Guild Wars 2

What do people think to the trait “Honed axes” also appealing to offhand axe (possibly with a skill change like axe 3). I feel this could bring power ranger closer to condi in pve and would not affect other game modes as axe 4 is hard to land and axe 5, similarly to torch 5, requires a non-moving target.

What else do people think would improve zerk ranger in pve?

Reduce the after cast on sword auto attack by .10 seconds and add trait which gives +10% critical damage to sword.

Ranger attacks should be fast and precise as opposed to high damage lumbering blows from meat head warriors and guardians.

Archon.6480:

Reduce the after cast on sword auto attack by .10 seconds and add trait which gives +10% critical damage to sword.

Ranger attacks should be fast and precise as opposed to high damage lumbering blows from meat head warriors and guardians.

And add 3 targets to the 2nd auto chain, it currently only hits 1 target. Additionally, they could add a +15% crit chance (whilst using a sword) to Strider’s Defense. This trait is up against Spotter (which gives 7.1% crit chance to 5 allies) so adding over double the crit bonus would make it a better choice for solo play. That way the 2nd tier traitline would have 3 good choices depending on the situation: Spotter for group play, Strider’s Defense for solo sword play, and Hidden Barbs for solo condition play.

Community is probably 50/50 about this one. Half think Axe is power, half think it’s condi.

Problem with the trait, is that not many weapon skills work well with it. On Main Hand (MH) Axe, it works for Ricochet, but Splitblade and Winter’s Bite are mostly condi oriented and has a very low power damage. Even point blank Splitblade on power Axe sucks.

Now, it comes to Off Hand (OH) problem.

OH Axe : As you said OP, Path of Scar is hard to land (are very hard to see too) and Whirling Defense is just a bad version of Warrior’s Whirling Axe with a target limit of 3 + projectile reflect. It forces Axe+Axe ranger to yo-yo between long/mid/close range, which is a pretty weird gamestyle. In my wildest dream, I want Whirling Defense to be something throweable like Scrapper’s Gyro or Mesmer’s Warden instead of us. It forces the player to have Stability or a good defense to use it.

OH Dagger : Barely used condi weapon. Long cooldown on both skills that do so little effect. Doesn’t really get buff from Honed Axe.

OH Torch : Excellent instance condi weapon. Doesn’t really get buff from Honed Axe.

OH Warhorn : Is the best OH for Honed Axe and MH Axe. Still, beside the Call of the Wild buff (which is good), Hunter’s Call could give a little more, like 3 to 5 targets.

We can say we have 2 power OH (Warhorn is support-ish, but still Power) and 2 condi OH. In order to get more use to Honed Axe, I believe we should get Power coefficient buffed on all OH and a QoL on the clunkyness of OH Axe.

The only build I can come up with Honed Axe (which I play), is to play with NM/BM/MS or Druid and stack 25 might to get those sweet 3-4k damage per Ricochet.

When I look at other Ranger weapon skills, I believe we have a problem with AoE power range. Beside Barrage, what skill do the Ranger have to make AoE damage from range ? Ricochet was in a good spot with 2 bounces, but they nerfed it to 1, nerfing our AoE power potential.

So far, Honed Axe seems to promote Ricochet Spam to keep the might stacks, also because it’s the only reliable skill to do high damage at range. Only Path of Scar and Hunter’s Call can surpass it, but one is clunky at best and the other one is a single target on a mid-long cooldown.

Anet, if I wanted to melee, I would go to GS or Sword instead.

Buffing sword auto attack would be ideal but would require Anet skill splitting and no one wants old power rev 2.0 damage. But for all classes I hope Anet really start to do some serious changes. It’s been 4 years and lots of stuff on all classes is underpowered or useless.

MADPIEMAN.8023:

Buffing sword auto attack would be ideal but would require Anet skill splitting and no one wants old power rev 2.0 damage. But for all classes I hope Anet really start to do some serious changes. It’s been 4 years and lots of stuff on all classes is underpowered or useless.

Yeah, going back to axe, I think it suffers same problem of being to slow and sluggish. The pre-cast on skills 2 and 3 are painful.

Honed Axes should just ditch the ferocity and apply something else that both condition and power can benefit from. Make it active, too, rather than just having an axe in (either) hand. Maybe buff an off-hand axe skill. Something like:

Honed Axes: Gain Honed Axes (5s) each time you strike a foe with an axe skill. Axe skills recharge 20% faster. Winter’s Bite is an AOE and Path of Scars inflicts Daze (½s) on the outgoing strike. Honed Axes: +2% critical hit chance per stack. Stacks up to 10 times.

That would make it worthy of the GM slot in my book.

MADPIEMAN.8023:

What do people think to the trait “Honed axes” also appealing to offhand axe (possibly with a skill change like axe 3). I feel this could bring power ranger closer to condi in pve and would not affect other game modes as axe 4 is hard to land and axe 5, similarly to torch 5, requires a non-moving target.

What else do people think would improve zerk ranger in pve?

The trait should give precision if you have two weapons in your hand doesnt matter which.
Additionally i would suggest( instead of winters bite let your pet apply weakness) you apply weakness when you hit a chilled foe and vice versa, does not apply if weakness or chill is already applied.
AoE of winterbite is baseline.
Do more dmg (condi and power) for a short time when you weak or chill someone while wielding an axe.

