Guild Wars 2

I know most people are running shield, but I really like the axe, has anyone had any luck with it?

It depends on the purpose of your build. It works great with mace in condition builds and great with sword in more offensive power or hybrid builds. Shield is powerful for survivability since shield 5 is basically a second heal skill, but I think it’s usage will decline as more people run reaper builds that haven enough unblockable CC to nullify it. I like axe because the gap closer is insanely strong damage wise and the CC is strong in a teamfights. It’s also our only truly hybrid weapon.

I have a buddy that I run with who does a mace/axe build and he does very well. he also weapon swaps to shield, so no ranged weapon. He runs mallyx/glint and uses the 5 for damage and 4 as his gap closer since he is not running ranged or shiro.

I feel if you have shiro equipped axe is pretty pointless unless you’re a condition build because you get so much mobility from shiro already that you don’t really benefit from the axe teleport. If you don’t want shield with shiro I’d rather take sword for the block and the #5 can be situationally useful too.

Without shiro though, axe is great even just for the teleport alone.

I started using Sword/axe and Sword/shield as my power set up for spvp and have been having a lot of fun with it. The extra mobility now that the shiro shadow step has a CD is awesome, plus it chills and does decent damage, and also puts you behind your target, giving you free leach with the right build. Also the axe 5 is great in groups to help pull things together to cleave down with sword autos.