Foetracer Strand Hunter Build
Last Updated:October 21, 2024|Changelog
Welcome to the Foetracer Strand Hunter Build! Foetracer gives you the effect of x4 Strand Weapon Surge with practically infinite uptime, this frees up a lot of build-crafting resources to be spent towards your Abilities and survivability. More specifically, the Whirling Maelstrom Aspect is your best friend.
Whirling Maelstroms form from Tangles you destroy or throw. They automatically track enemies and deal a massive amount of damage over time, automating most of your fighting. The aptly named Synergy Weapon Mod bypasses global Elemental Pickup cooldowns, effectively doubling your Tangle generation.
You can't expect your spinning death balls to do all of the work or keep you alive, though. To that end, you have your Weapons and Abilities giving you on demand immortality and Suspension.
WARNING: Strand Subclasses and Vexcalibur require the Lightfall DLC to be obtained. This Build cannot be played without this DLC!
- Woven Mail
- Infinite x4 Surge
- Strong Crowd Control
- Lower Burst DPS
- Limited Weapon Choices
- Weak Against Tormentors
Gameplay Loop
Focus on generating Tangles as often as possible, spawned Whirling Maelstroms easily do the bulk of the fighting for you. The damage they do procs Foetracer's x4 Weapon Surge Buff.
- Use your Shackle Grenade or Threaded Spike to afflict enemies with Sever or Suspension, helping you and your team stay alive. Killing Debuffed enemies creates a Tangle.
- While the global Tangle generation cooldown is active, focus on killing enemies with your Synergy Weapon. This generates Tangles and has its own separate cooldown, though be warned that doing this first causes both forms of Tangle generation to go on cooldown! This is presumably a bug.
- Collect Orbs of Power to heal through your Armor Mods and gain Woven Mail, keeping you alive.
- In grave danger? Swap to Vexcalibur. Guarding with it gives you an absurd 95% damage resistance while generating a Void Overshield, increasing your effective health pool by up to 75%. Kill with the Glaive's Melee to instantly refresh and refill the Overshield.
Ability Breakdown
Super
- Silkstrike - This Subclass's only Super Ability option. Use in emergencies to stay alive. This Super has high total damage with the drawback of low damage per second.
Abilities
- Gambler's Dodge - Instantly refills a Melee Ability Charge if used while near an enemy.
- Triple Jump - Jump of your choice.
- Threaded Spike - Throw a rope-dart that Severs targets on hit and ricochets between many enemies. Each enemy hit by this Ability refunds a portion of your Melee Ability energy - the rope-dart returns to you shortly after, use your Powered melee input to catch it and refund a larger portion of energy. This Ability is capable of fully refunding itself.
- Shackle Grenade - Throw a bolas of weighted Strand matter that detonates on impact, Suspending targets and creating additional Suspending subprojectiles.
Aspects
- Widow's Silk - Gain an additional Grenade Ability Charge.
- Whirling Maelstrom - Your thrown and detonated Tangles turn into spinning balls of death that track enemies, rapidly dealing damage to them for a long duration. It creates infectious Unraveling projectiles whenever it kills an enemy.
Fragments
- Thread of Warding - Orb of Power Pickups grant Woven Mail for 5 seconds. Provides massive amounts of damage reduction and greatly increases survivability.
- Thread of Continuity - Your Shackle Grenades Suspend targets for a significantly longer duration.
- Thread of Generation - MASSIVELY increases Shackle Grenade uptime.
- Thread of Mind - Killing enemies affected by Suspend grants Class Ability Energy.
Gearing
Required Gear and Weapons
- Exotic Armor: Foetracer - grants you a Strand Weapon Surge x4 Buff with practically infinite uptime, giving your Strand Weapons a 25% damage increase.
How to unlock:
- Complete the Vex Strike Force Public Event on Neomuna.
- Open Exotic Engrams at Rahool in the Tower.
- Purchase it from Xur in the Tower.
- This Exotic does not require DLC ownership.
- Energy Weapon: Vexcalibur - A stronger defensive option than all other Glaives, granting you Void Overshields and 95% damage resistance when Guarding with the Glaive's Shield.
