Guild Wars 2

I’ve leveled almost exclusively and had lots o’ fun with great-sword and rifle, but I was thinking of giving dual-wield axes a try for my melee.

Have folks enjoyed dual wielding axes? Would dual-wield do better than the rather anemic single-wield axe values shown in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Warrior-weapons-guide/first#post491033?

Dual wielding axes doesn’t really give you a whole lot more damage. Whirling axe is nice, yes, but the 4 is fairly useless, and axe skills don’t give very much utility. Main hand axe does some pretty heavy damage anyway, but you can pair it with an offhand mace for a ranged knockdown and vulnerability on the 4. I run main hand axe and offhand shield and I have a lot of fun with it, but if you just want big damage, mace may be a slightly better choice.

If you got dual axe signet build then axes can put out some good damage and is good if you solo alot, but that is at lower levels and doesn’t give any abilitys to help your group when your in a instance, at around 50-60 you should switch up to something else.

Does this mean dual axes are bad? I was going for a dual axe banner build, but maybe not…
Edit: How is mace(main)/axe(off)?

Dual axes aren’t “bad”, per se. It just doesn’t give you a whole lot of utility. Utility as in CC/defense. In that sense, your only “CC” is your ranged cripple on the axe 3. Dual axes is basically only about damage.

Main hand mace and offhand axe isn’t a bad choice either. I feel like the autoattack chain does less damage due to the slow speed, but you get a block and a daze, both of which are quite useful. I feel, though, that the offhand axe 4 just isn’t that useful in general, even though whirling axes is quite nice.

I might be completely off on this, but from a high level PvE standpoint, CC doesn’t seem to do a lot. When you’re on regular mobs it seems better to just spam AOE to tag everything before someone else kills it. On the other hand, bosses seem to be immune to most CC.

Blob, you literally just asked this same question less than 12 hours ago and are simply repeating what someone else told you without any experience to speak from yourself.

Apparently I’m the only axe/axe signet warrior that lolroflstomps every single thing I run in to. If anything, it’s OP as hell. Running around with a ~90% crit rate and auto attacking things for 2.5k damage while stacking bleeds and vulnerability is pretty amazing. That’s not even mentioning whirling axes. Ever crit 15 times in a row with that? I’m pretty sure it’s one of the single highest damage abilities in this game, and it’s an AoE that you can MOVE with…

Oh yeah, and then there’s eviscerate, which leaps to the target and instantly drops 2/3 of the health off anything not wearing plate in wvw/pvp.

Seriously, I don’t get people.

Oh, if you’re talking about general PvE, then CC usually ain’t that useful, at least in the open world. That’s why most people run GS, which has basically zero utility, but our traits make the damage extremely high.

However, in dungeons, which are designed to be quite difficult, CC is almost always necessary, or at least extremely useful. In CoF, for example, if you’re hugging the torches in path 1 while someone kills the gatekeeper, you will not be able to sustain the damage for the duration (usually) without some method of preventing damage. Shield has a 3 second block which is nice, or you could do an aoe knockdown with an offhand mace. In that case, you have a few seconds of reprieve to wait for cooldowns or heal up.

Boss fights are kind of a different story. Depending on how you’re built, most of the time you’ll want to stay away from the boss, using a rifle or a longbow. Staying in close is usually too dangerous.

I dunno. I run this for everything, including instances. Don’t misread me – axe/axe is for raw dps. It is not in any way, shape, or form, a support build. That said though, I’ve cleared all of AC/HotW/CoF and a few paths of the remaining instances without problems. A lot of this depends on the group build, of course. As raw dps, you’re relying on other support from the group. Generally speaking though, with a guardian using mace main hand or a ranger dropping healing spring, there’s not any problems. I slot the heal sig/precision sig/armor sig/ and rage sig with endure pain as my last skill. This is you “OH snap” button that gives you time to back off or finish the fight. Backing off and switching to long bow for 10 seconds is enough to regen a bit of health from the sig and cause the boss to switch aggro.. after that you’re pretty much right back on top of him for the duration.

