Build it if you can get your hands on it. The forced Slash proc on every heavy attack detonation is still one of the best damage tricks in the game. Armor ignoring. Not tied to a status chance roll. The catch, as of September 2026: Glaive Prime is vaulted, so getting it means trading with other players or waiting for the relics to cycle back.
Hold the melee button to charge a throw, then hit Heavy Attack while the glaive’s still in the air or bouncing off a surface. It detonates in a 4.8m Blast explosion for 592 damage (1,184 if the throw was fully charged), forces a guaranteed Impact and Slash proc on everything it touches regardless of line of sight, and snaps back into your hand ready to throw again.
Glaive Prime still shows up near the top of just about every thrown-melee tier list getting updated in 2026. It’s not the best melee overall anymore, though. That crown currently sits with Kronen Prime, which edges it out on raw crit and status numbers. Nothing else in the thrown category does what Glaive Prime does with a detonated throw.
The reason is simple. The throw-detonate loop skips two things that slow down other melee weapons: status chance RNG and line of sight. No lucky proc roll needed. No angle on the target needed either. You throw, you hit heavy attack, and the Slash proc lands, full stop.
How to get the Glaive Prime
Glaive Prime is a Prime item that requires Mastery Rank 10, with no vendor blueprint on the Market or a syndicate offering.
- Reach Mastery Rank 10 to equip it.
- Pull the Blueprint and parts, two Blade components and one Disc, from Void Relics spanning Lith through Axi tiers.
- Build it in the Foundry for 15,000 Credits and 10 Orokin Cells on a 12-hour timer.
Currently vaulted
- Trade platinum or parts with other players.
- Wait for the next Prime Vault reopening. It was last farmable during Varzia’s Prime Resurgence rotation, December 18, 2025 through January 15, 2026, followed by a Last Chance pass from February 12 through 19, 2026.
Glaive Prime is vaulted as of September 2026, so its relics aren’t sitting in the regular mission reward tables. Vault rotations change, so check Varzia’s offerings yourself before you commit to farming toward this one. No separate unlock is needed either: the throw-detonate-recall mechanic is native to the base weapon, not an Incarnon, Lich, or Sister requirement, and it works as soon as you mod and equip the weapon.
Stats
| Class | Melee |
|---|---|
| Mastery Rank | 10 |
| Attack Speed | 1.25 |
| Range | 1.25 m |
| Blocking Angle | 55° |
| Combo Duration | 5 s |
| Follow Through | 0.7 |
| Wind Up | 1.2 s |
| Slam Attack | 492 |
| Heavy Attack | 164 |
| Critical Chance | 22% |
| Critical Multiplier | 2x |
| Status Chance | 30% |
| Set Price | 70p on warframe.market (48h average) |
| Riven Disposition | (0.7)Riven disposition 2 of 5 (0.70): a Riven mod rolls 30% weaker than the 1.00 baseline on this weapon. Two dots means a popular weapon: DE keeps its Riven gains below average. The dots measure how much a Riven helps, not how good the weapon is, and DE re-tunes them with every Prime Access. How Rivens work · The full disposition list |
| Damage | 164 total |
|---|---|
| Impact | 24.6 |
| Puncture | 24.6 |
| Slash | 114.8 |
Riven disposition sits at 0.70x, two stars out of five. That’s low. A Glaive Prime Riven isn’t going to swing the weapon’s power the way a five-star disposition Riven does for other top-tier melee, so most builds treat one as optional icing rather than a core piece of the loadout.
Builds
The build below leans into the throw-detonate loop instead of fighting it. Every slot either pushes crit chance up before the throw lands, pushes status damage into the guaranteed Slash proc, or speeds up the heavy attack detonation so you can chain throws faster. Call it a crit-and-status hybrid. Since the Slash proc is forced rather than RNG, status damage actually does something reliable here, unlike on most melee weapons.
SET: Melee
Melee
Melee
Melee
Thrown Melee
Melee
Melee
Thrown Melee| Mod | Effect |
|---|---|
| Sacrificial Steel | Up to +220% critical chance, doubled again on Heavy Attacks. |
| Primed Pressure Point | Flat +165% melee damage. |
| Melee Elementalist | Up to +90% status damage and +60% heavy attack wind-up speed at max rank. |
| Amalgam Organ Shatter | +85% critical damage and +60% heavy attack wind-up speed at max rank. |
| Volatile Quick Return | Cuts the glaive’s bounce count by 4, roughly doubles the detonation radius, and gives a 100% chance to auto-detonate on a bounce. Disables punch-through as the tradeoff. |
| Primed Smite Grineer | Flat x1.55 damage multiplier against Grineer. Swap in the Corpus, Infested, or Orokin version depending on what you’re fighting that mission. |
| Galvanized Steel | +110% critical chance, doubled on Heavy Attacks, plus +30% critical damage per kill, stacking up to 4 times for 20 seconds each. |
| Power Throw | +2m punch-through, plus up to +100% throw damage on consecutive buffered throws, capped at 3 stacks. |
For the arcane slot, Arcane Fury is the most commonly recommended pick for a crit-focused throw build like this, since it adds melee damage on crit. Some guides pair it with Arcane Arachne. A few point toward Melee Crescendo instead if you’re building around combo counter uptime off finisher kills. None of them has strong enough consensus to call it the definitive pick, so treat the arcane slot as flexible, not fixed.
Reviewed September 2026.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Forced Slash proc on every heavy attack detonation. That’s armor-ignoring bleed damage that doesn’t depend on a status chance roll landing.
- No line of sight needed. The explosion goes through walls and clears corners other melee can’t touch.
- Fastest flight speed in the Glaive family, plus the highest crit and status readout of any glaive: 22% critical chance and 30% status chance base.
- Scales well into Steel Path and endurance content once you stack faction damage and viral.
- Fast to get value from once it’s modded. No combo counter babysitting required, unlike stance-combo melee.
Cons
- Vaulted as of September 2026. Relics aren’t farmable right now, so it’s trade plat or parts with other players, or wait out an unknown-length gap until the next Prime Resurgence.
- Riven disposition is low: 0.70x, two stars out of five. A Riven won’t spike this weapon’s power the way it does for top-tier melee.
- The heavy attack detonation staggers you when you trigger it, and the explosion itself can’t land headshots or crits.
- The throw-catch-detonate rhythm has a learning curve. It feels clunky next to just swinging a stance combo, and whiffing the catch costs you Power Throw’s stacking bonus.
This is a weapon for players who already like thrown melee and want the guaranteed proc payoff, not a first recommendation for someone chasing their first solid melee weapon. If you’re fresh off hitting MR 10, there are easier, cheaper things to build before this one.
If you already own it, or you’re willing to trade for it, it earns its spot near the top of the thrown category. Steel Path players get the most out of it, since the forced Slash proc keeps working even when armor scaling starts wrecking other melee weapons’ damage. Casual star chart clears don’t need this level of investment. Worth it anyway, if you’ve got the parts.