How to unlock:
- Obtain it from the rotating Exotic Mission: NODE.OVRD.AVALON, find it in the Legends tab of the director when it is up.
Recommended Weapons
- Kinetic Weapon: Any Strand Ad-clearing Weapon capable of being Crafted or Enhanced, letting them use the highly synergistic Synergy Weapon Mod. Special Weapons are recommended but Primaries work too - see the Variants section for information on those.
- Iron Banner's Tusk of the Boar is the best in slot, it's great at ad-clear and synergizes with several Artifact Perks.
- Alternatively, use The Call from the Pale Heart or Incisor from the Trials of Osiris - which isn't as hard to get as you may think!
- Power Weapon: Wicked Sister - Envious Assassin and Bait and Switch make for a great Grenade Launcher. This one's pretty easy to get via Vanguard Engrams , but you can also use the Trials of Osiris's Cataphract GL3 if you got a god-roll of it laying around.
- Swap this out as needed for other Strand Heavy Ammo Weapons. Semiotician with your preference of Weapon Perks is great if your Fireteam is opting for a Gjallarhorn strategy, while Scintillation's handy if Precision damage is required.
Stat Priorities
- Resilience > Mobility > Discipline > Recovery.
- Resilience massively increases your overall survivability through increasing your maximum total health and giving you damage resistance.
- Discipline reduces your grenade cooldown.
- Mobility reduces your Dodge's cooldown.
Learn more about the Stats available to you in Destiny 2 with our dedicated guide.
Armor Mods
| Item | Slot | Mandatory Mods | Supporting Mods |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foetracer | Helmet | Harmonic Siphon | Special Ammo Finder Heavy Ammo Finder |
| Deep Explorer Grasps | Gloves | Heavy Handed Firepower | |
| Deep Explorer Vest | Chest | Resist Mods of your choice | Harmonic Reserves |
| Deep Explorer Strides | Legs | Better Already Recuperation | Harmonic Scavenger |
| Deep Explorer Cloak | Class Item | Powerful Attraction Reaper | Special Finisher |
Armor Mods are unlocked by progressing your Guardian Rank. Check out the Guardian Ranks Guide for more information.
Artifact Perks
- Overload Breechloaded Grenade Launcher
- Lets Tusk of the Boar Stun Overload Champions, letting you fight all 3 Champion types (While unable to Stun Barrier Champions, this Build's high Suspend uptime lets you effectively deal with these Champions!)
- Fell the Revenant
- Tons of Scorn in Episode: Revenant's activities, deal more damage to them!
- Killing Breeze
- Weapon Final blows giving bonus Mobility helps you meet Stat recommendations.
- Rapid Impacts
- Increases reload speed for your Grenade Launchers.
- Total Carnage
- Never say no to even more damage resistance! This build has no trouble finishing powerful combatants.
- Debilitating Wave
- Improves ad-clear in dangerous situations.
- Concussive Reload
- Your Grenade Launchers now do even more damage!
- Kinetic Impacts
- Your Heavy Grenade Launcher now does even more damage!
Variants
Don't want to use double Special? The Build won't work as well, though it works well enough if you insist.
- Swap Special Finisher for Healthy Finisher.
- Swap Harmonic Scavenger for Void Holster, eliminating the need to reload Vexcalibur.
- In the Kinetic Weapon slot, use any Strand Ad-clearing Primary Ammo Weapon capable of being Crafted or Enhanced, letting them use the highly synergistic Synergy Weapon Mod.
- I recommend Imminence from the Salvation's Edge raid, though there's tons of other options available if you can't get your hands on this!
Summary
Foetracer Strand Hunter makes for a versatile build, offering excellent survival and ad-clear through Whirling Maelstrom. Your Exotic Armor provides practically infinite uptime on a powerful Weapon damage Buff, while your Abilities massively reduce your enemies' lethality towards you and your team. Use Vexcalibur to further deny the possibility of death.
Try this Build out if you're sick of doing all the dirty work, your Whirling Maelstroms are more than happy to do some of that heavy lifting for you.
Credits
Written by: Xtra37
Reviewed by: AbbyHour, Tenkiei