Huge Glaive Changes Coming to Destiny 2 in Season 17

Glaive’s came out pretty hot when Witch Queen first came out, then they were dialled back, and the exotic glaives were simply a massive letdown. Bungie has some great news for all you glaive fans out there with some big changes coming in season 17. Today I’m going to run through all the changes we’ve got coming to Glaives, so sharpen those pointy sticks right now and get them ready, because Glaives are going to be in fashion next season.

First let’s have a look at the details from Bungie, detailed in their This Week At Bungie update last week.

We’ve noticed that several aspects of how Glaives interact with weapon and armour perks don’t match player expectations, and want to take some time to clarify the intent, the changes included in Season 17, and the logic we’ll use for future changes.

A Glaive melee is a basic melee attack, not a weapon attack, doesn’t consume ammo and deals Kinetic damage. So, it’s more like an unpowered punch than a Sword swing.

Allowing buffs to weapon damage to apply to Glaive melees would be too powerful for something without an ammo limitation, particularly in PvP where even a small damage buff would allow for incredibly fast two hit kills. Also, in general, we’d prefer to increase Glaive melee damage directly (as we’re doing, in fact!) instead of effectively making weapon damage perks mandatory on Glaives.

Glaives already have a long lunge distance, and increasing this at all results in unreliable behaviour over the network, so no melee lunge distance buffs apply to Glaive melees.

Our intent is:

• Glaive melees should activate perks that trigger off base melee damage or kills (for example, ammo refill from Grave Robber, weapon damage buff 5x stacks on Swashbuckler, ammo refill from Sealed Ahamkara Grasps).
• Glaive melees should not activate perks that trigger off powered melee damage or kills, or require expending subclass melee energy (such as Combination Blow or Assassin’s Cowl).
• Glaive melees should benefit from melee damage buffs (such as Winter’s Guile or Wormgod Caress).
• Glaive melees should not benefit from weapon damage buffs (such as Rampage, Kill Clip, Swashbuckler).
• Glaive projectiles should benefit from weapon damage buffs.

With that expectation set, there are some inconsistencies with how these are implemented in-game, some of which we’ve already fixed, some of which we’ll look at in the future.

Once we have these guidelines consistently implemented in-game we may look at specific cases where this doesn’t match player expectations and do something custom, updating descriptions where needed for clarification, but our primary goal is that players be able to predict how a Glaive interaction will work.

Here’s what we changed during Season 16, largely bug fixes with some quality-of-life changes:

• Glaive projectile hits to reach maximum energy decreased from 6 to 4.
• Glaive melee can now be interrupted by Hunter dodge.
• The Grave Robber perk now pulls from reserves on Glaives instead of generating ammo.
• Glaives no longer get stuck in clang recovery when using a melee attack on each other.
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps no longer reloads Glaives on projectile hits (but does on melee hits as expected).
• Glaive melees can no longer stunlock high-health combatants.
• Glaive melee kills are now tracked in match history, for bounties and so forth.

Here’s what’s changing in Season 17:

• We’re pushing Glaives deeper into their roles of hard-hitting melee damage and near-complete protection when shielded, as well as increasing projectile speed to make them more reliable at range.
• Note: the Glaive shield grants 97.5% damage resistance in PvE, 75% in PvP.
• Increased melee damage vs PvE enemies (except for bosses and vehicles) by 25%.
• Reduced energy drain speed while shielded by 30%.
• Increased projectile speed dependent on the range stat:
• At 0 stat: increased from 30 to 60 m/s.
• At 100 stat: increased from 80 to 100 m/s.

Exotic Glaives have all been buffed, in addition to the global Glaive changes which make it easier to build energy (projectile speed making landing shots easier and energy granted per projectile hit).

• Titan Glaive, Edge of Action: players now gain a Void overshield while inside the bubble, Helm of Saint-14 now applies to this bubble as it does for Ward of Dawn.
• Warlock Glaive, Edge of Intent: increased speed and acceleration of the healing turret projectiles.
• Hunter Glaive, Edge of Concurrence: tripled the damage of the wave detonation, increased the number of enemies it can chain to from 4 to 8.

That’s a lot of information from Bungie, so let’s dig into the details a little bit more.

First, let’s have a look at the global changes to Glaives coming in Season 17. The big improvement is the 25% increase in melee damage increase to PVE enemies, that’s going to help run around and stab a bunch of enemies and clear out smaller rooms of ads. The reduction in the energy drain speed of the shields by 30% is a nice addition too, although personally, I haven’t been using the shield much when using Glaives, I tend more towards the melee and the projectiles… although given the Glaive shield grants 97.5% damage resistance in PvE, 75% in PvP, then that’s going to change with that knowledge, that’s huge! All in all these global changes are very nice, and I’m looking forward to seeing what The Enigma and Lubrae’s Ruin can do next season.

Next, let’s have a look at the Exotic Glaive changes. It’s pretty universal that Destiny fans have been disappointed by the Exotic Glaives. The grind to get them was pretty long, especially if you got them when they first came out with the rarity of the red-bordered weapons in the Wellspring activity, that was a nightmare. Thankfully, Bungie increased the drop rate of red-bordered Come To Pass and Tarnation, making completing the investigation board quests much easier now. I do have a full guide on the channel for how to get all Exotic Glaives in Destiny 2, so do check that out if you haven’t already.

I think there’s something for every class in the updates. Titans get another source of an overshield. it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with Warlocks because the changes state “increased speed and acceleration of the healing turret projectiles.” We don’t know the speed and frequency yet, but this could be very effective for Warlock Healing builds, especially if you pair this up with other Solar 3.0 elements, which could be coming next season too.

Then we have perhaps the most exciting change, and that’s for Hunters. The description states “tripled the damage of the wave detonation, increased the number of enemies it can chain to from 4 to 8”. Given the damage has been tripled, and the chaining of enemies has been doubled, this is huge. This has the potential to be as impactful as Trinity Ghoul when the catalyst was introduced a while back.

I liked Glaive’s from the start, it’s always nice to see new archetypes in the game, it mixes things up and keeps the game feeling fresh. They definitely need a little bit of love, and it’s good to see Bungie acknowledging that. It’ll be interesting to see how the Destiny 2 audience reacts to the changes, and we don’t have long to wait to find out.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the changes coming to Glaives, and do you think it’s going to make a difference.

That’s it for this look at the Huge Glaive Changes Coming to Destiny 2 in Season 17. For more Destiny 2 content like this check out This Week In Video Games on YouTube and subscribe today.