I said in my Destiny 2: Lightfall review, which is still very much a work in progress, that the release of the new Strand subclass has been weakened by heavy time-gating for the Fragments that shape your play style. It turns out a lot of players felt the same way, so in response to that feedback, Bungie's unlocking all of the Strand Fragments in an update later today, March 2.
"We’ve heard the initial and constructive feedback," Bungie said in its latest blog post. "As with any new subclass in Destiny 2, we want to make sure Strand feels great in players’ hands once they’ve realized its full power, and that evolution doesn’t stop at day one.
"To that end, we’ve decided to release a live update that will unlock the ability to earn the full suite of Strand Fragments for all players later today. While these additional Fragments will be class-specific to unlock and you’ll need Strand meditations to acquire them, this should be a great way for everyone to experience more of what Strand has to offer before we head into next week’s raid."
At the time of writing, Strand is limited to a mere five Fragments, most of which aren't very good compared to the ones previously tied to the March 7 reset and March 10 raid release. Getting all of them at once will go a long way toward fleshing the class out.
It sounds like Bungie is also keeping a close eye on Strand's solid but not mind-blowing performance. "We’ll need to ensure Strand is balanced against the rest of our subclasses so everyone has a solid raid experience next week, and we’ll be keeping an eye on Strand’s performance as more players unlock it fully and wield it in the wild," the studio adds.
I've been parsing Bungie lingo for a long time, and this sounds like a plausible Strand buff to me, though it's too early to say, especially with a bunch of Fragments set to change things up. But I know I'm not the only one hoping for some shorter Strand cooldowns and greater survivability, so the next few days could be quite spicy for the many green Guardians running around.
Here's how to unlock Strand Meditations in Destiny 2 Lightfall.