The damage output is pretty extreme. I ran a full AC clear last week with another axe/axe warr using the same build and with our guardian dropping the heal pool (w/e its called) we cleared all 3 paths in around 35 (MAYBE 40) minutes. No deaths. Things literally MELT faster than they can possibly kill you.

edit for rage, not justice sig

Shadowscamp.8065:

Dual wielding axes doesn’t really give you a whole lot more damage. Whirling axe is nice, yes, but the 4 is fairly useless, and axe skills don’t give very much utility. Main hand axe does some pretty heavy damage anyway, but you can pair it with an offhand mace for a ranged knockdown and vulnerability on the 4. I run main hand axe and offhand shield and I have a lot of fun with it, but if you just want big damage, mace may be a slightly better choice.

Yeah cuz getting fury and hitting everything in front of you twice in a 180 degree arc is bad. The #4 skill is also a great adrenaline builder, which is nice if you’re using eviscerate.

I’m speaking utility-wise. I’m not talking DPS.

And even in that sense, it’s still not that useful, since you hit multiple targets with your autoattack chain anyways. And the fury only lasts for 2 seconds.

Edit: I also never said it was “bad”, because that’s an opinion and is based on what you’re trying to do with your build. If you want DPS and only DPS, they by all means go dual axes. In my opinion, that’s not very “useful”, but it’s your prerogative to do it that way.

Shadowscamp.8065:

I’m speaking utility-wise. I’m not talking DPS.

And even in that sense, it’s still not that useful, since you hit multiple targets with your autoattack chain anyways. And the fury only lasts for 2 seconds.

Edit: I also never said it was “bad”, because that’s an opinion and is based on what you’re trying to do with your build. If you want DPS and only DPS, they by all means go dual axes. In my opinion, that’s not very “useful”, but it’s your prerogative to do it that way.

I’m not so sure extremely high dps melting mobs is not “useful”. I prefer 5 minute boss fights, not 15. That two seconds is more than enough time to slam them with a crit eviscerate, and the rage sig is 30 seconds of fury that you’ll be popping throughout fights regardless, meaning you’re running fury for the majority of the fight.

But hey, it’s all good. I like that people don’t want to use axe/axe. It makes it that much more entertaining knowing that I’m using such an OP dps build that other people aren’t able to fully comprehend and are failing to utilize. I like being a special little snowflake.

Dual Axes can put out some nice damage, I love it for mob tagging in Orr specifically.

To respond to the poster above me, I find the off-hand Axe very nice even though it’s lacking utility. The 4 skill is a very nice adrenaline builder and can give alot of fury considering it can hit up to 6 times. And Whirlwind Axe can be used while dodging, which gives it some defense/offense qualities.

A suggestion I have, if you want to try single target spike damage, is Axe/Sword

Whirlwind Axe does really low damage though, if you look at the actual numbers.. about 35-40% of hundred blades dps. It ends up doing a lot less than your axe auto attack, it’s just got a nice 360° hit arc, and gets pretty brutal in combo fields such as fire.

I do wish axe mainhand had cooler auto attack animations.. it looks like you’re chopping wood.. the axe #2 also seems very weak and pointless, the axe #3 is somewhat useful, the #4 is very weak with low damage and 2 seconds of fury won’t do much either. While again the axe #5 looks cool, but the actual numbers, the dps, is very very low.. it’s only really useful in a fire combo field.. which luckily we can provide with the long bow.

I think I will try axe-axe/longbow again.

Shadowscamp.8065:

And the fury only lasts for 2 seconds.

With Axe 4, it’s 2 seconds of Fury per strike per target. If you hit one target, it’s 4 seconds, two targets it’s 8 seconds, …

That being said, it’s still too weak because of the cast time equal to an axe autoattack with basically the same level of damage output of one autoattack swing (which also hits up to 3 targets). If an ability has a cast time with animation, it needs to do far more damage. The utility (Fury boon in this case) should be balanced and relate to the cooldown of the ability.

Axe off hand is beyond useless. Go Axe + Mace and learn to juggle