Guild Wars 2

Robert Gee.9246:

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

What about make AA a chain?

1st attack is like first hit ot actual aa (dmg + 1 stack vuln)
2nd attack is like 2nd hit (dmg + 1stack vuln) (both are the same, but now in 2 different skills)
and then add a 3rd attack, which has higher dmg and as well 2 more stacks of vulnerability.

Cast times like 1/4 —> 1/4 --> 1/2

Treat the animations from the player like swinging sword/axe like it’s for Thief or Warrior or something, but faster^^

There should’nt be enough time left for exploiting then^^

Ant btw, off Topic:
Reduce cast time for life blast to half and with this dmg to 50-60% XD

Varonth.5830:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

1.- does no damage if too many targets are in the way, requires range restrictions to reach max dmg, no additional built-in effects
2. The only competitor here and doesn’t “outshine” necro axe, just has burning which is op in itself
3. same target limitations as mesmer GS, and requires to line up targets for max dmg potential. Single target it sucks and hitbox for the electric beam is small
4. Better for loot tagging than killing anything, plus it has no other effects like vuln, burning (without virtue of justice) ect.
5. melee…not sure why this is even being compared here. Not the same thing at all. It does no massive damage, the clone can be buggy and not spawn, and it has a cooldown.
6. same as GS1, can be body blocked or terrain blocked easily
7. Phantasma attack slow, easily dodge or destroyed. Most serious mesmer builds don’t rely heavily on phantasms. The GS phant is about the best one they have and if you can distance yourself enough you can even sidestep it when it attacks from 1200 range away….

My point being your comparisons aren’t telling me that axe is bad and the changes don’t help it. In fact the only example you gave of a weapon that performs like axe is ele scepter 1, and it’s only good because burn spam and that is courtesy of the burn condition itself.

after doing some test axe 1 is okishcould be better, axe 2 need more damage and axe 3 is ok

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

Why not add something like the revenant sword auto or ele’s fire trident auto, to buff its damage while giving it some counterplay? Instead of the auto just hitting twice, make the auto attack hit first normally, and the second hit leave an immobile floating skull or locust or something that detonates after a second, dealing significantly more damage than the second hit of the auto would currently do. It would make it far more viable in PvE, and in pvp, give it better maximum payoff, but that maximum would require using other skills to pull off reliably, while adding some counterplay to a weapon that currently has none.

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Well, my main Necro has run Axe + Focus with max’d vulnerability duration increase (givers weapons, sigils, runes) for years and always wrecks face to my satisfaction (or out right glee) so a straight up buff to range AND damage is like Winter’s Day come early to this like death-monger .

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

I will give it some thought.

The real issue:

For those, who will never forget and never forgive:

The Good ==> The Ugly

Good Asura ==> Ugly Asura
Good Charr ==> Ugly Charr
Good Norn ==> Ugly Norn
Good Males ==> Ugly Males
Good Females ==> Ugly Females

Edit: not to minimize the actual numbers balance. But i recently posted a suggestion on how to change the autoattack to fix it, which still seems like it would work, so it seems redundant to also address that here.

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning.
…

What do you mean when you say positioning?
The only time when positioning matters is when a player has the option to obstruct their opponent’s line of sight. But Rending Claws doesn’t ignore that.

The only other upside to a non-projectile ranged attack is that it can’t be countered by the likes of projectile reflects. But like many others have pointed out already, the mesmer greatsword is the same and has even higher range while dealing way more damage than our axe. And our scepter has always had 900 range with a better auto attack than Rending Claws. Now the scepter got some buffs on top of that, which are much better than just +10% direct dmg.

And let’s be honest, would anyone be impressed or amazed if the patch notes said +100% damage instead of 10%?

