I explained above to someone else. It’s player preference. I prefer having the axe over other weapons. It’s usable, and I like the damn thing. I’ve also made no indication that the axe is superior to other weapons, only that it’s absolutely usable in all content.
Player preference? It’s not the best option but it’s fun to use, stylish as hell, and not going to cost me a match to pick it. It’s not like picking Axe on Champion turns the game into Legend or picking it on Legend makes it Cataclysm. It’s still a viable pick, and if I can do better with Axe and than Billhook, does that mean Billhook is worse than axe? No. I’m just better with Axe lol.
That’d be a great change, and I also never indicated that it couldn’t use a buff. Again, I’ve been repeating this. It’s a viable weapon. It could use some love. It’s not going to ruin your matches. It’s fun to use as is. This post was about the viability of axe (and crowbill).
The “comparison” was more to draw a point to the fact that wanting a specialized weapon to do everything, and if it can’t its “not viable” is a dumb ass argument. As you just proved with your response on how the niche use of a handgun outweighs its lack of usability in a horde situation. The niche use of an elite killer outweighs its lack of usability in a horde.
I bet Kitten would lose their mind if they learned that on Shade I use my Hagbane more than my dual Daggers in a horde situation and only pull them out for ammo Gen or to delete an elite (hah). Or on my Unchained I spend more time with my Fireball staff on hordes than using my Mace, which I pull out for THP for venting and to bonk elites. It’s a hard concept for people to wrap their brains around, building a weapon kit that complements each other.
They kind of actually are though? With the exception of Chaos Warriors, the Griffonfoot on the BH and the two flamethrower weapons are able to easily and efficiently clear Strom patrols. This is also why nobody is taking you seriously when you argue for the ace’s viability when you also use it with h Griffonfoot pistols.
Nobody is saying the solution to axes is to make them as good at clearing hordes as Greatswords. But it should atleast be able to contribute to the team in Cataclysm.
In theory the trade-off is the ace’s ap attacks is leveraged by its lack of cleaves anywhere. What you are failing to grasp is that
It’s ap attacks aren’t an advantage when literally every other weapon in the game have AP attacks to handle elites TO A REASONABLE DEGREE
It’s not nearly good enough at its one trick to compensate for its inability to do anything else.
Just as all other weapons can deal with elites to a reasonable degree. The Axe could use some cleave on either a horizontal push attack or a few of its light attacks so that it can somewhat contribute to the team to a reasonable degree.
When I first made this thread and it’s title, it’s with the stipulation that the weapon is trash, and while one way to make it viable is to throw some cleaves into its moveset somewhere i wanted to see if there are other ways to make it WORTHWHILE in extreme density games. Of which nobody has thrown any suggestions yet btw.
Bro come onnnnn. Use your brain here. People do all sorts of whacky stuff for challenge runs, including beating Cata + with grey/blacksmith template weapons. People true solo Cata with some of the worst classes.
Being technically able to complete a map with something is a completely worthless metric. OP is clearly asking for suggestions to improve the weapon and is using a definition of viable that is closer to what I suggested.
Meanwhile you’re arguing semantics rather than offering suggestions for a weapon you are clearly partial to, but I guess you’d rather it never improved then
To address OP’s question, no I don’t think they can be improved without touching cleave in some way. An over specialised weapon is polarising and difficult to balance. I don’t think making them even better at single target is the best approach.
Start with minor stuff, +1 trash mob hit per attack, and am also definitely a fan of giving a much higher cleave push attack to 1h axe, similar to the Antax Caxe push attack in Darktide.
To be honest, I do like the weapon. The light attacks feel reasonably quick, snappy and weighty. Despite Bardin & Saltz having the same 1H Axe, I dislike using it on Bardin; probably a height thing.
Here’s some of the changes I’d make:
Replace the push attack with a cleave attack.
Slightly increase the speed and range of Light 3
Either make Light 3 a cleave attack or add another cleave attack as Light 4.
Push attack chain into the above mentioned cleave light attack I’m more partial to a Light 4 Cleave attack, leaving the 3 tap AP combo untouched
Combined with the reduced push cost FS introduced to all light weapons,
1H Axe could clean up groups of trash with Push Attack > Light attack > Repeat.
