Guild Wars 2

Hi guys , according to wiki , dagger chain attack deals 940 damage while axe deals 236 ( 278 at 18 stacks of Vulnerability > max stacks from the skill )

Axe cast time is 0.75 sec , but I’m not sure about the dagger’s ones
Is it 3(0.25) = 0.75 ? if so , the dagger is stronger than axe by 3 times !
Dagger chain attack (940 in 0.75 sec ) deals more damage than Ghastly Claws (968 ( 1142 from 1st skill Vulnerability ) in 2.25 sec ) >> in 2.25 , dagger will deals 2820 damage while axe will deal 1142 )

Dagger 1 and 3 have quite the aftercasts, so no you finish a dagger 1 chain in around 1.4 seconds while a Axe 1 attack goes off in around 1 second.
But overall melee damage > safe position of range.

Yes, melee weapons have always been more powerful than ranged weapons, the tradeoff is you cant always have 100% dps uptime when using melee weapons

Andele.1306:

Dagger 1 and 3 have quite the aftercasts, so no you finish a dagger 1 chain in around 1.4 seconds while a Axe 1 attack goes off in around 1 second.
But overall melee damage > safe position of range.

How do you know that ? Is there any source that tells us the cast time of 2nd and 3rd dagger chain attacks ?
Or you just tried it ?

When i was testing in game dagger auto seemed about 2 seconds for a full chain as far as i can remember. Still, its much stronger than axe.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Andele.1306:

Dagger 1 and 3 have quite the aftercasts, so no you finish a dagger 1 chain in around 1.4 seconds while a Axe 1 attack goes off in around 1 second.
But overall melee damage > safe position of range.

How do you know that ? Is there any source that tells us the cast time of 2nd and 3rd dagger chain attacks ?
Or you just tried it ?

There is a very old thread that will give you fairly decent estimates. Most seem fairly accurate, but some are a bit off; dagger 1 chain f.i.: in one of his recent videos, Nemesis did 17 full chains in about 33 seconds which would put the chain around 1.95 sec instead of 2.2 sec.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Autoattack-DPS-and-cast-times/first

Full dagger chain sits at around 2 seconds. You can and should test it yourselve by taking time (stop watch) and counting the number of hits from the 3rd dagger chain attack, or using some recording programm.
If the timeframe is reasonable long you get to around 2 seconds.
This is due to aftercast. The hits itself are pretty fast but every attack in guild wars has an aftercast working as a timeframe that probably prevents animation overlapping.
Same should be done for axe auto. I am not sure around what it sits but probably one second for 2 hits if not longer.

After that you can make reasonable assumptions about the % dmg difference.
Also it should be noted that probably every move you do with a dagger that isn’t auto attacking, except maybe warhorn 5 and focus 4, is a dps downgrade, whereas axe 2 is actually a substantial dmg boost that, if axe is traited, should be pretty close to dagger auto attack damage.

Arvid.3829:

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Andele.1306:

Dagger 1 and 3 have quite the aftercasts, so no you finish a dagger 1 chain in around 1.4 seconds while a Axe 1 attack goes off in around 1 second.
But overall melee damage > safe position of range.

How do you know that ? Is there any source that tells us the cast time of 2nd and 3rd dagger chain attacks ?
Or you just tried it ?

There is a very old thread that will give you fairly decent estimates. Most seem fairly accurate, but some are a bit off; dagger 1 chain f.i.: in one of his recent videos, Nemesis did 17 full chains in about 33 seconds which would put the chain around 1.95 sec instead of 2.2 sec.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Autoattack-DPS-and-cast-times/first

You can (and should just like in mobas) cancel the aftercasts of 1 and 3 by pressing esc/keybind on mouse you use for it, speeds up both dagger and on DS 1, 2 (UW), 4; so if you got a mouse with 2 or more additional buttons just click 1-2-1-1-2.

Andele.1306:

Arvid.3829:

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Andele.1306:

Dagger 1 and 3 have quite the aftercasts, so no you finish a dagger 1 chain in around 1.4 seconds while a Axe 1 attack goes off in around 1 second.
But overall melee damage > safe position of range.

