Best Strand Hunter Build for Destiny 2 Lightfall

Strand Hunter is becoming a popular build for people stepping into the Destiny 2 Lightfall world and more and more people are looking into how they can exploit it. The build is certainly versatile and can offer a lot of options – from the “in your face” style of fighting to those more restrained and long-distance ones.

We have looked into Strand Hunter and the build we want to explore is the one focusing on massive AoE suspending/disabling and dashing out some pretty heavy damage. Dive in and see what build we have in store for you.

Destiny 2 Lightfall: Perfect Strand Hunter Build

The main advantage of this Strand Hunter build is the utilization of suspending enemies for a long time and using it for your advantage – whether to shoot the nonsuspended ones or to get easy headshots on those caught by the hard disable. Overall the build is going to have great survivability, great crowd control, and the most important thing, an amazing damage output.

Related: Best Void Titan Build for Destiny 2 Lightfall

Strand Hunter Subclass Abilities

The first thing you want to do is grab the Marksman’s Dodge class ability that will let you evade some strong attacks (especially from elites) and simultaneously reload your weapon. For the melee, choose Threaded Spike which will allow you to throw a bouncing dart that severs the enemies and reduces their damage. The more enemies the dart has hit, the higher the melee energy bonus coming back your way will be. Moreover, when you see the animation of the dart coming back to you, try clicking the bound button to increase the amount of that energy you’re getting.

For your grenade, pick Shackle Grenade that suspends multiple enemies after which it branches out to suspend some more. A great crowd control ability that you will base your build on. For your Super ability, we advise taking the Silkstrike whose primary attack is a single target dart swing that deals heavy damage, while the secondary attack involves you swinging the dart rope around you and dealing damage to everyone in your range.

Strand Hunter Subclass Aspects

As far as Aspects are concerned, get Widow’s Silk and Ensnaring Slam. The Widow’s Silk will give you another grenade slot, allowing you to use 2 Shackle Grenades. This means that you have 2 AoE abilities right out of the bat. I can already see all the enemies floating around and just waiting to be owned.

The Ensnaring Slam is taking your Marksman’s Dodge and turning it into an air move which you can now use to dive a group of enemies, and yes you guessed it, suspend all of them at the same time.

Strand Hunter Subclass Fragments

Choosing just a couple of the best Fragments for this Strand Hunter build would be hard. So, here are all the Fragments that can be incorporated into this build and you make your own combination:

• Thread of Ascent – reloads equipped weapons when you use a grenade ability. Ideal to use in-between throwing two Shackle Grenades.
• Thread of Mind – grants you class ability energy every time you finish a suspended enemy. Translated, it will recharge Marksman’s Dodge each time you kill those floating enemies.
• Thread of Warding – grants Woven Mail when Orb of Power is picked up. Good opportunity for tanking yourself up.
• Thread of Wisdom – killing suspended enemies creates an Orb of Power. Great chance to charge your Super and in combination with Thread of Warding, to get even more resistance to enemy attacks.
• Thread of Generation – when you damage enemies your grenade energy recharges which means you can use Shackle Grenade more often.
• Thread of Continuity – Sever, Suspend and Unravel last longer on enemies. Having in mind that you will be using the first two quite a lot this Fragment can prove crucial.

Strand Hunter Build – Symphony of Abilities

Now, you might be wondering how all these abilities work together. Well, the focus in this Strand Hunter Build is suspending as many enemies as you can for as long as you can. The key is that you use your first charge of Shackle Grenade to suspend enemies, shoot them, and as your ammo is getting low use the second charge of Shackle Grenade that triggers Thread of Ascent, immediately reloading your weapon, and allowing you to continue spraying the enemies.

After this, you suspend more enemies by diving in with Marksman’s Dodge enhanced with the Ensnaring Slam. Killing enemies that are suspended will replenish the class energy needed for Marksman’s Dodge due to the Thread of Mind.

Lastly, exploit the advantage of Thread of Wisdom that gives you Orbs of Power needed for your Super to get Woven Mail and upgrade your resistance. You should use the Silkstrike Super (especially the secondary swinging AoE strike) whenever you can, since if your Super meter is fully charged you won’t be able to pick up the orbs, thus you won’t get the Woven Mail bonus.

Mods on Equipment for Strand Hunter Build

Mods we recommend for this build won’t bring anything new to the above-described build but will instead boost it up. It’s crucial to understand that you can run the build exactly as described previously and use totally different mods. However, we assume you do want to exploit this suspension-oriented Strand Hunter build and buff it up even more so here are our mods recommendations.

1. Helm – the best mod you can use in your helm is the Dynamo which reduces the cd of Super whenever you use the class ability near enemies. Since you will be using the Marksman’s Dodge to dive enemies, this means that you will always automatically reduce your cd.
2. Arms – use Bolstering Detonation that gives class ability energy when you do damage with a grenade is a natural choice here since we will be using a lot of Shackle Grenades which, even though don’t deal massive damage, do deal enough to trigger this effect.
3. Chest – If you get your hands on the exotic Sixth Coyote chest piece definitely hold on to it because it gives you the Double Dodge ability. Yes, this means that you can use 2 Shackle Grenades to suspend enemies and then 2 Dodges to again suspend them again. Unlimited suspension!
4. Legs – Stacks on Stacks mod for legs gives the opportunity to obtain an Armor Charge every time you pick up an Orb of Power. Keeping in mind that this build doesn’t have much tankiness and healing to start with, this mod can be a great asset.

We hope you enjoyed our guide. For more Destiny 2 Lightfall guides see the best Strand Titan build and the best Strand Warlock build. Follow us on Facebook for regular updates on Destiny 2 and other trending games.