After months of waiting, Destiny 2: Lightfall has arrived, but it’s not taken players long to find a big problem with Strand, Lightfall’s new subclass.
Following on from the success of The Witch Queen, Destiny 2: Lightfall brings players one step closer to the end of the game’s overarching story, and in doing so has welcomed the Strand subclass to the fold.
Like Beyond Light’s Stasis, Strand is an interesting new addition that can be permanently unlocked and features prominently in the Lightfall campaign.
Eager Destiny 2 fans have already been hands-on with Lightfall, with some making it to the end of the game already, and have voiced their displeasure over a certain aspect (no pun intended) of Strand.
The Strand cooldown feels too long in Destiny 2: Lightfall
Just as in Beyond Light, Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion spends a lot of the campaign teaching players how to best use the Strand subclass.
It can eventually be unlocked, but it seems that when you do, Strand’s much-hyped grapple mechanic suffers a great cooldown penalty.
“Getting to play the entire story with a fast-recharging grapple only to unlock Strand and discover that the fastest cooldown you can get is almost a minute feels like s**t,” said one frustrated Destiny 2 Reddit post.
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The OP continued: “At first, I was expecting maybe a 20-second cooldown since you sacrifice a grenade and the punch is dangerous without doing a ton of damage. Once all the cooldowns got normal during the campaign, I started to assume that short couple of seconds was the cooldown, and I was ecstatic. After the campaign. Yeesh. I just don’t think the grapple is good enough vs a grenade to warrant anything over 30 seconds, let alone double that.”
The OP certainly wasn’t alone with this though, with one user commenting: “This is something Bungie does not understand in the slightest. You need something strong in the game. Not just neutral but STRONG. You will still need to be careful in difficult content but people don’t have the time to grind out hours each day anyway so rather be a bit more overpowered than underpowered.”
Another upvoted user believes that a simple sacrifice could be made: “It feels like losing your grenade is already a pretty massive price to pay for grapple, so why not make the grapple have a really quick cooldown?”
Needless to say, there’s a bit of a mixed reaction to Strand in the early stages of Destiny 2: Lightfall, so we might have to see if the consensus changes once the dust begins to settle.
However, it’s important to remember, many of the fragments for the subclass are still locked. Players won’t be able to contend with Strand in its entirety until at least March 10 after the World’s First Raid Race is over. Perhaps some builds will emerge that really unlock the power of the subclass and make it come into its own. Thus far Woven Mail looks like it could be very powerful, but that isn’t the grapple fantasy some players will be hoping for.
We ourselves believe that Destiny 2: Lightfall has plenty of bright moments, but has it missed a big opportunity?
