Guild Wars 2

Title basically says it.

Compared to it’s other counter parts of sword and mace, its just so lackluster. It’s so bad aside from the “concept” reasons of your character for RP purposes or whatnot. The #5 skill is only good if there happens to be more than 5 targets, and the #4 is…well i mean it stacks fury for a class that can keep it up near 100% of the time without it.

I wish they would add some utility to it like a projectile reflect, or give it a redeeming factor by increasing it’s damage to single targets, but have that damaged spread out evenly the more targets there are, or maybe even let it be a stun breaker that also grants stability. SOMETHING!

Sigh…I love axes, they’re awesome for warriors. It just breaks my heart that the axe in the offhand is just so unloved.

If axe 4 was a block of some sort that you could then lash out and axe 5 reflected projectiles like the thief steal version then yea axe off hand would be fine.

SaintSnow.6593:

If axe 4 was a block of some sort that you could then lash out and axe 5 reflected projectiles like the thief steal version then yea axe off hand would be fine.

thief steal reflects now? Have never seen that happen before, then again, ranger axe whirl wasn’t initially supposed to reflect projectiles, just block them, but it still does reflect. Thief Elite “spin to win” does reflect however.

Axe 5 would be good if; it like ranger axe spin had some secondary effect to it (in case of warriors, how about protection for the skill duration?).

Axe 4 would be good if it dealt more damage or had a secondary effect. Also, too long cast time and too short “arc”.

I still love using Axe Axe as it allows for rapid buildup of adren (i run healshout, so my DPS is reliant on the numbers of eviscerates i can churn out)

Axe #5 is still worse than auto attack hitting lots of targets. Off hand axe can be used for easy bosses like giants, abominations and hunter/crusher though.

The only reason to use axe offhand is in a solo where you dont want to take fgj but you need the fury. And you dont need a better offhand.

How much condition curing does a whirl finisher in a light field give?

Stooperdale.3560:

How much condition curing does a whirl finisher in a light field give?

Not enough to be useful.

@Prysin, as for the thief warrior steal, it has always reflected projectiles.

Axe/axe is perfectly viable for screenshots.

I think that not only should axe #4 deal more damage, but #5 should probably do something like give you protection while channeling it. It honestly kind of makes sense to me… but perhaps somebody out there has a better idea that isn’t OP like reflecting projectiles lol.

Block projectiles!

I like off hand axe. Granted I mainly solo PvE, but its great for it

pdavis.8031:

I like off hand axe. Granted I mainly solo PvE, but its great for it

http://i.imgur.com/WoRNpdt.gif

Off hand axe works on a lot of arah bosses.

If they made Axe 4 like Olaf’s Undertow from LoL:

-Throw an axe in a line to a target location, dealing physical damage and slowing enemies it passes through for between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds, depending on the distance the axe has travelled.
-The axe remains at the target location until Undertow is off cooldown. Player can pick up the axe to reduce Undertow’s cooldown by 4.5 seconds. If the axe would land inside terrain, it will instead stick to the wall.

And if a change was made to Axe 5 (instead of the damage) to something like (one of the following):
– Reflects Projectiles
– Breaks Stun
– Steals 100hp on each successful strike.

Purple Miku.7032:

pdavis.8031:

I like off hand axe. Granted I mainly solo PvE, but its great for it

http://i.imgur.com/WoRNpdt.gif

Lol. Love it!! Anyway haters gonna hate, I don’t care, I love my axe/axe thank you very much.

Yes, let’s implement a cooldown reduction attack in a game that has no inherent mana costs thereby making a spam-happy skill have none of the intended drawbacks while also incentivizing stacking in corners (spam toss against wall→immediately pick up and either toss again or wait for reduced cooldown).

For it to be balanced, it would probably end up like RTL. It would not be better when you reduce it; it would be necessary to reduce it.

