The Insect Glaive is one of the many weapons you can choose to take with you on a monster hunt in Monster Hunter Rise. The Insect Glaive is one of the tougher weapons to use because of the vertical movement and precision of the weapon’s Kinsect. However, while it is difficult to use, you have plenty of rewards through raw damage and landing multiple critical hits against a target. In this guide, we’re going to cover the best Insect Glaive builds you can use in Monster Hunter Rise.
The best Insect Glaive builds
You want to remain mobile when using an Insect Glaive, regardless of how you build it. However, you give up multiple defenses for this increased mobility and damage, forcing you to consider your combos wisely, paying extra attention to a monster’s attacks to ensure you don’t take a single hit, and downing yourself if you’re not careful.
Insect Glaive Critical Hit build
If you want your critical hits to count while using an Insect Glaive, we will recommend this build. You can find yourself relying on the Valstrax armor’s Dragonheart ability. While this armor set does not naturally come with any form of Critical effect, you can increase it through jewels.
- Weapon – Evening Calm – Considered one of the best Insect Glaives in Monster Hunter Rise, the Evening Calm is a must-have weapon to cleave through enemies.
- Armor – Valstrax Helm, Valstrax Mail, Valstrax Braces, Valstrax Coil, and Valstrax Greave – Rather than mix-and-match armor sets, you can lean into the Valstrax armor, increasing your Dragonheart as high as possible, followed by Master’s Touch, Weakness Exploit, Critical Boost, Speed Sharpening, Resuscitate, and Resentment.
- Talisman – Counterstrike III – For your Talisman, we recommend a Counterstrike III option, improving your character’s attack power after being knocked back by an enemy, which is likely to happen given your character’s mobility.
- Decorations – Three Critical Jewel 2, Three Mastery Jewel 2, Two Grinder Jewel 1, and One Counter Jewel 2
Insect Glaive Poison build
With this build, we’re going to lean into the chance of poisoning a monster during combat, allowing the heavy ticks of DOT to make a battle go that much easier.
- Weapon – Hazy Caster – The Hazy Caster comes with a natural effect of poisoning the target. You’ll want to increase it as much as possible through this build, turning it into a weapon that slowly bites away at your prey’s health.
- Armor – Kaiser Crown, Vaik Mail S, Valstrax Braces, Anjanath Coil S, and Ingot Greaves – You’ll want to mix-and-match armor sets for this build, giving yourself a massive Attack Boost and Critical Eye numbers, alongside the Critical Eye, Critical Boost, Weakness Exploit, and Poison Attack, to name the important ones.
- Talisman – Counterstrike III – Similar to the last build, we will recommend Counterstrike III. We feel you can still make the most out of this
- Decorations – Three Venom Jewels, Three Critical Jewel 2, Two Sharp Jewel 2, Two Tenderizer Jewel 2, Two Grinder Jewels, One Counter Jewel, and One Steadfast Jewel.
Insect Glaive Elemental build
The final build will lean into preparing for elemental attacks against your foes. You can expect to encounter multiple monsters, and prepare to use the right element against them is crucial. You will have the swap out your weapons, but don’t worry about your armor.
Weapon – Abominable Glaive, Curved Naganagi, Gnashing Flammenfaefer, and Metalmangler – You can swap between these four weapons, depending on what element you would like to use. Abominable Glaive is for Iceblight, Curved Naganagi is for Waterblight, Gnashing Flammenfaefer is for Fireblight, and Metalmangler is for Thunder.
Armor – Kaiser Crown, Rhopessa Thorax S, Rathalos Braces S, Anjanath Coil S, and Ingot Greaves – You want to have access to as many of the jewel slots as possible, which you can by using nearly all of the same build’s previous armor pieces, swapping things out for the Rhopessa Thorax S and the Rathalos Braces S.
Talisman – For your Talisman, you want to focus on getting a Razor and Attack jewel to boost your Attack Power and protect your weapon’s chance of losing sharpness.
Decorations – Your decoration slots will vary for this build. However, the important ones include Two Critical Jewel 2, Two Razor Jewel 2, One Attack Jewel 2, One Grinder Jewel, and the rest will be Element Jewels. The Element Jewels will swap out depending on what weapon you’re using, such as Stream Jewel, Bolt Jewel, Frost Jewel, or Blaze Jewel.
