Best Axe Haft

I know that this ultimately comes down to my personal preference, but which kind of haft is best suited for an all-purpose PvE axe?

I've been leaning towards Furious, Sundering, or Cruel.

Do the first 2 take effect often enough to be useful? Is lenghtning Deep Wound really all that important?

Or should I go a different direction and select vamp or zealous? Elemental mods don't appeal to me because I want this to be an all-purpose axe.

Gah, so many choices!

Any advice on the uses of these mods to help me decide would be great.

Edit>>> One more thing, is a Defense mod better than Fortitude? I was thinking that +30 will be gone as soon as you are hit a few times, but +armor will prevent a few points of damage throughout the battle, and would end up saving you form mroe than 30 damage which would be better than +30 hp. Did that make sense?

-Mike

Zealous if you're going to be using a lot of buffs like Tiger's Fury. Otherwise go with Furious, IMO.

Vamp is good for certain situations, like if you're attacking lots of foes with Cyclone Axe.

I don't think lengthening Deep Wound is that important. They'll either be dead, have removed it, or you'll have another Eviscerate charged by the time Cruel would kick in.

And Sundering sucks.

>>On a Warrior, go with Fortitude over Defense in general. You have enough armor that adding 5 more is negligible. Frankly, I prefer +1 Axe Mastery mod for the extra Critical Hits and such. The enemy can't kill you if they're dead. For farming, though, you may want Fortitude or even Defense, depending.

furious /+5 armor <~~my fav
sundering / +30hp <~~the fav of the l££T
zealous / +5 <~~another good 1

best thing to do is buy a few axes and put diff combos on each..then u got an axe for every occasion

Vamp for your primary set
Zealous on your secondary or if you are using TF
Elemental for attacking warriors and monks
Sundering if you are rich and stupid

PS I am a moron, i just reread the OP. If this is just for pve it really doesn't matter.

??

of course it matters..adren warrior would need a furious mod a wammo would need sundering

PvP ppl..*sigh*

For an all purpose PvE Axe go Furious or Zealous.

For "all purpose" I'd say Furious - vampiric or zealous will cause degen that will force you to keep switching weapons all the time.

My previous warrior used Victo's Maul, which has a Furious mod, and I wasn't dissapointed. My Ranger got an Elswyth's Recurve Bow that has Vamp (bought it for 5k, was that as good of a deal as it seems?), and I can never seem to justify using it because the degen always seems to kill me in battle.

I think I'm gonna go Furious, and fortitiude. Thanks for all the comments!

PS. If you wanna convince me otherwise, post up some final arguments!

THe only good time for having a vamp mod on your bow, is if youre spamming barrage, otherwise you're losing more hp then you're gaining, because the attack rate is to slow

Bow Vamp is best suited for builds with increased attack speed(Tigers,Frenzy,etc)

I run Zealous/+5 and Furious/+5 since +5 is generally a lot better in PvE since most damage isn't direct, but if you do get a lot of direct damage(armor ignoring) then +HP would be better. But make sure(if you don't want to spend ungodly amounts of cash) to get a +29 haft/pommel of fort.

Believe me, I'm an expert on being cheap. I almsot never use greens unless I get them cheap. Otherwise I build my own from a collector item at half, a third, or even less the cost. So you think armor is better than fort? I dunno.

I've tried every axe mod combo under the sun, and I find Zealous to be the best haft for my build, and +5 Armor to be the best grip regardless of build (armor > HP 95% of the time).

The haft really depends on your build, but I'd definitely recommend trying Zealous if you haven't already.

As I said before, +AL is better for non-direct damage(i.e., eles, warriors,ect) and +HP is better for direct damage(SS, holy damage, IW,ect) since direct damage = armor ignoring damage = AL doesn't count at all.

I think I like that idea. Defense ought to be cheaper than fort as well, eh?

5k>80k Anyone? ^^

Furious + defence works best for me, however I've yet to find a 15^50 with a nice skin to get the mods for, so for now I'm wielding a Victo's Battle Axe (sun + fort :/)

I usually have three set of weapons
Zealous + defense like Rahl has explained
Zealous + fortitude for dealing with degen and direct damage
Long Bow to pull
If Im wamo then Zealous + enchanting

just go for zealous, it's one of the better mods IMO because it gives a nice amount of mana. Furious should be nice tough but i never tried it persoanlly.
and elemental dmg mods are always a nice addition to someones weopons. but for pve do keep in mind that a certain type of element is useless vs some foes.

zealous/furious is the best choice to go, sundering 20/20 is just overpriced trash imo, altho vamp is the biggest +damage haft <3