Strand

Aegis Weave — Silkstrike (Strand Hunter)

Fireteam Woven Mail tank/support — grapple-fed permanent DR for the whole team (dual-exotic with The Navigator)

Centerpiece: Cyrtarachne's Facade (Helmet) · Subclass: Threadrunner · Role: Fireteam Woven Mail tank/support — grapple-fed permanent DR for the whole team (dual-exotic with The Navigator) Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Updated 2026-07-03

Paint the fireteam with Woven Mail straight off the Navigator's beam, then keep it on yourself by grappling on a loop. Cyrtarachne turns every grapple into more Woven Mail, and Tablet of Ruin's To Shreds re-broadcasts it from every severed kill. The result is three independent Woven Mail sources feeding a team that almost never drops out of damage resistance, while you stand in the open and tank the room. This is the support half of Cyrtarachne — the brawler half lives in the Widowmaker build.

The exotic

Cyrtarachne's Facade (Helmet) — Acrobat's Focus: Activating Grapple grants Woven Mail. While active, Woven Mail provides flinch resistance and health when defeating targets.

The Navigator (Trace Rifle) — Protective Weave: Firing this weapon at an ally grants Woven Mail to both the user and the target. Deals more damage while you have Woven Mail.

Weft Cutter: Dealing sustained damage severs the target.

The Navigator Catalyst — Gordian Knot: Special reload and then fire to create a Grapple Tangle at the targeted point.

This is a two-exotic engine (one exotic armour piece plus one exotic weapon is legal). Cyrtarachne's Facade converts your Grapple into a 10-second Woven Mail buff plus 10 HP, and while that buff is up you gain flinch resistance and heal on kills — so grappling is both your damage-resistance button and your steadying button. The Navigator does the fireteam half: sweeping its beam across a teammate grants Woven Mail to them and you at once, and it deals bonus damage the whole time you personally hold Woven Mail. Weft Cutter lets sustained fire sever a hard target, and the Gordian Knot catalyst plants an on-demand grapple point so you can re-trigger Cyrtarachne without spending grenade energy. Together they keep Woven Mail permanently painted across the fireteam.

Loadout

Slot	Pick	Why
Subclass	Threadrunner (Strand)	Strand's grapple + Woven Mail toolkit is the whole build; every source keys off it.
Super	Silkstrike	Strand rope-dart room-clear that repositions on the grapple-cancel; severed/Strand kills refund it via Elemental Supercharger.
Class ability	Gambler's Dodge (flex)	The loop runs on grapple, not dodge; Gambler's refunds Threaded Spike (which severs to feed the sever chain). Marksman's is fine too.
Movement	Triple Jump (flex)	Player preference; not load-bearing to the loop.
Melee	Threaded Spike	Returning rope-dart that severs and ricochets — a free Strand debuff that feeds To Shreds and Harsh Refraction.
Grenade	Grapple (required)	The loop's trigger: every grapple procs Cyrtarachne's Woven Mail and, via Widow's Silk, drops a Grapple Tangle.
Aspect 1	Widow's Silk	+1 grenade charge and your Grappling Hook creates a Grapple Tangle — doubles grapple economy and seeds the Tangle engine.
Aspect 2	Ensnaring Slam (champions/tank)	Air-dive suspends all nearby targets (Unstoppable lock) and grants you Woven Mail; swap to Whirling Maelstrom in add-dense rooms to cash the Tangle surplus.
Fragments	Generation · Warding · Continuity · Transmutation	Grapple uptime, an extra Woven Mail source, longer sever, and a self-feeding Tangle economy.
Exotic armour	Cyrtarachne's Facade (Helmet)	Grapple → 10s Woven Mail + 10 HP + flinch resistance + kill-healing; the personal DR anchor.
Weapons	The Navigator (Energy) + flex Strand primary + flex boss Heavy	Navigator is the team-buff engine; a Strand primary severs while it reloads; a Heavy covers the damage phases it can't.

