The Warlock class in Destiny 2 has changed quite a bit since its humble beginnings in the original Destiny. Gone is the Sunsinger, replaced with the Dawnblade, which, in the right hands and with the correct Exotics, can be lifted from a disappointing subclass into a damage-dealing monster. Though not all Exotic armor is worth using, if you want to increase the lethality of your Warlock, whether it’s the Voidwalker, Stormcaller, or Dawnblade, you’re going to want to focus on using the perfect piece of Exotic armor.

Last updated on May 14, 2024.

List of Exotic Warlock Armor in Destiny 2

Use the links below to jump to specific Destiny 2 exotic Warlock armor listings to learn more about each piece's type, intrinsic perk, and whether to use it or shard it.

For more information about other exotic armor in Destiny 2, be sure to check out our guide to all Exotic Titan armor as well as our guide to all Exotic Hunter armor. Check out our guide on all classes, subclasses and aspects in Destiny 2 for information on old subclasses and the new ones.

Skull of Dire Ahamkara

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Actual Grandeur – Provides additional damage resistance during Nova Bomb. Nova Bomb kills grant Super energy.

Good or Bad: A decent addition to any Voidwalker’s repertoire of killing tools. The amount of Super energy you gain off of Nova Bomb kills is impressive, especially when clearing a wave of enemies.

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Crown of Tempests

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Conduction Tines – Arc ability kills increase the recharge rate of your Arc abilities and extend the duration of Stormtrance.

Good or Bad: Crown of Tempests is the ultimate Stormcaller Exotic thanks to its main perk which helps recharge the Super from Arc ability kills while also ensuring kills extend its duration. Any self-respecting Stormcaller needs this helmet.

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Eye of Another World

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Cerebral Uplink – Highlights priority targets and improves the regeneration speed of your grenade, melee, and Rift abilities.

Good or Bad: Eye of Another World really shines in Crucible, where improved charge rates of grenades, melees, and Rift energy can lead to an advantage over your opponent. Its Intrinsic Perk is subclass agnostic as well, so you won’t be disadvantaged using it on whatever subclass you prefer.

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Nezarec's Sin

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Abyssal Extractors – Void-damage kills increase ability energy recharge rate.

Good or Bad: Though Nezarec’s Sin’s Intrinsic Perk says “Void” it can actually be utilized by any subclass, as “Void-damage” relates to Void weapons as well. If you can afford to have an all-Void weapon build, Nezarec's Sin is for you.

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The Stag

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Dearly Departed – Your Rift provides damage reduction to allied Guardians standing in it. Grants Rift energy when you are critically wounded. On your death, creates a Healing Rift on your corpse.

Good or Bad: I used to believe The Stag was a terrible Exotic all Warlocks should avoid. While I do not think it is a top-tier option, it does shine in a few instances. When playing Competitive Crucible, where death is almost an inevitability, leaving a Healing Rift for your team can give them the buff they need to secure a kill or two.

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Verity’s Brow

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: The Fourth Magic – Weapon final blows with a damage type matching your subclass energy grant Death Throes, which provides a grenade damage bonus and grants you grenade energy. When you have Death Throes and throw a grenade, nearby allies gain greatly increased grenade regeneration for a short time.

Good or Bad: Verity’s Brow will probably never be someone's go-to Exotic, unless something catastrophic happens to the meta. The damage increase from the Death Throes mechanic is a nice addition, though.

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Apotheosis Veil

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Insatiable – Immediately regenerate health, melee, grenade, and Rift energy upon activating your Super. Nearby allies recharge class abilities faster.

Good or Bad: Apotheosis Veil doesn’t really fit into any Warlock meta right now, making it unfortunately weak in all instances. However, its immediate health regeneration on Super activation is useful for a last-second save when close to death. It's also nice for giving your allies a little bump in their class abilities.

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Astrocyte Verse

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Move to Survive - Blink further and more frequently. Weapon readies quickly out of Blink and Radar remains up.

