Guild Wars 2

Yea, this is pretty bad. The animation feels really clunky and feels like it deals less damage, whereas before (on asura at least) it was pretty cool and looked like I was seriously attacking. I’d have just made it so that the boost from animation canceling (which was pretty hard to do and I doubt you could do it practically in a normal battle) was base. Axe AA is already pretty bad.

/sigh
Saw the red thread and was hoping this was about a buff…

Well Reaper looks cool, so clearly this nerf was warranted.

DarkMezmer.5198:

So does the new axe animation look good on a norn female? Won’t be able to log in to see for myself.

No it looks just like the human female video somebody posted, weak. The animation was aggressive before today’s patch which is why it is so jarring seeing it as it is now.

Looks great on Male Norn. I like it!

I do desperately wish they could buff Axe MH though. The weapon itself is a cool concept, and it should be expanded on.

Who uses this weapon? Honestly I might ever use it in pve when I want to generate life force and I get tired of staff. That said the autoattack on this weapon is so poor that it’s better to swap to it, use focus 4, and kitten axe 3 and maybe 2 and switch back to another weapon. The autoattack is slow and does terrible damage and is useless. Warriors can one click 12+ vuln and eles can do what 20+ in on click. Anet never got that the axe is junk. Animation or not who cares

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well Reaper looks cool, so clearly this nerf was warranted.

Im starting to think A-net intentionally trolled axe necros for using the weakest weapon of the necro kitten nal before repear gets released.

The new animation is terrible, it doesn’t look like the necromancer is trying to damage the enemy at all. Not only that, but it feels so much slower. The Axe auto attack was already really bad, now it feels even worse.

I hope that they up Axe auto attack damage now that they have done this bug fix.

Edit: Yes, animation is terrible.

sorry but this animation looks horrible
not that i ever use axe autoattack anyway.

This looks effing awful.

I mean it actually upsets me. You took the “throw” animation and tagged it onto an attack? What kind of shoddy workmanship are you trying to pass off as a “fix”?

Change the numbers and timing if you must, but this just looks unprofessional and clunky.

The new animations are great on male norn.

I guess all the complaints show just how many plebeians play humans instead of norn master race.

is it not better that you help Anet then complaining all the time
it will be better if you guys let Anet no what you guys like to see

what kind off animation maybe the DEV team can do something about it ??
as you no Necro use melee weapons as a long range weapon

so let your fantasy do your job and maybe there is something nice

I don’t like this change either. I don’t know about the other races/genders, but on the human male it used the same animation as the warrior’s double chop. Now it seems to use the same animation as feast of corruption and it just feels weak, even if the actual damage numbers are unchanged.

Softspoken.2410:

Hm. I kind of prefer the new animation, from a visual perspective. My Charr always looked like he was flailing when he used axe before. Now it’s a bit more under control. I wish they’d put a stronger carry-through on the backswing to emphasize the second hit, but eh.

My God does it look kitten on a human…. it reminds me of the attack animations from RUNESCAPE.

This animation looks so stupid for humans. My human female looks like she is playing tennis. Seriously?

Let’s not forget the upcoming Nerf to ‘Axe Training’ with this garbage. I can’t even imagine the thoughts of whoever thought these changes were warranted/justified. This is just ridiculous in every sense cpof the word. I guess…maybe…Axe was Necro’s go-to weapon and was dominating every aspect of the game…oh..wait… :/

Genlog.4983:

is it not better that you help Anet then complaining all the time
it will be better if you guys let Anet no what you guys like to see

what kind off animation maybe the DEV team can do something about it ??
as you no Necro use melee weapons as a long range weapon

so let your fantasy do your job and maybe there is something nice

The complaints have addressed this. They want it like it was before. Im sure a resolution can be found with the old or similar animation to address the exploit.

Certainly it cant be left as it is since it is only half finished as an animation. Very stiff and clunky with an apparent dps loss

Aktium.9506:

The new animations are great on male norn.

I guess all the complaints show just how many plebeians play humans instead of norn master race.

Can you post a vid of the male norn animation? Im curious to the look

The animation is actually better for Sylvari. Don’t know about the damage, since axe is inferior to dagger/x so I don’t use it that much.

