Guild Wars 2

Just wondering if anyone has found its usefulness…

Moo Poo.7358:

Just wondering if anyone has found its usefulness…

well, its basically a ranged weaker version of dagger. But the issue is that 600 range is sort of an awkward range because its not far enough to be exactly “safe”.

In a word, “no.”

You can come up with some sort of build that’ll use it. But your build won’t be nearly as good at its role as other classes. You’ll gimp yourself and your team.

Virgil Kemp.7056:

In a word, “no.”

You can come up with some sort of build that’ll use it. But your build won’t be nearly as good at its role as other classes. You’ll gimp yourself and your team.

I could see SOME use for it. One that comes to thought is mid point on forest of nif, you could be nuking with wells and and be attacking with axe at the same time.

If your purpose is nuking, there are better options. Being a necro with an axe and trying to nuke just means you’ve gimped your team and should be playing another class.

Virgil Kemp.7056:

If your purpose is nuking, there are better options. Being a necro with an axe and trying to nuke just means you’ve gimped your team and should be playing another class.

Never said it was the best option. Not everyone wants to play this game competitively and wants to play the way they want to. And to be honest, lol @ anyone who plays this game competitively.

If you don’t mind it being broken, then what’s the problem? :P

Most people don’t really understand how professions are built, especially Necro.

Actually axe does have a huge role in necro, but only if ur running a power build ( preferably 30 in soul reaping).

The first thing you’ve gotta remember is that necro power dmg scales over time, they have almost 0 burst dmg except 3 skills. Do you wonder why the devs made survivability (deathshroud) and crit dmg on the same line? That’s the first key.

15 in curses gives 4 sec of fury upon death shroud, and 30 soul reaping gives 5 sec recharge on deathshroud. 10 trait in curses, 33% chance to gain life force on crit. Guess how many aoe tick skills that necro has to proc that trait (4 deathshroud, wells, dagger 2, axe 2, axe 3, focus 4, warhorn 5……). Speccing into Soul Reaping is what allows necros to go full glass cannon while also surviving very well.

See the synergy?

So… soul reaping = crit dmg = more Death Shroud health per skill.

With dagger its best to use warhorn (which gives u life force in melee = lets u heal = be more aggressive). Dagger also has best dps in game on Necro for a reason. When you combine dagger with sigil of rage (easily procc’d do to all aoe tick skills) you can do INSANE dps with 1 skill on dagger.

With offhand on axe a great choice is Focus. 4 on focus gives ridiculous life force, gives vulnerability (which scales with vul on Life Blast pierce / vul and axe 1 atk). 5 on focus gives AMAZING control (especially when top trait 10 is traited for longer focus distance / shorter cd)

Axe 3 also cripples and gives retaliation. Cripple helps control, but retaliation is so strong cuz guess what? Your whole build allows you to gain tons of Death Shroud HP, so over the course of a fight retaliation works strongly in your favor because of sustain. In many ways it’s like an offensive meditations heals guardian, but has many different strengths in comparison.

By scaling into power / soul reaping you also unlock the maximum potential of power wells. Well of suffering has 2.7k dmg / 5 secs on my build, the other well 1.3k (boons → conditions). When a necro knows how to scale into power so their wells do good crit dmg it becomes one of the strongest tools for punishing point holders as well as downed enemies. Don’t forget that while that 2.7k dmg is ticking you are also gaining 33% chance for life force on each crit and also using all of your other dmg skills at same time.

In a good power build in Lich form I have 4650 atk, 31k health, and 91% crit rate with 62% crit dmg. When ran with a good supporting team ( or 1 v1 tons of builds) it is one of the strongest DPS builds of all time. The 1 pierces too so it HEAVILY punishes enemies trying to rez downed allies.

15 in soul reaping gives spectral armor @ 50% , giving you a potential whole other bar of death shroud. You maximize this potential by making sure to burn all ur death shroud before you hit 50%.

You’ve gotta really understand necro to understand how axe fits within various builds they can use.

As it is with many other classes, in tournament pvp axes make no sense whatsoever. It may is super good with some super good power builds, but those builds are just bad and worthless compared to the current meta necro builds. Axe and focus are really cute but there are much more better tools in pvp.

Maybe Bunker builds? Might work just that it seems too hard to figure out like a jigsaw puzzle.

Did you guys not read TsurugiOni’s post? Extremely well written. +1

Everything Tsurugi said could be done with the dagger and be better. The vuln stack and the retaliation isn’t enought to be worth it. 600 range is nearly melee, it’s a weird range.

I tried so many build with axe, and while it’s not awful, I just feel like I’m gimping myself over using dagger.

“Everything Tsurugi said could be done with the dagger and be better.”

Phrases like this are worthless. Better, in which ways? Against what comps, and which scenarios?

