Guild Wars 2

Well the last 4 days i’ve been running zerker axe/axe and LB for pve and a friend saw me and went nuts. I tried with sword/axe like he told me but the numbers are basically the same, even lower in axe 4 and 5 since i have less ferocity with sword (no “honed axes”)

I hit around 2k with the bouncing autoattack of axe, and it gives me might, also, axe 3 gives me aoe weakness that lasts longer than the CD of the skill…. I get the point of sword with the evade in 3 and the slightly faster autoattack, but is it really that big of a deal or am i just too used to axe/axe to see it?

What type of pve content?

FrownyClown.8402:

What type of pve content?

Maguuma exploration, events, dungeons and some fractals.

Sword both attacks faster and hits harder than axe, so if you’re doing something where you want to be optimized for damage, like fractals or possibly even dungeons, use the sword.

And the counterpoint is that nothing really matters in almost all PvE scenarios.

The main problem is, while being a hybrid weapon, mainhand axe favours condi more. Whereas offhand axe is pure power. And Honed axes just confuses the matter.

But for general Pve, run what you like. Some people can across as pushy though, even if they meant to be helpful.

I’d used the axe and the next time you see him standing around out of nasty aoe dmg with his melee weapon and you are plinking away with axe, tell him to get his kitten back in there.

Throw some light? Nah, you better take a torch for that :P

Axe/Axe is my primary weapon set for open world PVE, much AOE on very short cooldowns (make sure you have Honed Axes traited), useful for tagging as much stuff as possible.

Decided to look at raw numbers as I never did check after the 40% buff to axe auto.
Axe auto: 0.79 coeff/second
Traited axe auto: 0.86 coeff/second
Sword auto: 1.07 coeff/second

Sword cleaves 3 targets and axe is a bouncing 2 target. If there are 3 targets and you pull them together with axe 4, sword auto wins by a decent amount. However, let’s look at the big picture:

Axe 4 is ~2.7 coeff/second for the dmg/cast time.
Axe 5 is ~1.7 coeff/second for the dmg/cast time.

Assumed a bit of after cast. That’s why you quick draw axe 4. It’s also why sword is power and axe is condi actually sounds kind of naive after the 40% axe auto buff. They both kind of suck compared to your burst. If you are full zerker and using the axe trait, the 250 ferocity also buffs the off-hand axe as well as main-hand axe by ~7.5%. Furthermore, if you don’t have a PS warrior stacking crazy might on you, Axe auto is 6 or 12 might on 1 or 2 targets which is another 7 or 14% buff to axe auto but also axe 4/5. More boon duration and this makes a bigger difference. Sword auto is ~2 might to your pet >_>.

Then again, full zerker druids bring marksmanship and skirmishing since they are better than beast master for damage. If you drop druid and are just open world/casual grouping, axe is (as weird as it is to say this) better than sword.

TLDR: Your friend is used to the old meta balance patches. In meta groups sword>axe auto as it does about 35% more dps. It used to be 56%. While it’s only a small portion of your overall DPS rotation, it’s still important for meta comps.

In casual stuff, axe (especially if you have a bit of boon duration) is probably better than sword as it comes with 14-21% (or more with boon duration) bonus damage to itself and your heavy hitters which makes that 35% auto difference insignificant.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Decided to look at raw numbers as I never did check after the 40% buff to axe auto.
Axe auto: 0.79 coeff/second
Traited axe auto: 0.86 coeff/second
Sword auto: 1.07 coeff/second

Sword cleaves 3 targets and axe is a bouncing 2 target. If there are 3 targets and you pull them together with axe 4, sword auto wins by a decent amount. However, let’s look at the big picture:

Axe 4 is ~2.7 coeff/second for the dmg/cast time.
Axe 5 is ~1.7 coeff/second for the dmg/cast time.

Assumed a bit of after cast. That’s why you quick draw axe 4. It’s also why sword is power and axe is condi actually sounds kind of naive after the 40% axe auto buff. They both kind of suck compared to your burst. If you are full zerker and using the axe trait, the 250 ferocity also buffs the off-hand axe as well as main-hand axe by ~7.5%. Furthermore, if you don’t have a PS warrior stacking crazy might on you, Axe auto is 6 or 12 might on 1 or 2 targets which is another 7 or 14% buff to axe auto but also axe 4/5. More boon duration and this makes a bigger difference. Sword auto is ~2 might to your pet >_>.

