Guild Wars 2

Hello my fellow rangers,

Well, the axe should be a hybrid weapon, right? Too bad it’s just “viable” as a condition weapon right now and only taken as a power weapon because 1. The player doesn’t like sword, or 2. The player wants a one-handed ranged weapon.

I got an idea to rework at least the second attack (splitblade) to make it better for both options and now viable for power builds.

I attached a (kinda crappy) chart about the stacks of bleeding and the power based damage of this attack, also the range. Right now, you get more bleeds the closer you are to your target – high risk high reward. I would like to keep it that way. The big problem is the spreading of the blades (it has the same range as the auto-attack). If all blades hit, it’s the same damage as 1 auto-attack, 1 axe deals damage equal to 1/5 of an auto-attack… why even using it in a power build?

My Idea is to reduce splitblades range to 600 from 900, but make a real AoE around the player. I guess it would look cooler to make the animation earth spike based, like the sigil of geomany, we can summon springs and make the terrain muddy, so why not creating earthern spikes (The name would has to be changed then). I think throwing hundred axes to all sides would look weird

Now the reason behind it:

-Condition: It’s still high risk high reward, more stacks of bleeding the closer you are to the target.

-Power: This is going to be something like high skill high reward, we should really get some kind of damage for the axe. The further away the target is the more damage will be dealt. The damage of 1 auto-attack at it’s nearest spot up to the damage of 3 autoattacks at the furthest point. So you have to decide if you want to try to hit your enemy at the furthest spot (where you could also miss if done wrong) or close a little gap to get some less damage but increase the chance of actually hitting. The AoE has a hit cap of 5 targets.

Could be that I’ve forgotten to write something I wanted, hmmm…

Anyway, what do you guys think?

It would still suck in both duties.

Condi weapon without condi application in autoattack chain is pretty meh and power weapon without any burst is pretty meh.

P.S. Axe really should be a melee weapon instead of ranged.

I kind see axe as melee with 900 cleave as it is, i even lol when i heared Brazil saying the same in his video.

On top of that i believe axe is power viable in some scenarios with its auto attack, off the top top of my hand the start of the imbued shaman fractal, like the entire CM dungeon, etc. You know, any scenario with 2+ mob that do not cluster for a cleave.

In cluster of mobs splitblade is amazing since i think, correct me if i’m wrong, the axes from the ability have an inherit pierce.

On PvP i am running condition atm.

Im especially speaking about splitblade, not the overall axe…

Yes splitblade pierces, but who’s running condition builds in dungeons? And when you’re facing 6 enemys to make it better than a normal AoE, you’re most commonly dead.

ANet probably won’t do this because they seem to want to keep ranged weapons at the same range regardless of attack. It’s the reason our shortbow got nerfed. Of course this rule doesn’t apply to Heavy classes though, but that’s to be expected… ANet wanted this to be a 2 class game!

Taku is also right… it’s a condi weapon without any condi application outside of traited crits on the primary attack which makes it a poor condi weapon (but if it applied condi on auto it would be nearly identical to shortbow) and without any burst, a power option won’t be viable either (thus why this class only really has a Condi/Bunker build to fall back on: no burst or AE class wide).

If you’re going to change Axe 2, just increase the damage to 800ish. To ‘balance’ this they could make it ‘channeled’ in some fashion. Or make you throw the axes in waves… you throw 1 axe, 1/4sec later you throw 2, 1/4 sec later you throw 3. Similar to guardian greatsword #2.