I did some testing between decimator and headtaker traits, and found that while decimator isn’t quite functioning accurately (not proccing on the first hit), it’s also vastly underperforming another existing very similar trait- headtaker.
Headtaker grants higher power per stack, lasts much longer, and stacks either on-par or twice as quickly as decimator (I have an axe that stacks in 10, and one that stacks in 5).
Why not just replace decimator with headtaker? It’s better in every way, and it’s functioning.
Decimator has greater potential than Headtaker but is harder to maintain. Decimator gives up to 100% more power than Headtaker does but you lose the bonus if you miss/stop an attack (including pushing) or get staggered (it also doesn’t start stacking until your 3rd chained attack). If your playstyle involves dodging everything and you rarely push, then Decimator will perform better than Headtaker in situations where you are fighting long enough to get to max stacks.
To avoid taking damage without pushing you can use the talent perk that increases your attack speed at lower health. This makes it easier to stagger everything with brutal momentum faster then anything else can attack combined with dodging and positioning.
You are right that most will perform better using Headtaker considering you can push without losing your power bonus. Decimator is more of a glass cannon build that can give you higher DPS at the cost of being more vulnerable to getting downed.
My bug report on this was actually the reason they changed the blessing description btw. And most people agree that headtaker is better than decimator in most every case. You don’t really need the extra power from decimator to reach breakpoints on horde enemies, where it would be procced, and the damage potential doesn’t reach headtaker’s on a single target until near the last stack on a tactical axe. On a combat axe it’s ‘ok’, mostly because it actually starts stacking after the first hit and not the third, like the original description said, and only stacks five times instead of ten. It’s pretty much worthless on a tactical axe though; that bonus damage you get doesn’t match headtaker’s until like the 12th or 13th hit, at which point the thing is likely dead anyways.
Decimator I think clearly destroys head taker on Caxe when you consider it stacks per enemy cleaved. 2 hits with a BM Deci Caxe into a mixed horde and you’re at max stacks, at which point you’re getting double the bonus power for basically the same stack rate. Sure it stacks a bit slower single target but you’re rarely fighting elites alone, and I’d rather have the one that is better for hectic situations than one that is a little better for duelling single elites.
For Taxe yeah Deci seems pretty questionable, no arguments there.
Sure I’m not too experienced with running it on Taxe. You do definitely lose out more on single target there than you do with Caxe at least, so there’s some argument both ways, whereas for Caxe I think Deci is very clearly better overall than head taker.
I didn’t say decimator was bad on combat axes, just “ok”, and I originally thought the same thing, but I swapped over from decimator to headtaker on an antax and it just feels better, for the reasons I said before about decimator not being necessary to reach breakpoints on horde units. For elites, it’s not much of an issue whether you get there in 4 hits rather than 5, especially when there should be teammates doing damage alongside you. I enjoy being able to have some breathing room when in melee rather than frantically dodging and hit-trading, and I haven’t found a meaningful excuse to keep decimator on it.
For the tactical axe, the breakpoint you might want to reach is oneshot headshot scab and dreg non-elites, at which point headtaker also does just fine if you manage to get 25% bonus damage to unarmored and flak, or even less if you’re a zealot and take the bonus damage talent.
-if you do a spreadsheet on the math about the damage ramping between decimator and headtaker (on a tactical axe), there should only be a 6% difference in damage between the two once decimator is fully stacked, and headtaker wins the entire time before that, so it really only matters for big things you plan to hit more than 12 or 13 times.