Guild Wars 2

When judging Axe damage what is the best way to do so? It stacks Venerability poorly, Focus #4 is the Venerability stacker. After Axe #2 and #3 are on CD you might as well stop attacking unless you swap weapons.

But if we look at Axe #1 as something we do in between retaliation, then is that not a better way of judging it? In that light Axe #1 is a really good skill especially ‘Traited,’ correct or …?

Axe #1 is the reason why axe is pretty much entirely useless in any PvP scenario. If you run a PvE MM, then sure, it can be ok, but it is just far too weak. Even traited the CD on Axe 3 is 12s, so you have time to swap to a useful weapon and then swap back before 3 re-pops, so there is never really a good reason to use Axe 1 unless you hit like a wet noodle and you want to boost damage from other sources.

Hopefully this is one of the things that gets addressed in the upcoming balance patch. They could make Axe interesting by changing the #1 into a chain with some effects on it (like a boon corrupt or something).

In my oppinion, you shouldn’t use axe #1.

I have traited a few things to power up my Life Blast (Death shroud #1) I’ve reduced it’s CD to 5 seconds, it also Pierces, causes 2 stacks of Vulnerability per hit and 1 stack of might. In Arah with Potion + Sigil I’m critting 6k + with a zerker build always.

This might not be the best way to go because I don’t look at all these other build I just like to play around with what is good for me but it’s worth a go, I’ll explain in more detail below if you’re interested

Traits;
Soul Reaping
Gluttony: Increases life force gain from skills by 10%.
Vital Persistence (II): Life force drains 25% slower while in death shroud.
Last Gasp: Gain Spectral Armor at 50% health.
Unyielding Blast: Life Blast pierces and causes vulnerability.
Strength of Undeath: You do 5% more damage if you have more than 50% life force.
Near to Death: Death Shroud recharges 50% faster.*

*You should switch out the last trait for Foot in the Grave for Lupi in Arah.

If you keep your life force >50% You will have a nice 5% damage boost on top of the 25% (from vulnerability) not to mention the might stacks you’ll be building up.

To get the might stacks you’ll have to be in Spite trait tree with Reapers Might (VI). The might stacks last 15 secs before any boon duration.

Usually you’ll be able to get one or two casts of Life blast out so you’ll need Death Shroud on a 5 sec CD because you’ll only be coming out of it while your axe and focus skills come off CD.

I ranted on so I’ll stop now…

youlostthegame.8102:

In my oppinion, you shouldn’t use axe #1.

I have traited a few things to power up my Life Blast (Death shroud #1) I’ve reduced it’s CD to 5 seconds, it also Pierces, causes 2 stacks of Vulnerability per hit and 1 stack of might. In Arah with Potion + Sigil I’m critting 6k + with a zerker build always.

This might not be the best way to go because I don’t look at all these other build I just like to play around with what is good for me but it’s worth a go, I’ll explain in more detail below if you’re interested

Traits;
Soul Reaping
Gluttony: Increases life force gain from skills by 10%.
Vital Persistence (II): Life force drains 25% slower while in death shroud.
Last Gasp: Gain Spectral Armor at 50% health.
Unyielding Blast: Life Blast pierces and causes vulnerability.
Strength of Undeath: You do 5% more damage if you have more than 50% life force.
Near to Death: Death Shroud recharges 50% faster.*

*You should switch out the last trait for Foot in the Grave for Lupi in Arah.

If you keep your life force >50% You will have a nice 5% damage boost on top of the 25% (from vulnerability) not to mention the might stacks you’ll be building up.

To get the might stacks you’ll have to be in Spite trait tree with Reapers Might (VI). The might stacks last 15 secs before any boon duration.

Usually you’ll be able to get one or two casts of Life blast out so you’ll need Death Shroud on a 5 sec CD because you’ll only be coming out of it while your axe and focus skills come off CD.

I ranted on so I’ll stop now…

As stated. I don’t run axe simply because everything an axe does, a soul reaper does better. The attack speed is a joke, making the stacking of vul near impossible. It does not synergize with anything well. You get retaliation, which you also get from spiteful spirit. The 2 is a simple damage spell, which, dont get me wrong, does decent damage, but doesn’t do anything else. The CD on 3 is just too high to be viable for retaliation, again, soul reaping and spiteful spirit do that as well, and faster. If you want a vuln / power build, go with soul reaping.

1. is also a decent life-force gainer and on hit/crit procs.

Really, the only weak part of the axe is the #1.

Make axe cleave! Pretty please?

