When you get good with a Greataxe, it is an absolute beast, but it's all about picking your moment. It's one downfall is an inexplicable penalty to movement speed.

But there is no tier after Silver. Kromm supplants it as an incredible two handed weapon capable insane DPS. The Atgeir is superior in crowd control, but if you need to mop the floor with a nasty mob in one or two hits, Kromm's secondary attack is vicious, has range and is relatively fast. In general, if you're parrying or fighting a boss that doesn't stagger easily, spamming Kromm's secondary attack is a better option to the combo.

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

Originally posted by jonnin:

** in general anything that is a tool is bad, like trying to fight with a picaxe

You are right but there is one exception: golems.
In case you haven´t tried it yet, parry a golem with a shield and quickly swap to your pickaxe, you´ll be surprised how fast he´ll go down. It completely trivializes them.

You can jump on top of them, and they can't hurt you. You can then pickaxe away with impunity. Usually 3 good smacks and it's dead lmao.

Originally posted by qwerm:

Originally posted by jonnin:

Axes are a grey area here, esp early game, but I stand by lumping them in the tools.

They lack the regular attack cleave of a sword, and swing a little slower, but that new power attack they have has proven to be unusually effective at hitting mobs below the expected plane of combat since the overhead swing finishes a little below where your feet are, so it can help when your opponent is downhill from you.

Plus, you'll likely almost always be carrying an axe for woodcutting, so if you want to travel light, you can run with that if you're not too concerned about minmaxing damage types and DPS.

Similar to Kromm, if you want to use an axe as your primary weapon, you should be using the secondary attack almost exclusively. Obviously if you're surrounded, it's better to combo and stagger lock what you can. In my opinion, Axes are slightly underpowered, but at least the One-handed axe is mostly just a tool. The battleaxe, while capable of chopping down wood, is very obviously intended as a weapon only. It really needs a slight damage boost (especially now with Kromm, though they both complete their three-hit combo at the same time, Kromm's first hit comes out faster, while the Axe final 2 hits come out faster than Kromm) but mostly just get rid of the extra 10% movement speed penalty, bringing it in line with Sword/Axe/mace + Shield and Kromm.