Axe weapon skills perform very poorly

[Gwydion]

I have been updating my Beastmaster and Warrior, using Axe builds and I'm just very disappointed at how weak this weapon performs, relative to others. Even with R25 Nyame, and R15 REMA weapons, Axe weapon skills do at most HALF of what Savage Blade is capable of doing. How is this "balance"?

[Alhanelem]

It's more savage blade is broken than anything else, really.

[Armarc]

Yep its a Naegling problem. They could delete that weapon (deal with a month of complaints) and the game would be better off.

[Gwydion]

While I do agree, that Naegling and Savage Blade are extremely powerful, Axe weapons and weaponskills are not without their disadvantages.

• There are more instances of TP Bonus+ on Axe weapons than any other single-handed weapon.
• When combat skill+ exists on JSE armor slots, the quantity of Axe skill is larger than any other combat skill in that slot.
• While sortie earrings have +10/11/12 combat skills for NQ/+1/+2 earrings, respectively, only BST and NIN earrings have both combat skill+ AND Physical Damage Limit +%.

I think the existence of this armor and augment layout, demonstrates that Axe is inherently weaker among one-handed weapons, given that these are the offensive boosts that Beastmasters must strive to obtain. (Meanwhile, a Beastmaster will still be outparsed by a Dark Knight with Dolichenus).

How do we fix this? Give Beastmaster native Dual Wield? Everything about Beastmaster as a front-line job, feels very ...unfinished.

[Ahlen]

Ikenga axe (high Rank) on war is being used on some of the hardest fights in Ody. Axe is not that weak and axe has a decent amount of good skillchains they can make.

[Gwydion]

Ikenga axe (high Rank) on war is being used on some of the hardest fights in Ody. Axe is not that weak and axe has a decent amount of good skillchains they can make.

Respectfully, you are kidding yourself.

Axes just don't have a reliably high damage weaponskill (#1, even if you remove Naegling/Savage Blade from the comparison, and I strongly recommend you do). Even with the addition of Prime WSes, Blitz is still artificially held back in performance. Being a multi-hit WSes, it doesn't get the same performance boost using Nyame Path B, as other single-hit WSes (2). This is another way that Axes (and arguably multi-hit WSes) are artificially kept as weaker than other weapons and weapon skills. And as my third point, I ask you to take a look at the fTP modifier for Blitz, you are effectively forced to WS at 2000 TP, reducing your WS frequency by half (when many other jobs optimally WS at 1000 TP or 1250 TP for maximum damage). So clearly, the design choices made by the dev team are artifically limited the performance of Axe users.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Blitz


Not only should Axes be improved upon, but every single Axe should be available to both BST and WAR. (I would even make a case that BSTs should be allowed to use Great Axes, like Morimar in the SoA storyline). It is wholly unfair for SE to use Beastmasters as cool story-telling devices, but hinder their performance in battle.

Are Beastmasters and Axe users front-line DD or not? Because this is extremely disheartening.