To sum this up: This would buff winterbite baseline but removing the weakness.
You would get more precision if you play dualwielding stuff and you would have a weakness-chill mechanic which would go well with power trapper, condi trapper or other soft cc builds. Additionally Axes would get a unique benefit from chilling and weakening enemies.

What I would like to see is honed axes be moved to ws and made condition damage and empathetic bond be moved to bm, not only would it be more thematic but 1 a line besides ws would have cleanse, and two, main hand axe is a Condi weapon for all intents and purposes

Eleazar.9478:

What I would like to see is honed axes be moved to ws and made condition damage and empathetic bond be moved to bm

Lol yeah, the pathetic bond!

I can agree that these traits should swap place. Empathic Bond however needs a buff to be worthy of GM status. Perhaps not so much when it comes to the condition “cleanse” itself, but less suffering for the pet somehow, or that the pet gets buffed for each condition it suffers from. Just… something.

I agree it’s pretty weak atm, simply because it never got buffed since the Condi change (meaning it was balanced around the old Condi formula which wasn’t all that, if there was a way to cleanse your pet besides pet swap it would be amazing, with sig of renewal it takes 4 conditions from you every 10 secs which it pretty pretty nice

I have fun running LB, Axe/Axe. Can’t say the majority of the skills on the bar are very helpful, except for pulling enemy to you and offhand #5. However when I charge an enemy with rapidfire, close the distance, then switch to axe/axe to cleave with #5, I can seriously do major damage to many. For the heavy warriors, guardians they usually just go invuln on my rapidfire and don’t expect a ranger to go hand to hand. When i’m up in their face they use their cleaving, when I hit my Stone signet, then retaliate with axe/axe #5. After that, pull back go back to longbow, and start the process all over again.

Would however like to change up my Nourishment. What would you reckomend for Nourishment for a ranger going axe/axe? I tend towards Omnomberry Ghost for health steal, but I’m open to suggestions.

Specific scenario: Traited Winter’s Bite is absolutley wonderful in SW, since it helps immensely with keeping mobs clustered together to AOE down.

KeyOrion.9506:

I have fun running LB, Axe/Axe. Can’t say the majority of the skills on the bar are very helpful, except for pulling enemy to you and offhand #5. However when I charge an enemy with rapidfire, close the distance, then switch to axe/axe to cleave with #5, I can seriously do major damage to many. For the heavy warriors, guardians they usually just go invuln on my rapidfire and don’t expect a ranger to go hand to hand. When i’m up in their face they use their cleaving, when I hit my Stone signet, then retaliate with axe/axe #5. After that, pull back go back to longbow, and start the process all over again.

Would however like to change up my Nourishment. What would you reckomend for Nourishment for a ranger going axe/axe? I tend towards Omnomberry Ghost for health steal, but I’m open to suggestions.

Since your gaining might stacks boon duration food wouldn’t be bad. He’ll I even think someone is testing a might stacking build using main hand axe on meta battle

Although I would seriously (you do you I’m just saying) take sword or staff or gs on weapon swap instead, simply because if your fighting a defense traited warrior with sheild mace, a ele in earth, mesmer, scrapper,they will completely negate a majority of your dps at least 40% of the time and either gain the upper hand very quickly or you just won’t be able to kill them period.

MADPIEMAN.8023:

What do people think to the trait “Honed axes” also appealing to offhand axe (possibly with a skill change like axe 3). I feel this could bring power ranger closer to condi in pve and would not affect other game modes as axe 4 is hard to land and axe 5, similarly to torch 5, requires a non-moving target.

What else do people think would improve zerk ranger in pve?

Tbh, if we were to have a power equivalent of condi ranger, we would need much better non-support direct damage utilities. They won’t bring the power build up to par with condi dps by just tweaking weapon numbers, because that will make any druid build overpowered in their view.
So I’d start buffing a lot things not used in support builds, like Ice trap traited direct damage, for example, traited Signet of the wild /of the hunt, cooldowns/effects, and even Sick them.

apocalypso.4895:

Tbh, if we were to have a power equivalent of condi ranger, we would need much better non-support direct damage utilities. They won’t bring the power build up to par with condi dps by just tweaking weapon numbers, because that will make any druid build overpowered in their view.
So I’d start buffing a lot things not used in support builds, like Ice trap traited direct damage, for example, traited Signet of the wild /of the hunt, cooldowns/effects, and even Sick them.

Oh yah, I totally agree. I nearly forgot Frost Trap existed.

Sic ’Em still interrupt some pet skills and I wish it could be used with and without a target (so you can still buff your pet with no target). Target to reveal, no target for buff.

Signets have glaring issues, mostly from cooldowns that make them noncompetitive :

Signet of Stone is ok.

Signet of Renewal needs the pet to be close or it won’t work and be completely useless. Why even put a range ?

Signet of the Hunt is only used when the ranger needs movement speed, which is really not a problem with ranger/druid. It should proc more often to be usefull. Something like Wrath of Justice : Striking an enemy with justice’s active effect triggers signet of wrath (But for Ranger, of course). It needs serious buff or rework. Maybe give it an Unblockable effect duration too !? (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Might and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_Mastery)

Signet of the Wild is weird AF. It should be a stun breaker and instant, it would fit with the stability and give a way for the ranger to time its burst instead to cast then burst. Cooldown is more or less ok, a shorter one would be great.

To come back on Axe, Winter’s Bite should be like Ele Conjure Flame’s Explosive Lava Axe (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Explosive_Lava_Axe). A blast and an AoE ground target.