Ever since their debut inDestiny 2’sWitch Queen expansion, Glaives have struggled to find a place in the weapon sandbox. They had limited synergies with melee Exotics, were unaffected by most melee-centric perks, and did pitiful damage considering their special ammo requirement. Years of adjustments have hardly moved the needle.
That is finally changing in the upcoming Edge of Fate expansion. After years of community requests, Bungie is adding a long-requested feature to Glaives that will make them the perfect tool for melee-centric buildcrafting.
Glaives Now Count As Unpowered Melee Attacks
Announced inthe June 19 This Week in Destiny post, Bungie is reworking Glaives to synergize with nearly all the game’s melee modifiers, including Exotic armor, subclass Aspects, and weapon traits. Bungie clarifies in the blog post, “Anything that increases the strength of unpowered melee abilities will now increase the strength of Glaive melee, including the melee stat.”
Glaive base damage is being reduced by roughly 40 percent to compensate for this newfound synergy, but the upper ceiling of damage far exceeds what’s currently possible in Destiny 2. Guardians can ramp up their Glaive damage through the likes ofSynthoceps,Wormgod Caress, Facet of Courage on Prismatic, the Hunter’sCombination Blowmelee, and any subclass Aspect that buffs melee damage—Knockout,Roaring Flames, andStylish Executioner, to name a few.
There are a plethora of buffs to mix and match here, which should give Glaives a comfortable home in any melee build. Of course, stacking so many multiplicative damage buffs would break certain PvE encounters in the current game. To address this, Bungie is also reworking how melee damage scaling works to ensure that Glaives and melee attacks don’t trivialize the game.
How Melee Damage Is Changing In Edge Of Fate
In The Edge of Fate, all melee damage will be converted from multiplicative scaling to additive scaling. The TWID describes this best.
Currently in Destiny 2, most sources of increased damage in Destiny 2 are multiplicative. Two hypothetical 50% damage increases (a 1.5x increase to damage) are multiplied together for a total 125% (or 2.25x) damage increase… When The Edge of Fate is released on July 15, melee damage increases in Destiny 2 will be additive. That means, two hypothetical 50% damage increases will be added together for a total 100% damage increase.
While this results in a lower ceiling for melee DPS, nearly all sources of melee damage are buffed to compensate.Synthocepswill no longer have diminished scaling with other sources, and all the game’s most popular sources of melee damage scaling are getting buffed by 50 percent or more. Exact numbers can be found in theTWID.
The reworkedMelee stat in Armor 3.0will be the only source of multiplicative damage scaling left for melee builds.
Many of these changes seemed to be aimed at reigning in the power that Prismatic subclasses brought to the sandbox last year with Final Shape. Consecration Titan is currently a hot topic of conversation, seemingly being the impetus for most of the upcoming Prismatic nerfs. It remains to be seen if these systemic melee changes will move the needle on Consecration’s effectiveness or disproportionally impact other classes. Until then, now might be a good time to start experimenting with Glaives.
