Only a week into Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion, the new Strand subclass has proven to be a powerful pick for players to wield in all manner of content. A lot of this inherent strength within Strand can be attributed to the crowd control potential of the Suspend debuff, but just as much can be credited to Woven Mail—an on-demand damage reduction provider.
Woven Mail may not have enjoyed the spotlight that other core components of Strand did pre-release, since verbs such as Tangle, Suspend, and Unravel are a bit more flashy, but it’s one of the most important elements of the subclass to master.
With Bungie having taken Lightfall as an opportunity to rework difficulty scaling in the majority of PvE activities, this is the perfect time to learn about the benefits Woven Mail can provide and how it stacks up with other forms of damage reduction. Here, we’ll go over how to get it, what it does, and how it synergizes with the rest of your build.
What is Woven Mail in Destiny 2?
Woven Mail is a Strand subclass buff that can grant players and their allies with a significant amount of damage reduction for a short period. More specifically, in PvE, Woven Mail provides players with 60 percent Damage Resist for 10 seconds total.
Unless you’re playing Titan, Woven Mail is one of the more challenging Strand keywords to successfully activate. Unlike Tangle or Suspend, you have a limited set of options when it comes to activating the buff.
How to get Woven Mail in Destiny 2
To get Woven Mail when using Strand, players have three different potential routes as of the launch of Lightfall: Aspects, Fragments, and certain Exotic armor. Warlocks unfortunately get the short end of the stick here, with only a single universal Strand Fragment at their disposal for getting Woven Mail. Titans and Hunters have it a bit easier, with new Exotic armor pieces as well as the aforementioned Fragments or Aspects that can provide the damage reduction bonus.
Titans
- Into The Fray (Aspect): Destroying a Tangle or casting your Super grants Woven Mail for nearby allies. While you have Woven Mail, your melee regeneration rate is increased.
- Thread of Warding (Fragment): Picking up an Orb of Power grants Woven Mail
- Abeyant Leap (Exotic Legs): Drengr’s Lash spawns two additional projectiles, tracks targets more aggressively, and travels farther. Gain Woven Mail when suspending targets.
Hunters
- Thread of Warding (Fragment): Picking up an Orb of Power grants Woven Mail
- Cyrtarachne’s Facade (Exotic Helmet): Gain Woven Mail when activating grapple. Increased flinch resistance while Woven Mail is active.
Warlocks
- Thread of Warding (Fragment): Picking up an Orb of Power grants Woven Mail
With Abeyant Leap equipped, Titans are the clear outliers when it comes to Woven Mail uptime. Luckily for every class, though, the renewed importance of Orbs of Power with the new Armor Charge system means that the Thread of Warding Fragment will be a consistent and reliable source to draw from.
Into The Fray’s exclusive ability as an Aspect to provide Woven Mail to not only the Titan but their allies as well also puts it on a pedestal above the rest. Casting your Super isn’t a common occurence, but destroying Tangles can be. If you’re consistently able to produce them via your Strand abilities or Strand weapons, Titans can keep their team stocked with the 60 percent Damage Resist buff that Woven Mail provides throughout tough activities such as high-level Nightfalls or raids.
How Woven Mail stacks with other Damage Resist buffs in Destiny 2
The history of Damage Resist stacking is well-documented thanks to the efforts of creators such as Court who have created convenient infographics on Destiny 2’s systems. With the lack of explanations given in-game though, a lot of players undoubtedly have many questions about how sources of damage reduction like Woven Mail interact with other sources like Resilience or Emergency Reinforcement.
The simple answer is that Woven Mail will stack with your other forms of Damage Resist. To balance that out, however, there are diminishing returns to account for. Court’s document details the formula needed to figure out the specifics, which involves converting the damage reduction percentage into a decimal (for example, Woven Mail’s 60 percent Damage Resist becomes 0.4) and multiplying it with the other forms of Damage Resist.
If we take Tier 9 Resilience as an example then, the calculations needed would be 0.73 x 0.4 (which gets you 0.292) and then a subtraction of 0.292 from 1 to get 0.708. Multiplied by 100, you get 70.8—the total amount of damage resistance you’ll have with Tier 9 Resilience and Woven Mail combined.
If doing your own math is a little intimidating though, u/Aceblast135 on Reddit, fortunately, did the calculations when it comes to Woven Mail’s Damage Resist total when combined with the higher tiers of resilience currently in Destiny 2.
- Woven Mail with Tier 7 Resilience: 68.4 percent Damage Resist
- Woven Mail with Tier 8 Resilience: 69.6 percent Damage Resist
- Woven Mail with Tier 9 Resilience: 70.8 percent Damage Resist
- Woven Mail with Tier 10 Resilience: 72 percent Damage Resist
Despite the nerf to Resilience that came with Lightfall—where Tier 10 Resilience was reduced down from 40 percent Damage Resist to 30 percent—Woven Mail allows for a level of damage reduction far above anything Resilience was previously capable of. A Guardian with both Tier 10 Resilience and Woven Mail active will be getting 72 percent damage resistance for a 10-second period. Refreshing those 10 seconds can be as simple as picking up an Orb of Power.