PetiteGeek.2961:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAfcvjaRxos

Just looks ridiculous… Offhand dissapearing is annoying. Some how, charrs got the best of this for once, the animation suits charr… My human female is just combing her hair casually while attacking. :/

Wow that looks bad. Glad i have a charr necro. :^)
At first i kind of regretted that choice hehe

PetiteGeek.2961:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAfcvjaRxos

Just looks ridiculous… Offhand dissapearing is annoying. Some how, charrs got the best of this for once, the animation suits charr… My human female is just combing her hair casually while attacking. :/

Wow that looks bad. Glad i have a charr necro. :^)
At first i kind of regretted that choice hehe

The new animation looks absolutely terrible. Please remake the original animation to look the same but without bugs, don’t just slap a ugly new one on there.

So did mesmer GS get this fix too or did Anet confirm they still hate necros today~?

I just got to look at it and wow, there is no exaggeration. This new animation is decidedly terrible, weak, and an absolute downgrade from what we had. Change it back, please. Please. PLEASE.

Why take a skill that was already only used because there is literally nothing better, and nerf it even further out of existence? I understand the change was done with the intent on being fair, but does anyone actually think that the animations/damage of Necro axe pre-nerf were even close to fair?

Flumek.9043:

WOOOOOOW

OK, i just blew the dust away and put on axe again.

ITS AWFUL.

+ ITS ACTUALLY A DPS NERF , WTFF ??? LOWEST DPS NOODLE AND YOU DO THIS !!

Also, it could be superman strong and it just feels clunky , bleh. terrible animation

-7/10

I blame all those speedrunning necro’s in dungeons and fractals. They caused this nerf.

Visual buff to Charr Necromancers. Senpai Karl noticed us and in order to repopulate Charr Necromancers, he nerfed animations on other races.

Choose – boobs or axe animations! Love you, Karl!

I will always choose boobs over axe animations.

This animation looks terrible and unacceptable on human female. This change really upset those keep using axe as main hand weapon. Can we just have the previous one back?

PetiteGeek.2961:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAfcvjaRxos

Hahaha that really does look terrible doesn’kitten and i thought sylvari was bad

I actually like the new animation. It’s a bit slow, but it suits the attack much better now with the horizontal swing.

Now, could we please have the auto attack hit 3 people in a small arc and have base dmg and attack speed increased by 25%? Thanks.

Edit: Animation looks pretty weird from the front now that I’ve looked at it more. It looks okay from behind though.

This animation looks absolutely horrid on humans. Its like they’re waving at the enemy, trying to bludgeoning them with the flat side but constantly missing. I’ve been playing necro human with axe since launch and I’m so so disappointed now. My character looks like a joke now. I understand the nerf/exploit/whatever bit but don’t change the animation for god’s sake.

I actually like the new animation on my male human character o.o
And the dps loss a lot of people describe here isn’t even noticeable to me.

I appreciate the need to change the animation to deal with the cancel-casting, and I can’t say much about the other races animation or the DPS change (though it does seem to feel slower, but i’ve not tested it).

What I can say however is that the female human axe animation right now is just… not good. The old animation was very nice; dynamic and fast – it looked really good and I loved playing it. Now it just looks clunky, slow and ridiculous.

That so many people thought it was a bug and not a genuine animation change should be testament to how bad this new animation is (on human females, at least).

I’m an “aesthetic” player. I moved to Axe for the slice animation, it was AWESOME.
The new one on my female sylvari is… hem… horrible.

If that’s the final solution to prevent a sort of bug, well, that’s an ugly solution.
Very disappointed :-(

Axe is terrible, greatsword wil trump axe at every turn. I’m not worried because they are nerfing it even further in hot so it will become even more useless. Axe 3 is the only trait that is worth a kitten outside pve. Axe 2 is slow windup and is easily dodged, thus does crud damage because you can lock someone down… Yet. The autoattack, regardless of the animation has always been complete dookie

Personally, I could care less about looks. This change is odd, I cant tell you how often you get interrupted or blocked, so in a way its still a nerf. On a side note, when the trait rework comes out , and they change the 10% increase to only occur when your target is crippled, there’s a. no reason to take that trait,(there’s better) and b. Axe’s damage will not make it a viable weapon choice once more (its slow and now the #1 is odd and clunky).

I let go of axe in PvP, maybe would still use it in WvW but that’s about it. As much as I love the damage from the #2 skill, that often gets interrupted or blocked as well, and doesn’t get contribute much overall damage.