How do you know that ? Is there any source that tells us the cast time of 2nd and 3rd dagger chain attacks ?
Or you just tried it ?

There is a very old thread that will give you fairly decent estimates. Most seem fairly accurate, but some are a bit off; dagger 1 chain f.i.: in one of his recent videos, Nemesis did 17 full chains in about 33 seconds which would put the chain around 1.95 sec instead of 2.2 sec.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Autoattack-DPS-and-cast-times/first

You can (and should just like in mobas) cancel the aftercasts of 1 and 3 by pressing esc/keybind on mouse you use for it, speeds up both dagger and on DS 1, 2 (UW), 4; so if you got a mouse with 2 or more additional buttons just click 1-2-1-1-2.

Surely thats more of an exploit than the stuff you claim speedrunners do as exploits.

Should the fact that Axe has a dedicated +15% damage trait put into consideration?

sorrow.2364:

Should the fact that Axe has a dedicated +15% damage trait put into consideration?

Still nowhere near dagger damage.

Which is why I really doubt taking the axe for vuln. The damage lost is so significant I’m not sure the party buff from vuln can cover the lost here. And also have to consider most casual party get ~15 stacks of vuln already just by going through their regular rotations.

Afya.5842:

Which is why I really doubt taking the axe for vuln. The damage lost is so significant I’m not sure the party buff from vuln can cover the lost here. And also have to consider most casual party get ~15 stacks of vuln already just by going through their regular rotations.

This is my point

Traited focus gives you almost 100% uptime of 12 stacks of vuln on a single target. Thats all you really need.

I honestly would love to take axe on most occasions, And I dont mind it in PvE because I can always use it.

However, In PvP/WvW I usually really need that spike damage that dagger has and use many immobilize to stick to the target making Dagger more attractive. The big problem moreso is the way Axe 2 works. Its amazing burst DPS and is good because if you do run stuff on crit (traits or even on hit) then it can proc a good deal. But dodging this is too much of a DPS loss to me compared to an auto. That and the whole running behind deal. I might try it again now that i learned you can stand still and your character will turn, but I can’t see a reason to stand still besides letting them DPS on me heavy themselves.

And no, the 15% doesn’t make it outrank Dagger in damage.

edit: said PvE twice. MEANT WvW my bad.

Loyo.8526:

I honestly would love to take axe on most occasions, And I dont mind it in PvE because I can always use it.

However, In PvE I usually really need that spike damage that dagger has and use many immobilize to stick to the target making Dagger more attractive. The big problem moreso is the way Axe 2 works. Its amazing burst DPS and is good because if you do run stuff on crit (traits or even on hit) then it can proc a good deal. But dodging this is too much of a DPS loss to me compared to an auto. That and the whole running behind deal. I might try it again now that i learned you can stand still and your character will turn, but I can’t see a reason to stand still besides letting them DPS on me heavy themselves.

And no, the 15% doesn’t make it outrank Dagger in damage.

Axe #2 is longer than the dagger auto chain and does less damage.

Against a dummy golem, Axe #1 has significantly lower DPS than Dagger #1, even when traited. Even mixing in Axe #2 every time it comes off cooldown, Dagger #1 is ahead. But since the dagger is melee, you’ll have to dodge and heal more often so your actual DPS out in the world might be lower, depending on how much damage uptime you lose by fighting so close.

As far as I can tell, it largely depends on playstyle.

sorrow.2364:

Should the fact that Axe has a dedicated +15% damage trait put into consideration?

Probably, but it’s only +10% now. It got nerfed when it moved from Grandmaster to Master.

spoj.9672:

Loyo.8526:

I honestly would love to take axe on most occasions, And I dont mind it in PvE because I can always use it.

