How can FS make one-handed axes(+crowbill) viable without giving them more cleave?

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 General Discussion
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Before anyone say it, yes I know Necromancer has that one single borderline OP(or straight up OP) talent that makes Crowbill’s bafflingly terrible heavy attack actually useful, but that speaks more to how OP that talent is than the crowbill being any good.

Considering how FS left 1-handed axes the way they are for all this time, it sounds like they’re very adamant about keeping them without any cleave. In that case in your opinion…what would it take to make these weapons worth picking over all the far better weapons that are already full capable of destroying armoured enemies but also have decent crowd clearing?

The so-called advantage of 1-handed axes seem to be completely negated by the fact that pretty much most other weapons have attacks that are more than capable of deleting chaos warriors.

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1H Axes are great weapons - very easy to use, all attacks do good armor damage, also pretty good stagger and they are fast. Hordes are not problem usually so no cleave is not a big disadvantage. Also you have +10% crit. chance with them on all light attacks and push attacks.
I do not know why everyone still complain about these weapons. My first successful Cata run was with 1H Axe back then…

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I was going to say that the 1H axe is my go to melee weapon for Bounty Hunter (though tbf I use GF-pistols as my ranged weapon)

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Yeah! BH was that career with which I did that first Cata run. Pretty great career for solo play. .-)

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My favourite weapon is the elfs one handed axe with the SOT aoe push.
You can run cata and hold off a hoard of near unlimited size with that and make a ton of space for your team and it’s elite killing is pretty great to.

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Bardin and Saltz 1H Axes are objectively the worst melee Weapons in the game for Cata and Cata+.

Being able to use them with OP ranged Weapons or Careers doesn’t fix that, because it’s not the melee weapon that makes it good.

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Bardin’s Axe and Shield is the only one I use for the light attack is good against armor and elites and the shield bash is good against hordes and THP regen, the rest of them is all trash

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Thank you Kitten for being a voice of reason as usual. Yeah my lord, “good on GF BH” AKA good if you rarely use the damn thing.

It’s also “good” on Zealot because if you pump enough AS and power steroids into something anything can be decent. It’s still consistently the worst or one of the worst options for basically every class that has access to it.

1h Axes have just ok single target DPS (still outcompeted there lmao) while being one of the worst weapons in the game for any kind of density, abysmal horde clear, and no CC whatsoever.

They’re one of the very few weapons in the game I would call indefensibly bad. Getting through a game because your ranged weapon/team mates carried you does not make 1h axe acceptable.

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Seeing that 1H Mace has faster Heavy Attacks with the same damage profile as 1H Axe was the nail in the coffin for me.

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So funny enough, despite the advantage of already having a shield and the fact that Bardin is still swinging that axe with one hand…the axe and shield have an incredibly useful side swipe that cleaves enemies in one of its heavy attacks.

Making the 1-h ace’s lack of it very bewildering.

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You can do that with 1-hnaxe, then you’ll do that with nearly all other weapons tho

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Yes but it feels really good that’s why it’s my favourite.

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I believe you’re referring to me, so to clarify I said “it’s my go-to on BH” and “to be fair, I do use GF Pistols”.

I don’t use the Axe for hordes, I don’t need to. I built my kit around using it for killing elites. It’s usable on hordes, especially if you hot swap between melee and ranged like I do for the guaranteed crits.

Just because it’s specialized into armor pen and not an all-Rounder doesn’t make it “not viable” though. If you want a weapon that “does it all” pick something else? There’s plenty of weapons that are phenomenal at horde clear but suck at Armored elites/single target. The axe is phenomenal at Armored elites/single target, but sucks at horde clear.

Edit: want to emphasize that you have two weapons for a reason. For most characters: If you’re bringing a special sniping/single target ranged weapon, bring a horde clear melee weapon. If you’re bringing a horde clear ranged weapon (shotguns, flamethrowers, etc.) then bring a single target melee weapon. If you’re locked to two melee weapons: bring a horde clear weapon and a single target weapon. Or a jack of all trades (good on horde and single, but not specialized) and a defensive weapon for if you’re in a tough spot.

1H axe is fine how it is. It’s a specialized weapon.

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Exactly.

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Royale w/ Cheese’s Optimal melee combo against (Armored and unarmored) elites for Hammer (since no character gets Axe and Mace, I assume this is what you meant) is Heavy, then loop Heavy + Light attacks.

Using your own post with the screenshots from The Armory mod:

For a 5 hit combo that’s 0.46+0.46+0.63+0.46+0.63 = 2.46s of “delay between the attacks” (i.e. It doesn’t take account the wind up animations, only how long it takes to start the next attack) for 19+19+0+19+0 = 57 damage, averaging 23.17 armor damage.

Royale w/ Cheese’s Optimal melee combo against normal elites (non-superarmor) for 1H Axe is chain light attacks.

For a 5 hit combo that’s 0.53+0.48+0+72+0.53+0.48 = 2.74s (again, delay between strikes) for 9.75+9.75+9.75+9.75+9.75 = 48.75 damage, averaging 17.79 armor damage over the combo.

For Super Armor it’s chain heavies which is 5 attacks with the same 0.53s delay for 2.65s, at 19 damage each is 19×5 = 95 damage, averaging 35.85 super armor damage.

