Destiny 2 – Warlock PVE build with Winter’s Guile

Sometimes you really just want to punch something. Maybe Master Rahool gave you another Edge Transit or you just can get that Mindbender’s to drop from the weekly nightfall. If that’s the case then this Warlock PVE build with Winter’s guile is for you.

This build is focused on your melee abilities, charging them up as fast as possible as well as increasing the damage up to 5 times with these exotic gloves. Winter’s Guile combined with Devour turns the once-friendly Warlock into a fight, puncher that wouldn’t be out of place in an East End pub.

Let’s have a closer look at the build ingredients:

• Attunement of Hunger (Bottom Tree Voidwalker)
• Winter’s Guile (Exotic gloves)
• Monte Carlo
• One-two punch shotgun

Let’s have a look in a little more detail:

Subclass – Attunement of Hunger (Bottom Tree Voidwalker)

Feed the Void – Consume your grenade energy to regenerate your health. Grants the Devour effect.

Devour – Kills with this melee ability fully regenerates your health. For a short time afterwards, kills restore additional health.

Insatiable – While the Devour effect is active, killing enemies extends the duration and recharges your grenade.

Vortex – Nova Bomb creates a singularity which continually damages enemies trapped inside. Kills with Nova Bomb grant Devour.

We’re going to be using the Devour ability here which is going to keep our health up. Since we’re going to be using Winter’s Guile to get damage stacks on our melee ability with Warlord’s Sigil, having a nice regeneration of health at the same time will come in handy.

Exotic Armour – Winter’s Guile

These gloves were introduced back in Season 1 of Destiny 2. They come with the intrinsic perk called Warlord’s Sigil stating Eliminating enemies with melee attacks increases your melee damage.

This is great as the damage stacks up to five times. The objective here is to get a kill with your melee, get the buff and then get another melee kill before the timer runs out. Do this enough times in succession and you’ll get the five times stack, turning you into a tank with arms and fists.

You can get these gloves from Xur at the weekend or in random exotic world drops.

Let’s check out the damage of these gloves. For testing I went into the Menagerie and showed my gauntlets to some Thrall.

• 6,857
• 16,174 x1 Warlord’s Sigil
• 27,709 x2 Warlord’s Sigil
• 39,244 x3 Warlord’s Sigil
• 50,780 x4 Warlord’s Sigil
• 62,315 x5 Warlord’s Sigil

Exotic Weapon – Monte Carlo

This was originally introduced during Season 8 of Destiny 2, a returning weapon from Destiny 1. This weapon has become invaluable to the build creators due to its intrinsic perk called Monte Carlo Method. Dealing damage with this weapon reduces your melee cooldown and grants a chance to fully charge your melee ability with each kill. We also have Markov Chain where this weapon gains increased damage from melee kills and kills with this weapon.

Monte Carlo is great for melee-focused builds and I’m sure you’ve seen it used plenty of times before. Reducing our melee cooldown is going to be useful here if our target is out of range for that melee attack.

Weapons

One-two punch – Hitting an enemy with every pellet in a shot increases melee damage for a short duration.

You can use any weapon with One-two Punch. I was lucky enough to get a drop of Last Man Standing from The Reckoning.

One-two punch is going to boost our melee damage, so if you can go into an encounter with a shot from the shotgun, then an opening melee and then subsequent melee attacks with Warlord’s Sigil stacks, then you’re going to maximize your damage output.

Mods

Absolution – Reduced all ability cooldowns each time you pick up an Orb of Light.

Flare-Up – Immediately regain your melee charge when you or your ally staggers an Unstoppable Champion.

These mods are optional. Absolution is nice as you’re going to be reducing the cooldowns on all abilities when you pick up orbs, which you tend to do a lot. Then we have Flare-Up when you or an ally stagger an Unstoppable Champion. We’re going to be getting back our melee charge a lot anyway due to our weapons, but it doesn’t really hurt to get more anyway you can.

Let’s put it all together in some gameplay.

• Pick off your first enemy with your shotgun with one-two punch to get extra damage on your melee
• Punch and get the Warlord’s Sigil buff
• Punch again and get as many stacks as you can
• If you don’t have any more enemies nearby pick off enemies at range with Monte Carlo for a reduction in melee cooldown
• Shotgun, punch, punch

Let me know how you get on with this build and if you have any suggestions to make it better. Feel free to drop by the This Week In Video Games Discord to share your builds along with other Guardians.

That’s it for this guide for a Warlock PVE build with Winter’s Guile. For more Destiny 2 content like this check out the Shadowkeep Guide or check out the YouTube Channel.