Introduction Top
Weapon Glaive is a terror to encounter in the jungle, especially if he is well farmed and played right. Using him effectively requires careful play and though he is slightly harder to play compared to his crystal counterpart, he would be able to out damage him in the long run. With the right knowledge and play-style, a weapon Glaive can be incredibly difficult for the opposing team to counter during the late game as he annihilates everything in his path to victory.
A weapon Glaive has several weaknesses though and the build path I suggested above, along with my play-style focuses of getting rid of them first. Let's have a rundown of all his weaknesses.
- A weapon Glaive is generally weak compared to other heroes, early to mid game, atleast till he reaches level 6. He can be bursted down easily by any crystal intensive heroes.
- Going full weapon would prompt atleast one of the members of the enemy team to buy some armor during mid game which could cut down his damage potential immensely.
- A weapon Glaive would be very mana/energy dependent all throughout the game.
Build Strategy Top
One would normally think that high damage items like
Sorrowbladeshould be prioritized first for maximum damage potential and thus many would rush to complete it as their first 3rd tier item, which may not always give the best results. In my experience, a weapon Glaive works most effectively when
attack speed and
critical damage are maximized first. Keep in mind both of these, as the build path suggested above focuses mainly on that.
Glaive hits slow as a molasses without any attack speed items. Thus even if you have a sorrowblade with you, you can very well die after dishing out just two hits. Focusing on attack speed first ensures that you can dish out many more hits and stay longer and effective in fights against both weapon and crystal builds. Keeping this mind, start off with a
Swift Shooter along with 2
Halcyon Potions. Follow it up with another
Swift Shooter,
Book of Eulogies,
Weapon Blade and
Sprint Boots to compliment that attack speed with decent damage, some lifesteal and movement speed.
Another impressive thing I noticed about Glaive is how effective he could still be by branching most of his tier 1 items to tier 2 instead of rushing to get a tier 3 item. This is because his combination of high attack speed, armor pierce, decent damage, 30 % lifesteal (with full stacks of bloodsong) and movement speed to run down your opponents can be quite overwhelming to handle. So branch into a
Blazing Salvo first, followed by a
Barbed Needle,
Piercing Spear and then
Travel Boots. Once this is done, you are ready to get your first tier 3 item,
Bonesaw.
The Star of This Build : Bonesaw Top
Many might consider this an odd choice, but if you look back at Glaive's weaknesses I mentioned at the beginning, you might begin to understand why this is my choice for my first 3rd tier item. This item single handedly addresses his first two weaknesses. Although it doesn't offer that much of a raw damage boost, it does offer a nice increase in attack speed and its most important feature, its passive ability : Armor Shredding.
What happens with armor shredding is that, each time you hit an enemy, his/her armor keeps reducing by 12 %. So after five hits (which you'd be able to do quite fast since you have good attack speed) their armor would come down by 60 %. That is a HUGE dip in their armor values, which would make you hit like a truck even though you don't have that much raw attack damage power. This is also why Bonesaw is a great farming tool, each of your hits will do more and more damage progressively and you'll be able to clear jungle camps much faster. The armor shredding also works on the turrets, which would help you push the lane and also on the Kraken.
Many have the wrong notion that Bonesaw is an item to be bought only if the enemy builds armor. All heroes have base armor that keeps increasing with level, the final tier boots provides some armor too. Reducing these base stats with the shredding would also make him sting alot. Another important thing to note about Bonesaw,is that it reduces the opponent's armor values for not only you but also your allies , so if another weapon based Hero is on your team, it can benefit them greatly.
Remaining Core Items Top
Once you get your Bonesaw, go ahead and complete the
Tornado Trigger which meshes well with our prioritizing attack speed and critical damage philosophy. This would also dramatically increase your DPS (Damage per Second) and you'll be hitting away insanely fast with the 125% attack speed increase both these items give. Move onto to completing your
Serpent Mask to compliment all the attack speed with some raw damage and good lifesteal (40%!! Holy moly!!!). If you were able to farm enough enough to get to your serpent mask you should be doing reasonably well in the game. If you find yourself on the receiving end, prioritize the appropriate defense item first. Otherwise move on to your next core item, tyrant's monocle, the weapon item that provides the maximum damage boost to Glaive. Yes, it is even better than sorrowblade, mainly because of Glaive's twisted stroke passive which also provides critical damage. It will be easier to explain with this screenshot below.
These are what your stats would look like after completing your build. Don't get misguided by the 0 % armor pierce as you have a better armor shred ability. Plus I had used up my bloodsong stacks before taking the screenshot, so the weapon lifesteal would actually be 40% with 20 stacks. Anyways it shows him having a raw base damage of 324 which is quite decent enough, but more importantly, have a look at his critical chance and critical damage ratios! 75 % crit chance means out of four hits, three of them are going to be critical strikes and with each critical strike you deal double damage which amount to 648 damage (reduced by armor values of course) per hit! Factor in your insane attack speed, lifesteal and armor shredding and you got yourself a Predator who not only can plow away anything before him, but will slso be difficult to kill and counter later game.
Playstyle and General Tips Top
Weapon Glaive is to be played safe early game, sticking to the jungle and farming as much as you can while occasionally camping by the bushes above gold miners camp to try and rocket enemies towards your allies and turrets. Being a weapon based build, you are going to rely much more on your auto attacks than any of your skills. Afterburn has to be used purely as a utility skill, either to escape or rocket your enemies back to your allies. Try and be as accurate as possible as you only get one chance to execute it during teamfights. Your twisted stroke is going to be your most used skill. Use it early game to get some farm but as the game progresses, preserve your energy for team-fights alone and rely on your autoattacks for farming. Bloodsong is a skill to be used only and I repeat ONLY during teamfights, either as an initiating skill while hiding in bushes or as a finisher. Weapon Glaive benefits more from the lifesteal passive than the burst damage.
Conclusion Top
Thank you for reading this far and I hope it helped you in some way or the other. This guide is still a work-in-progress as I have still yet to add Hero threat levels and appropriate links. Do let me know what you think of this build and how well it has worked for you. Cheers!
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