Axes

[Wraist]

I don't see what the issue is with the 1h stab.

[Phew]

2h probably has one of the best overheads since it gains so much reach. It's slow, but just fast enough to avoid getting spammed. I recall Cyranule and Noodles utilizing its reach quite well. It's quite safe to say that all overheads in this game are great, depending on your turn speed.

I don't like the 2h overhead because it's not centered like 1h and pole; I was always missing by this much. 1h overhead is the easiest to aim because the short+light weapons turn the fastest.

1h stab plays the same as 2h stab, just with less reach. Glances in short and long range, and leaves you open to being hit during block stun if someone blocks it then immediately overheads or chambers you. High reward, high risk.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

It's mostly the turn-rate to effective reach advantage.

1hs have the best turning speed to effective reach since very little of the handle is behind the grip + the weapon arm gets extended a bit more than with a 2h stab. Generally, 2h and polearms have greater reach, but only because the weapons are actually that much longer, besides the bastard sword-type weapons.

2hs seem to have a much better side-to-side wobble effectiveness window, though that may just be my experience getting stabbed by Tretter.

2h pole stabs are the strongest stabs (damage-wise) if they actually land correctly, though they seem to glance at odd times for me.

Hoplite stabs have the most reach (just from having really long weapons), not sure what the exact penalty to thrust damage/speed is with a shield though.



I'm not sure what the deal is with pole overheads, I'll often see the hit land in the wrong place if I was turning at full speed at the time of the swing.

[Jona]

I don't like the 2h overhead because it's not centered like 1h and pole; I was always missing by this much. 1h overhead is the easiest to aim because the short+light weapons turn the fastest.

1h stab plays the same as 2h stab, just with less reach. Glances in short and long range, and leaves you open to being hit during block stun if someone blocks it then immediately overheads or chambers you. High reward, high risk.

Phew... you're starting to sound like Elindor right before he died left crpg. Every class now has its own insanely OP swing directions. 2handers have the stab, and arguably the left-to-right swing is pretty darn fast (not to mention they have no particularly weak swing). 1handers have the tweaked stab and right-to-left swing, meanwhile the leftswing has always been a favorite and the overhead is particularly fast, save for the poor 100+ length swords that suffer from bouncing. Polearms have the tweaked overhead and the same old right-to-left swing, yet their left-to-right swing has always been underpowered due to the severely limiting reach, and the stab has been nerfed (relatively) recently.

Now, would I say that all classes are perfectly balanced? Hell no. Tallying up the number of OP/exploitative animations and seeing which class has the most is hardly what I consider balance, but at the very least Tydeus's "balancing" evens the odds by spreading around the retardation. The only point I am trying to make is don't repeat Eli's follies by playing 1 class and only 1 class until you become blind to your strengths and only see every other classes' strengths (and by strengths, I mean exploits).


To show you what I mean... here are a couple of neat little tables, cuz everyone loves tables.

In the first one, I rank each swing where 1=OP, 2=good/useful, 3=nearly useless. This means that we are using golf scoring, lowest=best.

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You can see that 1h actually comes out on top, while 2h and poles are tied. Now, there are of course many other things to consider when picking the strongest class besides the strength of the animations, like  weapon length, speed, and damage, but right now we are simply looking at which class has the strongest (read: glitchiest) animations.

Notice that I was extremely lenient by considering the 2h and 1h leftswings as "good" and not OP. I feel that they are definitely very strong swings, but nothing about the animations is particularly fishy, so I let them off the hook.

Next up is table #2, where I ranked the strength of each swing compared to the other classes.

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As you can see here, I made a tabular phallus all classes actually come out tied. Ideally I would have said that 1h and 2h stabs are tied, but since I was strict about my ranking, I gave 2h the edge since they seem to be more effective later in the animation than 1handers, despite 1h being a little quicker off the bat. The overheads and leftswings were in a similar situation, definitely very close between the 2h and 1h. I gave 1h the edge on the overheads because they are just so short and hard to see that a quick little overhead slice always catches everyone by surprise. For the leftswings I said that 2h takes the cake since it is simply a lot easier to position yourself for a good hiltslash with 2h as opposed to 1h, and the leftswing is the go-to hiltslashing swing for 2handers.