Additionally, for Axe 5. Any of those changes would make it ridiculous with the inherent ability of movement and rolling. It is one of the few channeled skills that allow free movement (bar jumps, iirc) in addition to rolling. The only ones that I can think of off the top of my head would be the two Thief skills; Steal Axe 5, which would obviously get it because it’s the same skill and the elite skill, Daggerstorm, which also reflects projectiles but is an elite skill with a much longer cooldown…

Sure, you might not ever really use Axe 5, but it’s safe damage while moving. If you need to follow a boss or enemy and want to hit them, then you ckittene Axe 5. Now, you might say that you can also just auto attack, but you can’t roll while auto attacking (unless you break the auto chain and lose a few hits). So yes, the usage is very, very, very niche, but if they do any of the changes listed in this thread (bar the Protection Prysin suggested) for Axe 5, it would break the skill. Adding damage needs to be careful because it is 15 hits per and they would be modifying the damage of each individual hit. Making it reflect projectiles is too strong combined with the mobility. Having it break stuns would probably force it to get a slightly longer cooldown. Stealing health doesn’t really make sense for a warrior, but remember that the maximum amount of hits is kitten at a rate of 100 hp/hit it would give 4,500 hp. A fair, but harder way to code this, would be to make it start off with a very low amount of hp/hit and slowly increase as the skill goes off, incentivizing prolonged usage of the skill versus a quick dip in the spin house while waiting on cooldowns.

Tl;dr: The main problems with buffing skill 5 is to punish players who don’t use it for the full duration while benefiting players who use it for the full duration (see any skill that has a bonus damage on final hit *cough*100b*cough*) without making it too strong (fast hands for HB→Axe5→HB→Axe5→HB→Axe5 nearly permanent hard hitting skills. Chase down during Axe 5 because of free mobility).

Although I will admit, Axe/Axe animations look great even though I run GS + S/Sh for arah [solo] runs since that’s all I do on my War(PS when in groups and I don’t actually run Fast Hands). And yes, I know I should switch to Sword offhand, but I’m too lazy to get another Sword (even though I have over 13 Swords on my Mes, hue).

Bah, I should have red through Esplen’s post with less fast eyes and not make duplicate suggestions Anyway i would love for it to see some small tweaks to make it more viable!

Lol, chasing someone with axe 5. You do realize the skill makes you Moe slower. Another reason why it sucks.

in pvp where axe 5 deals more damage it is amazing if you spec for axes.

i keep saying this but it still seems to be a secret, you can dodge while channelling it
that means that while you’re doing a 10k+ whirl you can also dodge twice to do another 6k+ damage from 2 reckless dodge hits while avoiding all damage.

so yeah, 16k AOE damage, avoiding all incoming damage, pretty short cooldown.
follow it up with a 10k+ eviscerate if things aren’t chopped up finely enough for you!

incase anyone is interested this is the axezerker build i use, it is ridiculously easy to play, just chop chop chop!

KittyRiv.5291:

Lol, chasing someone with axe 5. You do realize the skill makes you Moe slower. Another reason why it sucks.

No, it doesn’t. It does, however, put you in combat if you hit the enemy, which does make you move slower. But that would happen if you attacked with your Greatsword and started following them, as well.

And if axe auto is higher dps than axe 5, why would you use axe 5 while chasing an enemy?

maha.7902:

And if axe auto is higher dps than axe 5, why would you use axe 5 while chasing an enemy?

Obviously because spin2win.

Doesn’t axe #5 give 360 degree damage but auto-attacks are forward arc? Technically I think there a lot of minor benefits to this multi-hit spin but they are not valued, such as triggering crit abilities more often (most have their own timer) or hitting through blind and aegis.

Axe auto has like a 200 degree arc. I dont know of any situation where your group of enemies would be positioned in such a way that you would not hit 3 at a time with such a huge arc. Axe auto hitting 3 targets does more damage than axe kittenting 5 targets. So yeah….

The multi hit spin was decent when lifesteal food had no icd. You could full heal with one axe 5. But everything is limited by internal cooldowns now.

Liewec.2896:

in pvp where axe 5 deals more damage it is amazing if you spec for axes.

i keep saying this but it still seems to be a secret, you can dodge while channelling it
that means that while you’re doing a 10k+ whirl you can also dodge twice to do another 6k+ damage from 2 reckless dodge hits while avoiding all damage.

so yeah, 16k AOE damage, avoiding all incoming damage, pretty short cooldown.
follow it up with a 10k+ eviscerate if things aren’t chopped up finely enough for you!

incase anyone is interested this is the axezerker build i use, it is ridiculously easy to play, just chop chop chop!

