Bungie recently shared a Developer Insights blog about mid-season weapon tuning for Season of the Deep, and outlined upcoming changes. The developer introduced a Season 23 balance pass for glaives — the often maligned Legendary and Exotic weapon type. Concluding the blog post, Bungie said that it wants to hear what the Destiny 2 community thinks. So, here are some of my thoughts on future updates and the state of glaives.
According to the blog post, Bungie plans to make glaives reliable and is “looking at ways to make them feel better to use without making them annoying to play against [in PVP].” The developer intends to improve base projectile speed, ways of granting shield energy, and plans on “reducing the delay after firing before you can melee,” too.
Players often use glaive projectiles for shield energy and stunning Champions, but this stabby weapon has potential in its melee ability. Bungie amping up the projectile speed — firing quickly without relying on Rapid-Fire is a plus — and reducing delay to melee after firing is a huge bonus, especially when you consider perks like Close to Melee, which buffs the glaive melee damage by 30% for 10 seconds. While Voltshot affects Unexpected Resurgence projectiles, I would love to see Bungie experiment with more melee-based perks on Legendary glaives that could have status effects like Jolt or Scorch.
Although the developer said it will alter how players get shield energy, it hasn’t provided details yet. Currently, for shield energy, Rapid-Fire, Adaptive, and Aggressive glaive archetypes generate energy by dealing ranged damage. Preferably, methods of obtaining shield energy should vary and complement the individual archetypes. Also, if Bungie made shield energy come from melee kills, that would be a quality of life change for glaives.
Beyond what Bungie has planned, Legendary glaives could use a general damage buff in PVE to bring it up to speed with other special weapons. Unlike the Judgement of Kelgorath’s hard-hitting Aggressive archetype, Adaptive and Rapid-Fire glaives lack that powerful feeling — albeit Greasy Luck is the only Rapid-Fire glaive in-game right now.
Moreover, these changes would make choosing a glaive archetype for PVE or PVP more purposeful — depending on loadouts for Grandmaster Nightfall or a Crucible match. Glaives haven’t been around long in Destiny 2 and are a bit of a niche, but I hope that future updates will make them more impactful.
