Guild Wars 2

Everyone seems to hate this weapon and yet I don’t see any reason to. Skill 4 gives furry and skill 5 has the highest adrenaline gain/fastest attack rate of any weapon option.

(Here is my build If any one is curious)
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mmRkzzMzMoGRaMoGwaMGpa0fVRzVMo

Currently I am running a Bulky DPS build on my warrior with Sword/Axe : Axe/Mace.

I think the big issue is for some reason everyone keeps trying to run Dual Axe, then when they see skill 5 doesn’t do MORE damage than skill 1 they discredit its other uses.

1. Adrenaline gain is vastly superior to any other options.
2. Stacking bleed/vulnerability with crits (Highest rate of attack on any weapon.)
3. Full 360 AOE damage not just

When you start trying to play with your adrenaline gain and weapons synergy Off-Hand axe gives you some awesome tools.

For example with my build

Sword Leap in
Axe 4 for Furry
Axe 5 (Stacks bleed and Vulnerability + Massive Adrenaline gain)
Weapon swap
Axe 2 (Vulnerability)
Mace 4 (Vulnerability)
Eviscerate (Max Adrenaline) with well over 10 stacks of vulnerability
Axe 2
Weapon Swap
Flurry (1 Bar Adrenaline)

You can pretty well repeat that over and over again thanks to the rate of adrenaline gain and the cool downs on each move lining up.

So yeah why all the hate for OH Axe?

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

Jason Todd.1489:

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

But why do you think it sucks? From what I have seen it is a great weapon.

My main built is double axe/ rifle, really love it.

TheOSC.7659:

Jason Todd.1489:

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

But why do you think it sucks? From what I have seen it is a great weapon.

Axe #5 does less damage than Axe #1.

Axe #5 forces you to lose control of your character except to dodge.

Axe #4 does ok damage but most of the time Warriors are fury up from FGJ or Sig of Rage so having more fury won’t help (doesn’t stack).

Your better off with another weapon in almost every scenerio.

Sure the adren gain is good but I’m never adren starved since i take embrace the pain (defense I).

Defektive.7283:

TheOSC.7659:

Jason Todd.1489:

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

But why do you think it sucks? From what I have seen it is a great weapon.

Axe #5 does less damage than Axe #1.

Axe #5 forces you to lose control of your character except to dodge.

Axe #4 does ok damage but most of the time Warriors are fury up from FGJ or Sig of Rage so having more fury won’t help (doesn’t stack).

Your better off with another weapon in almost every scenerio.

Sure the adren gain is good but I’m never adren starved since i take embrace the pain (defense I).

1. you can still jump, move and dodge.. what control are you losing?

Expect to see more people using axe offhand.

Before it was a death sentence due to the amount of AoE retal in the game from guardians. You’d spin to hit 3-4 people and do 15k damage to yourself.

Now that AoE retal has been toned down, it’s a very good weapon. Use it if your team has enough utility already that you don’t need to go warhorn or mace. Then again if you’re playing with a warrior in sPvP you need to design your team around the warrior to make the most of the class anyways.

above mars.4586:

Defektive.7283:

TheOSC.7659:

Jason Todd.1489:

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

But why do you think it sucks? From what I have seen it is a great weapon.

Axe #5 does less damage than Axe #1.

Axe #5 forces you to lose control of your character except to dodge.

Axe #4 does ok damage but most of the time Warriors are fury up from FGJ or Sig of Rage so having more fury won’t help (doesn’t stack).

Your better off with another weapon in almost every scenerio.

Sure the adren gain is good but I’m never adren starved since i take embrace the pain (defense I).

1. you can still jump, move and dodge.. what control are you losing?

Control I’m referring to is being able to use attacks on demand, your stuck into a spinning death sentence against anyone intelligent.

The damage also doesn’t beat Axe #1 until I believe 3-4 people are in the picture. Essentially making it a waste of an ability in tPvP but spam happy in Hot Join.

