Guild Wars 2

For me i would love it if the damage is slightly buffed and Whirling Defense actually hit everything around it or at least 5 target instead of 3. Diving in with Ungent + Flame Traps + WD is my fav combo you see

i think the axe off-hand is good as it is, i feel the axe main-hand needs something, but im not quite sure what. a damage buff might work, but its kinda a boring buff

Deleven.7508:

i think the axe off-hand is good as it is, i feel the axe main-hand needs something, but im not quite sure what. a damage buff might work, but its kinda a boring buff

Number 2 and 3 on Axe are good, Axe 1 though is boring and crap..Should apply maybe a Condition of some kind.

A way to get fury reliably from another places other than warhorn on a decent CD. (Main impediment to me for using axe/axe)

Moving while whirling would be helpful as well.

Add a chain to Skill 1, it’s absolutely boring to spam the same skill over and over. At least both the bows have the positional mechanic so you are actually moving around and/or using the other skills. The other 2 MH Axe skills are fine IMHO.

OH Axe needs a good rework. Path Of Scars needs a buff/rework/replacement, and Whirling Defense could use a bit of love.

axe 1 should apply weakness.

Axe 3 already applies weakness.

The only thing you could make it is Vulnerability

Off hand Axe has too high cooldowns to be taken over a horn.

Mainhand Axe ist quite a good weapon when facing hugging enemies.
Sadly most players won’t do that in sPvP.
A 75% damage buff for hitting only one target would be great (Remember: normally it deals 3*100%, yet is balanced).

Main-hand I would like to see Ricochet (button 1) more constantly bounce off of the environment; walls, trees, rocks etc when there are not additional targets to bounce from would give the weapon it’s own positional awareness to maintain.

Splitblade (button 2) weak as it stands now I suggest adding piercing to the attack and tighten the cone some to allow mokittengets at mid range are hit with all 5 axes, perhaps building in a increase in damage base on how far or close (whichever fits the design teams image of the weapon) and lastly boost it up to full projectile finisher 100% it is on a cooldown so why not let it finish combos.

Winter’s Bite (button 3) the only single target skill on the weapon seems out of place. I would have it bounce as well probably 4 targets.

Offhand I like Path of Scars (button 4) and if it could get a buff maybe have some sort of knockdown on it maybe the return path or just from being hit with it or perhaps a daze both ways.

Whirling Defense (button 5), let us move while channeling for pity’s (or Dwayna’s) sake.

On a mostly related note the would be nice to see the Trait Off-hand Training be changed to effect the cooldowns of all axe skills as the other main hand/two hands have cooldown reduction build into traits.

While we’re on the subject, bring the original Honed Axes trait back. It made so many cool Axe builds possible.

Axe(s) need an interrupt or other utility. With the exception of 5 (reflection) and 3 (chill), every skill is pure offense. It’s kinda boring to just cycle through the DPS skills and only have 1 thing you can use to react to a changing fight.

Bran.7425:

Main-hand I would like to see Ricochet (button 1) more constantly bounce off of the environment; walls, trees, rocks etc when there are not additional targets to bounce from would give the weapon it’s own positional awareness to maintain.

Splitblade (button 2) weak as it stands now I suggest adding piercing to the attack and tighten the cone some to allow mokittengets at mid range are hit with all 5 axes, perhaps building in a increase in damage base on how far or close (whichever fits the design teams image of the weapon) and lastly boost it up to full projectile finisher 100% it is on a cooldown so why not let it finish combos.

Winter’s Bite (button 3) the only single target skill on the weapon seems out of place. I would have it bounce as well probably 4 targets.

Offhand I like Path of Scars (button 4) and if it could get a buff maybe have some sort of knockdown on it maybe the return path or just from being hit with it or perhaps a daze both ways.

Whirling Defense (button 5), let us move while channeling for pity’s (or Dwayna’s) sake.

On a mostly related note the would be nice to see the Trait Off-hand Training be changed to effect the cooldowns of all axe skills as the other main hand/two hands have cooldown reduction build into traits.

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

4 is situational and slightly buggy (the return axe gets obstructed by the smallest things). Adding a utility of some kind (bind or daze would be nice, matches the defensive aspect of 5) would be a good addition. It’s good at what it does, but what it does is really simple.