Note: In both tables, I only considered 4-directional polearms, seeing how they are obviously the only polearms with all the attack directions.

Take this with a grain of salt, since it is nothing more than 1 man's opinions, but I think I am pretty good at analyzing things without bias when necessary.

[Wraist]

I think that 1h R to L is one of the weakest animations in the game, unless you're talking about the opponent's right?, it's a long arc so it's easy to out swing at close ranges. Your second table with 1h being second best at everything sounds about right.

[Jack1]

to jona:

IMO 2h overhead>1h overhead(2h overhead adds a lot of length)
1h leftswing> 2h rightswing (1h leftswings are 90% headshots)
1h stab> 2h stab(2h glances much more)

[Jona]

I think that 1h R to L is one of the weakest animations in the game, unless you're talking about the opponent's right?, it's a long arc so it's easy to out swing at close ranges. Your second table with 1h being second best at everything sounds about right.

Well the 1h right-to-left swing used to be very slow while having a long arc, but it was recently buffed so it can cover the same ground (far reach) in pretty much half the frames. It is very different than the 1h leftswing nowadays other than the fact that it is slightly slower and can still reach farther. It definitely isn't the best option in close face-hugging situations, but you can easily play the range game against people using poles or 2handers since no one expects it to be able to reach so far, so fast.

to jona:

IMO 2h overhead>1h overhead(2h overhead adds a lot of length)
1h leftswing> 2h leftswing (1h leftswings are 90% headshots)
1h stab> 2h stab(2h glances much more)

Yeah, like I said, those were just my opinions, everyone is bound to have their own. I agree that 2h overhead is very deadly, and I get a lot of people with that one when using my danish since it's just so long, but personally I find 1h overheads to still work better when I use them and when used against me. People just can't seem to block them for whatever reason, myself included. It honestly feels like they are very close to the polearm overheads, where they are slow to draw back but as soon as they are released they just hit nearly instantly... but afaik they haven't been tampered with so this shouldn't be the case.

The 1h v. 2h leftswing was also a tough call, mainly because yes, 1h swings do hit the head most of the time, yet you can't overlook the fact that everytime you see a 2hander they always feint stab/rightswing then go for the hiltslashing leftswing. Honestly I wish we could find out the stats on these sort of things... which classes used which swings the most. Imo 2h would be a toss up between stab and leftswing. I don't claim to be a great 2h player, yet I have won countless dueling scenarios by just spamming the leftswing, and then combining that with holds when necessary. Throw in a couple feints here or there, and even the most skilled players have a hard time reacting to the hiltslashing power of the all-mighty leftswing. Also something of note is that most players have weaker leg armor than body armor, and the leftswing tends to hit the legs since many 2handers turn into their swings so much. While yes, hitting the leg hitbox gives you a small deduction in damage compared to a torso hit, I think that the huge difference in body armor v. leg armor typically helps you out still. And you don't HAVE to aim for the legs either with the 2h swing, while with a 1hander hitting the head just kind of happens, it isn't something you are entirely in control of. If you are up against someone who is stacking head armor, then the leftswing isn't the best choice.

For the stabs... idk. I still see 2h stabs being able to move nearly 180 degrees and still land for full damage. While 1h can do almost the same thing nowadays, they can't seem to hit as late in the animation as often as 2h can. This may be due to the fact that like the 1h leftswing, 2h stab is often aimed directly at the opponents face, thus dealing more damage and lowering the chance of glancing. Also it is easier, imo, to hit someone who is really close to you by dragging the 2h stab than it is the 1h stab. The main reason for that is probably because the 1h stab is simply so fast it is harder to aim than the 2h stab which lasts so much longer.