Tourney Balance also made some good changes, turning 1H Axe into more of a finesse weapon.
I don’t think it would be a stretch to include their finesse changes, maybe reduced slightly. Currently it takes 20% to 30% Power to 1 tap a clan rat, which is pretty absurd for a weapon with no cleave. 1H Axe BPs feels kinda borked without assassin.
I’d probs use something like this ^^^ on Bluntsman, maybe even Repeater, if Kruber had a 1H Axe.
By giving them more cleave. This is a horde game, and on Cata the hordes are very dense. Really no point bringing an axe when you’re up against very dense hordes.
I never thought people needed to argue about the semantics of my rather clearcut title ffs
Unfortunately that’s kind of what I was afraid of, but I chose to make this thread hoping for some brainstorm.
But I’m inclined to agree with you as this game doesn’t value utility and other functionalities much.
Perhaps the general design philosophy is flawed to begin with. What’s the point of all those light attacks having AP while the heavy attack is already an anti-elite AP attacks to begin with? This kind of weapon might have worked better in a more strategic RPG, but not a horde mode game
I’ve considered the possibility of indirectly “buffing” axes by making monsters actual threats to the player, or implementing a few armoured enemies that are threatening enough to warrant such a specialized weapon
Problem with that approach is it makes a team without such a specialized weapon screwed. And a real f-you to solo players.
I think it’s fine for lights and heavies to both be single target with different roles. Lights are best DPS for light elites. Heavies are best DPS for super armour. It’s a bit dull but it does work as a division of role.
What it’s really lacking is the cleave push attack to complete its combo flowchart. Without that the weapon is just mash M1 until you see a chaos warrior then briefly mash heavy.
Ultimately, the problem boils down to: if you give axe enough Cleave to “compete” with other weapons then there’s no reason to bring those other weapons. Look at the Great Hammer or Executioner Sword for Warrior Priest and Kruber respectively. They’re both so good at their jobs (hordes AND Elites) that the only reason not to take them is if you prefer another weapon. But they’re actively the strongest melee weapons for their respective classes. 1h axe has a specialization of doing well in low density hordes and killing Armored enemies very easily. That’s why you bring it. If you’re trying to deal with a high density horde you need to use a different weapon, ideally your ranged weapon (drakefire, Griffins Foot, Grudge Raker, etc) to thin the horde while you take out an enemy here or there with your axe for THP.
Making it better at hordes while it’s already great at elites would make it a situation where “why would I bring Axe+Falchion or Rapier when Axe does their jobs and can deal with armor?”, “why bring Great Axe or Axe and Shield when Axe does their jobs… But better?”
If you don’t like the axe for what it does, then don’t use it. There’s a bunch of other weapons out there. I’m personally perfectly capable of clearing Cataclysm w/ bots using an axe without any major issues. It serves its purpose to cover my ranged weapons weaknesses and let’s me deal with heavies with ease.
indeed Bardin and Saltz 1h axes are carried by their range weapons…sure you can do well if you combine them. But as soon as spicy situations go south they will perform more than badly.
As soon as you play cata+ (official realm) you will recognize it
That is the main problem i see. But i guess you can buff single target (armoured) damage a bit more. IMO they dont excel much enough at single target to pick them over a an “all rounder” or crowd control weapon. And no they dont have to be OP but i feel like i can do the same but only better with the other weapons. They are not at the same level to call a 1H axe a sidegrade to other weapons
Literally just open any games and even at sweaty difficulties and various YouTube videos show people are using a ton of weapons other than Executioner Sword and Great Reckoner. And only one of them I found was a “I try to make this sucky meme weapon work”-video. So that already disproves of this broken logic.
The only instance where a weapon would legit replace another weapon is if they play and feel exactly the same as one another, but the other one is straight up better than the other 90% of the time…and so far the only time that’s existed is in Coghammer vs. Mining Pick scenario (which really deserves a thread of it’s own now that I think about it…). Why? It’s not just because Coghammer is straight up better than the Pick, but because they have an almost identical moveset when used on TOP of the clear power imbalance.
Yeah that’s…not the ringing endorsement you think it is.