Fragments

Thread of Generation dealing damage generates grenade energy — grapple uptime, the loop's engine; `-10 Grenade`
Thread of Warding Orb pickup grants Woven Mail; `-10 Health`
Thread of Continuity Suspend/unravel/sever last longer — Weft Cutter sever 10s→15s; no stat delta
Thread of Transmutation while you have Woven Mail, weapon final blows create a Tangle — self-feeds the Tangle economy since you're always in Woven Mail; `+10 Melee`

Why it works (the mechanics)

The weapon is a fireteam buff dispenser. Protective Weave grants Woven Mail to the ally and to you just for firing at them — no kill required. Sweep the beam across the fireteam and everyone is in damage resistance on demand. That unconditional team-wide DR is the build's entire reason to exist.
Your own Woven Mail is near-permanent. Three timers refresh it: every grapple (Cyrtarachne, 10s), every Orb pickup (Thread of Warding), and sustained Navigator fire (Weft Cutter, 10s→15s sever). Grapple supply is huge — Widow's Silk (+1 charge) plus Thread of Generation (the continuous trace damage refills the grapple grenade fast) plus the catalyst grapple point — so the 10s Cyrtarachne timer effectively never lapses.
A third fireteam Woven Mail source stacks on top. Tablet of Ruin's To Shreds turns every severed kill into a Strand hotspot that grants nearby allies Woven Mail. You generate Sever constantly (Weft Cutter, Threaded Spike, Vile Weave Tangles), so severed kills are routine and allies stay in DR even when they step out of the beam.
The Navigator is always inside its damage window. Protective Weave deals bonus damage the whole time you hold Woven Mail — which is always — and Harsh Refraction adds trace-rifle damage against targets carrying a matching elemental debuff. Unraveling Orbs (Tangle/Orb → Unraveling Rounds) plus To Shreds' unravel keep the pack Strand-debuffed, so Harsh Refraction stays live on every beam.
The Tangle economy self-sustains. Thread of Transmutation (Woven Mail kills → Tangle) plus Widow's Silk grapples plus Elemental Siphon (Kinetic/Super-element kills → Strand pickup) flood Tangles; Vile Weave severs anything they touch and refunds Tangle cooldown on pickup, while Unraveling Orbs converts them into the unravel rounds that feed Harsh Refraction.
You tank while you support. Layered DR from three Woven Mail sources plus Cyrtarachne's flinch resistance (keeps the beam steady so Protective Weave doesn't break) plus Ensnaring Slam suspending the dangerous group. You stand in the open dispensing buffs and the room can't shift you.

Stats & mods

Grenade 200 → Health → Weapons. Grenade drives grapple uptime (the loop's trigger), Health is your tank stat (more EHP under Woven Mail), Weapons rides on top of the Navigator's Woven Mail damage bonus. Lead with a Siegebreaker (Health/Grenade) archetype and slot a Gunner or Powerhouse piece for the Weapons third — Thread of Generation plus the continuous beam mean even a moderate Grenade stat keeps grapple online.

Mods:

Boots: Innervation / Insulation — grenade energy on Orb pickup to reinforce grapple regen.
Arms: Momentum Transfer / Impact Induction — melee and grapple feed each other off Threaded Spike hits.
Chest: Resistance mods (elemental damage resistance) to lean into the tank role under Woven Mail.
Class item: Bomber / Distribution — shave class-ability and ability cooldowns for more Ensnaring Slam and dodge uptime.
Surge: Strand Surge to match the Navigator and share Surge legs across a Strand kit.
Anti-Champion: none from the artifact — Unstoppable comes from Suspend (Ensnaring Slam); bring a Barrier/Overload legendary intrinsic for the rest (see Champion coverage).

Artifact — Tablet of Ruin

Picks (2/3/2): Unraveling Orbs + Elemental Siphon — Harsh Refraction + Vile Weave + Horde Shuttle — To Shreds + Elemental Supercharger

Harsh Refraction (T2) is the centrepiece — Trace Rifles do more damage to targets afflicted by a matching elemental debuff, which this build keeps applied permanently via unravel.
Unraveling Orbs (T1) turns your flood of Tangles/Orbs into Unraveling Rounds — the exact debuff Harsh Refraction wants — and Elemental Siphon (T1) makes Kinetic/Super-element kills drop Strand pickups to keep the Tangle engine fed.
Vile Weave (T2) severs everything your Tangles touch and refunds Tangle cooldown on pickup; Horde Shuttle (T2) spawns Threadlings off unravelled targets that sever in turn — both pour Sever into To Shreds.
To Shreds (T3) is the third fireteam-Woven-Mail source: severed kills create Strand hotspots that grant nearby allies Woven Mail, and sustained damage on a severed target unravels it (feeding Harsh Refraction again).
Elemental Supercharger (T3) refunds Silkstrike off severed/Strand-element kills to close the Super loop.
Everything here is a real Tablet of Ruin mod and the section is exactly 2/3/2 (verified by `artifact_parser.py --audit`).

