Guild Wars 2

For a long time, I have doubted to make any suggestion thread about axe due to the fact that I was doubting whether a developer would ever read it. But since they plan on giving scepter a huge and unnecessary buff, I thought it might be a good idea to try an axe topic in order to try to make axe a more useful weapon for power necro’s. Before you continue reading, this topic is just a suggestion topic, meaning everyone is free to jump in and give their opinion about my suggestions or to give in a suggestion them self. I’m fully aware that some “numbers” won’t as high as some would expect, however this has multiple reasons.

First of all, I really want to prevent the necro axe of becoming OP. I believe everyone has seen the recent impacts of OP stuff and has seen what happens when things get OP. As I believe axe isn’t the only thing that could use some adjustments, I therefore would introduce a new axe weapon first and see how it works, in order to see how everything works out in order to make small adjustments later.

Secondly, I also would like to prevent necro’s axe to join the “that weapon x of class y does more damage, buff us”. I believe a weapon should have it basic idea, and that the combination of traits and game play should reward players rather than giving them free buffs, one of which the suggestion about scepter auto attack is a good example.

So after this long intro, let’s start than. My main idea was to stick as best as possible with the “single target” weapon idea. However, I added some small adjustments in order to make it way more rewarding and useful in multiple situations.

Axe skills

Rendering Claws

It’s damage get’s increased by 5%. But it now will only take 3/4 second instead of 1 in order to faster apply vulnerability.

I’m fully aware that this first change won’t be what people are expecting, however don’t forget to read my trait suggestion before stopping here. I really want to keep axe auto attack single target, just like scepter auto. However, in order to make it more useful I would make a small damage increase and make it more useful for stacking vulnerability. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not saying this should be the end goal for axe auto. However, with everything in mind this could be a first step to make axe more useful for every game mode.

Ghastly Claws

It’s damage get’s increased by 5%. It’s channeling time gets reduced to two seconds. But instead of dealing damage to one target, targets in a radius of 150 of the target also receive 25% of the damage received by the main target.

This change is still focused around the “axe single target” theme, however with the adjustment of making axe more useful for team fights with a, to the best of my knowledge, unique mechanism as the 25% damage dealt to the surrounding players is only based on the actions and main damage dealt to the main character.

Let’s say for example that players, and opponents, A, B and C are standing somewhere, and B and C are standing in the 150 radius of player A. If you cast Ghastly Claws on player A, and this player decides to tank all damage, B and C will receive 25% of the damage dealt to player A, no matter whether they are blocking or not, and independently of their toughness level. If however player A decides to block, neither B or C will receive any damage.

I’m fully aware that this might quite special towards players who are used of using blocks or playing bunker builds, knowing that they might receive quite some damage if they are standing next to a glass cannon that get’s attacked. However, this is why the skill itself doesn’t get a massive damage increase on itself, and is also the reason why they receive only 25% of the damage dealt. And why the radius is only 150. However, I believe that this change would be quite useful for necro’s axe weapon, as it gives the skill a unique ability, again to the best of my knowledge, without giving up the main theme of the weapon. If you chose to pick out a glass cannon, you’ll get rewarded. However if you chose out a bunker or blocking character, you’ll get less rewarded when using this skill.

For those who are asking how far this “you’ll take damage anyway” idea goes, I would first start with only applying it for blocking characters. We can see later whether we want to add more options, or whether we want to slightly increase the dealt damage.

Unholy Feast

It’s damage get’s increased by 5%. Cripple nearby foes and turn their boons (1) into conditions (1). Gain retaliation for each foe you strike. Punish foes with boons by dealing 10% more damage for every boon on your foe.

As I believe this skill is already quite useful for necro’s, I was thinking about a way in order to make it more useful towards the type of game play we have seen previously. I was therefore tempted to increase the amount of boons you convert, however as this is a power weapon I really wanted it to keep it this way. I therefore was thinking back about the old version of Feast of Corruption skill, which allowed the skill to deal 10% more damage for every condition on a foe. This is why I want to give something similar to this axe skill, but with boons instead of conditions. That’s why this skill will now apply 10% more damage for every boon on a character, making this skill a quite powerful AoE skill towards boon spamming machines. Or at least, that’s what I hope it will become.

On a side note: I would first let the damage be applied, before converting the boon into a condition.

Axe trait

Unholy Fervor.

Reduces recharge on axe skills. Axe skills deal 1% more damage for every stack of vulnerability on your foe. Ghastly Claws generates an additional 0.2% life force for every stack of vulnerability on your foe.

This is a trait idea I, and afterwards others as well, already made once. The idea is to turn axe into a power weapon that could be used in any game mode, without making it OP in a specific one. In PvE, opponents will mostly likely have some higher number of vulnerability stacks, meaning this trait will allow axe to deal quite some additional damage. However, as this will be less the case in wvw or pvp this also means axe won’t be as Op when using this trait.

However, I hope now everyone understands why my damage increase numbers weren’t higher than 5%. And why my auto attack change wasn’t world changing. It’s because when you equip the axe trait, the axe auto attack will by itself deal more damage over time and will be quite necessary in order to buff the other axe skills. As the axe trait is also focused around the amount of vulnerability stacks, I believe this will also give necro’s more options when creating their builds.

And that’s all folks. Feel free to comment if you disagree with anything. And off course feel free to leave a comment if you like them.

