaced those constant chunks of super regen with THE worst orb generation in the game (1 orb on 10s cooldown???) while still retaining the same -20 stat hit for running it.
To be fair though, if they kept that fragment intact, Cenotaph probably would have power-crept Mantle for that exact same use-case anyway.
Dawn chorus has melee regeneration on every scorch tick, use any weapon that scorches and you will always have a melee ready, heat rises is better but this doesn’t require you to be in the air for kills so it’s safer. Also worth noting doing a Phoenix dive during daybreak with ember of ashes is an immediate ignition for anything hit. This is great against champs and some bosses, you can just hit hit dive for 2 ignitions, and once you’re out use a normal dmg strat, only downside being the time it takes to do so, bogging down the dps. Niche but probably not f tier, considering the amount of ignitions you can get going and the regen on damage instead of kills
I might push it a tier higher yeah next version
Basically
S Tier - Everyone should absolutely have a build with these. Must haves.
A Tier - Best neutral game exotics so recommended that you consider these for builds.
B Tier - Solid exotics usually that can make or break a build. Pick your favourites and make those builds, they will work in end game scenarios!
All other tiers - dont waste your time unless you have a soft spot for one of these and really wanna make a funky build, it will most likely just be for fun rather than effective gameplay.
The outliers are the now reworked exotics.
Secants being able to stun overloads with Gjally is pretty dope tbh i used it on Birthplace of the Vile a lot since there were plenty of Overloads further away during GMs.
Yeah it's definitely a unique quirk
you should make a super cut of every tier list you’ve made so you have some 15 hour masterpiece
Oh no
Geomags is such an idiotic exotic. It's the ONLY super damage buff exotic, but at the same time it increases the duration of the super, essentially decreasing your total dps, because you can't use weapons for the whole of the damage phase. It's like they made an exotic for blueberries so they can say they did damage, when they have shit loadouts.
They should just make geomags deal more damage in the same duration, instead of increasing the duration ffs. Warlocks have no good exotics for super damage, and are always shoehorned into using well because of that.
Needlestorm and thread of ascent exists. Can usually match the arc hunter ..
One thing to mention about Aeons, is that they allow you to generate another orb of power from kill. Most people dont even read the whole desc, even the "sect of purple boxes"™, the first part lets you spawn another orb of power after 2 precision multikills. (data from DDC). So you can go sth like syphon, spark of amplitude on arc, reaper and aeons, to potentially spawn four orbs on one kill. (or in short time). And even if it overrides siphon, it still gives more super energy than 1x siphon (not >1x tho, again data from DDC), and you have free slot on helmet.
Edit: Also i wish wrathweavers actually did do good in dps scenario, would be cool alternative to well, or in the future sunsong, as a mobile survival super, (additional overshield, could even synergise with stasis overshield, cuz afaik it doesn't), or as a damage boost instead of well if someone prefers stasis
Yeah I think I mention that in the titan section, Aeon effects are hugely overlooked
Is there a good guide on playing Cenotaph Mask's neutral? During Crota day 1 my team's run died on Ir Yut while I was on that exotic and I felt like I was struggling to keep up compared to being on Sunbracers for the first two encounters. Was on Well with Lumina, POLR, and I think a linear (my clan is allergic to rockets >_
My team legit had 2 warlocks just chaining Well using Benev + ToF healing grenade + Dynamo spam by middle doors and spamming Ceno
the problem with cenotaph is that its in no way self sustainable. if you run ceno you should have some people in on it to take advantage of the regeneration; its basically 100 or 0. you either keep the ammo economy going and roll over everything or you run dry and become useless almost immediately because your saccing your exotic armor and an entire weapon slot. you cant be the only addclear and run ceno.
you need someone on ceno and someone that takes advantage of it. you mark all the yellowbars and your teammate gets to clear everything with ghorn. its a team effort (and to be honest suggesting more optimal strats on day 1 scenarios is reasonable). a more elegant solution if your the only one running it is to not be on addclear. for ir yut specifically you should simply be a wizard person. that way you get to occasionally proc ceno and still generate a lot of heavy for your team while not dragging down the clear capabilities.
all that being said, its definitly most optimal if you are stacking multiple cenotaphs because its effectiveness scales exponentially of sorts. the heavy you provide for each other is the addclear and 2 people can pretty much chain forever already creating enough heavy for the rest of the team.
