Where are the Axe skills?

Any plans for one or two Axe specific skills?

It seems that Axes generally are not as rewarding in terms of available skills, particularly for One Handed Axes and Dual Wielding.

Mace builds get
- Ground Slam
- Glacial Hammer

Sword / pointy things get
- Viper Strike
- Whirling Blades

Things that work with Axes

- Cleave: but it also works with swords
- Sweep: limited to 2H, and also works with staff and 2h mace
- Leap Slam: but also works with sword, mace, staff, so no advantages


I wanted to make a dual wield Axe Ranger or Marauder but right now good skills like Viper Strike and Whirling Blades are barred from use unless dual wielding a sword and an axe.

Are there any other options than Flicker Strike for an Axe-dual-wield build?

Axes, Claws and Wands are all in about the same boat in regards to specific skills. Kind of sad, because I absolutely love Claws and Axes; it's just that one is useless and the other's a slower sword clone...

I'd absolutely love more melee weapon skills in general. It's very lacking at the moment. More specific stuff for everybody.

you forgot dual strike.

Dual strike + Cleave make a very strong duo.

Hmm yes you can't exactly do the same with axe as you do with swords but there is still a bunch of skills you can choose from, isn't there? Let me see the skills...

Seems like the axes really need more love after all. Maybe unlocking some mace skills would be good idea. Or ban swords from infernal blow or dominating blow instead. Until then if you wanna use axes you should just use sword and pretend it to be an axe...

Edit: I don't think axes need some exclusive skill, they just need to have their place in the skill spectrum. They really are just bad swords at the moment.
They still may be used by some strength character that is not going to invest in DEX but want to use cleave, which is really a great one and using axe instead of mace for that skill may be worth it.

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DeF46 wrote:

Any plans for one or two Axe specific skills?

It seems that Axes generally are not as rewarding in terms of available skills, particularly for One Handed Axes and Dual Wielding.

Mace builds get
- Ground Slam
- Glacial Hammer

Sword / pointy things get
- Viper Strike
- Whirling Blades

Things that work with Axes

- Cleave: but it also works with swords
- Sweep: limited to 2H, and also works with staff and 2h mace
- Leap Slam: but also works with sword, mace, staff, so no advantages


I wanted to make a dual wield Axe Ranger or Marauder but right now good skills like Viper Strike and Whirling Blades are barred from use unless dual wielding a sword and an axe.

Are there any other options than Flicker Strike for an Axe-dual-wield build?

Let's refer to http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Melee_Skill for a bit. We'll disregard anything that can be used by any weapon (listed above). What we're left with is a list of skills that each weapon can use that isn't a free-for-all. Thus:

1 handed sword: 7 skills
1 handed mace: 5 skills
1 handed axe: 4 skills

The disparity is clear there. However:

Dagger: 3 skills
Claws: 3 skills

So your lumping in of 'pointy things' with swords regarding the abundance of skills Axe doesn't get is on shaky ground there.

2 handed sword and 2 handed axe are equal, at 5 skills.
2 handed mace and staff, 6 skills.

This should clarify that 1 handed Axe is actually only one or two skills 'behind' the other 1-handed weapons in terms of choice, and 2-handed axe is on par with 2-handed swords.

But daggers and claws are well behind *everyone* with only three skills, so which weapon classes should we be buffing again?

Daggers and claws can have spell mod and are partially INT weapons, they are meant to be used with spells as well as melee skills. It is just right they only have so many skills available to them.

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wiggin wrote:

Daggers and claws can have spell mod and are partially INT weapons, they are meant to be used with spells as well as melee skills. It is just right they only have so many skills available to them.

A fair point regarding the utility of daggers, although I don't think claws are anywhere near as useful for a spellcaster (dagger's crit chance carrying over to spells is very significant, still).

But these two weapon types are still billed as 'melee' primarily and are short-handed in the skill department.

1H Axe could definitely use a few more, but I think this thread exaggerates ever-so-slightly the sparsity of skills available to an axe user.

The fact that you can Cleave with two axes and have the damage count for each weapon already puts them close to 1-handed swords in my opinion.

If anything, Viper Strike is the big advantage 'pointy things' have over axes. That's one mean boss-killer. But since it doesn't rely on weapon damage, you can just weapon-switch to apply four stacks and return to your axing pleasure, if need be.

Same for whirling blades.

But for a build purist (and that I am, most times -- if a char uses axes, she USES axes), Axes are left a little behind. A little.

I still think claws and daggers, more-so.

Also keep in mind the "intrinsic mod" for axes is their abnormally high dps. They just do more damage than swords, maces, and staves. They're not supposed to be flashy or special, just huge.

I like the design choice of putting Culling Strike on more unique axes, would be fun to have an axe-specific melee skill with culling strike built in (like how Power Siphon has it built in).

I'm just interested to know if there are any plans for skills stylistically designed for Axes. It's not a matter simply of what skill is usable by what weapon.

"

Charan wrote:

But daggers and claws are well behind *everyone* with only three skills, so which weapon classes should we be buffing again?

Wands.