This build is not a guide on how to exploit some new bug to deal ridiculous damage. What this build is, is a method to use glaives in challenging content without getting your teeth punched out the back of your head every time you try to fight anything more powerful than an asthmatic Thrall. This build really shows you what it's like to feel like Spider-man a Titan.

At the end of this guide, you'll be a tough bastard who can genuinely tank a ludicrous amount of damage that would kill even a Loreley Titan dead on the spot. As a bonus, this build doesn't need a single seasonal mod to work. With the context for this build out of the way, let's get to it.

Aspects: Into the Fray, Banner of War

Fragments: Thread of Warding, Thread of Transmutation, Thread of Continuity and Thread of Wisdom.

To explain these choices, we need the Aspects for the ability to get Woven Mail out of Tangles, as well as Banner of War for the healing and a moderate melee damage boost.

For the fragments, the idea is to allow for the highest possible uptime of our Woven Mail. As such

Thread of Warding is mandatory to give us a source of Woven Mail that doesn't depend on you generating a Tangle, as Tangles have a 15 second cooldown (excluding seasonal mods). This will synergise with some of the Armour Mods we'll go into later, as well as some of the fragments.

Thread of Transmutation is also mandatory as while you're under the effects of Woven Mail, your glaive melee attacks do gain the benefit of this fragment, meaning that you can generate Tangles while fighting in melee, which is the whole point of the build.

Optional Fragments: Thread of Wisdom & Thread of Continuity: These aren't required to make the build work, but Thread of Wisdom will massively increase your Woven Mail uptime if you use it correctly (more on that later) and while this isn't a Suspend build, Shackle Grenade and Super Suspensions lasting longer can be extremely helpful in situations where you've messed up a timing, need to revive a teammate in a dangerous location, the list of benefits of having a longer-duration, hard crowd control ability like Suspend is very long indeed. You can flex these two out according to your personal preferences, but in my testing these two made for the smoothest gameplay experience.

Not Recommended Fragments - Thread of Generation: Avoid this like the plague. The whole point of this build is fighting things up close and personal with the glaive, and the grenade energy generation gained from the glaive's damage is so insignificant that I had to double-check that I actually had equipped the fragment when I was testing it.

Abilities: Frenzied Blade, Shackle Grenade.

I'll explain how this all comes together, alongside the Weapons & Armour, in the Gameplay section.

Weapons

Don't be put off by my specific loadout here, this build can be played well with:

Kinetic Weapon: Any that uses Primary Ammo. We will barely ever use this weapon anyway, so we don't want it eating some potentially crucial Glaive ammo whenever we do use this weapon. If you're using Winterbite, you can take a Special Ammo weapon here. If you do, I recommend something with decent range to deal with pesky fliers or the like.

Energy Weapon: Any Glaive, preferrably with Graverobber and failing that, Overflow. If you're using Winterbite, see above.

Heavy Weapon: Any. You can use Winterbite, but I do not recommend it.

The baseline version of this can be played with any weapons, you don't even need Exotics. However, what follows is what I think is the best version of this build.


Kinetic Weapon: Any Primary Ammo weapon with either Reconstruction or Overflow. If you don't have any, Auto-loading Holster will do in a pinch.

Energy Weapon: Vexcalibur with Auxiliary Reserves, Extended Mag, Feedback Loop, with Robber Refit.

Heavy Weapon: Any with Reconstruction or Overflow + Bait and Switch.

My Personal Weapon Choices:

Rufus's Fury with Reconstruction & Target Lock. (This specific weapon doesn't really matter, I just want a Reconstruction weapon to be ready to enable Apex Predator's Bait and Switch.)

Vexcalibur with Auxiliary Reserves, Extended Mag, Feedback Loop, with Robber Refit.

Apex Predator with Impact Casing, Enhanced Reconstruction & Bait and Switch.

Character Stats

You need: 100 Resilience

You want: As much Recovery as you can get, especially if you're using Vexcalibur.
The third stat to prioritise comes down to personal preference. I want to maintain a decently high value in both Strength and Discipline without completely dumping one, and I do not really care about Intellect as, in PvE, the majority of your super cooldown reduction comes from Orbs of Power and dealing damage.

A comment on the stats - If you execute the gameplay loop correctly, you can get by with terrible stats, though you do of course want the 100 resilience as you'll be taking a lot of damage all of the time.