Raziel.8072:

Varonth.5830:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

1.- does no damage if too many targets are in the way, requires range restrictions to reach max dmg, no additional built-in effects
2. The only competitor here and doesn’t “outshine” necro axe, just has burning which is op in itself
3. same target limitations as mesmer GS, and requires to line up targets for max dmg potential. Single target it sucks and hitbox for the electric beam is small
4. Better for loot tagging than killing anything, plus it has no other effects like vuln, burning (without virtue of justice) ect.
5. melee…not sure why this is even being compared here. Not the same thing at all. It does no massive damage, the clone can be buggy and not spawn, and it has a cooldown.
6. same as GS1, can be body blocked or terrain blocked easily
7. Phantasma attack slow, easily dodge or destroyed. Most serious mesmer builds don’t rely heavily on phantasms. The GS phant is about the best one they have and if you can distance yourself enough you can even sidestep it when it attacks from 1200 range away….

My point being your comparisons aren’t telling me that axe is bad and the changes don’t help it. In fact the only example you gave of a weapon that performs like axe is ele scepter 1, and it’s only good because burn spam and that is courtesy of the burn condition itself.

So your point is, if you hit more than 3 targets with the greatsword it becomes worse? Why because you dealt AoE damage? Also the range part… at 300-600 range with equal equipment the Mesmer Greatsword #1 deals 3% less damage than Axe #1. At 600+ it will outdamage it by 16% and 900+ it is 35% stronger per attack.

Scepter Fire #1 is really strong now due to burning stacking, as you said yourself

Scepter Air #1 is weaker over the 3s of damage duration (+ another 0.5s ramp up) as it does even less DPS. But still it is AoE.

Guardian Staff #1 deals just slightly less damage per hit than Axe #1 but on 5 targets with half the casttime. DPS is almost twice of Axe #1. That’s why it is so good at tagging mobs… it deals almost twice as much damage as a single target skill… just on AoE.

Sword #3… wouldn’t call 600 range melee.

Mesmer Scepter #3 deals a surprising amount of condition damage even without any might or condition damage. Even a berserker build scepter #3 will deal comparable damage to Necro Axe #2. With might stacks it far outdamages Axe #2.
Your idea that those thing can be terrain blocked… so can necro axe skills.

Why bring up the phantasms? Because report said that the axe mechanic is fairly unique. It just shows that it isn’t as unique. And there are plenty of good and mechanical unique skills using the same targeting mechanism. That mechanism should therefor not be an argument to keep a skill terrible.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The only buff Axe needs at the moment is a blast finisher on the 3. It has competitive (although slightly low) damage for a weapon with 900 range, it just needs unique utility that other weapons do not offer. Give me a blast finisher on the 3 (and on the trait Spiteful Spirit) and I guarantee you I’ll put it to good use.

Yes please give me a blast finisher on the 3 and spiteful spirit (though i think spitful spirit also need it cooldown removed).

Narrrz.7532:

Good Asura

Edit: not to minimize the actual numbers balance. But i recently posted a suggestion on how to change the autoattack to fix it, which still seems like it would work, so it seems redundant to also address that here.

That animation on my Asura Necro made me use axe even though it was an awful weapon. It was just… entertaining. I always sniffle when I see a gif or old video of it.

The thing with axe is that I don’t see what the role of it is and how the all different aspects of the skills serve this, including the trait(s).

Also please stop my human female necro trying to gently swat away some bees.

Yeah i dont even use axe and i dont care how you do it. Just make an animation that doesnt look totally spasticated.

Tim.6450:

Also please stop my human female necro trying to gently swap away some bees.

So much this^

fem human necro main here, used A/F for a long time to support minions through vuln stacking, the anim change finally put me off the weapon. It is so kittening horrendous, she looks like she’s cowering while feebly batting at something, it’s beyond pathetic.

Across the races the anim really needs help, generally it needs momentum, it feels slow and weak right now. It needs fast, hard, deliberate swings, it’s a two strike skill so have the anim do two fast swings to match it.