Where it shines

Fireteam content — GMs, raids, dungeons in a group. Team-wide permanent Woven Mail plus a personal tank profile makes this the survivability spine of a coordinated fireteam; the Navigator carries add-clear while allies handle DPS.
Sustained add-dense rooms. The Tangle/sever/unravel economy compounds the longer a fight runs; swap to Whirling Maelstrom to convert the Tangle surplus into roaming Strand masses.
Champion coverage: Tablet of Ruin carries no anti-Champion mod, so Champions are handled by the kit, not the artifact. Unstoppable → Suspend (Ensnaring Slam dive hard-locks them). Barrier / Overload → a flex legendary with the matching anti-champion intrinsic, or lean on the fireteam — this is a support build. Verify the current 9.7.0 champion-stun mapping in-game.

Verify notes

The Navigator — Trace Rifle · Strand · Special · 1000 RPM · no intrinsic champion breaker, confirmed in `data/weapon_facts.json` and `docs/encyclopedia/weapon_facts.md`.
Cyrtarachne's Facade intrinsic (Acrobat's Focus) quoted verbatim from `exotics.md`; the 10s Woven Mail + 10 HP restore + kill-healing values are from `clarity_build_numbers.md`. The flinch-resistance value is unpublished — Clarity records it as "%? Flinch Resistance" — confirm live.
The Navigator Protective Weave, Weft Cutter and the Gordian Knot catalyst quoted verbatim from `exotics.md`, `perks.md` and `catalysts.md`. The specific tuning numbers the older draft cited (Protective Weave +25% weapon damage / +40 Ammo Generation, 8 ally-hits/1s → 60 HP, Weft Cutter 20 hits/1s) are not present in the local encyclopedia dump — flagged as unconfirmed, verify against Clarity in-game.
Aspects/fragments — Widow's Silk, Ensnaring Slam, Whirling Maelstrom quoted from `aspects.md`; Thread of Generation/Warding/Continuity/Transmutation and their stat deltas (`-10 Grenade`, `-10 Health`, no delta, `+10 Melee`) from `fragments.md`. Thread of Continuity gives "increased duration" (no exact %); the 10s→15s Weft Cutter sever is derived from Continuity's +50% duration — treat the exact figure as tuning. Not in the local `aspects.md` dump: Ensnaring Slam's Woven Mail grant (dump lists only the suspend on impact) and Widow's Silk's Grapple-Tangle creation (dump lists only "+1 grenade charge") — both are real in-game behaviours but unsourced here, confirm live.
Artifact — all seven picks (Unraveling Orbs, Elemental Siphon, Harsh Refraction, Vile Weave, Horde Shuttle, To Shreds, Elemental Supercharger) confirmed in the Tablet of Ruin pool in `artifacts_structured.md`; exactly 2/3/2.
Woven Mail itself has no Clarity entry (buff-verbs aren't covered) — commonly cited as a large flat cut to incoming combatant damage; confirm the exact percentage live.

Mod selection (masterworked — full allocation)

Piece	Mod · cost	What it does
Helmet (5/10)	Strand Siphon 1e fill	Rapid Strand weapon final blows create Orbs of Power.
	Ashes to Assets 3e fill	Gain bonus Super energy on grenade kills.
	Heavy Ammo Finder 1e fill	Increases the effect of all contributions towards the Heavy ammo meter.
Arms (7/10)	Momentum Transfer 2e	Causing damage with a grenade reduces your melee cooldown.
	Impact Induction 2e	Causing damage with a powered melee attack reduces your grenade cooldown.
	Grenade Kickstart 3e fill	When your grenade energy is fully expended, your Armor Charge is consumed and you gain grenade energy for each Armor Charge used.
Chest (6/10)	Strand Resistance 2e fill	Reduces incoming Strand damage from combatants.
	Concussive Dampener 3e fill	Reduces incoming area-of-effect damage from combatants.
	Sniper Damage Resistance 1e fill	Reduces incoming damage from combatants that are at long range.
Legs (5/10)	Insulation 1e	Reduces class ability cooldown each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
	Innervation 1e	Reduces grenade cooldown each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
	Strand Weapon Surge 3e	Your Strand weapons gain a small bonus to damage while you have any Armor Charge. Your Armor Charge now decays over time.
Class Item (5/10)	Distribution 3e	Reduces all ability cooldowns when using your class ability near targets.
	Bomber 1e	Reduces grenade cooldown when using your class ability.
	Reaper 1e fill	Shortly after using your class ability, your next weapon final blow spawns an Orb of Power.

All 15 sockets used, 10 energy per masterworked piece; costs from the manifest. Core mods are the build's engine; fill mods are strong defaults — swap freely (chest resists should match the activity's damage types). Flex/loadout-dependent: ability cooldowns for more Ensnaring Slam.