Whenever I see an Axe offhand Warrior I get a little giddy and B line it to them for the free kill. And if they start spinning to win on me I just let them have it since it’s less damage overall than if they were just auto attacking.

It’s almost like they are intentionally trying to deal less damage to their foes.

Axe #5, Is good to keep though from a pure adrenaline building standpoint. Least that’s my impression of it. I don’t think we have any other abilities that build it as fast.

So you could theoretically do Axe #2,Mace #4, Evis. Weapon Swap, Axe #5, and get another Evis off before the durability leave (which in a short time span is a good amount of damage on a target)

Is it optimal No. Is it the most terrible thing in the world? Not at all.

Defektive.7283:

above mars.4586:

Defektive.7283:

TheOSC.7659:

Jason Todd.1489:

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

But why do you think it sucks? From what I have seen it is a great weapon.

Axe #5 does less damage than Axe #1.

Axe #5 forces you to lose control of your character except to dodge.

Axe #4 does ok damage but most of the time Warriors are fury up from FGJ or Sig of Rage so having more fury won’t help (doesn’t stack).

Your better off with another weapon in almost every scenerio.

Sure the adren gain is good but I’m never adren starved since i take embrace the pain (defense I).

1. you can still jump, move and dodge.. what control are you losing?

Control I’m referring to is being able to use attacks on demand, your stuck into a spinning death sentence against anyone intelligent.

The damage also doesn’t beat Axe #1 until I believe 3-4 people are in the picture. Essentially making it a waste of an ability in tPvP but spam happy in Hot Join.

Whenever I see an Axe offhand Warrior I get a little giddy and B line it to them for the free kill. And if they start spinning to win on me I just let them have it since it’s less damage overall than if they were just auto attacking.

It’s almost like they are intentionally trying to deal less damage to their foes.

Do you have parsed combat logs, a damage meter or the devs formula to show Axe #1 does more damage than Axe #5? If not then I can claim I do more damage using a dead fish in my main hand than a HB frenzy warrior by your standards.

Also, with an axe in your main hand you cripple your mobility.

I see a lot of PvP talk, but what about PvE? Wouldn’t Axe off-hand be good for builds which depend on lots of crit-traits and fury stacking when you don’t use FGJ?

1. Adrenaline gain is vastly superior to any other options.
2. Stacking bleed/vulnerability with crits (Highest rate of attack on any weapon.)
3. Full 360 AOE damage not just

you already answered the reasons why Axe 5 is good. However, it’s competing against a 1200 line knockdown on the mace, both shield skills, and both warhorn skills. Axe #4 isn’t anything to write home about, and I’m not mentioning the sword off-hand as it’s terrible.

Axe off-hand is good for PvE farming and has limited use in WvW for kill tagging/bombing. I would never use it in sPvP.

Azucar.3594:

Defektive.7283:

above mars.4586:

Defektive.7283:

TheOSC.7659:

Jason Todd.1489:

axe off hand = suck
axe main hand = high DPS

But why do you think it sucks? From what I have seen it is a great weapon.

Axe #5 does less damage than Axe #1.

Axe #5 forces you to lose control of your character except to dodge.

Axe #4 does ok damage but most of the time Warriors are fury up from FGJ or Sig of Rage so having more fury won’t help (doesn’t stack).

Your better off with another weapon in almost every scenerio.

Sure the adren gain is good but I’m never adren starved since i take embrace the pain (defense I).

1. you can still jump, move and dodge.. what control are you losing?

Control I’m referring to is being able to use attacks on demand, your stuck into a spinning death sentence against anyone intelligent.

The damage also doesn’t beat Axe #1 until I believe 3-4 people are in the picture. Essentially making it a waste of an ability in tPvP but spam happy in Hot Join.

Whenever I see an Axe offhand Warrior I get a little giddy and B line it to them for the free kill. And if they start spinning to win on me I just let them have it since it’s less damage overall than if they were just auto attacking.

