Guild Wars 2

The new Flame Axe in PvE

After some play-testing with the 10/2013 patch, I would say that the Flame Axe is now a reasonable option right next to the Lightning Hammer, the Frost Bow, and the Fiery Greatsword.

I would like to discuss some of the pros and cons, and find out about your own experience. My comments are exclusively about PvE, specifically about dungeons. I assume a player of average skill (me :-) running with a PUG. This is not about organized, steady groups doing all-maxed Zerker speed runs. Let us assume that we run a conjurer build.

The LH is great for melee with some of the highest sustained DPS of the game. The FB gives great AoE burst on a longish cooldown. The FGS has a great mix of damage and mobility but with a very long elite utility cooldown.

Introducing the new FA

The FA does not see much use, although it used to be a good ranged weapon, possibly just another option for low levels. However, the patch added might per cast (!) for FA1, and a combo blast (!) to FA2, which goes well with the Fire combo fields FA3 and FA4. To support the FA it is natural to go 30 in Fire to get either FireXI for Persisting Flames (fury from blasts in fire fields) or FireXII for Pyromancer’s Puissance (might on fire spells).

As people have noticed right away, the might from FA1 stacks with the might from FireXII: you get 2 might for each FA1 attack. This makes it easy to gain and maintain 25 stacks of personal might!

The nice thing is that the FA1 auto-attack has rather a short cast and after-cast time. In simple tests (golems in the Mist, timed from 1st to 25th hit) the attack repeats after 1.0s plus/minus. Does someone have precise numbers? Anyway, even without extra boon or might duration, that means that we get up to 8 might from FA1 and 10 might from FireXII for a total of 18 might. With +40% or more boon/might duration you reach 25 might after about 13s and maintain those 25 stacks of personal might just by standing there and auto-attacking with FA1. Just try it.

In practice, you will use your combo blasts for group might, so you share the boons with your party and get to 25 might in under 10s. Say, Scepter F2, Focus/Dagger F4, Scepter F3, Conjure FA, FA2 into the previous fire field, some more FA2 into the fields from FA3 or FA4 between FA1 auto-attacks. Alternatively, you can give up some personal might using FireXI and the FA blasts for party-wide fury and might.

This turns the FA into a top-notch ranged weapon in the right build. It certainly closes a gap in my conjurer/LH/FB builds. You already have great melee from LH and great ranged burst from FB, but there are several situations where I wished I had a hard hitting 900 range weapon for sustained DPS. The FA is only single target, but yes, it does hit hard with all that might.

And it works really well with LH and FB. If you think LH hits hard, try it after pumping yourself up to 25 might. FB4 is strong, but with 25 might … I wouldn’t be surprised if the next burrow gets up and runs when it sees you coming. Too bad your might stacks trickle away outside FA.

Let’s look at some numbers.

For concreteness, let us look at a 30/0/0/0/0 +40 build, which gives additional 300 power. We choose FireVIII for the conjured charges, so 10 more points for FireXI or FireXII are cheap. I consider half Soldier, half Berserker equipment, see for example this post. Of course, if you don’t need it, the Soldier defense is wasted! And full Berserker always gives more damage, but let’s start somewhere in the middle. In the example power is 1972, precision 1272, crit chance 21%, crit damage 42%, effective power 2361, toughness 1284, vitality 1284, effective health 17388.

A full build would include for example 30 points in Air, which is worth about +20% in damage, plus around +25% from damage traits in Air and Fire. I’ll stick to 30/0/0/0/0 here for simplicity.

DPS

So, how does the FA1 ranged auto-attack compare to other ranged options? Have a look at the attached table. Note that the stat bonus for conjured weapons is included. The DPS column lists direct damage. Some of the information comes from Zelyhn’s thread. (At the time of writing, the Wiki appears to be wrong on the tooltip damage for FA1, Lava Axe. Based on tests in the Mists, it should read 260, not 358. Without gear, I get 311, which becomes 260 when corrected for the 180 power bonus.)

