No love for axes?

Axes, the only weapon without any implicit mod, a limited number of skills available (and nothing specific) and a general lack of support overall... whats the deal?

yeah. whenever i go marauder i go 2 handed mace. it's almost STRICTLY better.

well they're faster than mauls, and do more damage than swords

but then you could argue they do less damage than mauls, and are slower then swords....



its not a huge deal if you ask me

having a useless weapon type seems like a big deal to me

they have implicit mods, every weapon does, its just not shown, according to a mod post a little while back.

i hope they do show the implicit mods, just because its confusing otherwise, but so far no luck on that.

check out: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/17982

highest level white mace is terror maul doing 108.6 overall dps and white axe is void axe doing 118.8 overall dps. but the maul has base stun duration of 20% so that seems good for the 10 dps less (which is nothing)

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Float wrote:

highest level white mace is terror maul doing 108.6 overall dps and white axe is void axe doing 118.8 overall dps. but the maul has base stun duration of 20% so that seems good for the 10 dps less (which is nothing)

10% damage or 70ms of stun duration. I don't really think axes need more love.

i d like to see special axe and two handed sword skills,something new and exciting...sweep/cleave are not very interesting

Axes have the best base DPS, which is their implicit perk.

I WOULD like to see more base items though. Variants on existing weapons.

Right now, we have swords and thrusting swords, maces and scepters but those are the only major alternatives.

Axe --> Scythe(2h)/Sickle(1h). Scythe has 15% less base DPS, but +60-80% base critical strike chance.
Stave/Spear --> Halberd(2h). Halberds cannot block attacks (unless you have a +staff block passive) but come with +40% critical damage.
Bow --> Crossbow. Crossbows have +40-80% increased base critical strike chance, but reduced accuracy compared to regular bows.
Claw --> Knuckle(1h). Knuckles have implcit mana leech instead of implicit life leech.

Of course, these would require a lot of models, and maybe some animation tweaks (hopefully not, but in the crossbow case, definitely). I'd foresee them in very distant content updates, but having more implicit mods to choose from would be a nice thing.

Axes also falter in the area of melee skill gems, especially with one-handed axes.

Here is a comparison between the amount of melee skill gems available to strength-based weapons, not including the 8 available to all melee weapons:

One-handed
Axes: 4
Maces: 6
Swords: 7

Two-handed
Axes: 5
Maces: 6
Swords: 5
Staves: 6

In both cases, axes have the least amount available. I know that isn't saying much for two-handed weapons, but for certain builds this is significant.

The reason it is this way is because there isn't any skill gem geared specifically towards axes. They seem tacked onto skills made for the other strength-based weapons if logical. Because of this, there truly isn't very much reason to side with axes, especially one-handed, and even moreso with a shield.

I think it'd be plausible to implement a chop skill gem of some sort. It could be available to axes, two-handed axes, and two-handed swords, which is logical and also closes a few gaps. It'd be even more plausible in the vein of Puncture and Viper Strike. This makes so that a damage-over-time skill is available to all Dexterity-based weapons, two-handed swords become more like one-handed swords, and especially to give axes a skill gem of their own.