I like the Unholy feast idea. Punishing foes with more boons, but this will get negated by protection. If the mechanic can remove protection as priority then I like this. Otherwise I prefer to corrupt 2 boons.
The retaliation idea is also great. To give 1.5s of retaliation per target, up to 7.5s. Good buff there.

I don’t like the Unholy Feast idea, as I feel like it works against itself and our other boon-punishing skills.

Dealing more damage per boon on the target contradicts with the boon removal on the skill, as well as our theme of corrupting boons.

I think all your other ideas are good. The potential 25% damage modifier might be a bit much though.

In this case it doent. It strip only 1 boon, the enemy player will have more then one.
There will be contradiction if it was skill like “corrupt boon”. In this case its additional effect, that only add to the skill.

mazut.4296:

I like the Unholy feast idea. Punishing foes with more boons, but this will get negated by protection. If the mechanic can remove protection as priority then I like this. Otherwise I prefer to corrupt 2 boons.
The retaliation idea is also great. To give 1.5s of retaliation per target, up to 7.5s. Good buff there.

The retaliation effect is already on the skill. I only copied it to prevent misunderstandings as people might think I would remove.

And I personally don’t mind if people have protection on them. Off course it will deal more damage if the boon is ripped off, but on the other hand I think one of the powers of the skill is that with the current skill you can transform any boon, from stability to resistance. I therefore don’t think a priority to protection is necessary.

In terms of your suggestion concerning two boons, I personally think this idea of the convert two boons idea is something that could be implemented either for Unholy Feast or Spiteful Spirit, as that GM trait needs some rework as well. However, as axe is supposed to be a non-condi dps weapon, I would therefore think my suggestion would fit it better than and increase of boon conversions.

Increase range to 1500.

OlliX.1705:

I don’t like the Unholy Feast idea, as I feel like it works against itself and our other boon-punishing skills.

Dealing more damage per boon on the target contradicts with the boon removal on the skill, as well as our theme of corrupting boons.

I think all your other ideas are good. The potential 25% damage modifier might be a bit much though.

The theme of corrupting boons is mostly useful for condi-oriented builds. This is something that isn’t really the case for axe, as it’s supposed to be used as a power weapon as opposed to condi weapons. Therefore, adding more boon conversions to the weapon would mean you would convert them, but they would hardly do any damage due the lack of condition damage. One could off course insist on the usage of offensive hybrid runes/armor sets but, as one could see, this would really limit the general usage of the weapon as non of the other attacks have any sort of damaging conditions.

I personally therefore don’t agree with the fact that this change would make the weapon skill works against our theme. We would still be in the theme of punishing people with lot’s of boons, however this time this would result in direct damage as opposed to condi damage.

To come back to your point of the 25% damage modifier, this could indeed be a bit to hard in certain situations, however keep in mind all changes as well. Previously the skill lasted for 2.25 seconds while now it will only last for 2 seconds, meaning it will do faster damage, but it will also be easier for people to dodge it due to the shorter channeling time, which decrease the overall dps.

guildabd.6529:

Increase range to 1500.

I personally don’t think axe range should be increased to 1500 range. Of course, it would be quite useful, however the moment it becomes 1500 range will be the moment we can forget any further improvements to axe due to the way the axe skill works. This isn’t that noticeable maybe in PvE, but in PvP or WvW people will notice that axe does direct damage in comparison to other mid/long range weapon skills who’s projectiles first need to cover a distance before hitting the target. Increasing its range would therefore make axe skills quite hard to dodge or to escape from it. I therefore think that due to it’s concept, the 900 range is enough for axe but that the problem with axe is that its skills don’t fit the role well of damage dealing skills.

Thanks already to all those who made some remarks or suggestions. Who knows what comes out of it. ^^

I really like these proposed changes, they are level headed and well thought out. One thing I would change would be to make the axe auto get the lf trait buff. If someone dodges your #2, then all of your life force generation is gone, making you a sitting duck for focus fire. It needs to be on auto for unavoidable passive generation, or it wont work. Look at staff auto, you can possibly get 20% life force in a single hit, so I dont see any reason why Anet is so hesitant to buff axes life force generation in this way.

Bluewizard.2694:

OlliX.1705:

I don’t like the Unholy Feast idea, as I feel like it works against itself and our other boon-punishing skills.

Dealing more damage per boon on the target contradicts with the boon removal on the skill, as well as our theme of corrupting boons.

I think all your other ideas are good. The potential 25% damage modifier might be a bit much though.

The theme of corrupting boons is mostly useful for condi-oriented builds. This is something that isn’t really the case for axe, as it’s supposed to be used as a power weapon as opposed to condi weapons. Therefore, adding more boon conversions to the weapon would mean you would convert them, but they would hardly do any damage due the lack of condition damage. One could off course insist on the usage of offensive hybrid runes/armor sets but, as one could see, this would really limit the general usage of the weapon as non of the other attacks have any sort of damaging conditions.

I personally therefore don’t agree with the fact that this change would make the weapon skill works against our theme. We would still be in the theme of punishing people with lot’s of boons, however this time this would result in direct damage as opposed to condi damage.

Condi conversion is not just about dealing damage. Non-damaging condis like weakness, chill, cripple, vulnerability (and so on) are universally valuable.

We already have a power boonstrip weapon, the focus. The Spinal Shivers attack on focus deals more damage for each boon stripped, and the associated trait rewards us 5% more damage against boonless foes.

I don’t think the skill idea is bad in itself, but I really don’t feel that it’s coherent with what we already have.