It’s almost like they are intentionally trying to deal less damage to their foes.

Do you have parsed combat logs, a damage meter or the devs formula to show Axe #1 does more damage than Axe #5? If not then I can claim I do more damage using a dead fish in my main hand than a HB frenzy warrior by your standards.

Also, with an axe in your main hand you cripple your mobility.

Here I’ll make it easy on you.

Used Steady Axe – No buff difference, full adren.

Attack#5 (Whirling Axe’s) does 25 dmg per hit.

Attack#1 (Chop/Double Chop/Triple Chop) Does between 103-184 (depending on which attack its on).

For the sake of making a point I’ll only use the 103 number.

Lets do some rudimentary math:

106/25 = 4.12

You need to be hitting greater than 4.12 people with Whirling Axe’s in order to beat Axe #1 first attack (Chop).

Considering Axe #1 went up to 184 (Double Chop), well then you’re going to need to basically hit the whole other team.

Then lets compound the fact that Axe #1 can hit 3 enemies in a cone infront of you… And well….. lets just say:

Axe #5 is bad.

Edit: Incase the forum doesn’t upload the image:
Combat Log -
http://postimage.org/image/6aedsvrmf/

The thing about the adrenaline gain from axe 5 is that you are still tied to the 8 second cooldown of eviscerate. So even if you use axe 5 immediately after dumping adrenaline, you can’t make use of the adrenaline for X more seconds. And if you are using some of the adrenaline building traits in arms and discipline, you build it very fast even without axe 5, usually getting full again before or right as eviscerate comes off cooldown, and you can use a mace/shield/sword/warhorn offhand for more options.

And axe 5’s damage isn’t very good either.

Offhand Axe is currently a complete joke, hope to see it buffed at some point.

I think OH axe is seriously underrated in dungeon and farming situations (mobs of 15+ undead in orr?)

If you time it right you easily can use your burst, #4 to gain some stacked fury then #5 to instantly rebuild your adren and probably get some loots off most of those mobs too

Kierlak.5209:

The thing about the adrenaline gain from axe 5 is that you are still tied to the 8 second cooldown of eviscerate.

Kind of wrong. The burst cooldown is per-weapon. So if you Evicerate, you have 8-10 seconds before you can do it again. However, you can weapon swap and – providing you have built up the adrenaline – burst with a different weapon instead.

Signet of Fury often overlooked, but is the perfect partner for that kind of build. Best options are to use Mace (stun) or Sword (root) to set up an Evicerate. Most enemy players aren’t expecting back-to-back bursts, so if they dodge the first one they probably won’t expect it to be followed up by Evicerate.

I’ve been playing around with my warrior build, we need someone with dps to run with our support/bunker guys in tPvP. Basic role is to roam between points and help clear out pesky foes quickly. Currently I’m using axe/axe and greatsword / x + warhorn out of combat to maneuver around.

I do enjoy spinning at people but with the lesser damage I find that using auto attack is much better in most situations and the only added benefit of axe 5 is to dodge whilst doing it. I did previously use it for adrenaline gain but now i just use berserker’s stance just before I reach my attack point so I can open with eviscerate for some silly 9k damage and finish the fight fast.

So I might change out off hand axe for shield to gain some survivability. I find a lot of people in sPvP and tourney will just kite axe 5 with swiftness and slows. Adding in a shield or mace will give me some control and defense ability’s.

I quickly discovered the joy of sword/main hand axe/off hand. I love it. GS got boring fast despite the dps. Plus my norn woman looks badkitten dual-wielding sword/axe.

You don’t lose control while using Axe #5……….. you can CANCEL IT at ANY TIME by using ANOTHER AXE SKILL LOL. You can roll with it too, and it tags mobs like crazy if you ever end up karma farming…..

I love the off hand axe, it performs very well imo, even if I would increase the damage of skill #5 a little bit.