600 range is perfect to fight hybrid ele / trap ranger / warrior, especially since u have 3x chill + cripple. It allows you to DPS while not fighting on point (aka not taking aoe dmg). I guess in a 3 v 3 + teamfight you can always try to run to their backline and put yourself dead set in enemy threat range.

If you use dagger / warhorn against a HB warrior ur not going to trade effectively. A trap ranger is going to kite you all day, and ur going to have a hard time dps’ing a great mesmer. But if u run axe/focus u can double chill from 1200 range a HB warrior which forces em to either get DPS’d down or burn their heal skill. 600 range + retaliation has MUCH better control against a trap ranger than dagger / warhorn. Dagger / dagger is “safe” but offhand dagger synergizes best with conditions and you lose out on a ton of life force / dps.

Plz, there’s only a few good US teams out there who have their teamwork / rotations down to a pat, the meta is in stage 1 evolution. These teams can wipe out 90% of teams using different comps.

A necro can get 115% bleed duration with a 30/30/x/x/x build, yet all that dps is meaningless if a team has tons of cleanses (for say Guardian rune of soldier + shouts + triple shouts). Combined with a hybrid ele w/ double cleansing wave conditions can be cleared super easily.

I watched Tsurugi play axe necro and it definitely has strong points.

I played another setup on my necro numerous times while trying different builds and there definitely is a potential.

The axe is a weapon that I feel is designed to support necro’s Death Shroud. It is quite fun to play, well the whole power build is rather enjoyable compared to standard condi necro.

The one thing that this kind of necro needs is new DS UI so you can actually get most of those builds. I hope it is coming soon, because as it is now, it really cripples necros.

I can also promise that, unlike most of people posting here, I will test this particular build in paid tournaments and try to get some feedback, taken I remember to.

i built a healing/toughness/deathshroud build with high power and low crit. I tried with the axe and eventually i realized that dagger still does it better. So, atm, no.

Hey Leman !

I think you’re completely right in saying that axe generally supports death shroud.

And that was dueling using a wells build (useless for dueling) with rez sig. I think he was using triple cantrips.

Any condi necro is going to have to run preferably 30 in curses for maximum scepter damage. That leaves very little for death shroud because generally it scales very poorly into condition damage. The reason why Powerr is using 20 soul reaping is because his condi build depends on fear doing dmg.

Now Powerr was a hybrid – bunker ish ele. Consider his necro build fighting against that, he wouldn’t last 2 secs because he has almost no death shroud recharging abilities and his conditions get cleansed way too easily.

I lasted like what, 3 minutes, even making him run away to survive when I lich’d? That’s starting off the fight with 0 life force too.

The build ain’t a dueling build, and neither is the game, but that’s an example of the different strengths of a power build.

Not saying that axe is “the best”, but like built right u can get a max 15 second bleed per hit on scepter 1. But how much of that full dps will you actually get? How are you going to transfer those X stacks through epidemic? Same reason why 100 crit rate sword / sword warrior will never kill easily, because conditions over a long duration never get to maximize their full length. Offhander dagger does provide extra control and utility though which is valuable.

Lich form is basically a piercing backstab on 1. 3 is knockback, 5 strips all boons / conditions. Within a good team comp it is one of best elites in game (along with plague form and time warp).

Take Guardian. Crit dmg and toughness scale together. That’s why DPS guardian can do well, because their survivability traits scale with crit dmg. Same concept with Necro, their death shroud (survive) scales with crit. They both accomplish a similar goal through slightly different mechanisms.

People don’t even understand their professions well, so most people’s perception will be way off.

Dagger actually scales best into a minion master build (Like 20/0/30/20/0, always clerics amulet). Minion master is one of the strongest 1 v 1 builds in the game, but is weak against aoe and in team fights.

Speccing for minion master gets you incredibly tanky, some of best self-healing in game, and superior sustain damage. Dagger gives immobilize (synergizes with minion) and allows you to use warhorn effectively (daze + locust swarm so powerful with minions).

A good minion master can easily go toe-to-toe with a good hybrid ele, even with all of the aoe ele brings. Can even easily kill most shatter / phantasm mesmers because of the sheer tankiness, constant pressure, control, heal, and dps.

All weapons have legitimate competitive usages. It just depends on ur team comp, enemy team comp, and how effectively you exploit any natural advantages.

Axe is easily the weakest weapon, but it is playable. I ran axe in pvp for a long time just for funsies, but truth be told when I switched to dagger, I felt like the play style was roughly the same, but I was far more efficient.

Axe range is too short to do pretty much anything. Moreover, for those cases when you can’t catch up, using dagger #2 has the same range as axe #1. Dagger #3 has a farther range than axe, and it is one of the better immobilizes in the game.

The axe is able to build pretty decent LF, but again the dagger’s attack speed ultimately builds it faster.

My advice? Play axe for fun. Play it for a challenge. Play it to learn to appreciate dagger.