On the topic of mechanics, I’ll have to test the new axe (if I can stomach making myself look like an incompetent ditz for any length of time), but my gut tells me at 900 range with a 10% boost the axe AA should be acceptable.

The main issue then is #2 Ghastly Claws, this is supposed to be Axe’s burst, currently it’s only really good for generating life force and pretty notably underperforms next to a lot of other rapid attack weapon skills. If axe is supposed to be our ranged power weapon it needs to hold up the damage end of that. I’d say improving the damage on this should be a priority, give axe the bite it’s supposed to have.

At this point unholy feast is fine, it’s AoE and a ton of utility, cripple, retaliation, & boon corruption. This has been axe’s best skill for a long time. And thanks to Spiteful Spirit I don’t even need an axe to have it, which puts the pressure once more on Rending & Ghastly claws to sell the weapon.

I saw this coming already, when I watched the live stream and heard it’s range was increasing I knew not much else would happen for the weapon. Simply put, It’s bad… And I’m not just talking from a pve perspective, which in pve It’s WORSE then bad, It’s not even usable for DS builds. Giving up Rending Shroud is just a giant no-no for that crappy axe trait.

This weapon needs much more If you want it to work correctly.

Robert:

Thanks for the Axe changes!

Much appreciated man.

Cheers!

Robert:

Thanks for replying.

Much appreciated.

I think you just listed two very good reasons to completely redo axe 1 from the ground up, unless you can instead disable stow weapon in pvp or something similar.

The Reaper is in pretty bad shape as a power based class with no access to a power based ranged weapon.

Hopefully you guys can spare the development time.

Can’t someone post a link of this horrid animation for me? I won’t be in-game for a bit

weak changes from a pve perspective. 900 range is okay i guess, but why not on all axe skills? and 10% damage added to nothing is still nothing. it was an incredibly weak single target weapon, and it remains one. power reaper will need more dmg buffs in melee, to compensate for having literally no decent range weapon to use.

guess we can wait another 6 months for the next tiny tweak. fun.

Relshdan.6854:

weak changes from a pve perspective. 900 range is okay i guess, but why not on all axe skills?

There are only 3 axe skills, and 2 of them are now 900. Unholy Feast being 900 range is completely unnecessary, it’d be one of (if not the) largest AoE in the game.

Matt Stacey.7415:

Can’t someone post a link of this horrid animation for me? I won’t be in-game for a bit

It was posted above, but here it is.

Narrrz.7532:

The real issue:

For those, who will never forget and never forgive:

The Good ==> The Ugly

Good Asura ==> Ugly Asura
Good Charr ==> Ugly Charr
Good Norn ==> Ugly Norn
Good Males ==> Ugly Males
Good Females ==> Ugly Females

Edit: not to minimize the actual numbers balance. But i recently posted a suggestion on how to change the autoattack to fix it, which still seems like it would work, so it seems redundant to also address that here.

From my perspective, the 300 range increase is an increase in effectiveness so it is a clear and significant buff.

Vulnerability application, when pretty much every profession can apply a large amount of it, is my only hang-up.

I would like to try all of the changes but my client crashes the moment I try to do anything after logging into a character.

The buffs are “baby steps.” I think Axe needs some more defining features in order to be valuable, such as might at the end of the auto chain or on axe 2. This would be really strong with Blighter’s Boon for Reaper while also boosting damage overall.

Yeah I mean, ask any designer and the buffs it got are a fairly large incremental improvement. I think the concerns of not wanting to make such an easy to hit weapon too OP is very reasonable. Still, would have been cool to see like a half second shaved off axe 2’s cast.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

He can pull up decimate defenses. 50% crit chance on top of your berzerker’s 45% crit chance+ fury is 100% without deathly perception.

So a reaper will indeed have 100% crit chance on axe.

Doesn’t change the fact that the axe is the crappiest ranged weapon out of all PvE classes, with one of the lowest DPS and no cleaving/group utility whatsoever.

