Guild Wars 2

Axe is in a strange place right now. It has a jarringly poorly matched animation, too short range for a true ranged weapon, and too poor damage for close range. It’s life force generation is poor, and its ‘burst’ damage skill is actually a dps loss, when it works right at all.
There’s a long thread about the animation and what the weapon is designed to do already; i’m not going to get into that here. This is just my idea for a redesign of the autochain to bring its damage into line.

Attack 1: Rending Claws
slash your foe three times with ghostly claws, making them vulnerable
hits 3x, for 75% of the current per-hit damage, for a total of 12.5% additional damage in the same time frame
Attack 2: Deathly Grasp
Impale your foe with ghostly claws, leaving them weakened
Deals 2/3 total damage of attack 1 in half the time, for a proportional 33% dps increase.
Attack 3: Spirit Rip
Rip away a chunk of lifeforce with your spectral talons
Deals the full damage of the initial attack in 2/3 the time, for a 50% dps increase.

Overall this averages to just below a 1/3 dps increase with most of the damage concentrated at the end, with added weakness application, 50% more vulnerability, and added lifeforce generation.

Unholy Feast, skill 3 is very good skill. Maybe it can convert 2 boons per foe or convert 1 boon and transfer 1 condition per foe(to powerful, maybe!?).
I like the Auto attack idea, give it 15-20% more damage.
Your skill 2 idea is ok. It need to be shorter in duration, something like 1 and 1/2 or 1 and 3/4, It need to give good amount of LF, but I think it also need another effect on it.
Some kind of defense(again I compare it to the mesmer 1h. sword).
Or another idea, keep the 2 1/4 sec cast but add projectile destruction option to it. The axe animation is perfect for it, it spin fast in front of you and it can tear apart projectiles in a frontal cone.

Sorry, maybe i wasn’t clear – this is all one skill, turning autoattack into a chain, rather than a single repeating skill.

Did you miss the preview?

They ignored all the issues and increased the range, which is what they did when focus sucked.

Hint: it didn’t help anything

nekretaal.6485:

Did you miss the preview?

They ignored all the issues and increased the range, which is what they did when focus sucked.

Hint: it didn’t help anything

Did you miss the preview?

Hint : They clearly stated they would not nearly cover all the changes and to wait for tuesday for the full patchlogs.

There’s also this post on the Ranger forums that implies that they don’t feel like they will be done balancing after this first patch, and further changes may be forthcoming afterwards.

nekretaal.6485:

Did you miss the preview?

They ignored all the issues and increased the range, which is what they did when focus sucked.

Hint: it didn’t help anything

Yeah, axe needs a lot more than a range increase.

I see what you did there, my mistake. But then your idea becomes 5 attacks chain, way to long I guess.

mazut.4296:

I see what you did there, my mistake. But then your idea becomes 5 attacks chain, way to long I guess.

Huh?

i labelled the three attacks you make – or do you mean, because the first hit strikes 3x? That’s no different from warrior mainhand axe – they have a chain of 1hit, 2 hits, then three hits, spread over three skills.