Our hardest hitting auto-attack is LH1. It hits several targets, blinds, and blasts, but only in melee range. DaA1 is not much behind (82% of LH1), but of course with advantages of its own. Then there is the FGS1 auto-attack, which is getting us to 600 range, but the FGS is not always available. The best options for range are found in Staff, but LH1 does more damage. Still if you want to hit more than one target at range, staff is an excellent option.

On the other hand, I prefer S/D and S/F conjurer builds for the nice synergy with conjured weapons: do lots of burst damage and might/fury stacking, then conjure. I therefore include the Scepter auto attacks. Not impressive, even when including condition damage, because most of the damage is single target. And I am not impressed by the FB1 damage, either.

Enter the Flame Axe. Even without might stacks, it is quite competitive. With 25 might stacks, LH1 only does 31% more damage, which is quite impressive for a 900 range weapon with lots of combo utility. StF1 only does 59% of the FA1 damage, however together with StF2 becomes comparable. But shouldn’t we look at the other ranged options with the same amount of might? Well, the FA is most impressive in situations where the might you provide yourself is the only might you get. Say, your party is scattered, running around a boss. Anyway, how many PUGs have you run with that consistently provide 25 might stacks for you? If possible, everyone should share the might, but the FA might is available even when you are on your own.

Conclusion

At least for my own playstyle, the Flame Axe fills a gap in standard conjurer builds. Your goal should still be to get as much damage as you can from the Lightning Hammer. If you can survive it, LH melee is the way to go. In between, do terrible things with your FB4 AoE whenever ready. However, there are some fights where I find myself at range, often against a single boss, and the new FA (with might) adds 70% damage over your standard ranged options, even beating the long-cooldown FGS by 20%. If you use Staff, FA’s blasts are still nice to have, but Staff provides superior ranged AoE to multiple targets.

One more general comment. You can do well with just LH1, and, I am afraid to say so, now you can also do well with FA1 at range with those 25 stacks of might. But you can do much better! As for all ranged attacks, stay as close to the fight as possible for party boons, rezzing, etc. FA and FB make a lot of sense when stacking, too. Try to think about all your options. This means dropping your conjured weapon and using all the utility available to you. We usually learn this while leveling, and in my opinion great conjurer play also means that you want to be fluid in the various standard rotations available in your weapon set. Just because you have traited for a LH-FA-Fire build doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t swap and do your S/F support or go staff for long range AoE in selected situations. Just my two coppers.

Good guide!

Can we use just “A” for flame axe? We have only one axe and FA is usually used for fresh air.

How about taking persisting flames to be able to combo might with A2 (axe skill 2) on cooldown? Without it you will have times when there won’t be a fire field available while A2 will be available. Also fury for the group is more valuable than 10 might for one player. Then you can take piercing shards in water and camp in that attunement to deal more damage.

Persisting Flames is definitely a very strong option! Depends on your group and the fight whether group buffs work, but I completely agree, that should always come before personal might.

Edit: Tried this again: Persisting Flames does not seem to affect FA3 or FA4 field durations. The 6s from standard FA4 is not long enough for two blast from FA2, which is too bad. Still, at +50% might duration, FA by itself should give up to 12 stacks of combo/blast group might plus fury.

FireXII for personal might is still a nice option when you are on your own.
(I’ll think about using A2 etc, usually the distinction seems clear from the context.)

Ever since the Flame Axe buff I’ve been running this in open PvE:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmAc0R3gjFAkCoEecwAFMK0hogFlC5A

With two conjures I almost always have one in my hands even if someone steals my second conjured weapon or I leave it behind. With Fire Magic XI, the fire fields and blast finisher from Fire, Earth and the Flame Axe I have virtually permanent Fury.
Before you conjure a weapon switch to Earth and cast #2, that will give you 250 extra Toughness.

Imo there are better options in dungeons, though. You can tell your teammates not to pick up your LH, and if they have some brains they won’t be doing it. LH has a blast finisher and if your team provides you with fire fields you end up with even more Might stacks than with Flame Axe. It also frees one utility slot.