Chromatic I think should have been D tier (not saying much). The precision kills also leave a status effect based on the subclass that you have so it also has that going for it. Obviously not good on some subclasses and better on other.
I find your perspective really helpful. I said before, it’s like Aegis’ Razor, the D2 version of Occam’s Razor and helps me cut to the simplest endgame truth of exotics, in this case. So helpful.
Bruh
Would cenotaph be good in solo content for ammo economy with double specials? Guaranteed special drops in champion dense content or something like ghosts with 3 hive guardians should be pretty helpful.
The ammo only drops when a teammate gets the kill
@@notcampers riiiiight, okay, that makes a lot of sense.
Ceno and Aeon are no-gos for solo
is rof better than t-steps for speedrunning? or do I want t-steps on for skips still (I want to get into speedrunning so im wondering)
RoF for neutral, Transversives/Starfire for skips
@@TheAegisRelic great good to know, is 100 mobility helpful? I have it on both rof and t-steps
Yeah to reach high heights sometimes
37:55 whisper of impetus also reloads all weapons, but stasis isnt really good rn, and the fragment is by far most useful on hunter bc of the double charges. just thought it was worth mentioning!
Impetus is good and I've actually used it on warlock with Claws in a speedrun but that's certainly not really worth mentioning imo
Chromatic Fire, Arc, Wishender. Gilded conqueror like 3 seasons ago using that set up. Unless they changed it, you can blind forever. Obvi no boss damage but thats never what causes wipes in GMs. Def reconsider F. It's got at least one application haha
another banger video about the best class in the game 👏
Another hour long vid. How do you manage???
Mental fortitude (disease)
I appreciate these videos. Sandbox changes all the time.
I'd say Phoenix protocol definitely has a use for gms if a niche one
If you're team is really good on heavy ammo generation you can use it with
Ghorn
Combustion
Eruption
Char
Ashes
To clear out massive groups of ads with ignitions and wolfpacks
Mostly good on the battleground gms since so many ads spawn
If youre carrying noobs this might be useful but for experienced players its a very slow playstyle and extremely boring to play. Just my opinion
Eyes of tomorrow
You could also use hierarchy of needs
Phoenix would be ranked a lot higher if this list wasn't specifically about optimal play
if we’re talking specifically gms, then pheonix is s+
Did a GM yesterday with Chromatic Fire on Strand for shits and giggles and I used Transfiguration as my primary.....I was doing work. Transfiguration actually hits pretty hard even in GMs, for a primary at least.
imo u r the best pve content creator, everything is based on facts. i joined d2 at lightfall and i gathered a lot of knowledge on my own, but ur videos still help me a lot. im gonna keep watching every new video and im excited to see how ur tierlists change over the time, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the vid. One thing though, when you were talking about effects that reload all weapons I think you left out the stasis melee fragment. I’m a big fan of using that alongside dragons shadow when I play stasis hunter. Still nowhere as bullshit as Rain of Fire though.
I'm aware of Impetus but it's not enough to save Revenant
oh for sure but I think it is a strong enough effect in a vacuum that if stasis ever becomes decent it instantly becomes relevant.@@TheAegisRelic
I'm wondering if it might be time to update these lists given all the buffs (and some nerfs) dropped since this video's release.
Updating soon (in the next two videos)
@@TheAegisRelic excellent. I look forward to it.
i think they should rework apoth veil to give you a kind of sunbracers effect after you super for a certain amount of time on all abilities, and maybe give it intrinsic ashes to assets and hands-on so you have some sort of rotation between using super -> abilities -> Super -> ...
Yeah something where you get insane ability regen after casting super would be cool, maybe refilling all your allies' abilities
@@TheAegisRelic yeah that ally support part would be very nice and certainly better than 25% class ability regen XD
Geomags also got neefed for pve reasons, you could finish for ammo and it take a little bit of super, but then you just run to top off.
I love Mantle with Graviton/Sunshot +radiant. Takes out the trash in no time.
I definitely think you should give Nezzy another shot. It's not just used for super regen, class ability regen meaning debuff extension, melee is whatever but more scatter nukes is never a bad thing. I'm not saying it's A tier, but not D.