Just my $0.02

[AwesomeHail]

to jona:

IMO 2h overhead>1h overhead(2h overhead adds a lot of length)
1h leftswing> 2h rightswing (1h leftswings are 90% headshots)
1h stab> 2h stab(2h glances much more)

No, not really. when i try to stab with my spathion (18 str char) i glance more than i see ppl with 2h stab weps. dunno if you have seen Umbra, but he stabs with full damage at the tip of his GGS or stabs when youre facehugging him. never seen him glance lol

Axes should trade length, awful or lack of stab and unbalanced tag for damage, and shield breaking, when compared to swords or bladed pole arms.  Speed should be the same or very close, not the garbage speed they have now.

welp every shield i wore with my shield 6 got 1-2shot by more axe/bardichemy old friends

[Rebelyell]

Why you peoples still talk about 2h stab?
It is shit, shit dmg shit speed and you can't lolstab that with most of weapons anymore, personally i stopped using staby 2h at all.
Greatswords need shitload of space just to land one properly and it is super easy to counter, maybe some short fast 2h can still properly utilize stab, even on duel tournament peoples have not use stab almost at all, look at chase.

You live in some 2011 world,
I will tell you what is 2h meta on eu now
Hack and slasch kill fast weapon, If weapon is not long and hit as truck or fast and hit as truck   or fast as longsword/2h opsword you are fucked.


Miadao is probably strongest battle 2h now, op in pure form(long fast and >45cWTF<) super easy to use.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Persian War axe is getting buffed to 94 speed/42 cut. Its secondary mode is 32p which is quite good, but it's main mode is too useless. It may need further buffs along with the Two Handed War Axe both together.

Instead of buffing the Persian Battle Axe even more, I'd rather increase the price on the War Axe and just make it even stronger than the PBA while keeping the same speed.

Personally I think the Two Handed War Axe is fucking excellent and shouldn't be touched. For it's cost it's good and I find it really easy to use. Yeah sure I've got 250 ping but it can respond after blocking fast enough for me to counter attack and is really easy to time hits off, I land far fewer team hits with it.

The PBA doesn't need a huge buff, it's still (on the numbers at least) the most powerful weapon in the game. The only trouble it has is delivering that power in any kind of none mob situation. Which isn't the end of the world but I just think it needs a very tiny tweak, maybe just more weight so it cocks up peoples blocking a bit more.

The PWA just needs a speed buff and then to be the same price as the THWA, then it'll be dandy.

The thing that makes the THWA stand out is the fact it's balanced. I got to duel the other day on the Australian server against some guy from the 5th tier of native. His build was way better for dueling but the difference between my unloomed PBA and the THWA was insane. I hit him once in 4 rounds with the PBA where as I killed him 3/5 with the THWA. That's just a messed up difference to have when you're talking about no change in player skill.

modz dead tho so probz no point in fixing the axes.

[MURDERTRON]

It's good to remember that most of the decent 1hers have higher stab damage than 2hers, although both weapon types have absurd stabs for their own reasons.

[Grumbs]

I don't think its worth messing around with the animations too much anymore. 1 hand stab should not even be in the same league as polestab though, that discrepency needs fixing at least. We have weapons with 1-2 directions that have an inferior stab to a 0-1 slot 1 hander with 4 great animations. I know there are some great polearm stabbers in the game, but if they trained with a 1 hander they would do so much better. That stab is like 2011 polestab on steroids

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

I don't think its worth messing around with the animations too much anymore. 1 hand stab should not even be in the same league as polestab though, that discrepency needs fixing at least. We have weapons with 1-2 directions that have an inferior stab to a 0-1 slot 1 hander with 4 great animations. I know there are some great polearm stabbers in the game, but if they trained with a 1 hander they would do so much better. That stab is like 2011 polestab on steroids

All the spear based weapons need a series buff to their stab out put or everything else needs a nerf. But yeah, a awlpike or a war spear should fuck shit up with the pokey end.

BUT THIS THREAD IS ABOUT AXES YOU HIGH JAKEY MO FO!