What surprises me Is that I hear complaints about many things, and I am sure there are things that need to be changed, but this one baffles me in necessity. I personally did not use axe in this way but i fail to see how this is any different then flashing deathshroud?

I also know that there are lots of other classes with similar traits abilities that do the same so I am unsure why Necro was focused here.

Looks worse on everything in my opinion, they all look slow and as if there’s not even two hits. Annnnd it’s a slight nerf like wtf??? Pretty sure everyone agrees Axe auto on necro is close to worst auto in the game and we get this haha..

It looks horrible on my female Sylvari. The original animation was aggressive and savage now it looks like I’m swinging a fairy wand from some Disney movie.

And the off-hand disappears too!

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all,
The animation of this ability has changed so that the attacks occur later in the skill, fixing the draw to constantly cancel the ability for an unintended increase in damage. The overall active time of the ability hasn’t moved (remains 1 second flat), so there shouldn’t be any actual loss of damage as long as you’re not cancelling the ability early. The first strike now occurs at ~0.5 seconds in (slightly past it), while the second attack occurs closer to the 1 second mark than before.
There is a bug with the attack hiding your weapon, which was unintended and will be fixed.

-Karl

I still don’t understand why this change was implemented. Were there complaints? I haven’t seen anyone complain about this. In fact, this is a stupid NERF that should have been left alone until further issues were resolved with the axe, such as the limiting range. This is a step backwards for necromancer. THANKS KARL.

There was no reason to slow the cast time for the axe when it was already weak to begin with. 0.2secs is a big deal in situations like WvW and overall will slow the necro play style slightly. If you were worried about people skill cancelling why not just lower the cast time from 1s to .8, therefore making the 2nd hit at the true end of the animation. If you don’t want to revert back then at least give the axe auto a damage buff or something to compensate. Also, the animations are slow and clunky.

I am also hearing the true cast time is 1.2s and not 1s like intended.

It will be interesting to see if there is any additional response to this thread. I expect it’ll be a case of it being dealt with and it’’s now final though.

It was at least good of them to at least state why it was changed even if it is a bit of a head scratcher as to why this animation was the best possible solution.

Gmbcrew.6209:

There was no reason to slow the cast time for the axe when it was already weak to begin with. 0.2secs is a big deal in situations like WvW and overall will slow the necro play style slightly. If you were worried about people skill cancelling why not just lower the cast time from 1s to .8, therefore making the 2nd hit at the true end of the animation. If you don’t want to revert back then at least give the axe auto a damage buff or something to compensate. Also, the animations are slow and clunky.

I am also hearing the true cast time is 1.2s and not 1s like intended.

True cast time before was 3/4 seconds. True cast time now is 1 second.

Both before and now, the aftercast delay (the period before you can start casting any other skill) is .2 seconds. Total cycle time went from .95 seconds to 1.2 seconds.

Haven’t been on the forum for ages but having seen the new animation I had to come on here and insist it be changed back. It looks bloody awful.

You gotta be kittentin me right? Who actually animation canceled with this skill? Why would you even do it anyway? So that you could deal insanely weak damage a little bit faster? Or inflict vulnerability faster to a single target whereas other classes can do it without animation canceling?

I must be missing something, surely.

They weren’t trying to nerf Axe or its overall cast time, the point was to change the animation so that the overall chain-time and DPS is the same, but the animations are now front-loaded with no aftercast so that you can’t animation cancel. The implementation is debatable, and the animation looks awful now on Human Females, but it wasn’t planned to be a direct nerf.

I personally feel the new Charr animation looks awkward and ungainly. Looks as if though someone who’s never picked up an axe before decided to chop at something in self defense… repeatedly. Over and over again.

The old one was great as it matched the visual effects on the target – you carved and sliced through the air, and the target would have the visual claw marks to match.

The new animation does not match the visuals whatsoever. It looks more suited to a(n awkward) melee attack.

They need to just completely change the skill to a chain skill. This is just dreadful and its getting worse each day I look at it. Especially considering how close I am to finishing frostfang.

If I wanted to use a scepter, I’d use a scepter.

There was nothing wrong with the animation before and it actually looked like rending claws would. I don’t see bears and the other ferocious creatures in the game waving their arms around like fairies when they’re mauling my face. Why should I look like one when I’m mauling faces?

I guess Reaper/GS will be my go-to for facemauling come HoT.