Destiny 2 is slowly entering the hot phase as the new DLC “Lightfall” is about to be released. Therefore, we met with Bungie for an interview to exclusively provide you with some special insights into the new super ability “Strand” in advance.

Where do the infos come from? Bungie has conducted an interview with many editorial outlets, including MeinMMO. The focus was on Strand, the new ability in Destiny 2: Lightfall. Our interview partners were the long-time Combat System Design Lead, Kevin Yanes, and Eric Smith, the Gameplay Feature Lead. 

We asked you many interesting questions. 

• Including how you will unlock Strand.
• How it will compare to Stasis in PvP.
• And what specific ability options you can expect from it.

Since the interview was very extensive, we decided to split it into several parts. So stay tuned in the coming days to see what we were able to extract from the Bungie developers. 

The unlocking of Strand should be simple

What do the developers say? With the DLC “Beyond Light”, a class of darkness was already implemented. However, players had to grind hard to fully exploit the potential of the super after a tough grind. This should simplify in 2023 with Lightfall regarding Strand. Eric Smith said:

[…] Strand will be unlocked by completing the campaign, and you will know that as you continue, you can unlock more elements of the subclass kits. One thing we want to avoid is making it too grindy when you try to unlock your entire class. 

So it should become easier to unlock the complete Strand Ultimate to make full use of your new element. Kevin Yanes adds:

[…] We learned a lot from “Born in Darkness” [the lengthy Stasis quest at that time]. There are definitely some cool things about “Born in Darkness”, like a meaningful journey to a permanent upgrade. But the grind there was way too big, especially for new players who came in and couldn’t see the new stuff. […] From there, we created something like a “Take-a-Gift-Type System” where you can tackle things the way you want and earn them.

You can then decide for yourself at what pace and what you want to unlock. So you won’t be forced to shoot green crystals in Neomuna with a new Exo, as it was in Beyond Light. 

However, there will also be no quests like “Go to location X and kill Y enemies”. Bungie wants to express that it should not feel too grindy or too complicated and annoying.

Strand will still keep you busy for a while: As Bungie revealed to us, Strand will also be developed seasonally, similar to Stasis, throughout the entire expansion year. 

The plan here is to bring more Strand aspects into the game over all seasons of Lightfall. By the end of the DLC year, you will have a quite complete subclass kit capable of keeping up with your existing powers. And you will probably also discover a playstyle that is currently not available to you. With Strand, you should “feel like a god”.

Particularly interesting is of course the gameplay itself. So the question was whether there will again be synergy mechanisms with Strand that players can use? And here Bungie gave us a glimpse of the so-called “Clumps” that you can expect with Strand.

[…] Every enemy weakened by a [Strand] strand will turn into a Clump when killed. A Clump is a swirling, volatile bundle of strands. So after you have weakened an enemy with a melee attack or certain grenades, you can transform them into a Clump. Pick up the Clump, and you can throw the enemy like a bomb. Or you can shoot the Clump where it lies. If you hold onto a Clump, it will cost you neither grip nor grenade energy, so you can use the Clumps to set up “Gripper Arenas”.

Explained Eric Smith

There will also be various aspects, exotic armors that will change the entangling in many ways. The core description of Strand will thus revolve around bindings, weaknesses, and dynamic gameplay. 

And Bungie lets you choose freely from Lightfall onwards, as Eric Smith notes: “Use your instinct to just say: Oh, I will change the path. I will change the way I attack this encounter because I see a Clump there. […] If I can change everything in a dynamic way, then I can probably maximize my effect.”

Kevin Yanes particularly points out: “Things like grabbing a Clump, throwing it, and grabbing it, seeing that very Clump and following up with a grip hit is something you can’t do with any other subclass. But when you chain those actions together, you feel like a god.”

• Hunter Threadrunner: Silk Strike
  • Hunters weave a silk arrow to take down their enemies. The light attack throws the arrow forward to hit a single enemy. Hitting an enemy with the tip of the arrow deals bonus damage, and enemies defeated in this way explode. The heavy attack swings the silk arrow over a wide area, dealing damage to all enemies in the vicinity.
• Titan Berserker: Blade Fury
  • Titans form large blades on their arms as they sweep across the battlefield with light and heavy attacks. With light attacks, the Titans can quickly slash their enemies and build energy for their heavy attacks, where they swing their blades to shoot projectiles that bind and incapacitate enemies on impact.
• Warlock Threadweaver: Needle Storm
  • Hovering in the air, Warlocks conjure a wave of piercing Strand projectiles. When these projectiles hit their enemies, they detonate and weave into threads that pursue nearby targets.

This is how Strand will perform in PvP

A question that many players have already raised with great concerns is: “How will Strand perform in PvP?.” 

When Stasis was released with Beyond Light, the new ability was not only very powerful in PvE but also in PvP. Players could eliminate foes with the Glacier Grenade and its shatter in a blink. Also, the duration for being frozen was simply too long. 

This led not only to shards raining down, but also a lot of criticism, as there was an almost intolerable state in the crucible.

Will Strand be as annoying in PvP as Stasis? Bungie wants to reassure players with these concerns. Strand should not be as dominant and annoying in PvP as Stasis was back then. Eric Smith explains:

Yes, I think you know that Stasis was delivered with a 5-second stun in PvP […] It’s like being frozen and not really able to fight back. We wanted to avoid this hard crowd control [CC] and give you a way to fight back this time. […] If you get caught by Strand in PvP and are bound, you still have some movement control. You can still fight back by shooting and hip-firing. So you won’t feel as helpless when caught by the [Strand] debuff.

Nevertheless, with all the preparation, it will always be a balancing act. The Bungie team will primarily notice where there are still issues when “Strand” is released, which may need to be improved.

Stasis is a very powerful crowd control ultimate, and Strand is supposed to venture in that direction as well, just with a more pleasant kind and better entry experiences. 

Strand will give you a new sense of mobility

What challenged Bungie about Strand? However, the development behind Strand was not characterized by ease either. When asked which aspect of Strand was the most challenging for the developers, Bungie named two new Strand features:

• The “Grappling” or “Swinging”
  • A new feature that allows players to swing around like Spider-Man.
• The “Binding”
  • Players can hold enemies and Guardians in the air with strands.

When swinging, it was mainly about how players can use this feature of the Strand grappling hook even outside the new target location “Neomuna”.

This sounds very much like Destiny 2 will go much faster from Lightfall onwards. Strand will likely give you a new kind of mobility, and thus more freedom, which may also propel you into the virtual beyond at too high a speed.

The second and, above all, more interesting issue is how the new “Binding” talent behaves in PvE and PvP. 

In PvE, Guardians can “hang” other enemies like Cabal, Vex, and Fallen in mid-air with “Strand” with ease. While this is fun in PvE, it looks different in PvP because it makes you helpless. 

Already with Stasis, the total helplessness was a flaw that many Guardians despised. However, with Strand, Bungie wants to avoid exactly that and has now created something that behaves differently in PvP. You will rather suffer a debuff, with which you will also be swinging in the air but not completely helplessly exposed to a hail of bullets. 

How Bungie has precisely worked this out, we will probably only know once Lightfall has seen the light of day. Until then, how do you find the insights Bungie has shared about Strand? Are you looking forward to how Strand will perform? And what serious question would you like to ask Bungie? Feel free to leave us a comment!

New Exo in Destiny 2: Lightfall brings an intelligent Stasis ability soon for every class