Again these values for the heavies don’t take charge time into account. If we add, idk, a quarter of a second to charge each heavy swing. The Hammer combo becomes 3.39s for an average of 16.81 damage and the Super Armor Axe Combo becomes 3.9s and averages 24.36 damage.

Leaving the results with charge time as:

Hammer: 57 Damage over 3.39s
Axe (chain lights): 48.75 damage over 2.74s
Axe (chain heavies): 95 damage over 3.9s

Seems like Axe is better than Hammer for armor damage to me?

Edit: I realize that Armor damage doesn’t apply to Bosses or Super Armor enemies, but there’s no way to check that? And I also didn’t account for the +10% Crit Chance on every light attack for Axe and I don’t know the Crit Multiplier nor do I care to redo the math. So just note that the light combo for axe should be slightly higher due to innate Crit.

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Okay here is something I can see eye to eye with, it DOES feel really good, especially with a PlayStation controller and it’s heavy vibration and sound.

Which is precisely why I wish the weapons aren’t so garbage.

Like look at Crowbill. It’s got one of the worst heavy attack in the game. Zero Cleave yet purely horizontal. You can’t even use it properly except against a lone target…and even then you’re probably better off L1+Block Canceling for the far easier headshots.

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A key issue with 1-h axe is the fact that it’s mean gimmick appears to be the fact that is has armour piercing in all its attacks whereas most other weapons have it confined to a few select attacks (often a heavy). That sounds cute in theory, but this isn’t Dark Souls where heavy attacks eat more stamina. Having ap on all your attacks doesn’t mean anything when you’re only using a few select attacks to deal with armoured enemies to begin with.

And to make it even more damning, with all the 1-h axes outside of Crowbill (whose heavy attack is a joke), you’re going to be using heavy attacks on elites anyways because their heavies also happen to be far better for headshots than their Light attacks. A slight difference with Kerilian’s axe whose L3 and L4 are also decent for headshots.

Or long story short, unlike all other weapons in the game equipped with moves to handle elites and moves to handle hordes, the axe has a moveset to deal with elites and a moveset that does the first one’s job, but better.

The big issue here is nobody’s bringing the axe along because it complements any viable playstyle well. Rather you’re trying so hard to give it a purpose by building around it. Assuming you’re using the cheesy Griffonfoot Blessed Combat build, let me tell you right now, you’re only surviving because that talent is OP AF and you’d literally get by with any other weapons almost as well.

The issue isn’t that it’s not an all rounder. The issue is it’s a one trick pony that isn’t even that good at its one trick.

What you’re not seeing is that the axe can only do one thing that every other weapon can ALREADY do…on top of actually being able to survive a horde in cataclysm.

Your argument that you can rely on the Griffonfoot to do all the horde clearing for you is inherently broken by the fact that this argument is solely applicable to 1-h axes and 1-h axes only. You never need to excuse away other weapons being fine because they’re propped up by something OP because most other weapons are…viable.

The axe isn’t phenomenal at killing armour, it’s capable…like every other melee weapons.

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It does have more armour damage and headshot damage you’re right.

Even with that advantage, on Cata, the uptime of that niche is too rare. If you play on difficulties where it’s not rare, and there’s more Chaos Warriors or Elites, then you end up not being able to deal with the situations, due to low Stagger Cleave anyway.

Whereas with 1H Mace, you could Stagger multiple enemies, and then snipe with headshots during the Horde - With 1H Axe, you’re pretty much kiting while fiighting, and other enemies take the place of the one enemy you’ve hit, so now you’re on a full health enemy again.

The reason I was more focused on AS was that it still only hits one enemy with every attack. Even with optimal builds this makes it feel horrible on mixed Hordes, and other more versatile Weapons do it’s job better, as they actually add the safety of multiple Staggers and multiple kills. It’s one of the only one-handed Weapons, which feel like you’re getting overwhelmed almost constantly.

The reason it works on Zealot, is because getting hit on him is a good thing for high end play, and doesn’t really matter, whereas most other playstyles (even Slayer, due to low burst, Stagger AS for On-kill), end up playing too defensive with it - due to more unstaggered enemy uptime.

I’d also argue that, due to Bardin’s headshot angle with the axe, even overheads aren’t possible on Chaos Warriors most of the time. Even if you aim for the head, you’ll get a body shot.

As this is a light 1H Weapon, I would expect it to be viable on ranged Careers, without the use of S+ tier AoE Cleave builds, at least.

Would love to see some footage of people saying this Weapon is good, playing on Cata vs mixed Hordes, and not on Zealot.

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This is a really niche request lol, but I was able to find this https://youtu.be/XGkp477h0i4?si=NgHfRiM19-uZg0m6

I found some other guy doing runs but he also had a few videos where he Modded the axe so I don’t trust the other videos where he doesn’t say he modded it.

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This is HM, I was talking about Saltz/Bardin’s 1H Axe. Elf has some of the same problems, especially with it not working that well on Waystalker, but has more ways to increase it’s damage or usefulness (guaranteed Crits, bleed hits, AS).

Don’t think it’s niche at all really. Mixed Hordes are constant on Cata.