However, In PvE I usually really need that spike damage that dagger has and use many immobilize to stick to the target making Dagger more attractive. The big problem moreso is the way Axe 2 works. Its amazing burst DPS and is good because if you do run stuff on crit (traits or even on hit) then it can proc a good deal. But dodging this is too much of a DPS loss to me compared to an auto. That and the whole running behind deal. I might try it again now that i learned you can stand still and your character will turn, but I can’t see a reason to stand still besides letting them DPS on me heavy themselves.

And no, the 15% doesn’t make it outrank Dagger in damage.

Axe #2 is longer than the dagger auto chain and does less damage.

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

Anyway, I rarely use the axe myself for the auto attack. The axe is best used in particularly strange scenarios, and should itself never be the permanent weapon of the power necro. Some examples include:

A) When you need to disengage from melee range, but still want to maintain an offense. Then, you’ll usually do something like Focus #4 + Axe #2 + Death Shroud for a few seconds, followed by Axe #2 again once you leave DS, then focus #4 again, then switch back to the dagger and sally forth after your heal has recharged.

B) If I am ever trying to run past a bunch of mobs, axe #3 makes a nice AoE cripple if they’ve already engaged me.

C)There are also those rare enemies, like the high risen priest, who can launch a ton of small damaging attacks. In these scenarios, the long duration retaliation can really rack up damage. I like to use Axe #3, then engage at point blank in DS and just watch as the enemy ticks up 6k or so damage against my life force, which I just gain back again soon.

D)The biggest appeal of the axe is that it is a spell: It has no flight path, and because of this it can be used to bypass reflect skills and area denial skills in order to do damage. It is a big help against something like the Plunderer from HotW Path 1, who spins around reflecting projectiles for several seconds. Once he starts doing this, I just swap to the axe and attack with it. This is really the only time you’ll ever use the auto attack, when Life Blast isn’t a viable option but you can’t melee either.

So all in all, axe is best as a secondary weapon, used mostly for situations where the dagger can’t really be used, or for those special purposes like kiting enemies or maximizing retaliation damage.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

This thing called math that everyone seems to ignore, its not 430 (then axe 2 would be 860) its 480 and 530 if traited (last numbers rounded ofc because of weapon damage variation and simplicity).

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

This thing called math that everyone seems to ignore, its not 430 (then axe 2 would be 860) its 480 and 530 if traited (last numbers rounded ofc because of weapon damage variation and simplicity).

2.25 seconds. Not 2 seconds. You have to divide axe damage by 2.25 seconds.

Ghastly claws is 3 seconds. Or tooltip error? Anyway its still less dps. You cant spam axe 2 forever whereas you can spam dagger auto forever.

spoj.9672:

Ghastly claws is 3 seconds. Or tooltip error? Anyway its still less dps. You cant spam axe 2 forever whereas you can spam dagger auto forever.

It’s really not. I’ve tested it a few times, and it takes up anywhere from 2.25 to 2.5 seconds to use.

EDIT: Ah, sneaky edit. Anyway, the tooltip says 2 and 1/4th second. Also, you’re not supposed to spam axe 2 forever. You’re supposed to alternate between Axe 2 and other skills with DS while you wait to recover.

spoj.9672:

Ghastly claws is 3 seconds. Or tooltip error? Anyway its still less dps. You cant spam axe 2 forever whereas you can spam dagger auto forever.

Exactly
Dagger chain is the strongest attack we have. I don’t have to worry about healing and dodging thanks to my minions.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

This thing called math that everyone seems to ignore, its not 430 (then axe 2 would be 860) its 480 and 530 if traited (last numbers rounded ofc because of weapon damage variation and simplicity).

2.25 seconds. Not 2 seconds. You have to divide axe damage by 2.25 seconds.

If you want to nitpick on the cast times in game that arent based on the skills actual damage dealing time but aftercast and initial animation then all of dagger damage should be delt in 0.25 of a second, no you can cancel axe 2 after 1.98 and it will still do full damage, same with dagger chain being done in 1.41 if you do it right or 1.79 if you let the 1 aftercast go and just cancel out of the 3>1 pause/aftercast.
Or even better, if you wanna count the additional time wasted in raising the arm and lowering it for axe, why not count the distance a dagger holder must walk to even deal damage?