With what they did to Special Finisher that concern is completely irrelevant (inf special finish bonds still exist lol)
Think you are wrong on Dawn Chorus. Understand your perspective, and that Well is just better in a team scenario. But for a solo GM (or with randoms) you can deal with champions really easily with a scorch stacking exotic primary (like Polaris Lance).
Yeah I think I'll shift it up a tier next version
@@TheAegisRelic I think it's all perspective on what counts as "end game". For you this is running every raid back to back in a total of 35 secconds. For esoterickk this is running every raid back to back on his own whilst making a Spaghetti Bolognese.
Regardless, I am always interested in what you have to say.
When you do the hunter one I want to see you put stompees in S tier without explaining anything and just see how many people get pissed off in the comments
If you use Eye of Another World with 100 strenght, you basically have weavewalk legit at all times with threadlings, 25 sec melee CDs
Im gonna need to disagree with a chunk of this list.
Necrotic grip deserves top of A or bottom of S. Its ALWAYS a good choice and makes any build with a weapon of sorrow feel an entirely new subclass.
Nothing manacles are At the very least above apotheosis. It literally gives you the second nade apotheosis does without needing to burn a super. Building into a scatter spam build with an demo adrenaline void weapon (duality smg) and echo of instability is just constant explosions everywhere. If scatters ever get a buff, NM will be the best voidwalker exotic.
Osmiomancy deserve a bump to A. They can be used with turret builds AND getting a direct hit with a coldsnap completely refunds your nade.
And swarmers are C. Threadling builds are surprisingly decent. And unravel coming from threadlings is noticable in gameplay because now, hatchling guns, weavers call rift, any tangle thrown ALL unravel that lets you hold your melees the combo a high value target with all 3 while not sacrificing unravel spam.
Like I prefaced, this is an optimal endgame PvE list:
Necros are good but force you to select specific exotic primaries to be used best, and even with those weapons, do not compete with the most potent exotic-based add clear abiltiies warlock have, and they are DEFINITELY not S
Please watch the part where I talk about Manacles :)
Osmio is low because stasis isn't good
Okay at this point I think you should watch the video
@@TheAegisRelic I did watch it. I just disagree.
I've tried builds around pretty much every exotic and brought them all into GMs.
The ones I talked about just feel way better than they were rated here.
One thing I neglected with manacles and osmiomancy is that you can build into tesselation with them from the 2x nade charges.
Which basically gives you a slightly worse, but surge matched, Izanagi if you can find a DPS weapon to match your subclass.
@@TheAegisRelicto this point doesn’t that at least place them in A? Striga can put clear sun star and the other exotics in A tier aren’t there for ad clear reasons.
Dawn Chorus scorch numbers go crazy when you have a vorpal gun
Dawn chorus has some niche senarios in lowman settings or whenever you need to extend total damage (trio master rhulk final comes to mind) and it’s not so useless I think it belongs in D
Oral damage? What kinda blowjob you doing?
Strong is niche situations still isn’t good. A exotic should be good in a multitude of situations, or make a previously weak playstyle become so viable that it’s on par or stronger then previous options.
yeah but their point is not that dawn chorus is good it is just that it's not completely useless so it doesn't deserve F tier @@Alckee6904
It is also really good for solo gms
Def deserves F, sunbracers make it look like a joke, really any other exotic makes it look like a joke.@@ssynths
41:00 sanguine works really weirdly with two tailed fox. You can get up to a 58% surge buff, by combining 3 different typer of surges. Chicken 2 sl made a video on it
So I've heard, I'm planning on testing it at some point
I really do love these videos as someone who loves optimization but as of recent I havent had a use for them sadly. These videos are good for getting 1 phases in master raids which I dont play because loot is ass, beating gms in sub 10 minutes when I can take an extra 5(or 10) and not care about rushing, or speedrun dungeons and raids which I dont do because I have no team (and im probably not good enough tbh).
Again I love optimization and buildcraft but for me for now its more fun to run briar binds ToM in a gm than cenotaph. Like I know that shit is bad but man the meta just gets way more stale way faster nowadays than it used to and with so little to work for in later game content I dont think the spared time is worth the effort anymore. But thats just me. I love what you are doing for the game and I am glad to come back for your opinion when someone ask me for a strat I dont know.
I already know the answer to most of these rankings as I've been playing religiously for 6 years but I still love these tier lists, keep em coming bro.
