Guild Wars 2

About a year ago, I completed my Legendary, Frostfang. I had been having a lot of fun with Axe at the time in Fractals and dungeons, and just wasn’t a fan of Conditions. I also loved the way it looked in general

Fast forward to now, and I slowed down on my Necromancer. I don’t want to not use Frostfang because I’ll feel like I wasted materials to make it, especially since Tooth of Frostfang was a gift. But at the same time, it seems Axe just isn’t cutting it anymore, and I don’t want to stop playing my Necro just because of that. And I’m still not sure I’m a fan of conditions.

So, are there any good or recommended axe builds for Necro for PvE?

Unfortunately….not really. I mean axe and focus are decent, and in the right setting I’ve seen axe 2 hit as much as a hundred blades, but it’s all single target. But! Look at the first page of the BWE changes and you’ll see Robert mentioning axe and scepter buffs. So there is hope.

But really, it’s just PvE, and axe is fine for PvE for LF generation with the two and tagging mobs with the three. So use it if us want, or go make another character that can utilize axe properly, I’m not sure which one that’d be, but give it a try. You might just need a break from necro is all.

Yeah axe is terrible right now, but we’ve made Rob aware of this and he said he was going to fix it.

Continue necro tradition of complaining until fixed. It only took 3 years to make our minions actually attack our target.

Axe is very unpopular at the moment, but for what it’s worth, Robert Gee is on record as looking over necro axe and scepter for a rebalance sometime in the future, so don’t lose hope yet!

I also built a Frostfang for my necromancer.

I put a Sigil of Generousity on it too (at the time it was very expensive, and now it s by far the most expensive sigil in the game), because axe is the only ranged weapon Necromancer has that fires somewhat fast.

It sucks.

Axe was seemingly passed over in previous skill patches. It was never good, and it gets worse as more power creep is added to the game.

Axe is pretty boring on warrior, pretty bad on ranger, and looks only ok ish on revenant.

But mostly I’m concerned about the reaper. Staff can’t carry the load that life blast was carrying, staff’s pretty poor by itself. The reaper needs viable choices for ranged: axe, scepter, and focus all need looking at. (Maybe offhand dagger too)

Glass Cannon 3.0 will have axe, since it’s a DS Build but people tend to use Staff instead because of increased Weapon Damage, if you get hit and have no life force while having staff, it’s really really bad dps and you also lose Offhand Focus damage, wait for it my friend, shouldn’t be that long

Refer to my signature.

Kahrgan.7401:

Refer to my signature.

Second line of your signature is blatantly false.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Kahrgan.7401:

Refer to my signature.

Second line of your signature is blatantly false.

Agreed

Dagger.

Oh wait you said axe? Well no, the dagger is pretty much better than the axe in every possible way except for the range.
Maybe they’ll fix the axe toolkit at some point so that it’s not kitten t y. If it were up to me i’d do this

1. a) Slash your enemy and apply vulnerability (5 stacks, 10 seconds)
   b) Slash you enemy and gain (5sec 2 stacks) might if they have 5 or more stacks of vulnerability on them. If they have 10 or more stacks you also gain gain retaliation (3s). More than 20 and this attack adds duration to existing vulnerability stacks (3s to all active stacks), at 25 stacks you gain a 10% bonus to life force and damage done (lasts 5s)
   c) Wind up a vicious strike which hits three targets and has a chance to spread your vulnerability stacks.
2. (25sec recharge, instant cast) Dig into your foe with your axe, dealing more damage and gaining more life force per stack of vulnerability. The recharge of this skill is reduced by 1 seconds for every stack of vulnerability on your foe(note- the idea is that you can abandon vuln stacking for spike damage if needed, but eventually it comes down because your stacks fall off and you can’t maintain).
3. Not really any reason to mess with this. (except perhaps that, in keeping with the theme of “does more stuff with higher vulnerability stacks” that i was trying to convey, if it hits someone with 15+ stacks it chains out another smaller effect that only hits 3 targets and only applies 2 seconds of cripple/retal)

Axe play has always revolved around vuln, so i figure it only makes sense to make the axe skills do more things to targets that have more stacks on them.
Edit: Sorry that didn’t really help you, i just got a little carried away and i’d like to have a viable power option that isn’t a dagger. Not that i don’t like daggers but it gets a little bland sometimes.

Axe works well with a MM build because each minion’s damage is increased 1% for each vulnerability you stack. You take a hit on your personal dps versus dagger but minions or allies have increased dps. 1 vuln X 5 minions = 1% X 5 = 5% attributed to 1 person = 1 person giving might to 5 people.

You may also consider axe in group PvE where the group is not getting close to the vulnerability cap. Axe is boring when used just for vulnerability and feels awful for the person using it but it has a purpose.

nekretaal.6485:

Axe was seemingly passed over in previous skill patches.

Actually the axe has seen about as many buffs as any other weapon.

Ghastly Claws got a 10% damage increase 3 times since release.
Ghastly Claws originally generated 8% life force, which was at first buffed to 10% and then to 12%.
A boon strip was added to Unholy Feast, later that turned into a corrupt.
Rending Claws got a buff to its vulnerability duration and rather recently a cast time reduction.
Also, originally Axe Training was a grandmaster trait, so when it was moved to master it wasn’t just more accessible but it also allowed axe users to combine it with Close to Death.

Anyway, I get why the axe isn’t popular, but I really have to defend the axe when it comes to skills 2+3. When you compare those to the dagger or scepter there’s absolutely no contest, the axe is straight up better in every single way. The lameness of Life Siphon is only surpassed by Feast of Corruption, while Grasping Dead and Dark Pact are a shining beacon of mediocrity.

Bottom line, it’s really just Rending Claws that sucks, this skill needs a change more profound than some tweaked numbers or a different animation. And with a different auto attack the axe would definitely see a huge boost in popularity.

Dalent.9358:

So, are there any good or recommended axe builds for Necro for PvE?

No, and for PvE there probably never will be because the axe is too utility oriented to have its damage increased to a point where it could rival pure dps weapons like the dagger. What you could do though is use the axe in a build that spends most time in Shroud, basically to avoid the axe except for the occasional Ghastly Claws.

Dagger is better than Axe in PvE. With that said, if you don’t care to min/max, and you group with people that don’t care to do everything fast & perfectly, then you can use axe no problem. PvE is easy enough as is it really doesn’t matter that much what you use as long as you aren’t with people that complain about min/maxing performance.

But still, dagger is better than axe. We can only hope Mr. Gee will boost axe as he said he’s looking into.

Personally, I would trade some of the vulnerability from Rending Claws for bleeds so that scepter has a hybrid power/condi-damage weapon to swap to at shorter range.