Guild Wars 2

Increase range to 900 with Axe Mastery it at least gives us some sort of ranged DPS.

I have no idea why axe mastery was nerfed so hard at a time when many traits were being combined or baselined.

Maybe a axe buff is coming?

EDIT: Landing a rending claws will reduce the recharge of Ghastly Claws by 0.16 seconds? wTF seriously wTF is this trait doing?

It was a decent idea that worked on other builds, but was an awful idea. I imagine they looked at what was happened to say Mesmer and realized that was cool, and then in trying to move the idea over someone just didn’t think too much about Axe, just that the current Axe training is pretty mediocre.

Just makes no sence to me, even with up coming changes, that we are a light armored class who is supposed to fight up close unless you do condition damage. With little way’s to escape or survive (outside or DS). If siphon worked properly I could see it as that would off set our armor, but short of any changes it doesn’t scale. Not ment to be a rant, I was just hopping we might get a ranged DPS even at 900.

What if the trait gave axe #2 a whirl finisher and axe #3 a blast finisher (that also affects the GM (spiteful spirit?) trait? Would you take it even if it didn’t have a damage increase or CD decrease?

Whirl is an interesting idea as you can now hit multipul targets and I get where you are going as Staff is the only weapon that has combo’s, but every class except Necro’s has a ranged dps weapon. Yes I guess DS half counts but not really.

Plexxing.2978:

What if the trait gave axe #2 a whirl finisher and axe #3 a blast finisher (that also affects the GM (spiteful spirit?) trait? Would you take it even if it didn’t have a damage increase or CD decrease?

That should be axe baseline.

Ahh, Axe Mastery… yes!

For me it’s pretty sure the trait in the proposed form will not see the light of day, because it’s so bad that the whole forums would explode.

The new proposed trait just makes no sense. The mastery should’ve increased axe range to 900, and made axe 1 cleave.

That would be amazing! Increase range to 900 when taking axe training, put it into grandmaster, put signet mastery back into master. All problems fixed.

quBit.6437:

That would be amazing! Increase range to 900 when taking axe training, put it into grandmaster, put signet mastery back into master. All problems fixed.

They will have to give axe a serious buff for that to be worth it. 900 range on axe is not worth a grandmaster slot.

I want to see what’s planned with greatsword. This class doesn’t need 2 melee weapons.

Increase Axe to 900, dagger to 600, and make GS melee.

I’d like them to add AOE damage around enemy who is targeted by Ghastly Claw on top of the current changes with the trait. My reasoning behind this is because the Axe seems to be an AOE weapon set. Axe is used in mid range fights and is good for building LF and causing AOE cripple and boon rip. Since now Axe only does increase damage to enemies who are crippled it would help if since it already causes AOE cripple to also cause some type of AOE damage.

Plexxing.2978:

What if the trait gave axe #2 a whirl finisher and axe #3 a blast finisher (that also affects the GM (spiteful spirit?) trait? Would you take it even if it didn’t have a damage increase or CD decrease?

A necro finisher?!?!? They don’t like us that much

The thing is axe mastery could be good if they buffed 2 to actually do burst damage. As it stands its slightly less than dagger auto attack. Its the weapon thats the real problem. Not the trait.

Axe should be reworked. Blast finisher on 3 makes sense, as does making 1 aoe, like eles fire staff 1. Skill 2 should be upped in dmg to be comparable to dagger auto. That would make it much more interesting pick.

The main issue with axe is that it can’t work with its current identity- we have two single-target power weapons, and dagger fills that role much better than axe. Changes should focus on making axe distinct from our other weapons, like when they made Ranger axe good for both condi and beast-master builds with Might stacking. What if it was a more defensive weapon focused on building lots of life force? You could even have the auto attack build life force when you strike a Crippled target if you want axe users to care more about landing Unholy Feast.

Here’s a random thought. How about instead of just axe cool downs, it reduced all cool downs?

Still don’t get why they are nerfing the least used, weakest weapon we have. I mean, what is going on?

leman.7682:

Ahh, Axe Mastery… it’s so bad that the whole forums would explode.

That actualy made me laugh .

Well, did anyone even consider the fact that they may actually rework Axe at the same time? (I don’t think they will but maybe I’m underestimating them…)

Dadnir.5038:

leman.7682:

Ahh, Axe Mastery… it’s so bad that the whole forums would explode.

That actualy made me laugh .

Well, did anyone even consider the fact that they may actually rework Axe at the same time? (I don’t think they will but maybe I’m underestimating them…)

Probably because 2/3 skills on Axe are shown in the trait tooltips and they are exactly the same as they are now.