Gmeiners punching air after that nothing manacles placement
Yes thank you lol I was thinking the same thing lol😂
You insult me putting Fallen Sunstar in B tier. Like it is so much better than vesper because it allows for more ability spam for your whole team and doesn't require an in-your-face playstyle that Vesper requires. Put in a A-tier at least.
Vesper is better in endgame play imo (anything Sunstar can do is better done on another subclass, but Vesper has good neutral for solo imo)
I think crown of tempests can activate on jolts which don’t require kills. So if you have a voltshot weapon or the jolt grenade fragment it’s better.
It activates on jolt kills, not the jolt itself afaik
Phoenix Protocol carried us during ir yut contest. We just chained wells on the middle plate where you would do damage and called it a day. I ran on like 30 FPS the whole time but it was a really safe option. And we got a lot of safe aeon finishers
You can definitely chain wells without it (my team did so on day 1)
@@TheAegisRelic yeah im sure it works without, but we said lets better be safe then sorry.
And i personally dislike the sunbracers playstyle and our damage strat (Cataclysm + Div) didnt really need stuff like rain of fire or broodweaver/necrotic. Damage wasnt a concern, too. So i just said lets throw it on^^
I’m surprised you put Briarbinds at C, they’ve been glued to me since the season started, genuinely the most fun Void exotic we’ve ever gotten.
This is about optimal play, not fun. If it was about fun then Cenotaph would not be S tier
@@d2cbroWell I don’t really go higher than Master raids, but are GM Nightfalls really so oppressive that only a handful of exotic Warlock armors are viable? If so, that’s kinda depressing.
@@gavo7911 no, plenty of stuff is viable, but really only ceno is viable if you are speedrunning. Phoenix protocol is really good for casual runs, vesper is still good, sunstar and crown are both fun, contras/briars are fun too. Stasis turrets work nicely for crowd control (good on battlegrounds) but yeah to go fast you want damage output and ceno is unparalleled with its effective DPS (tons of rocket ammo)
Finally, a perspective that doesn't deepthroat Eye of Another World, especially whenever I say it can do with some buffs. Just give it a passive that when you kill the guy with a highlight it gives energy to your least charged ability. That alone would make me actually consider using it. "it's good with stasis turrets!" yeah and so does Osmiomancy and like, a hundred times better.
I like dawn chorus, I use it fairly often in raid scenarios and still run well over daybreak with it unless there's a couple people already on well. All you need is a incadencent weapon and you can kill a group of enemies with a single kill. It's not GM worthy but I've been doing raids on master with it without issue, it is nice to just take the easy way and scorch everything to death and spam your melee ability with the regen.
You can even build into the solar orbs this season with it to get massive scorch ticks.
All I'm trying to say is its overlooked and belongs in C or low B tier
I'm definitely considering pushing it up after splitting the lists next season
Sleeping on Crown. As someone who’s soloed GM the last 3 seasons, crowns is hands down better than sunstar in that situation and it’s not even close. People forget the regen it gets is also super regen. Add on that fact storm trance has high DR, and doesn’t lock you out of using your right and nade, which crown gives you insane uptime. It allows you to mow through things like crazy. For 6 man activities, I would definitely use sunstar. But GMs or solo, crown all the way.
But Fallen Sunstar also boosts your teammates' abilities and doesn't necessarily require kills. I would even say that Fallen Sunstar is better than Vesper because in endgame content its not ideal to be placing a rift in the middle of a group of adds. Whereas, with Sunstar, you can get ability recharge from a safe distance.
Sunstar/Vesper more applicable than Crown imo
@@TheAegisRelic sunstar is low key overrated. It’s ability spam and helping your allies. If you don’t have teammates, or don’t have many, then you don’t need that aspect. And it’s easy enough to run a few mods/weapons to keep your grenade/rift up time on arc. And crown helps out with it a bit too, just not as much.
Also Yes, crown requires kills, but that’s not a problem. One good pulse grenade and everything goes down even in GM activities. What’s really fun is getting your super within the first 40 seconds of a GM like Moon Battleground because you had 3 good pulse grenades at the start, and you then yeet the chorister off the map with landfall. And then clean up the rest of the adds in that wave with your super.
I’ll give you vesper has some nice qualities for mid game, but it’s definitely a lot harder to pull off in GM content.