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

Come Reaper, the same is true with axe. Hitting 50% crit chance from gear is fairly simple. Decimate Defenses will take it from there and actually synergizes with axe.

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

What if axe AA was made a chain skill, like scepter? Would the counterplay possible with that (since breaking LoS long enough/CC’ing would make the skill chain reset, avoiding the big final attack) mean you could go a little crazier with the damage numbers? Might even be able to bring the old animation back for the middle part of it, as long as the damage from doing the whole chain was better than canceling at that attack.

Lily.1935:

the axe’s problem was never its range. It was its lack of useful abilities that hindered it. Even with 900 range on the first two attacks unholy feast is still 600 range. Arguably its most useful skills is still stuck in that range and this also causes another problem since the axe can’t keep people from running away from you when they’re beyond that 600 range. So, in my opinion the range buff was absolutely pointless.

I still see no reason to take this over the staff. Even with its vulnerability and boon corruption it wasn’t very good and you couldn’t justify taking it.

If I was to make some changes I’d play more into that corruption theme and probably have its damage scale up the closer you are to foes as opposed to the further away you are.

range was definitely a problem. I always dislike your feedback.

Bhawb.7408:

Relshdan.6854:

weak changes from a pve perspective. 900 range is okay i guess, but why not on all axe skills?

There are only 3 axe skills, and 2 of them are now 900. Unholy Feast being 900 range is completely unnecessary, it’d be one of (if not the) largest AoE in the game.

i would only use axe if i absolutely needed the 900 range (and the damage wasn’t terrible)….so the 600 PBAoE is a wasted skill. make it a ground target 900 range w/ a smaller appropriate radius to compensate. now you have an aoe cripple to help you take advantage of your range /tag mobs away from you.

Foefaller.1082:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

What if axe AA was made a chain skill, like scepter? Would the counterplay possible with that (since breaking LoS long enough/CC’ing would make the skill chain reset, avoiding the big final attack) mean you could go a little crazier with the damage numbers? Might even be able to bring the old animation back for the middle part of it, as long as the damage from doing the whole chain was better than canceling at that attack.

I made a suggestion thread about an idea for an axe AA chain here, which would move a majority of its damage into the second and third skills with an overall dps increase of approx 30%.

haven’t really received much enthusiasm or revulsion, but that might just be because most people have given up on the necromancer forum…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

Come Reaper, the same is true with axe. Hitting 50% crit chance from gear is fairly simple. Decimate Defenses will take it from there and actually synergizes with axe.

Ah… but what about might stacking on life blast via Reapers Might trait ?

As of right now, no way to get might on axe skills. ;-)

Life blast still wins by a land slide.

Cecilia.5179:

The buffs are “baby steps.” I think Axe needs some more defining features in order to be valuable, such as might at the end of the auto chain or on axe 2. This would be really strong with Blighter’s Boon for Reaper while also boosting damage overall.

Worth noting that Blighter’s Boon gets up to 5% just from Holy Feast, which makes it the best BB proccing weapon skill we have.

Relshdan.6854:

i would only use axe if i absolutely needed the 900 range (and the damage wasn’t terrible)….so the 600 PBAoE is a wasted skill. make it a ground target 900 range w/ a smaller appropriate radius to compensate. now you have an aoe cripple to help you take advantage of your range /tag mobs away from you.

That’s valid, but that is a very specific use for Axe that not everyone needs. I don’t want Axe 3 to be nerfed just for mob tagging at a slightly higher range.

My biggest issue with Axe 1 is the weak damage and lack of cleave. Between dagger, staff, greatsword, and reaper auto, they all have either cleave or pierce. Lack of cleave about kills the whole weapon for me.

Then there’s Axe 2, its damage is also lackluster, although it becomes decent if you take Unholy Fervor trait to give it a 10% damage boost and 20% reduction in cooldown. Unfortunately that’s the core of the issue here, no power necro will take Unholy Fervor over Chill of Death or even Rending Shroud. This is why Axe will always be lackluster unless they boost it from baseline.

