Warlock mains are having a field day with the Briarbinds Exotic gauntlets, one of the all-new Exotics introduced in Destiny 2 Season of the Witch. These gauntlets enhance your Void Soul, making them overpowered when combined with the perfect Aspects, Fragments, armor mods, and weapons.
If you're looking for the absolute best Warlock Briarbinds build, we have all the info you need to make your Voidlock one of the strongest in the game. This build focuses on ability spam for a continuous cycle of Void Souls while leveraging your overpowered grenades to weaken enemies, produce tons of Orbs, and produce a constant cycle of Devour.
We developed this build based on insights from Destiny 2 content creators “gmeiners” and “Plunderthabooty.” You can check out the gmeiners loadout we used as inspiration here and Plunderthabooty's here via Mobalytics. Our take specifically pushes you to get as many kills as possible with the Briarbinds by emphasizing ability regeneration and by producing Orbs of Power, so note that this build is strongly suited for ad-damage rather than boss damage.
Briarbinds Warlock Build
You can earn the Briarbinds as part of Season of the Witch, so it should be accessible to anyone who has the season pass and is willing to put a few hours into grinding the Vex Strike Force public event on Neomuna or by completing Legend or Master Lost Sectors.
Build Overview
Here's a breakdown of the specs you need for this Briarbinds build.
- Class: Voidwalker (Warlock Void subclass)
- Super: Nova Bomb: Vortex: While this isn't inherently relevant to the build, Warlock mains generally consider this to be the most potent Voidwalker Super ability.
- Grenade: Choose an area of effect grenade such as Vortex Grenade or Scatter Grenade.
- Melee: Player's choice, though you may prefer Pocket Singularity, which detonates near a target, knocks them back, and makes them Volatile.
- When an enemy is Volatile, it takes extra damage and, after taking enough damage, will eventually explode.
- Jump: Player's choice.
- Class ability: Empowering Rift, as the cycle of Devour and healing will make you a tank against difficult enemies.
Aspects & Fragments
- Aspects:
- Child of the Old Gods: Creates a Void Soul upon Rift cast, which targets enemies and weakens them. Targets that are being drained grant health when running Empowering Rift (or grenade and melee energy if running Healing Rift). Defeating a target being drained by Void Soul grants class ability energy.
- Chaos Accelerant: Hold your grenade key/button to overcharge your grenade to make it deadlier and more effective.
- Fragments:
- Echo of Starvation: Grants Devour when you pick up a Void Breach or Orb of Power.
- Devour gives you health regeneration and damage resistance when dealing damage to enemies.
- Echo of Instability: Gives your Void weapons Volatile Rounds when you get grenade final blows.
- Volatile Rounds increase damage to enemies.
- Echo of Undermining: Void grenades weaken targets.
- Echo of Harvest: Defeating weakened targets creates an Orb of Power and a Void Breach.
- Echo of Starvation: Grants Devour when you pick up a Void Breach or Orb of Power.
Armor & Armor Mods
- Exotic armor: Briarbinds: Void Souls last five seconds longer, and the player can retrieve them by interacting with them to grant Void Soul Ready for 25 seconds. This allows you to redeploy it while keeping its kill bonuses, which range from 16.3% for the first kill to 100% for the fifth kill.
- Armor mods:
- Void Siphon: Rapid Void weapon kills grant an Orb of Power.
- Firepower: Grenade final blows grant Orbs of Power.
- Bolstering Detonation: Creates class ability energy when you cause damage with a grenade.
- Insulation: Reduces class ability cooldown each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
- Innervation: Reduces grenade cooldown each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
- Bomber: Reduce grenade cooldown when using your class ability.
- Powerful Attraction: Collect nearby Orbs of Power automatically when you activate your class ability.
- Artifact unlocks:
- Elemental Orbs: Void: As a Void subclass, Void weapon final blows have a chance to create a Void Elemental Orb. You can pick up and throw the Void Orb to create an explosion that makes the enemies it hits Volatile.
Weapon Selection
- Weapons: Ideally, you will use Void weapons in all three slots for this build, as your grenade damage will grant Volatile Rounds. If possible, select weapons that have the Demolitionist trait or enhanced trait because kills with this weapon generate grenade energy (for the normal trait, it's 10% per kill, while it's 20% per kill for sniper rifles, shotguns, glaives, and fusion rifles). Plus, activating your grenade reloads your weapon. Ideas for Legendary Void weapons include:
- Funnelweb SMG
- Gnawing Hunger auto rifle
- Unforgiven SMG
- Glacioclasm fusion rifle
- Seventh Seraph SI-2 sidearm
The build is complicated, but it's extremely powerful in practice. Ultimately, the core loop here is to constantly generate Orbs of Power and Void Breaches for an ongoing cycle that grants Devour, replenishes your class ability to leverage the Briarbinds' buff to the Void Soul, and gives grenade energy — since your grenades will weaken enemies and thereby produce more Orbs.
But the devil is in the details. Initially, Child of the Old Gods combined with the Briarbinds immediately makes your Void Souls more powerful. To make the most of Briarbinds, you'll want to ensure you're generating class ability energy, so you can cast your Rift as often as possible. You'll do this by leveraging Bolstering Detonation, which reduces class ability cooldown when you deal damage with a grenade, and Insulation, to reduce your class ability cooldown when you pick up Orbs of Power.
The Firepower mod means grenade final blows grant Orbs of Power, and with the Void Siphon, rapid Void weapon kills grant an Orb of Power. This means your Chaos Accelerant-powered grenades and Void weapon kills will continuously replenish your class ability energy at a rate of 4% per Orb. While that may seem low, the rapid pace at which you're producing Orbs of Power means you'll be recharging your class ability at an extremely high rate.
Innervation also grants grenade energy when picking up Orbs of Power, plus you'll get grenade energy when using your class ability from Bomber and Void weapons with the Demolitionist trait. Because of the Echo of Undermining, the damage you deal with your extra-powerful grenades weakens enemies. Due to Echo of Harvest, defeating weakened targets grants Orbs of Power and Void Breaches, plus these Orbs of Power and Void Breaches also grant Devour for Echo of Starvation. With the Child of the Old Gods Aspect, all enemies you reach with your Void Souls also become weakened, which means they'll also grant Orbs of Power and Void Breaches when defeated as well. Also, grenade kills give your Void weapons Volatile Rounds so they deal more damage and cause enemies to explode.
Ultimately, all the Orbs of Power you collect are reducing your class ability cooldown, so you can continue casting your rift repeatedly and leveraging the Briarbands. Each time you cast your Rift, the Powerful Attraction brings nearby Orbs of Power right to you.
If you're constantly picking up Orbs of Power and Void Breaches, you should also have a fairly persistent Devour buff. However, if you're struggling to maintain Devour due to not generating enough Orbs of Power for a continuous loop, you can do a version of this build with the Feed the Void Aspect, which causes Void ability kills to grant Devour. However, this will make your grenades less powerful and slow your class ability generation, so you can't cast your Rift quite as frequently.
With the Briarbands, you'll also want to ensure you stay close to your Void Souls to keep them active and make the most of the Exotic. The loop means you'll constantly be casting your Rift to produce Void Souls while creating Orbs of Power and Void Breaches for Devour, and using your powerful grenades to generate even more Orbs of Power for Rift energy. If you're leveraging this build correctly, you can fully expect to be that person on your fireteam that ends the Nightfall with the most enemies defeated and the most Orbs of Power generated.
While this is an incredible build, we understand you can't always run Void. So, after you sample this build, you'll also want to see our guide to the best Warlock build in Destiny 2 Season of the Witch.
