Guild Wars 2

Hi all!

I’m new to the warrior class and actually wanted to be dual-axe warrior but I’ve heard that skill 4 of offhand axe is too underpowered to be useable. So I’m currently looking to use offhand sword or horn as an alternative.

I hope that you experienced warriors out there could give me some good suggestions on offhand choice and traits, build, etc.

Thanks in advance

No, skill 5 has too little damage. Skill 4 has too little utility (it grants a short duration of fury, which is essentially redundant on a warrior anyway).

Warhorns are good for buffing and/or condition removal, plus #5 debuffs nearby enemies. Maces are good for some control and additional vulnerability stacks. Shield is… shieldy. Long cooldowns though even when traited. Never really tried swords. I guess the block could come in handy, but condition focused attacks on an axe build?

I use mace offhand just because I like the aoe knockdown but I’m thinking of switching to warhorn and traiting it to remove conditions. 50% fumble is nice too, it can knock damage down to 75% or less.

just a note- warhorns #5 skill can aggro everthing 600 meters(?) around you including the passive mobs I believe

I went for the offhand mace as well. Pretty effective weapon

Thanks for the great responses guys I see that offhand mace and warhorn are favoured. Can you tell me the respective builds for main hand axe and the offhands? (traits, armour, trinkets, etc) This will help to gime a better idea of whats best for me

Well… what do you want to do with them?

Try em all and experiment. Unlock all the weapons. All of em. Try them all out. Don’t need to settle on anything while leveling up.

Pick what sounds fun, get to 80, then when your experienced with the game you can decide what you want to do.

I only do pve, dungeons and DEs. Already got a lvl 80 GS Guardian so want to try something new. I’m currently using axe/mace combo, its pretty good

Well, builds using shouts and WH condition removal/debuff are nice in dungeons. The swiftness doesn’t matter so much there, but it’s handy for events since the useful waypoint pretty much always becomes contested by the event.

shield or mace.

I’ve noticed that with the projectile reflect trait a shield is hilarious against the smaller karka that fire off a volley of something at the start of every fight. One won’t quite kill itself but if two line up and the shots all bound back into one of them it can be enough. Or you can just smack them with the shield and they stop shooting those.

I’m having some success with a Shield. Trait in +50% crit on stun, and you can Shield 4 Stun into F1 Axe Eviscerate for some nice reliable burst, and trait in reflecting shield on block to make Shield 5 more useful and fun, like LameFox said above.

And both those traits are 10 pointers I think so pretty flexible to work into a build of your own liking

I’m surprised that stun is long enough for eviscerate to even cast. Good for interrupts though.

Yeah its a little hard to tell, but its a 1 sec stun, Evis is 0.75 cast time. It seems to combo just quick enough, tested on dummy and enemies alike. But yeah you wanna be clicking F1 repeatedly straight away when the shield stun attack animation starts. You could use +15% stun duration sigils for some extra margin of error/delay or to counter enemies with cond duration reduction.

Skin.3027:

shield or mace.

This a million times.

I prefer mace as my offend to go with axe. It not only provides a knockdown/interupt but also more vulnerability.

OH Axe isn’t so bad, could use a bit of a buff I admit but for now its the most fun choice for me in wvw along with longbow.

I use oh axe and love it the aoe dmg it does. I made a build for it on here check it out can face tank an still dish out high dps.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/AXE-AXE-warrior-build/first#post812727

Axe, mobile whirlwind = regain of adren really fast for new evisc.

Thanks for the awesome recommendation guys, I see the shield can be quite fun. I’m currently leaning more towards mace offhand thou. Lets see if there are any more interesting replies

I also prefer axe/axe, because of the large amount of trash packs in the dungeons I run, the way I’m built I can consistently crit everything I’m hitting for end damage of 5-6k in a very short amount of time, and it gives me plenty of adrenaline to line up evis as soon as it’s off cooldown, which crits for 8-11k. (And with fury, I have 70% crit, so it’s not very often I’m not hitting hard)

That being said, I think it’s appropriate for every profession to carry around every weapon set they can use, and be able to hot swap traits in dungeons to suit the encounter. Get some big bags, and make sure you’ve got a mace, sword, gs, hammer, shield, axe, horn, rifle and lb, and use it where needed! You’d be surprised how versatile you can be when you just hot swap your major traits. Two minutes to pop on a different weapon set and change a trait saves time later to make yourself useful on a boss that doesn’t like melee, or doesn’t like range, or is immune to conditions, or eats conditions to heal, etc.

I enjoy the axe/mace combo. Axe has a second skill that give 4 vulnerability. However the off hand mace has a skill that also does 4 vulnerability. You can stack these and I find it to be effective. I also enjoy the off hand mace’s ability to slam a foe into the ground.

I consider for PVE the sword to be non optimal. I consider main hand mace to be garbage but off hand I like it. As a substitute I might use an axe/axe combo but I haven’t really tried it much. For my personal tastes I find the axe/mace combo to be the finest weapons to equip even more than a two hand sword or hammer.

Axe and shield.

Love this combo the stun on the shield is amazing for guaranteeing an uninterrupted eviscerate (against mobs that cc a lot). Shield stance in dungeons is just to amazing to pass up for me. I use it to extend endure pain, in really tight situations, of by some time taking the heat off my buddies while my heal comes up. Love the shield wouldn’t change it for anything.