Then again, full zerker druids bring marksmanship and skirmishing since they are better than beast master for damage. If you drop druid and are just open world/casual grouping, axe is (as weird as it is to say this) better than sword.

TLDR: Your friend is used to the old meta balance patches. In meta groups sword>axe auto as it does about 35% more dps. It used to be 56%. While it’s only a small portion of your overall DPS rotation, it’s still important for meta comps.

In casual stuff, axe (especially if you have a bit of boon duration) is probably better than sword as it comes with 14-21% (or more with boon duration) bonus damage to itself and your heavy hitters which makes that 35% auto difference insignificant.

I like posts like this.

@DuckDuckBOOM, I really want someone to go add those numbers to the wiki for all the various skills. coeff/sec is such a useful measure for this! Thanks for taking the trouble to calculate that out.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Decided to look at raw numbers as I never did check after the 40% buff to axe auto.
Axe auto: 0.79 coeff/second
Traited axe auto: 0.86 coeff/second
Sword auto: 1.07 coeff/second

Sword cleaves 3 targets and axe is a bouncing 2 target. If there are 3 targets and you pull them together with axe 4, sword auto wins by a decent amount. However, let’s look at the big picture:

Axe 4 is ~2.7 coeff/second for the dmg/cast time.
Axe 5 is ~1.7 coeff/second for the dmg/cast time.

Assumed a bit of after cast. That’s why you quick draw axe 4. It’s also why sword is power and axe is condi actually sounds kind of naive after the 40% axe auto buff. They both kind of suck compared to your burst. If you are full zerker and using the axe trait, the 250 ferocity also buffs the off-hand axe as well as main-hand axe by ~7.5%. Furthermore, if you don’t have a PS warrior stacking crazy might on you, Axe auto is 6 or 12 might on 1 or 2 targets which is another 7 or 14% buff to axe auto but also axe 4/5. More boon duration and this makes a bigger difference. Sword auto is ~2 might to your pet >_>.

Then again, full zerker druids bring marksmanship and skirmishing since they are better than beast master for damage. If you drop druid and are just open world/casual grouping, axe is (as weird as it is to say this) better than sword.

TLDR: Your friend is used to the old meta balance patches. In meta groups sword>axe auto as it does about 35% more dps. It used to be 56%. While it’s only a small portion of your overall DPS rotation, it’s still important for meta comps.

In casual stuff, axe (especially if you have a bit of boon duration) is probably better than sword as it comes with 14-21% (or more with boon duration) bonus damage to itself and your heavy hitters which makes that 35% auto difference insignificant.

Thanks for the insight, and yeah i don’t use druid when soloing (majority of the time) or with small groups. When i use druid i like to go with a magi spirit build i improvised, so yeah casual pve was the point.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

In casual stuff, axe (especially if you have a bit of boon duration) is probably better than sword

It is. Open world pve, axe is superior to sword in almost all aspects imho. Far easier to use, many times it will outdamage sword by a decent margin for a number of reasons, but most important being range and easier to hit more than one opponent with one autoattack.

Also, traited axe makes Winter’s bite incredibly good.

Reason why you see LB & Axe/Axe on a ranger is for what is called the double burst. Works great in PvE, works semi-ok in PvP against someone not expecting it, and only works 1/2 the time in WvW.

Basically longbow at range with rapidfire, as you wait for the enemy to close the distance, or in the case of fighting another long distance opponant, you’ll close the distance yourself. Once distance is closed, switch to Axe/Axe and burst #5. Can’t say it works all the time. If you have sharpening stone on, you can bleed a foe pretty good. Throw in Axe#2 (at face to face distance) to throw on more bleed, and having a Superior sigil of earth….well I think I pushed up to 26-30 stacks of bleeding.

But yah Axe/Axe from what I seen, and use comes down to a second burst after Longbow rapidfire.