Armour & Mods

Synthoceps. You can of course play this build without them, but they make your life so much easier and, more importantly, makes your glaive, melee ability and even your super a lot more powerful and fun to use.

Mandatory Mods: Siphon Mod matching your Glaive element, Heavy Handed.

Recommended Mods - Head: Special or Heavy Ammo Finder

Recommended Mods - Chest: Concussive Dampener or Melee Damage Resistance + a Reserve mod matching your Heavy, or Concussive + Melee Damage Resistance.

Recommended Mods - Legs: Scavenger + Surge matching your Heavy, Innervation for more grenade readiness or Recuperation for even more tanking. Without the Seasonal Artifact discount for Scavenger mods, you'll need to make a choice here.

Recommended Mods - Mark: 2x Time Dilation, or 1x Time Dilation and 1x Font of Restoration if you're not at 100 Recovery.

While Heavy Handed does not allow the glaive to generate orbs on melee kills, it will create a great opener for us in any fight, which I'll explain in the Gameplay Section. Since I choose to use Thread of Wisdom, the Firepower mod is largely redundant as we can get Orbs by killing the Suspended targets, and we do not want to use our grenade in the opening of a fight unless we absolutely have to. More on this and Vexcalibur in the Gameplay section.

Here's a DIM link to my loadout for those who want to have a look: https://dim.gg/gmnt5zi/Raise-the-Banners

Now that we have looked at the components, let's look at how it all comes together, starting with a summary of the effects we're working with. This section assumes you're using Vexcalibur:

Effects

Orbs of Power grant you Woven Mail. While you have Woven Mail, your weapon kills, including glaive melee kills, have a chance to generate a Tangle.

Your Melee Ability (Frenzied Blade) kills generate a Tangle, an Orb of Power, and triggers Banner of War.

Killing a Suspended target generates an Orb of Power.

Banner of War grants you extra melee damage and more importantly, healing while in combat. This also buffs and heals your allies, which is great. Once triggered, any kill, including ranged glaive kills, will add time to the duration, and allied Guardians can help with this too.

When blocking with your Vexcalibur, you'll slowly build up an Overshield. While you have this Overshield, Vexcalibur deals extra melee damage. Vexcalibur melee kills scored while you have any amount of this Overshield will instantly grant you a full Overshield and refresh the duration. With a matching Void Siphon, ranged kills generate Orbs of Power which will give you Woven Mail.


Gameplay Loop



1. Start with a Frenzied Blade kill. This will spawn an Orb of Power and generate a Tangle, pick up the Orb (this almost always happens automatically) to gain Woven Mail. You'll also have activated Banner of War, increasing your damage and healing you even while you're taking damage. This healing triggers as a regular pulse, occurring more often as you ramp it up with further melee kills Do NOT immediately pick up or destroy the Tangle. This is your opener and how you want to start every fight. if you have an Overshield, skip Step 2.

2. If you do not have any Vexcalibur Overshield, generate a small amount by blocking. A good way to do this without immediately losing it is getting close to an enemy, bait a melee attack while blocking, block the attack, and immediately kill them with your glaive melee. This will instantly fill up your Overshield if you still have any left at the moment that you kill the enemy. If your block charge isn't full, sneak in the occasional shot to ensure you always have full block energy. Graverobber will reload your Vexcalibur when it kills in melee. Repeat this process if you lose your Overshield.

3. Remain close to the Tangle you created with Frenzied Blade, and pick it up or destroy it once your Woven Mail is about to expire, around 1-3 seconds left. If you have no enemies left to fight in this location, bring the Tangle with you to where you know the next fight will be, or as close as you can.

4. Doing this correctly will mean you'll still have Woven Mail by the time the 15 second Tangle cooldown expires. If Thread of Transmutation doesn't generate a Tangle for you before Woven Mail expires, get a multi-kill Vexcalibur's ranged attack to generate an orb, pick it up which refreshes your Woven Mail, and keep going. If you're out of ammo, swap to your Kinetic and use Frenzied Blade. If you're out of ammo and you have no melee charges left, use your grenade, and kill one of the suspended targets.

5. If your vexcalibur block energy is not full, sneak in a few shots every now and then to build it up. Graverobber will reload it for you as you fight. By doing this, you'll always have a full block ready if things go terribly wrong or you mess up your Woven Mail uptime.

