I’ve played chainaxe only since the update dropped and tried some combinations out I think would work best in theory, but the weapon still has some fundamental issues. when I mention Reved attacks I mean standard attacks NOT the special one please keep that in mind while reading.
I’ve used a Zealot crit build and the following combinations.
Orestes MK IV: 80% Damage, Penetration, Mobility 78% Shredder 25% Damage against Flak/Maniac Slaughterer IV. Headtaker IV
Orestes MK XII:: 78% damage 79% Penetration 80% Shredder, 69% Mobility. 25% Damage Against Maniacs 5% Melee Critchance, Thrust IV Headtaker IV
the Dodge range and charges are lacking there is not enough stagger or cleave to dispatch a pack of maniacs fast enough and the dodge range/limit is very low which leaves you stranded like a beached whale this can also apply to a mixed horde.
the Unreved Heavy on IV or the light on XII feel very bad , there is no cleave or noticable stagger against maniacs and the windup animation on the IV is still annoying, which makes this weapon kind off a pain to use because you are forced to use the reved attack which still leaves you vulnerable because they can’t dispatch maniacs fast enough, unlike a Cadia IV chainsword, Eviscerator or alot of other weapons.
The cleave is bad , they either need a cleave blessing or hit more targets+do more dmg at once
Reved attacks should ALWAYS apply bleed on the IV that would be light attacks, on the XII the heavy, it’s a chainaxe after all.
reved attacks still leave you very vulnerable this is especially a pain on the IV because your lights still eat into every enemy and you got to dodge alot which is a big drain on the damage output ( same as heavy on XII) and theres still an annoying windup time on the heavy attack (IV).
I think if we made all attacks including the multitarget one , reved attacks and gave all reved attacks bleed chainaxes would perform alot better. The Special attack rev should be the only attack that stuns and leaves you vulnerable akin to a charged hammer. If that is not an option the TTK should be lowered and the animation should be faster on non special attacks to make you less vulnerable because right now you have to choose if you either want to 1. Dodge and deal less damage 2. Don’t dodge and wait till attack finishes and eat some damage. the Special attack rev seems to be in a good place damage wise in my opinion and does not need any adjustment.
and I summon @nCmixam to explain it himself because I don’t know how you can “play a weapon wrong”. I’m well aware how both weapon variants and their attack patterns work
I’m currently using Slaughterer III (which may be the difference), but the lights on the new chainaxe are slapping maniacs (esp. Dreg Ragers) and staggers them out of their attacks fairly reliably, as well as the push attack.
I’m not sure how much cleave it has though; it hasn’t felt lacking from what I’ve played (it’s probably more notable vs Scab Ragers). It feels less than a Chainsword, but I don’t think that’s a problem in itself.
Yah know, there’s something to be said about how common of a suggestion that is.
I haven’t been able to play with the chaxe any, myself. Seems like, from what I’ve seen, there’s an equal number of people who hate the new axe for being a club and people who love the new axe for it. Which is to say, I’ve seen 4 whole people on YouTube play with it and do commentary
I’m using headtaker because usually Fury of the Faithful gives enough stagger to quickly kill them , gonna give it a try with Slaughterer maybe it works better and i’m wrong.
While not to disparage an individual idea, a popular idea isn’t always a good idea
Personally, I’m not super keen on baking things like bleed into a weapon, because now you either (a) build around it to make it useful, or (b) let it “tag along” and eat into the weapon’s power budget (for want of a better word)
I think more could be done with the Bloodletter blessing to enable it, with bleed on non-special shredding attacks at higher ranks (say T2/T3/T4 get 1/2/3 stacks for shredding lights, 3/4/5 stacks for shredding heavies, just to throw out arbitrary numbers). No clue if that’s a good idea, just throwing it out there.
I missed your Headtaker mention in the OP; I don’t think Slaughterer III over Headtaker IV would be enough to make the difference. I doubt I had 5 stacks active in many cases, so the best-case 135% stagger versus Headtaker’s more consistent 125% stagger doesn’t sound like it’d be enough
The only time I’ve had major issues was with 4+ ragers on me. I can’t stagger them all at once, but I don’t expect the chain axe to do that, and and they’ll just break my guard in a second with that many swings. I do find the eye poke helpful though. For me personally, 4+ ragers will generally be a bad time for most weapons. Crusher is an exception, because they can’t fight when face down in the dirt
Buffed IV heavies feel very potent to me. They’re killing multiple trash mobs per swing and chain pretty damn fast with solid cleave. I was running it with mostly left side + inexorable tonight and it was feeling pretty damn good to me. Lights hit appropriately hard now and the breakpoints feel good.
I dunno I’ve used Chaxe a lot and my current impression is that it’s in a pretty good place now. Thrust feels like overkill considering how many things die in one rev light or 0 thrust heavy (including crushers with FotF) so I’ve swapped to head taker + slaughterer for now, bloodletter is good but I don’t feel like I need more single target currently and boss damage is still solid without it.
A brauto in my back pocket to fall back on (that also benefits a lot from all that attack speed). You could force crit CDR in there for a bit better FotF uptime but I really haven’t felt the need for more ults.