Axe 3 is nice, it’s the highlight of Axe as a weapon but its use is quite niche. It’s quite lackluster vs single target, and in aoe situations Axe 3 won’t save you. You pretty much just use it to tag people for bags in WvW. Dagger 3’s immob while it’s only single target, is infinitely more useful than Axe 3.

So I gave it a second chance tonight, sad to say I’m going back to dagger. Thing with Axe is after Axe 2 is on cooldown, you sit there saying to yourself “do I really have to use Axe auto? I don’t really want to”. Unlike Dagger where you immob someone and go to town pwning them with dagger auto. Axe auto do the kind of damage you can ignore.

It’s easy to take dagger, and have a good high auto & A+ util (immob), then take Quicken Thirst and gain 25% base run speed with it. Am I to sacrifice that for Axe, which again no power necro will or should take Unholy Fervor over Chill of Death. And I lose 25% base run speed. The synergy isn’t there, the trait while required to make axe semi-viable, is in a spot too competitive for anybody to take.

I’m sorry Mr. Gee, it’s a nice start to move Axe towards the right direction. But it’s not quite there.

I don’t get it. Trident have every bit the same tatical advantage as axe auto And it hits multiple targets, don’t see how axe auto can’t cleave
And don’t even get me going on underwater ds1

This is one of those situations where you NEED to have separate balance in PvE and PvP.

Axe in pvp is really good because of the long range hitscan attacks like Robert mentioned. However this provides no benefit at all in pve because enemies don’t dodge projectiles so you have 100% damage uptime with any kind of ranged weapon.

Bring axe’s overall DPS output in line with dagger in PVE ONLY and it’ll be fine. Each weapon still has its niche of being melee cleave lifeforcegen and ranged single target debuffing. Leave the weapon where it is in PvP because it’s fine right now.

Varonth.5830:

Raziel.8072:

Varonth.5830:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

1.- does no damage if too many targets are in the way, requires range restrictions to reach max dmg, no additional built-in effects
2. The only competitor here and doesn’t “outshine” necro axe, just has burning which is op in itself
3. same target limitations as mesmer GS, and requires to line up targets for max dmg potential. Single target it sucks and hitbox for the electric beam is small
4. Better for loot tagging than killing anything, plus it has no other effects like vuln, burning (without virtue of justice) ect.
5. melee…not sure why this is even being compared here. Not the same thing at all. It does no massive damage, the clone can be buggy and not spawn, and it has a cooldown.
6. same as GS1, can be body blocked or terrain blocked easily
7. Phantasma attack slow, easily dodge or destroyed. Most serious mesmer builds don’t rely heavily on phantasms. The GS phant is about the best one they have and if you can distance yourself enough you can even sidestep it when it attacks from 1200 range away….

My point being your comparisons aren’t telling me that axe is bad and the changes don’t help it. In fact the only example you gave of a weapon that performs like axe is ele scepter 1, and it’s only good because burn spam and that is courtesy of the burn condition itself.

So your point is, if you hit more than 3 targets with the greatsword it becomes worse? Why because you dealt AoE damage? Also the range part… at 300-600 range with equal equipment the Mesmer Greatsword #1 deals 3% less damage than Axe #1. At 600+ it will outdamage it by 16% and 900+ it is 35% stronger per attack.

Scepter Fire #1 is really strong now due to burning stacking, as you said yourself

Scepter Air #1 is weaker over the 3s of damage duration (+ another 0.5s ramp up) as it does even less DPS. But still it is AoE.

Guardian Staff #1 deals just slightly less damage per hit than Axe #1 but on 5 targets with half the casttime. DPS is almost twice of Axe #1. That’s why it is so good at tagging mobs… it deals almost twice as much damage as a single target skill… just on AoE.