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Axe #1 is the reason why axe is pretty much entirely useless in any PvP scenario. If you run a PvE MM, then sure, it can be ok, but it is just far too weak. Even traited the CD on Axe 3 is 12s, so you have time to swap to a useful weapon and then swap back before 3 re-pops, so there is never really a good reason to use Axe 1 unless you hit like a wet noodle and you want to boost damage from other sources.

Hopefully this is one of the things that gets addressed in the upcoming balance patch. They could make Axe interesting by changing the #1 into a chain with some effects on it (like a boon corrupt or something).

And even then, Retaliation is pretty much useless for a MM because their minions are going to be taking most of their hits for them, and you don’t stack Vulnerability fast enough to amp your minions’ damage sufficiently. You’re still better off with another weapon.

I like the idea of Axe #1 cleaving, maybe in a cone or maybe just around your target. It would suck as a 1v1 weapon compared to the mainhand Dagger, but in a teamfight or skirmish, it would provide awesome direct-damage pressure.

Ghastly Claws is pretty good, but the auto-attack is just sub-par.
It helps you keep up Vulnerability, but there are much faster ways of stacking it.
I feel like it’s just a set-up for Ghastly Claws and not much else.

Unholy Feast could use a buff, too, but it’s nice situationally as is.
AoE cripple can be handy sometimes and the Retal isn’t amazing but it’s still something.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I like the idea of Axe #1 cleaving, maybe in a cone. It would suck as a 1v1 weapon compared to the mainhand Dagger, but in a teamfight or skirmish, it would provide awesome direct-damage pressure.

Naw. With the slow attack speed and terrible DPS even the cleave wouldn’t salvage it into useful. There are too many better DPS builds with cleave out there, and they won’t boost the damage and give it cleave because then the Vampiric proc’s could get out of hand.

I don’t expect any reasonable degree of cleave damage on any Necro weapon sets for that very reason. They already whack-a-moled a lot of the Necro damage and sustain out of the game once and still havent brought it back up to par. I don’t expect them to go buff crazy now after 10 months.

Axe/warhorn with a staff is okay for a build condtion/critical/death shroud. But you gonna have a hard time finding some good traits to go with that…

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Blaine Tog.8304:

I like the idea of Axe #1 cleaving, maybe in a cone. It would suck as a 1v1 weapon compared to the mainhand Dagger, but in a teamfight or skirmish, it would provide awesome direct-damage pressure.

Naw. With the slow attack speed and terrible DPS even the cleave wouldn’t salvage it into useful. …..

This.

If they won’t speed up Axe1, then maybe they could add, say, 2-5 sec of Weakness to the attack? It won’t help our DPS, but it would help our survival, so it fits with the whole “attrition” concept.

I have to admit that Axe2 is pretty good with a decent Power build. Mine is nothing extreme, and I get (in PVE) 5-6K (with Clsoe to Death) pretty reliably with some vulns on the target.

As others have said, though, Axe can’t really stand on its own as a weapon: it requires Focus4 (or vulns from a party member) to make Axe2 effective, and a Grandmaster trait which still fails to add any notable effectiveness in comparison to Close to Death.

Edit: Also, I have to say that the Asura male axe animations are pretty good.

I think Anet thinks that vulnerability is a very big deal that should require large sacrifice or only be granted in small amounts. Thief pistol 2 is another example where a thief would need to use all his initiative to average..maybe 15 stacks without +duration? Though with how initiative works it’s completely optional where axe…well I guess it’s optional but you really have to juggle weapons and DS.

The problem comes from two things I think, the players don’t want to make that sacrifice and that there’s some exceptions to the rule that can stack it without as much hassle. In necros case even within it’s own class. Within it’s own weaponset even since focus is the goto axe offhand.

I use the axe almost exclusively. That said, yes, the number 1 skill is painfully slow and really needs a speed boost. The vulnerability is nice but as others have said it is just easier to get it with a focus or through other means. Weakness however is something we are sadly lacking in and to make a true attrition profession (as TheAgedGnome has said) would fit in well for what an axe is for.

So my suggestion for the axe would be to increase the speed on (1) to 1/2 (1/4 might be a bit over the top) and replace the vulnerability (2 stack for 7s) with weakness (one stack for 3s). This would make us stronger the longer we stay in a fight by way of making our opponent’s attacks hurt us for less damage. The (2) and (3) skills are fine, but the damage for both could use a minor (5%) boost IMO.

Lolicia.6502:

Make axe cleave! Pretty please?

Always thought this would solve a lot of Necro problems.

We don’t need more access to weakness. We already have a cheap trait (weakening shroud) that gives near perma (or perma, depending on build) pbaoe weakness. Give me cleave, faster cast times, more damage, etc.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Naw. With the slow attack speed and terrible DPS even the cleave wouldn’t salvage it into useful. There are too many better DPS builds with cleave out there, and they won’t boost the damage and give it cleave because then the Vampiric proc’s could get out of hand.