Sadly the whole condition clearing of most professions make stacked conditions nearly avoidable. Stick a sigil of nullification on one axe, and throw generosity on the other. Throw conditions back at your foe, and take away their boons.

Lots of experimenting with stats and runes to make things even more interesting.

Useful posts. Thank you all.
Coming back after a year long break, these are valuable insights.
Does anyone have a pve build to share, I am fully berserker equipped.
And furthermore I’d like to ask whether someone would bother explaining the calculations behind the metric: coeff/sec. Since it seems very useful I would like to do that myself.
Cheers

Power damage is calculated as = Power * Weapon Strength* Powe scaling coefficient * other multipliers (including crits) / Enemies armor.

Everyones power and enemies armor will vary fight to fight. However, when comparing multiple weapon skills between weapons on a single build, what really matters is weapon strength and power coefficient as power and enemy armor should remain consistent (unless Might buffs power which Axe 1 does). Axe and Sword have the same average weapon strength. Each skill for every weapon has a specific power scaling coefficient. Example:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ricochet
0.7 Coeff (this has been tested in game)
1/4 second cast time (according to UI)
0.88 seconds per attack is also tested in game and listed lower on the page. Most skills have some aftercast.
So the coefficient/second would be 0.7/0.88 = ~0.79 coeff/second.

Get Marksmanship Bot, Mid (or Bot), Top
Get Skirmishing: X, Top, Top
Last line depends on what you want/utilities you bring:
WS: Bring QZ and LR and trait survival skills for easy PvE fury, stun break and condi clear.
BM: Shouts and Axe trait
Druid: Bot (this procs on F5, doesn’t require staff), Mid, Top. Bring glyphs.

I’ve tried Axe as both main hand, off hand, and dual-wield, and it’s really hard to understand why people like it. I tend to be a pure damage individual, and don’t like to accidentally hit another enemy when I only want to kite one. That’s why I even use the Thief’s bow sparingly, since it will tag more enemies than I want to fight even if I try not to be too close to a mob. I guess for me, there’s just something very satisfying about how the GS and LB/SB hit my targets as a Ranger. Multi-target hitting weapons (as in, bounces between targets) have always felt weird to me in combat.

Hi.

I see some people want datas. First, i need to say that I know nothing about axe OH. However, I play axe MH with warhorn.
I recently worked on a build, so I calculated different things. It may be helpful for you :
- The avarage casting time of sword auto-attack is 0.67s. For axe it is 0.87s. However, you have a chain attack on sword that make thing a bit different. (I calculated number of strikes / 1 minute).
- On one target, if the familiar doesn’t fight, axe is slower to kill a heavy golem than sword.
- Axe auto-attaque can strike at 1200, but even if auto-attack is on, it won’t work. So you have to spam it if you want it to strike a foe between 900 and 1200 (the aut-attack wont repeat automatically). Frozen bite strikes also at 1200. Axe 2 strikes at 900 as it is supposed to and I don’t know for axe 4.
- I don’t know without the magic nature fortifying bound. But with it, the familiar gets TWICE the boon you get (and not just once). I don’t know if it is a bug or not, but that is what my screen shows. Notice that you have +20% boon duration with nature magic.
- With this trait, you can have 6-7 power on you and 12-14 power on your pet.
- With quickening zephyr, you can have 10 power on you and 20 on your pet.
- There is no difference in axe’s casting time if you strike at 900 (or 1200) or in contact.

I tried to kill a heavy golem with axe auto and lynx and compared with sword auto and lynx. It needed exactly the same amount of time. I think it is due to the boons to pet.
But your sword cripple your target. Don’t forget it. With sword you can nearly perma cripple your target.

Finally, axe MH is not a condi weapon but dual weapon : you max your damages by raising both power AND condi. That is not the case for sword: there you max damages with power only.

I agree with people who think that axe MH and OH are not compatible. Axe MH is mixed and ranged damages, Axe OH is direct damage and contact (5) or for forcing contact (4). A way of making it work is to fight Axe/something – Sword/axe, and then making a crit build. But ferocity would not be the stat I would max. That is my opinion. And you lose axe 2 and 3 a decent source of condi damages.
The only contact usefull MH axe skill is 2, if you fight only one target. But it is condi.