Lightfall is less than a month away and the previews for this new Destiny 2 expansion are in full swing. Along with a new destination and story, one of Lightfalls’ most significant additions is the Strand subclass. Like Stasis, this Darkness subclass is about manipulating the treads of reality and life itself. While we have gotten glimpses of various abilities each class will be able to wield, this is our first trailer and blog post dedicated to showing what Strand is capable of.
Before we explore each subclass, let’s go over the key verbs tied to this class. Similar to 3.0 subclasses, there are three keywords associated with Strand. The first is Sever, which debuffs whatever enemy is hit and reduces their damage output against you or allies. Next is Suspend, which allows players to lift enemies off the ground and disable anything they can do for a brief period of time. In PVP, any enemy who is suspended can slowly move and still fire back while in the air. Finally, there’s Unravel which effectively turns that foe into a Strand bomb. Hitting an Unraveled enemy will cause threads to explode out and attack other enemies around them.
Warlock – Broodweaver
Starting with the Warlock’s Broodweaver, this class revolves around telekinetically manipulating Strand threads to create an army of sentient, exploding Strand allies called Threadlings. These little critters will rush towards and explode when they make contact. Where things get really interesting, is if you’re a Broodweaver and there are no enemies around the Threadlings will just follow you around in the form of a Strand orb until more foes appear.
If controlling a horde of little green monsters doesn’t excite you, the Broodweaver is also focused heavily on melee abilities. Their melee is called Arcane Needle, which as the name suggests, sees the Warlock launch a barrage of Strand needles at enemies. They deal high damage and Warlocks can chain these melee attacks up to three times. Finally, we have the Warlock’s Super which is called Needlestorm. This is a burst damage super that has the Warlock hurl a bunch of Strand bolts at enemies that detonate and turn into more Threadlings.
We also got a look at the Warlock’s new Strand Aspects:
- Weaver’s Call: On Rift cast, the Warlock weaves three Threadling eggs, which hatch into Threadlings when they hit a surface. Any perched Threadlings are converted to additional eggs.
- Mindspun Invocation: This Aspect improves several of the Warlock’s abilities:
Titan – Berserker
Unsurprisingly, Titan’s Strand class is about causing maximum damage and beating your enemies to death with Strand. Their melee ability is called Frenzied Blade, which causes the Titan to dash forward and Sever the target. Similar to the Warlock, you will have three charges of this melee ability. This means you can use this as a way to quickly cover ground or just debuff a bunch of enemies around you.
The Titan’s Super is dubbed Bladefury (which is just metal as fuck) and causes their arms to become engulfed in large Strand blades. Light attacking in this Super will increase the speed of your next strike and start building up charges toward your heavy attack. Once charged, the Bladefury heavy attack will launch two projectiles toward enemies, suspending any that are hit and damaging them.
The Titan Strand Aspects are:
- Into the Fray: Destroying a Tangle weaves Woven Mail unto the Titan and nearby allies. In addition to reducing damage taken, this Aspect also increases the Titan’s melee energy regeneration while wearing Woven Mail.
- Drengr’s Lash: When the Titan casts their class ability, the Titan will blast forward a powerful ripple in reality, suspending enemies that are caught in the shockwave’s path.
Hunter – Threadrunner
Last, but certainly not least, we have the Hunter’s Strand subclass, Threadrunner. Embracing everything that makes this class fun, Threadrunners focus largely on mobility and using their new rope dart to strike enemies from afar. The Hunter melee is called Threaded Spike, which sees them launch their rope dart at enemies. It will then strike, sever, and ricocheted to surrounding enemies before returning to the hunter. You will gain melee ability energy for each foe hit with Threaded Spike and for pressing the melee button at the right time when the rope dart returns to the Hunter.
The Hunter Strand Super is Silkstrike, which shifts the camera to the third person and allows them to freely swing their rope dart around. Your light attack can be used in the ground or air and can be chained into other light attacks. Any foe struck with your rope dart’s tip takes increased damage and will explode if they’re killed. As for heavy attacks, the Hunter spins the rope dart around their body in a circle allowing them to attack in a 360-degree field. Both of these can be used in the air or on the ground and the Hunter can grapple more while in Silkstrike.
Here are the two Hunter Strand Aspects:
- Ensnaring Slam: While in the air, press the air-move input to slam downward, suspending all nearby enemies.
- Widow’s Silk: This Aspect grants an additional grenade charge. The Hunter’s grapple ability creates a persistent grapple Tangle when it latches, which fully refunds grenade energy when grappled to. Hunters can use this ability to set up chains of grapple points that their entire team can use, greatly enhancing their ability to quickly move around in combat and/or traverse the environment.
The Strand subclass will be available when Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion launches on February 28th.