Sword #3… wouldn’t call 600 range melee.

Mesmer Scepter #3 deals a surprising amount of condition damage even without any might or condition damage. Even a berserker build scepter #3 will deal comparable damage to Necro Axe #2. With might stacks it far outdamages Axe #2.
Your idea that those thing can be terrain blocked… so can necro axe skills.

Why bring up the phantasms? Because report said that the axe mechanic is fairly unique. It just shows that it isn’t as unique. And there are plenty of good and mechanical unique skills using the same targeting mechanism. That mechanism should therefor not be an argument to keep a skill terrible.

You’re still comparing apples to oranges though. None of those things work like axe beyond scepter so even bringing them into the discussion is pointless. And none of what you have said so far convinces me axe sucks. I used axe before the change, I use it now. I see nothing wrong with it other than #2 being a little low still on both dmg (or channel time too long, either adjustment would work) and LF generation but overall it’s not bad. It lets me hit mesmers hiding behind clones, reflect spamming mesmers and guardians, hell I can even hit players inside siege defense bubbles. While not 100% unique in this way, it does factor in to balancing axe and you can’t simply discount that and cry for more dps on it. Range increase was a significant buff on it, and helps move us farther from cleave range which is always good. It will now provide reaper with a suitable ranged option other than stale ol staff. Does this mean I think it’s perfect as is? Of course not. But saying axe sucks then comparing it to other class mechanics is pointless. You could spend all day doing that between necro and other classes, still doesn’t mean necro sucks overall. Take this buff for the gift it is and stop contrast-crafting with other classes.

Zantmar.5406:

I don’t get it. Trident have every bit the same tatical advantage as axe auto And it hits multiple targets, don’t see how axe auto can’t cleave
And don’t even get me going on underwater ds1

Anet isn’t balancing underwater combat.

Increase the damage to where it’s needed, but make it scale with close range, so you have to be pretty close to get the full DPS. Like a Mesmer’s GS but in reverse. Gives the damage thats needed for PVE and makes positioning a relevant counter to it.

Rhyse.8179:

Increase the damage to where it’s needed, but make it scale with close range, so you have to be pretty close to get the full DPS. Like a Mesmer’s GS but in reverse. Gives the damage thats needed for PVE and makes positioning a relevant counter to it.

Did you know that necromancers already have a ranged weapon that gets stronger when closer to the enemy? It’s hidden in a special spot above your weapon bar.

Captain Unusual.9163:

Rhyse.8179:

Increase the damage to where it’s needed, but make it scale with close range, so you have to be pretty close to get the full DPS. Like a Mesmer’s GS but in reverse. Gives the damage thats needed for PVE and makes positioning a relevant counter to it.

Did you know that necromancers already have a ranged weapon that gets stronger when closer to the enemy? It’s hidden in a special spot above your weapon bar.

The main concern is that when reaper comes out you will want a backup ranged option for the times when it’s not possible to melee. Currently, lifeblast fills that function, but on reaper that has to fall to an equipped weapon, and pushing axe into that position is better then pushing staff.

Jelzouki.4128:

I always dislike your feedback.

That’s nice.

With axe being a 900 range power weapon, I am fine with dps, now. A ranged power weapon should never have as much dps potential as melee power weapon, except if you are a Ranger and damage increases with range.

to be honest im running a power build using scepter and is good, axe need more

Zenith.7301:

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

He can pull up decimate defenses. 50% crit chance on top of your berzerker’s 45% crit chance+ fury is 100% without deathly perception.

So a reaper will indeed have 100% crit chance on axe.

Doesn’t change the fact that the axe is the crappiest ranged weapon out of all PvE classes, with one of the lowest DPS and no cleaving/group utility whatsoever.

No group utility? Vulnerability is even more important than maintaining might stacks, yes there are plenty of sources of it but I often see it not maxed out. I don’t think enough people stress this point and focus only on how many might stacks you can bring.

