Destiny Warlock Exotic Armor Rankings

Destiny Warlock Exotic Armor Rankings by xpwn123

So after about 900 hours on my warlock,and collecting and maxing out every piece of exotic warlock armor, I feel I can give a decent idea of how these exotics stack up. But first, a little about myself to hopefully explain the few opinionated rankings you will most likely see. I’m trying to keep these objective, but when it comes to ranking, it becomes difficult to say one is better than another at certain points.

So I love the voidwalker class and wholeheartedly want to play it at an endgame standpoint, and have it be competitive with Sunsinger. I play an extremely Crowd Control style of play with sunsinger, but not as much with voidwalker. Utilizing double solar grenade (but I’m trying out fusion grenade right now and loving it) on Sunsinger, and vortex grenade on my voidwalker subclass. Yet I favor Shatter+Annihilate over Vortex+Vortex Mastery. I’m very oriented toward a straightforward playstyle that can be used both competitively and casually, in both crucible and PvE. I’ve played warlock since launch and have loved every minute of it, and I figured after enough playing I wanted to contribute back to the community and hopefully someone can gain something out of this post.

Disclaimer This post assumes you know the exotic properties of each piece of armor

Helmets

Skull of Dire Ahamkara – It used to be the best voidwalker exotic (sorry voidfang vestments) but with the coming of the Obsidian mind, it fell from grace, the idea was to extend the duration of Energy Drain to help refill your super gauge, but this is much less consistent and seems to perform significantly worse than its DLC counterpart.

Obsidian Mind– since basically the endgame idea for voidwalker is using your super left and right to stomp your way through whatever charges into your path, having the ability to theoretically throw out infinite Nova Bombs, and even three or four kills help tremendously. As far as warlock helmets go, this is definitely top tier.

Light Beyond Nemesis – Seems to be the most average of the warlock helmets. It’s always useful in some way or another, because the “generate additional orbs from your super charge” actually does something a little more substantial than it sounds, in actuality it increases the total amount of orbs your super can generate. The ability to revive and be revived faster is a useful ability no matter what activity you’re doing. So this class neutral exotic is definitely useful no matter what the situation. Also the ability to heal off orbs is extremely useful in CE HM.

Apothesis Veil – This helmet…well, honestly it’s hard to find a solid use for this helmet over any of the others, except for one area of the game. Crota’s End. Specifically the Crota fight. This helmet probably has it’s best use after the crystal room. As stinkoman1468 pointed out to me, the Light Beyond Nemesis helm is probably better than this helm for generating additional orbs in the crystal room. Although I believe that after that point, this helm becomes the king of Crota’s End.

Rankings

1. Obsidian Mind
2. Light Beyond Nemesis
3. Apothesis Veil
4. Skull of Dire Ahamkara

Gloves

Sunbreakers – So with the advent of the Claws of Ahamkara, the title of best exotic gloves has been taken away from these poor gauntlets, to say it straight up, increased duration of solar grenades just isn’t very good anymore. Solar grenades, and controlling the battlefield, while being a powerful and useful strategy, when a single warlock can carry two solar grenades, extending the duration is usually not necessary.

Claws of Ahamkara – The ability to carry two charges of scorch with flame shield, or carry two charges of energy drain with life steal/soul rip? Yes please! The overshield from scorch, or the heal from lifesteal/cool down reduction from soul rip, easily outshines the extended duration of solar grenade. It is life saving, and the extra charge of life steal has saved me in a pinch a ton of times.

Rankings

1. Claws of Ahamkara
2. Sunbreakers

Chest Armor

Voidfang Vestments – Well…Enhanced Axion bolt…umm…Anways, axion bolt is a useful tool, JtheNinja pointed out it increases the cap of seekers from 2 to 3. The real use is spawning with grenade energy. Note that this doesn’t apply to just voidwalker, and in crucible this is extremelyvaluable. The ability to spawn every life with 2 fully charged Fusion Grenades, oh man is it fun to just run around and give the gift of the sun to every enemy guardian.

Starfire Protocol – At first glance this chestpiece looks amazing, 3 Fusion Grenades?!? Well sorry, for some reason this doesn’t work, it seems Bungie never planned for any class to have more than 2 of any ability, and that hurts this chest piece. This forces this exotic to function very differently than one would first think. Basically this turns into being forced into using Fusion Grenade, and getting the Gift of the Sun perk for free, and then utilizing Angel of Light, or Touch of Flame as to not be redundant. Fusion Grenade is a very powerful grenade, but as far as damage goes, Touch of flame would be the better of the two in my opinion. This leads me to say that this is a decent chestplate, but it just can’t compare to the Heart of the Praxic Fire.

Heart of the Praxic Fire – So what’s to say about the Dark Souls chest armor? Well. If you play Sunsinger, you’ve noticed that when your super is active, it’s grenade spam time. This exotic makes the cooldowns even lower, so instead of throwing a grenade every couple seconds, you become a grenade launching gatling gun. If you use Gift of the Sun, giving you two grenades, and allowing there to be overflow reduction because your grenades recharge faster than you can throw them. Honestly, you’ll spend the entire Radiance throwing grenades, it’s wonderful. The reduction also applies to song of flame, making your allies recharge grenades faster than other warlocks without it. I haven’t tried this, but in theory, getting a group of 2 warlocks equipped with HotPF using song of flame, you could reduce cooldowns further than using just a single radiance, the only issue is that song of flame does not stack so 2 is the pinnacle for efficiency. There simply isn’t a single bad thing about this chest armor. It’s wonderful.

Rankings

1. Heart of the Praxic Fire (Was it really even a contest?)
2. Starfire Protocol
3. Voidfang Vestments

Second Disclaimer This section is influenced by my opinion more than the other sections

Overall Rankings

1.Heart of the Praxic Fire

1. Obsidian Mind
2. Claws of Ahamkara
3. Light Beyond Nemesis
4. Starfire Protocol
5. Voidfang Vestments
6. Apothesis Veil
7. Sunbreakers
8. Skull of Dire Ahamkara

Thanks for Reading!

Rankings for PvP

1. Voidfang
2. Skull
3. Claws
4. OM
5. Sunbreakers
6. LBN
7. Hotpf
8. Apotheosis Veil
9. Starfire Protocol