2 is not TOO bad, but it’s only effective at close range. Making it a Whirl finisher (spin while throwing axes! yay!) would give it some additional offense and support options when combined with things like Traps or Healing spring, and would make it a much more adaptive skill.

Rhyse.8176:

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

Could make the bounces cripple and the primary target still get chilled, but it is not like the ranger axe skills are so great that that addition would break the game it could be worth testing at least.

Make skill 2 not require you land all 5 axes to stack those bleeds. You basically have to be right up against the guy to land all 5 which makes it useless given that axe is a range weapon.

@Aridia

just because of that reason i play my axe/axe ranger melee-ish

edit : what about adding Might for 1 or 2 sec for every bounce? Guardian GS did it and i don’t see why bouncing axe shouldn’t

Rhyse.8176:

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

4 is situational and slightly buggy (the return axe gets obstructed by the smallest things). Adding a utility of some kind (bind or daze would be nice, matches the defensive aspect of 5) would be a good addition. It’s good at what it does, but what it does is really simple.

2 is not TOO bad, but it’s only effective at close range. Making it a Whirl finisher (spin while throwing axes! yay!) would give it some additional offense and support options when combined with things like Traps or Healing spring, and would make it a much more adaptive skill.

About Winter’s Bite; What if you did something similar to the Mesmer’s Trick Shot, or Engineer’s Static Shot? First hit chills, and any subsequent bounce simply cripples. Though I still think an area slowdown might be a bit powerful?

Path of Scars needs to be a bit more… deadly? Like an AoE of sorts, it’d act like Phoenix. You throw it out and can hit people, then it arrives at its target and does some AoE bleeding or whatever, and then it returns.

I like the idea of making Splitblade a whirl finisher, though. Would give some interesting synergy with Torch and traps.

Rhyse.8176:

Axe(s) need an interrupt or other utility. With the exception of 5 (reflection) and 3 (chill), every skill is pure offense. It’s kinda boring to just cycle through the DPS skills and only have 1 thing you can use to react to a changing fight.

Well, way back before the beta, there was this skill called Staggering Throw. It resided where Winter’s Bite is now, and it knocked back foes. However, there were some issues with it due to it knocking opponents out of range (Axes had a shorter range then), so it was removed and Winter’s Bite took it’s place.

However, a few builds later, the wiki had Staggering Throw listed as a 4 skill on the OH axe, making the OH axe more of a defensive weapon. That turned out to be a typo, and the OH Axe has been Path of Scars and Whirling Defense ever since.

I think Staggering Throw should make a comeback. Put it on 4 with a knockdown instead of a knockback. That makes Axe/Axe more interesting, the playstyle would revolve around using skills 3 and 4 to control opponents to hit them with SplitBlade/Whirling Defense.

Axe is fine imho, there are no changes needed

I’d just like the axe to be melee? We already have 2 ranged weapons, we don’t need another one. I like axe offhand, but i wish whirlwing also reflected melee attacks or allowed you to move while using it >.<

Sleepy.2647:

I’d just like the axe to be melee? We already have 2 ranged weapons, we don’t need another one. I like axe offhand, but i wish whirlwing also reflected melee attacks or allowed you to move while using it >.<

But we also already have two melee weapons. Axe is the middleground; It is ranged, yes, but it also requires you to get in real close to get the most out of it.

Main change I’d want to Axe would be to remove it bouncing off yellow enemies. Stuff like Mesmer’s staff basic, Elementalist Chain Lightning, or Mesmer’s Bouncing Blade don’t aggro yellow enemies, they only hit enemies which are already in combat with you or already aggressive to you, so why does Ranger Axe get stuck with this silly “aggros every enemy regardless” limitation when no one else does?

Not a fan of Splitblade personally, but I think thats mainly just personal preference and wanting to stay at range rather than being right in an enemy’s face. But even aside from personal preference, Shortbow already has a very similar attack, so for the sake of variety I’d still like to see one of them get changed. I’d be more inclined to say that Axe should be the one to get swapped, since Shortbow has an escape shot to allow you to get into melee range, fire off a shot, then quickly get out. And Shortbow already seems more inclined to short range because if you’re closer to your enemy, its easier to get behind them so you can apply bleed.