Good or Bad: Astrocyte Verse is a fairly powerful Exotic in the right hands. Having your weapon ready faster after Blinking will give you a competitive edge in Crucible if you're able to outmanoeuvre your opponent. Furthermore, the increased distance and frequency allows you to quickly reposition. In normal PVE activities, Blinking isn't really that important or even preferable. 

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Felwinter's Helm

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Warlord's End - Powered melee final blows create a burst of energy that weakens nearby enemies. Finishers and final blows against more powerful enemies increases the radius of the burst and the length of the weakening effect.

Good or Bad: Weakening the enemies around you is extremely powerful in PVE activities. During boss fights, killing an enemy that is close to a boss will increase your team's killing potential. Because this isn't a player buff, you will still be able to get the benefits of things like Weapons of Light and Well of Radiance. In Crucible, a melee kill is going to be less likely and getting one close to another enemy is going to be even less likely to happen.

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Dawn Chorus

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Rites of Ember – Your Daybreak projectiles cause targets to burn on contact and deal more damage to them. All of your burn effects last longer, and you gain a small amount of melee energy each time one of your burns damage a target.

Good or Bad: Good! Dawn Chorus takes the Daybreak Warlock to new heights, allowing it to deal considerably more damage. Check out our Dawn Chorus guide for a thorough look at what makes this helmet so potent.

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Fallen Sunstar

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: Ionic Conductor - Ionic Traces you create move faster and grant you additional ability energy. Nearby allies also gain ability energy when you collect an Ionic Trace.

Good or Bad: This is a pretty average Exotic for Warlocks. The ability regeneration is neat, which is useful for neutral game builds, but it doesn't boost the Arc Warlock Supers, which need help. There are better Exotics to be found elsewhere.

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Cenotaph Mask

Type: Helmet
Intrinsic Perk: High Priority - Steadily reloads a portion of your equipped Trace Rifle's magazine from reserves. Damaging a vehicle, boss, or Champion with a Trace Rifle matching your subclass marks it as a priority target. If any ally delivers the final blow to a priority target, Heavy ammo spawns for them.

Good or Bad: This is surprisingly powerful Exotic for Warlocks. Constantly reloading a Trace Rifle means Coldheart keeps doing damage or the Divinity effect stays constant. The additional effect means you don't need to wear Aeons to generate Heavy and can instead defeat a Champion from a distance.

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Sunbracers

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Helium Spirals – Increases the duration of Solar Grenades. Solar melee kills grant unlimited Solar Grenade energy for a brief time.

Good or Bad: An absolute must-have for Dawnblade users. Sunbracers makes the Solar Grenade a DPS monster. Scoring a kill with a charged melee lets you throw as many Solar Grenades as you can for 5 seconds, which works out to roughly 4-5 grenades. You will melt through combat phases in the Leviathan raid and strip away a boss’ health in Strikes and Raids.

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Karnstein Armlets

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Vampire’s Caress – Melee kills instantly restore a large amount of health and continue to restore health afterwards for a short duration.

Good or Bad: Though they suffered a nerf, Karnstein Armlets are still worth using, especially if you’re a Stormcaller, as the Stormtrance Super counts as melee kills. The recent changes gives a nice bump of health on melee kill, followed by continued health regeneration for several seconds.

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Winter's Guile

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Warlord’s Sigil – Eliminating enemies with melee attacks increases your melee damage.

Good or Bad: An incredible piece of Exotic armor that makes the Warlock one of the only classes to be able to easily solo high-level activities like Nightfalls. Every melee kill increases the damage of the next melee, up to 5-times!

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Aeon Soul

Type: Gauntlets
Intrinsic Perk: Choose one of three mods (can be changed at any time):

Sect of Force - Rapid precision hits with a weapon temporarily increase your reload speed and weapon swap speed.  When you stun a Champion or defeat a boss/miniboss, your nearby fireteam members gain a burst of grenade and melee energy. Aeon Cult allies who do not have the Sect of Force role equipped also gain a burst of Super energy.