So you’re advising people to waste both of their dodge rolls to make up for the inferior damage of axe #5 so that it’s on par with the autoattack?

With PvP buff it would be the highest damaging skill against 5 enemies (assuming coefficients listed on wiki are correct).

In PvP axe/axe isn’t viable.
Easy

Wethospu.6437:

With PvP buff it would be the highest damaging skill against 5 enemies (assuming coefficients listed on wiki are correct).

I reckon the circumstance in which 5 enemies are closely packed together and remain so for your whirling axe to hit them is pretty rare though.

Purple Miku.7032:

Wethospu.6437:

With PvP buff it would be the highest damaging skill against 5 enemies (assuming coefficients listed on wiki are correct).

I reckon the circumstance in which 5 enemies are closely packed together and remain so for your whirling axe to hit them is pretty rare though.

And it happens all the time on Spvp.

xbutcherx.3861:

Purple Miku.7032:

Wethospu.6437:

With PvP buff it would be the highest damaging skill against 5 enemies (assuming coefficients listed on wiki are correct).

I reckon the circumstance in which 5 enemies are closely packed together and remain so for your whirling axe to hit them is pretty rare though.

And it happens all the time on Spvp.

So it happens all the time that you hit 5 people (their entire team?! minions count as well I suppose) for the full 15 hit duration? I would assume not…If i ever see a whirling axe warrior, they are lucky to hit me twice, and even luckier if they don’t get CCed/blinded/blocked at any point during the channel.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Whirling Axe reflect projectiles like the thiefs version of the skill.

The fact that it doesn’t reflect and theives’s version does still baffles me. That’s all it needs to be decent.

Purple Miku.7032:

So you’re advising people to waste both of their dodge rolls to make up for the inferior damage of axe #5 so that it’s on par with the autoattack?

did you miss the part about doing 16k damage in several seconds?
yes the autos are great, but using axe5+2 dodges you can often down everyone on the point while avoiding taking damage or getting CCed.

its not hypothetical either, i’m rank 72 and still love using axe/axe fairly often.
if they buffed it further because people don’t know about the potential of it and the synergy with Reckless Dodge then it would end up getting nerfed,
they’d probably make the dodge cancel the whirl.

also something to take in to account is the adrenaline you can build with the whirl

Did you miss the part where the damage of the axe auto is superior to whirling axe?

“The fact that it doesn’t reflect and theives’s version does still baffles me.”

The last thing a thief needs when standing under the feet of a warrior is missile reflection.

Liewec.2896:

Purple Miku.7032:

So you’re advising people to waste both of their dodge rolls to make up for the inferior damage of axe #5 so that it’s on par with the autoattack?

did you miss the part about doing 16k damage in several seconds?
yes the autos are great, but using axe5+2 dodges you can often down everyone on the point while avoiding taking damage or getting CCed.

its not hypothetical either, i’m rank 72 and still love using axe/axe fairly often.
if they buffed it further because people don’t know about the potential of it and the synergy with Reckless Dodge then it would end up getting nerfed,
they’d probably make the dodge cancel the whirl.

also something to take in to account is the adrenaline you can build with the whirl

So what happens if you don’t kill them then by the time it’s done channeling? You’re left with no dodges. 16k damage in a few seconds doesn’t impress me at all. You’re stuck with a purely offensive offhand that deals less damage than an autoattack does.

I don’t know why you’re bringing your rank into this, because it doesn’t really give your claim any more merit… but grats nonetheless.

The situations in which axe #5 are actually good are so niche that there’s no way you’re ever convincing me of it being worth it. Even in the situations that it is good to use, it’s barely better than autoattacking would be.

If that’s not a good enough reason to stay clear of it, then forget it and just play how you want. :P

Axe offhand’s time was before the pies gained an internal cool down and whirling axe (axe 5) was the jokingly called the strongest heal in the game.