Guild Wars 2

Is the axe any good for general PvE? And if so is there any builds for it? What off hand would I use with the axe and what would I use in my other set. Just wondering if anyone even uses it because all I see is that it is underpowered. Sometimes I just want some
Burst yah know?

This, I am also looking for Axe build for PVE and Dungeons. I found a few threads here and in other fan sites but for some reason they all link to GW2skill.net which has been down for almost a week now.

Also Since Axe benefits for +power build would it be wise to go all the way into Wells?

I’m hoping someone comes and saves the day haha. I love the axe 2 skill so much and I want to use it kitten

Axe is really underpowerd atm and you will almost never see anyone use an axe, or atleast not in higher lvl areas. But if you wanted to run an axe build I would recomend a warhorn offhand because both skills on that go really well with the axe, aslo I would bring the Blood is Power utility spell for might and the Axe Training trait from spite and Banshee’s Wail from curses if you bring a warhorn offhand.

It is not very good for general PvE. The problem is that its autoattack is slow and the 2 combo takes a long time to do mediocre damage. The third ability is acceptable; I just wish it was a blast finisher. That right there would add a ton of potential to the axe, which it is sorely lacking in right now.

In my opinion the best role of the axe is as a supporter weapon for a dagger mainhand. Dagger mainhand can pump out some damage if you have enough power. The problem is that it’s melee. That’s ok though, if you start getting trounced in close, you can roll out, swap to your axe and still get some hits in. They’ll be weaker, but at least you’re stacking vuln. In a power build, the 2 combo Ghostly Claws becomes mediocre instead of bad, but it’s a medium range damage, so that’s good. You can then use the 3 skill Unholy Feast on the axe to cripple and gain retaliation and life force while you heal up and then go back in with your dagger once the coast is clear. Throw a focus on with the axe and you have a full-on utility weaponset, as you can stack even more vuln, remove boons, and stack regeneration with the focus.

And to answer your question, definitely take at least Well of Suffering with you if you make a power build(any Axe build should be a power build). It will likely be the only source of ‘burst’ you will have, aside from perhaps Lich Form and >50% Life Force DS skills.

Great stuff, I want to experiment with Necro melee as I have always played it as a range class only i guess its time to research some dagger builds.

On a side note, is dagger also a Power dependant build only?

I play axe/dagger and swap with staff. For a while I’m going typical power/crit. Maybe not the best build but I like idea of book-worm scholar suddenly attacking mobs with blooded chopper
As you can guess I use axe more because of look of it than because of it usefulness.

The Axe isn’t really intended for being a primary source of damage. That is what the other weapons are for; dagger for power builds, scepter for conditions, staff for balanced damage at high range. The axe is primarily a support weapon for your party. The damage you deal yourself will be lower, but being able to keep up 10 stacks or more of vulnerability provides a lot of extra damage to your party. I would imagine that the damage lost for yourself is easily counteracted by everyone else in your party doing 10% or more damage.

I could see axe working as a great support weapon for dagger power builds mentioned above, as well as a good secondary weapon for minion builds. Assuming the minion issues get resolved, MM could be a very viable build with staff and axe. The staff being your primary weapon, but the axe providing 10% or more damage to your party and also your minions.

Necro has but one build right now and that is condition everything else falls way behind. You can though have other builds if you want to be a tank sure, but as DPS its all about conditions.

PCoraJr.7526:

Great stuff, I want to experiment with Necro melee as I have always played it as a range class only i guess its time to research some dagger builds.

On a side note, is dagger also a Power dependant build only?

You can try crit rate/crit dmg. Ive been playing around with it and it works just as good as straight power. You also get a touch of condition damage through the curses trait line. I started usin this build the other day. I get bored alot so i like to mess around with builds and see what works lol http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.2.21.13.4.1.17.1.106.116.120.121.129.2.2.6.0.0.0.319.323.327.0.0.0.346.0.0.362.363.0.0.30.0.15.25

Hi, using axe from my experience does do mediocre damage and all, but form what i have noticed, i rarely attracts aggro from creatures compared to using staff or scepter(unless everyone else is down or dead).

