Thrown axes are EXTREMELY fun to use (I wish we could use them on IB) but they just don’t do their job on higher difficulties. And they could, if there were two changes made to them:
Axes should always 1-shot-body-shot all specials, on all difficulties. They have a significant drop, they are slow and the ammo pool is small, so I think they are entitled to it.
The initial reload time (the first axe) should be significantly shorter, I’m talking 50% faster. Javelins reload much faster than that while still being much more powerful than throwing axes in probably all aspects.
And I know these changes would work fine because I’ve literally modded the game to have them and played around with it. It feels really damn fun to be able to recall an axe in the middle of the fight to throw at a stormvermin.
Aye, overpowered things are fun - at least for a while. Then they become odd and scare away others.
Thats why I hope Engi wouldnt remain too long (like Javs ) in his actual state.
I’ve come around somewhat to throwing axes over time. I don’t think they’re ever good on RV personally but I think that’s probably OK.
The fact all their animations including reload speed scale with attack speed helps them a lot on Slayer. Especially now they work with thousands cuts (wasn’t true for most of the time they’ve been available). In general on Slayer having a ranged weapon, albeit a fairly high skill floor one, is pretty helpful in quite a few places and their high stagger is great for dispatching chaos warriors very safely.
If there was a 1h weapon on the level of coghammer to pair them with I think you could make a competitive build with them on Slayer. Maybe cog + thraxes is solid with the recently improved hack and slash but the axes fiend for attack speed so I kinda doubt it.
For your suggestions I wouldn’t complain about a slight reload speed increase. I think body shotting with them on Cata would be a mistake.
It would be a mistake if you had 4-5 axes instead of 3.
With 3 axes you can afford to miss once and take down a single special. With a weapon that doesn’t have much cleave (unless you use the secondary fire, which is significantly slower AND slowing), has travel time, is affected by gravity and cannot be reliably reloaded (recalled) in the middle of combat.
) in his actual state.