So what you just said is that the 1h axe is only viable…in difficulties that are so easy that it wouldn’t matter what you pick anyways.
And it’s ability to deal with armoured elites slightly better than some other weapons is rendered moot by the fact that nearly all other weapons can handle elites pretty easily themselves.
@Scipo0419 You’ve yet to define what you consider as an all-rounder.
By your reasoning, an all-rounder appears to be every melee weapons that aren’t 1h axes since pretty much all melee weapons can deal with elites while still holding it’s own against a hyper density horde.
There are weapons that are primarily horde clear, they have sweeping attacks and lots of Cleave but tend to suffer when it comes to armor damage. For example: Paired Skull-Splitters. They can deal with armor sure, but not as well as a other options.
You have weapons that are really good for defensive positions. Typically are shield weapons, but not always. They offer great crowd control, even if their damage isn’t the best. Hammer+Shield is probably the best example of this category.
Then you have the Elite killing category. These weapons tend to not have much (or any) Cleave and focus on high single target damage (often adding natural Crit or armor Penetration) other than the Axe a good example is the Dual Daggers on Kerillian.
Lastly we have the all-Rounders, these weapons dont excel at a single category but can do everything generally well. They tend to be the weapons most players use due to their versatility. Examples include the Executioner Sword, Holy Great Hammer, Rapier, and Sword and Dagger/Axe + Falchion
You see the argument a lot for Kerillian. Why would you bring Dual Daggers when Sword and Dagger is just straight up better. It has worse single target (mainly because accessing the combo is a bit jank) but significantly better horde management, but it also has worse horde management than dual swords.
So on the one end you have Dual Daggers for high Single Target, low horde clear > Sword and Dagger for mid-high single target and Mid-High horde clear > Dual Swords for low single target, high horde clear.
Edit: I use Dual Daggers on my Shade spec over the S+D because I prefer the ease of use in single target damage to delete patrols/bosses vs the horde advantage. The discrepancy is small enough to be covered by my Hagbane. Same situation as my Bounty Hunter. I use my Axe to delete elites and do high boss damage over something like A+F with its better horde clear. I can cover the discrepancy with pot shots from my GF-pistols.
Neither Dual Daggers nor axe are so significantly worse that I can’t use them effectively with my spec nor am I abusing game mechanics to make them work, I’m not good enough of a player to pull off crazy stuff like Blacksmith Template Mining Pick True Solo Cataclysm+ like some people can lol.
Wow it’s been an incredibly long time since I’ve seen anyone claim Exe Sword is top meta option for Kruber. That is a pretty wild (AKA wildly incorrect) take. It was true before the attack speed nerf many years ago, then since then it was handily power crept by other weapons getting buffed and DLC weapons like Bret LS.
Also just a reminder than 1h axe is like a 7/10 at elites at best and like a 2/10 at hordes or any kind of density really.
Yeah I think you could definitely afford to take it up to a 4 or 5/10 at hordes without concern, considering we have weapons that are like 7 or 8/10 at both those things.
Then we’d have more posts about how 1h axe isn’t “viable” because other weapons do it’s job better.
The weapon is perfectly usable in all difficulties. Just because you can’t use it doesn’t make it bad.
Also, Exec Sword is still a very strong pick for Kruber as it does everything well. With only Bret Sword being better at that job but being locked behind dlc.
This really just feels like slippery slope argument taken to an absurd extreme frankly.
Yeah never said it isn’t good. Just suggesting or completely outclasses all other Kruber options. It’s competitive, yet there are often very good reasons to take other options over it. Sure wish 1h axe was just a smidge closer to having any reason at all to take it.
That’s fair, because it intentionally is. Axe is already in a place where picking it is a viable option over other weapons. And people are saying “it’s not viable it needs buffed why would you ever pick it!” (see my comments on DD vs S+D for Kerillian for a similar argument) so if it’s still under performing in any aspect, like it is now on hordes, people would still say “it’s not viable it needs buffed why would you ever pick it”
Leave it at 1 Cleave 1 stagger and give it higher attack speed and it’s exactly the same as dual daggers except with armor Penetration *on its light attacks. But people aren’t asking for dual daggers to be made viable. Why axe?