Strongly agree. Crown > Sunstar for GMs. Sunstar struggles with ad clear vs crown with tickle fingers. Other than the buff to allies, the neutral game is equal, so I think crown comes out ahead.
@@d2cbro I don't do tickel fingers. Chaos Reach is better. Stormtrance is a crappy roaming super that barely does any damage at all.
Briarbinds C tier is the biggest crime since DB cooper
Will be updating this this season :)
Contraverse in B-tier.Cardinal Sin. You have to go out of your way to use any other exotic
I haven't used it in several years
Who tf using contracerse on solar or arc lol.
Huh?
Ill take briarbinds all day
Empowering rift isnt good for Boots of the Assembler, healing rift is the way to go. The noble seekers from it proc Ember of Benevolence which grants you 400% ability regen rate for 6 seconds. This aling with the extended rift duration means that youre getting super fast ability regen as long as your fireteam is somewhat nearby. The seekers actually go a fair ways. Its definitely not good for any encounter where you have to move a lot obviously, but if you can perch in a rift in an encounter its pretty good. Definitely need to use Lumina to get the damage bonis though. Youre pretty much always full on seekers with these boots on so you can just buff freely without thinking lol
The healing seekers have saved my fireteams a few times in under-light level content like gms. I usually use them with healing grenades. Definitely not a meta defining exotic because its not dps or free heavy ammo but its still really fun and helpful.
I'm aware of the seekers procing Benevolence, but you have max uptime on Benevolence just by having allies touch your rift - on top of that, this list is designed around optimal play, and at that level of play, Assemblers are pretty much only useful for their 35% buff
I'd like to see phoenix dive get incorporated in some way
Great Video
Btw I also use a build with Felwinters on strand with Monte Carlo and weavewalk, grapple procs Felwinters and I can spam weakening melees
I used stag on my void build when i first made my warlock. Nice to have if youre trying to learn how to play warlock
Won’t change the ranking but chromatic fires explosion is weapon dependent. So something like a high impact sniper or arbalest will yield a much greater explosive effect
I think the idea is that you’re not really using snipers to ad clear. As a primary with firefly would be better.
Aegis putting in real work out here
Alright. Let me make my case for Swarmers and Geomags.
I like them, so maybe I'm biased. I want to point out there is only one build to them that I can do and that is threadings. But I think that build is powerful in most add clear and Master Lost Sectors. Combined with Quicksilver or Rufus' Fury, you can pump out a lot of pain and with the threadlings unraveling as well, I think its great.
Geomags I think is spectacular. With an ionic trace build, you are building towards the super being generated super quickly and not only that, it lasts basically 1.5 to 2.0 times as long. So you are able to use your super more often with long uses. And while I haven't done damage tests, it feels like Chaos Reach does a good chunk of damage. And a lot of players have these from the beginning of Destiny 2 so it makes getting into the Legendary Lost Sectors much easier.
My goal wasn't to gild the lily but be honest. I think they are better than you placed them. While both of these are not full on meta, I think they have their big uses in game. Both help players get into the end game better and are generally amazing.
I'm gonna reevaluate Strand next season but Geomags are definitely outshined by both Sunstar and Crown
I’m sure you know (since you mentioned it in the Subclass tier list) but Whisper of Impetus also refills all weapon magazines.
Yeah, I actually used Claws + Impetus on Warpriest in KF runs but I didn't think it was really worth the mention
Does Celestial Fire actually work with Sunbracers now? I thought they were just “working on a fix” rather than having actually fixed it. 🤔
Yeah it's 100% fixed now lol
@@TheAegisRelic That’s awesome! Do you know if they’ve fixed the issue with Liar’s Handshake not working with Lethal Current too? They’d acknowledged both of those bugs in the same post, so if they’ve fixed one, it makes me wonder about the other.
Necrotic on Broodweaver dps was so good before Thread of Generation nerf
Its still viable, but not was it used to be
How would you put apotheosis veil in D tier? Makes me question the rest of the list.
This is pre change
its crazy no one has tried triple aeons strat
its very underrated
People definitely have lol
Swarmers def need some help, but the fact that threadlings apply sever is crazy cause your grenades recharge your grenades, and it makes threadlings able to chunk mini bosses and champs
If Threadling damage was increased maybe
The Stag being in B tier and you mentioning day 1 Crota feels extremely strange. It being useful on a day 1 melee raid boss (which im not sure it was) is extremely niche, for other end game content something like osiomancy leads to more effective DR since if the enemies are frozen you wont be taking damage from them, and Id even argue starfire protocol gives more effective DR for the opposite reason of osmio's since if you kill things then you wont take damage from them. Also, when it comes to getting your rift back you Vesper serves the same purpose without you having to go down to critical HP.
