Guild Wars 2

Im currently trying to get ranger Mainhand axe to work, using a high dps knights build for wvw with the axe mastery trait giving plus 10% crit, so far the damage has been far to low for the effort given, axe 1 although has a cool bouncing attack cannot scale dmg even with high crit to other weapons, axe 2 split blades damage is also horrendously low, the onyl way to get any damage with it is to throw it point blank and even then the dps is minimal with a bit of bleeds to help compensate, axe 3 seems to be the only decent skill with a reliable freeze although it only hits 1 target but gives your pets the power to inflict weakness, good for spvp I suppose.

what are your thoughts on the ranger mainhand axe? any advice?

thief shortbow is muchmuch better. more damage, range, 2aoe, perfect to escape etc. the offhand axe 5 is the only good skill in the asura fractal to reflect harpy and in the grawl fractal when the end boss use bubble.

I think in another thead before some mentioned that it would work out in their power-based-build, but for me this never performed well. In group fights it isn’t that bad with high crit-chance if you can make sure that there will always all the bounces hit. But normally this is a pure condition weapon imo and does it’s job good with axe/dagger in a condi-build.
When I did some tests in the mists back then, axe really performed just bad with power. Even if you manage that the target gets 2-hits all the time the axe still doesn’t performe any good.

There are better power options indeed. Against multiple targets it’s a decent weapon, though I dual wield mainly for the 4,5 (and cuz the 2 jade axes look cool). Mostly use it in events to tag as much as possible or in a zerg. Never tried it, but I think the sb will outdamage the axe 1 even when up against 3 targets with piercing not traited. The sb 1 fires so fast and the axe 1 relatively slow, that the sb more than makes up for the single target damage.

The 4,5 axe skills are just yummy.

the primary reason i use mainhand axe is to match it with the offhand axe as I like the way it fits the theme and its the only ranged mainhand weapon rangers have

I think it works fine, in fact I think main-hand axe is underrated. It might be that it has lower damage, but the attack speed and AoE makes up for that. It really shines when you use off-hand axe, as it adds some burst damage to main-hand axe, which none of the other off-hand weapons have. But if you attach bleeding to the axe instead, through utilities, traits, and sigils, it can also work great as a ranged condition weapon, using torch as off-hand. This gives you bleeding, poison, and burning, in just one weapon set.

Short clip, not the best players but only clip i bothered to record. Axe/Axe is great though and i like pairing it with greatsword for secondary. For the utils I was just testing it, prolly not viable in a more player skill situation.

EDIT: Both axe off hand 5 and greatsword getting a buff btw. So it’s even better now.

SpehssMehreen.5897:

Im currently trying to get ranger Mainhand axe to work, using a high dps knights build

There’s your mistake. Axe is a condition weapon for rangers. It has trash power scaling.

I would love the axe mainhand to be a power-based weapon so that it could pair well with an axe offhand, but if they did that then there wouldn’t really be a really good mainhand option for a condition build.