6. If your health drops dangerously low despite your Woven Mail and healing from Banner of War, or you lost your Woven Mail and you're taking a beating that you feel will kill you, start blocking. The damage resistance and slowly generating Overshield from Vexcalibur will often be enough to get you out of trouble, and with a high Recovery stat, if the Overshield isn't being broken as you block, you'll even start regenerating while doing this. Of course, if you still do have Banner of War active, that will help drastically. If you can, shoot an enemy every now and then while blocking to maintain your energy to buy you more time if needed. Alternatively, use your Grenade or Super depending on whichever will be the better solution in your current situation.

If you're playing well, 6 will only happen in rare emergencies even in higher-difficulty content.

Tips:

While the Overshield from Vexcalibur has a 10-second duration, you can extend this. By blocking for a very short period of time, just long enough that it starts generating Overshield. The instant it does this, it will refresh the duration of your current Overshield back up to a full 10 seconds. This costs almost no block energy and can be used to bring your Overshield with you between fights, even when covering large distances without any enemies like you might need to do between certain raid encounters.

if you have an Overshield and you're taking damage while approaching a fight, don't be afraid to spend some of your block energy to protect your Overshield as you close in. By following the steps above, you'll build it back up again and thanks to Graverobber, you don't need to reload.

If you empty your Vexcalibur mag while fighting in melee, just keep swinging. This will override the reload animation, allowing you to keep fighting and, when you kill something, reload that way. This isn't news to anyone who has used a glaive after this synergy was enabled, but it's important to know if this is your first time using glaives in more challenging content.

Thanks to Thread of Warding, allies can help you keep your Woven Mail up without relying solely on Tangles. This means you can usually leave your Tangles on the ground or, if you're confident in your ability to stay alive, use your Tangles to buff your teammates with Woven Mail.

This creates a versatile glaive build that gets around most of the glaive build's biggest problem. Previously, we could choose between Strand's damage resistance or the healing from Void (Devour) or Solar (Restoration), but not both. The Strand build could survive the high burst damage but would constantly have to leave fights to regenerate, and the other two could deal with sustained damage, but were more susceptible to being killed in a single hit or very high burst damage, both of which are typically even more likely to happen in melee range.

When you've got the hang of it and you're doing it right, you can comfortably go toe-to-toe with multiple Elites at once in things like Solo Legend Avalon, face tank direct hits at close range from the terrifying damage of the Spire of the Watcher final boss' lance attacks, but it can only do that if you earn that power by playing the build right. If you mess up, mismanage your Woven Mail, don't prepare the backup of Vexcalibur blocking, and if you don't make the proper decisions to recover from your mistakes, you will die.

And I absolutely love it.

This is the most fun I've ever had with any build in this game, and that's despite the fact that I've never enjoyed Strand up until Banner of War inspired me to mess around with this build. It truly lets you feel like the frontline force of nature that the Titan's supposed to be, getting right into the fight and surviving beatdowns most other builds could only dream of. No, you won't be the greatest damage-dealer of all time but hey, if the activity calls for rocket or linear fusion DPS, with Vexcalibur, you're still perfectly able to fulfil that role just as well.

Alright, time to wrap up before I start rambling about how much I enjoy tearing enemies apart in close combat and I have the polite men with the fancy white jackets show up at my door again:

This build, especially when you're playing solo, requires you to pay attention, manage your resources, and execute the gameplay flow well. The only room for error that you get is room for error that you create by having prepared for it, say for example by making sure your Vexcalibur always has a good amount of charge to block with if you lose your Woven Mail and get in trouble. If you do that, not only are you rewarded with glorious close combat carnage, but there's, at least to me, a great deal of satisfaction in feeling so involved in the gameplay.

You're constantly making decisions. it's a very calculating yet frenetic playstyle that, if you want to get the most of it, forces you to think while you stab. Play your cards right, and you will feel unstoppable and while you do so, you know that you EARNED that, it wasn't given to you by just bonking something with a hammer once, walking into a sunspot and then brainlessly farming Solar kills to keep an infinite Radiant + Restoration combo going, enabled by a single Aspect and two Fragments, without a single neuron activation in your brain or any decision-making beyond "Oh my buffs ran out, I bonk something once again."

I say this as someone who has played a lot of Solar Titan since last year, and I'd gotten bored of exactly that. Before I made this build, I didn't realise just how bored I truly was with it. With that, if you're looking for something that demands more from you and rewards you for it, I highly encourage you to try this out. To quote a line from the following song:

"By design, he was made for the frontline!"