Guild Wars 2

I’m fairly new to necro having played guardian until recently, my necro is so far only lvl 63.

I’ve talked to other necros in my guild, scanned these forums and read a number of guides and it seems that most necros prefer dagger/dagger or sceptre dagger with staff alt.

Having played around with various combinations I find that on a condition trait and built I far prefer axe/focus for a main weapon with much less used scepter/dagger alt.

I particularly dislike dagger mainhand, this dosent seem to fit with any build I can come up with (unless someones got a life drain vampire build all centered around Life Siphon).

Am I missing the reason that so many necros love dagger mainhand and hate axe so much?

I’m not sure if I’m interpreting correctly, but if you are focusing on condition traits then you should be avoiding axe and dagger altogether. In a power build, necros love dagger mainhand because dagger 1 does significantly more damage per second than axe 1. In fact, axe 1 is one of the lowest damaging autoattacks in the game.

Popular opinion is that axe 1 is so bad that it destroys axe altogether. Coupled with the fact that 600 range is a “no man’s land” (not far enough to be safe as with a ranged weapon, not close enough to warrant melee level damage) and you have a recipe for disaster.

That being said, if you enjoy axe and wish to stick with it, Ascii and Nemesis have some niche builds that utilize it to good effect. However, neither of them “stick” to axe. They both agree to only switch to axe to use the burst on axe 2 and cripple/retaliation on axe 3. Then they either switch to DS or their swap to wait for cds.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: To address the other point of your post, d/d is usually not suggested except for roleplaying reasons. MH dagger is a power weapon, OH dagger is a condition weapon. Scepter/Dagger + Staff is the cookie cutter weapon choice for condition play simply because scepter 1 stacks conditions and staff is a versatile, long ranged, amazing overall weapon.

I run Axe/Focus as it’s the greatest vuln stacking with Minions but I do not run Axe main with DS/Lich Power Crit Build. Dagger has two things going for it.

1). Auto Attack speed and damage. The Axe has horrid Auto attack and speed and if you take off auto attack on axe you lose the double hit by spamming 1.

2) Life Force build is significantly higher as Dagger 1 than with A/F builds. It’s also an amazing bunker weapon with the right skills.

Because auto attack is used so often everyone seems to think Axe 2 is awful. It is actually extremely strong, and a couple of Necro buddies were testing it out. They were able to get to 8k damage on Axe 2 with Power/Tough/Vit gear and one guy got to 9k with Valkyrie gear. This is with Axe Training. Without Axe training they varied between 5 and 7k in Arah and HoTW. Needless to say neither felt that the Delay on Axe 2 was worth putting up with the really lackluster feel of axe 1. Dagger Auto was just too easy, and they could get to DS significantly faster which is where their big hitter was.

I run axe because I really like the burst over the steady damage with my minions.

Axe is.. lackluster. Give it cleave ability and increase dmg by 20-30% and we would be talking somewhat useful… and the 600 range is completely le sigh.

If you like axe, don’t listen to all the doomgloomers. I love it too. It’s not a main attack weapon, wasn’t ever meant to be and most people fail to see this. If you have unlocked how to use it and enjoy it, run with it. I would just recommend against using it as your primary source of damage. it can be done but it will be inferior to other methods that require less gimmicks to make work. I’m not sure how well it will work for your build (I’m understanding you are running a condition build, unless you go dagger offhand maybe), but you could still make it work. Just remember, its you playing it all these hours not them. Play what you enjoy.

IM running hybrid power/cond good dps and decent survivability.
I run dagger/warhorn and off hand scepter/focus
It’s pretty effective. At least in spvp