Sect of Insight - Successive precision weapon takedowns have a chance to drop an Orb of Power for your allies. When you use a finisher on an Elite, you generate Special ammo for your fireteam; when you use a finisher on a boss or miniboss, you generate Heavy ammo for your fireteam. Nearby Aeon Cult allies who do not have Sect of Insight role equipped also gain a bonust o weapon damage for a short time.

Sect of Vigor - Gain class ability energy as your allies die. Gain full class ability energy when you resurrect an ally. When you cast your Super, nearby allies gain an instant burst of healing. Aeon Cult allies who do not have the Sect of Vigor role equipped also gain an overshield.

Good or Bad: This was once a terrible Exotic but now it is rather attractive. You don't even need to worry if your allies aren't in the Aeon Cult, but if they are they will benefit greatly.

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Ophidian Aspect

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Cobra Totemic – Weapons ready and reload very quickly. Melee range is extended.

Good or Bad: Downright dirty. Slap these on a Stormcaller Warlock and use the Attunement of the Elements perk cluster for increased melee range, and you’ll be practically sniping enemies with your Warlock slap. Enjoy the hatemail.

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Claws of Ahamkara

Type: Gauntlets
Intrinsic Perk: The Whispers – Gain an additional melee charge.

Good or Bad: This Exotic piece of armor is situational at best and likely only decent for those players who absolutely require a second melee for any of the Warlock subclasses. There is almost no situation where a second Warlock melee is more important than using some other piece of Exotic armor.

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Contraverse Hold

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Chaotic Exchanger – Resist incoming damage while charging your Void grenade with Chaos Accelerant, Feed the Void, or Handheld Supernova. Charged Void grenades return a random amount of grenade energy on a hit.

Good or Bad: Resisting incoming damage is a huge game-changer, especially in PVP. It just adds far more survivability to an already powerful subclass. Plus, being able to earn back a random amount of grenade energy means the next ‘nade will be ready even sooner.

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Getaway Artist

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Dynamic Duo – Hold grenade to convert your Arc Grenade into a supercharged Arc Soul. The Arc Souls functions as an autonomous turret.

Good or Bad: The Getaway Artist is an excellent Exotic for Warlocks who aren't looking to do maximum DPS damage with Geomags or focus entirely on ability regen with Crown of Tempests. The Sentient Arc Soul is a buffed-up Arc Soul from the Stormcaller's bottom tree. This thing lasts for 20 seconds and fires far more bolts at a faster rate. A great choice for PVP players who are looking for a little bit more damage when engaging other players. When using the bottom tree, the Rift refreshes the Sentient Arc Soul ability, allowing for a 40 second autonomous turret.

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Necrotic Grip

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Grasp of the Devourer – Damaging combatants envenoms them with poison that deals increasing damage over time. Defeating a poisoned combatant spreads the condition to nearby targets.

Good or Bad: Excellent! Necrotic Grip is a mean set of gauntlets that can kill waves of enemies with a single melee. Couple this with Thorn for some truly grotesque area of effect damage.

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Nothing Manacles

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Scatter Charge - You gain an additional Scatter Grenade charge. Enables tracking for Scatter Grenade projectiles.

Good or Bad: There are definitely better options out there, but Nothing Manacles do grant an extra grenade. On top of that, coupled with the Chaos Accelerant Voidwalker trait, you'll have a whole lot of Scatter Grenade particles homing in on your enemies.

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Osmiomancy Gloves

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Fervid Coldsnap - Your Coldsnap grenades have an additional charge that recharges quicker on direct impact. The seeker spawned from Coldsnap grenades travels further.

Good or Bad: Pretty good for Stasis builds that focus on freezing enemies as opposed to creating crystals. The fact the seekers travel further distances makes them tough to deal with in PVP.

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Ballidorse Wrathweavers

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: Heart of Ice - Your Winter's Wrath Shockwave deals increased shattered damage. Allies in range of your Shockwave gain an overshield and increased damage with Stasis weapons.

Good or Bad: Fantastic for boss damage and increase your allies' damage output. Try and work this into some of your Stasis builds.