I rock this:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#11|17|1201|1197|1199|4172|1205|10|1255|0|0|30|2324|688|1238|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|1257|2401|2241|5|0|3|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

With axe/focus and staff, berserker gear.

DS is a beast, you can hop into it for the 5s that you get fury, and blast huge ( for a necro ) numbers, then get out of it. With the reduced cooldown, I rarely use axe or staff auto, it’s just there if I happen to need a filler. Remember that you can swap weapons in DS, but it will interrupt casts. It’s not difficult to swap between casts.

Axe 2 is OK damage, but it’s a great LF generator. You get bonus damage for keeping your LF above 50%. You keep weakness and quite a few vulnerability stacks on your target. Target the Weak is also a great damage boost. Targetted Well of Suffering. Signet of Undeath is great utility, but I swap for Spectral Armor/Walk when you need to have a stun break handy.

I use dagger and axe/warhorn for spvp, dungeons and pve, axe is a decent (still weak, needs fixing) medium ranged damage dealer with 2 and I switch to dagger to finish off. Axe 1 is very good for dungeons though, you can never get tired of having 125% damage on a boss, and it really helps killing the boss especially if it does hard hits on you.

axe/warhorn has good utility as well, 3 and 5 have cripple, 1 has vuln, 4 has stun

Axe works best with focus and when you use it on 1 enemy, especially boss. Then you can make (with good traits) even 25 vulnerability. Hitting for 25% more, not only for you but also for another people seems really cool and it’s good, but when 5 mobs atacks you condition build is the best and in PvE more often you will be atacked by groups than lonely mobs. Try axe + focus in PvP, works really nice if you walk with other people.

hint: the axe trait gives you the highest base damage for all your necro skills (except conditions of cause)

i got a bit bored with my condition spec and scepter swinging, so i picked up an axe with focus offhand and have been having quite a bit of fun, the biggest downside though, going from conditions to power/crit is that i dropped down from 30k hp to 20k :/ in an effort to push my dps through gear choices, i’m currently running a 20/20/0/0/30 build to max my crit damage and ds (faster recharge on abilities, might gain, faster ds recharge, stability, etc.) especially being able to pop into ds every couple of seconds helps out a lot, though the rebuilding of lf could be a little bit faster sometimes, especially if your chanelled axe 2 skill misses :/ , if it hits though and the channeling crits then you can see some really nice numbers, the last one has crit for 5k+ on regular occasions (usually with might stacks) so that’s a nice amount of damage since the channeling does a lot of hits with potential crits, but again it’s easy to dodge it or get out of it’s 600 range, but focus 5’s chill helps out in keeping enemies close (i use the runes described in the mr freeze thread to increase chill duration +40%)

for utilities i switch between spectral grasp(so much fun if it works), well of darkness(chill on blind trait)/corruption, spectral walk and bip, elite is plague form for it’s #2 skill so i can survive, but i want to try lich form with all this extra power and crit

i plan to try out dagger/focus/warhorn/axe combinations and figure out what’s best for my personal playstyle, but so far i prefer the axe to dagger, since while dagger 1 is actually good, with axe you never have to run into melee range, of course dagger 3 can be a lifesaver, it’s hard to pick because every combination has it’s pros and cons

I have been running an Axe/Warhorn build lately. Honestly loving it, love layering on vulnerability while using it in combination with a couple of wells. I don’t think there is a set build for Axe’s just experiment and see if it is for you. I am still tweaking mine atm or I would have posted it.

to me axe is a very weak weapon.. i think i saw even bigger crits on my sceptre on a powerbuild then on an axe.. around 1100 crits htis on sceptre vs 800~1000 hits on axe..