Stag is just unique in its ability to provide free 25% DR for just placing a rift, to all allies, which can be useful both neutrally and as part of a specific strategy
Tl;dr - Trying to demote stag is a strange hill to die on.
What a strange comment we have here. Riddled with falacies. That passive bonus damage resistance is not "incredibly niche" by any stretch, the only encounters in which it is not as strong are ones where you can't stand still at any stage - I cant name any encounter in the entire game like this. Therefore, stag offers a worthwhile benefit in all content, on all subclasses, with tremendous flexibility, just for putting down a rift. B tier is about right.
Next, your bizarre point on Osmio and starfire: the former only works with one specific build on what is currently the weakest subclass on Warlock. You have to make all those sacrifices in order to use turrets and get the stasis fragment DR, which are both great, but osmio doesnt offer you the flexibility of playing well, or strand lock etc. Starfire works on the best subclass, but keeping your fusions up is not easy - the irony is that you have to continue killing with your weapons while empowered to get them back (and radiant doesn't work) - emp rift is not favourable for staying alive. And while they're not recharged your benefit of "just kill everything lol, its the same as DR (which it isn't btw)" disappears.
Dawn chorus doesn't deserve F tier because it has synergy with the strand weavewalk aspect (The 2.5% melee per scorch tick on any subclass is the only way of regenerating melee without getting a kill by hipfiring skyburner's oath on the strand subclass, and the DoT activates perched threadlings while in weavewalk)
Let me get this right: you think an exotic should move up a tier because it provides melee regen for Broodweaver using Skyburner's Oath?
@@TheAegisRelic Massive damage resistance in endgame activities like Grandmaster Nightfalls is super useful, and the combo I mentioned allows for higher uptime on that without the need to get kills. Yes.
@@TheAegisRelic also as an addendum skyburners is just my personal go-to. Prometheus Lens also works. Anything with intrinsic scorch
I'm probably going to tier shift Dawn Chorus next season, but I really don't think Skyburner's on Broodweaver is a strong selling point for it haha
@@TheAegisRelic I reccomend giving it a try if you haven't already, it's super fun if nothing else!
Who else is waiting for the hunter video?
They need to turn Apotheosis Veil into a void Sundracers and give it a bangin' emblem
whats best for solar warlock in gms besides ceno? i usually just use phoenix, but if theres a better alternative, someone lmk!
Probably Sunbracers but Phoenix is safer if you're playing with randoms
@@TheAegisRelic i only really play with randos, but ig id have to make my own ads low enough to make it work. thx for the tip
Use Chromatic Fire with osteo, i used this combo just out of curiosity but it really works quite well. I would suggest using void, but you can change that for fun.
That still requires precision kills, I think there are better exotic primaries for that
cenotaph nerf incoming: brace for impact!!!
as it should tbf. pls just cap it to one ceno or one aeon per enemy killed and it would be much healthier very quickly
Just the other night I ranted to my buddies how over half the warlock exotics are either overshadowed, or just useless. The tier list speaks truth, and it hurts…
this is just the same for every class. each class has their own option of top 3 that cover every single gameplay need. synthos and hoil invalidate 95% of titan exotics cenotaph rof and sunbracers pop off for warlocks and hunters get held hostage by ses, rdm and foetracer.
once you start optimizing stuff you notice how poorly this game is balanced and how little most of the community realizes it.
I don’t find sunbracers easy to proc in high end like gm’s
Prime the target before meleeing it.
My strat is damaging a red bar or yellow bar(non-mini boss) to finisher range then incin snap them. Even 25 under the incin+ignite will trigger sunbracers. Then free add clear
I've heard this complaint before and personally I've never had this issue
the trick is to figure out a way to consistently get melee kills. gms are obviously tuned so that you cant just melee something to proc them but knowing that you can for example arby body + snap certain enemies for a guaranteed proc will make it easier and more consistent. this is obviously specific to your weapon setups and enemy types but you get the idea.
