27 replies to this topic

[Scoodle]

I found myself using Whirling Axe on a single target sometimes when my other abilities on my current weapon set were on cooldown.

It looked like it was doing okay, but does this make sense? It's hard to compare the damage to regular (main-hand) axe swings or other auto attacks.

Edited by Scoodle, 31 July 2012 - 11:12 PM.

[Ljiona]

From what I seen, people will treat it like 100 blades and dodge it.  Making someone waste a dodge isn't a bad thing.

[Sol1]

It's decent for clearing a node or building Adrenaline very fast for more burst attacks.  I personally prefer other OH weapons as they offer more utility such as mobility (GS) control (Mace) or defence (shield).

[heatzzz]

It can work great if you have a decently number of crit chance + minor trait precise strike.

[Beorn The Berserker]

Ljiona, on 01 August 2012 - 01:05 AM, said:

From what I seen, people will treat it like 100 blades and dodge it.  Making someone waste a dodge isn't a bad thing.

The main difference is that you can move while channeling Whirling Axe, so it does less damage than Hundred Blades. If you compare the damage to Axe #1 skill Triple Chop I'm not sure what would do more damage to a single target, but Whirling Axe definitely hits a lot faster so good for proccing "on crit" traits and sigils.

[Ayestes]

Generally, melee range AoE in this game isn't much different in damage potential as melee range single target damage.  This is especially evident on the Warrior, where every one of our melee options has forms of AoE sprinkled in at seemingly no drop in their damage output.

Edited by Ayestes, 01 August 2012 - 02:43 AM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Ayestes, on 01 August 2012 - 02:43 AM, said:

Generally, melee range AoE in this game isn't much different in damage potential as melee range single target damage.  This is especially evident on the Warrior, where every one of our melee options has forms of AoE sprinkled in at seemingly no drop in their damage output.

Most melee AoE tends to root (look at the guardian).  The difference for warriors is that their AOEs don't root, which is what makes them so strong.  Whirling Axe is basically the thief's Dagger Storm on roids, except not elite and on a much shorter CD and more damage to boot.  Definitely worth using whenever it's up.

[Ksielvin]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 01 August 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

Most melee AoE tends to root (look at the guardian).  The difference for warriors is that their AOEs don't root, which is what makes them so strong.  Whirling Axe is basically the thief's Dagger Storm on roids, except not elite and on a much shorter CD and more damage to boot.  Definitely worth using whenever it's up.

Dagger Storm is 900 range aoe that also cripples to keep people in the area better. Whirling Axe is fine and all but there's a reason Dagger Storm is elite. Area skills just get so much stronger with wider radius.

[Giac]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 01 August 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

Whirling Axe is basically the thief's Dagger Storm on roids, except not elite and on a much shorter CD and more damage to boot.  Definitely worth using whenever it's up.

I think you are confused. Whirling Axe is nowhere close in damage to Dagger Storm, has 180ish range, does not apply bleed or cripple and it does not reflect projectiles. The only thing the two abilities have in common is the animation.

If that classifies Whirling Axe to be a Dagger Storm "on roids", then steroids clearly have been overestimated and misunderstood.

[Shinimas]

It's ok for building up adrenaline or stacking bleeds. The damage on it is pretty terrible, since you can fit like 2 chain attacks in the duration of the whirl.

[Synth Brightsong]

Like others have mentioned, the damage on it for single target is lacking. You can sometimes get people to waste a dodge roll or cooldown on it though, which can be nice.

I tried using it for single target damage last BWE and I usually felt like I could get more out of my auto attack chain when it comes to single target.

[Ayestes]

The key is in the Adrenaline generation to use burst skills more then the direct application of damage, which to me is an indirect form of increasing your damage done.  

GuanglaiKangyi, on 01 August 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

Most melee AoE tends to root (look at the guardian).  The difference for warriors is that their AOEs don't root, which is what makes them so strong.  Whirling Axe is basically the thief's Dagger Storm on roids, except not elite and on a much shorter CD and more damage to boot.  Definitely worth using whenever it's up.

You generally have the opinion that anything on the Warrior is extremely powerful and useful, and anything on the Thief is extremely weak and unproductive.   There is nothing wrong with having an opinion, or this opinion as it's yours.   You mention this an awful lot, at least enough to make an impression on me that this is your very strong opinion.   It's my opinion that you grossly overestimate what the Warrior is capable of, and don't really understand them.  I do think you understand the Thief pretty well and I've learned things from you on the Thief forums, but I really think you suffer form a "grass is greener on the other side" trait when it comes to Warriors.  