considering sceptre is 900 range and adds a bleed to the target.. its kinda weird. it’s to bad axe is so horendous power necros could def use another weapon except staff to be viable..e

why not try axe and focus? focus 4 (reapers touch) for 5 vuln stacks, axe 1(rending claws) for some more vuln, then epidemic and/or wells

Okay, I whipped out the ol’ handicap axe again and gave it a whirl in sPvP as a power necro and came to the following conclusions:

I went as 30/0/10/0/30
Axe/focus, with staff

Cons:

1) The auto-attack dmg still sucks
2) I feel Closer to Death is better than Axe Mastery (30 pts in Spite) in almost every circumstance?
3) Ghostly Claws never hits anything as people love to evade it
4) You don’t do much damage even as full glass cannon
5) No immobilize for sticking people in wells (big negative, IMO)

Pros:

1) Vuln stacking is easy if you use the focus and get the VI trait in soul reaping for +vuln on DS life blasts
2) With aoe cripple + retal on the #3 skill, well bombing a crowded, contested point is quite fun
3) Survivability is higher than the dagger, as you range attack
4) If Ghostly Claws DOES hit for the full amount, this combined with the focus #4 gives you a nice stream of life force from a relatively safe distance… meaning you can pop into DS often

So in PvE, against a boss, the ability to maintain a 25 stack of vuln could be quite nice, as well as your ability to shift into DS for life blast burst damage + might… but in PvP, with people dying so fast anyway, I don’t think the damage trade-off is worth choosing it over dagger

The Axe is great if you are a tanky melee Necromancer.
The primary reason to utilize it is it’s ability to give you a large amount of Retaliation when you’re knee deep in hostiles.
However, as a source of damage the Axe is rather mediocre, and really the Axe is better used as a support weapon to switch to when you need some Retaliation, to utilize the off-hand, or to make use of a weapon switch sigil.

I run a power / crit /crit damage build. Full berserker’s gear, with runes of the scholar. My power is 2200, my crit damage is 55. These would be higher if I ran with Ruby jewelery, but I’m using Emerald for the toughness in dungeons. I run a deathshroud build for the most part, and the Axe is one of the quicker ways to increase LF on a single target when I can’t melee with a dagger. I run either Axe Focus / Staff, or Axe Focus / Dagger Dagger if I can melee.

In PVE, Ghostly claws totals to 5K damage (depending on crits), Axe 1 is good for vuln stacking, and Axe 3 is a beast with retaliation stacks in mass AE groups. I use focus off-hand for the chill and bouncing damage/regen.

Build is 30/0/0/10/30. and all major traits focus on DS, with exception of increased axe damage in the power line. Utilities are Well of Suffering, Signet of Spite, Signet of Undeath (targetted rez is invaluable in dungeons), and Lich Form/Flesh Golem elite (Switch between the two). DS1 is hitting for 4-5K a shot, Life transfer ends up being a great support AE Heal from the blood line trait, and having a teleport with chill (DS2) is great for moving around when running daggers. I spend 50-60% of my time in DS and the damage is pretty insane. I hop into death shround when my life force is full and hop out when it reaches 50%. I’m working on building up an exotic ruby jewelry set to see if I can still survive without the added toughness.

I mainly run dungeons, and rangers can cap-out bleeds faster than we can. Having me in direct damage seems to make our core group kill faster, not to mention taking stuff like turrets / burrows etc out is 100x faster with the power build over the condition build.

PVP on the other hand.. Condition / well spec is king.

I find the axe to be more of a useful tool than a primary weapon. As others have mentioned, the Axe can provide LF production from a relatively safe range than dagger. The Axe also synergies with my wells + siphon + retaliation build. I gain retaliation from my heal, my Axe #3, and entering Death Shroud, all while being able to sit on top of my wells for siphons, protection, and the well’s individual effect. Like some kind of vampiric porcupine.

The Axe pales in comparison in straight up burst or maybe even dps, but I don’t need it to be.