I don’t expect any reasonable degree of cleave damage on any Necro weapon sets for that very reason. They already whack-a-moled a lot of the Necro damage and sustain out of the game once and still havent brought it back up to par. I don’t expect them to go buff crazy now after 10 months.

I don’t think Axe should be our high DPS weapon, though. That’s what the Dagger is for, and it does it pretty well. The Axe should be about applying pressure, which it could do in group situations if it had better AoE.

And actually, we do have sustain buffs coming. The devs went on and on about the Necro in the last State of the Game about how they know Life Siphoning is pretty bad at the moment and needs to be improved dramatically. My guess is they’ll fix that, give us a bit more Life Force here and there, and then stop and see if that’s enough to let us out-attrition the other attrition builds.

If axe 1 either cleaved or had the default attack speed bumped up a little, it would be fine.

One interesting buff could be to make axe #3 a blast finisher. This would give axe a unique role as giving us access to reliably trigger some of our great combo fields. This idea is not originally mine as I’ve seen it suggested elsewhere, but I always thought it sort of made sense. Thoughts?

Axe isn’t much use. #2 for medium range as we know is nice. #1 is nice for MM as it dose 2x attacks per attack, so it sets your minions num num’s in half the time of staf, and vun is nice with minions.

Truthfully tho, dagger usually wins over. Once you get over it’s range.
Auto-Attack starts with 2x to get pets hungry, then gens life force. Is soo much faster.
Tho #2 doesn’t quite do the dam, it’s keeping up/doing sexy numbers with the heal on top.
And #3 is soo much nicer for ‘stand in my well’ rather than ‘walk slowly out my well’.

make dagger cleave, and axe an hybrid weapon. Remove vulnerability and put poison on #1, remove cripple from #3 and put it in #2, put weakness in #3 and done. You have an attrition weapon that use the condition duration on Spite line, just where is the trait for Axe.
Your foe can’t run, can’t dodge, can’t heal while you do abysmal damage, pretty much the attrition concept.

vicious.5683:

make dagger cleave, and axe an hybrid weapon. Remove vulnerability and put poison on #1, remove cripple from #3 and put it in #2, put weakness in #3 and done. You have an attrition weapon that use the condition duration on Spite line, just where is the trait for Axe.
Your foe can’t run, can’t dodge, can’t heal while you do abysmal damage, pretty much the attrition concept.

But axe (2) is single target and I like to have an aoe retaliation/cripple. Single target cripple would in essence nerf us while using the axe, even though you would replace it with an aoe weakness it removes one of the few ways we can get a bit of distance when facing a mob. The number (1) skill does need some work be it another condition or just speeding it up remains to be seen.

The Axe is a support weapon, first and foremost. This is evidence by the 600 range (midrange) and fact that it has a weak, vulnerability inflicting attack. It’s not made for 1v1, quick fights, or long range anything. It looks to me like it was made for team fights. Remember, vulnerability helps everybody on your team – they all do more damage. Likewise with the aoe cripple and so on.

@youlostthegame.8102 Always find speccing for Lifeblast makes it look kinda good but you know 1sec cast time in this game? thats a LONG cast time if it was half dmg 50% faster castrate it would be something and the whole vuln + might stacking would feel alot smoother.

for me, 1-2 stacks of Might for 10s do not justify:
– the TOO SLOW cast of Life Blast (twice at least, usually, if you want might)
– the skill cooldown created when exiting DS.

Clunky and shallow mechanic, lazy / unimaginative thinking by AN.

Alot of Necromancer is “long cooldowns” and “Long cast times”.

This looks like a q.q thread about axe damage, which starts with basically saying that the statement actually only applies to when 2/3 skills are on cooldown, so “axe damage is bad when all the axe damage-dealing skills are on cooldown”, you don’t say..

I don’t really see a massive problem with the axe, sure the auto hits like a wet noodle, I personally never thought that skill should be a massive damage-dealer as it’s pretty fast in 2 stages, applies vuln and is (sort of) ranged so not much to stop it from hitting; I think it’s meant more like a set-up skill for the other 2/3 which actually do deal damage. Hitting a non-bunker with axe #2 after stacking some vuln with the auto and focus #4 vuln-burst will chip off at least 50% of their hp, so a properly-played axe set does deal good damage, then you swap, use your other non-axe set to deal damage and then you can swap right back to axe in 9 seconds and you’ll have the skills up again, since axe cooldowns are actually low-ish (especially compared to all other necro skills lol).
The game is designed for you to have 2 weapon sets and another skillset in DS, not linger around in one set and wonder why you’re not dealing damage when you put it all on cooldown.