Guild Wars 2

Lots of classes have low cd decent burst skills on #2 of their weapons. Necro isnt one of them.

Axe 2 needs to be instant, or near instant, not channeled for 5 minutes. Burst skills need to be, you know, bursty, not give your opponent time to see the attack start, fall asleep, wake up, go to the bathroom, come back, check their email, then dodge the last half of the skill and have taken barely any damage.

Maybe:
Give Rending Claws native spread; the first slash will act as normal, but the second strikes 2 more targets within 240 radius of the primary target

Move Unholy Feast to the 2, reduce CD to 10 seconds, reduce Retal duration to 2s per target, reduce Cripple duration to 4 sec

Move Ghastly Claws to the 3, increase cooldown to 15 seconds, reduce cast time to 1.75 sec, boost damage by a nice big number (20-30%)

There’s my wishlist. It’ll never happen, but there it is. That should be enough to give it a firm role as a close-range, power AOE weapon.

Maybe axe should be the go to LF generating weapon in addition to vulnerability. if the autoattack generated 1% LF, would this make it an appealing choice?

This of course raises the question whether dagger AA should still be a LF generator, or make it pure DPS.

CratZ.6270:

Maybe axe should be the go to LF generating weapon in addition to vulnerability. if the autoattack generated 1% LF, would this make it an appealing choice?

This would make it really unappealing. At the moment, LF being on the 2 squeezes it down to a manageable cast time; you channel 2 for 2 seconds, you get 8% life force. Being on the 1 forces you to spam 1 for the same amount of life force for a much longer time.

Dagger 1 is a fast chain which gives large chunks of LF. For Axe 1 to do the same thing, it’d need to provide something like 3% LF for each use of 1.

On Dagger and Staff providing LF while Axe and Scepter don’t; I think making a hard rule here would just suppress build diversity.

I think I worded badly maybe. The idea was not to replace the #2 LF gain, but having a small LF gain on AA as well as #2.

Idea was that you’d get some extra LF while being forced to AA on axe until weapon swap/ DS is available again.

Make axe auto attack frontal cleave at 600 range like guardian staff. Since the auto hits like kitten, it will be ok. Happy panda necro when this happens.

Lol! You still use an axe! Haha! XD

By the way, for people who think Axe 2 is a decent burst skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1os1GjSS1Zc&feature=youtu.be

THAT is what bursting someone looks like. He deals 15k damage with less of a cast time than your 5k Axe 2. That is burst, axe 2 does not have burst.

I just switched to trying the axe. It doesn’t seem very bad nor very good, but the auto attack is pretty weak. Though you can do pretty much damage with #2.

Personally, I’ve had good results using the axe for what it’s obviously designed for.

Button 1 does some damage but it also applies 2 stacks of vulnerability. With increased vulnerability duration you can pile it on pretty deep with nothing but auto-attack – setting up both yourself and allies for big hits. Grinding someone to death with auto-attack is a long job and pretty much the wrong way to use it. Let it tick 6-8 times before unloading your big hits. Pairs nicely with other vulnerability inflicting tools.

Button 2 is how you cash-in on the prep-work you’ve down putting 12-18 stacks of vulnerability on a target. Also builds life force.

Button 3 – a point blank AoE with some retaliation. Pairs with wells utilities — get into the middle of the fray, hit everything, drop wells (hitting everything), switch to death-shroud (hit everything some more…).

Power-based, axe-wielding necros are in-fighters. Button 3 demands it, so build accordingly if you’re going to use an axe at all.

With unyielding blast in soul reaping, you can hit axe 2, then life blast to stack vuln. Much more effective than axe auto, especially with the axe trait
And unyielding blast is a trait every pve necro should take

Ive said it a million times the.only issue with axe is the.auto.attack.
2 hits hard and channel is fine.as is
3 is kind of a odd ball but retal is aswome vrs karge.numbers and has.saved.my life so.many times.

Making axe 1 cleave or slightly increased damage
I would.live to see a ’cone attack in the AA chain.at the end.

2 does not hit hard. 5-6k over nearly 4 seconds is not high damage. DS auto attack hits for more than Axe 2 does per cast, with piercing, might and vuln stacking.

Bhawb.7408:

Axe’s issue is not its range.

I disagree.

Wrote this on another topic before i saw this one lol

On the topic of axe i think they designed it as a weapon for minion necros. Stack vulnerability with an AA that doesnt do much, but the minion will hit 10-16% harder even if youre using tanky stats since minions dont scale from stats. On that same thought its not meant to be a berserker weapon since it takes time for it to reach it maximum damage stacks, so its intended for longer fights, with the minions doing more and more damage.
The weapon is ranged, you dont really need the cripple, the cripple on 3 is there for your minions.
The number 2 is nice. Anyways the weapon is outclassed completely by dagger mh, if you know what youre doing you are really hard to kite (this goes for wvw and pvp)

The issue is even as an MM, I only take axe because staff is worse. Its basically a matter of picking the best smelling pile of poo. If they introduced a hammer, or any kind of CC/support/tanky weapon, Axe would be dropped instantly.

the biggest issue I have with the axe is that it’s really a weak “power” based weapon. The AA is worthless. It’s like a watered-down dagger with extra range.

It needs a major lift.

Yup I’m convinced after looking through this thread that I’m the only necro who favors axe.