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

This thing called math that everyone seems to ignore, its not 430 (then axe 2 would be 860) its 480 and 530 if traited (last numbers rounded ofc because of weapon damage variation and simplicity).

2.25 seconds. Not 2 seconds. You have to divide axe damage by 2.25 seconds.

If you want to nitpick on the cast times in game that arent based on the skills actual damage dealing time but aftercast and initial animation then all of dagger damage should be delt in 0.25 of a second, no you can cancel axe 2 after 1.98 and it will still do full damage, same with dagger chain being done in 1.41 if you do it right or 1.79 if you let the 1 aftercast go and just cancel out of the 3>1 pause/aftercast.
Or even better, if you wanna count the additional time wasted in raising the arm and lowering it for axe, why not count the distance a dagger holder must walk to even deal damage?

Axe takes 2.25 seconds at least to do its full damage. :p

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

This thing called math that everyone seems to ignore, its not 430 (then axe 2 would be 860) its 480 and 530 if traited (last numbers rounded ofc because of weapon damage variation and simplicity).

2.25 seconds. Not 2 seconds. You have to divide axe damage by 2.25 seconds.

If you want to nitpick on the cast times in game that arent based on the skills actual damage dealing time but aftercast and initial animation then all of dagger damage should be delt in 0.25 of a second, no you can cancel axe 2 after 1.98 and it will still do full damage, same with dagger chain being done in 1.41 if you do it right or 1.79 if you let the 1 aftercast go and just cancel out of the 3>1 pause/aftercast.
Or even better, if you wanna count the additional time wasted in raising the arm and lowering it for axe, why not count the distance a dagger holder must walk to even deal damage?

Axe takes 2.25 seconds at least to do its full damage. :p

No it doesnt…

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andele.1306:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dagger auto attack does 940 base damage in 2 seconds, coming to 470 damage per second.

Axe #2 dos 968 damage in 2.25 seconds, coming to 430 damage per second. Here’s the kicker, though: factor in axe training for an additional 15%, and you get 495 base damage per second, which puts it higher than the dagger, and gains twice the life force in that time. Of course, now that axe training is 10%, this puts it only equal to the dagger at 473 damage per second.

This thing called math that everyone seems to ignore, its not 430 (then axe 2 would be 860) its 480 and 530 if traited (last numbers rounded ofc because of weapon damage variation and simplicity).

2.25 seconds. Not 2 seconds. You have to divide axe damage by 2.25 seconds.

If you want to nitpick on the cast times in game that arent based on the skills actual damage dealing time but aftercast and initial animation then all of dagger damage should be delt in 0.25 of a second, no you can cancel axe 2 after 1.98 and it will still do full damage, same with dagger chain being done in 1.41 if you do it right or 1.79 if you let the 1 aftercast go and just cancel out of the 3>1 pause/aftercast.
Or even better, if you wanna count the additional time wasted in raising the arm and lowering it for axe, why not count the distance a dagger holder must walk to even deal damage?

Axe takes 2.25 seconds at least to do its full damage. :p

No it doesnt…

Yes it does…

The Dagger chain is definitely strong.
For some time after Axe Mastery was moved into Master from Grandmaster I figured that Axe was outright better since Axe mastery also works on Life Blast.

Someone pointed out that Switching to a Staff for Life Blasting adds pretty much same amount of damage anyway.
So I guess that 15% isn’t as huge as I thought it would be.

When talking about just damage the two are surprisingly well balanced with one another.
My main issue with Dagger is that Necros don’t have many defenses and while it’s a great weapon for facetanking mobs in the open world there are situations in PvE where melee just gets murdered.
Necro even more so because of no blocks/invul.

Even with all it’s flaws it’s my favorite Necro weapon.
Stabbing things in the face is funny!
Also it reminds me of Black Mages from FF1.

If only Life Siphon scaled better with Healing power (or was replaced by something better) and Dark Pact had a shorter cast time we just might see more Necros running Healing Power and Blood Magic.