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Briarbinds

Type: Gauntlet
Intrinsic Perk: One With the Void - Your Void Souls have a longer duration. They also gain escalating damage and durability as they defeat targets. You can retrieve your Void Souls by interacting with them, allowing them to be redeployed.

Good or Bad: Quite a unique set of arms that shake up the Void subclass. Void Souls are useful to begin with, but these ensure their damage output ramps up. 

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Starfire Protocol

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Fusion Harness – Fusion Grenades have an additional charge and recharge from empowered weapon damage. Fusion Grenade kills grant Rift energy.

Good or Bad: Situational benefits can be earned by using Starfire Protocol. They allow you to have four Empowering Rifts during the Emperor Calus fight, but it means missing out on using another Exotic. Back in the original Destiny, when grenades were a one-hit kill, having two of them was obviously a brilliant idea. Still, two grenades can sometimes be pretty decent.

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Wings of Sacred Dawn

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Tome of Dawn – When Dawnblade is equipped, aiming weapons while you're midair suspends you there for a short time, improving airborne accuracy, reducing incoming flinch, and granting damage resistance. Weapon hits extend this effect's duration.

Good or Bad: Destiny's in-air accuracy is terrible and mods and Exotic armor doesn't make it any more viable. These are useful only for creating meme content where you get sniper shots while in mid-air. But as soon as the enemy team catches on, you're just a floating skeet.

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Vesper of Radius

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Planetary Torrent – Rifts release an Arc shockwave when cast. Rift energy recharges faster when you are surrounded by enemies.

Good or Bad: Much like Starfire Protocol, the Vesper of Radius chest piece is a niche item. There's rarely a time when you'll want to keep enemies around you alive in order to simply speed up your Rift cooldown.

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Sanguine Alchemy

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Blood Magic – Weapon kills while standing in any Rift pause the Rift's countdown, extending its duration. Further kills maintain and extend the length of the pause.

Good or Bad: A perk change has significantly altered how this Exotic chest piece is used. By extending a Rift's duration, you can essentially ensure your teammates have a Healing or Empowering Rift for an entire add-clearing phase.

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Chromatic Fire

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Crystalline Transistor – When a Light subclass is equipped, precision final blows with your Kinetic weapon create an explosion in the element of your subclass.

Good or Bad: Chromatic Fire offers a lot of utility and fun for Warlocks who prefer a bit of PVE action. The added explosion of the subclass element is significant, making add-clear a breeze, especially when coupled with the already powerful Ace of Spades.

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Phoenix Protocol

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Battle-Heart – Kills and assists you make while standing in your Well of Radiance return Super energy.

Good or Bad: An excellent choice for any Warlock running Well of Radiance while in PVE, especially during the Last Wish raid. The Well of Radiance lasts a decent amount of time, so there’s every chance Warlocks will regain a respectable amount of their Super back.

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Stormdancer's Brace

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Ascending Amplitude - Each enemy you defeat with Stormtrance increases the damage you deal with it and refunds Super energy when Stormtrance ends.

Good or Bad: For those that like Stormtrance, this Exotic chest piece is going to be a decent pick. However, the damage increase with each kill probably isn't enough to outweigh the beneifts of Crown of Tempests. Following that, Chaos Reach is by far one of the most powerful Arc supers for a Warlock, rendering this Exotic one that will sit in your Vault.

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Mantle of Battle Harmony

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Absorption Cells – Takedowns with weapons that have a damage type matching your subclass element grant you Super energy. While your Super energy is full, you instead gain a temporary bonus to weapon damage of the type matching your subclass element.

Good or Bad: Average. While this chest piece does boost your damage output, it requires you to use weapons that exactly match your subclass, which can box you in.

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Mataiodoxia

— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) May 14, 2024

Type: Chest
Intrinsic Perk: Arcane Needles cause a suspending detonation.

Good or Bad: Not great, Bob. Warlocks already have access to a whole lot of suspend, so using multiple melees to do suspend is a bit of a waste. 