@@TheAegisRelicI definitely did when first playing GM’s, just takes some game knowledge. In low tier content you can miss most of the melee on full health targets and still trigger it while in a gm you gotta prime beefier red bars like knights to get the melee kill.
Personality rate Karnsteins in high C tier especially in non boss encounters. And paird with winterbite on stais with ice flare bolts. Definitely good in a few dungeon and non boss regular raid encounters not quite gm or master raid and master dungeon.
warlock is also glue to well with sunbracer and phoenix tbh
Tbh phoenix has been powercrept by super energy generating mods.
Wrong tho
biggest L casual take
Because teams will complain or boot you if you don’t have well
Hey it was all about Starfire before so I’m okay with Sunbracers. I was a fan since before the nerf
I don't think it's fair to rank Osmiomancy Gloves so low in B tier bc stasis is bad when you ranked Stronghold as S tier for titans despite swords also being bad, if not worse than stasis.
edit: I also think you rated Transversive Steps too highly. it is incredibly niche in pve, significantly more so than many of the other exotics you placed in B or C tier. imo it's almost strictly a pvp exotic
otherwise I agree with pretty much this entire list. I main warlock 100% of the time for end game pve (my titan and hunter are my casual chars), and your observations match up closely to what I use and see used by other warlocks.
I think Vesper should be at B-tier and Fallen Sunstar at A-Tier. Vesper requires you to be dangerously close to enemies and that is not ideal in content like GMs. Fallen Sunstar is like a 10x better Crown of Tempests that doesn't even require kills to work.
Strongholds are definitely getting tier shifted down next version
Speedrunning is part of endgame content to me, and Transversives get used a lot there, but I'll probably move it lower next version
As for the other comment, Vesper is literally used in solo GMs frequently lol
@@TheAegisRelicoh fs I'm not trying to suggest Transversive Steps are D tier or anything lol, I just felt that they should be in the lower half of B tier. I'll defer to you on its prevalence in speed running tho, since I primarily do GMs and low mans
the thing is vesper enables you to be this close. your a lot safer 5 meters from enemies with vesper than you are 30 meters from them with fallen sunstar. it blinds everything thats not a champion or bosses so the situation in which you cant go super close are very rare and easily avoidable. it also provides strong ability uptime through grenade energy on rift and so on, combined with 1 minute cooldown chaos reaches due to dynamo.
additionally, vesper does it unconditionally. sunstar relies a lot on enough addclear to generate its optimal output (which is still worse than vesper) while all vesper needs is 2 or so adds closeby. @@luckytheprotoboi826
Felwinters is tons of fun with strand melees
I agree with almost everything. Personally Lunas and Phoenix deserve S tier.
Good team support and great for solo builds.
Thanks again
feel like some of these aren't getting properly rated. briarbinds getting a low rating because it's not used in a dps strategy is a bit silly when that's not the only place you should be considering an exotic, and also imo it does contraverses' job better now since the constant sucks get you the grenade energy back anyway and applies weaken in a larger radius (also I don't know what you mean by devour on charged nades?)
Also boots of the assembler are definitely not niche. Use healing rift and you can cover teammates in a large area with constant auto tracking healing that doesn't lock you into a healing grenade and ember of benevolence is a constant 400% base regen on your abilities.
And F tier being that the exotic is a downgrade and you put dawn chorus in there when its a 200% scorch damage increase (are we pretending incandescent isn't one of the more popular perks?) and massively improves daybreak super.
I was probably talking about old bottom tree Voidwalker, but Briarbinds got a lower rating because that's literally all it would be used for in optimal endgame content, Voidwalker as a whole is much less relevant than it used to be
Assembler is niche because its effect is cool but isn't worth it over any of the exotics over it (they either have more important niches or are generally more applicable)
Incandescent scorch damage is a joke - Dawn Chorus will likely be moved up in the future, but for its scorch regen properties (I also literally talked about Daybreak and how I think dropping a Well for a mediocre damage super is also a bad idea)
Not sure if it was patched but rain of fire was working with broodweaver and was doing some good numbers
Nah Weavewalk on RoF is damage loss
Ouch. Manacles placement hurt. Ive been farming for them after watching a couple of build vids. As a void warlock guess im sticking with contraverse hold.
Going to revisit this list this season :)
I saw briarbinds be used on master trio warpriest
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