Axe

General
The Axe is a primary weapon that usually causes slashing damage (with very few exceptions that cause piercing damage).

The Warrior's Axe Mastery attribute improves damage dealt by the axe and linked skills, and is often a requirement for this weapon type. Equipping an axe is required to perform Axe Mastery skills.

Damage Stats

 * The maximum damage range for axes is 6-28.
 * Note: A low damage axe can also have minimum damage of 7 (instead of 6).


 * Axes swing every 1.33 seconds.
 * Axes tend to have a very wide range of damage compared to swords and hammers. An axe may do 6-28 damage, whereas a sword of the same level would do 15-22 damage and a hammer would do 19-35.
 * On average, the highest level axe will do 12.8 damage per second (17 damage per hit), while its sword counterpart would do 13.9 dps (18.5 dph) and the hammer would do 16.3dps (27dph). It is therefore best to invest heavily in Axe Mastery to increase the likelihood of a critical hit and make use of the axe's high end damage. Based on the critical hit research, a max damage axe will produce more average damage per hit than a max damage sword at weapon mastery 11 or higher.

Upgrades and Modifiers
An axe can be equipped with a magic Axe Haft (name prefix) and/or Axe Grip (name suffix) to add extra bonuses to the weapon.

Furthermore an axe may come with a number of non-salvagable weapon modifiers.

See "Weapon Upgrades" for details.

Axe Types
''Note: The only thing influenced by the type is the damage type, and even that can be ignored because the vast majority of axes cause slashing damage. And slashing or piercing damage doesn't make much of a difference anyway. Other stats (range, damage range, swing rate) are not influenced. A Sephis Axe with damage 6-28 is just as good as a Cleaver with damage 6-28. Which visual appearance you prefer is merely a matter of taste.''

The following axe types can be found in GuildWars:

Prophecies Campaign

 * Axes that cause slashing damage:
 * Ascalon Axe
 * Battle Axe
 * Cleaver
 * Chaos Axe
 * Double-bladed Axe
 * Dwarven Axe
 * Great Axe
 * Hand Axe
 * Hatchet
 * Krytan Axe
 * Kyhlo Axe
 * Sephis Axe
 * Serpent Axe
 * Sickle (Tyrian variant)
 * Spiked Axe
 * Summit Axe
 * Tribal Axe
 * War Axe
 * White Scythe


 * Axes that cause piercing damage:
 * Battlepick
 * Piercing Axe
 * Battle Axe

Factions Campaign

 * Axes that cause slashing damage:
 * Archaic Axe
 * Cleaver (Canthan variant)
 * Gothic Axe
 * Gothic Dual Axe
 * Sickle (Canthan variant)
 * Jade Axe
 * Runic Axe
 * Halo Axe

See also Category:Axes.