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Transversive Steps

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Strange Protractor – Sprint speed increased. After a short time sprinting, your currently equipped weapon is automatically reloaded.

Good or Bad: The Transversive Steps are too niche to be of much use to the vast majority of Warlock users. However, these can be good when using Grenade Launchers or chasing The Mountaintop.

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Lunafaction Boots

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Alchemical Etchings – Your Rifts gain the additional ability to increase weapon reload speeds. Empowering Rift makes weapons effective over longer ranges.

Good or Bad: While still good, the Lunafaction Boots used to be far better. The increased reload speed is nice, as is the greater ranges. These aren't really essential enemy now that instant-reloading perks are no longer a thing.

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Geomag Stabilizers

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Close Enough – Damaging targets with Chaos Reach extends its duration.

Good or Bad: Geomag Stabilizers might be one of the best Exotics in the game. Being able to quickly cap off a near-full Super bar is pretty handy but being able to extend the duration of the Super when enemies are being hit by it is incredible. When attacking a boss, such as one in Gambit or some high-level activity, Geomag's can rinse the boss' health. This is a must-have item for Warlocks.

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Promethium Spur

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Embers of Light - Defeating combatants or Guardians while Daybreak is active creates a healing and empowering Rift at their location. While standing in any Rift, Solar weapon final blows grant Rift energy. When your Rift energy is full, final blows consume your Rift energy and create a healing and empowering Rift at the target's location.

Good or Bad: Promethium Spurs are an excellent Warlock Exotic. Daybreak is already a powerful add-clearing super and throw in Healing and Empowering Rifts, and now your allies have more places to heal and more killing potential. These should be a Solar Warlock's go-to Exotic for the foreseeable future.

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Boots of the Assembler

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Blessing of Order - Standing in a healing rift creates Noble Seekers that seek out allies that are not in a rift and heal them. Standing in an empowering rift creates Noble Seekers that grant both you and your ally a damage bonus. Each time a Noble Seeker finds one of your allies, the duration of your rift is briefly extended while you are standing in it.

Good or Bad: Boots of the Assembler are definitely a top-tier Exotic for Warlocks, especially those using Well of Radiance. Being able to heal your allies from a distance is vital and helps greatly in the tougher, end-game content.

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Secant Filaments

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Devouring Rift - Casting an empowering rift will grant you Devour. Damage dealt by you and your allies from within your empowering rift will disrupt combatants.

Good or Bad: A fantastic Exotic armor option for Warlocks that need a more on-demand Devour. Furthermore, the fact it will disrupt combatants is huge for dealing with Champions.

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Rain of Fire

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Soaring Fusilier - Air dodge reloads all of your weapons and improves the airborne effectiveness of Fusion Rifles and Linear Fusion Rifles; final blows with these weapons make you radiant.

Good or Bad: I've come around on these boots. At first I thought they were too niche, but after using them in the new dungeon, the dodge-reload is extremely powerful, especially given Icarus Dash's short cooldown. Plus, Fusion Rifles are in a nice spot damage-wise for PVE, so applying Radiant is easy and it gives a nice bump in damage. Worth getting.

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Swarmers

Type: Boots
Intrinsic Perk: Swarmers - Destroying a Tangle spawns a Threadling. Your Threadlings unravel targets that they damage.

Good or Bad: If you're a fan of Stasis and want more Threadlings, this is the way to go. With your allies spawning Tangles, just blow them up and enjoy having your own army roaming around at all times.

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There are only a handful of Exotic Warlock armor pieces that are worth picking up, and most of those are subclass agnostic. The subclass that suffers the most from lack of worthwhile Exotics is probably the Dawnblade, but it has its own issues to deal with. Even if an item on this list of Exotic Warlock armor is consider “bad”, it’s still worth picking up and holding onto, just in case it becomes vogue in the future. For more information about other exotic armor in Destiny 2, be sure to check out our guide to all Exotic Titan armor as well as our guide to all Exotic Hunter armor. Be sure to check out our Destiny 2 complete strategy guide for more breakdowns on armor and weaponry.