The problem is, you can be genuinely confusing to the newer Warrior's that would be on these forums.   Whirling Axe and Dagger Storm only share the Whirl Finisher properties, beyond that Dagger Storm is greatly superior to Whirling Axe.  The fact that it is an Elite skill and has a long cooldown is what balances it with the rest of the game.  Please tone it down a little as I do love reading your discussions and opinions, but I don't want to have to see a large chain of quotes after you've posted pointing out your errors.  I'd like this to be a place of positive influence, where we discuss tactics, builds, and teach each other to improve.

Edited by Ayestes, 01 August 2012 - 02:48 PM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Ayestes, on 01 August 2012 - 02:46 PM, said:

The key is in the Adrenaline generation to use burst skills more then the direct application of damage, which to me is an indirect form of increasing your damage done.  



You generally have the opinion that anything on the Warrior is extremely powerful and useful, and anything on the Thief is extremely weak and unproductive.   There is nothing wrong with having an opinion, or this opinion as it's yours.   You mention this an awful lot, at least enough to make an impression on me that this is your very strong opinion.   It's my opinion that you grossly overestimate what the Warrior is capable of, and don't really understand them.  I do think you understand the Thief pretty well and I've learned things from you on the Thief forums, but I really think you suffer form a "grass is greener on the other side" trait when it comes to Warriors.  

The problem is, you can be genuinely confusing to the newer Warrior's that would be on these forums.   Whirling Axe and Dagger Storm only share the Whirl Finisher properties, beyond that Dagger Storm is greatly superior to Whirling Axe.  The fact that it is an Elite skill and has a long cooldown is what balances it with the rest of the game.  Please tone it down a little as I do love reading your discussions and opinions, but I don't want to have to see a large chain of quotes after you've posted pointing out your errors.  I'd like this to be a place of positive influence, where we discuss tactics, builds, and teach each other to improve.

I appreciate your effort to put things diplomatically but I was being serious.  I played both thief and warrior extensively last BWE specifically for the purposes of comparison and speaking from experience Whirling Axe does in fact do way more than way more damage than Dagger Storm, or at the very least comparable damage.  I think this is in part due to the fact that warriors have way more options to jack their damage up than thieves do, so a glass cannon warrior hits harder with anything in general than a glass cannon thief (although I don't think this really surprises anyone).  I've actually one-shotted elementalists with Whirling Axe before.  Once I even one-shotted two elementalists at the same time with one WA.  Granted, they were bad elementalists and didn't dodge or otherwise mitigate, but huge damage is still huge damage.

Now, I didn't test this but I'm sure an untraited, same-stats Dagger Storm would do more than an untraited Whirling Axe.  In practice though it doesn't work that way.  With regards to other comparisons between Whirling Axe and Dagger Storm, they are both PBAOE, movement-enabled spin attacks that hit multiple times, which does make them roughly comparable.  The difference is that Dagger Storm has a few other additional properties which do justify elite status, although in my opinion not a 45s cooldown.  The basic use remains largely the same, i.e. killing everything around you.

You may consider this my opinion but regardless it doesn't change the fact that warriors in general do ungodly amounts of damage in general, even excepting the obvious offenders like HB and Eviscerate (just the auto-attack chain on the axe averages over 10k damage for all six hits, compared to 4-5k for most other weapons for other classes).  Whether Whirling Axe is useful relative to your other axe attacks in terms of DPS is a different question, all I'm saying is that standing alone it's an incredibly powerful skill especially considering that the only other two similar skills suffer from significant drawbacks (Whirling Wrath is a semi-root while Dagger Storm is a long-CD elite).

[Ayestes]

I suppose my experiences completely differ from yours.  Whirling Axe in my experience did roughly comparable damage to auto-attacking, probably slightly less then it.  To me the value was in the rapid Adrenaline generation from the skill.  Dagger Storm to me is a massive AoE attack, that had superior damage, applied lots of bleeding and cripple, and most importantly reflected projectiles.  It also had incredible synergy with the Signet that had healing per hit.  I feel that comparing the skills beyond their animation and combo finisher is improper to both classes.