I was messing around with axe in my fotms last night and since I play hybrid, my condition duration brought the vuln up to 13 seconds, so I could actually maintain 25 if that’s all I did (which I wouldn’t do for obvious reasons). But even with good comps, I frequently see vuln sitting far too low at like 8-15 stacks. I’m going to try playing tonight focusing on making sure that vuln is always above 20 stacks, and see how smoothly the run goes when someone is dedicated to watching out for it. I always notice how bosses just melt when stacks are well maintained so I expect good results. As a hybrid build I have a unique opportunity to try it, because of my long non-damaging condition durations and variety of conditions I bring.

I imagine, at least because of my lower investment in auto attack damage that a sacrifice in personal DPS will be more than made up for across the group if I watch vulnerability closely.

It bothers me how much people focus on getting their leet ice bow freezes off but don’t pay as much attention to things like vuln.

Going to try slapping a sigil of vuln on it too, since that should be cheap, but if I don’t need or like it I’ll throw force on there. Either way, I’m happy to have a good reason to keep this axe in my bag now. I think there’s no reason not to bring it for fights where melee is too much of a liability. As power or hybrid.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Zenith.7301:

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

He can pull up decimate defenses. 50% crit chance on top of your berzerker’s 45% crit chance+ fury is 100% without deathly perception.

So a reaper will indeed have 100% crit chance on axe.

Doesn’t change the fact that the axe is the crappiest ranged weapon out of all PvE classes, with one of the lowest DPS and no cleaving/group utility whatsoever.

No group utility? Vulnerability is even more important than maintaining might stacks, yes there are plenty of sources of it but I often see it not maxed out. I don’t think enough people stress this point and focus only on how many might stacks you can bring.

I was messing around with axe in my fotms last night and since I play hybrid, my condition duration brought the vuln up to 13 seconds, so I could actually maintain 25 if that’s all I did (which I wouldn’t do for obvious reasons). But even with good comps, I frequently see vuln sitting far too low at like 8-15 stacks. I’m going to try playing tonight focusing on making sure that vuln is always above 20 stacks, and see how smoothly the run goes when someone is dedicated to watching out for it. I always notice how bosses just melt when stacks are well maintained so I expect good results. As a hybrid build I have a unique opportunity to try it, because of my long non-damaging condition durations and variety of conditions I bring.

I imagine, at least because of my lower investment in auto attack damage that a sacrifice in personal DPS will be more than made up for across the group if I watch vulnerability closely.

It bothers me how much people focus on getting their leet ice bow freezes off but don’t pay as much attention to things like vuln.

Going to try slapping a sigil of vuln on it too, since that should be cheap, but if I don’t need or like it I’ll throw force on there. Either way, I’m happy to have a good reason to keep this axe in my bag now. I think there’s no reason not to bring it for fights where melee is too much of a liability. As power or hybrid.

A single ranger with storm spirit is gonna slap 15 permanent vulnerability stacks on a boss. Warrior/Ele/Mesmer will fill up the rest.

Vulnerability is stupidly abundant and by no means this great contribution a necro brings.

Not enough players pay attention to it. People need to l2p. More people need to stress vuln’s importance and shut up about defiance stacks a little bit.

Zenith.7301:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Zenith.7301:

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

He can pull up decimate defenses. 50% crit chance on top of your berzerker’s 45% crit chance+ fury is 100% without deathly perception.

So a reaper will indeed have 100% crit chance on axe.

Doesn’t change the fact that the axe is the crappiest ranged weapon out of all PvE classes, with one of the lowest DPS and no cleaving/group utility whatsoever.

No group utility? Vulnerability is even more important than maintaining might stacks, yes there are plenty of sources of it but I often see it not maxed out. I don’t think enough people stress this point and focus only on how many might stacks you can bring.