What if axe was like the following?

The auto attack working similar to wave of wrath for guards. Axe auto would hit targets in an area infront of the player and it would have a might tighter cone.
Rending claws
Damage targets in an area infront of the player.
Deal vulnerability on the final strike.
5 Targets

Ghastly claws
Rapidly slash your tareget and surrounding area.
same damage
120~240 radius.

Unholy feast
Just add a blast finisher.

Then axe mastery could be changed to 0.5~1% per target hit. Meaning the cooldown on the trait would be useful.

I seriously doubt we got that much attention, but we can only hope we did. Simplist change would be:
A: Old axe mastery plus increase range 900

B: Allow Rending Claws to hit up to 3 targets 120 / 150 radius of target no change to damage as it now hits multipul targets

C: Leave Ghostly Claws alone

D: Either leave Unholy Feast at 600 or make it 900 but it bounce to up to 3 targets with increased damge

spoj.9672:

The thing is axe mastery could be good if they buffed 2 to actually do burst damage. As it stands its slightly less than dagger auto attack. Its the weapon thats the real problem. Not the trait.

No, the trait is objectively worse than its current version. The weapon is also pretty bad, but the trait is garbage still.

Well yeah its worse than the old version. But if skill 2 and 3 were much much stronger then its not terrible.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Dadnir.5038:

leman.7682:

Ahh, Axe Mastery… it’s so bad that the whole forums would explode.

That actualy made me laugh .

Well, did anyone even consider the fact that they may actually rework Axe at the same time? (I don’t think they will but maybe I’m underestimating them…)

You must be new here. These forums are not only ignored, but I think ANet lost the roadmap to them. I have waited since bw1 for our “attrition” to actually be implemented and now I just use my necro as a well dispenser in WvW.

you are incorrect. anet reads necro forum, thats why revenant is so awesome. he steals our ideas. -.-

spoj.9672:

Well yeah its worse than the old version. But if skill 2 and 3 were much much stronger then its not terrible.

No it’s awful.

Landing a rending claws will reduce your ghastly claws cooldown by 0.16 seconds. This is so minor it doesn’t exist.

The other bonus hits enemies with cripple. But cripple from axe is pathetic. Less than 33% uptime on tiny range & easily cleared since power Necromancers don’t have a lot of conditions to worry about. Necromancer main source of cripple is Warhorn, which doesn’t work well with axe at all (axe = skirmishing, Warhorn = melee).

This is a terrible terrible trait.

And if ghastly claws gets a damage buff and Axe 3 gets a blast finisher, its still terrible.

My point is it can be made not terrible. But before that axe needs to be buffed first.

Id be fine with it being deleted from the game though. Its probably too much work to make it acceptable.

Atherakhia.4086:

I want to see what’s planned with greatsword. This class doesn’t need 2 melee weapons.

Increase Axe to 900, dagger to 600, and make GS melee.

Necro doesn’t have a cleave weapon.
GS is needed.

leman.7682:

You know what kittenes me off the most, guys?

It’s that most of you only talk about number buffs that do not solve the biggest problem the necro has, which is boring skills. All of our builds in both PvE and sPvP revolve around the necro spamming his auto-attacks. This is a horrible design, totally undeserved and completely unacceptable.
Necro weapon sets look bland compared to the existing classes and revenant’s weapons demolish them. Necro axe, dagger and scepter (which are 4 of our main hand weapons) are basically 3 different versions of warrior rifle. Staff isn’t too inspired either. Other classes have such weapons as well, but usually weapon sets for other classes have combos and skills that synergise to create a more or less full experience.

You could take most if not all of necro weapon skills, shuffle them and place back to the weapons and it would have no impact on how these weapons play. This means they do not synergize internally and that’s utterly wrong. The diversity of mechanics in our weapon sets is extremely limited – we have channels, normal attacks and marks which I considere simplistic anyways. Our skills do 3 things mostly – damage, life force generation and condition transferring. Boons are almost not present, siphon is only on dagger, and fear only on staff.
Other classes have skill sequences (we have one on dagger auro), channels, movement skills, fields, finishers, status effects (evades), blocks, stealth and hard cc, boons and so on. Hell, even a very simple ranger weapon – MH axe – has more gameplay to it than necro stuff, because it requires good positioning to maximize the bleed damage.