I also have experiences playing the Elementalist, Thief, Warrior, Necromancer, and Mesmer.  I do not believe a Warrior's damage is disproportional to the other classes.  This however is pretty offtopic, so I think I'm going to drop this subject as it stands.  We have different opinions, and I didn't realize how strongly you believed in yours.

[ScuipiciTrollbane]

Beorn The Berserker, on 01 August 2012 - 02:35 AM, said:

The main difference is that you can move while channeling Whirling Axe, so it does less damage than Hundred Blades. If you compare the damage to Axe #1 skill Triple Chop I'm not sure what would do more damage to a single target, but Whirling Axe definitely hits a lot faster so good for proccing "on crit" traits and sigils.

you can get out of its way pretty easy and the auto atack skill does much more dmg anyway.In pvp now is kinda crap. Axe/Axe should be an high dps style , like they said last year . In order to do that , they should slighty increase dmg to whirling axe and make it apply cirple , so is a good offensive skill. And to dual strike , increase the dmg by a bit and fury gay. So axe/axe will be that " get adrenaline fast while deal good dmg" . you have no escape mechanism on axe/axe , so you have to relly on a greatsword off hand or sword.

[Red_Falcon]

Whirling Axe can be dodged by any decent player, so you better keep it for AoE.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

ScuipiciTrollbane, on 03 August 2012 - 11:13 AM, said:

you can get out of its way pretty easy and the auto atack skill does much more dmg anyway.In pvp now is kinda crap. Axe/Axe should be an high dps style , like they said last year . In order to do that , they should slighty increase dmg to whirling axe and make it apply cirple , so is a good offensive skill. And to dual strike , increase the dmg by a bit and fury gay. So axe/axe will be that " get adrenaline fast while deal good dmg" . you have no escape mechanism on axe/axe , so you have to relly on a greatsword off hand or sword.

Hitting 6-7k on one skill isn't good enough for you?

[ScuipiciTrollbane]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 04 August 2012 - 12:39 AM, said:

Hitting 6-7k on one skill isn't good enough for you?

have you tried axe/axe nin pvp?

[Zogoth]

I was running a glass cannon bleed build during the stress test. Sword/Axe and Sword/Shield. Whirling Axe combined with Frenzy and the 60% chance to apply bleed on crit rune was a good way to apply around 20 bleeds in an aoe or on a single target right away. I would then weapon swap to apply another 20+ bleeds on them with the 1h sword elite after using the shield stun. Very effective against enemies with little condition removal. But even more cooldown dependent than the GS/Axe/Shield build.

You could change that to GS/Sword/Axe for pve. To give you a lot of bleeds combined with the GS burst.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

ScuipiciTrollbane, on 04 August 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

have you tried axe/axe nin pvp?

Actually, yeah, I have.  It's probably the highest DPS weapon combination in the game, period.

[Siric]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 01 August 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

Whirling Axe is basically the thief's Dagger Storm on roids, except not elite and on a much shorter CD and more damage to boot.  Definitely worth using whenever it's up.

Yeah... no.

[ScuipiciTrollbane]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 04 August 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

Actually, yeah, I have.  It's probably the highest DPS weapon combination in the game, period.

Greatsword said what? bad trolling , i award you no points , good day sir!

[GenericWarrior]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 04 August 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

Actually, yeah, I have.  It's probably the highest DPS weapon combination in the game, period.

Also zero defensive capabilities and low mobility. Axe/axe combination can be easily kited and bursted down by any competent elementalist or ranger.

Edited by GenericWarrior, 05 August 2012 - 04:19 AM.

[Giac]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 04 August 2012 - 12:39 AM, said:

Hitting 6-7k on one skill isn't good enough for you?

Just get out. You must be the last person on this forum who hasn't caught up to how the damage of multi-abilities is displayed on your screen in guild wars 2.

[hendel65]

Why do people keep mentioning dodge?
surely the op was only asking about it for pve since this is the pve forum section, right?

[Ayestes]

The thread was started when it was still a PvE and PvP forum.  Honestly the split of topics is extremely confusing, but maybe it'll get better over time.

Edited by Ayestes, 05 August 2012 - 02:21 PM.

[Itharius]

It builds adrenaline very fast and does a lot of damage. So yes.

You don't use double axes to chase down ranged units, you would use them for burst dps versus groups of melee combatants.

Edited by Itharius, 05 August 2012 - 07:59 PM.

[Samson2500]

with a 20 second cooldown your fine using it on 1 target. By the time you kill your target and make your way to another it will have recharged