This dude has been a strong hero in many patches but as others also had his popularity decrease from time to time. Somewhat recently Glaive has been on the surge of being one of the best junglers in the game and a very good bot lane pick. We’ve had CP Glaive. We’ve had Captain Glaive. But the original Glaive, WP Glaive is truly dominant in this patch.
WHAT TO LEVEL UP
It may seem simple it may not seem simple, A or B. I used to level up B max but then I accidentally leveled up my A so I was like I might as well max it. This dude was beasting with his A max and having a lower cooldown. The whole point of his existence was: lemme just end this game <3.
Leveling up should be like this:
Max A first, Max B, 100% get your Ult at level 6. Never level up your Ult unless it is the only thing that can be leveled up. So your A and B should be maxed.
BUILDS
2x Weapon Blades/1x Weapon Blade and 1x Book. Build Tension Bow (Sorrowblade; situational) first item, Breaking Point and Tyrant’s Monocle/Poison Shiv.
PLAYSTYLES
When going jungler go build double weapon blades. Those two blades will go build into your Tension Bow and you will proceed building attack speed and more blades into Breaking Point and Tyrants Monocle. Build defense when needed but since you’re playing jungler you will most likely burst them down before they get to touch you because 2v1 ez ez.
In the lane you can opt for a ballsy playstyle or just passive till you get your Tension Bow. I used to think Glaive was a bruiser hero and not an assassin one but now I understand where the confusion comes from… Sorrowblade is inferior to Tension Bow for Glaive. So in the first playstyle (ballsy) build two weapon blades and unlock your A ability. Clear lane and head to enemy blue (remember to put vision in your jungle!) Ping your teammates to come to blue and it will be a 4v2. You take their entire jungle and if your top laner is smart and is aware of where the enemy bot laner and jungler are he will hopefully clear enemy bot jungle. You will most likely score a kill with your Afterburn (unless if you’re going against a Malene mid). Now good job you either have an assist or kill and control 3/4 of the entire map’s jungle. Oh yeah you also have Tension Bow money so buy that and you can either kill the top laner with your jungler (if enemy top is squishy) or travel to mid with your jungler and kill the mid laner who tends to die (unless if its Malene or there is a god Lyra). The whole point of ballsy lane Glaive is to just harness all the gold possible and burst down squishies.
Now this will be passive lane Glaive. You buy weapon blade and book. You do everything ballsy lane Glaive does but the difference is you will buy Poison Shiv instead of Monocle. If you feel as if there is no one to burst down, buy Sorrowblade instead for just a little bit of late game scaling and providing your hypercarry with a little bit of food, if ya know what I mean. Obviously with this build you will still blow up squishies but don’t expect to get ahead and blow them up fast. This is somewhat inferior and used to be my previous playstyle…
SSW Glaive is probably the worst Glaive. He isn’t actually that cost effective and you only run out of energy fast if you use your A constantly when it is off cooldown. You should just build SB and not worry about energy that much. The last time I feel like SSW was really good on Glaive was when you were able to stack it on things like Lance, Grump, and Glaive. Now the only hero who can do that is Tony.
I like the idea of a 4 item guild but I feel like you should use it mostly for when you are really ahead. Otherwise Glaive is somewhat squishy or he just can’t burst down all the carries so Atlas will do.
Using SB instead of the TB in the BP+TM build makes it a sustained build (along with PS instead of TM maybe). But trust me the TB+BP+TM build lets you crit up to 800 per AA on a squishy target which lets you get so many stacks so you can melt tanks after. It seems sustained but it really isn’t and is actually more burst orientated.
And always buy JB instead of HC, because you really are trying to just get one swing in followed by a Twisted Stroke.
You can buy boots first if you want a first blood thou. It is a very good option if you have a carry who has a little strong DPS damage early game like Ringo or Gwen and you use the dual bot laner tactics.
About Tyrant Monocle… Well, I dont think nobody build it nowasday anymore (except Ringo, maybe?)
About Tension Bow, with a nerf to it, I recommend you to change it to Sorrowblade since with this, he can deal much more damage with the B’s crit as well.
My common build path is Weapon Blade + Boots -> Finish Sorrowblade -> Finnish BP -> Choose boots or defensive item -> Get the other one -> 3rd situation item (Spellblade/Serpentmask/another defensive item - whatever).
Skill path -> get B first (since I need it to help bot clear creeps and jungler ezier) -> get A -> max A -> max B -> Ulti not max.
What was the single change they made to SSW that made it not effective on Glaive? I remember the meta used to be rushing as many SSWs as you physically can.
Also nice guide! I love TB on Glaive. Btw a tip most people don’t know: when you afterburn, instead of knocking back your opponent with your basic attack, use B to hit them for a massive crit + TB proc + knockback. Hard to pull off because his B range is only slightly larger than his basic attack range but very rewarding.
