Guild Wars 2

Trying to run Axe in SPvP, whats the best off hand for it, and how to best use it?

when to use it over dagger?

When to use axe over dagger is technically never since dagger is supposedly better. If dagger#2 (life siphon) ever got a cast time decrease there would literally be no reason to ever use axe.

Not even I would use axe anymore and I’ve used it for over 2000 hours on my necro. Axe doesn’t even really make sense in my own mind for the way I think of necromancer since life siphon is sustain: “What does necromancer do better than any other class?”

Answer: Boon corruption? Nah. Necromancer gets focused better than any other class.

I just like the range on axe (which is why dagger#2 buff would kill axe for me) and being able to inflict an AOE attack with axe#3 whereas with dagger you would need to face your target to immob them.

The focus is supposed to be the ideal off-hand but because the skills on it suck, I use either warhorn or dagger off-hand. I really only care about warhorn for the swiftness though since I use rune of the pack which gives swiftness duration. I prefer dagger off-hand.

I’m salty though because removing stats from trait lines took a toll on my favourite builds since hybrid is impossible to do unless you go celestial now.

Axe is terrible. I played it almost exclusively my first 1500 hours in the game and i crafted Frostfang so i am very familiar with what the weapon can do. I like that the #3 doesn’t require facing and is AoE, but #1 and #2 are too weak.

Also, axe doesn’t work too well with Warhorn (which is melee), and the other off hands are super weak.

Also axe nerfs your damage in death shroud.

You need to use dagger because dagger and Warhorn are literally the only decent weapons the class has.

Axe is my favorite necromancer weapon in terms of theme and aesthetics, so I eagerly await Robert Gees buffs for it. I just like the idea of some ghostly scary claw rending you from afar, I think it’s sooooo cool!

But I am not blind to its problems. Still I make it work as on offset to d/who on builds that can’t utilize staff very well, so I pretty much just use it on minion and yolo zerk wells builds.

Don’t.
That’s about all the help there is for players looking to run axe on a necro.