If Splitblade gets ditched, I think I came up with a pretty cool replacement attack. Inspired by what someone said above about having the basic attack bounce off the environment (which I think would probably be very difficult to implement) how about something like this?

The attack would be called Nature’s Bane. It would be a targetted attack which would involve your character throwing a spread of axes into the air which would fall down on the target location a moment later. Enemies at the location when the axes fell would naturally take damage. The falling axes would also cause a spirit tree to grow at the target location, which would create a poison field around it. The real treat, though, is that the tree would be targettable by the Ranger so that you could bounce your axes off the tree, gaining better damage against single targets (and a poison combo to boot). Tree could last for maybe 3-4 seconds

Winter’s Bite is great, its one of the reasons I like Axe so much. Chill is great and the synergy with pets is nice. I don’t quite understand why Winter’s Bite isn’t a physical projectile combo finisher though, doesn’t really make sense to me. It IS a projectile and it IS physical, so… why? Even a 20% chance would suffice, though a 100% certain finisher for mainhand axe would be nice, especially if they would change Splitblade as above.

Path of Scars, as already mentioned, needs some pathing work, it gets too easily blocked by obstacles. Think they should probably just make it pass through obstacles regardless as long as the attack isn’t “obstructed”.

I’d also like to see Whirling Defense benefit from combo fields (start launching projectiles of the field type) rather than how it is now, where it will only apply the combo field to reflected projectiles. Having the thing only work when reflecting projectiles makes it exeptionally situational and not even worth using as a finisher most of the time. And I dont’ play a warrior so I don’t know for certain, but I believe Warrior has a similar attack that DOES get combo field benefits at all times, so again as above why does Ranger draw the short end of the stick?

You could have the bounces apply a random condition.

Sleepy.2647:

I’d just like the axe to be melee? We already have 2 ranged weapons, we don’t need another one. I like axe offhand, but i wish whirlwing also reflected melee attacks or allowed you to move while using it >.<

I actually agree with Sleepy.

Having a second one-handed melee option would be nice.

The Axe is our only 1-handed ranged option. The only way I see it becoming a melee weapon is if we get some other 1-handed ranged weapon.

But do we really need a one-handed range option?

I’d be cool if they wanted to make main hand dagger a throwing weapon and copy/paste the axe skills over and let us use the axe as a main hand melee weapon.

They could add Scepter as a 1H ranged option based on the whole druid angle, but I really see no reason axes need to be melee anyway. Having them thrown makes them more unique compared to Warrior / Necro axes.

nldixon.8514:

But do we really need a one-handed range option? …

In my opinion, yes. I want to get the most out of my offhand mastery trait and still have a ranged option for those times when ranged is necessary. Not every ranger uses a bow.

Falchoin.6152:

nldixon.8514:

But do we really need a one-handed range option? …

In my opinion, yes. I want to get the most out of my offhand mastery trait and still have a ranged option for those times when ranged is necessary. Not every ranger uses a bow.

Sorry, I meant do we need one in the future (i.e., if Rangers get a profession revamp)? Yes, currently it makes sense to have a one-handed ranged weapon, since we have traits geared towards them.

We are always going to need a 1-handed ranged weapon, I don’t see how that’s going to magically change in the future. The reason why we have the Tomahawk-style axe skills is to accommodate ranged use of the OH weapons (which are mostly ranged). If both MH options were melee, a lot of Rangers would be very irritated for having to melee in order to use the ranged off-hand skills.

Also, why would you ever change the axes to melee? Throwing Axes are very fun and much more interesting than the generic melee style. If you want to melee with axes, why not roll a Warrior?

Xsorus.2507:

Axe 3 already applies weakness.

The only thing you could make it is Vulnerability

while your pet is alive, so for the first 20 -30 seconds of dungeon combat, first 40 seconds in pvp/WvW.

Bran.7425:

Rhyse.8176:

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

Could make the bounces cripple and the primary target still get chilled, but it is not like the ranger axe skills are so great that that addition would break the game it could be worth testing at least.