The biggest problem I see with axe is its difficulty in usage. Its rough getting those full channel ghastly claws out with everyone constantly moving, it really is a clunky skill. The auto attack should cleave and we should be able to melee things in front of us with axe 1 without a target.

In wvw its pretty much equivalent of being in melee range so its barely a range weapon in that aspect.

Even with all its downfalls I still love this weapon, and I think the only change I would like to see is getting rid of the channel on ghastly claws. Making it a 1 1/2 second cast and keep the claw animation.

Axe is beast when it comes to life force regen its all about timing and positioning yourself for ghastly claws, in pvp that is…. in pve its a lost cause i guess given the pve “meta”

Theres even a rotation for it with near to death Gc > Ds > 5 Life blast > Exit Ds > 3 autos > repeat

or GC > 3 Lb> 3 axe autos > GC works too

So.ive been thinking… ya scary i know..lets focus less on the weapon and more on the trait. Make it better when traited

Trait is atm.
Axe training
+%10 damage
%20 recharge reduction of axe skills.

Rework #1
+%10 damage
%20 recharge reduction
Axe AA splashes. In a radius of 350

#2
+%15 damage
%20 recharge reduction
Axe AA bounces to nearest foe within 200 of target to a max of 3 targets.

Idk thoughts.

A weapon shouldn’t be god awful if it isn’t traited. Even traited axe has only ever been used in DS LB builds due to it being better than staff for a short time.

Bhawb.7408:

A weapon shouldn’t be god awful if it isn’t traited. Even traited axe has only ever been used in DS LB builds due to it being better than staff for a short time.

It is not a awful weapon. Its just sub par, even traited. And it works fine in power builds.
Making better when traited will give it a spot to kitten, right.now its good at getting lf…
Making the trait better will pull people to take it over staff.

Untraited i would take axe over staff but thats.just preference.

If they gave us almost any ranged power weapon, axe would drop from all of PvE, just like it’d fall from PvP if they gave MMs another weapon. I agree its better than staff, but that isn’t saying a whole lot either.

Honestly if you play a bit on other professions, you’ll realize how incredibly lacking we are on good weapons.

The #2 channel needs to be sped up… i don’t think I’ve ever hit a full channel in WvW because it is so slow and so easy to dodge/mitigate.

It’s great against PvE / Stationary targets, but it’s just too slow for WvW/PvP. You might hit a high number on the channel, but it takes so long to finish your effective DPS probably isn’t all that great by the end of it.

The #1 skill is just plain weak and needs to be buffed somehow.

The #3 skill is reasonable enough… they could maybe add a small siphon or something? I dunno.

I don’t use dagger on my power Necro, so this is all that I’m left with… they should fix it or give us a new ranged power weapon. I would say this is one of the worst weapons in the game… even though i run with it every day.

I don’t have all the answers, but i think A-net should take a look at this weapon and look to make some modest improvements.

Axe isnt that great. I tried it out for a bit after a friend recommended it because he saw other necros using it and thought it was ‘cool’ . At first, i admit I wasnt really too optomistic. I am a dagger necro afterall, so I mostly used that for a long time. However, I loved the effect and everything about #3 on axe. It was a great skill in its own right, and I figured I try it out again.

But I still ran into various problems. Axe #1 honestly is just horrendous. Im not saying it cant do ok damage, but that damage only occurs after Close to Death and Axe training on DEAD SQUISHY TARGETS. 1.7k is probably the hardest Ive ever hit someone with this skill. You can imagine the amount of vulnerability that had to occur for this.

Axe 2# honestly is buggy and broken as can be. the damage looks great on paper, but each hit is about 10~ damage less than its auto attack (after you split the auto of course because its two swings), so if even 3-4 miss because of how fast dodge animation is, you can lose a bit of damage. I get it, the animation is cool, but for how long it is there needs to be more damage in each hit for it to be so easily dodged. This or just cut the time down so It can hit in a smaller window. That way its rewarding for both parties. Also, I can’t stand the bug where if someone runs behind you it stops the channel. This frustrates me to no end when you compare it to dagger which has a similar skill but atleast its both long enough and has the hp restore part unblockable to justify it on a weapon with such a high auto attack.

So yes, It does keep people away from you, but anyone who knows Necro will exploit the heck out of you when you pull out this weapon. I rather use Scepter at this point because its auto hits similar with better range. However, I guess axe shines when no one can see you because giant blobs.

Axe #2 isn’t bad but it’s also not that great because of what you need to sacrifice to get there. . Anet should have really not displayed cumulative numbers for channeled stuff.

I think the failing of axe is that it is all single target except for 3. Now if it had the same crappy damage but if it cleaved with say, vulnerability (and maybe only a small portion of damage to cleaved targets) that would be interesting.

Zefrost.3425:

If you think axe is bad it’s because you don’t know how to use it properly. Axe is superior to dagger because going toe-to-toe with real melee classes? I wouldn’t recommend it…

And to a real melee class (warrior, guardian, thief, and yes, even ranger), 600 range is nothing. Quite literally. In fact, it’s the perfect range for them to slap you in the face with a leap. For at least two of the above, going toe to toe with you is their choice, not yours.

It may be ok to chase someone that’s running away from your dagger. And get yourself some extra vul/retaliation. That’s about it.

Ok, axe is also good as a minionmancer. But that’s because it’s not about the axe’s damage. In retrospect, having skills that don’t depend on weapon damage was a good thing.