If you don’t straight up kill them then you’ll just get kited and killed. Unless you go multiple SSW then it’s not worth. Even then you won’t be 1v1ing anyone, just utility.
For Jungle Glaive, I start WB and boots. I really like SB first item. Healing Treants will keep your energy up so SSW isn’t necessary. TB doesn’t maximize his Crit and falls off late. After SB, I usually go TT second then TM.
I really like the passive move speed bonus from TT. With TT, TM, and overdriven B, you hit 100% Crit Chance.
I know not building BP is heresy. At lvl 12 Glaive has a base of 156 damage. With a SB, a TT adds 53 damage per attack and 40% attack speed. A BP adds 55 damage and 20% attack speed. As BP stacks the damage difference is going to get magnified quickly. TT does give 20% more attack speed, increased cleave chance (AOE life steal), and make you 10% faster.
I forgot exactly what it was but IIRC the more spellswords you have the less effectiveness each of them have. But I don’t think that worked out well but now we have our recent cooldown changes so stacking SSW will only work on Tony as his A can be consistent due to it being a three part ability and having a WP ratio on it.
With CDA changing to CDR stacking SSW will give you the same effect for every SSW. Well maybe not the last one as it probably goes over the cap but I am not sure. I still wouldn’t go with that build though.
How do you do that A+B Combo. Afterburn+Cleave+Punt.
It frustrates me that I can’t pull this off, I’ve seen ttigers doing this a couple of times but you have to be so quick.
Glaive needs a lot of defense after getting his 1st T3 offensive, unless you’re going against a lot of squishies. He can’t survive a early-mid brawl without any.
Spellsword is a debatable item on him, but I think if you’re mostly playing solo you should skip it. No use having your A up every ~10 seconds if your teammates are rarely in position to follow up. For jungle, Serpent’s Mask is a pretty decent pick up (better than Sorrow) if the enemy has a comp that’s going to dive yours. Otherwise, Tension Bow / Sorrowblade is a go to. Personally I prefer Sorrow because Tension Bow falls off really quick if you don’t snowball.
Breaking Point is a good 2nd item on him and in a sense, it is his counter to heal comps and he stacks it mega fast because of the high base damage. Shiv is a bit optional IMO as you can just get more crit to burst someone down before they can get any heals.
I think instead of getting into Glaive’s AA range you have to use his B range when trying to punt an enemy, although all I do is just spam tap B when I get close with Afterburn and it works like 60% of the time. I’m pretty sure thats like a moderate combo, the hardest being the Afterburn -> Ultimate -> Twisted Stroke -> Punt, which is basically going to obliterate any squishy hero.
It requires super quick fingers, but the damage is worth it and it looks cool so style points. I literally did it once and it was under enemy turret but I was able to blow him up and get out so no regrets.
One is Reim where you throw out your Winter Spire -> boots -> AA -> root. They take extra damage because of how the explosion from the second part of Winter Spire does more damage if someone is chilled. It’s kind of easy to do but due to there becoming more and more mobility heroes its become harder and harder although slows have more priority than speed boosts so it is something to consider.
Taka has one that isn’t really a combo but its more of a strat against mobile heroes. You use X-Retsu and then basic attack over and over and save your Kaiten. If you’re WP you will build up BP stacks really fast if you’re using a warrior build like SM BP SB. If you are using CP you can keep the bleed from your Ult going so you do end up stacking a lot of damage over time. The reason why I mentioned mobile is because if you are against a hero that is immobile then you can just Ult + Kaiten + AA. But Kaiten since its a targeted ability when timed right can make you “follow” your opponent when they dash or whatever. Its one of the reasons why Taka has become one of my favorites again because of Reza and Skye popularity increasing, although Glaive is probably the hardest one to do it on but whenever you do its ASMR material especially if they AA right after.
Anka has a bunch of them all because of her blink but when you are on low health and have Clockwork you can throw a dagger -> blink -> knives -> AA -> Ult -> throw dagger to something that is faraway and won’t kill you but will make your copies come back to you such that all of your copies hit the enemy you were trying to kill -> blink. You can also do this to get in and out of fights putting out a lot of burst damage and hoping your team gets the kill and then you can reset and jump back in. (I think I got a good grip on Anka based on my last two cas matches but then again they were kinda low tier).
If you’re using CW Reza and being chased by the enemy team because you are at low health. If your dashes are on CD start spamming your A and that will decrease the cooldown of your dashes which may or may not make you ready to either engage and pop them with a combo or it will help you run away.
I can’t really think of any because some heroes just have known combos like Malene and Idris.
