The Glaive Prime is a deadly and beautiful weapon from the Orokin era. The blades are as effective in close quarters as they are when thrown at distant enemies.
The 戰刃 Prime is an improved version of the 戰刃. The Glaive Prime was added into the game in Update 11.0. If thrown, this weapon will bounce three times before returning to its owner or after reaching 30m away from its owner.
Can hit headshots and other weak spots for damage multipliers on its throw (with more ease than a standard melee swing which does not always land where you aim).
Can be aimed around corners and used to score up to whole group of enemies in one bounce.
Regular attacks have momentum, like some heavy weapons (stagger resist).
Actions can be performed once the Glaive Prime is thrown.
After releasing the Glaive Prime, you can fire or reload your weapon.
Catching the Glaive Prime is considered a one-handed action, therefore it will not interrupt a reload in progress.
Disadvantages:
Short melee attack range.
Using the charge attack (throw) prevents the use of all melee attacks until the weapon has returned to the thrower, effectively preventing it from being used in as rapid succession as conventional charge attacks.
When it bounces off the wall, it has very low chance to hit an enemy, but can be angled to do so.
Due to being a thrown weapon, it has significant travel time, making it hard to hit moving targets at range.
See the user build section for builds using this weapon.
Tips[]
Catching the Glaive is considered a one-handed action. As such, it will not interrupt reloads.
This is useful if you throw the Glaive before reloading allowing you to perform a long range attack even as you reload.
Glaive will always return in a straight path toward the player. It will ignore all obstacles and punch through anything in its path on return.
A player without Power Throw can use this to emulate Power throw by bouncing the Glaive off the floor between the legs of enemies and have the Glaive hit them all on return.
As for the regular Glaive, when using the slide attack, it is possible to chain a second slide attack, for even more slide range and speed.
Can be thrown with and without stance mods.
When equipping the Glaive Prime, the player can throw it and then press the channeling button to detonate the Glaive Prime, dealing high AoE damage and returns to the player immediately. This is true for all thrown melee weapons.
Notes[]
Thrown attack bounces off of enemy targets and can hit a theoretical infinite amount of targets on the way back to the user.
Flies faster and further than its original counterpart (needs confirmation)
When the charged Glaive is in flight, you are unable to do basic melee attacks or throw another Glaive until it returns from flight. However, you can fire whatever weapon you're currently holding or reload (see below) during the Glaive's flight while melee weapons are not equipped.
Sword-based Warframe abilities such as Slash Dash can still be used even if the Glaive has not returned to the user.
The Glaive can be thrown under a mining machine so that it ricochets back and forth between ground and the machine for a maximum amount of bounces, sometimes destroying it in a single throw.
Against tougher enemies, the Glaive can hit more than once on the outward throw by aiming at the inside of their legs so that the first bounce will bounce into their other leg. Particularly useful on Ancients.
Range is around 30 in-game meters. Reach will not improve the flight range nor the width of the projectile.
Beware that an airborne Glaive can break reinforced glass.
Airborne Glaives will ricochet off Frost's Snow Globe.
Throw cannot punch through Shield Lancer's shield without Power Throw. However if aimed at their exposed body parts, the Glaive is still able to damage them.
Saryn's Contagion is applied on charge attacks as well, as of 10.3.4.[1]
If under the effect of Bullet Attractor or similar abilities, the Glaive cannot be thrown; it instantly returns to your hand without harming you.
When U13 was first released, the throwing attack was changed to match the throwing attack in the stance. This was a bug, and has since been reverted to Hold+E.
As with the regular Glaive, activating Melee Channeling while the Glaive Prime is in-flight will cause it to explode, dealing damage to nearby objects, enemies and the player, if they are within the blast radius. This will also make the Glaive immediately return, even if it has not hit its bounce limit yet.
It can also explode toward the end of the flight/last bounce when thrown without channeling, although the explosion timing cannot be controlled.
It could be seen in Ember Prime's left hand during the artwork show of Livestream 18. It was also seen in the splash screen in Update 11.
The Glaive Prime shares the same sheath style with the other thrown melee weapons, where they retract and attach under the right arm.
The word "Glaive" historically has referred to many different weapons, none of which refer to a returning throwing disk but more to a polearm or a sword. An exception to this can be found in the movie, Krull, in which a five-bladed throwing weapon which returns to the thrower is called a "Glaive" which is quested for and used by the protagonist.
Update 11 teasers showed an Ember Prime wielding Glaive Prime, along with a Sicarus Prime.
Oddly enough, though the Glaive Prime has 3 blades, only two are requested in the crafting process. It's possible that the disc has an in-built blade to begin with.
Up until Update 12, the Glaive Prime only required 1 blade to construct, in spite of the blueprint needing 2.
Like the Glaive, the Glaive Prime has a much smaller model when retracted under the arm.
Unlike most prime weapons, the Glaive Prime does not deal any more damage than its unprimed variant.
Bugs[]
On very rare occasions after throwing the Glaive, it can get stuck somewhere and never come back. When this happens, the Glaive will shortly reappear in the player's hands but the player will be unable throw the Glaive again or perform any melee attacks.