Another possibility is to give it a SMALL aoe blast. Like how our spear gun skills work. Have reach no further than adjacent range. Maybe increase the cd.

First suggestion would be to have a buff to the axe attack speed.
Second suggestion would be to add vulnerability to skill #1. On each attack would be nice, but at least a 50% chance of applying.

The axe is fine now imo. In fact, its great now. GS and LB are the weapons that needs more tweaking.

Xsorus.2507:

Axe 3 already applies weakness.

The only thing you could make it is Vulnerability

Axe 3 applies chill and Axe 5 applies vuln

@ManLove (hmm sexy name)

Axe 3 applies chill, but pet will apply weakness in addition.

@monepipi
Rly? ive never seen that

ManLove.2457:

@monepipi
Rly? ive never seen that

Its in the skill description.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Bran.7425:

Rhyse.8176:

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

Could make the bounces cripple and the primary target still get chilled, but it is not like the ranger axe skills are so great that that addition would break the game it could be worth testing at least.

Another possibility is to give it a SMALL aoe blast. Like how our spear gun skills work. Have reach no further than adjacent range. Maybe increase the cd.

I like this more!! Make it so when winters bite hit it like explodes in frosty goodness chilling the target and any adjacent ones!

However, that’s just something i think would be cool, i really do not think that axes need a buff they feel really strong as is and can do more damage then any other weapon that we have if we get the double bounce.

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Bran.7425:

Rhyse.8176:

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

Could make the bounces cripple and the primary target still get chilled, but it is not like the ranger axe skills are so great that that addition would break the game it could be worth testing at least.

Another possibility is to give it a SMALL aoe blast. Like how our spear gun skills work. Have reach no further than adjacent range. Maybe increase the cd.

I like this more!! Make it so when winters bite hit it like explodes in frosty goodness chilling the target and any adjacent ones!

However, that’s just something i think would be cool, i really do not think that axes need a buff they feel really strong as is and can do more damage then any other weapon that we have if we get the double bounce.

AoE chill, even if the radius is small, still seems pretty powerful. You’d probably need to up the recharge on it. Maybe double it, to 20 seconds.

I would like to have the ability to swap from ranged mode to melee Axe mode on the fly.
Much like the Troll hero from Dota, which i borrow the original idea / concept. If you think about it the only thrown axe would be the Tomahawk, since the original axe was and will be melee to begin with…

Quoting broken.

Winters Bite
“Could make the bounces cripple and the primary target still get chilled”

This is an amazing idea. That would do perfectly. Blind or weakness on the bounce would be an alternative if the aoe snare is found to be OP combined with traps or whatnot.

“I think Staggering Throw should make a comeback. Put it on 4 with a knockdown instead of a knockback. That makes Axe/Axe more interesting, the playstyle would revolve around using skills 3 and 4 to control opponents to hit them with SplitBlade/Whirling Defense.”

This is also an amazing idea. I’ve played a bit more with Path of Scars, and kinda grown to like the damage when it double hits through a combo field. But it’s buggy and hard to aim, so I’ll take this change in a heartbeat. It would complement MH axe just where it needs it, and make OH axe a worthwile control/defense counterpart to warhorn. A simple 1 sec (or even less) knockdown to use as an interupt, or stop an advance would be all it takes. 600 range would help keep it as a defensive move.

Here’s some random discussion- I really like the dagger OH, it gives some great all-purpose utility and the conditions mesh with MH axe really well. Unfortunately 4 is too short range, and the evade duration is too short to work with ranged weapon. Which leaves dagger as a really solid complement to the sword as it stands now. Warhorn gives a superlative support ability, and a straightforward range dot. That goes well with either MH weapon. Which leave OH axe where? A weak/situational ranged skill, and a ranged defense (I don’t count it as a pboa, the damage is not high enough and it roots). The changes suggested by posters above would make it Axe/Axe a control/defense alternative to the 2 bows, and Axe/WH a good backline support set. OH axe would work really well with sword this way well, covering it’s weakspots with an interrupt and a ranged defense. Fix the sword-1 problems as well, and Melee and Support rangers both just became a lot more viable. I think the ideas are great.