And you know what’s even worse? That ArenaNet positions some guy, who doesn’t give a kitten about the class who comes to the stream and rushes through those boring traits with ‘old classic’ and ‘nothing changed here’, while the already most versatile profession with gameplay so much more engaging than necro’s and with a superior number of skills and mechanics – the engineer – is getting even more skills and reworks… Who asked for the F5? I guess pretty much no one, but Anet is doing it. Mortar rework changing it from 1 skill to 5? Sure! A new healer kit? No problem. Look at the emotional investment with which Jon Peters talks about warriors. You can see he has the mental capacity and the enthusiasm to work on that and that’s why warriors are good. We just aren’t that lucky.

This kittening kittenes me off.

Um ok so there was definitely a lot of passion in this post lol. Personally I think the devs do care about the class and I’m excited for the necro trait changes and if anything id like to expand on DS. But Im not against changing up weapons skills a bit. And I think Robert Gee does care….

Rending Claws 1: 262 damage
Range 600
Rending Claws 2: 205 damage
Poison Target
Range 600
Rending Claws 3: 205 damage (Would look cool if graphically this shot out like a wave from the Necro. Black fog traveling forward with hands coming up out of the ground grabbing at everything)
Chill Target
Range 600

Ghastly Claws
1040 Damage (x10)
Every 5th strike target explodes out dealing 150 damage and Poisoning the target for X sec if Necro is within blast gain swiftness for X sec
Range 900
Life Force: 12%
CD: 10 sec

Unholy Feast: Blast Finisher

Ragnar.1546:

Rending Claws 1: 262 damage
Range 600
Rending Claws 2: 205 damage
Poison Target
Range 600
Rending Claws 3: 205 damage (Would look cool if graphically this shot out like a wave from the Necro. Black fog traveling forward with hands coming up out of the ground grabbing at everything)
Chill Target
Range 600

I´d prefer Cripple on the 2nd hit, assuming the 10% modifier from Axe Training stays the way it was proposed.

Ragnar.1546:

Ghastly Claws
1040 Damage (x10)
Every 5th strike target explodes out dealing 150 damage and Poisoning the target for X sec if Necro is within blast gain swiftness for X sec
Range 900
Life Force: 12%
CD: 10 sec

Still too weak if you ask me, just compare it to Rapid Fire (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rapid_Fire), which has double the range, great synergy with a lot of traits, good vulnerability application and can pretty much be spammed after the changes hit =P

Ragnar.1546:

Unholy Feast: Blast Finisher

This, or Blocks Missiles, like Ele dagger earth #2.

But still, as people already pointed out, even with improved Axe skills I think the reduced recharge from Axe Training will still be kitten and the trait wont compete with Death Shivers or Chill of Death.
The reduced recharge should be flat, unconditional 20%, period. In addition to that I think if the damage modifier stays conditional (only against crippled foes) it should be increased to 20%.

Comparing what they proposed for this trait to what warriors will get for their GS just makes me want to delete all the ascended Axes on my Necro =/

FrozenChinchilla.5249:

Atherakhia.4086:

I want to see what’s planned with greatsword. This class doesn’t need 2 melee weapons.

Increase Axe to 900, dagger to 600, and make GS melee.

Necro doesn’t have a cleave weapon.
GS is needed.

That’s why they improved dagger to hit 2 targets instead of 1. The class doesn’t need one weapon that hits 2 targets and another that hits 3.

Especially depending on how they treat the weapon. Is GS going to be a high DPS weapon or a utility weapon? If dagger remains the highest DPS output, it won’t matter what the cleave target is. Especially if we’re talking 2 vs 3 targets.

Sigmoid.7082:

What if axe was like the following?

The auto attack working similar to wave of wrath for guards. Axe auto would hit targets in an area infront of the player and it would have a might tighter cone.
Rending claws
Damage targets in an area infront of the player.
Deal vulnerability on the final strike.
5 Targets

Ghastly claws
Rapidly slash your tareget and surrounding area.
same damage
120~240 radius.

Unholy feast
Just add a blast finisher.

Then axe mastery could be changed to 0.5~1% per target hit. Meaning the cooldown on the trait would be useful.

I’d not be opposed to axe working like this. I actually suggested something similar in a post a few months back. The auto attack is so bad anyways, that making it hit 5 people really shouldn’t be OP.

The trait should remain the same it is today. I don’t see the new trait being useful, even with axe buffed in this manner.

Honestly the only thing about Axe that I really care about is the 3rd skill. Make it a blast finisher, make it not be blocked by Aegis (boon removals should remove Aegis), fix its boon priorities a bit, and I don’t care a massive amount what you do with the other two skills, as long as 3 doesn’t change.