It feels very good to me. Juiced attack speed and lots of bonus damage. I’m sure you could do some truly dumb damage with martyrdom if that’s to your tastes.
Still don’t get your point , Fury of the faithful is a guaranteed crit + scourge applies bleed and gives crit chance and you can still go down to blazing piety and righteous warrior or Inexorable judgement. don’t know what kind of “raw damage” you pick in the skill tree but there isn’t alot and I got the few that are there skilled.
Well, nearly any weapon can be built for crit with Zealot, Chaxe included. The playstyle, damage and tankiness is very similar to your inexorable build, you just go about getting the damage and tankiness in different ways. Your build is certainly better for a Brauto backup - but crit and inexorable play pretty similarly in my experience (on Chaxe).
Real , my build looks almost identical with the difference that i went for immolation grenade instead of stun, and the bottom is pretty flexible I can either choose to go Inexorable Judgement or Blazing piety dude got like 3 skill points spend differently lol.
Yes playstyle is similar and obviously the survivability and Ult spammability can be applied to basically any weapon but the DPS benefits are pretty heavily influenced by the crit modifiers of the weapon you’re using. I just find Chaxe responds better to attack speed and straight damage increases like what inexorable gives more so than crit scaling. It feels like the attack speed also speeds up the sawing animation so you can chain unrevved lights together at a surprising rate. Not sure how much the heavy chain benefits but it feels very fluid and fast to me on this build.
the only differences in your build is that i got backstabber+scourge instead of disdain and enemies within and invocation of death and the movement speed boost instead of 2 points further into inexorable judgement
I agree that attack speed feels very nice on Chaxe. I don’t particularly like that the uptime (at least fully stacked) on Inexorable is so short, though. But it is pretty glorious for those 8 seconds of 20 stacks.
It would probably be a lot better if “on successful dodge” wasn’t whatever the hell the game feels like. It’s… not consistent.
I strongly disagree with this. I think the weapon has a high skill floor. That’s it. The MK4 in particular is not for everybody. The Mk12 can be challenging to use but has inviting combos that make sense to most people because they are simple.
This is a strange choice in terminology. I propose, for this thread, we continue to use the term “latching” attacks to refer to the lights on the Mk4 and heavy attacks on the Mk12 and “revved” to mean the both weapon’s special activation mechanic. This is much easier to track in my view.
this is your number one problem. This is not a crit weapon. It doesn’t have especially good crit modifiers and no crit blessings. You do not need or want crit on this weapon. This is a brute force weapon. You either want Inexorable Judgement or, if you’re crazy enough, Martyrdom. The attack speed and extra damage help a lot in making the weapon do what you want it to. Just 2 stacks of Martyrdom and 3 of Headtaker (for example) can net you 2 hit headshot kills on Dreg Ragers with Lights. That is absolutely nutty. I haven’t finish breakpoint testing but I know for a fact you can twotap headshot ragers with MK4 latching light attacks from a cold start. Amazing.
You’re supposed to alternate lights and push attacks to maximize in the cases where you are using lights into small groups. You should never get hit and never need to dodge out of a light attack.
And it shouldn’t have serious cleave or stagger against maniacs. Thats not what those attacks are for. Those are your horde clear attacks. This is an intentional downside of the weapon meant to make you use the other tools on the weapon. If you could just brainlessly LMB your way through everything then it would be one of the least fun weapons in the game.
It really isn’t. But the horde clear on the chain axe is intentionally worse than other weapons. Despite that fact with a good build its quite decent. All you need is headtaker or slaughterer and you’re good to go. Maybe not even those if you run almost dead martyrdom like I do.
I still like this idea, at least a portion of the Bloodletter blessing should be applied. But its not a requirement. It’d just be cool.
Clearly there is a need for the tutorial I am working on for the chain axes.
Here is my build. Try it and get back to us.
It seemed more polite to assume build issue over user issue. Maybe just a few days of use isn’t enough to actually make a good assessment of a weapon? Reginald and I have been using it for a year more or less at this point. We’re very used to its quirks, where you can sneak in rev attacks and where you can’t, and to us it feels pretty damn strong after the update.
It’s fine that you disagree but I do think it’s pretty silly to tell FS how to “fix” a weapon you’ve barely just picked up. Maybe try the build advice being given and give it some more matches then come back to this thread. I’d recommend going to Reginald’s YouTube channel and checking out some gameplay too.
If nothing else, you could try Grievous Wounds or Hammer of Faith; I thought for a moment that they might make a difference
I don’t have them specced personally (which kinda ruined my eureka moment when I thought I had one of them on my build), but it might be worth a shot. Emperor’s Bullet might have been active sometimes (+30% impact on empty ranged weapon) but I don’t think it was active that often.
From the last game I played, it felt as though the push followup was really good for staggering ragers; light attacks seem to take 2 swings.
Other than that, I’m not sure what else would be at play. The Chaxe itself has 77 Damage/80 Mobility/65 Penetration/76 Defences/78 Shredder, +8% Elite Damage, +25% Carapace, Thrust IV, Slaughterer III. As far as talents, the damage/stagger related ones are