I was messing around with axe in my fotms last night and since I play hybrid, my condition duration brought the vuln up to 13 seconds, so I could actually maintain 25 if that’s all I did (which I wouldn’t do for obvious reasons). But even with good comps, I frequently see vuln sitting far too low at like 8-15 stacks. I’m going to try playing tonight focusing on making sure that vuln is always above 20 stacks, and see how smoothly the run goes when someone is dedicated to watching out for it. I always notice how bosses just melt when stacks are well maintained so I expect good results. As a hybrid build I have a unique opportunity to try it, because of my long non-damaging condition durations and variety of conditions I bring.

I imagine, at least because of my lower investment in auto attack damage that a sacrifice in personal DPS will be more than made up for across the group if I watch vulnerability closely.

It bothers me how much people focus on getting their leet ice bow freezes off but don’t pay as much attention to things like vuln.

Going to try slapping a sigil of vuln on it too, since that should be cheap, but if I don’t need or like it I’ll throw force on there. Either way, I’m happy to have a good reason to keep this axe in my bag now. I think there’s no reason not to bring it for fights where melee is too much of a liability. As power or hybrid.

A single ranger with storm spirit is gonna slap 15 permanent vulnerability stacks on a boss. Warrior/Ele/Mesmer will fill up the rest.

Vulnerability is stupidly abundant and by no means this great contribution a necro brings.

And if you REALLY wanted a vuln-bot, you’d just bring an engineer. You get better DPS in the bargain.

Just pointing out that gross over-simplifications of things are how misconceptions get spread in the first place. “no cleaving/group utility whatsoever” is one of those. It may be redundant or not useful in many scenarios(which I think could be argued, anyway), but falsifying statements to prove a point in nuanced discussions frustrate me.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Not enough players pay attention to it. People need to l2p. More people need to stress vuln’s importance and shut up about defiance stacks a little bit.

I totally agree; but this doesn’t make the axe better.

Just because a group is bad at keeping vulnerability up, doesn’t turn the axe from a bad weapon into a good weapon. Which is at the core of the discussion here.

Personally I feel like the axe is still missing a little something something. But I can’t really put my finger on it.
- The auto attack isn’t too exciting, the vulnerability is ok but not a real asset by itself.
- Ghastly Claws isn’t bad; but really needs Unholy Fervor to feel good tbh.
- Unholy Feast never really got me excited, but I can see its uses. This ability still screams to have a blast finisher though. It’s still unbelievable how most other classes get at least 2-4 combo fields/finishers per weapon set and necro barely has anything.

I personally think the range increase did it good. It gave the axe a bit more of a niche and with bosses being more unforgiving I could see it becoming a decent secondary weapon when we can’t get close.
But it’s not quite there yet IMO. It lacks either solid damage (I know Gee is afraid of giving it more due to the nature of it’s attacks; but it’s also single target and other classes DO seem to get a good ranged power option like that).
Or it needs to do something more with conditions/boons.

What could make the axe a bit better also, is the upcoming reaper spec.
Maybe axe would make a good secondary for greatsword. Where the former gives you ranged abilities; decent LF generation between Ghostly Claws and Unholy Feast + Blighter’s Boon; and a way to maintain 25 vuln stack together with reaper shroud (which as we know from BWE is really good at that).

Zenith.7301:

It needed way more than a 10% increase. Why was 10% settled on on all the bad autoattack weapons for necro and mesmer, while thief is receiving 25%+ damage boosts?

Because the pistol’s power scaling was worse than Axe’s with arguably just as poor utility and suffered from projectile problems. Actually, the pistol is still really bad because Body Shot is pretty much the worst skill ever made.

Axe has crazy burst LF generation and with excessive damage would make it a safer dagger with range and no projectile deficiencies. While it might not be perfect as is, it’s better to see incremental buffs in the right direction (we’ll also see what goes on with the Reaper due to its LF-generation dependencies) rather than monsters emerge like PU mes and burn builds did after the 6/23 changes.